Taking the buzz out of life

Nature has an interesting article exploring the ramifications of a world without mosquitoes.

Overall the benefits appear to outweigh the negatives – but they are still given their credence. Mosquitoes, and their larvae, may be physicaly miniscule, but they are big players in the scheme of things. Their removal would have effects on food chains containing birds and fish, plus wider ecological effects – such as plants losing pollinators and changes to deer migration, and also possibly cause over-population in already stretched human communities.

Image: mosquito by tanakawho (CC by A from Flickr)

Starts with Sue, ends with She

Answer to my children’s question, “What’s for afternoon tea?”

Little do they know what it actually means.

Tatts amazing

Given they also sell tinned unicorn meat, I’m not sure how seriously to take Think Geek’s changeable body modification tool, moodINQ, but it does look pretty cool.

Okay it’s clearly hypothetical at the moment – an implant under the skin looks like a tattoo, but wifi signals would allow it to be reprogrammed to change design at your whim. Useful for looking neat at a pool party with your uptight boss, or at the beach with your girlfriend’s parents, or grocery shopping reminders.

It may seem like a total joke now, but could it be real in the near future?

Tattoo aficionados may also like to check out last week’s Spicks and Specks (ep 25). It turns out the latest Wiggle, Sam Moran, has a couple of tatts – one of them involves an angel that is only visible under a black light.

Adulthood Take 3

Not a good news week for me.

I think I’ll spend it on the internet instead.

And cleaning … maybe cleaning.

It lives on in you

Ewwww…

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

It’s good to be in charge

Less so to not be in charge. Mitchell & Webb:

Teenage attention span too short for Facebook

An online gaming site has done a survey which reports that the main reason for teens leaving Facebook and other social networking sites is that it is not interesting enough for them. Obviously they need more ways to poke, bite, stab, tag, chat, and farm their friends.

While “It’s boring” ranked first amongst ‘lapsed facebook users’ (45%), not far behind was unsurprisingly “too many notifications” (27%), too hard to keep up with activity (21%), and too many ads (20%). Also coming up was the presence of parents and *shudder* other adults on Facebook. They do realise that it is meant for older people, right? (But not parents though, that is weird).

The gaming site obviously asked about social network gaming, and the economics related to it. I’m pretty happy that about two thirds of kids realise spending cash on virtual currency, clothes and power ups is a waste of money – but perhaps disheartened at the number of parents who have given children a special allowance to waste on virtual pitchforks and carrot seed. These parents should be really encouraging children to be online for at least tangible, if no less frivolous objects, such as crap on eBay, retail games (such as Steam or an MMORPG), or digital downlaodable content off iTunes. That would be the responsible thing, for sure.

It could the premise of a good movie…

…or even a good book.

Bringing back into existence extinct animals through the use of genetic and reproductive technologies. I wonder where that idea came from, researchers at Scripps & San Diego Zoo?

Well, okay, it’s not quite extinct, but the Drill Monkey from equatorial Africa is pretty darn endangered, which might be a redeeming factor for this story. Instead of creating a whole range of new endangered species, we should be working on protecting the ones we already have. And we definitely should be trying to avoid resurrecting giant reptilian predators that will eat all our goats.