So…what happened to Cheshire?

So…if you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noticed a distinct lack of posts. I wrote about this two posts ago, but I figured I’d share some details. For the past year, I’ve been trying to get into a graduate school. My grades are excellent-I’m one of the top in my class…it’s been a solid [...]

First contact with alien races: is it worth considering?

The latest meme going around is first contact, spurred by this speech by Stephen Hawking. It’s made some interesting buzz in the blogosphere, although I’m not sure how many of these biologist bloggers are actually applying biological principles to their thoughts. There are certianly many different directions societies could go. Just look at the various [...]

Homeopathy is Bullshit: Headlouse Edition!

One of the not-so-great things about being a parent is that your kid occasionally gets headlice. They seem to particularly like my kid for some reason because this is the second time I’ve had to deal with this. Either way, it’s getting really, really annoying. So I go to Walgreens to get a louse shampoo [...]

Spider Stories

One of the cool things about being an entomology major is hearing stories about bugs. Generally, folks tend to notice spiders for whatever reason. I have no idea why people notice spiders over things like beetles or caterpillars. I think it’s because they like telling stories about encounters with large, potentially dangerous animals. Spiders have [...]

Cheshire’s Top 5 Entomology Videos

I post a lot of videos here on this blog because I find them a very useful and interesting teaching tool. Why explain the life cycle of a parasitoid wasp in two or three boring paragraphs when I can simply hop over to youtube and find a video explaining the same thing narrated by David [...]

Doctor Who: The End of Time

I’m a fan of the new Doctor Who Series. Unfortunately, BBC makes it’s content very difficult for us Americans to get. Fortunately, it’s not completely impossible; I have my ways. Spoilers below the fold.

More Sketchy Science: Do Tomatoes Really Eat Insects?

I’ve been seeing this story more and more around the news, exemplified by this Telegraph article…apparently, there are some researchers that discovered that tomatoes have hairs on them which trap and kill small insects. The Telegraph reports: New research shows that they capture and kill small insects with sticky hairs on their stems and then [...]

Insects use tools, but do they self-medicate?

This is my first researchblogging post in awhile…so I figured I’d make it worthwhile by writing a really, really long post and actually deconstructing a scientific paper. I’ve seen the video of the tool using octopus…and it is neat. Here’s a science daily article, and here’s the video below: Using tools is something which is [...]

The SNL Tiger Woods Sketch

Okay…I really feel the need to say something about the SNL Tiger Woods sketch, as well as all the others floating about. As y’all probably know, sometime last week Tiger’s wife chased him down the driveway and assaulted him with a golf club, causing him to crash into his neighbor’s mailbox, causing him to need [...]

Institutionalized rape-stabs

If you don’t read Dinosaur Comics, you really should. They mentioned a favorite subject of mine…Traumatic Insemination. They also mentioned the female counter-adaptation…the paragenetalia. As the comic says…this is where the male bedbug splooges when he stabs his girlfriend. Here are some pictures of the paragenetalia. As you can see, there’s quite a bit of [...]