the meanest things in creation

Great article on an ichthyologist working on the relationships between venemous fishes. The payoff is in the last two paragraphs. I chuckled out loud when I read it - maybe you have to be a scientist or really devoted hobbiest to get this particular type of geekiness.

Perhaps you thought I was referring to Karl Rove and his minions?

In other news, Grisha Perelman refused his Fields Prize. This article discusses the other prizewinners and outlines their contributions, all of them interesting. The Fields Prize was set up because there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. The urban legend is that Nobel's wife ran off with a mathematician, and he hated them all with a vengeance. On the other hand, perhaps it was just an unfortunate oversight.