I just had to share this amazing photo of Prince Fielder. I think he's trying to fly away or something.

Oh BTW... nice skivvies, Prince.

Wish I could have been sitting on the front row for this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnXOLoOSbvc

The Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks will be playing an outdoor game this season and will be wearing special uniforms for the occasion. Neither one of these is a strict throwback. They both have some slight changes from the originals. But that doesn't make them any less awesome.

I saw this bumper sticker on a car on campus the other day, and I must say that it scares me. If dissent is truly the highest form of patriotism, then that would imply that a true patriot would always be dissenting, regardless of whether the government was right or wrong.

Now, I have no problem with dissension when it's for a good cause. If the government is doing something that you think is wrong, then by all means raise your voice in opposition. But dissent merely for its own sake is immature and childish.

Simply stand up for what you believe in. If the government is doing something right, support them. If they're doing something wrong, oppose them. The issue is not whether you're dissenting or not. The issue is finding the truth and the moral high ground. Do what you think is right, but don't raise hell just for the sheer thrill of raising hell. That's just stupid.

[Image by CafePress]

I was watching Neil Cavuto today on Fox, and he was making a huge deal out of how Nickelodeon's kids' poll had Obama 2 points ahead of McCain. (The Real Clear Politics average of all the national polls had Obama up by 5.7 points today.) Cavuto's argument was that kids decide who they like based on what they pick up from their parents. So maybe a lot of people are telling pollsters that they'll vote for Obama but are privately supporting McCain at home. Their kids then pick up on that and say that they like McCain better.

It's an interesting argument, but I think it's completely wrong. I believe the reason you see the difference between the kid polls and the adult polls is because so many of Obama's supporters are young people who don't have any kids yet. To me, that does a much better job of explaining the discrepancy.

Yesterday, I put up my idea of a good motivational speech to give the Rays going into Game 7...

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You guys remember the Yankees of the '90s? Remember the whole "mystique and aura" thing? Remember how nobody could beat them? How it seemed like God was on their side and there was just nothing anyone could do to take them down?

A team could be up on them by 5 runs, but they'd score a couple and start coming back, and everything would fall apart. The other team would say, "Here we go again. We can't do this. They're the freaking Yankees." And they'd give up.

Now do you remember the Diamondbacks of 2001? They went into the World Series against the unstoppable Yankees and then watched their star closer throw two games away. Talk about mystique and aura. It was over. The Yanks had done it again. Through whatever supernatural forces they channeled, they were going to win yet another World Series.

But the Diamondbacks didn't give up. They took a look at the Yankees and said, "You know what? These guys are baseball players just like we are. That's it. And if we were good enough to get this far, then by golly, we're good enough to beat them. And they did it. They even came from behind in Game 7 to do it because they didn't let the Yankees scare them.

Now the Red Sox are the Yankees of this decade. They paid their dues by coming back from down 3-0 to beat the Yankees and then won two World Series. And now they're in everyone's heads. They pulled out all the stops and came back from 7 runs down to beat us, and last night you were scared of them. You feel like you're fighting against destiny. The Red Sox are the Red Sox, and that's it. You can't beat the Red Sox.

Well, let me tell you something. They're just baseball players like you are. And over the course of 25 innings, you outscored them 29-5. If you were good enough to do that, then you're good enough to win this series. Now go out there, look them in the face, and beat them down!

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Maybe they read it...

[Getty photos]

I don't know if anyone noticed this, but something amazing happened yesterday. Not only did UT win a conference game, but they put up 34 points on offense! Yes, it was against Mississippi St., but it's something to build on. And Mississippi St. did beat Vandy last week, so they might not be that bad of a team.

Virginia beat North Carolina at home yesterday, and their fans stormed the field. You know what that tells me? It tells me UNC's football program has arrived. (It also tells me that the ACC is the most bizarre and unpredictable conference.)

My little pipe dream of Vandy winning the SEC looks dead after they lost to Georgia. But that's OK. They've put up a really good show so far this year, and I have no problem rooting for Georgia anyway. Mark Richt is one of my favorite people in college football.

Alabama may be ranked #2 in the nation, but they're soft. I guarantee you that somewhere along the way they'll lose a game they should have won. They keep letting up on teams like Kentucky and Mississippi, and it's gonna come back and bite them sooner or later. Maybe the Vols will do it? (I can dream.)

Meanwhile, Penn St. just keeps thrashing the rest of their conference. Let's see... they beat Illinois by 2 touchdowns. They beat Purdue by 2 touchdowns. They beat Wisconsin by 41 points. (That's, um, 5 touchdowns and 2 field goals.) And then there was yesterday's 46-17 butchering of Michigan.

Lions and Longhorns in the BCS championship game. You heard it here first.

I was joking with a former student of mine today about her inability to spell. (She's really not that bad, but she worries about it.) Next time I see her, I'll tell her that it's OK; she can always get a job designing campaign advertisements.

Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube (hopefully, someone will put it up), but Barack Obama's latest ad comparing John McCain to George Bush has some text in it that says "presidental debate".

Way to go there, my man. *applause*

This is Jonathan Papelbon after Boston's Game 5 victory over the Rays...

Exactly what is he doing???

 [Getty photo]

Thanks for all the comments, Joyce. I had fun reading all of them... and you compelled me to address a common misunderstanding :-)

There's this odd myth going around (particularly in the southwestern parts of this great nation) that the potency of a scorpion's venom is inversely proportional to its size. In other words, the smaller the scorpion, the more dangerous it is.

The way it got started is because of two common species that live in Arizona. One of them is the Arizona desert hairy scorpion (Hadrurus arizonensis)...

[photo by Daniel Estabrooks]

The other one is the Arizona bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus), which looks like this...

[photo by Matt Reinbold]

The Arizona desert hairy is more than twice the size of the bark scorpion, but the bark scorpion has a much more potent sting. It doesn't usually require hospitalization, but it has killed people in rare instances, and it will cause you a great deal of pain and other uncomfortable sensations. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

Of course, the problem here is that we're making a generalization based on two species. There are 38 species (give or take a few, depending on current taxonomy) in Arizona, and the Arizona bark scorpion is the only one that's potentially dangerous to humans. And even though it's less than half the size of the Arizona desert hairy, it's actually bigger than almost all the other species in the state.

So size doesn't mean anything in Arizona. The best approach is to just learn what the Arizona bark scorpion looks like, and then you know that anything else is safe. And it doesn't work in the rest of the world either. The scorpion responsible for the most human deaths is the North African fat-tailed scorpion (Androctonus australis)...

[Photo by Daniel Estabrooks]

This species is bigger than almost anything in the United States (though not quite as large as the desert hairies), so, again, the myth is disproven.

And just for the record, Joyce, nothing in the Carlsbad area is dangerous :-)

Thanks to Catie for creating some conversation around here. This blog is just starting out, so I'll take whatever I can get :-)

OK, so this is me and baseball:

In the 2005 World Series, I was pulling for Houston. They got swept by the White Sox.

In the 2006 World Series, I was pulling for Detroit. They lost in five to the Cardinals.

In the 2007 World Series, I was pulling for Colorado. They got shredded in four by the Red Sox.

In other words, out of the last 13 World Series games, my team won exactly one of them.

So, needless to say, I should have known better than to turn on the TV when the Rays were up 7-0 tonight and ruin their moment. In three innings, the Sox came back and won the game 8-7. You may think it was an amazing comeback, but that's just what happens when Daniel is watching a game.

I like the Red Sox, but I'd really like to see the Rays do the worst-to-first thing. They had the worst record in baseball four different years!

In any case, I'm rooting for the American League team, regardless of who it ends up being. Down with Philthy Philly!

I got to watch the Pens-Flyers game last night on Vs., and it was a great one.

First off, Eric Godard took on Riley Cote early in the first period.

It was a pretty even bout until Godard landed a vicious haymaker at the very end.

You have to give Cote some credit. At least he fights fair, unlike a lot of his teammates. The Flyers became known league-wide last season for doing cowardly things like smashing opponents face-first into the boards from behind. Well, they were up to their usual tricks last night. At one point, there was a big scrum in front of the net. Somehow a linesman ended up on top of Ruslan Fedotenko, so Mike Richards jumped on top of the linesman and landed a sucker punch on Fedotenko, who was obviously completely defenseless.

And then, of course, he was in utter shock that he got sent to the box. Stupid Flyer.

Anyway, later in the game he found out what Hal Gill thought of him...

I noticed a couple of things during the game. First of all, Malkin is incredible. He kept making these ridiculous moves and creating chances for himself and his teammates. Nothing ever came of it, but I couldn't help but be impressed. And Rob Scuderi is an absolute defensive beast. I think the Flyers would have won this game 10-2 if it hadn't been for him. His backchecking is ferocious, and he even made two saves when Fleury was out of his net.

In any case, the game went into OT tied 2-2, and then Pascal Dupuis ended it with 11 seconds left.

(He looks oddly rapturous in that picture.)

The Penguins have played four games this season. Three of them have gone into overtime, which is kind of interesting. But what's really amazing is that Brooks Orpik & Rob Scuderi each have gotten a goal.

I'll end with a couple random shots of Sid the Kid.

For one thing, he's a pretty stout dude. This is what happens when you collide with him...

After installing my camera's software to one of the computers here in the science building computer lab, I can now give you photos of some of the beasties we found on Saturday. (I didn't take pictures of everything, so I'll have to wait for Lisa to put up her photos before I can show off the rest.)

I'll go ahead and get the sad part over with. I went back up there today and found a baby cottonmouth beaten to death along the stream that runs by the garden. I guess some people just can't resist...

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The one good thing to come out of this is that you can see the cool belly pattern that c-mouths have. It's kinda hard to get that shot when they're alive.

The best you can do is educate people and hope that they change their ways... and try to resist the temptation to beat them with your snake hook.

Anyway, here's some of the critters from Saturday...

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A caterpillar with wasp eggs laid on him. When they hatch, they'll eat him from the inside out. The life of an insect is rough.

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The green treefrogs like to spend their days resting on the fence that goes around the garden.

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If you believe in ring-neck subspecies, this is a Mississippi ring-necked snake. Regardless, it's pretty. The belly is yellow with black spots on it, which, unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of.

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We were talking about mole salamanders, and I said that I didn't think they came this far north. Nathan corrected me and then reached into the leaf litter and proved his point by randomly pulling one out. This was a new one for me, getting my Tennessee salamander life list up to 27 species.

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Isn't that gorgeous? This is my first copper-bellied water snake. I saw a couple more of them today, but I wasn't able to grab them before they slipped away into their holes.

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Northern cricket frogs are supposed to live all over Tennessee, but I'd never seen one before I moved to Murfreesboro. And then the ones in the Basin around M-boro are solid brown, so this green little guy was new to me. Isn't he pretty?

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He's climbing a tree. (He didn't get very far.)

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A rough green snake, demonstrating his camouflage.

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Spotted dusky salamander. This one's pretty dull, but some of the ones in the Smokies have pretty bold spots on their back and an orange face.

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...and this is what we were after. Success at last! I had no idea cottonmouths could be found only an hour away from Murfreesboro, and the Agkistrodon vipers (copperhead, cottonmouth, & the cantils) are my favorite snakes. So finding this little dude made me very happy :-)

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I'm angry! Back off! (See the "cotton mouth"?)

I saw an interview with some guy involved with Obama's campaign earlier today. He was giving the usual Democrat line about how wealth needs to be redistributed. You know, tax the crap out of the rich people and use that money to create programs for the poor people.

The fundamental misunderstanding here is that they don't realize that rich people who run big businesses are an asset, not a problem.

First of all, let's clear something up here. Rich people are not automatically greedy *******s. Having money does not make you evil. There are plenty of greedy poor people in the world, and there are plenty of kind and generous rich people who do good things with their money.

Furthermore, rich people who run big businesses are what drives our economy. If you want a job with a particular business, then that business had better be able to afford to hire you, or else you're not getting that job. The more taxes are paid by big companies, the less money they have available to hire people with. So when you raise taxes on the richest people who are in charge of big businesses, that results in a loss of jobs because now those people can't afford to hire as many people for their business.

Ultimately, who ends up getting hurt here? The poor people. The rich guy running the business will have to shrink his business a little, but he'll still end up making some profit. And, of course, the politicians who raised taxes in the first place are getting a lot richer 'cause that's where all the taxes are going. Meanwhile, the poor dude looking for a job is out of luck.

It looks like the NLCS is getting a little more interesting. It all started when Brett Myers threw behind Manny Ramirez (accidentally, it looked to me), and then yesterday there were pitchers throwing at batters' heads all over the place, and ultimately this ensued...

The benches cleared and Manny had to be restrained, but ultimately there was no violence and no ejections. After the game, Joe Torre said he didn't think it was a big deal, but Charlie Manuel seemed a bit more bitter. As a general rule, I don't root for anything that comes out of Philadelphia, but I suppose I should cut Charlie some slack since his mother did just die a few days ago. That can't be easy to deal with.

The most important thing is that the Dodgers won and we now have a series (2-1 in Philly's favor).

Go Dodgers!

[AP photo]

I took some pictures while we were out herping yesterday, but I currently have no way to upload them to a computer. (This goes back to the stolen-laptop situation.) So, in lieu of photos, I give you a story...

The guys and I were coming back to the garden, where Lisa was, and there was a big group of kids and parents looking around in the stream. I remembered that there had been a green treefrog resting on the garden fence, so I decided to go get him and do some public outreach. So I brought him down to the stream and showed him to the kids, and then I got out a red-spotted newt that we had caught earlier and showed him off, and then, just as they were leaving, I caught a real pretty green-phase cricket frog. So I let the kids see him as well. Then they left.

I was just about to get a couple cricket frogs posed for Lisa to take photos when I thought I heard one of the kids yell "SNAKE!" from down the trail. So I grabbed a snake hook and took off after them. When I got there, I said, "Did I hear someone yell 'snake'?" And one of the guys said, "Yeah, he just went under that railroad tie. He was about 3 feet long, green on top with a yellow belly."

At any other time, I would have been thrilled with the opportunity to get a green snake, but I was all psyched up for cottonmouths yesterday (and still hadn't seen one at this point), so I was kind of disappointed. Still, a green snake is a good one to show off 'cause they're so pretty.

So I rolled over the railroad tie... and there was a big fat black kingsnake. Now, I have to give the guy credit for not overestimating his size like most people do. (He was about 3 feet long.) But how in the world did that thing look green? The entire back and sides were jet black. There weren't even any yellow markings like you usually see on black kings.

Anyway, Lisa got some pictures of him (I didn't), and she said I could put them up here once she gets them up to her Webshots page. He was a really pretty snake.

But he wasn't green.

Jerrod and I went up to Ashland City yesterday to look for cottonmouths with Lisa and two guys from Austin Peay, and the adventure was a rousing success. Here's our species list for the day:

Fowler's Toad (Anaxyrus fowleri)
Northern Cricket Frog (Acris crepitans) [brown & green phases]
Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea)
Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) [heard but not seen]
Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) [heard but not seen]
Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans melanotus)
Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus) [seen by Jerrod but not me]

Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)
Red-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus v. viridescens)
Spotted Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus conanti)

Eastern Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus)
Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon sp.)
Ground Skink (Scincella laticeps)

Mississippi Ring-necked Snake (Diadophis punctatus stictogenys)
Eastern Black Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula nigra)
Copper-bellied Water Snake (Nerodia erythrogaster neglecta)
Common Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis s. sauritus)
Smooth Earth Snake (Virginia valeriae)
Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus)

The two guys from Austin Peay (Nathan & Seth) also brought back a Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus) that they had caught there earlier, so we got to see that on top of everything else.

The Fowler's Toad was not in Ashland City. It was actually in the middle of the road in front of Laura & Brandon's house in Murfreesboro... but it was still seen yesterday, so it gets included in the day's list :-)

And finally, I saw a frog that looked like either a Cope's Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) or a Bird-voiced Treefrog (Hyla avivoca), but I wasn't able to get a good look at it before it went into a hole under some tree roots. Ordinarily, I have no problem sticking my hands into holes to get critters out, but in cottonmouth country it seemed like it would be wiser just to leave it.

Just for the record, the new Thrashers 3rd jersey is not the worst uniform ever.

This is the worst uniform ever...

Byron had to do a black-&-white project for his photography class, so he asked me if he could do something with me and my scorpions. This is what came out...

That last one made me feel like an especially mature zoologist.

Those are all shots of my Arizona desert hairy scorpion (Hadrurus arizonensis). And, in case you're wondering, its sting is not particularly dangerous.

[Photos by Byron Jowers]