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Category: humour

why have i never heard of “osmosis jones” before?

November 20, 2018 | Alison | communication, humour

Teachers may find this one great fun for their junior science classes! Our Science Communication students have just told me about the movie, but here’s a rather entertaining clip. (Extra enjoyment may be found in identifying the voice artists.)      

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wellness and access bars – i can’t even…

September 11, 2017 | Alison | critical thinking, humour

There's a 'Waikato Wellness Fair" just out of Hamilton next weekend. Along with the usual woo (homeopathy, reiki, & so on) comes something called 'Access Bars'. However, these are not accessible places to have a drink – oh no! they are something far more mystical than that.  Apparently 'Access Bars' consist of 32 Bars of […]

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dogs, dispersal, & (bio)dynamics

September 30, 2016 | Alison | critical thinking, humour, nature of science

A couple of days ago I did a spot of live radio with the good folks at 95bFM. It was great fun. One of the topics was dog evolution, which I've already written about here; another was the recent publications on human dispersal, covered nicely over on sciblogs.co.nz.  The third was a brief discussion of […]

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every major’s terrible (sorry, G&S)

February 25, 2016 | Alison | humour

This is an amended re-post of something I first wrote back in 2012. We're in the lead-up to the start of the A semester & lately I've spent a lot of time lately advising students on their programs of study. (Consequently I'm a bit short of the time needed to give attention to serious posts […]

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how do hedgehogs mate, and other sensitive questions of that ilk

February 22, 2016 | Alison | animal behaviour, animal diversity, humour

So, last night I was asked how hedgehogs mate.  The obvious answer was, carefully! My interlocutor suggested that perhaps face-to-face was most likely, but as far as I know, very few species (& that short list includes our own) do that. It turns out that care is indeed needed, for the male approaches the female […]

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the budwig protocol – help, help, it’s being repressed

February 17, 2016 | Alison | critical thinking, humour

A friend recently pointed me (via donotlink – well done, Nicky!) at a post on healthnutnews (which reads a bit like an offshoot of mercola.com – this, it turns out, is hardly surprising). It's a while since I've read anything so full of total nonsense – well, a few days, anyway!  The post, by one […]

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the strange s*x lives of leopard & banana slugs

January 30, 2016 | Alison | animal behaviour, humour

Following on from the private lives of snails, I bring you: slugs! (The first part of this post is largely a repost of something I wrote back in 2009.)   Leopard slugs, like other terrestrial slugs & snails, are hermaphrodites. They produce both eggs & sperm, but must exchange sperm with another slug in order to […]

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snail s*x toys

January 22, 2016 | Alison | animal behaviour, animal diversity, humour

This morning when I went out to feed the goldfish, I encountered a pair of snails in flagrante delicto. I resisted the urge to step on them 🙂 However, I was reminded of a post that I wrote several years ago, on the sexual habits of snails, and thought it was worth a repost. So here goes: […]

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oh sad new world, that has such foolishness in it!

September 23, 2015 | Alison | critical thinking, humour, nature of science

The internet is a seething pool of ‘stuff’, and one of the challenges faced by those using it is to distinguish useful information from foolish fantasy. And there surely is a lot of the latter! Thus we find that According to a BBC news story, the Indian government’s Agriculture Minister  has said that yogic farming would […]

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slugs, and snails, and … facials?

April 26, 2015 | Alison | critical thinking, humour

Today's Life/Style section in the Herald on Sunday brings us the latest 'beauty trend' to hit our shores: the snail facial. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently one can (if one has a sufficiency of funds) already purchase Snail Soap, which contains "snail slime, virgin olive oil, honey and extracts from medicinal plants". The slime […]

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Swan girl - portrait of the author as a young scientist This blog in response to comments from secondary school biology teachers. I hope to use it as a way of encouraging critical thinking, looking at scientific papers that are relevant to the Level 3 curriculum and to Scholarship.

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