Over at Edge, Nathan Myhrvold has a gripping photoessay on the way lions live and hunt. You may be surprised to find that many of the “facts” we know about lions are tosh recycled by unwitting documentary makers. Did you know that lions do not hunt co-operatively? The more lionesses join the hunt, the lower [...]

According to the blog of marine biologist Kevin Z., now that all species of the squid genus Moroteuthis have been reclassified as genus Onykia, someone has the unenviable task of explaining this to the squid. Hence the new pastime of squid wrestling.

Photo courtesy of Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Upgraded to 2.2. Talking Squid gone. Gone, I tell you. Conniption activated: hyperventilation mode. Realised need to reactivate plugins for Squid to appear. Reactivated plugins. Talking Squid back, oh joy oh joy! Conniption downgraded to mild pique.

Lewis Jaffe, “passionate bookplate collector,” compiles Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie. Here you can find bookplates from US Presidents and movie stars, Cecil B. de Mille’s self-parodying turkey bookplates, a rather grotesque proctologist’s logo, and page after page of superb little artworks. And there’s a bundle of bookplates from genre writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan [...]

For many years, there has been talk of a machine that would print and bind a book in about 15 minutes, enabling bookshops and distributors to reduce the cost of shipping and storage of books. Shops would keep a range of covers in stock for browsers to examine, and maybe a few dumpbins of books [...]

For those of you who thought that math classes were a waste of time because you were never going to visit whichever country it is where they speak algebra, Matt Bailey has done a detailed statistical analysis of the notoriously high mortality rate of red-shirted crewmen beaming down to the planet - and he has [...]