CURIOSITIES IN SCIENTIFIC NAMING

(Image of Phialella zappai from here)

The jellyfish Phialella zappai was named by Ferdinando Boero as part of his plan to get to meet Frank Zappa. "There is nothing I'd like better than having a jellyfish named after me," Zappa replied. And so they met. (The long story, well worth a read, here.)

Binomial nomenclature is not supposed to be humorous. Yet a few odd scientific names slip by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Entomologists seem bugged by congenital punning. At least one marine biologist favored magic. This list of favorites is from Deep Type Flow.

• Agra vation (a beetle)

• Colon rectum (another beetle)

• Ba humbugi (a snail)

• Aha ha ( a wasp)

• Lalapa lusa (a wasp)

• Leonardo davinci (a moth)

• Abra cadabra (a clam, now, alas, in the genus Theora)

• Gelae baen, Gelae belae, Gelae donut, Gelae fish, and Gelae rol (all types of fungus beetles)

• Villa manillae, Pieza kake and Reissa roni  (bee flies)

• La cerveza (a moth)

• Ytu brutus (a beetle) 

Curioustaxonomy lists several palindromes, including:

• Orizabus subaziro (a scarab beetle)

 Plus an extinct pterosaur named for an extinct author:

• Arthurdactylus conandoylensis

Plus an extinct fish named for the famed British documentarian who gave it its 15-plus minutes of fame:

• Materpiscis attenboroughi

(Model of Materpiscis attenboroughi at Museum Victoria 2008)

Curioustaxonomy has a lot more puns and plays on words:

• La cucaracha (a moth)

• Phthiria relativitae (a bombyliid fly)

• Pieza rhea (a fly)

• Vini vidivici (a recently extinct parrot)

In the section on unused names: 

• An anthropologist, noting that the group including African apes is named Panini, suggested in jest that the subset of those which have language should be called Linguini

Strange and poignant, the irukandji jellyfish named for American tourist Robert King, whose death from its sting highlighted the heretofore invisible danger of a species no bigger than your fingernail:

• Malo kingi

(Photo of Malo kingi by Lisa-ann Gershwin)

Plus a short poem celebrating taxonomy's longevity:

A Discovery
by Vladimir Nabokov, 1943

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss
Poems that take a thousand years to die
But ape the immortality of this
Red label on a little butterfly.  

ANTARCTICA UNDERWATER

Huge forests of nasty-tasting kelps, plus soft corals, sponges, tunicates, and really really cold water.

The Life of a Home Mom is moving...

I wanted to be the first to tell you all that I'm finally moving the blog..... http://www.homemom3.com/  yes I know it isn't a major change but it should be easier to type in. :)

Can't wait to see ya over there.

My Family

Over the weekend we celebrated my Papa’s 80th Birthday!!!!

I love family parties!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While we were all together, we celebrated my husband’s and brother’s birthday and my sister’s engagement!  It was so nice to see everyone.  Getting together with my family is one of my FAVORITE things to do in the whole world.

I am the oldest of 11 children. 

That’s right, 11!

Here is a picture of all of us  form this summer.

 

I always get lot of questions after I tell someone that.  They usually ask me these questions in this order, lol….

“Do you have any twins?”   No.

“Are all the kids from the same marriage?”  Yes.

“Are you Catholic?”  Yes.

“Were you homeschooled?”  Yes.

“Are you going to homeschool?”  Yes.

“How old are you?” 25

“How old is your youngest sibling?” He just turned 3.  (that’s who’s birthday we celebrated)

“How old are your kids?”  Grace 4, Michael almost 3 and Matthew 1.  And yes, my mom and I were pregnant together.

Here is a picture….I know she will just die when she sees this. (She gets my posts via email) lol  Look, we even dress the same!  hee hee!  I just noticed that now.  We both love to wear pink, black stretch pants and slippers!! lol!  Michael’s uncle is only 2 months older than him and Grace is older that her uncle!  Isn’t that sooo funny!!!

 

“Where did you all sleep?”  Why do they ask me that?  Where do they think we slept.  Yes, we each had our own bed!!!!  But we did share rooms most of the time.

“Are you going to have a big family?”  We are just trying to do God’s will. We are open to life.  

Those are some of the questions that I get and it is so funny because everyone really does ask me those questions in that order!!!

Anyway, here are some pictures from the party at my mom’s house.

We LOVE food and our parties are known for always having way too much of it.

This is a homemade chocolate cheesecake ball that my Grandma made, yum!

Yummmmm, butter!

To fit everyone together, they set up tables in their basement.  The adults are closer to the window and the kid”s table is the table with all the “cars” stuff (for my brother’s birthday).

They always have to so cute and fun!

The always make the cutest little name tags for everyone.

Here is everyone minus my brother who was in Florida for college baseball and me because I was taking the photo.

Front right: Michael, Front left: his Uncle Johnathon (hehe)  They are so cute!

Here is my sister playing with Grace.  My kids absolutely LOVE going to grandma’s house.  They ask, “Are we going to the grandma’s house with the kids?” lol!

This is my Grandma and Papa (dad’ parents) looking through the picture book that we gave my Papa for his 80th birthday.  My sister-in-law,  Ann Marie made it and did a wonderful job.  They loved it!

She is not camera shy, lol! 

I love that baby soooo much!  

Here is my sister Elisabeth getting gifts for her engagement.

I took some pictures of their house it show you.  If you think that I am good and garage saling, you should see her house.

Here is the family room.  They need a LOT of seating! 

Living Room

Study

 

Here is my parent’s room.

Master bath

Their closet (my mom is so organized)

  

Here is my sister’s room (This is were we sleep when visiting) Isn’t it so cute???

That is my sister Rachelle in their craft corner.

There room is over their 3 car garage and it didn’t have a closet, so they made this.

Here is their downstairs hall bath.  (they just re-did this room) 

  

These are just a couple of their rooms!  There house is really neat and the decor is always changing.  Click here to see their fall décor and here to see their Christmas decor.

I hope that you enjoyed these pictures of my family and my parent’s house.

Bonnie :)

Please visit my online Shaklee site.

Juicy Rewards Updates & a Contest

As ya'll know I'm a Tropicana Mom and have been buying a ton of Tropicana Orange Juice, unfortunately I tossed two of the big gallons in the trash this past week without grabbing the code. Akkk. That's okay, I'm sure the kids will drink much more juice to replace those points. (Currently have 47 points)

There is a contest going on that ends at the end of March. Tropicana's Monthly Contest:

LinenKids Winner

Random.org picked #30 as the winner! The winner is Secret Life of a WAHM.

Secret Life of a WAHM said...


I LOVE the Winged Linen Dress.Congratulations! Please email me at homemom3@gmail.com with your mailing address.

Birthday Dinner Tablescape

This week we celebrated my husband’s birthday!  I just had to show you how I set the table.  To be honest with you,  I never set our table with this much stuff on it and I had total blast!!!!  It could be that I just got all new dishes from my mother-in-law.  That is a great story that I will tell you about soon.  Anyway here is some pictures.  Sorry about the lighting, I didn’t know it would take that long to set a table and I lost a lot of sun.  I hope you like them.

 

 

I didn’t know what I wanted to use as a centerpiece so I used candles, flowers and strawberries.  I think it looked good and the kids loved the fruit.  They ate about a 1/4 of them before Scott even came home, lol!

    

I hope that you like it!  I had a lot of fun setting it up.  I will defiantly be doing more tablescapes in the future!

I hope that you have a great weekend!!!!

Don’t forget I am giving away $30 .00 credit to my Shaklee site, a FREE LIFETIME MEBERSHIP (to always receive 15% off) and FREE SHIPPING at  Finding Fabulous.  So please, go check out Jane’s blog and join the party to enter to win!!!  Good luck!

I will be linking up to some of these fun parties!

Bonnie :)

Please check out my online Shaklee Site…