Mating of the common water shrew

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This is an amazing work of cinematrography. I can imagine the hours on hours of observations, waiting for just the right moment to get the high speed cameras rolling.

Fascinating also to be introduced to the totally different world, a world that to our eye seems to be so peaceful, but is in reality a jungle.

You really want to see this in the highest quality as possible - I found a good version on the water shrew website.

Posted by Merlin - September 22nd, 2008

Jun

15

How Congress Micro-Manages your Life

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About a year ago I wrote about my great wonder what our government, especially the federal one, has to do with regulating how much water we use to flush our toilets.

And things have gotten better and betters since then. Just listen to this speech…

Congress man Ted Poe addresses congress for five minutes explaining how ridiculous and unconstitutional it is to require all Americans to use fluorescent light bulbs exclusively soon. The bulbs might be more energy efficient but bring with them a whole lot of problems that make them environmentally very unfriendly to say the least.

There is a three page paper outlining the procedure that should be followed when such a light bulb is accidentally broken - these bulbs containing mercury, the procedure probably comes only a little bit short of calling the HazMat for the rescue.

Another interesting point made by congressman Poe is that all of those ‘energy saver’ light bulbs are made in China taking more jobs away from America and bringing them over-sees.

This appears to fool Americans into buying new things they believe are good for them and the environment while actually hurting them. Another example is the fact that more and more big chain super markets now started to offer ‘organic food.’ These foods might - or might not - be grown by the rules established by the FDA to be called ‘organic’ but if we tally in the fact that these ‘organic foods’ are mass produced in often far away farms and that lots of fuel need to be expended to bring those foods to the local super market, then most of the advantages of organic food are negated. The FDA just forgot the one rule that, in order to call a food ‘organic’ it needs to be grown locally. But when was the last time a big machine like our government did get such a complex issue right?

Posted by Merlin - June 15th, 2008

Apr

19

Men Sitting Down on Toilets

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With little kids there is no difference between boys and girls. OK, I know about those differences, but look at the title of the post, here, as in law, it’s context, context, context. To make it clear for everybody, for small kids there is no difference between the sexes when sitting on the thrown is involved.

But when the boy gets a bit bigger he wants to be like papa and ventures into standing up while peeing. This is handed down from generation to generation and never questioned - men stand up while peeing!

In the initial training phases it creates a mess around the toilet, but even mama does not mind because junior is so cute as he wants to be like papa. Over time a percentage of male adults develop a skill to deposit their waste into the container they are aiming for, but take note of my formulation - not all succeed in that laudable skill.

The first time I encountered that this law of nature can be questioned was at a friends house. Very progressive guy, married when we were still in high school, driving his VW to school without a driver’s license (a very serious offense in Germany) and being altogether very cool.

He and his wife had their own appartment and so all of us who still lived with the parents certainly loved to hang out there. And he was so progressive that it might have been him and and not his wife to clean the house, including the toilet. He must have gotten tired of cleaning after all those buddies of his because there was suddenly the sign in the bathroom:

I don’t want to clean and have a fit,
therefore please, all men do sit!

The German version was similarly rough in terms of metric, obviously using different words. But imagine the impact. I don’t remember if it actually had the impact on me abandoning my training and actually sitting down - I tend to think that I did not - but I have not forgotten in so many years.

I don’t know why, but over the years I had turned into a sitter-downer and when our son joined us, we brought him up as a sitter-downer as well - there was no dad role model to show him otherwise. But he certainly tried all this when the peer pressure in school kicked in.

And then there were his buddies visiting - all stander-uppers. How do we handle this? As we asked politely, the universe gave us an answer in form of a low resolution jpeg image that attempted to educate in a funny way. The resolution was so low that it was not usable to be printed and used as a sign in the bathroom. It took me considerable time to get my act together and design a new document with appropriate resolution and I hereby offer the world this work. I am deeply indebted to the person who had the idea and made the first graphic - unfortunately I don’t know his identity, I would love to give him - or her - credit.

Here is a low-res preview version, but you can click the image to get a high resolution pdf version of the graphic to laminate (!) and hang in your bathroom.