WHAT THE FUCK:

Franklin Park Zoo may have to close, euthanize animals
The Franklin Park Zoo, a Boston institution that has drawn generations of city and suburban families, might be forced to close its doors and possibly euthanize some of its animals as a result of the deep budget cuts imposed by Governor Deval Patrick, zoo officials said Friday.

A great post about crazies of the past Read it

The way media reads science papers is crazy

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 4 July 2009

There’s nothing like science for giving that objective, white-coat flavoured legitimacy to your prejudices, so it must have been a great day for Telegraph readers when they came across the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. Ah, scientists. “Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester.” Well there you go. Oddly, though, the title of the press release for the same research was “Promiscuous men more likely to rape”.

Normally we berate journalists for rewriting press releases. Had the Telegraph found some news?

I rang Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester. She was surprised to have been presented as an expert scientist on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as Sophia is an MSc student, and this is her dissertation project. It’s also not finished. “We are intending on getting it published, but my findings are very preliminary.” She was discussing her dissertation at an academic conference, when the British Psychological Society’s PR team picked it up, and put out a press release. We will discuss that later.

Read more here

Freaking Japan: Whaling talks target compromise Officials have gathered in Madeira to hammer out a deal on whaling, with Japan and Iceland likely to insist on their right to hunt.

Despite this looking like penguins flying through space it's actually penguins swimming in the arctic ocean through a hole in the ice.

Awesome awesome video of the moon from the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya:

So what they did was fly a plane through clouds over Montana and they measured every tiny ice particle that made up the clouds. Fascinating stuff you can read more about it here.

This is another cool little discovery. A 100 million year old termite trapped in amber. A very cool example of evolution of mutualism which is the relationship between termites and the microorganisms that allow them to digest cellulose.