Notes for March 15

• Birds and mammals are not alike. For instance...some birds are bilateral gyandromorphs. Yeah, I'd never heard the term either. Apparently it refers to animals that are half-male, half-female, only split right down the middle. If you want to know more (and see pictures) than I would not hesitate to read all about them here.
• Something I've wondered about for awhile is how much changing land use is directly affecting local weather conditions (humidity/temperature/etc.). For instance, if you cut down a forest, won't the surrounding areas get warmer too? I haven't had time to dig into the literature on this, but apparently other people are thinking along the same lines, and have created some quick and dirty approaches to estimating these kind of effects. (via Conservation Maven)
• I really don't know what to think about this ambiguous little worm. No head, no gut, no up, no down. Does the worm even know which way it is facing?
• Apparently drug users in Scotland have had their heroin contaminated by...anthrax? I guess just say no kids.
• Workout for less time with high intensity and achieve the same results. Ok. I'll start today (not kidding). I've got a recumbent exercise bike, and in order to get the same sweat and 'I've worked out sufficiently' feeling that I used to get out of 25 minutes of riding, I now have to stay on the damned thing for an hour pedalling pretty much as fast as I can. Not only is that an annoyingly long time, but I'm sick of spending an hour and a half (after stretching and showering) in my basement every other night. I'm going to start hitting the gym every day for thirty minutes over lunch instead. We'll see how it works out.
• Finally it is beginning to look like the legal case for the vaccine nutjobs is coming to an end. I won't lie, I hate reading stories like this, because I hate believing the worst about people. And Jenny McCarthy is pretty much the worst of people.