XKCD linked to a feathered dinosaur successor in action, inspired by a PlosOne pa per.

Dinosaurs don’t need made up sounds to be scary!

Google is involved in a historical reconstruction of the Versailles palace. It is quite nice. I wish I had seen it before going there.

Before the revolution

After the revolution

This video from NASA shows how Curiosity will hopefully land in Mars on 6 August 2012 (6:31 UK time). It is not science fiction, nor inception. I hope all goes well.

It is turning into a thriller because we will know if the landing was successful later than expected, and of course when it has all happened already. For more information see here.

Here is a slowed-down high-speed video of the lunge behaviour of Drosophila males, used when they fight. The movement is too fast to observe at normal speed. The behaviour is described in Hoyer et al. (2008)

Here is a talk on apathy about things that should be important but most people do not engage in: political parties, elections and leaders.

The speaker argues that the reason behind people’s apathy to these is not that people are too selfish or too lazy to care. Instead it is because the world actively discourages engagement. He calls to redefine apathy as due to cultural barriers to engagement, instead of an internal property of people.

For example putting a price on public space discourages messages that cannot generate a profit to the messenger, even though such messages can be important.

Here is a parody of the one guitar cover of the ‘Somebody I used to know song’.