From Reuters: Purple frog among 24 new species found in Suriname
A purple fluorescent frog is one of 24 new species found in the South American highlands of Suriname, conservationists reported on Monday, warning that these creatures are threatened by illegal gold mining.
Maybe it's time for a new domain name ... purplefrog.net.
Do you ever feel like you can't catch a break? Two days after spending a day building a garden box, filling it with soil and planting tomatoes in the ground, I come across this news item:
Tomato-killing virus detected in Calif.
SACRAMENTO - An insect-borne virus that has killed tomato plants across Central America, Florida and Georgia has been detected in California for the first time.
The virus, known as tomato yellow leaf curl, devastated crops in the Dominican Republican and in Mexico, forcing those countries to curtail the growing season to contain the spread of the disease.
No signs of the virus yet, but I'm not holding my breath.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water (and Dom thought it was safe to go back to sleep), a marine park captures this rare species of shark:
A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 metres (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.
...
Marine park staff caught the 1.6 metre (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.
As reported in the Daily Mail
Apparently, there's another good reason not to go skinny dipping in the Amazon ... and it's not because of the piranha:
[The candirú] is feared by the natives because it is attracted to urine or blood, and if the bather is nude it will swim into an orifice (the anus or vagina, or even in the case of smaller specimens the penis—and deep into the urethra). It then erects its spine and begins to feed on the blood and body tissue just as it would from the gills of a fish. The candiru is then almost impossible to remove except through surgery. As the fish locates its host by following the water flow from the gills to its source, urinating while bathing increases the chance of a candiru honing in on a human urethra.
See Candirú in Wikipedia for all the gruesome details.
January has to be the best month of the year. With Christmas presents still shiny and new, my birthday looming, College Bowl Games and NFL Playoffs, what's not to love.
Football. Nothing like a playoff game with everything on the line. Lose and go home. Win, and you're alive one more week. Of couse, the current BCS Bowl system sucks. I want to see some more USC, LSU, Boise State and Florida.
C'est la vie.
Incidentally ... Troy Smith, the Heisman Committee called and they want their trophy back.
P.S.
Though I'm not an unbiased observer, what's up with ESPN? I go to check for some Bowl Game results and my browser is left hanging, downloading too much Web 2.0, I guess. So I made the switch to Yahoo! Sports. Unlike Yahoo's mail, the site sticks to the basics and gives you the information you want in a flash (pun intended).