Weekly WTF: Part Deux un Trois

You know, it’s been a hell of a week for WTFs. I bring you an unprecedented second and third WTF in one week:
WTF #2: PZ gets sued for saying a book of total crap is, in fact, a book of total crap. Cause everyone knows all biologists have $15 million dollars under the [...]

Insect Artwork

It’s not quite what you think–artwork created BY insects. Loads of photos at the new Sci blog, Zooillogix.
Also, a really cool video of a jumping spider’s mating dance.

Synthetic neem!

This could be the start of something wonderful: A report of a synthesis for a compound previously available only from the Neem tree.
“Twenty-two years of dedicated research has finally resulted in success: In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a British team….reports the first synthesis of azadirachtin, a natural compound that stops predatory insects from feeding….Azadirachtin is [...]

Butterfly poachers in the news

A ring of butterfly poachers is shut down by the US Fish and Wildlife Service!
“In the cutthroat world of butterfly poaching, Hisayoshi Kojima was king. He bragged he was the Indiana Jones of butterfly smugglers, that he commanded a global network of poachers. From Jamaica he could get the giant swallowtail Papilio homerus, whose velvety [...]