Among the many things I hate about being ill (I'm not very good at it for a start), is that it always completely screws with my sleeping pattern. I was up at 8am this morning. 8am! On a Sunday!

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to crawl back under the duvet and feel sorry for myself.

I keep the subject constantly before me and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

- Isaac Newton

You ever have one of those evenings that was weird, interesting, funny, captivating, heartfelt, cool and completely blew your mind... all at the same time?

Damn, nature is creepy sometimes.

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

There is a growing collection of photos of the Buncefield oil refinery explosion on flickr (this is a personal favourite).

As with the London bomb blasts I'm now getting a better view of events via flickr and blogs than I am from the television.

I still find myself watching news bulletins to get an overall snapshot of the world, but more and more I turn to the web to "zoom in" and pick up localised views. Something you just can't do with television.

Not sure what the purpose of this post is, I think it's a ramble on realising how natural the web as news source feels to me now.