Archetype » Humor

The good old days of entomological journals

Roberto Keller — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:59:02 +0000

Yes, the discrete logo appeared at the front of each research article.

The articles may have been long, descriptive and rather dull (although important), but boy did they made up for it with crazy typography in the journal’s logo!

Ho, Ho, Ho?

Roberto Keller — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:00:22 +0000

This is my reply to the nice image by myrmecos.

The Pewter Leprechaun Awards Ceremony

Roberto Keller — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:16:52 +0000

E. Haeckel

You may not fancy public humiliation of scientific papers (ah come on, who doesn’t?), but the Pewter Leprechaun Awards Ceremony is a fun read. If you want to know what is this all about look here.

You really need to know well your history on systematics and biogeography to fully enjoy the piece, but if you don’t you will do well in putting Google to a good use and run some searches on those names. On a side note, I do think Brazeau’s paper didn’t deserved the nomination, specially among the other contestants.

I hope they do send a pewter leprechaun to the winner (and blog about it).

Leafcutter ant of the genus… Paraponera?

Roberto Keller — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:42:13 +0000

Hey look, it’s a picture of a leafcutter ant! And it’s carrying a leaf using its… antennas, that are missing the distal part (wha?). And it has an odd ball-something between the mandibles, and a stick-like thing stuck in the rear foot. And the ant belong to a species not even closely related to true leafcutter ants. It’s, it’s… it’s Photoshop gone wrong.

The ant in the image is Paraponera clavata, a very large ant that lives in the tropical forests of Central and South America. These ants are generalized predators and scavengers. A more familiar equivalent of the image above would be to put a lion grazing in the Swiss Alps with its nose.

Anyway. The image is part of an advertisement from ExxonMobile going green.

As seen in The Economist, November 28th-December 4th, 2009.

Ants are a dominant feature of terrestrial ecosystems

Roberto Keller — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:01:15 +0000

Ants are a dominant feature of terrestrial ecosystems (and variations thereof).

Sigh. Myrmecologists really need to find alternative opening phrases for abstracts, grants and papers. Myself included.

A Virus Walks Into a Bar…

Roberto Keller — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:51:11 +0000

If you find the next series of jokes funny (I do), try going out for a stroll at the shopping mall or whatever less science-obsessed people normally do. It gets from awkward to real good at about 1:00.

The Search

Roberto Keller — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:23:37 +0000

via xkcd – A Webcomic – The Search.

Annie Liebowitz to the arthropods

Roberto Keller — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:20:22 +0000

Sorry, with apologies to my colleague and fellow blogger Alex, I just couldn’t let this one pass. [/giggle]

“Alex Wild, Annie Liebowitz to the arthropods” – Carl Zimmer

via Beautifying Bedbugs | The Loom | Discover Magazine.

Sunday’s reflection

Roberto Keller — Sun, 10 May 2009 08:00:07 +0000

I keep failing those CAPTCHAs on a regular basis. I’m starting to think my parents are hiding something from me.

Making up for last week’s April fool post

Roberto Keller — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:57:55 +0000

Last week I posted my Homology Weekly as an April’s fool joke attempt. Since I am sure I was the only one to found it somewhat funny (and looking back, barely so), I decided to make for it this week and post something really interesting for my readers and especially eye-candy for my myrmecologist colleagues. It will be ready to go tonight, provided I have some time to work after supper, but no later than tomorrow.

In my defense I have to say that nothing I wrote in that post about DNA sequences was false. It was meant as a parody/criticism of the level of reductionism that results from our practice of treating each single nucleotide position as a character for phylogenetic reconstruction equivalent to a complex morphological structure.