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April 2008
Become a RedPill: Kill Your Television
I get funny looks when I admit to people I don’t own a TV. I get the impression they think I’m some kind of flaky activist. In fact, people have even told me as much.
They seem to think it’s unnatural not to spend more than four hours a day on an activity that burns just five calories more an hour than sleeping.
Likewise, I don’t get people who own televisions. TVs are big dumb conversational bullies that don’t care about you, what you want, or what you think. Television doesn’t care what time you want to watch a show, it’s going to show things according to it’s schedule and you will conform if you want to know what everyone’s talking about around the water-cooler tomorrow. Television is great for promoting inane small talk about its fantasy world, a completely unproductive exercise. It’s like Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” People do the same with TV.
Television is virtual reality. Sports fans in bars scream at projection-screen TV’s all over the world, despite the fact that the football players can’t hear them. Faux News describes the world outside as nothing but car chases and violence, but the reality is that America is safer than it’s ever been. African Americans are not just thugs and whores as Black Entertainment Television (BET) wants us to believe.
To quote Ron Kaufman, “Why do you think they call it programming?”
So join the RedPills, and kill your television. You could go outside, you could join an MMORP, you could jump into a chat room, start your own blog, contribute to Wikipedia, join a social network, start a flash mob, make an LOLCat, or just MAKE. Whatever you do, engage, don’t be a passive receptacle for advertising sponsors.
Who’s going to win the next American Idol? I am, because I’m not going to watch it.
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Humans Aren’t the Only Ones…
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When Galaxies Collide
NASA has released 59 new images of colliding galaxies. w00t!
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Attractors Flash Game
It didn’t take me long to figure this puzzle out (HINT: It’s not something you figure out), but I did enjoy the attractors flash game more than the commenters.
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Free E-Book: Programming Through Natural Selection
Genetic Programming |
I’ve heard this field referred to as “Emergent Programming,” but there’s a Free E-Book on Genetic Programming available for download, which covers the method of using natural selection to evolve computer programs (HT Oranchak). The method has been used to find more efficient algorithms and programming methodologies.
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R.L. A.I.
was an early AI that could move withot bumping into things |
Science Fiction is rife with intelligent machines. C-3PO in “Star Wars,” the HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” KITT from “Knight Rider,” Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the Terminator, Sonny from “I, Robot,” the agents from “The Matrix,” and the deceptively artificial humans from the movies “A.I.” and “Westworld” are commonplace in our fictional futures.
Video games are filled with AIs who compete against human players. The better the AI, the more challenging gaming experience. Since computers started decisively beating the best chess players on Earth, grandmasters have started coaching competing chess AIs against each other. Artificial Intelligence is already integrated into our interactive entertainment, and holds promise for more real-world applications as well.
But is AI really “intelligent?” The father of modern computer science Alan Turing, described a test for determining a machine’s capability of demonstrating thought: a human judge enters a chat room with a human and a computer program, if they cannot identify which is the human and which is the machine, then the machine qualifies as intelligent. This procedure is known as the Turing Test.
A.L.I.C.E is a ChatBot that holds promise for one day passing the Turning Test. ALICE scans sentences given to it in online chat for keywords and returns one of hundreds of appropriate responses based on the context of the conversation. You can chat with ALICE online at alicebot.org.
ALICE does not understand sentences, it feigns understanding. However convincing, ALICE is not intelligent in any sense, it merely pretends at being human.
Actually understanding the meaning of sentences is an incredibly complex task for computer programs. Consider the following two sentences:
“The cat chased the mouse because it was hungry.”
“The cat chased the mouse because it looked appetizing.”
We can easily deduce that the ambiguous pronoun “it” refers to the cat in the first sentence and the mouse in the second, but consider the wealth of personal knowledge and experience required for our minds to make this distinction. The conundrum in AI development is giving a computer program this level of intuition.
Cyc (pronounced “psych”) is one attempt at a computer program that can actually derive meaning from language. Since 1984, researchers have been plugging facts into this program, trying to teach it common sense. Using facts like “Creatures that die stay dead” and “When Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, he took his left foot with him,” Cyc makes its own assumptions about the world.
I visited cyc.com and played the “FACTory” trivia game, where Cyc give the player the assumptions it has made from the facts in its database and asks if they are true, false, or don’t make sense at all. One true assumption Cyc had made was, “Devices are typically located in toll booths,” but I had to think about it. “Condominiums are typically located in modern homes,” was an obviously false assumption, and “Ones are typically located in police stations,” failed to make sense to me or any of the other players either.
Child-Robot with Biomimetic Body (CB2) acts like a toddler
(but really it’s just creepy)
At the present moment, Web Developers all over the planet are adding another layer of complexity to the World Wide Web, one that will allow computers to read and process our existing websites. This new layer, called the Semantic Web, holds a great deal of potential for AI development. Already agent programs are running tasks for users on the Internet, retrieving data for them using this new logic layer. Science Fiction has speculated on the possibility of a sentient World Wide Web, maybe the Semantic Web is a step in that direction.
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Earth Day 2008
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David Brin Talk in Extropia Second Life
Last weekend I got to meet one of my favorite SF authors, David Brin, at a virtual talk in Second Life’s Extropia Community.
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It was a packed house, avatars kept crashing, lag was evident, but surprisingly mild. Twice my SL interface got a memory error and crashed, meaning when I logged back into the room, I was standing where I was sitting and looking like a putz to everyone else while the room loaded back in. Just like other members of the audience got booted and then reappeared standing and looking around dazed while their avatar reloaded. It’s not like you can yell, “Down in front!”
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Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the talk focused on David Brin’s insecurities about the chat format, and whether or not it was progress. “How on Earth could anybody call this “discourse” subtle or detailed or serious?” Brin asked, obviously frustrated at the fact that keeping up with a chat log involving 80-plus people is an exercise in futility.
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I could understand Brin’s frustrations; however, I had to completely disagree with him on the inadequacy of the medium. Many people are perfectly happy with chat rooms, some with blogs, other television, and others books. Brin unnecessarily put down RSS because he has “so little life span,” and seemed to indicate that he believes the “cocktail party” format is superior for communicating information to the Internet.
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Yet, I personally absolutely despise real-life parties for the same reason Brin dislikes virtual ones, there’s too many voices going off at once and I end up losing track of all of them. I get dizzy and disoriented at parties, and often feel as though I should wear a button to them that reads, “I’m smiling because I have no idea what’s going on.”
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At least I can save and review a chat log, usually finding many wonderful meme morsels in them. I sift 400-plus science articles a day, because I’m looking for only the most interesting stories. I blog, because that’s the only way I can keep from being talked over, which is what happens in every other real-life medium I’ve encountered. Instead of criticizing our online formats, David Brin should have been celebrating the fact that people like us have found a way to express ourselves and exchange ideas.
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Not enough of the discussion was about the Western Enlightenment, but there was enough to make me think about coffee shops, and how they got their start during the Enlightenment. Intellectuals would gather, get caffinated, and engage in late-night discussions about science and philosophy. This was before the Renaissance came along and squash rationality with its oppressive foo-foo idealism.
User Interface Displayed |
Today, coffee shops have been abandoned to the artists, and the scholars of the Enlightenment have moved to the online world, like hanging out on blogs, RSS Feeds, and in the anything-goes realm of Second Life. I think that is progress.
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Break Your Children Off of Books Today
When I had to learn SQABasic for automated testing, I downloaded and printed out the 902 page reference guide, three-hole punched it, and put it into a three-ring binder. The only nice thing about this otherwise idiotic and wasteful act of mine was that I printed it two-up and double-sided to conserve paper.
Now I’m in the process of migrating into Database Development. Having to learn the intricacies of our relational database, I downloaded the Ingres 2006 SQL Reference Guide. It’s a PDF file, and it’s taking every ounce of my willpower now not to print it out.
In the comments section of his July, 2007 article, A Defense of the Book, Alan Wall argues:
I value computer technology, and could not function without it (here I am, after all) but I am yet to meet anyone who would rather read Paradise Lost on a computer screen, or read Dickens on a train from a laptop.
He’s correct that there is a strong resistance to people reading entire books electronically, but this is not proof that print-books are intrinsically superior to e-books. The resistance has much more to do with what’s familiar to us. Print books are incredibly inefficient and devoid of features when compared to the same literature placed in an electronic medium.
There’s no “Find” function in a book. I can’t cut-and-paste my favorite quotes and blockquotes into other files, I have to transcribe them by hand or scan them with text-reading software. I can’t store a book online and reference it from any computer in the world, including my cell-phone.
If I cite a book in one of my posts, anyone who wants to check my sources has to call the library or check the book’s availability online. Then, if the library doesn’t have the book, they call another library and have it sent over. At some point, the scholar has to physically visit the library to pick up the book, and then physically visit the library again to return it.
In a utopian future, libraries will offer nothing but free Internet access and experts to guide people to books online. Romanticists get cold-chills at such a future, as if we are somehow losing something classical rather than gaining something magical. It’s the same nostalgia that keeps us from adopting the Metric System and Dvorak Keyboard layouts.
We didn’t have E-books when I was a kid, so now I must unlearn my habits and port my mind to this Information Age paradigm. Don’t let your personal resistance to E-books prompt you to saddle your children with the obsolescence of printed texts. Get them reading books online today, and put the world’s library on their bookshelf.
Project Gutenberg is a great place to start, with a collection of over 25,000 classic text available for free online.
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Fun With Animating Magnetic Resonance Images
“Some kids get their ears pierced… others it’s a unique haircut… Charles likes people to see his brain.” - Supervillain Brain Child’s Mother, from The Tick Cartoon
My friend Carolyn and her husband Clint made this really cool animated video from her CT Scan, which I highly recommend. A few months back, I had a series of MRI’s done, but was disappointed to find the quality wasn’t good enough to make my own animated video from the images.
What I have been able to do is turn a few of the image series into animated gifs. The result are what you see below. Click on any image to see a larger version.
Top View of the Head Click Image for 2.1 MB Size Gif |
Front View of the Head Click Image for 2.2 MB Size Gif |
Side View of the Head Click Image for 1.5 MB Size Gif |
Top View of Neck and Chest Click Image for 2.2 MB Size Gif |
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Port Discover Participates in Healthpalooza Kids Health Fair, April 18
Be There or Be Square!!!
Elizabeth City, NC— Port Discover will bring hands-on science activities to Kids Healthpalooza Health Fair, Friday, April 18 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at Southgate Mall. Kids Healthpalooza is sponsored by the Elizabeth City State University Health Resources Center and made possible by generous funding from the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund, as part of the Health Disparities Initiative. Other participants, including American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, UNC/ECSU Pharmacy Partnership Program, and the College of the Albemarle Nursing Program, will share information along with other information on health topics, healthy lifestyle choices and health careers.The event is free. Additional sponsors include ECSU, Southgate Mall and the Elizabeth City Housing Authority. For information, phone 252-335-3828 or email pharmacy@mail.ecsu.edu. Elementary school and preschool groups are invited to schedule a field trip.
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Our Technologically-Challenged NC IRS
Dear North Carolina IRS,
Imagine my surprise last night, when after filing my taxes electronically, I was told that I would not be able to pay my state taxes with a debit or credit card. Instead, I would need to print out a payment voucher and mail you something called a “check.”
I vaguely remember this antiquated method of payment. Didn’t it have something to do with me writing my name and an amount of money on a piece of paper, which you could then redeem at my banking institution for real money? Doesn’t a farcical system like that sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland?
So I found a way to print up one of these check thingamabobs from online, but then I needed one of those envelope thingies to put it in. So I bought a pack of 200 envelopes, the remaining 199 of which will gather dust in a drawer of long-lost office supplies next to my 3.25 floppy disks.
Of course, the pony-express guy needs payment to carry my letter through the rain and snow and whatnot, so I had to buy stamps. The remaining stamps will go into the long-lost office supplies drawer also, until that fabled day when I need them again. By that time, the price of postage will have gone up several cents, rendering my stamps obsolete. So I’ll have to buy upgrade stamps to make up the difference.
I don’t know why I’m posting this on the InterWebs. You’ll never read it. I suppose I should voice my grievances in a manner low-tech enough for you to understand, but I’m afraid I’m not well-versed in smoke signals.
So enjoy the inconvenience you have cost me and many others, enjoy the $0.41 you got from forcing me to use your antiquated snailmail system, and enjoy the late fees you will inevitably charge me for daring to think you weren’t just a bunch of cave people bonking rocks with other rocks in the dark.
Sincerely,
Ryan Somma
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Solution to the Monty Hall Mathematical Problem
On the game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” contestants were offered three doors. Behind one of them was a prize. Contestants would choose door one, two, or three, but before Monty Hall would show what was behind the chosen door, he would show the contestant what was behind one of the two doors not chosen, revealing an empty door.
He would then give the contestant a choice: stick with the door they have chosen, or switch. So if the contestant picked door number one, Monty Hall might reveal there was nothing behind door number two. Should the contestant switch to door number three or stick with door number one?
Correct answer: switch. Always switch. Because the first time the contestant chooses, they have a one in three chance of getting the right door. The second time, they have a 50/50 chance.
Seems somewhat counterintuitive, no? See for yourself. The NYT has an interactive version of the Monty Hall Problem, where you can see it work for yourself:
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Yuri’s Night World Dance Party in Second Life
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In David Brin’s science fiction book Kiln People, people make copies of themselves to aide with multi-tasking. Something we’d all like the power to do at times. Time isn’t money, it’s much more precious.
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Saturday night, unable to physically travel a hundred-plus miles to hang out at one of the parties celebrating space flight, I decided to go virtual and attend a party in Second Life hosted by Extropia a community of Transhumanists—an international intellectual and cultural movement that seeks to use science and technology to ameliorate human suffering and shortcomings.
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However, I was also very busy that night. So while I was at the party, I set my avatar to dance automatically, while I caught up on some writing. It was awesome! I got to dance with hot cyborg ladies in one window, while keeping up on research in the next.
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I had a great time, and just like real life parties, I don’t remember much of it. Unlike real life parties, I didn’t get behind on my homework.
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Also unlike real life parties, I’m an excellent dancer in virtual reality… after downloading the appropriate dance moves that is. : )
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Yuri’s Night In Second Life
in Moscow Courtesy Wikipedia |
“Outer space is eternal and extends indefinitely far out. There is enough room for everyone there.” - Yuri Gagarin
Can’t make one of the parties tonight? Go virtual and attend COLAB’s Yuri’s Night party in Second Life. It begins 11AM PDT and runs until 11PM PDT, with live virtual music performances scheduled all throughout the day. I’ll be wearing my virtual Yuri t-shirt, if I can find it.
Extropia in Second Life also has events planned all day. David Brin will be giving a speech at 1PM PDT.
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Otherness
Alien… Weird… Foreign… Alterity… Strange… Xeno… Other.
Scientists and philosophers have had a field day with the issues raised by communicating with aliens. Consider the Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade. When we finally do meet the aliens, at least we can rest assured that they’ll speak geek.
Nothing compares to the otherness found in science fiction. Even when artists take existing structures found on Earth, and simply add another layer of complexity to them, the result is remarkable, as we can see in these two videos by 1stAveMachine, where insects and jungle plants are made alien by simply adding additional organs to them:
And another:
Wayne Barlowe creates some of the most alien creatures of all, and makes them all the more real with hard SF details. There is some concept art that was used in making the CGI speculative documentary Alien Planet, about robot probes visiting a distant planet called Darwin IV, where life is detected in the future. Barlowe also has several great books collecting aliens from SF literature, which could make for interesting coffee-table books.
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Yuri’s Night Space Party 2008
This Saturday Night! Be there! BE THERE!! BE THERE!!!
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Head out to Yuri’s Night World Space Party, a series of parties being held across the world to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Human Space Flight, and Yuri Gagarin
Find a party in your area, attend, and then tell me about how cool it was… since there aren’t any parties within 150 miles of where I live.
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The Mathematics of Cooperation
for the Benefit of the Hive Photo by Todd Huffman |
Humans are funny animals. We cooperate at a level of sophistication seen nowhere else on planet Earth. Teachers, food servicers, law enforcement, medical workers, farmers, entertainers, engineers, truck drivers, and a bazillion other specialized laborers make our survival in its present convenience possible. The majority of us would die in a few weeks without our worldwide social support network.
Homo Sapiens behave altruistically toward one another. Human altruism is so strong that it even goes beyond our own gene pool. We are so nurturing that we adopt and care for members of other species like cats, dogs, houseplants, ant farms, hamsters, snakes, lizards, and other pets. We undergo Herculean efforts to save beached, stranded, or wounded whales.
Homo Sapiens care a lot.
We aren’t alone in this regard. In nature, we see cooperation and self-sacrifice everywhere. Primates like Chimpanzees and Gorillas work in cooperative altruistic fashion, as do pack animals. My two pet cats will often spend quality time grooming one another’s fur on the couch, taking turns licking those hard to reach places like on top of the head and chin. Another cat was documented mothering orphaned skunks. It’s obviously natural for members of a species to care for one another, and sometimes even outside their species.
Drone bees work tirelessly to feed their hives, even though they have no hope of reproducing themselves. Their queen, however, shares their genes, and if she survives to reproduce, the drone’s genes will survive as well. Lacking higher brain functions, the altruistic behavior in bees must be instinctual, carried within their DNA. The success of bees is living proof of the success of altruistic genes.
British evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton figured out that when an animal’s genetic relatedness to another (r) multiplied by how much altruism would benefit the recipient’s survival chances (B) was greater than the personal cost to survival of the altruistic animal (C), then the genes for altruism would propagate. Expressed mathematically as rB>C, it is known as “Hamilton’s Rule,” and some consider it the E=mc2 of biology.
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The science of Game Theory provides an example of altruism’s strength in numbers. In each round of a game called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” two players have the option to either act altruistically or betray the other player. If they cooperate, they both get three points. If they betray one another, they only get one point each. If one betrays and the other acts altruistically, the betrayer gets five points and the altruistic player gets zero.
Scientists have devised all sorts of strategies for winning this game, and those strategies put into algorithms and put into competition on computers. Of all the strategies put into this virtual world, the “Tit-for-Tat” (TFT) comes out on top. This strategy’s first action is altruistic and after that it simply does what the other player did on the previous round, rewarding altruism with altruism and betrayal with betrayal. When TFTs exist in the community, the other more altruistic strategies succeed with them, forming a cooperative community.
Between the success of TFT’s and mounting support for Hamilton’s Rule, we are finding that being good to one another not only makes moral sense, but logical and mathematical sense as well.
Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976.
See also my previous post Nice Guys Finish First exploring the math behind the Prisoner’s Dilema in further detail.
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Calorie-Counting Whoas
Last night I did my regular routine of working the stationary bike to get my three aerobic exercise sessions in for the week (I do weight training the other three times). For one hour I kept my RPMs above 85, managing over 20 miles in one hour. I lost two pounds of water weight from sweating in that time, and I burned a little over 500 calories.
That hour of intense effort barely made up for the Hostess Zingers I ate after lunch (470 Calories). When I add in the Caramel Machiato coffee I got from Starbucks that morning (340 Calories), my dieting outlook gets bleaker. If I were to add just one signature burger, fries, and milkshake from McDonalds to this picture (1,500 Calories), I’d bust my limit on a 2,000 calorie daily diet by 300 calories, and there’s still a whole meal, or two, we need to fit into this food schedule.
If 3,500 calories translates to one pound of fat, then such a diet would doom me to obesity very quickly, just as it brings down so many others in today’s society.
Dieting is complicated. So be sure to keep up on the math involved.
My personal Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is 2040 ((weight X 10) + (weight X 2)). Take a moment to figure yours out, then take some simple mental notes using the nutritional facts listed on food containers and the numerous calorie-counters available online. Just that much education could convince you to give up that visit to the snack machine, or choose peanuts instead of straight sugar.
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Human Memory Prosthesis
Cave Paintings became writing, photography, and film, sundials became clocks, the abacus became the calculator, and all of these other tools supplementing human cognition gave way to the computer. We are as smart as our technological brain-extensions allow us to reach beyond our grasp.
Mathematician Von Neumann estimated the total memory storage for a human brain at 1 Exabyte or 1020 bits in 1950. Anatomists lowered the estimate to 1013 to 1015 in the 1970’s. Thomas Landauer lowered the total memory a human stores in a lifetime to 100 Megabytes in 1986, based on our retaining 2 bits per second of “visual, verbal, tactile, musical memory” multiplied against an average human lifetime of 2.5 billion seconds.
Whether you believe the best estimate or that we have less capacity than a CD Rom, our memories are highly flawed. Look at ourselves in an old photo album, and we realize the immense wealth of data we have lost to time. As data storage becomes cheaper and cameras become smaller, the possibility of a comprehensive memory prosthesis will emerge in our lifetimes. Imagine being able to rewind and review every moment of your life without having to rely on memory. Find your car keys by reviewing the recording of the last time you had them rather than tearing up your house exhausting all the possibilities.
Psychology already knows how much our perceptions and emotional states can change the way we remember things. The capability to review any moment in our lives would allow us to analyze our experiences objectively. When our mind plays tricks on us, we can check the recording to determine if we saw what we think we saw. Imagine the implications for domestic spats.
We could also return to a moment in time, such as our first kiss or learning to ride a bicycle, evaluating it from a wiser perspective, and gaining even more wisdom in the process. Such a device will inevitably lead to very interesting legal challenges. Just as diaries and journals are sometimes sequestered in courts as evidence, an individual’s personal webcam would certainly be admissible. The recording would become deleterious for the criminal, but advantageous for the victim. The camera would serve as a neutral witness for juries and judges to review its third-person account of events.
Is it possible to record every moment in a person’s life? If one hour of video on a DVD consumes 2.5 Gbytes, multiplied against the 600,000 hours of the average human lifespan, then we will need 1500 Terabytes to record a lifetime. We will soon have DVDs with a storage capacity of one terabyte. I envy the future human who possesses a bookcase filled with DVDs chronicling their lifetime, or whatever storage device becomes the next standard.
There is one important constraint also needing consideration; we are only recording two senses, hearing and seeing. We’re leaving out taste, touch, and smell. We’ll be able to review ourselves eating the escargot, but we won’t know what it tasted like. People who wish to capture an approximation of the missing senses would need to speak to their memory prosthesis, describing the missing sensations. If you find people talking to their bluetooths in grocery stores a bizarre site, as if they were talking to themselves instead of someone on the phone, imagine someone talking to their memory prosthesis, describing the flavor of anchovies, the scent of a lavender, or the feel of silk. It would certainly improve people’s language skills, giving them an incentive to adopt a more descriptive lexicon for our three undervalued senses, and exercising the right brain.
Just some futurist speculation on a technology we will see in our lifetimes, and the implications for our culture. Feel free to contribute your own perspectives.
Many of these numbers come from Professor David Wishart’s slide presentation Between Biological and Digital Memory.
Thomas K. Landauer “How Much Do People Remember? Some Estimates of the Quantity of Learned Information in Long-term Memory” Cognitive Science 10, 477-493, 1986
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Hyper-Rummy
Here’s a variation on an old favorite of a card game. Try playing Rummy, but in addition to pairs and straights, try throwing in other number sets.
Loosing to (B) Pi, (C) Even Numbers, and (D) Primes. |
1 - Ace 11 - Jack 12 - Queen 13 - King
Set of Natural Numbers: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13}
Set of Even Numbers: {2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12}
Set of Odd Numbers: {1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13}
Set of Primes: {1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13}
Set of Fibbonnacci Numbers: {1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13}
Set of Exponents: {1, 2, 4, 8}
You could also add famous irrational numbers taken to the maxium number of decimal places allowed by the available cards:
Pi: {3.14159265358979323}
Phi: {1.6180339887498}
e: {2.718281828}
Everyone automatically plays the empty set. : )
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Tiassic Triops: First Run
From my personal observations of my Triassic Triops:
03/14 Add distilled water to the tank. Added nutrient pack, which is like a tea bag. Nutrient pack floats. Accidentally popped it trying to get it to submerge. Particulate, sticks and twigs, are floating in water.
03/17 Added eggs. Eggs clump together on water’s surface.
Triops Eggs |
03/18 No life yet.
03/19 0900: No life yet. Eggs still floating. Dropped water droplets on some of them to submerge, but they float right back to the surface. 1400: Life! A little white dot jiggling up and down and around the tank. About 1mm in size. It pushes its way through the ater rather than swims.
Triops One Day Old |
03/20 1100: There are now two triops in the tanks. The one from yesterday has doubled in size to 2mm, and it now swims much more smoothly. Younger counterpart still in the ‘pushing through water’ phase. 1340: Just counted four triops in the tank. 1700: Trying to photograph triops. Keep getting blurry dots. One triops swam close to the egg cluster and got stuck in the mucous-tendrils that spread out from it in the water.
Triops Two Days Old |
03/21 0800: Crushed two food pellets and added them to the tank. 0930: The first hatchling is now 4mm long and 2mm wide. I’ve decided to name it Spaz because it swims crazily all over the tank. Other triops are hard to find. Only observed one other, the size of a hatchling. Spaz must have eaten the others. This suggests and evolutionary advantage to being the early-born triops, and getting the size jump on your siblings so you can eat them. 0500: Removed nutrient pack. Spaz is the only triop in the aquarium. It has even eaten most of the eggs at the surface. I put several crushed pellets worth of food in the tank for the weekend. Took apart nutrient pack. It’s all twigs. Don’t know why the directions have you treat it like toxic waste.
03/24: 1000: Spaz is huge and still a spaz. One inch long. Head antenna and tail antenna are very visible. Added four food pellets. During the day, Spaz will grab one from the surface and pull it down to munch on it. 1700: Fed Spaz four pellets. It took one and nibbled on it upside down, rolling it over and over in its legs.
Spaz Six Days Old |
03/26 1200: Spaz ate two pellets given this morning, out of four. It is two inches in length now. Carapace is solid. Spaz swims like a dolphin, up and down, rather than like a fish, side to side. Mandibles are clearly visible as well. They look like big white buckteeth.
Spaz Six Days Old |
03/27 1400: Six food pellets from this morning are gone. Spaz is still two cm long. Two and a half counting tail antenna. 1430: Noticed a shell at the bottom of the tank. Spaz has shed its outer layer since yesterday.
Spaz Six Days Old |
03/28 0815: Put a dab of tuna into the tank. Spaz jumped right on it, and then went crazy swimming around the tank. 0850: Tuna has been torn to little pieces, which Spaz continues to munch on. 1700: Dumped a bunch of tuna and triops food (12 pellets) into the tank before leaving for the weekend.
03/31 0800: Spaz is dead, lying upside down at the bottom of the tank. All food pellets in the tank are eaten, but the tuna is untouched. I suspect the tuna was responsible for Spaz’s death. 1730: I have preserved Spaz in a test tube filled with 70% Isopropyl Alcohol.
Future Plans: I still have half the eggs left and another nutrient pack. Intend to try the whole thing again very soon.
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National Garden Month at Port Discover
April is National Garden Month, and Port Discover, Elizabeth City’s Hands-On Children’s Science Center has a host of activities to celebrate Spring:
Port Discover: Second Saturday Science: Go Green!Saturday, April 12, 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.
Master Gardener Bonnie Hanbury-Calliotte takes us on exploration of the world of plant life. What are biomes and food-webs? What are common pollutants and how can we make a difference to keep our world cleaner? Join us to learn more about our environment and the role we play. Everyone will take home a plant to make the world a bit greener. Sponsored by Gateway Bank. No fee, but reservations are required.
Toddler Time: Green for Me
Thursday, April 17, 10:00 a.m.
How can we help keep our world clean? How do plants grow? Get ready for spring while we make our own miniature plant garden. A fee of $5 per family and reservations are required. Parents or guardians must accompany the child.
Make-It-Take-Its for April: Go Green!
Everyday sources of pollution can damage our environment and water system. Come in to make you own science experiment to demonstrate the effect of acid rain on plants. Sponsored by the City of Elizabeth City.
Easy to Be Green
Saturday, April 19, 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Join the Port Discover Junior Volunteers for a day full of hands-on-activities that are sure to make you Green! What can you make of dryer lint? Can you make a rocket out of recyclables? What is the best way to compost? Try your hand at making plant pots out of newspaper. With the Junior Volunteers as your guides, play green games, Earth Day quizes, and learn easy ways to Go Green! No reservations needed.
Port Discover is located at 613 E. Main Street, Elizabeth City. Port Discover’s hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. Programs can be arranged at other times for special groups. Outreach programs are also available. For more information call 252-338-6117 or http://www.portdiscover.org/.
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An Endangered Cephalopod
Can you spot the rare and magnificent endangered species in the photo below?
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The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is not officially on the endangered species list; however, this extremely rare and biologically unique cephalopod inhabits a very small area in the coniferous Olympic rainforests west of Seattle, an area threatened by suburban sprawl and an encroaching logging industry.
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You can see other sightings here, and there’s a pretty amazing video of the PNTO in action here. To read more about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus’ unique behaviors and lifestyle go here.
