The Charles Norvell Falkner Gallery: 2011

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

A Book With Some of the Bissette Family History

Look over to the left of the page and you will see a Kindle link here

We were banished from Scotland because an ancestor who lost a joust set the winner's castle on fire and killed him! Hence a line of Bissette's from Ireland emerged.

Beauly Priory, Scotland - founded by the Bissett family.

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Smiley Face Spider

Theridion grallator, also known as the “happy face spider,” is a member of the Theridiidae family. The Hawaiian name is nananana makakiʻi (face-patterned spider). The binomial grallator is Latin for “stiltwalker”, reference to the species’ long spindly legs. The spider is about five mm long overall.

Certain morphs have a pattern uncannily resembling a smiley face or a grinning clown face on their yellow body. Each spider has a unique pattern, and the patterns differ from island to island. Some lack markings altogether. On the island of Maui, the happy types seem to follow simple Mendelian inheritance rules, while on other Hawaiian islands the body inheritance patterns seem to be sex-limited. The variation is possibly a kind of camouflage against birds, their only natural enemies of significance, to counteract pattern recognition by predators.

As the pattern may change according to what food the spider has eaten (Gillespie, 1989) and as T. grallator is very small, hides during the day, and is thus not a significant prey item for any species of predator, it is more likely that the bizarre variety of patterns serves no significant adaptive purpose at all.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theridion_grallator

Sunrise on Mars

From Daily Galaxy

How to Make Awesome Hand Shadows on the Wall

Link to Kindle version: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12962

The Mermaids

Illustration by Frank C. Pape

A link to the stories this illustrates: http://www.archive.org/stream/gatewaytospenser00spenrich/gatewaytospenser00spenrich_djvu.txt

What Lies Behind the Secret Door of the Great Pyramid of Giza?

There is a 4,500 year old secret door in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Scientists, with the help of a robot, may soon reveal what's behind it! More about the secret door in the Great Pyramid here. The pyramid was built for the Pharoh Cheops. He had help from his magician, Djedi, who designed three secret doors in the pyramid. Read more about the magician and the pyramids here.