Today we’re taking a look at some good old fashioned mad science. While there are actually serious research questions being examined in these studies, it doesn’t change the fact that there have been multiple studies where scientists went out and created glow in the dark animals. Green Fluorescent Protein IN 2008, Green Fluorescent Protein was […]
Victor Hugo is best known for his novels Les MIserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Though it’s probably more accurate to say that he is best known for going off on extremely long tangents in said novels. Such as the infamous twenty six pages about the Paris sewer system. Though really, the eighteen chapters […]
After vanishing for a bit into the world of working strange hours and taking classes, I am back with a discussion of discoveries hiding in plain sight. That almost seems topical! There have been plenty of scientific discoveries that occurred, essentially, because someone decided to actually look. So let’s look at some recent and not […]
When you look at a list of animals by their common names, it will generally start with aardvark and ends with zebra (or zorse…). But when it comes to scientific names, the extremes of the alphabet get a little more extreme. And at least in a few cases, their positioning in alphabetical list is quite […]
Welcome to the new Saturday posting schedule! In honour of that, today we’re talking about… spite! Spite is an amazing thing. It’s actually the reason that Diane Duane started writing for Star Trek, which is simply fantastic. It’s also one of many ways to pick a name for a species. You’re not supposed to pick […]
In honour of Black Friday, I figured I’d do a post about crass commercialism in science. I’ve discussed the many ways species get their names in the past. But today we’re looking at some examples of species named for sponsors. There was a fine old tradition of naming species for the rich guy who coughed […]
There are a lot of living things on the planet. This is probably pretty obvious, but the important part here is that it means they have to name a lot of species. I’ve discussed some of the science fiction and fantasy references in species names before. And of course, I’ve advocated for a strong liberal […]
Since last week’s post was already pushing a thousand words with only the first five Ig Nobel prizes, today we’re picking up where we left out. Everyone else may be speculating about the actual Nobel Prize, but here at Science Shenanigans, we’re much too silly. Here are five more strange scientific studies that were recently […]
The Ig Nobel prizes were announced last night. Which was hilariously good timing seeing as yesterday I idly wondered if they’d been announced yet for this year. Sadly I didn’t get to actually watch the webcast live due to choir practice, but all the same it’s basically a gift wrapped post for this blog. So […]
There are lots of reasons to undertake a scientific investigation. Sometimes it’s pure and simple curiosity. Sometimes it’s a directed effort to solve a specific problem. Often it’s pure curiosity that gets dressed up as a directed effort while writing a grant application. Sometimes it’s trying to solve one specific problem and accidentally solving another. […]