Animal Training

From an old article by Amy Sutherland in the New York Times:

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't.  After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging.  The same goes for the American husband.

Read the whole thing here.

Comma Butterfly

A comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album), so-called because of the little white C-shape or 'comma' on the underside of its wings ('c-album' being Latin for 'white-C').  Photos take in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2008-09-21.

Butterflies of this species that hatch early in the summer and which will breed and die in the same year, tend to have lighter underwings.  Those, like this one, which hatch later in the summer and which overwinter and breed the following year, tend to have darker underwings.

End of Season Hoverfly

A hoverfly; I have no idea of its genus, never mind the species.  There are around 250 species of hoverfly in Britain and the insect guides I have only cover a dozen or so between them.  Photo taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2008-09-20.

Scorpion Fly

A female scorpion fly of the genus Panorpa.  Photos taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK on 2008-09-20.  Male scorpion flies have rather imposing scorpion-like stings at the end of their tail.  I cannot recall ever having seen one of these flies before.  This one was spotted by my daughter Zoe, but I took the photos.

The Pfaffian in the Grassmannian...

From a post by David Guarrera at Imaginary Potential:

One example that I do understand, since I’ve read the paper many times, is Hori and Tong’s “proof” of Rodland’s Conjecture: that the Pfaffian in the Grassmannian G(2,7) lives on the same kahler moduli space as a hypersurface Calabi Yau in a Grassmannian. The proof uses beautiful physical intuition about the dynamics of non-abelian gauge theories in two dimensions.

However, you may think that the kahler moduli spaces of Calabi Yau’s are useless. Fair enough, I say. But they’re quite beautiful.