Yes, The Caps Are Necessary
As of now, my "Today I Learned" series will be hosted via Blogger here: http://positivederivative.blogspot.com/. Posts will automatically be pushed to Facebook (odds are, that's where you're reading it right now, so you don't need a link) and to my new Tumblr: http://positivederivative.tumblr.com/. I'm new to both of these mediums, so I'm open to any advice aesthetic or functional.
Now, for the things I learned today:
1) I learned how to blog! And how to tumblr! This feels kind of like cheating, but I'm excited about it.
2) There is a remarkable variety of lifespans and ageing styles among the basal metazoans (animals). Among the hydras, for example, there are species which appear be healthy and fertile for decades or centuries, but other species that stop producing offspring and die within a few weeks. Similar variety can be found among cnidaria (jellyfish and anemones). Two notable cases are the hydra Campanularia flexuosa (http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/365594/view) and the sponge Acropora cytherea (http://www.arkive.org/staghorn-coral/acropora-cytherea/#src=portletV3api), two not-particularly-related species that both live in large colonies of many polyps, all integrated into a single organism with continuous connective tissue. In both species, individual polyps show signs of aging (lower ATP production in the hydra, reproductive dropoff and defects in the sponge), but the overall colonial organism remains healthy.
3) Use caution when stir-frying with wood-ear mushrooms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auricularia_auricula-judae). If you put them into a hot, oil-lined pan, they quickly start to pop violently, spewing little bits of hot oil over surprising distances. They seem to behave better with other vegetables around them, or in water-based cooking methods.
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