Portent

The title makes it sound like some sort of website for detecting animal droppings! This is a new BBC website for the TV series Earth which will be appearing soon.

The tracking part of the website follows migratory paths of penguins, polar bears, whales etc. This will be particularly invaluable for hunters everywhere (joke!). As you’d expect from the BBC the production values are high with gorgeous photos, though the flash animation about the series crashed my browser - I suspect you need a fast connection to get the most out of this site.

So if you’re in to animals, highly recommended. But if you aren’t or you think the BBC Licence is too high…

Link

Popularity: 13% [?]

If you like wine to have a little body in it, why not buy a fake corpse! These are terrific, though I suspect if you were to say drive around town with one in your front seat you might have a little explaining to do.

Each is hand crafted with attention to detail- nostril cavities and fingernails. Heads can rotate, mouths open a close and the fingers can be angled as you wish! Including howe much decay (6 months decay, drowned with maggots please!) Even the latex skin feels real and apart from the lack of smell, they look very realistic!

Link

Popularity: 20% [?]

Phi is a number approximately 1.61810339887… Not so well known as Pi or e, yet Phi is a very popular number. You can determine its rough value from the equation 1/phi = phi-1 which is almost magical. Ie 1/1.6181033 = 0.6181033.

Phi has other properties as well. It is the ideal ratio for width to height- to get the most pleasing view. It is known as the golden ratio and is found frequently in nature. This site will probably tell you more than you ever want to know about it! Some very nice illustrations as well.

Link

Popularity: 3% [?]

I like this but that’s probably because I got 17 out of 20 correct. It’s on the BBC’s website. You are shown 20 short video clips of people smiling. All you have to do is say which is a fake and which is genuine.

Easy? Well I didn’t do too bad. It isn’t that easy to fake a genuine smile.

Link

Popularity: 5% [?]

Evolution is a principle that sticks in the craw of some religions. After Intelligent Design and trying to force teaching of creationism have both failed, the next attack on Evolution is to try and hide the evidence from public view.

The Telegraph newspaper reports that in Kenya the 6 million strong Pentecostal church wants Dr Richard Leakey’s ground-breaking finds, housed in a museum near Nairobi relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing. The collection includes the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7 million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Dr Leakey’s team in 1984 at Nariokotome, near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

Link

Popularity: 4% [?]

In the UK, today is known as “The Glorious Twelth” and marks the start of the grouse hunting season. This year though it’s more likely that huntsmen will be grousing about the lack of birds due to a population crash. Parasitic worms in the gut of the grouse have reduced the number of chicks and caused the death of thousands of birds. It’s believed that the mild winter helped the gut parasite thrive.

Link Takes you to an article in the Scotsman Newspaper.

Popularity: 2% [?]