Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks

Villagers who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Evolutionary Trade-Offs: Big Brains or Big Balls?

A recent scientific paper reveals that as sexual selection pressures increase in promiscuous bat species, males evolve larger testes and smaller brains. But in bat species where females remain faithful, males had comparatively smaller testes and larger brains. Conversely, male sexual behavior had absolutely no effect on either brain or testes size.

Originally uploaded by seizethedave.

I found this image on flickr – it’s adorable, well done, a bit creepy and just plain cool. Great job, seizethedave.

Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks

More than half of students at four-year colleges — and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges — lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

Exit

I had so much fun today at the old Austin airport. Even though the last flight left the airport in 1999, it officially closed in 1993. It’s usually barricaded and marked with “no trespassing” signs, but that’s changed recently, so I decided to check it out. You can see more pictures here.

Hallway with Freya

Freya stands still long enough for a one second exposure. This is the one and only hallway in my wee little house.

Freya

I think this is the best photo of Freya I’ve ever taken. She’s in the window next to my bed.

No, it’s not a silly b-grade horror movie. It’s true. At least, according to National Geographic. (Yeah, that’s National Geographic, not the National Enquirer.)

Yes, hamster tongue – I can’t decide if it’s cute or disturbing.

And my Flickr addiction continues to grow. Yeah, I’m looking at pictures of people with cats on their heads. Someone, please make me stop! I just keep clicking and clicking and clicking…

Mishka & Phil

Mishka seems to have adopted Phil the Phlamingo as his own.

To continue the recent photo obsession, I went for a walk today and took photos along the way. You can see the set I took on Flickr. I might actually be happy with a few of them.