nature

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Vintage Reading Rainbow: BEES

How do beekeepers get honey out of honeycombs? Would you believe it involves a gigantic centrifuge and some 90's rap? (Well, the latter is just edutainment, not technically part of the extraction process.) Anyway, this vintage Reading Rainbow clip explains the process a beekeeper goes through to harvest the honey, then there's a segment with a hilarious rap explaining why bees are important, and finally we see a new beehive being transferred into a new hive box. (That last part is really surprising and... READ ON

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Hummingbirds in Slow Motion

There are two little hummingbirds outside my window right now. They come for the feeder on a nearby porch (and perhaps for the view of me typing). They're gorgeous little creatures, but a little on the nervous side -- just the sight of someone walking nearby will have them zooming off to the next feeder. So I wondered what they would look like, slowed down? YouTube to the rescue. Prepare to Zen out: More slow-mo hummingbirds after the... READ ON

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Michael Pollan Takes a Plant's-Eye View

In this TED Talk from 2007, nature writer Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) thinks about plants...from the point of view of those plants. Is grass taking over the world, getting humans to destroy forests? Is corn slowly dominating our entire food system? Pollan thinks that our consciousness isn't the only effective tool for dominating a planet -- plants have some tricks up their sleeves (or, uh, leaves) as well. Discussed: "I want to say a word for the soil, the bees, the... READ ON

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How to Clean Your Indoor Air Using Houseplants

Researcher Kamal Meattle lives in New Delhi -- and breathing the air landed him in the doctor's office with diminished lung capacity. He embarked on research to find a way to clean the air around him using houseplants (much of this work had already been done by NASA and the folks at Biosphere 2). In this four-minute talk, Meattle shares the very simple results -- using just three species of common houseplants, you can create measurably cleaner indoor air, increase oxygen levels, and decrease indoor air... READ ON

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What Happened to the Honeybees

Today, Scientific American brings us some answers to the question what happened to the honeybees? Since the "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) appeared in 2006, millions of beehives have been abandoned by the bees, putting bee-pollinated crops at risk -- and in turn threatening the livelihood of farmers and apiarists (beekeepers). In the SA article Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees, researchers Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp detail their efforts to solve the mystery, through contact with... READ ON

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Birds on Wires

On this Friday afternoon, I bring you a quiet, contemplative topic: birds on power lines. Here are three of the better birds-on-power-lines videos available on the web. First up, birds flocking around a series of power lines, in the evening. Sort of "musical chairs" for birds. By Wes Johnson: powerlinerflyers from wes johnson on Vimeo. (Go to Vimeo to watch in HD.) Next up, birds from Rhode Island on a wire filmed from below. Watch as they scoot back and forth, turn around, and fly away.... READ ON

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The Protein Synthesis Dance

Here's a bit of Friday nerdery for you. In this gloriously retro 70's video, a group of dancers demonstrate how protein synthesis works...via interpretive dance, complete with trippy music and Jabberwocky-inspired narration. Entitled "Protein Synthesis: An Epic on the Cellular Level," I'm not sure if this counts as an educational film...but it's definitely fun and weird. The introductory lecture does help to set the stage for the dance, featuring about three minutes of genuine educational material on... READ ON

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Atop the World's Tallest Trees

Richard Preston is best known for his book The Hot Zone, a thriller about the Ebola virus. But while he's not writing, Preston has a hobby: he climbs some of the largest trees in the world -- redwoods ranging up to 38 stories tall, thirty feet in diameter, and over 2,000 years old. Now that's a tree. Preston gave a TED Talk last year explaining the history of these trees, and what it's like to climb them. It's a fascinating look at another kind of life, that exists in a completely different... READ ON

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Inside a Giant Ant Colony

Today's crazy science video: a Science Channel documentary in which scientists pour 10 tons of concrete down a massive anthill, let it harden for a month, then carefully excavate it to demonstrate the internal structure of the colony. It took three days of pumping to fill the colony with concrete. The sad thing about this is that the colony was alive at the time. And it's a heck of a big colony -- the ants excavated an estimated 40 tons of dirt in its construction. You may find the narration... READ ON

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Incredible Deep-Sea Creatures

Although the presentation was given ten years ago (the presenters start by cracking jokes about the then-current box office hit Titanic), ocean explorer David Gallo has some amazing video of animals and other interesting stuff in the deep sea. The thirteen-minute presentation is crammed full of video showing strange octopods, colorful jellyfish, beautiful tubeworms (including a worm fight!), and scary fish -- but there's also some really interesting video of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. The vents are... READ ON