Death By Cassowary

Humorous piece over at io9 about the Cassowary:

They can grow to over six and a half feet tall, weigh well over 100 pounds, and gallop around at speeds of over thirty miles per hour – an impressive biomechanical feat for a creature with legs that might best be described as “death-cudgels with knives attached.”

io9 has become one of my favorite casual reading sources. The stories are off-beat and generally well written. This link-article by Robert Gonzalez is a great example. It’s a link article that takes the original source material and makes it better.

For the uninitiated, the cassowary is a behemoth of the bird world (second-heaviest, behind the ostritch) with a face perpetually frozen in an expression resembling that of a frat bro who just challenged you to a bar fight. A bar fight for your life

I also like io9’s approach to science writing. I don’t sense an agenda in the content and there’s always a playful angle to the material. Too many tech blogs try to act like they have a staff scientist that is miraculously an expert in every area of research, only to fail spectacularly at consequential points. Ars Technica is the exception. They are thoughtful.