No stranger to controversy, I am a supporter of algae postage stamps. This one features Corethron criophilum, an Antarctic marine diatom, and would be perfect for mailing diatom party invitations.
Image source.
billy dalto
From here, either a periodic table or a board game.
Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger)
I got many nice presents for surviving -in the face of no obstacles whatever- another year, from the gifts from the Locomotive Sisters to the kind note from Andy (happy birthday!) to Abby’s presence here in Louisiana to well-wishes from many to gifts from family, friends, and coworkers. It was all much more than I deserve, not solely because I’m a reprobate but also because -and I here channel my inner-athlete in the post-game homily of empty phrases- I just came out and tried to execute on metabolizing and not getting killed.
So I don’t want to slight anyone when I say that as far as presents go, Lacey’s absolutely incredible gift is hard to beat: a sturdy and beautifully-made wooden sign for application to the front of the ostentatious compound I share with Will and which is known far and wide as Ills Manor.
None fighting through the surrounding swamps to attend one of our lavish cocktail parties will ever again wonder, Which mansion do those guys live in? It’s the one that says Ills Manor, chum. Now get inside and grab yourself a Clearly Canadian.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lacey! What an awesome present!
An emissary has been dispatched to announce our presence to a nearby house called Shadows on Letitia.
As you may have read, Halloween in New Orleans with Calvin and Hobbes was quite eventful, and unfortunately yielded images produced using electromagnetic radiation outside of the visible spectrum. Mills has posted an excellent flickr set of the evening.
Porphyridium: Unicellular. Eukaryotic. Single stellate plastid. Chlorophyll a. Phycoerythrin. WANT.
Image from here.
Trentepohlia is a terrestrial genus of branched filamentous algae named for mycologist Johann Friedrich Trentepohl. They are considered green algae, though the presence in their cells of carotene-containing lipid droplets gives a red-orange appearance. This group is believed to have evolved from marine ancestors but their transition to land, much like the continued operation of my car, is not well understood.
Photo from here.
From the Smithsonian Institute is this photo of Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, the British phycologist who elucidated the previously mentioned life cycle of Porphyra. Her discovery that the genus Conchocelis was actually the filamentous sporophyte phase of Porphyra allowed Japanese farmers to begin mass cultivation of this tasty seaweed.
This is the life cycle of the red algal genus Porphyra, which is grown to produce nori, an important agricultural product. This group exhibits an heteromorphic alternation of generations. Interestingly, the foliose gametophyte phase and the much smaller sporophyte phase have such different morphologies that the latter was originally placed in genus Conchocelis, as it was not thought to be the same organism.
Diagram from here.
Requests: 1. Lose the freckles 2. Learn to drive 3. Stop trying to sell me that turtle
I am an unbranched filamentous green alga of genus Spirogyra. I have beautiful ribbon shaped chloroplasts tastefully arranged in spirals within my cells.
I can reproduce both asexually and sexually. Embarrassingly, the latter is occurring in the photo above, where two neighboring filaments are connected by conjugation tubes. This image was mistakenly printed by a tabloid whose myopic editors thought they’d caught a member of Spyro Gyra in the act. Now I’m left to deal with a rug that’s been micturated upon and a jazz fusion band that won’t return my calls. FML.
Image from here.
