Monday Midnight Must-Reads

Here are some great posts from the blogosphere that I don't have time to do posts on myself.

First, Christopher Taylor at the Catalogue of Organisms beat me to it. He did a great job reviewing the recent PLoS ONE paper revealing how Acoels are not flatworms. In my ongoing efforts to battle paraphyletic nomenclature, Acoels shall not longer be called flatworms or "acoel flatworms". Find out where they fit at the Catalogue for an in-depth analysis of the paper.

Second, the LiveScience blog posts on new research published in Pain 'N the ASs on the evolution of body size in beetles. While palaeo-beetles were huge, modern-day beetles are pretty small by comparison. This study reports that

"bigger beetle species devote a larger portion of their bodies, proportionately, to airways than do smaller species. And the air passageways that lead from the body core to the legs turn out to be bottlenecks that limit how much oxygen can be delivered to the extremities."-Alex Kaiser, study lead author

Third, awesome song, awesome song lyrics

"There's nothing so pure as the kindness of an atheist

simple act of unselfishness that never has to be repaid 

And there's nothing so sure as a razor blade above your wrist

When you think you just can't stand it
That you're gonna leave empty handed

Do you still dream of being saved"-Freakwater's Gone to Stay from their Old Paint album

It's a beautiful song that is worth the $0.99 on iTunes (where you preview 30sec. of the song too). I found the chords for it and will cover it this week and add it to my list of insurgent country music.