Internet Salmagundi I

I'm thinking of a new weekly feature, just for fun, of stuff that I have found on the internet recently that made me laugh, or fascinated me, or otherwise just sit up and take note. I'm not sure if the idea will stick, but here it is.

The inaugural Canberra Cook's Salmagundi
Greta Christina, who normally blogs about sex and atheism, wrote a food post about making stock.

Stories about the platypus genome have been coming out for the last month; but Carl Zimmer at the Loom noticed a weird thing. The platypus has no stomach! Yet another whacky characteristic for this egg-laying, venom-spurred, electric-beaked mammal. Just amazing.

I've added a new Canberra food blog to my side links. Progressive Dinner Party has been going since April, and Zoe writes really well. I was inspired by her post on baked eggs and thought about making them, but got sidetracked into making poached eggs to have with my silverbeet agrodolce instead.

Is this the best-titled game in the universe, or what? Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. It's all 1920s style, so cute. I'm not sure how to describe it - a mix of turn-based RPG, where your party goes around killing orcs solving mysteries, with the aesthetic of an old board game. An assortment of mini-games are your weapons to extract clues and storyline; they range from liar dice to taunting and flirting.

I keep forgetting to watch the ABC's wonderful Mediawatch, but they have a web site so now I can catch up whenever I like. This week there was a story about really shoddy science reporting, with the most excellent title "pixie bulldust". Ooh, regrowing missing fingers! Sadly, not so much.

Do you read Two Lumps? In this one, Snooch is channelling Shadow. For the one or two of you out there who don't actually know me in person, Shadow is one of my two cats. The other is Plummet, and he is not very much like Eben at all. I think.

And while on a comic theme, xkcd once did the best illustration of sexism in a nutshell I've ever seen. Memories of my early uni days... And just now someone has found that the "gender gap" in maths is smaller in more egalitarian countries. Geeze, ya think? Although it does make me wonder about non-western countries - I suspect the correlation might disappear. The idea that women are bad at maths is a modern western one. Barbie ("math is hard, let's go shopping") has not been our role model for very long at all. This may or may not explain why women from Asian ethnic minorities seem to be doing comparatively well in science. Like these wonderful young women in America.

Oh, and congrats to Obama. He seems a very inspirational chap. Go Bazza! Yes, I do get most of my news online, though I have just decided to renew our Canberra Times subscription. I write in it sometimes, plus, it makes good garden bedding weed mat :)