Note to future self

August 17th, 2009 | by Steven Bush

You mostly get what you pay for with free hosting.

Note to everyone else:
We’re not letting server downtime and technical details stop our publishing. Keep checking back for new daily information. If it says “404 not found” or “500 Internal Server Error” or even “Index of home/” it’s not because we don’t like you.

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Special Trivia Update – Left-Hander's Day

August 13th, 2009 | by Trivia

If you’re feeling especially lefty today, you can spend some time typing words with only your left hand. These include, among many, such zingers as ‘dread’, ‘zester’, and ‘grease’. The longest left-hand-only title belongs to ‘stewardesses’, though this may only be a popularity contest, considering ‘desegregated’ and ‘reverberated’. Who cares if they’re past tense if our longest word needs the plural? I personally type Bs with my right hand anyways.

Regards (all left, baby!),
Trivia, Resident Left-Hander

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Factoid Friday – Whale Skin

August 11th, 2009 | by Factoid

(NOTE: Before it was Factoid Friday it was “Factoid of the Week”)

In 2001 a team of scientists working at the School of Veterinary Medicine in Germany discovered that the Pilot Whale has two anti-fouling systems: physical and chemical. (Anti-fouling is keeping bacteria and larvae from attaching to the skin surface so that they cannot live there.) It was already known that the Pilot Whale has a gel covering its skin which makes it difficult for micro-organisms to attach to micro-hiding places. The team lead by C. Baum publised the paper “A zymogel enhances the self-cleaning ablilities of the skin of the pilot whale (Globicephala melas)” (abstract only) in 2001 which stated that they had discovered a chemical anti-fouling component of the whale’s skin. A “zymogel” containing enzymes is secreted between the “nanoridges” of the skin. These enzymes work best in an approximate pH of 6; saltwater has a pH of 8. When the micro-organisms release their bonding chemicals to attach to the whale’s skin the pH of the surrounding area is lowered because of the chemicals’ acidity. The enzymes then become activated and begin to destroy the bonding chemical such that the micro-organism is unable to attach itself. These scientists are attempting to recreate this biological phenomenon to use as an eco-friendly alternative to the toxic TBT-paint currently used for ships.

For more information about pilot whales visit Encyclopedia of Life.

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