Lady squids are weird.

It seems that they coat their eggs in a rage-inducing chemical agent that turns male squid into D&D-style Berserker Dire Squids.

(There are totally going to be Berserker Dire Squids in my next D&D game.)

Hilariously, the Christian Science Monitor article about the same thing suggests that human semen could have similar effects. If true, your local pornographic film set just became much more dangerous.

Image is by Solongo Mellecker, found via My Modern Metropolis.
Webcomic is Married to the Sea, by Drew and Natalie.

If you know your organic chemistry (or would like to know your organic chemistry), you should click on this link to see organic chemistry explained through the base unit of Internet expression: the cat.

(Painting created on an iPad, by Don Shank.)

Fox News is, at times, painfully funny in its ignorance. For instance, Bill O’Reilly is apparently unaware that tides are caused by the moon, and insists that it cannot be explained.

The BMJ, last week, accused Andrew Wakefield of fraud. Here at the Big Bad Blog, we have seen a number of comments of the “about time” sort — almost dismissing the fraud as old news. However, given libel law in the UK, here at the Big Bad Blog, we feel that this is huge. Fraud is a deliberate act, purposely misleading others for material gain.

It seemed (to somebody without detailed knowledge of the particulars) perfectly plausible that Wakefield was just a poor researcher who designed his experiment to confirm his pre-established conclusions, and the sort of person who cannot admit that they are wrong. That the BMJ feels confident that his work was malicious and not well-intentioned (though misleading and of poor quality) is certainly newsworthy.

You know that “why?” game that children like to play? Parents can win it sometimes — all it takes is a PhD?

(by Kate Bernauer)

It looks like France is about to lose the Internet. The Hadopi (“three strikes”) law came into force last week, and ISPs are already receiving tens of thousands of requests per day — expected to increase to approximately 150,000 per day shortly.

For those who are not caught up (rightly or wrongly) in this deluge of due-process-free banning from the Internet, US ISPs do not have to comply with more than twenty-eight such requests a month, due to the workload involved. And French law fines the ISP 1,500 Euros per day for unidentified IP addresses.

Assuming French ISPs can process numbers similar to US ones, that means they will likely be fined (as a group) approximatley one million euros every day under this law (and current conditions). A cost certain to be passed on to customers.

And that cost will grow with the backlog.

Which means that for those few Internet users left in France, their internet bill will skyrocket. Enjoy your 1,000 Euro/month Internet bill, if you can afford it.

We kick off your September with a quick guide on how not to smuggle a tiger out of Thailand.

(Awesome live-action Zelda re-creation from The Zelda Project.)

Looking to raise a little genius? Then ditch the traditional crayon colour names, and go with Chemistry Crayons.

Ladies, do you hate not having anywhere to put your phone when you’re wearing that dress? A solution is now available — your phone and your dress can now be one and the same!