{"id":30336,"date":"2020-08-31T08:48:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T13:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=30336"},"modified":"2020-08-31T08:48:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T13:48:30","slug":"getting-a-bit-flippant-arent-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/08\/31\/getting-a-bit-flippant-arent-we\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting A Bit Flippant, Aren’t We?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My weekly pop-sci NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> issues have been showing up at erratic intervals; this week, after what seemed like weeks of no issues, two showed up on the ame day, although of a non-contiguous nature. No doubt just more evidence of the, shall we say, demonic incompetence<\/em> of Postmaster General DeJoy in combination with the more comprehensible delays inherent in publishing during a pandemic.<\/p>\n

Paging through the 8 August 2020 issue, I was struck by the surrealistic features of two articles. The first, concerning a variety of termite<\/a> which always lives with another specific species in their nests, contains this little gem:<\/p>\n

\u201cMany times,\u201d says [Helder Hugo of the University of Konstanz in Germany], \u201cwhen two unrelated colonies are put together in a single confined space \u2013 such as an experimental arena \u2013 the outcome is warfare with losses from both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t happen here. Despite attacks from host termites, the tenant termites were acquiescent. Hosts would bite or spray the inquilines<\/a> [foreign termites] with acrid chemicals, but their targets never responded in kind, opting to flee. Some ignored the hosts completely.<\/p>\n

At most, the lodger termites would squirt faeces towards a threatening host termite, surprising their assailant long enough to retreat. \u201cBy preventing conflict escalation, inquiline termites may considerably improve their chances of establishing a stable cohabitation with their host termites,\u201d says Hugo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, that’s right – they pooped on their hosts. Or in their hosts’ living room.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From<\/a> Wikipedia<\/strong><\/em>.
This is the sauropod, not the mammal.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

However, the ribaldry comes right out in the open in this article<\/a> on finding mammalian toothmarks on the bones of a sauropod – and small mammals at that. While interesting in itself, I fear I woke my Arts Editor when I started laughing at the penultimate paragraph:<\/p>\n

The mammals must have been scavenging, says [Felix Augustin at the Eberhard Karls University of T\u00fcbingen in Germany], as it isn\u2019t possible that such tiny mammals could have taken down a huge sauropod dinosaur.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Beyond the obvious, I can also remark that this reminds me of my aborted project to construct an animated film involving a T-Rex finding himself in similar contretemps. If some young Blender<\/strong><\/em> artist, looking to showcase their skills, needs a project, I might be persuaded to share the story with you. My Arts Editor thought it was fairly cool, but my time constraints and relative clumsiness with Blender<\/strong><\/em> has made it unlikely that I’ll ever get beyond the picnic basket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My weekly pop-sci NewScientist issues have been showing up at erratic intervals; this week, after what seemed like weeks of no issues, two showed up on the ame day, although of a non-contiguous nature. No doubt just more evidence of the, shall we say, demonic incompetence of Postmaster General DeJoy \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30356,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30336\/revisions\/30356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}