Friday, June 23, 2006

Oldest spider web found in amber


Actually, I didn't get through the entire article, but it's probably interesting. There is something better I want to post, but I lost it. NL please send it again. I'm sorry I lost it.

UPDATE:

Thanks Nelson for a) resending it b) putting that together. Two of my favourite things: lego and offensive.

The world's oldest spider web – complete with captured prey - has been discovered, preserved in 110-million-year-old amber.

The web was trapped in the early Cretaceous period as sticky sap seeped from a tree in what is now Spain. It had hung from a tree so that it would catch insects on the wing.

The sap may have dripped onto the web, or the web may have blown onto its surface, says David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US. Then more sap covered it, forming a small amber "stalactite" 18 millimetres long and 7.5 millimetres wide.

Palaeontologists who found the amber sliced it into three thin sections, revealing at least 26 silk strands, some interconnected. The web is not complete enough to be firmly identified as an orb web, with a spiral strand wound on radial spokes. But Grimaldi says the fragments are consistent with orb webs. "It's a geometrically complex web, certainly not a random assortment of strands like a cobweb. It was certainly in one plane," he told New Scientist.

Ancient spinners

Spiders are far more likely to be fossilised than their silk and such finds have shown that spiders have had spinnerets for extruding silk for at least 400 million years. The oldest known spider silk was found in 2003 in 130-million-year-old amber from Lebanon, but it was only a single 4-millimetre strand (see Silken clue to ancient spider's mastery), revealing very little about the web it came from.

The new fossil is by far the oldest web fragment. It contains a group of five strands in the same plane, at least three of which are connected to a perpendicular incomplete strand in the same way as in modern orb webs.

The amber also contains bits of prey stuck to the web, including a mite, a fly, a beetle and a wasp. "They are basically the type and size of prey you expect in a web several centimetres in size" today, although the fossil species are all extinct, Grimaldi said.

That means similar webs have shaped the evolution of flying insects for over a hundred million years. For example, moths and butterflies, which evolved at the same time as flowering plants about 130 million years ago, have scaly bodies that allow them to escape from sticky webs.

Journal reference: Science (vol 312, p 1761)




Monday, June 12, 2006

Weak Moments

Nobur Watanbe
Where have you gone?
Didn't the wind-up bird
Wind your spring?
(33 Haruki Murakami "The Elephant Vanishes")


If you've wondered how to spell this: tchotckes.

Moment of the (last) week:
Characters: Me, France (thirtysomething -this is relevant -coworker who is in the office 2 days a week), various other coworkers
(by the way this has been translated)

There is a wasabi packet on the conference/lunch table.
France: Does anyone want any wasabi?
Me: Huh?
France: Wasabi, there's some wasabi on the table do you want it?
Me: I'm good.
France: Do you know the show jackass? One of those guys snorted it.
Me (in awe): And then he threw it up.
France: Yeah!

WHOA! Someone around here watches jackass. I've yet to talk to her about it though, I went to go get something and then lost my chance. Next week.

All right so I wrote that in the morning before the greatest day ever at work. Let me tell you about it. Just after 9:30 am, the mail arrives and first pay day, finally, after a month.

Right before lunch I tell my boss, Paule, that I almost done translating the (cool) full length Swedish film ("Graveyard Island") I'd been working on for the last 2 full days. I tell her that I will take off early tomorrow (Friday) because my parents are coming tonight. She says that's fine and she'll give me some work to do at home so I don't have to come in at all! What? Sorry, what was that Paule? When Audrey brings in the movie tomorrow morning I just have to come by and pick it up and then watch it over the weekend. You are positively the most amazing boss there is. Hands down. Coworker Kit got lots of work to do and her boss being annoying and asking her to do things she actually can't do, as in, they are not possible. I'm sorry Kit. My day was super exciting...and we had to stop for ice cream on the way home from work to cheer her up. On the way to the bank, we ran into Kollene who had also just returned from the bank and was on the way to the bakery we were going to visit.

Then my parents came and we all went out to dinner. Folks were impressed with my French skillz. Skillz, yes. They don't know the difference, they also think I have a French (vs. Quebecois) accent. The photoside will be updated soon. The next few weeks are going to be ridiculous weekend-wise, so no promises.






Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch.

Some time to kill til I have to leave for work. Here is a very thrown together post. By the way, I remember the story from the last entry.

Thursday afternoon, my boss and I sit down to watch "The Eye of the Bear" which is an Austrian movie about a metorite that awakens a neanderthal boy who befriends a girl who is wandering down the mountain he has been frozen in for the past 10,000 years.

Boss: I heard this was good, but uhh... this is so unrealistic, he's [neanderthal boy] wearing pants!

Me: You mean this isn't a true story?

Boss: Hahah. Like there's neanderthals in Austria.

Me: Arnold Schwarznegger is from Austria...

Boss: Haha.

Coworker's boss: What are you watching?

Boss: Arnold Schwarnegger: The True Story.

Sweet, I have mastered being funny in French. That's all I needed. I would have written my boss' name, but it's longer than boss, but in case you were curious, her name is Paule (the 'e' makes it a girl's name) and she is by far coolest boss ever. I didn't have any work to do Friday afternoon, so she gave me the afternoon off.

Wait that wasn't even the story!! So we're watching this movie for a while and suddenly we hear this banging and it keeps going for a while...we finally look out the window (which looks out into a hallway between the office part and the grocery store in the building) and there's some kid (17ish) banging the hand piece of the payphone. By the time we looked, he'd already taken off and broken the hand piece in HALF!!! it was nuts. I wish I'd taken a pic but Ididn't have my camera with me. And by Monday morning it was fixed. 6' , shaggy brown hair, camoflauged pants, khaki t-shirt boy breaks phone.


1. Bad timing to find out about this, still fun though. These are some other people made. Why are there so many with my name? Weird.

2. People are always trying to get rid of young people, Barry Manilow is the answer. Here is the article (linked on his name):

Is "daggy" Manilow the answer to loud cars?

Reuters

SYDNEY - Sick and tired of souped-up cars with loud engines and pulsing music? Barry Manilow may be the answer.

Officials in one Sydney district have decided to pipe the American crooner's music over loudspeakers in an attempt to rid streets and car parks of hooligans whose anti-social cars and loud music annoy residents and drive customers from businesses.

Following a successful experiment where Bing Crosby music was used to drive teenage loiterers out of an Australian shopping center several years ago, Rockdale councilors believe Manilow is so uncool it might just work.

Councilor Bill Saravinovski said local authorities plan to install a loudspeaker and pipe in Manilow music, interspersed with classical pieces, over a car park favored by car "hoons," or hooligans.

"There are restaurants nearby and people can't park in the car park because they're intimidated by these hoons," Saravinovski told The Daily Telegraph newspaper Monday.

"Daggy music is one way to make the hoons leave an area because they can't stand the music," he said.

The Oxford Concise Australian Dictionary defines "daggy" as unfashionable, or lacking style, even eccentric or stupid.




Thursday, June 01, 2006

shout out

Excerpt from "The Bogeyman" Denmark, 1995.

Granny: You'd better beware or the bogeyman will get you.

Ida: There's no such thing.

Granny: I bet your pardon? The bogeyman is everywhere. He sees and hears everything. You can't hide anything from him. He lives in the chimney.

Ida: He can't see anything in there.

Granny: He sees everything that goes on.

Granny: All the way from down in the cellar to the very top of the chimney.

Granny: He eats naughty children.

Ida: But it was Chubby [her brother who unwrapped the presents]

* * *

By the way, Nelson, thanks for all the ridiculous emails. Hope work sucks less and you can email more soon.

****

I had another story, but I can't remember. How about the time I fell asleep watching a movie at work - I was actually working - and got caught but didn't get in trouble because it was a bad movie! Woo. Internet connecting is not constant so we'll see what I can do about posting.

French skills - improving. I can now be funny in French...which is more than I can say for English.

Quebec is supposedly smoke free now. Thank you.