Koalas Suffer From Depression

Koala Depressive Disorder

I just read about a disturbing breakthrough in koala psychology on koalascience.com

According to research conducted over a twenty year period, koalas are as prone to major depression as humans. Dr. Schultz Kuehlenschrank, of Austria's famed Lebkuchen University, said, "They may look cute and furry, but inside, these koalas have some serious problems." Kuehlenshrank said koalas are depressed for many reasons.

The life of a koala is rough. They have trouble finding food. And contrary to popular belief, they have predators. Kangaroos are the major predator. In my twenty plus years studying them, a day has not gone by when I haven't seen kangaroos harassing the koalas. On a good day, the kangaroos will simply stand below the koala, bouncing like a child on a pogo stick. But on the bad days, I've had to intervene in their disputes many times. Needless to say, I've been punched by a kangaroo many times.

What's more, the koalas don't seem to like Australia. According to the surveys they've filled out, they are not fans of the Australian outback. Specifically, koalas are tired of eucalyptus and are also not fans of the Australian accent. Kuehlenschrank said, "They much prefer the German and Austrian accents."

All of this leads to a crippling koala depression. The symptoms are easy to spot. Excessive sleeping. Sluggishness when awake. The inability to complete simple tasks, even as simple as raising one's head. Suicide is prevalent. Kuehlenschrank explains, "Suicide opportunities surround them. All they have to do is let go and they'll fall out the tree to the waiting kangaroo." And even if the koalas are taken out of the trees, there is still a great risk.

Kuehlenschrank explained, "Taking the koalas out of a threatening environment is nearly impossible, as koala claws are razor sharp. These claws are the "perfect" suicide method."

(Koala image courtesy of Luciano Roth Coelho, shared under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5)

Three quick, random posts: A neat image, Search for Aliens From Your Desktop, and something terribly, wonderfully geeky

First, a pretty nifty electron microscope picture of flower pollen from several different plants, including lily, primrose, hollyhock, and castor bean.

Secondly, I don't know about you, but I search for aliens from desktop. No, really. SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is scanning the skies with large radio telescopes, with the goal of
discovering the existence of other civilizations in the cosmos. This brings in a good amount of data, but they don't have a supercomputer. Instead, they organized a network of volunteers, whose computers all interpret data and send it back to the main facility. The computers only do work when they aren't being used, or when they are in screen saver mode. When banded together these volunteer computers have the combined computing power of a pretty damn big supercomputer. In fact, when combined, it beats out the world's current supercomputer champ, IBM's Roadrunner. (In this sense, it's like a computer virus, but for good.)

If you're interested, here's a link: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

And now for something truly funny, but embarrassing:

So let's say you're like me, and you love poetry and books, but you also have a soft spot for space exploration and Star Trek. Let's say you're rather excited for the upcoming Star Trek movie. Now let's say you REALLY wanted to get into the movie, not just by dressing up in Vulcan ears or by aping Scotty's famous brogue. Well now, there are Star Trek fragrances.

One, called "Tiberius," seems markedly uninteresting, as I'm no great Captain Kirk fan. Those Travelocity commercials just ended it for me. And that duet with Ben Folds? WTF?

But another is called "Red Shirt," in homage to the redshirt crew members who'd die in the first few minutes of your average Original Series episode. It carries the tagline, "Because tomorrow may never come." Now that's fantastic, Mr. Bombastic, yes?















http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/41832117.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

New T-shirt up

As you might have gathered from my random blog postings, aside from being a poetryface, I'm a bit of a science geek. As a matter of fact, I'm in love with all things NASA. I tell everyone I know: my two favorite governmental organizations are NASA and the Postal Service.

In any case, I too was disheartened when Pluto was voted off the island. To that end, I've been making random t-shirts on Cafepress. It's really just more for fun than anything, but here is a new one, in case you're interested:

Stephen Colbert and NASA, BFF

(image credit: NASA)

In case you hadn't heard, over the past few months NASA and friends have been tricking out the International Space Station, adding rooms, fixing the plumbing, and so on. During the course of this home makeover space edition, they've added a new nodule, or room, to the space station. Well, to get people excited, they decided to hold a contest to give it a name. NASA provided four options, Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity, and Venture, but allowed write-ins too. Well, Stephen Colbert exhorted his viewers to stuff the ballot box, and they've done so. Colbert is now the leader, far and away, though it remains to be seen whether NASA will actually follow through with it. In any case, head over to the site and make your suggestion. And yes, I followed the crowd and voted Colbert. I love this sort of stuff.

And a side note: with the recent additions, the international space station is actually so bright it's pretty easy to spot from the ground with the naked eye. (According to the wonderful website spaceweather.com, it has an apparent magnitude of -4. In English, that means the ISS is about as bright as Venus.)

Even cooler, you can type in your zipcode and it will give you a heads-up of what will be....well...above your head on a given night.