We are suffering from a sixth mass extinction. Some scientists call this the Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction, but what it literally means is that human beings are killing off a large number of species on this planet. This happens either directly, like shooting the last wild passenger pigeons, or indirectly through the introduction of invasive species. This is the story of the endlings. Endlings are the last one, two, or handful of a species that we are watching go extinct in real time. Many endlings die in zoos or institutes hoping to save their species but a great many…
Author: Kurt Broz
President Trump has been piling tariffs on many goods and many exporters to the US, especially manufacturing behemoth China. It has been an issue for farmers and manufactures worldwide. But nerds have been fairly safe… until now. Tariffs – taxes on goods important into a country from another country – are up to 25% on items from China. Another $300 billion plus in tariffs are being proposed. The issue here is that essentially everyone – Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo – building consoles in China. Independent research group Consumer Technology Association expects consoles and other video game hardware to go up…
Release the Kraken! Well, less a Kraken and more a giant squid. A very real giant squid. Scientists captured a big ol’ squid on video in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time ever. Giant squids – several species in the genus Architeuthus – have been known to scientists for decades, being officially described as a species in 1857. Before that they were the stuff of legends… Or, more precisely known pretty well among fishermen and coastal villages in places where cool waters held their preferred prey of fish and such. It wasn’t until 2004 when giant squids were…
Spider-Man walks in the footsteps of Thanos and gets a Mattel Hot Wheels exclusive vehicle! Sort of! It isn’t Peter Parker’s Spider-Man and his famous (infamous?) Spider-Buggy or anything (which already got a Hot Wheels version). No, this is Supaidaman aka Japanese Spider-Man and his Spider Machine GP-7. And you can get yours at San Diego Comic Con 2019. Supaidaman aka Japanese Spider-Man is a weird, weird, weird thing. It was a live action Spider-Man show from 1979/1979 that has very little to do with Spider-Man but helped bird the Super Sentai (Power Rangers) world. For reasons unknown to everyone…
As a Spider-Man nerd since I could read and a film geek for as long as I could remember, I love a good Spider-Man flick. I also enjoy making wild, unsubstantiated guesses about things I haven’t seen. Thus, I present my Spider-Man: Far From Home Theory Roundup. Some of these are my guesses. Some are certainly found elsewhere in the ether. But all of them have one commonality: They COULD be true. Maybe. Possibly. MYSTERIO IS A BAD GUY Shocker, I’m sure for all the Spider-Man fans out there but Mysterio will be a bad guy! Quentin Beck is a…
SPOILERS AHEAD. SPOILER ALERT. I WILL GIVE AWAY THE ENTIRE PLOT. PERIOD. There, that is out of the way. Daenerys Targaryan burned down a city full of innocent men, women, children, and her own army and lover. She did so angrily and without remorse. She decided it was better for her to rule with fear. Everyone alive was shocked and angered. My fiancee’s daughter kept angrily telling me that Dany would be a kind ruler. The internet said that her turn to violence wasn’t earned. I guess they never watched the show or read the books. THE STALLION THAT MOUNTS…
The first Jurassic Park movie came out when I was 10 years old. That’s a crucial time for the development of a monster-loving, dinosaur book-reading, future wildlife biologist. It’s one of the watershed moments of my adolescent pop culture experiences. There was my first comic book (Fantastic Four). My first video game (NES Mario/Duck Hunt). There was the ’89 Batman and then Jurassic Park. For all it’s flaws, the first few Jurassic Park movies were at a reasonable cutting edge spot in the knowledge of dinosaurs. Gone were the lumbering, stupid beasts of claymation films. Jurassic Park, through Michael Crichton…
Crazy biologists (myself included) have a long history of being nerds and naming species after nerdy things. There’s a fish named Iago, the villain in Shakespeare’s Othello – not the parrot. There’s a genius of extinct trilobite named after China’s largest ethnic group, Han, so of course someone named a species Han solo. There’s Godzilla’s ancestor, the Gojirasaurus quayi. And now… there’s Gollum! Aenigmachanna gollum is a newly described species of snakehead. Snakehead fish were famously a big issue a few years ago when the larger, less Lord-of-the-Ringsy species were invading US lakes and eating everything. A. golllum is less…
Are you afraid of an alien abduction? Do you have a family history of abduction? Could you be prime real estate for hybrid babies? Fear not, friends, for you can buy alien abduction insurance! To be fair, it’s actually a really good price at only $19.95 ($24.95 if you want a paper certificate) for a lifetime premium. If you are abducted by aliens or otherwise otherworldly entities, you (ABDUCTEE) are entitled to compensation and medical bills paid. You know, in case you need to get a tracking implant removed. The Saint Lawrence Company (aka UFO Abduction Insurance Company) of Florida…
Have you seen the amazing, groundbreaking image of a black hole unveiled Wednesday, 4/10/2019? It’s the first every image of a black hole and an amazing achievement for a team of more than 200 researchers working on it. It’s breathtaking. Oh, and it was made possible thanks for a computer scientist grad student named Katie Bouman. Then an MIT student working long-hours to use computer technology and dreams to bring us this amazing image. The brilliant young woman developed a way to stitch millions of partial images into one complete picture. Katie, now technically Dr. Katherine L. Bouman, is a…