Notes for March 30th

• Cell phones, electronics, all those games you (and I) love?  They are, indirectly, causing the ruin of Africa.  Including the gorillas.
• For an apparently widely discussed phenomenon, I was completely ignorant of the 'man flu' meme.  However, to the extent that it is a real effect, I definitely have it.  When I get sick, I tend to believe I'll never feel any better, which makes me depressed, which makes me more sick (or at least show more symptoms).  So yes, I'm a whiner, and as far as I can tell, that's the 'man flu' in a nutshell.
• This makes so much sense, even if it is a little weird.  Pitcher plants aren't out to kill insects for no reason, they are after nitrogen (pitcher plants often grow in bogs and wetlands where nitrogen is scarce).  Well, if you're unlucky in insects, why not catch animal poop?
• I'm not even going to pretend to understand mechanistically what's going on with Two-Component Systems, but I do agree that it is interesting that while plants, fungi and bacteria have them, animals don't.
• I like crickets as much as the next guy, but I'm mostly linking to this article for the Desperado reference.
• There are a lot of problems in conservation that revolve around a lack of quantitative measurements.  Here's a method for quantifying rareness.