Your science lesson for the day courtesy of Minute Earth.
Enjoy!
Herein we explain that birds do not hibernate in lakes, do not migrate to the moon, but DO go on very unique journeys, which we humans have learned about in a variety of ingenious manners.
This gardening cheat-sheet shows plants that grow well together, combinations that help control pests and bugs, combinations that are good for your garden in general, and plants that should never go near each other.
Companion planting is one of the best techniques to grow a better garden and naturally repel pests. Some plants thrive next to certain other plants, while being completely incompatible with others (much like humans!). This infographic tells you at a glance the combinations that work best.P
It highlights, for example, how thyme can be paired with just about any of the other plants in the list to improve your garden. Beans, on the other hand, are much pickier about their neighboring plants.
Who doesn’t love bugs? Especially a bug the size of your hand.
Enjoy.
As its name suggests, the Titanus giganteus, or Titan Beetle, is a giant of the insect world. Adults can grow up to 6.5 inches (16.7 cm) long and have incredibly strong jaws that can snap wooden pencils in half, so just imagine what they could do to your fingers. Luckily, these scary-looking bugs are quite harmless to humans.
The Titan beetle is one of the most mysterious creatures on Earth. It lives unobtrusively deep in some of the South America’s hottest tropical rain forests and only ventures out when seeking out mates. The larvae of this amazing insect have never been found, but judging by the large boreholes found in dead trees in their natural habitat, scientists believe Titan beetle grubs feed on decaying wood below ground for several years before reaching maturity. The size of these holes suggests the grubs are around two inches in diameter and up to a foot long. Just like the Atlas Moth, the Titan beetle doesn’t feed during its adult life cycle, using the reserves gathered in its pupa stage to fly around long enough to find a mate. Because they mostly sit around waiting for males to seek them out and fertilize their eggs, females have rarely been spotted.
| My life is often a volume of grief, your help is needed to turn a new leaf. Stiff is my spine and my body is pale, but I’m always ready to tell a tale.
What am I? |
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A cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”
The cowboy looks at the man, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?” The yuppie parks his car, whips out his notebook computer, makes his smartphone a WiFi hotspot, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he enters his exact location from his GPS receiver to get the most recent image of the field in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then forwards the digital photo to a military image processing facility. Within seconds, he receives an e-mail that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MySQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet and, after just a moment, receives a response. He turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 animals in this herd.” “That’s right,” the cowboy says. “Well, a deal’s a deal: I guess you can take one of my calves.” He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the wise cowboy says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?” The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “That sounds fair, why not?” “You’re a U.S. Congressman,” says the cowboy with no hesitation. “Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, leaning on his still-closed trunk. “But how did you guess that?” “No guessing required,” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment paid for by taxpayers trying to show me how much smarter than me you are. And you don’t know a thing about how working people make a living — or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.” |
