funky flora and state-sponsored stooging

Today I learned that there is an isolated Yemeni island called Soquotra where, instead of developing kangaroo pouches or forty-three species of finches, the plants did their own thing, and you wouldn't want to miss the nifty but short slideshow*.

In other news, the University of Tokyo learned that guys who rode bikes for an hour burned less fat than guys who rode half and hour to the ride start, stooged around for 20 minutes waiting for somebody else to show up, and then rode home. Ok, I made up the part about actually going anywhere because these guys were on stationary bikes, and the part where somebody would actually go straight home if their buddies didn't show up, but everything else was true. The upshot is that now we have a proper excuse for stooging around in the middle of rides, admiring the view and shooting the breeze.


* You might think that I came across that information watching the Discovery Channel or something, but I turned that up looking for landscape edging.