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Have a Happy Thought:   You may be wondering why you’re getting this so early in the week, especially those of you not in Aotearoa/New Zealand.   Tomorrow (25 th April) is the day we recognize Anzac Day, commemorating the soldiers of WWI (and has been expanded to remember all who have served and suffered in war). The symbol of the day, and of the fallen, is the red poppy. Papaver rhoeas, the red-flowered corn poppy. Image: Smithsonian Museum .   Here are some strange things I have learned about poppies this week.   Poppies mostly grow in temperate regions, but there is at least one species of poppy that thrives above the Arctic Circle. Papaver nudicaule, the Icelandic Poppy. Image: W. Pfahler , CC BY-SA4.0     Oh right, that means there must be more than one species of poppy – this is correct, there are over 70 different species!   And not all of those species can be used to make opium… at least not easily. In case you’re wonderi...

Have a Happy Thought:   Volcanoes are beautiful and amazing and terrifying and destructive and make new ground for life to grow on.     The latest volcano to remind us of these facts is Mount Ruang in Indonesia, which has led to many evacuations, airport and road closures, but (as far as I could see) so far no deaths.   Which means we can all enjoy these spectacular photos in good conscience.   Hot lava flows from Mount Ruang volcano during an eruption in Sitaro, North Sulawesi province, Indonesia, April 17, 2024. (Antara Foto/HO/BPBD Kab Sitaro/via REUTERS)     This handout photograph taken and released by the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation on April 17, 2024, shows Mount Ruang spewing hot lava and smoke as seen from Sitaro, North Sulawesi.     Image: Reuters   And last but not least… volcanic lightning!        Image: Reuters  

Have a Happy Thought:   Many of us, at one point in our lives, wanted to be a superhero. At some point, maybe you downgraded that desire to just having at least one superpower.   The good news for you this week is that you probably have at least one superpower… they’re just maybe not as flashy as, well, The Flash.   For example, you might be able to actually see images ‘in your mind’s eye’. Many of you will say ‘yeah, of course!’ but to someone like me, who is largely aphantastic , this is a superpower!   Or maybe you can make your ears rumble , a sensation (or sound-muffling?) that most of us only experience on accident when we are in the middle of a really. Big. Yawn. (sorry if you just yawned. I did. Several times while writing this part)   Or maybe you can see ultraviolet light, that most humans can’t but a lot of insects can – if you’re aphakic , meaning you’re missing the lens on one or both eyes, you might be able to see some add...

Have a Happy Thought:   You know when you feel the need to bang your head against a wall, or a desk? But you’re afraid of giving yourself a concussion?   Well, maybe (?) we have things to learn from woodpeckers.   Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) in Scotland. Image: Gary Zambonini https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0   Side comment: the Latin name for the Great Spotted Woodpecker, Dendrocopos major, effectively translates to “big wood-pain”. Which is a mood. Side-side comment: despite “wood-pain” being the obvious name for all woodpeckers, only 12 species of woodpecker are in the “wood-pain” genus, out of a total of 240 species. Side-side-side comment: There’s another genus called Xiphidiopicus which as far as I can tell translates roughly to “divine sword woodpecker” or something like that. Which is an entirely different, and totally badass, mood!   Back to the main point: if you’re like me-from-a-few-weeks-ago, you’ve...

Have a Happy Thought: Sometimes the best way to express your feelings is through an inventive use of language. William Shakespeare was a pro at this, inventing many words , phrases , and yes insults that we use today.   You can benefit from this in your daily life by using a Shakespearean Insult Generator. Start with the word “thou” (to make it sound old-timey”, then choose one word from each of the three columns.   There are many sources for this on the interwebs, that all seem to have the same word lists. So I’ll just give credit to Scholastic , because why not?   Although to be honest, some of these could easily be compliments… I feel like I would immediately want to get to know someone described as a saucy hell-hated flap-dragon… If you don’t want to scan through lists, the Hawaii State Public Library system has put a button on their website   that will automatically generate a new insult for you.   Have a great weekend, maybe try your hand at ...

Have a Happy Thought: Over the past few years, we’ve all gotten used to QR codes, those square codes that you can scan with your phone. The predecessor to those codes is something much more familiar to us all… so familiar that we don’t even think twice about these being on almost everything we buy: a bar code. Bar codes are actually something invented well within the lifespan of many people reading this… and they could have looked very VERY different.   You see, in the early 1970s, a bunch of different companies were starting to experiment with their own bar code designs. And, luckily for us all today, a group within the grocery industry realised a) how useful barcodes could be for grocery stores, food producers, and everyone in between; and b) how opposite-of-useful it would be if there were 20 different kinds of barcode that would require 20 different types of barcode reader.   So they created a committee to standardise what would become known as the Universa...

Have a Happy Thought:   Maybe you’re at a pub quiz, or filling in a crossword puzzle. Or maybe you’ve just seen a whole bunch of birds and want to point them out but don’t want to get an ‘80’s song stuck in your head for the next few hours   And I ran, I ran so far away …  Image: ‘80’s band A Flock of Seagulls https://www.mondosonoro.com/blog-musica/a-flock-of-seagulls/   (sorry)   Anyway, maybe you want to know what to call that group of birds.. is it a flock of seagulls? ( are there even seagulls? Or are they just gulls ?)   And we all know that it’s murder of crows, but what about some of the lesser-known ones?   This website has helpfully pulled together a list of the most common ‘collective nouns’ for birds. Feel free to visit for the whole list, here are a few of my faves, and why:   A commotion of coots (they are very noisy honkers once they get going) A curfew of curlews (just fun to say!) A volery of wa...

Have a Happy Thought:   Sometimes, all you need is to learn about a weird but adorable creature. This is one of those times. Since I’ve already introduced you to wombats , may I now introduce you to… The pink fairy armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncates). Image from Attis1979 on Flickr  Yes, this is a real creature! It’s native to sandy grasslands in central Argentina, and can grow up to 13cm in length (for reference, I have small hands and my hand is 17 cm from the heel to the tip of my middle finger) – so a real palm pal ! Image: Researcher Mariella Superina holds a pink fairy armadillo. PAUL VOGT, M. SUPERINA If you know things about armadillos, you will know that they are often defined or identified by the number of bands, or overlapping ‘plates of armour’ on their backs. For example, it’s the three-banded armadillos that can roll up into little balls, but the nine-banded armadillos can have anywhere from 7 to 11 bands. The tiny, pink fairy armadillo, meanwhi...

Have a Happy Thought:   If you’ve ever put something down, and then when you go to look for it, it’s moved… you’re not alone. This is even happening on a global scale – continents are shifting, moving, colliding, and separating all the time. One cool result of this is that landmarks really far away from each other were actually formed together, or even once were a single thing. Take, for example, the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America, the Scottish Highlands, the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa, and the islands Corsica and Sardinia. Image: Google Earth W hat do these all have in common? Well, it turns out that 300 million years ago, these were all part of one single mountain range – the Central Pangaean Mountains. This mountain range was created when Laurasia ran into Gondwana to create the “super-continent” of Pangaea. Pangaea, with modern-day locations noted. Abbreviations: WV: West Virginia; IM: Iberian Massif; Aq: Aquitaine; AM: Armorican Massif; M...

Have a Happy Thought: At some point in your life (maybe even still now), you were obsessed with Dinosaurs. Getting to see dinosaur skeletons, preserved as fossils, is always amazing.   The last few decades of dinosaur research have focused just as much on ichnology, or: the study of dinosaur traces . These are the signs that dinosaurs left on their environment : imprints of skin (or scales, or feathers!!), nests, or even just footprints. Image: photo of a dinosaur trace fossil, on display at St George Dinosaur Discovery Site, Utah, USA in 2016.   “Just” footprints can tell amazing stories – about the interactions between adults and young, or hunting scenes .   The lovely thing is when you start looking at footprints and other trace marks around us today, and realise that every trace you see can tell a story.   Sometimes, those stories are transient, like the looping path this shelled creature took on the beach. This story would have been washed away ...