New York has everything

I’m sorry to say that on our last trip to New York, we missed this museum.

Peruse an 1814 sketchbook by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and eventually you’ll come across a bashful, wide-eyed octopus. You’d never guess that the innocent creature leads a secret life of debauchery. But a few years later, there he is on a woodblock print, still wide-eyed, now presented by Hokusai in a moment of infamous passion—his bulbous head pushed between the legs of a young woman, delivering a rather well-received session of cunnilingis. Hilarious and startling, it’s just one example of the explicit shunga, or “pictures of spring,” in an exhibition at the Museum of Sex surveying four centuries of Japan’s cartoonish pornography.

Next time!

(via 3quarksdaily and Jennifer Ouellette)

Trout Fishing in America

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Troutnut has put up a beautiful page of Aquatic Insects of American Trout Streams. It’s all about using insects to catch fish, but it’s still an excellent example of how outdoor sportsmen (and in this case, soon-to-be grad student) can put together scientifically interesting information, too. If you don’t know a mayfly from a caddisfly, it’s full of photographs of the different organisms that might flit out of your nearby stream and park on your screen doors to weird you out.

You won’t see this on Cute Overload

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How would you like to see that coming out of the dark at you?

Here’s a dramatic account of divers meeting a school of Humboldt squid—the beasts are as big as a man, and aggressive.

As I floated there transfixed, a large squid moved to within two feet and flashed again. Mesmerized by the strobe effect, I didn’t see that another squid was rushing in from my left. Bam! It hit me with a tentacular strike that felt like being hit with a baseball bat square in the ribs. Shocked by the power of the strike and unable to breathe because of a cramp in my chest, I turned to see what had hit me and saw four more squid headed toward me. The first came in so fast that I could barely track it with the camera, and then Bam! It struck the camera, which in turn struck me in the face. I was starting to feel like I was in a barroom brawl.

After five attacks of equal ferocity, the magnificent monsters decided I was inedible and had no further use for me. With a few blasts from their massive jet funnels, they disappeared into the depths within seconds. Dazed and excited, I realized the entire ordeal lasted less than one minute. After dangling in the water for 30 minutes looking for any signs of their return, I surfaced and climbed into the boat. I later discovered bruises on me the size of oranges, as well as several scratches in my anti-squid armor suit. The system was working, but each attack left its mark — and this was just the first dive of dozens yet to come.

Cool…an anti-squid armor suit. That could be handy, someday.

Friday Cephalopod: Explicit!

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Octopus cyanea

You may be wondering what they’re doing. Here’s a hint: that’s a male below, and a female above. Here’s another hint: that’s his specialized third arm, the hectocotyl limb. Third hint: it’s in her oviduct.

If you can’t figure it out yet, look below the fold for an illustration.

Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

[Read more…]

Palaeos lost?

Palaeos is gone! There is a brief note about being unable to support it any longer, and then poof, it’s offline. Martin Brazeau has a comment on it’s value; you can still see fragments of this great resource in google’s cache, but even that will fade too soon.

This is troubling, and it’s one of the worrisome aspects of using the net—there’s no sense of permanence. It would be good if someone were to step forward and at least archive all of the pages, but the essential feature of the Palaeos site was that it was continually maintained and updated to reflect current information, and that’s not something that can be supported without the dedication of much time and effort by someone knowledgeable in the subject.