Watched this great TED talk with my roommates yesterday; I think you should go watch this too:

Happy working! :)

This is just perfectly adorable; I couldn’t help but link to it. Parents Sam Cornwell and his wife compiled a video featuring one second of each day since the birth of their son.

Watch:

Stephen Colbert’s mother died, we learn, last week. Here’s him, giving a heart-warming, and heart-wrenching, eulogy to the woman who brought him up:

But even after the above, what struck me as even more exemplary is how he proceeds:

So, with that in mind… This… is the Colbert Report!

And the show, as always, must go on:

Condolences, Stephen.

Species that reproduce sexually usually need two partners to reproduce, right? Right. What I didn’t know was, females of some species (that usually reproduce sexually) have apparently been observed to be able to reproduce without a mate—rarely, and when they’re in captivity and away from potential mates.

But now, virgin births have been observed in snakes–in the wild, with males present nearby!

They captured pregnant copperhead and cottonmouth female pit-vipers from the field, where males were present.

The snakes gave birth, allowing the scientists to study the physical and genetic characteristics of the litters. […]

“That’s between 2.5 and 5% of litters produced in these populations may be resulting from parthenogenesis.

“That’s quite remarkable for something that has been considered an evolutionary novelty,” he said.

No insights yet on how and why this happens, though, or what implications it may have.

But this is fascinating, nonetheless.

The latest in paleontology:

[…] “a filamentous body covering obviously represents the plesiomorphic state for dinosaurs in general,” wrote Rauhut’s team.

Plesiomorphic is another way of saying “ancestrally typical.” In short, it was feathers all the way down.

What?! All two legged dinosaurs had feathers? What were we thinking all these years? Has this been verified?

Now they’ll have to make Jurassic Park all over again.