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Five New Vids at Fungal Visions

Philip — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:54:17 +0000

It’s been awhile since I got around to uploading some new YouTube videos to Fungal Visions. I recently took the time to look over the most recent uploads to YouTube that had anything to do with mushrooms, fungi, or mycology. There is always a steady stream of such things. Most of them are not worth viewing.

Worthwhile Fungal Videos on YouTube

You may not agree that these videos are worth watching, but they are among the best recently uploaded to YouTube. Here are the ones I chose. You can see them (and many others) at Fungal Visions.

Biology 1B – Lecture 1: Introduction/Fungi: This is a full lecture from the University of California at Berkeley. The quality is good and the lecturers know there stuff. Since it is the first lecture of this general biology course, there is a lot of housekeeping discussed, but the beginning of the part concerning fungi begins around minute 14 and shortly thereafter.

Fungi for Biofuel: Prof. Amir Sharon, Tel Aviv U: A short explanation of the work being done in Israel on the use of fungi in the development of biofuels. Not overly exciting, but informative.

Paul Stamets Discusses Bioremediation and the BP Spill: A short interview with Paul Stamets, in which he discusses his ideas about, and the basis for, using fungi to remediate the damage caused by petroleum spills.

Growing Mushrooms–Unlocking the Food Chain: A sincere dude shows us some mushrooms growing in a pot of orchids. He makes a case for growing mushrooms for food and/or barter.

Giant Mushroom Safari Cloaks the Sun (HD): A fine, high quality video giving a ground-level view of an expanded mushroom cap (Chlorphyllum molybdites according to the video). Make sure you switch the resolution to 720p for the full effect.

YouTube has been having some technical difficulties today, so if you get an error, try again later.

Strange Fungus Cartoon Music Video

Philip — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:11:08 +0000

A reader sent in a tip (thanks!) on this strangely entertaining cartoon called “Shrooms” (what other name is there for a whack mushroom cartoon?). The website is Weebl’s Stuff and the toon is described as

A full length version of the Mushroom Song from 8-Bit Pwny Club since so many of you requested it. Animated by Wonchop. Written by Bizunth and Weebl (Mostly Bizunth)

I think I might like it better than Mushroom, Badger, Snake.

Introducing Fungal Visions

Philip — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:45:50 +0000

Fungal Visions is a site devoted to YouTube videos about fungi. The latest addition is an awesome demonstration of how to make a realistic paper mushroom. It looks like you’ll need the right kind of paper. This paper folding video was originally spotted on a twitter post. Although the video is titled Perfect origami mushroom, I hesitate to call it origami, at least in the traditional sense. But who gets to define origami? Not me.

So if you like videos that have anything to do with mushrooms, molds, yeasts, mycoses, hyphae, ballistospores, education, cultivation, ascii, pileotomy, mycorrhizae, Amanitas or Skank Foot Fungus Flour, check out Fungal Visions. You won’t have to wade through a bunch of non-fungal stuff.

Not only is there material of scientific interest, there’s weird stuff too. For example behold this guy who claims to be able to eat a “ceremonially prepared” A. phalloides mushroom!

Badger, Mushroom, Snake

Philip — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:48:56 +0000

Remember the badger, mushroom, snake video? No? Hmnn. Some middle school kids I was teaching introduced it to me several years ago. I had to admit it was fairly entertaining. Might even be worth another viewing (every few years).

According to a comment at YouTube “The actual lyrics are ‘magic magic magic mushroom’. Someone just got hold of the soundtrack and added badgers to the video.”

Here it is: