June 15, 2016 at 01:26AM

Today I Learned: 1) I thought I knew everythin there was to know about woodpeckers' adaptations to avoid braining themselves when they smash their faces into trees, but today Chris Lennox proved me wrong. So the most dramatic woodpecker anti-braining mechanism is their indreculously long tongues, which are wrapped up the back of their skulls and *above their heads* to act as a shock-absorbing cushion. Today I learned that woodpecker tongues are also AWESOME. They are very, very long, in general (it depends on the species, as usual), and most are topped either with harpoon-like spiny bits that are great for spearing insects, or fuzzy brushlike fronds that are good for extracting sap, or some combination of the two. Still not quite as awesome as hummingbird tongues, but pretty cool. I am continually reminded that birds' experiences of mouths and tongues are very, very different from our own. I also learned a couple of other woodpecker brain protection mechanisms, via this article (http://ift.tt/1rp43Hx), via Chris Lennox. 1) Woodpecker brains fit very tightly into their skulls so they don't slosh around. 2) Woodpeckers have ridiculously strong neck muscles. 3) Woodpecker brains are oriented to best spread out the impact over a large surface. 4) Woodpecker skulls have parts that can slide around a bit, acting like a spring and damping the effect of the impact. Here's something to consider -- somewhere in the woodpecker's evolutionary past is a bird that was *not* as well-protected from brain damage as its modern descendents, yet it impacted its face against things frequently enough that evolution favored those adaptations. That's an interesting position for a bird to be in. 2) Ok, so maybe foreverspin.com doesn't have the best tops in the world. I would still argue that they may have the most *beautiful* tops in the world, but darksucks.com (which actually primarily manufacturs extremely high-end flashlights) has a (possibly discontinued) line of seriously awesome tops called Lambda Spin tops (http://ift.tt/1tvrfpt). Aside from the tops' high-texture grips and general overall quality, the major feature of the Lambda Top is its tip, which is spherical instead of pointy. This makes the top much, much more stable and precesses less, and maintains its tip much better than a normal top. To get the tip machined to the highest possible tolerances, the guy who makes (made?) Lambda Spin tops builds (built?) them with a ruby tip, as ruby is apparently highly machinable and keeps its surface better than metal. So yeah, it's a top with a ruby in it. There are some seriously impressive videos on the site I linked above, including a ten minute spin and an example of a spinning top so perfectly balanced that it looks like it's still. Thanks to Dean Clamons for finding this, somehow! 3) Today I got to try a portable induction stove. It's really, really fast. Once we figured out how to use it, we were able to bring 200 mL of water in a glass beaker to near-boiling in... one minute? Two? I'm impressed, anyway.