VOTE for soft taco.

vvvvv @ 2007-02-09T19:33:00

2007-02-10T01:33:58Z

Fun Science Fact:

There is more rigorous empirical evidence for the theory of evolution than there is for the theory of gravitation.

Interesting gravity news.

(Incidentally, I pull this funfact out when people are arguing about it (evolution, that is), especially the "it's only a theory" people, but thus far no one has cared. Also interesting. Speaking of such things, yesterday was Darwin's birthday! I was going to make cupcakes, but I forgot.

Dude, gross.

2007-01-15T17:59:51Z

Even setting questions of ethics or responsibility aside, it is increasingly and glaringly obvious that the current demands in the western world for meat and thus livestock are not in any way sustainable. See nine million semi-embarrasingly strident posts to this journal, for exa.

No one appears that interested in the really insanely easy and simple solution: Hey, why not eat less meat!

So instead we're going to see more and more just unbelievably grody, hideous and expensive attempts at solving the problem thusly:

In different parts of the world, rival research teams are racing to produce meat using cell-culture technology. Several patents have been filed. Scientists at Nasa has been experimenting since 2001 and the Dutch Government is sponsoring a $4 million (£2 million) project to cultivate pork meat.

The idea may be stomach-turning, but the science for making pork in a Petri dish already exists.

Put simply, the process relies on a muscle precursor cell known as a myoblast, a sort of stem cell preprogrammed to grow into muscle. This cell is extracted from a living animal, and encouraged to multiply in a nutritional broth of glucose, amino acids, minerals and growth factors — Churchill’s “suitable medium”. The cells are poured on to a “scaffold” and placed in a bioreactor, where they are stretched, possibly using electrical impulses, until they form muscle fibres.

The resulting flesh is then peeled off in a “meat-sheet”and may be ground up for sausages, patties or nuggets.

Link.

Incidentally: Oh, sure. We can use stem cells for THIS, but if you have cancer, alzheimers, diabetes, or any of the nineteen billion other diseases that could potentially be treated and cured via stem cell research...yeah, you can continue to go fuck yourself.

(I know, I know, myoblasts are not the same as the totipotent or pluripotent stem cells in question above, but it's still hitting me funny.)

If you spit in the sky, it will fall in your eye.

2006-11-08T02:24:48Z

Since it appears that Rick Santorum will be in the market for a new job, I thought I'd compile this list of Exciting Career Opportunities I think he'd be ideally suited for (with some help from monster.com). Just doing my part!

Medical Waste Biohazard Cooker

Medical waste biohazard cookers pick up those red biohazard bags and needle containers left outside medical facilities. The contents in those bags? Urine, semen, teeth, and blood. (Contrary to popular belief, there are no ‘guts’ in the bag.) They gather the bags on a metal cart which is wheeled into an autoclave, a huge green metal cannister, which steams the material at 260 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. The smell is, not surprisingly, bad. MWB Cookers compare it to a mixture of smelly feet, sweaty armpits, and burning rubber. Equipped only with gloves and googles, one cooker runs roughly 8-10 loads a day.

Odour Judge

Odour judges are employed in research labs, and in a nutshell, their job consists of smelling things and judging the smells. For example, mouthwash companies use odour judges to determine how effective their product is: researchers, with disgusting breath, will blow in the face of the odour judges and then blow again after using mouthwash. In another instance, odour judges might have to smell human gas (open up little tubes filled with it and inhale) and rate how toxic the smell is.

Sewer Inspector

How would you like to work beneath the ground, in extremely narrow canals, and in the dark? They crawl through tunnels and tiny spaces. It’s dark, wet, and filled with rats and roaches. Sewer inspectors must, as the job titles implies, inspect the sewers for cracks, leaks, or any kind of damage. On a daily basis, they walk through tunnels in which thousands of cockroaches live, and every time, the inspectors have to shake the cockroaches off themselves.

Pigeon-dropping Cleaner

Pigeon-dropping cleaners clean bird-droppings, mostly off roofs, as the droppings clog drains and cause floods. They first spray the area with disinfectant, which makes all the droppings run together and form a mud-like substance. Then, using a shovel and gas mask, they scoop it away into bags for disposal. The problem is that the droppings are so strong in scent, they can still smell them through their respirators.

Sludge Cleaner

Sludge cleaners, again, have fairly straight-forward job titles: they clean up sludge. The majority of sludge is first sucked through a vacuum (which is incidentally extremely noisy) and the rest of it needs to be shovelled away. Without any face protection, sludge easily lands on their bodies. Mike Rowe, host of the Learning Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” rated the job as “6.5 out of 7 levels of hell,” and called it an “endless line of pain.”

Best of luck, Rick!

Edit: Well, that's convenient. If you're so inclined, feel free to read over this post again, mentally substituting "Rumsfeld" for "Santorum." 2-4-1!

PSA

2005-09-08T20:12:20Z

Bauhaus tickets got on sale tomorrow.

Aaaaaand for those from NJ (n' friends):
Here comes yer boy. Those tickets go on sale Saturday.

You're welcome.

vvvvv @ 2005-08-18T12:13:00

2005-08-18T17:41:59Z

If I were asked to give a lecture series on the topic of my choosing, it would be:

The Lovely Ladies of Science

OR...

Wow, They Really Got Screwed.

The first person I would talk about is Rosalind Franklin. Of the people in the world who can tell you who discovered the strucutre of DNA, 90% will tell you it was James Watson and Frances Crik. It's natural that people would think this, since they won a Nobel Prize for it, but these people are wrong.

In the early fifties there was a race going on to see who could elucidate the structure first. Watson and Crik were building models, using what they knew of the properites of the component molecules to put tinkertoys together, basically. This is not a great method, and they were stuck, big time. Given the data available at the time, there was no reason for them to suspect or consider a double helix. Rosalind Franklin was doing X-Ray crystallography at Kings college, and she had taken some pictures of the DNA molecule that J.D. Bernal described as "amongst the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.'

X-ray crystallography was a good method to choose for this particular project. You shoot an x-ray at a crystal made of the molecules you're intertested in, and the pattern produced by the diffraction of x-rays through the closely spaced lattice of atoms in a crystal is recorded and then analyzed to reveal the nature of that lattice. You can use Braggs Law to determine the spacings in the lattice. This generally leads to a pretty decent understanding of the material and its molecular stucuture.

(The molecule must be crystallized because a single photon diffracted by a single electron cannot be reliably detected. However, because of the regular structure of a crystal, the photons are diffracted by corresponding electrons in many symmetrically arranged molecules. Because waves of the same frequency whose peaks match reinforce each other, the signal becomes detectable.)

So Franklin had these terrific pictures. She spoke at colloquium on nucleic acid structure in 1951, attended by Watson and Crik. They returned to their lab and produced a model that was as close as they'd ever gotten, but still flawed. These flaws were spotted immediately by Franklin, who by 1952 had determined without a doubt that she was dealing with a helix.

In December 1952 members of her department wrote up their work in a report for the MRC. In it, Franklin gave important information about the space group the DNA crystal fell into. In January 1953 Maurice Wilkins (another researcher in the same lab, with whom she had an antagonistic relationship) showed James Watson Franklin's photographs. Crick and Watson had already obtained much information from Wilkins about the dimensions of the molecule and so started to build a new model. Crick and Watson had also managed to get hold of a copy of the MRC report from the previous December.

This contained the unpublished work by Franklin on the DNA crystal's space group, and therefore was not intended to be circulated to other laboratories. Crick and Watson realised this showed that the two chains were antiparallel.

Watson and Crick succeeded in building a model of the B form of DNA incorporating her data, which was published in Nature on April 25, 1953 in an article describing the double-helical structure of DNA. Upon seeing the Crick and Watson model, Franklin is reported to have commented that it was very pretty 'but how are they going to prove it'. Crick and Watson never did actually prove their model. Franklin had already produced a draft paper describing the double helix at the time that Watson and Crik published theirs.

They stole it, straight up, with the assistance of her collegue. They assumed they would get away with it, they assumed that even if she did complain she would be ignored, mainly because she was a woman. They were right.

Wilkins, Watson, and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. All three men have since publicly admitted the theft of her work.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer on April 16, 1958 in London; which may have been caused by exposure to X-ray radiation during the course of her research. She is interred in the Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London.

Please remember her name.

vvvvv @ 2005-08-17T15:22:00

2005-08-17T20:35:05Z

You can get Barbara McClintock stamps at the post office!

(Barbara McClintock is the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize. She was awarded the prize for her theory that some genetic elements can move on and between chromosomes, i.e. she 'discovered' transposons. Transposons are now believed to make up almost half (45%, roughly) of the human genome, and are the reason mutation occurs. This is pretty fucking important, from an evolutionary perspective.

She was the third woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, making her a peer of Einstein and Godel, yet somehow she is less famous. I wonder what that's about!)

What I am thinking about this week.

2005-08-09T17:50:00Z

The question of nature v. nurture is so problematic a binary as to be basically meaningless. It's a dead horse and it needs to be re-framed. A complex mind can be (and almost definitely is) designed to mesh with what is in nature (i.e. what it experiences)--and it can have an underlying structure without negating the possibility of free will. The fact that neuroscientific findings consistently suggest some sort of a "biological (or structural, that's what they really mean) basis for behavior" absolutely does not mean that people are necessarily "born (whatever) way," it can actually be evidence for the opposite: the more complex the underlying structure the more flexible and interactive with experience a brain will be.

Note: I am using the word "design" hypothetically. What I really mean is "evolve," duh.

I am going to write the URL for this entry on little slips of paper and hand it to everyone who asks me what I think of the article they just read in Time that told them that violent people's brains are different or gay brains are different or inner city youth brains are different and this justifies x treatment of them. Yes, I would imagine that their brains are different. (relatively) Extreme experiences will do that to a brain, just as easy as "biology." It is "biology."

In which I'm a little defensive and probably looking for reassurance, but pretending I'm not.

2005-08-03T19:22:42Z

Have I told you guys what (one of) my Goal(s) In Life is? This is it:

You know when you're watching a documentary on PBS, and they pull some scientist out of the lab, blinking in the sun, sit her in front of a bookshelf in a big chair, and have her say a bunch of really banal stuff? I want to be that scientist.

"The human brain is a complex thing," I'll say, and then I'll look thoughtful while the camera fades out to a bunch of MRI images.

I want to do the other stuff too, of course, research and teach, but once the PBS thing happens I'll know I've made it.

The dedication to the Kosko book I'm reading was:

"This book is dedicated to all the young men and women who stick with their training while their youth calls. It is hard, it will get harder, but your work can turn the world" or something like that. It made me feel really...bad, and then sort of...angry. Fuck you, Bart! Just because I didn't flog myself with grad school right after I got my degree doesn't mean I can't contribute, ever! There are some things I want to get done before I commit to spending 90 hours a week in a lab for the rest of my life, ok? I took some time to ENJOY my YOUTH, the only one I GET, if I remember correctly. I am happy. I like my life, a lot, for the most part.

Yeah, I will be a few years behind when I start working toward my PhD. What's "behind?" Maybe I'm supposed to be working in the patent office right now. It's certainly working out pretty well. Maybe I'm not supposed to do anything, maybe I can do whatever I want.

I probably won't have letters after my name until I'm at least 30. So what? They won't want me in their documentary until I've got grey hair and look distinguished anyway.

Right?

Happy birthday to my heterosexual life partner!

2005-05-24T17:32:44Z

vvvvv @ 2005-05-05T12:41:00

2005-05-05T17:39:45Z

Four hours of sleep! Four hours of sleep! For the second time this week! Motherfucker!

And a fuckton o' coffee.

I feel crrrrrazy today.

Origin of the Universal Dude Hand Gesture

2005-04-18T20:36:17Z

(x-posted from dudestravaganza

You know what I'm talking about, right? It's represented in basically every dude picture I've seen, so I'm not goin to reproduce it here. I've bolded the really funny shit, from a dudewatching perspective.

The mano cornuto has its origins in ancient Italy. Mano means "hand" and corno means "horn," the reference being to the horned head of an animal.
Whether made as an apotropaic gesture or worn as an amulet, the mano cornuto is used for magical protection against the evil eye. In this it resembles other hand gestures and hand images that ward off evil, including the hamsa hand, the eye-in-hand, the mano fico (fig hand), and the interlocked thumb gesture. A regionally popular amulet, it is primarily found in Italy and in America among descendents of Italian immigrants.

The evil eye is believed to harm nursing mothers and their babies, bearing fruit trees, milking animals, and the sperm of men -- the forces of generation. The Neapolitan custom of making mano cornuto charms from silver (formerly sacred to the moon goddess Luna) and blood coral (formerly sacred to the sea goddess Venus) hints at the cultural survival of a link between the horned animal head gesture and ancient worship of a neolithic-era mother- or fertility-goddess whose consort was a male deity sometimes called the Horned God. Some archaeologists have theorized that the ancient belief in the sacredness of the horned animal head -- specifially the bull's head or bucranium -- derives from its coincidental resemblance to the female human genitals, consisting of a vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Whether or not this is the case, the mano cornuto is still a popular gesture made by Italian men to protect their genitalia from the evil eye.

The gesture is also often made instead of the sign of the cross when one is faced with evil, as it is faster and more efficient.

Source: Some book on Italian folklore that I forgot the name of.

Rock and fucking roll!

The use of the horned hands to signify, I don't know, "rocking?" Is that what that is? "Metal?" Whatever. The person credited with first using the horned hands in a rock n' roll context:

Ronnie. James. Dio.

Source: the internet, duh.

Why the hell am I thinking about Nelson?

2005-04-07T19:19:33Z

Want to feel good about your life? Here:

Imagine you're dating one of the Nelson twins. Gunnar or Matthew, your choice.

Now, remember that you're not. See?

Incidentally, this is what they look like now:

Weird, huh?

I am contractually obligated to note this.

2005-04-01T21:04:39Z

The Ninja Burger website is all about pirates today!

Well, the front page, anyway.

It's because pirates are the coolest.

I like the descending Arrrrs the best.

Arrrrrrrrrr!

Arrrrrrrrrr!

Arrrrrrrrrr

Can't...stop...changing....user info...

2005-03-24T23:03:32Z

Ok, NOW it's done.

(One last reminder: dudestravaganza is the coolest community in the entire universe, everybody knows that.)

dudestravaganza!

2005-03-24T22:38:06Z

Whoa, shit going down without me!

I made it official: dudestravaganza.

Anyone who's anyone is joining, y'all.

vvvvv @ 2005-03-22T13:37:00

2005-03-22T19:53:43Z

I was eating lunch with some people I don't normally eat with today, and here's the thing:

I don't want to hear about your ham.

You asked me if I was a vegetarian when I ordered, and I told you I was. I know that the popular conception about sharing a table with a vegetarian is a meal-length lecture on the virtues of not eating meat, but I'm not going to do that. Not because I think that it's ok for some people ("people" here means "people in the United States") to eat it (I don't), not because I don't think it's one of the (if not the) unhealthiest, disgusting, and morally reprehensible dietary choices a person can make (I do), but because it's rude. It's rude because I am ALSO of the belief that adult humans are empowered to make their own choices, and as long as they aren't eating people (that being against the law, and all), they can decide what they spend their money on and what they put in their mouths. Will I give you a three hour lecture on the topic if you ask me about it? Yep! Will I silently judge you if you don't? Probably! But I'm not going to shove my beliefs down your throat unless you bring it up.

Ok? Ok. So shut up about your goddamn ham. First of all, everything else aside, do you know how gross that looks and smells to me? Eat it, fine, do whatever you have to do, but keep you hormone and antibiotic riddled, factory farmed, shit-fed flesh out of my fucking face. Second of all, having you wave it about while raving about how terrific it is isn't going to convice me that it's "good," it isn't going to make me want to eat it, it's just going to piss me off.

Because it's rude.

Shut up about the goddamn ham.

Thank you.

Perky.

2005-03-17T21:06:14Z

Oh man. I never ever ever thought that I would have the opportunity to use this phrase.

I present to you U.S. patent No. 5,934,226: Bird Diaper

But wait! There's more:

Apparatus for Simulating a High Five.

Self Containing Enclosure for Protection from Killer Bees.

Hat Simulating a Fried Egg.

Well, I feel better. I should start doing this every week or something.

Newsweek, of all things.

2005-03-16T22:36:06Z

"A question in honor of Women's History Month: what does the United States have in common with Brunei, Somalia, Sudan and Oman? The answer: we are among only a handful of nations on earth that have refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a mouthful commonly called CEDAW. Jimmy Carter signed the treaty in 1980, and ever since it has languished in legislative limbo, waiting for the Senate to take action. While country after country, including such feminist strongholds as Iraq and Afghanistan, has at least paid lip service to the idea of an egalitarian society by supporting the treaty, we now stand alone as the sole industrialized nation that has not done so. "We've abdicated a leadership role in the single most important ongoing international women's-rights process," says Jessica Neuwirth, president of Equality Now.

Of course, we can boast that we're right up there with Somalia."

If only this were an aberration. I remember the halcyon days of the early '70s, when the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced. Instead of focusing on the legal need—this was, after all, at a time when husbands could not be charged with raping their wives, and teachers could be dismissed from their jobs if their pregnant state began to show—the attention focused on the lunatic fringe. This resulted in an endless digression about unisex bathrooms, and no amendment. Score one for the protectors of the bad old days, when men were men and women were powerless.

And the same distraction tactics emerged recently as thousands of women leaders gathered at the United Nations to affirm a program for progress first developed a decade ago at a historic meeting in Beijing. Around the world women are being sold into sexual slavery, raped as spoils of war, even murdered in so-called honor killings. But the Bush administration held up the conference for days with a demand, unsupported by any other country, that a broad statement of principle include narrow and irrelevant language against abortion, a demand that was dropped after it garnered enough publicity to score points with the right wing. While considering the great panorama of gender injustices in the world, the United States also managed to register its support for abstinence.

There was no similar support for international family planning. Progress in America in the last three decades can be linked directly to the increased participation of women and the increased participation of women can be linked directly to their ability to control their fertility. (Or perhaps American women have miraculously developed an innate ability to have only two children.) This president likes to talk about fighting for the freedom of women in the world, but he has a cynically selective definition of what freedom means. Burqas, bad. Ballots, good. Birth control? Huh?

It's true that the women's movement has led to opportunities for many Americans that outstrip those elsewhere in the world. (One of the more ironic spectacles is listening as conservative women trash the women's movement, the movement that made their lives as activist lawyers, lobbyists and pundits possible.) Longtime opponents of CEDAW argue that we've come far enough on our own. They also insist incorrectly that the treaty would require the United States to provide paid maternity leave (horrors!) and to allow women in combat. Of course, women have been serving in combat since the gulf war, but it is convenient to pretend otherwise. Some conservatives also argue that if we ratify CEDAW we will have to prohibit Mother's Day. Score one for Hallmark.

Perhaps only Jesse Helms, who for years fought the treaty, was honest about the real impulse behind the obstruction. "I do not intend to be pushed around by discourteous, demanding women," he said on the Senate floor. There's the ubiquitous subtext: women are expected to ask nicely for human rights, and to say "please." A little lipstick doesn't hurt either. Score one for the protectors of the bad old days, when men were men and women were servile.

Like other international treaties, CEDAW amounts to a bill of rights, rights that may too often be honored in the breach, not so very different from "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We may not need those rights in exactly the same way as women facing honor killings or genital mutilation. But, as we are so quick to note on other fronts, when the United States stands up for a principle it sends a message to the world about how that principle ought to be valued. Yet while America signs off on trade treaties and refugee treaties, it refuses to join the world community in standing up for the rights of women. Today some nations in Africa and Asia far outstrip us in female political representation. Even Iraq, under our tutelage, has written into its Constitution a guarantee that 25 percent of its legislators will be women. By my count, that means someone owes me 11 senators.

Jimmy Carter rules the school. Most underrated President, in my opinion, and an A No. 1 human.

Psuedoephedrine=filing's not so bad.

2005-03-09T21:30:17Z

I missed wirk yesterday due to feeling like crap (much better today, thanks), and so I'm running running running today, trying to get all my shit done. (Seriously. My desk was starting to get a fort o' stuff-to-do around it BEFORE I missed a day.) As I'm darting down the hall, one of the lawyers calls me into his office. He's not one that I deal with very often, I'm assuming he has some Task for me to do. Gragh, etc.

He shows me a picture of an aligator.

Granted, it was that one-ton aligator that ate like 80 people that they just caught in Uganda or whatever, but still.

"Huh," I say.
"I just wanted to show someone," he says.

And I go back to darting.

Also: If you want to be a sad bastard, be sick, be stuck in the house all day, and listen to "Straight to You" like 50 times. Actually, don't.

Just to, you know, save you some time.

2005-02-19T23:59:40Z

A google image search for "wacky coconut" gives you like five things, none of which are (a) coconut related, or (b) in any way "wacky". Wack, maybe, but that is NOT the same thing.

I'd prefer not to tell you why I was doing said search in the first place, thankyouverymuch.

Morale is high today, that is all.

Coachella line up

2005-02-01T21:29:31Z

This year. Read and become increasingly hyper-ventilate-y:

Saturday, April 30:

Bauhaus, Weezer, Cocteau Twins, the Chemical Brothers, Wilco, Keane, Snow Patrol, Rilo Kiley, Cafe Tacuba, Doves, Sage Francis, Armin Van Buren, the Raveonettes, Bloc Party, Mercury Rev, Fantomas, Hernan Catttaneo, Spoon, Zap Mama, DJ Peretz, Jamie Cullum, M83, Ambulance LTD, Four Tet, MF Doom, Jash Wink, Amp Fiddler, Tiga, the Kills, the Secret Machines, Boom Bip, Swayzak, Immortal Technique, Jean Grae, Razorlight, Katie Melua, Radio 4

Sunday, May 1:

Nine Inch Nails, New Order, Bright Eyes, Gang of Four, Prodigy, Black Star, the Faint, Roni Size, the Arcade Fire, Roots Manuva, DJ Krush, Thrice, Junkie XL, M.I.A., British Sea Power, the Dresden Dolls, Miss Kittin, the Firey Furnacesm Aesop Rock, the Perceptionists, Jem, Autolux, Sixtoo, Tegan and Sara, Sterophonics, the Bravery, Matthew Dear, Diplo, Subtle, Shout Out Louds, the Futureheads, Sloan, Kasabian, the Blood Brothers, Matmos, Wolf Eyes, Gram Rabbit, Smokestacks

Seriously, what the hell?

2004-12-15T00:12:50Z

FUCK!

Cultural revolution?

2004-11-08T21:36:14Z

"Mallard Fillmore, a cartoon with a conservative voice, debuts today in the Star Tribune.

Well, I just cannot fucking wait. It's about time the conservatives were given a voice in the corporate media.

vvvvv @ 2004-11-08T11:21:00

2004-11-08T17:23:11Z

ATTN: DOWNTOWN
IT IS NOT CHRISTMAS. THANK YOU.

Who wants to get blackout drunk?

2004-11-03T17:16:22Z

I really don't want to talk about it, except to say this:

Once I am Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor (district 3), this shit is getting turned around.

(John thinks I have a relatively good chance of becoming Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor (district 3). There was nobody on the ballot, how many write-in votes could I possibly need? 50? That's not unrealistic. I talked to everyyybody who's phone number I know, pretty much, and John was handing out leaflets on street corners. The leaflet ruled, by the way. Then I thought, NEXT time, once the sample ballot comes out I'm looking for blank slots, campaigning hard for like, three days (as opposed to three hours)--I would definitely win. THEN I thought, why wasn't there anybody in the ballot? Was the post just unfilled the past three years, or does the incumbent not want to do it anymore because it sucks?)

(I'm totally qualified, too, I checked. You just have to be a registered voter in the, um, either county or state, I'm not totally sure. But I'm both! I couldn't relly tell if it was a state or county position, or like what, but one website implied that I'd get a staff

Picture me with a staff, people.)