Friday Blog Blogging

A while back, someone suggested that I submit a picture of our new colt to Modulator's Friday Ark.  I think it was "grrlscientist" AKA Hedwig the Owl,  at Living the Scientific Life.  I never got around to it, though, just as I've not yet gotten around to the Book meme she so graciously tagged me with.  But surprise, surprise, Modulator found yesterday's photo of April and Champie and included it anyway.

I actually happen to have quite a lot of photos that I could put up, but I'm still laboring with a 56K dialup connection, and it really is a pain in the neck to upload all that stuff.  Hedwig has a ton of great bird pictures on her Flickr site.  Another neat nature site is Sunidesus Sees.

And there was another blog surprise this week.  When I first started this blog, I never thought that one of my more popular posts would be about feminine hygiene products.  Surely, it would be something about the CNS drug pipeline, or an advance in sleep disorder research, or an environmental exposé, or maybe an incisive political analysis.  Just goes to show how unpredictable life can be.

Since I often write about medical topics, you might think I would have something to say about the rising possibility of a bird flu epidemic.  But no.  Instead, what I've noticed is that there has been an epidemic of photos from New Mexico.  The latest outbreak is at zap (patriotic).  Other outbreaks have been sighted at Mousemusings (1 2) and Dangerousmeta, and photo-secession.org (which appear to be two sites run by one guy), as well as sergeant's photostream.  

And to top it all off, here's a photo by a guy I once spent a summer with in Wyoming...

Photo in the News: Whale Found in Egypt Desert
Photograph courtesy Philip D. Gingerich/University of Michigan

The first of the truly gigantic whales, Basilosaurus had the serpentine shape of a sea monster and short, sharp teeth for hunting sharks and other prey. Unlike today's whales, it had no blowhole—the ancient behemoth had to raise its head above water to breathe. What's more, Basilosaurus still had the feet it inherited from its land-dwelling ancestors, according to Gingerich, who works for the University of Michigan and is a National Geographic Society grantee.