Do you read the web comic Tree Lobsters? It has lots of good skeptical and critical messages, and it’s pretty funny. This panel is from a particularly good one; click it to see the rest.
And who knew Jenny McCarthy had a chitinous exoskeleton?
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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January 14th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
chitinous exoskeleton.
that would make a good band name.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Those tree lobsters look like they’re not in trees at all, but a field of nettles. I guess that chitinous exoskeleton keeps them safe.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
That’s either so funny it’s sad or so sad it’s funny. I can’t decided which….
January 14th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Those lobsters….THEY have all the fun – don’t they!
Crustasham…..OUCH!
January 14th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Apologies for the gratuitous plug. Here’s a tune that takes an ironic look at conspiracy theories….
myspace.com/wearethecrap (song = conspiracy if autoplay doesn’t kick in).
Hope you like and sorry again.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Man o man this cartoon had me on the floor LMAO. I just lost control it’s so funny.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I think it’s slightly depressing that the ad on the corner of my page is for Tai Chi Secrets.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
JM’s chitinous exoskeleton is obviously due to all the botox.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I can’t decide if I want to vote Lizard or Spock. I think Spock.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
As a priestess in the cult of Tree Lobsterdom, I say unto you, read the archives! There’s some really great stuff in there.
This one made it onto the wall of my lab: http://www.treelobsters.com/2009/04/coffee.html
January 14th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
HOLY COW THIS COMIC IS GREAT HOW HAVE I BEEN MISSING IT ALL THIS TIME?!
(caps for Dinosaur Comics T-rex effect)
January 14th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Chitinous Extract. Made from all natural sources. Improves your skeletoreous equilibrium. Channels energy like a tree. Inexpensive without the side affects of Big Pharma medicines. Ick!
By 6Leg Pharmacology Enterprises.
(This product not evaluated by FDA. May contain less than 1% crustacean chitinous and more than 50% arthropoidal chitinous.)
January 14th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
This works in nicely with my exciting-newly-discovered-word-of-the-day “Pancrustacea”. Yes, you could have a Pancrustacea pizza, but it might not be what you’re expecting. (But it is likely to be rich in Chitinous Extract, so it must be good for you.)
That’s what I get for using my astronomy degree to get a job in evolutionary bioinformatics.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Simply awesome!
January 14th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Like I told him over on skepchick, I have a wee bit of a man crush on Steve (the creator of TL). I’m pleased that he will get a few more readers from this post.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Great comic.
But haven’t we
allmost of us, seen Jenny McCarthy nude and wasn’t there every bit of evidence for her lacking a chitinous exoskeleton & being simply an attractive female homo sapiens not a crustacinus arborius?(Yeah that’s probably NOT the right Latin term .. anyhow.)
Jenny McCarthy is not a monster she’s ahuman being … A very, very, *very* stoopid & willfully ignorant even crazy one but one nontheless.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Of course Phil held out on #92, didn’t he?
http://www.treelobsters.com/2009/10/92-make-it-so.html
-Rusty
January 15th, 2010 at 12:54 am
Hahaha! That was funny.
BTW Has anyone noticed that in fact the board of that game is a map From The Lord of The Rings but reversed?
January 15th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Tree lobsters! You can’t prove they don’t exist!
January 15th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Hey, ya gotta go read #5. I’ve been there…and this would make such an ultraneato memento of their…”accomplishment”…
January 15th, 2010 at 7:17 am
@ Mario: That was the first thing I noticed! I’m a nerd.
January 15th, 2010 at 8:06 am
Rarely have I seen anything this “right on”. This is a better message than ranting. I love the “logic?”. Another great comic to read.
January 15th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Thanks, Phil, for the plug. There’s been a huge bump in traffic since you posted this. It’s almost as if people pay attention to what you say or something.
And thanks to everyone for the great comments, tweets, reddits, diggs, etc. It’s nice to know my crappy GIMP skills and smartass comments are appreciated.
#2 Charlie Young: I think that’s actually a shrub (thyme?) in my back yard.
#18 Mario: Yep, it’s Middle Earth mirrored with the place names erased. Didn’t think anyone would catch that. The dice are standard D&D and the tokens are a monk and a scientist.
One bizarre side effect of this post is that Tree Lobsters is currently showing up on celebrity gossip sites: http://bit.ly/8TDiHy http://bit.ly/5UYjC7
January 15th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Everyone knows there are also those hidden mouse hover messages, right?
January 15th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Is this just a Firefox problem, or does nobody else see any sort of navigation buttons on the linked page or the home page for this comic? I can’t actually look at the other comics.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:53 am
Amazed I’m the first to say it. How come those lobsters have been cooked? Live lobsters are almost black.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
http://www.narragansettbay.info/species/shell/250_Homarus_americanus.jpg
January 15th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Hmm, looks like my previous comment got moderated into oblivion. Trying again without the links…
Thanks, Phil, for the plug. There’s been a huge bump in traffic since you posted this. It’s almost as if people pay attention to what you say or something.
And thanks to everyone for the great comments, tweets, reddits, diggs, etc. It’s nice to know my crappy GIMP skills and smartass comments are appreciated.
#2 Charlie Young: I think that’s actually a shrub (thyme?) in my back yard.
#18 Mario: Yep, it’s Middle Earth mirrored with the place names erased. Didn’t think anyone would catch that. The dice are standard D&D and the tokens are a monk and a scientist.
#25 Kris: Should work with FF. One thing is that the nav button images are currently hosted on Google Sites. If that’s blocked by, say, a firewall, that might cause a problem.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Tree lobsters is awesome!
http://www.treelobsters.com/2009/12/114-global-rounding.html
January 15th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
24. Kris Says:
Is this just a Firefox problem, or does nobody else see any sort of navigation buttons on the linked page or the home page for this comic? I can’t actually look at the other comics.
Do you have NoScript? Could be that it’s blocking the javascript for the site, I have that happen a lot because of the overuse of JS on web pages.
J/P=?
January 15th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
@Tree Lobsters: First, your comic sir, is awesome.
Second: Don’t underestimate the power of the interwebz nerds! Mwuahahaha HA!!!!
January 15th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
#28 John Paradox: There is a lot of javascript on the site but navigation should still work even with it turned off. The “random” and “secret message” buttons won’t work, though.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Weird. They’re there now. I don’t have noscript on, and they weren’t on my blocked images because they were visible when I went to the page just now to check.
Yay! I can read it now!
edit- Actually, I ran an update earlier today, and the slowdown I’ve been getting in FireFox is gone, so must have been something funky and unrelated.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Do tree lobsters coexist peacefully with the Northwestern Tree Octopus?
January 15th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
1. Rob,
“chitinous exoskeleton.
that would make a good band name.”
No, no it would not. You can’t say it drunk (I can barely say it sober)!
January 15th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
#30. Kris: It could also have been my home-brew webcounter. It uses a java servlet running on a very old server on a very slow pipe. It hasn’t been handling the increased traffic very well and may have caused some page load problems. I’ve disabled it for now, at least until the traffic gets back to its normal pace. I also went ahead and moved the button images under the treelobsters.com domain.