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#51
I'm currently having a conversation with someone about Church of the Flying Spaggetti Monster (AKA Pastafarianism). I was posing that, unlike she had proposed, Pastafarianism and Discordianism (or CotSG) are not really that similar.

My argument was that, while the latter irreligions were "religion masking joke masking substance", the latter was a joke through and through. People who use the parody tend not to self identify under that label, which is at best a ploy by atheists to counteract the teaching of creationism in schools.

Compare this with the more "traditional" irreligions of Discordianism and Church of the Subgenius. The former is a radical westernization of zen and taoism, the later a radical subversion of religion in general. And I pointed out that in 10 years, hardly anyone will remember the flying spagetti monster, but there will still be Discordians.

Now, why is that?

It seems to me that these "one-liner" irreligions have essentially no substance. As Nigel said previously, Discordianism is a complete system, a complete metamap through which to go about exploring reality. It provides an entire, absurdist groundplan from which to view the universe. The "substance obscured by the joke" is actually rather deep and useful. And this substance, and the history of human creativity surrounding this substance, allows a social cohesiveness despite the fact that it is a joke (and that "Discordians stick apart"). For example, this forum wouldn't still be around 10+ years after it got started if there wasn't some essential substance beneath the joke.

There is no social cohesion in Pastafarianism beyond the original goal to push creationism out of public schools. I would argue that there is actually NO Pastafarianism in the first place, because no one actually identifies as one. The lack of substance means that social groups tend to quickly fall apart. Look at the Church of Google for the same reason. It's the difference between laughing at a joke and forgetting it, and laughing at a joke only later to go "oh, there are a whole bunch of hidden gems there".

I know people here have been to some of these parody religion forums, and I hope you will comment.

My other thought is when you cling to a joke which has no substance as if it did, you start taking yourself too seriously. And if the backers of the parody aren't high enough in numbers, the social structure tends to fall apart quickly when under attack. There's no reason to cling together, as it was at the Church of Google forums.
#53
Starting with William Dampier.

QuoteHe was, as you can see here, a large nosed, lean, keen-eyed man whose image still hangs in Great Britain's national portrait gallery, alongside kings, writers, warriors and other great personages. Which is odd, because he was a pirate.

Not a gentleman pirate. William Dampier was a doubloon-stealing, knife-flashing, boat-nabbing outlaw who preyed on Spanish frigates, who pillaged, robbed and behaved very, very badly.

But he was also a great naturalist, one of the 17th century's best; a man who collected plants and animals and wrote about them during short breaks between piratical adventures.

Some of the stories include: stealing food from a Vietnamese funeral and barely escaping with his life; fashioning a bamboo container to waterproof his journals while running/swimming through the jungle; and that Darwin called him "old Dampier", as if the pirate was his pal over a century later.

The new biography is now on my 2012 reading list.
#55
Techmology and Scientism / Thingiverse.
January 15, 2012, 03:24:58 PM
(Ed Yong is apparently my muse, because I'm on a roll today.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-wonderful-world-of-thingiverse/251121/


QuoteThingiverse, founded in 2008, is a design library from the folks at MakerBot Industries, the Brooklyn-based company that is designing and building open-source 3D printers. On Thingiverse, people can download the plans for obsjects, tweak them, and share their improved versions. As CEO Bre Pettis explained, "You just download this digital design or you create one yourself, and the thing is made right there for you. ... Up until now, you've been able to download books, you've been able to download movies, you can download music. Well, now you can download things. And, once you download the digital design, you can just crank up your MakerBot, fire it up, and print it out."

And there are pictures of makerbot made items with designs downloaded from Thingiverse at the link.
#56
...birds are dinosaurs.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2012/01/dinosaurs-of-a-feather/


And while their simple answer seems to be "anything with feathers is not a dinosaur" (which is a near-idiotic just so story), the article reveals the real problem.

QuoteUltimately, though, many of Feduccia's objections boil down to a rejection of a methodology known as cladistics. This method of determining relationships among organisms is based on the analysis of shared derived characteristics—specialized features found in two organisms or lineages and their most recent common ancestor. Researchers look for numerous traits, record whether the traits in question are present or absent, and then insert that mass of data into a computer program that produces a hypothesis about the relationships among the various organisms included in the study. The point is not to find direct ancestors and descendants, but to figure out who is most closely related to whom. The method is not perfect—which organisms are included, the choice of traits for comparison and the way those traits are scored all affect the outcome. Still, this process has the benefit of requiring researchers to show their work. Each evolutionary tree resulting from such methods is a hypothesis that will be tested according to new evidence and analyses. If someone disagrees with a particular result, they can sift through the collected data to see if an inappropriate trait was included, an essential organism was left out, or if there was some other problem. Cladistics is useful not because it results in a perfect reflection of nature each time, but because it allows researchers to effectively examine, test and improve ideas about relationships.

They're using phenetics, something I thought was long dead in studies of morphology (though not in DNA sequences). Of course, the biggest problem with their methods is just that; Phenetics was never meant to find the evolutionary relationships of organisms. Sokal and Sneeth, who came up with the method, outright rejected that anyone should try to find evolutionary relationships because they were almost always too obscured to confidently reconstruct. Most systematists, such as myself, reject this idea, because it strikes us as solipsism. We know there are evolutionary relationships, and so we use specially shared characters (characters shared between species that are shared by no other species) to infer the relationships. As we find more characters, more information, we refine those relationships. Characters that are more widely shared, more general, are not useful because they don't tell us about common ancestry.

So, these birds-as-dinosaurs denialists ignore all evidence that doesn't support their claim that there is some unknown ancestor of birds that was not a dinosaur, and use methods to devise actual relationships that were never meant to find actual relationships. Pseudoscience is alive and well in systematics, as it is in some small amount in every field of science.
#57
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x/full

QuoteBut the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, 'I'd like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence'. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.

:lulz: And you thought professional meetings are quiet, boring affairs.  :lulz:
#59
Techmology and Scientism / Cockroaches with jet packs.
January 07, 2012, 07:03:19 PM
Title says it all. Some researchers wanted to test the stride reaction time of an insect to find out just how stable having six legs in tripodal alternation really is. So they strapped some jet packs to roaches and fired them off in front of a high speed camera, and the roaches barely broke stride.

Also, another jetroach video.
#60
And the best part is, the paper is open access so we can ALL read it.

The most interesting thing about this find is how different these vent ecosystems are from the ones in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. For one, there are no tube worms, and all the rest of the species are different as well. I'm very curious about these octopuses.
#62
The best summary of this whole discovery.

Quote from: from Biodiversity in Focus blogAfter further observation, a few behavioural trials and some interesting molecular techniques, the research team found that not only were these scuttle flies parasitizing honey bees in the San Francisco Bay area, but also in migratory bee colonies housed in the Central California Valley and South Dakota, and also that infected honey bees would leave their colonies at night to fly away and die (often congregating at man-made lights and acting strangely); that all of the parasitized bees had been exposed to Nosema ceranae (a fungus which can lead to death from diarrhea and malnourishment) and/or Deformed Wing Virus (a disease that can cause malformation of a bee's thorax and wings during pupation); and that some of the flies had evidence of these bee pathogens in their systems.

The best freakout over this discovery.

QuoteSince I live in northern California, my question is what would prevent this fly from planting its eggs under the skin of hikers or campers at night within the infection zone? Would the parasite migrate and feed on human brain tissue? If it likes honeybee tissue it may consider human brain tissue a "delicacy."

And just what region surrounding the human skull would mature flies "bust out" of? I would imagine the answer is the sinus cavity (i.e. mature flies exiting the nose and mouth while the camper slept). Also, the type of psychosis that brain infection could trigger may pose a threat in the form of unpredictable, perhaps violent or risky behavior. For example, if the parasite can "bust out" of the head region of the honeybee's body, what would prevent it from "busting out" of any region of the body that furthers the parasite's goals of mass infection? What I'm getting at, to put it indelicately, is the possibility an human adapted species of this parasite could "bust out" of the human appendage during intercourse, or transfer from one mouth to another during kissing or other intimate contact.

Overall, there has been mixed coverage. There are the usual parties, who want to immediately make these flies out as the "cause of Colony Collapse Disorder", and then there has been some good reporting as well. And the crazy. Which makes the title of the Bio in Focus post ("The Good, the Bad, and the Zombees") an apt pun worthy of RWHN.
#63
Techmology and Scientism / Help with science writing.
January 04, 2012, 02:44:15 AM
I've been writing a science-related blog for several years now. My hope is that my writing has improved somewhat. Then I wrote this post today. On one hand, that's the most comments I've had on any post ever, and I love getting criticism. On the other hand I feel like I really shouldn't have made that public.

It's not just the spelling errors either (I've tried to correct as many as I've seen). The whole thing is so horribly disorganized that it seems like I don't even know what I'm trying to say until the very end. And some of the ideas I was fronting now feel like they are way out in outer space. Like taxonomy amateur hour, or something. Hey look, some genera have lots of species and some genera have very few species. Isn't that /amazing/. I won't edit it now, because that would be dishonest.

I don't feel that I'm a horrible writer. I've improved, but I am definitely not the writer I want to be. The only idea I have right now is to show my copy to a friend to tell me if I'm bonkers and point out any glaring flaws in my logic before I post. This isn't science journalism, and sometimes it's as much philosophy as science. I'm not really sure how to work these stories. I'm not even really sure I have a /voice/. I'm caught between trying to use the voice I've created here, and the scientist voice of my publications. The latter is way too formal, but the former is too casual.

Tips, tricks, advice, help?
#64
I'm not sure if this has been posted yet, and many of you have probably seen it, but this toy isle rant warms my heart. Riley, at the age of four, already understands the manipulation involved in gender marketing of goods, and thinks it's stupid.

But of course when any female comes out and complains about gender stereotypes you know there is going to be mansplaining. Which includes a takedown of said mansplaining. My favorite part is where he tries to use circular reasoning to explain why girls like pink things (because they buy pink things, apparently).

And another by Rebecca Watson, who if you don't recall, was one of Dawkins' target of ire after Elevatorgate and the birth of the Dawkins Fallacy.
#65
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#66
Since I'm no longer anonymous on here, I can finally post about my first publication, which just came out two weeks ago. This is SCIENCE(!), albeit a science of details, an ideographic science if you will. It's natural history as opposed to molecular biology.

Here's a link to the PDF.


And a link to a "press release" on my blog.
It was inspired by John Eisen's recent decision to forgo a university press release and blog it instead.

More personally, I feel pretty good about this "achievement". This paper was a long time coming, mostly because of all the revisions and the things asked of me by editors and reviewers, and despite it's short length. I'm pretty happy about getting it published in an open access journal so I can share it freely. This is becoming more and more common, even in traditional print journals; the authors can often pay some extra per page to make the online PDF open access. You are probably all familiar with PLoSOne, and that sort of journal is the way of the future. It's already as influential as Nature or Science, mostly because journalists and the public can freely access the articles as opposed to paying to read them or being on a university system database.

And I feel a little sad because my next pub (coming out in January) is not in an open access journal, so I won't be able to pass the PDF around like I can now, nor could I pay to make it open access. It's also going to be of higher importance than this one, since it concerns a species being considered for federal listing under the Endangered Species Act.
#67
Techmology and Scientism / Ed Yong's Top 12 of 2011.
December 24, 2011, 08:00:15 PM
Ed Yong is by far one of the best science journalists out there. He regularly produces world class explanations of breaking science news on his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science.


Here are his picks for the best 'longreads' of science journalism for this past year.
They include the story of the whiskey feeding fungus I already posted here, an investigation of brain conjoined twins who feel each other's senses, a look into the alien mind of octopuses (I also posted this), and the excellent Carl Zimmer on the gut endosymbiont ecosystem as a 'human lake'. I recommend them all.
#68
Techmology and Scientism / Why menstruation?
December 21, 2011, 09:19:09 PM
A really interesting discussion by PZ Myers.

I especially appreciate that the discussion doesn't include any evolutionary psychology, a field wrought with just so stories. Instead, he draws on comparative biology and physiology to provide some hypotheses for what might seem outwardly to be a selective detriment. I'm not going to try to summarize his excellent summary here, except to say that the most supported hypothesis deals with the production of the thickened endometrial lining, either before or in response to a fertilized zygote, and the adversarial nature of the mother-fetal relationship. It reminds me very much of sexual selection and sexual "arms races" between males and females of the same species.
#70
Aneristic Illusions / "If I Were a Poor Black Kid."
December 17, 2011, 08:47:13 PM
Or

(Possibly) One of the Worst Op-Eds Ever.

Which was possibly a troll. Who can tell these days?

And satire.

It all makes me giggle.  :lulz:
#71
There's this sad preoccupation in research academia, or should I say, sad obsession with foregoing life outside the laboratory. To the point where friends, family, and any other "extracurricular" activity are accessories to Science.

After the recent Nobel awards, there was a panel of Nobel laureates offering advice to young scientists on how to be like them. I won't say successful, or happy, or even good at science, because I don't think these things are implicit in the advice to work yourself to exhaustion, forgoing all existence outside your work.

Scicurious has a full account of the issue. There's this strange self depreciation that is applauded in many circles, that a harder worker makes a better person. This isn't just an academic issue; in this country, and in many other places, we are judged publicly by the visibility of our toil and hardship towards success. Not our ingenuity, not our efficiency or ability to plan and then execute, but how much we wear our body down to dust day to day. People who refuse to destroy their life are "not cut out for Science". This is very cultish sounding, and I've pointed out before that academia has many cult like trappings.

When I was in grad school for my master's degree, my mentor told me that the very best scientists spend 80+ hours a week working. Thinking it wouldn't hurt me to try, I proceeded to do several weeks of that. I ended up exhausted, depressed, over stressed, and I got even less done than I did when I only worked 40 hours a week. Don't get me wrong, science does require passion and devotion. If you only think about research at the bench, then you probably aren't a good scientist. But it does not require social suicide. If the whole point of science is to figure out how the universe works by testing hypotheses and making discoveries, then the execution part of that equation should not take up most of the time. That's very inefficient. Good hypotheses come at weird moments, and good experiments take much more time to plan than they do to carry out. What a person gains by wasting their life in a lab is praise from other people who spend their lives in the lab. Most grad students hear "effort = excellence" and break themselves working till 4 am, and then discuss this the next day in a fashion similar to recalling drunken exploits while hungover. Except unlike drinking, the working late at night isn't really all that fun during, or in hindsight.

And then there's this Scott Kern character. He has passion and dedication, yes, which is a requirement of all good scientists. What he also has is a snobbish attitude towards anyone who doesn't exist entirely in a research hospital. And despite his prestige I don't think he has many friends, and maybe even is secretly unhappy. Or perhaps he has delusions of grandeur. Anyway, his mentality is the classic archetype of pompous, overworked, unsuccessful academia. "If only I worked even HARDER maybe I wouldn't be such a loser like those other losers!" As Drug Monkey said (in the link above), "The younger generations have chosen a different path. Deal, old grumpy dude. Deal. Your personal failure to cure pancreatic cancer (and thereby justify the choices you made vis a vis your personal life) are not the fault of the trainees you would like so desperately to exploit even more than you do already."
#72
http://www.politicususa.com/en/proof-that-homophobia-is-associated-with-homosexual-arousal

Proof in quotes of course because that only exists in maths. I'd say that this is strong evidence.

And it's strong evidence for something we here probably take for granted, that homophobia is mostly internalized homophobia linked to homosexual tendencies. I'm happy to have some numerical evidence to that general hypothesis, though. Increase in penis circumference is a nice, unbiased estimator of arousal. Of course, arousal can happen for many reasons, not just sexual ones, so it's interesting that none of the non-homophobic men had any response to the homosexual erotica. I'd like to see a larger replicated study with closer to 100 participants in both control and treatment groups, but I wonder if this is unnecessary. Plus, this study is over 10 years old; you would think that if the methods were to be called into question they would have been already. I'd also like to see it done with a control group of homosexual men, to see if their arousal difference is symmetrical to that of heterosexual men, but that's an entirely different thing.

Is there anyone who has experience with psychological experimentation and can access the full article?


ETA: Cock and repost.
#73
This just cracks me the fuck up.

So, apparently Catholic Ministries have started an "adopt-an-atheist" program. As Bill Donohue explains:

Quote[Let] them know of your interest in "adopting" one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

    If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who "believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing."


So of course, a classy atheist woman makes a video asking him to adopt her.   :lulz:
#74
Neil Degrasse Tyson is well known for his "most amazing thing in the universe" story about the synthesis of the heavier elements in the stars. If you haven't heard it, you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiOwqDmacJo

I've wondered for a while where this originated, and why it isn't celebrated. While listening to this Colbert interview with Tyson today, he talked about the original paper, "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" by Burbidge et al (1957).

You can download the article from this link (PDF): http://rmp.aps.org/pdf/RMP/v29/i4/p547_1

Just thought I'd put that out there.
#75
And so do toddlers.

Quote
She worked with 64 babies, and showed them a video of a duck hand puppet as it tried to get at a rattle inside a box. This protagonist was aided by a helpful elephant puppet that lifted the lid (first video), but hindered by an antisocial elephant that jumped on the lid and slammed it shut (second video). Next, the babies saw the two elephants playing with a ball and dropping it. Two moose puppets entered the fray – one (the 'Giver') would return the ball to the elephant (third video), and the other (the 'Taker') would steal it away (fourth video). The babies were then given a choice between the two moose.

Hamlin found that over three-quarters of the five-month-old babies preferred the Giver moose, no matter whether it returned the ball to the helpful elephant or the antisocial one. They were following a simple rule: "helpful moose = good moose". But the eight-month-old babies were savvier. They largely preferred the Giver moose when it was aiding the helpful elephant, but they chose the Taker when it was took the antisocial elephant's ball..

Videos in the article. Because I know you want to see this.
#76
I mean, just look at all this misogynistic pink BS they get fed.

http://www.wildscience.net/girls.html

"Beauty Salon"? "Lip Balm Lab"? "Magic Crystal Oasis"? "Perfume Designer"? Are there any stereotypes they DIDN'T manifest in this junk?
#77
Techmology and Scientism / Lynn Margulis (1938 - 2011)
November 23, 2011, 04:37:14 PM
Lynn Margulis died yesterday evening. Many of you probably recognize the name; she was one of the most influential biologists in the world, the mother of endosymbiotic theory, and the endorser of many crazy ideas, some of which turned out to be right.

More recently she's been in the news for communicating a very strange article to PNAS, which incidentally is now the reason that journal doesn't use that particular method in publication (the communicated articles by members bypassed peer review). In the words of a former student of hers, "she just [had] no bullshit detector". Though a great deal of the recent press on her is vilifiying this predisposition to crazy ideas such as the eukaryotic flagellum coming from spirochates, the larvae of insects coming from onychophorans, and the Gaia Hypothesis, it's important to remember her greatest contribution, that of Endosymbiotic Cell Theory.

Basically, there is a massive amount of evidence to suggest that mitochondria, chloroplasts and possibly other cell organelles were originally free living bacteria, and acquired and integrated over evolutionary history to become the cell components we know them as. It's an idea we take almost for granted today, but in the 1970s when Margulis started writing about endosymbiosis it was not widely accepted. She may have let this success go to her head which lead to the unfortunate inability to discriminate between good and bad ideas, but this first success really carried her career.

And to some extent, I think it's necessary to have at least one outspoken scientist in every field wrestling with so called crazy ideas. The greatest revolutionary hypotheses don't generally come from mainstream science, they come from the backwaters, the bits that are ignored in the mainstream, the ideas no one has thought to investigate, or more likely, no one has had the perseverance to investigate to a conclusion. Lynn Margulis was such a character, and we are at a loss in the biological community without her.
#78
I came across this article through a friend on Facebook. http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/15-food-companies-that-serve-you-wood/

Although I shouldn't be, I am a bit surprised at the idiocy of both the article and the comments. The article claims that 'wood' (i.e. cellulose) is being used in processed foods, and that this is a bad thing. No evidence of this, of course.

The real crazy is, as anyone who has passed high school biology would know, that ALL plants have cell walls composed of cellulose, that this sugar matrix is inert to the human digestive system and is otherwise known as 'fiber', and that this fiber is generally a good thing in terms of digestive health.

Yet the comments are filled with everything from yelling of processed food corps to stop putting "wood" in their products, to utterly crazy shit like some guy claiming the government is genetically modifying trees to have softer lignin and something about them falling down easier. It's a shitfest of idiocy, with only a few people saying, hey, wait a second, cellulose is in ALL plants we eat.  :lulz: There's even some "natural supplements" woo in there.
#79
If you're not familiar with Nature Journal, you should be. Like it's USAian counterpart, Science, Nature is one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world. Not that you should use authority as value; as the joke goes, in Nature and Science, there is little of either. However, they are the most widely read and cited journals in the world, meaning they have a high impact value, which is the stupid yet true way universities and other research institutions measure publication success. And I'll admit, historically they have some of the most important papers.

One of the long running sections in Nature is called Futures, where a fiction author is invited to write a piece of science fiction for every issue. Never mind right now the issue of whether science fiction actually belongs in a science journal, or whether anyone actually reads that section. The issue at hand is a Futures from September 2011, which has received an incredible amount of flac and fallout but months after it was published.

Titled 'Womanspace', you can read it in full here.

As the author says in the comments below, it was originally meant as tongue in cheek, but it's such a blatantly sexist piece of fiction that Nature Journal editor Henry Gee commented, "I'm amazed we haven't had any outraged comments about this story."

And now the angry letters have started, and the comment sections are filling up. You see, women scientists know and remember what it was like to be a woman scientist even just 30 years ago; catcalls when a woman professor entered a classroom were the norm, as was sexual harassment at professional meetings. It's a laugh against Nature that most people ignored the piece until 2 months after it was published, since apparently no one reads Futures.  :lulz:

http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2011/11/dear-nature-you-got-a-sexist-story-but-when-you-published-it-you-gave-it-your-stamp-of-approval-and-became-sexist-too/ The title says it all.

http://www.paulanderson.org.uk/2011/11/an-open-letter-to-nature/ And another

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/2011/11/16/in-which-i-form-the-suspicion-that-i-am-not-natures-intended-audience/ And another

http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/2011/11/even-bigotry-has-silver-lining.html OUCH

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/11/16/the-charismatic-misogynist/ You get the idea.


In fact, the whole blowout has a hash tag on twitter now, #womanspace. https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23womanspace

The highlight is the parody coming out of this, the chief example being a mockup of "Nature Publishing Group's new journal: Womanspace" by insect photographer Alex 'Myrmecos' Wild http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2011/11/17/nature-publishing-groups-new-journal/ And all the possible article titles posted in #womanspace.


This mess is really only just getting started. Nature and Science have been declining in quality for years now, despite the insistence of some institutions that publications in those journals are the only items worth considering on an application, and people are raring for a tearing.
#80
The title is priceless.

QuoteA mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves.

"OBJECTIVE: To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. Validity of the model is established by comparing total areas obtained from this model to these same areas obtained from graphic method (less than +/- 0.4%). Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin. RESULTS: Tai's model proves to be able to 1) determine total area under a curve with precision; 2) calculate area with varied shapes that may or may not intercept on one or both X/Y axes; 3) estimate total area under a curve plotted against varied time intervals (abscissas), whereas other formulas only allow the same time interval; and 4) compare total areas of metabolic curves produced by different studies. CONCLUSIONS: The Tai model allows flexibility in experimental conditions, which means, in the case of the glucose-response curve, samples can be taken with differing time intervals and total area under the curve can still be determined with precision."

:lulz:

Also, from the comments:

QuoteTechnically, she invented the Riemann sum approximation to the integral. I assume that the follow up where she determines the gravitational attraction between two bodies is in press

:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
#81
"A triumph of taxonomy, both old and new." - Me

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/05/ff_angelsshare/all/1

QuoteWhen James Scott attended the first day of a mycology course as a freshman in college, his plan was to cut class for the rest of the semester and fake his way through on borrowed notes. But in his lecture that day, the professor told a story about a fungus that lives on peach pits. No one, he said, knows how the fungus gets from one pit to the next. "If you go to an abandoned orchard and lie on your stomach under a tree for a week, watching which insects land on a peach and move to another one," Scott remembers him saying, "you will know more about this fungus than anyone in the world."

"It was something even I, an undergraduate who didn't know anything, could do," Scott says. "I could go out there and look for stuff." In the space of one anecdote, Scott had become the sort of person who kept a microscope in his dorm room and decorated the walls with fungal family trees he drew himself. (He also plays the banjo.)

QuoteIn Lakeshore, Scott found the black fungus as far as a mile away from the warehouse. And the closer it was, the thicker it grew, clinging like ashy cotton candy to walls, rooftops, even garden furniture. Under a microscope, it looked to be a mè9lange of different species, but much of it was thick-walled, rough-skinned stuff he'd never seen before. It looked like poorly hewn barrels, strung together end to end. Instantly, Scott realized where the distillery's other researchers had gone wrong. "They would have taken a sample and scraped it over a petri dish," Scott says. "And what would have grown were spores that just happened to be passively deposited." Common fungi were commingled with the mystery stuff in the sample, and the common fungi grew faster. Come back in a couple of weeks and the petri dish would be covered with boring, familiar species—leading to a false conclusion.

Scott had a better way to culture the samples. He ground them up and sprinkled them into a petri dish. But then he put the dish under the microscope and, using an impossibly fine needle, picked out fragments of the rough-skinned fungus and transplanted them to their own dishes. He figured that with no other fungi to compete with, the Lakeshore fungus would flourish.

He waited about a month, came back, and found ... not much of anything. Under a microscope the samples were clearly the same black barrel shapes. But his colonies were vanishingly small. Whatever it was, it wasn't growing like it grew around the warehouse.

Making growth media for fungi is really just feeding them a dish they like to eat. So, on a hunch, Scott bought a bottle of Canadian Club. "I put maybe a shot of whiskey in a liter of agar and filled the petri plates with it," Scott says. "That made it grow a hell of a lot faster."

Read the rest at the link. BTW, this article received an AAAS award. What Scott went through to ID this organism is NORMAL; all the corespondences, collecting, archive searching, shipping around for specimens, these are just average tasks for a taxonomist. Especially if you work in an obscure group.
#82
Kelly Houle, an artist with a background in calligraphy and bookmaking has started an illuminated manuscript version of the first edition of On the Origin of Species.



If you aren't familiar with illuminated manuscripts, they are books or parts of books which are scribed by hand and richly decorated with illustrations, especially those that incorporate gold leaf. The most famous illuminated book is the Book of Kells, a copy of the four Christian gospels from Ireland ca. 800 CE.

This is such a glorious project that I don't even know how to explain my feelings beyond that I start crying everytime I think about it. Right now she's working on the title page and the table of contents pages, and she's raising money through donations to fund it. This is the real deal, with nearly 2 by 2 1/2 foot pages, each one done by hand separately, fully illuminated. Nearly 300 in total when finished. This site has more information on her process. And what's more, when she's finished, it's going to be published in both a full size and trade size version.

And FURTHERMORE, she's not going to stop with OTOOS. She's going to make her life's work illuminating the great scientific texts.

Isn't this fucking amazing? If you can donate, please do. I'm going to donate 30 dollars because I want to see this happen.
#83
This is something that's bothered me for years. Which means when I saw this article earlier this week, I rolled my eyes at yet another journalist who doesn't fucking get it. I'm not going to quote it because the thesis is spread out over 3 pages, so I'll just let you read it there.



Okay, if I may just have a bit of space here, I'm going to fucking rant this one out. First off, yes, I do understand that it's very useful for an undergraduate student to have /some/ practical experience at the end of their career, whether that be running PCR or microscopy or field work, or running various types of equipment. What really cranks my noodle is that THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING POINT OF A SCIENCE EDUCATION.

Which brings me to the second article, someone who gets it.

QuoteHere's the problem. "Science" is NOT the same as "technology" and not the same as "engineering." There's a big difference between learning science and learning how to build things. The purpose of a degree in technology and engineering is obvious—it's job training. The purpose of a science education is quite different—it's supposed to teach you how to think critically.
...
Why do science majors drop out? There are plenty of reasons. In the case of "pre-med" students (whatever they are) the reasons could be as simple as not getting high enough grades for medical school. They were never really interested in science in the first place and once they discover that they're not going to medical school they flee to other disciplines.

But that doesn't account for all the students who drop out. Some students think they are interested in "science" but they're actually interested in technology. Those students are bored reading textbooks and sitting in lectures learning about theory. What they really want to do is build robots and learn how to use DNA to solve crimes.
...
If students enter science programs because they want to become technologists, then the way to keep them happy is to let them play with fancy toys as soon as possible. They're not interested in general relativity, plate tectonics, quantum theory, or evolution. Why should they be?

But if they're not interested in those things, why are they in a science program?

A science education is not job training. I repeat IT IS NOT JOB TRAINING. And this is one of the reasons why the STEM acronym is so abhorrent to me, because to teach science is not to train lab monkeys. And the science educators job is not to make the students feel all warm and comfortable and fuzzy with fun and games and shit. If the students want this, they should go into engineering or technology or psychology (j/k about the psychology). Same as if they want to be rich; my mentor told me that scholars take a vow of poverty, scientists included.

The purpose of science education is to teach students how to think critically, and to expose them to the reality of the universe. Science classes, not technology or engineering or pre-med classes, are filled with really hard to grasp theories like evolution by natural selection. And yes, the passion of the professor will instill fun into the subject despite this. And no fucking TOYS are necessary. No fucking mollycoddling.

This is why less scientists are graduating these days. Because they equate science with technology and with their education as job training. And frankly the equation of these things is pissing me off. They can take their STEM acronym and shove it up their asses. The answer is NOT to shove more lab training into the curriculum.
#84
...but I've realized that Twitter makes it far easier to spread science news than Facebook or PD ever will. I feel like I've gone over to the dark side, but the fact is that I can summarize and send off a link in less than 30 seconds on Twitter, whereas the Weekly Science News thread here would take me hours, and Facebook with it's crappy posting box (where you can't even see the cursor) takes me less time but still too much to post everything I want to post.

I've had people tell me in the past that they appreciate my feed of science stuff, so if anyone wants to follow me, just send me a PM and I'll give you the name (It's my IRL name, so I can't post it here for fear of google destroying my future employment chances).
#85
Whats the best ratio for mixing whiskywater?

I've been doing it about 1:1, but I haven't increased it because I don't want to dilute it too much.
#86
And Tyrannosaurus was the weirdest. http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/guest-post-love-the-tyrant-not-the-hype/

I don't understand the article completely, as I'm not a vertebratologist and don't know the morphology very well. But it's clear that T. rex was a very unusual theropod for a whole bunch of reasons.

I really love this article because instead of mythologizing the animals, the author describes Tyrannosarids as if they were still alive, breathing, moving giant predators.
#87
Techmology and Scientism / Mitonuclear match.
October 17, 2011, 05:42:26 PM
This is perhaps the most deceptively simple and important biological insight of this decade. As Huxley said of natural selection, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/10/17/the-two-genome-waltz-how-the-threat-of-mismatched-partners-shapes-complex-life

QuoteVirtually all complex cells – better known as  eukaryotes – have at least two separate genomes. The main one sits in the central nucleus. There's also a smaller one in tiny bean-shaped structures called mitochondria,  little batteries that provide the cell with energy. Both sets of genes must work together.  Neither functions properly without the other.

Mitochondria came from a free-living bacterium that was engulfed by a larger cell a few billion years ago. The two eventually became one. Their fateful partnership revolutionised life on this planet, giving it a surge of power that allowed it to become complex and big (see here for the full story). But the alliance between mitochondria and their host cells is a delicate one.

Both genomes evolve in very different ways. Mitochondrial genes are only passed down from mother to child, whereas the nuclear genome is a fusion of both mum's and dad's genes. This means that mitochondria genes evolve much faster than nuclear ones – around 10 to 30 times faster in animals and up to a hundred thousand times faster in some fungi. These dance partners are naturally drawn to different rhythms.

This is a big and underappreciated problem because the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes cannot afford to clash. In a new paper, Nick Lane, a biochemist at University College London, argues that some of the most fundamental aspects of eukaryotic life are driven by the need to keep these two genomes dancing in time. The pressure to maintain this "mitonuclear match" influences why species stay separate, why we typically have two sexes, how many offspring we produce, and how we age.

The original essay is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201100051/abstract;jsessionid=38BD914A6F8A6CC1CEDA0BB17A6F51BF.d02t04

The mitochondrial-nuclear relationship is one of the oldest and most important aspects of eukaryote biology. The mitochondria, at one time free living bacteria, are internal obligate symbiotes of the eukaryotic cell. Not only that, but their bacterial genome is parsed down from thousands to thirteen; the rest of the management genes have been transferred to the nucleus, but are still necessary to make the electron transport chain work well and not leak free radicals all over the place. Therefore, there is heavy selection for the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes to be compatible, since free radicals (electrons without a nucleus) are high energy and dangerous to life. They cut through tissues, mutate DNA and generally wreck havock. When a mitochondria stops working correctly, it either kills it's host cell (general cell death), or turns off the self kill ability (cancers). This and telomere length on nuclear chromosomes are probably what causes aging, as the telomeres shorten, allowing more copy errors, and mutations and copy errors accrue in the mitochondrial genome. And this accelerates as the electron leak worsens, in a feedback cycle. Which would explain the quick degeneration rate of people with end life diseases. And since this relationship is directly related to longevity, fecundity, and gene compatibility, it's no wonder that evolution has selected very widely used reproductive aspect of two sexes (with mitos passed down by only one), because multiple lineages of mitochondria in a single cell would decrease the total compatibility. It also explains why organisms with high energy lifestyles, like bats and birds, have low fecundity, because only embryos with highly compatible mitonuclear matches would survive development; the leak threshold is lower, the efficiency necessarily higher. Conversely, rats have lower energy efficiency needs, so they have higher fecundity. This also brings up another point, that species with lower leak levels have longer lives; pigeons, for example, live much longer than rats.

These are all, I think, majorly important ideas and routes for research, especially when it comes to aging and life extension.
#88
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Scholar still.
October 10, 2011, 06:52:47 PM
"It ain't all about the dollar bill, you could be dead broke and be a scholar still."

Someone produced this line here on PD recently. In this current funk I've been in, no job, living with my parents, no paying opportunities in my field, very little progress on my research, continued difficulty finding a job, etc.,

this has all of a sudden become really poignant. I looked it up, found out it's in a hip hop rhyme by MF Doom. And in context it doesn't make much sense to me. Out of context it sounds like a godsend.

Now, seriously, what the fuck have I been doing for the last several weeks? Sure, I've gotten out and enjoyed this beautiful weather, I've worked through the reviewer comments for two of the papers I have in review (one of which I just got a message about, which suggests to me it may be in publication very soon), I've cleaned up and organized. All of these things are beneficial and worth it in of themselves. And I still wake up depressed every morning because come December I have 10s of thousands of dollars in loans to start paying off and I haven't received a paycheck since April. For the past 3 years I've been living on my own means, and now I'm essentially freeloading and it's stressing me the hell out. Sure, I've worked at the above things and that's good, but I've otherwise done fuck all since I've gotten back to Wisconsin. My excuse has been that I need a stereo microscope and a supply of 80% EtOH to get things done, but what kind of fucking excuse is that? I've been worried about money up the wazoo, but the loan payments are small and still months off, and I have a 10 thousand dollar nest egg if I'm not employed by that point. So why am I so bent out of shape?

MF Doom has it right. There's no reason to be bent out of shape other than unrealistic expectations that I'm putting on myself. It's not about my parents, they asked me to come back here after I got done with the Field Museum. If they ever have a real problem I'll just leave. It's not about not having a microscope either, or a wet lab, or any number of special things.

This is all about the mentality of not allowing myself to enjoy the hell out of being interested. All my subscriptions (free, no less) to e-tables of contents have lapsed. I didn't even read them anymore, hell, I haven't read much of anything recently. What happened to re learning math, to the caddisfly bibliography, to actually going out and doing field surveys just to do it? And there's this idea that I've got to please someone about my race to find a paycheck, that if I'm not looking for work and sitting by the phones every second some opportunity is going to pass me by.

Well, it's NOT. The job market is as shit as it's going to get for me, as in, no jobs available. It will either stay this way, or opportunities will increase. Doom said, you can be dead broke and be a scholar still, but I'm not even broke. There's no fucking problem except releasing myself of expectations. So lets get down to some research and learning.
#89
Apparently this was Steve Job's greatest inspiration.

Now, you can read the whole of all the issues online, so I've paged through a bit of the first one. What's surprising to me is that the purpose sounds very discordian; irreverant, anti-authoritarian, and geared towards self discovery.

QuoteWe are as gods and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory--as via government, big business, formal education, church--has succeeded to the point where gross obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing--power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.

I'd love to hear some opinions about this, especially from Cramulus. It reminds me of Angel Tech (in some ways), probably because it came from that generation of the 1960s and was steeped in that culture.
#90
This is absolutely fascinating.

Quote
As clerk, he could step into a waterfall of data coming out of the nascent government. He would record and print public records, bills, vote totals and other official documents. He would also make a fortune literally printing the state's paper money. He won the race, but the next election wasn't going to be as easy. Franklin's autobiography never mentions this guy's name, but according to the book when Franklin ran for his second term as clerk, one of his colleagues delivered a long speech to the legislature lambasting Franklin. Franklin still won his second term, but this guy truly pissed him off. In addition, this man was "a gentleman of fortune and education" who Franklin believed would one day become a person of great influence in the government. So, Franklin knew he had to be dealt with, and thus he launched his human behavior stealth bomber.

Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without "paying any servile respect to him." Franklin's reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a reputation as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a selection from the his library, one which was a "very scarce and curious book." The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank you note. Mission accomplished.

The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the hater "ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death."

QuoteStudents at Stanford University signed up for a two-hour experiment called "Measures of Performance" as a requirement to pass a class. Researchers divided them into two groups. One was told they would receive $1, or about $8 in today's money. The other group was told they would receive $20, or about $150 in today's money. The scientists then explained the students would be helping improve the research department by evaluating a new experiment. They were then led into a room where they had to use one hand to place wooden spools into a tray and remove them over and over again. A half-hour later, the task changed to turning square pegs clockwise on a flat board one-quarter spin at a time for half an hour. All the while, an experimenter watched and scribbled. It was one hour of torturous tedium with a guy watching and taking notes. After the hour was up, the researcher asked the student if he could do the school a favor on their way out by telling the next student scheduled to perform the tasks who was waiting outside that the experiment was fun and interesting. Finally, after lying, people in both groups – one with $1 in their pocket and one with $20 –  filled out a survey in which they were asked their true feelings about the study. What do you think they said? Here's a hint – one group not only lied to the person waiting outside but went on to report they loved repeatedly turning little wooden knobs. Which one do you think internalized the lie? On average, the people paid $1 reported the study was stimulating. The people paid $20 reported what they just went thorough was some astoundly boring-ass shit. Why the difference?

According to Festinger, both groups lied about the hour, but only one felt cognitive dissonance. It was as if the group paid $20 thought, "Well, that was awful, and I just lied about it, but they paid me a lot of money, so...no worries." Their mental discomfort was quickly and easily dealt with by a nice external justification. The group paid $1 had no outside justification, so they turned inward. They altered their beliefs to salve their cerebral sunburn. This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one.

That's the cycle of cognitive dissonance, a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way. As Festinger said, you make "your view of the world fit with how you feel or what you've done." When you feel anxiety over your actions, you will seek to lower the anxiety by creating a fantasy world in which your anxiety can't exist, and then you come to believe the fantasy is reality just as Benjamin Franklin's rival did. He couldn't possibly have lent a rare book to a guy he didn't like, so he must actually like him. Problem solved.

And,

QuotePay attention to when the cart is getting before the horse. Notice when a painful initiation leads to irrational devotion, or when unsatisfying jobs start to seem worthwhile. Remind yourself pledges and promises have power, as do uniforms and parades. Remember in the absence of extrinsic rewards you will seek out or create intrinsic ones. Take into account the higher the price you pay for your decisions the more you value them. See that ambivalence becomes certainty with time. Realize lukewarm feelings become stronger once you commit to a group, club or product. Be wary of the roles you play and the acts you put on, because you tend to fulfill the labels you accept. Above all, remember the more harm you cause, the more hate you feel, and the more kindness you deal into the world the more you come to love the people you help.
#91
October 4th, 2004. Thats the date I joined here under my first user name. I concluded several years back that you people were the greatest influence on my life post highschool, no reservations. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for you bunch. I may not have started down the road of internet addiction either, but that's a small price to pay for Slack Enlightenment, for knowing about my cosmic schmuck. You made me into a writer, an informed citizen of the cosmos. I've had religious epiphanies, both in favor of and against religion (go check out my stuff on Emergence, In those days, and The Process of Sustaining, for example). I went insane, and after the haze of 2008 you welcomed me back. I found close friends and lovers here. I made connections with people that lead me to figuring out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. I've seen shit I can't unsee, and I think I'm okay with that.

So, cheers! Here's to 7 more years.
#92
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/01/140959249/hank-williams-unfinished-thoughts-finished

Quote"When Hank Williams died, he left behind a scuffed, embroidered brown leather briefcase. Like its owner, the briefcase appeared weathered beyond its years, yet it retained a dignified bearing that abuse couldn't erase."

So begin the liner notes for a new compilation titled The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams. Michael McCall, who wrote the notes, goes on to explain that the briefcase contained a stockpile of unreleased — and, in some cases, incomplete — music from the mind of the country legend, who died at 29 on New Year's Day 1953. His mother, Lilian Stone, discovered even more of his notes in a cardboard box in his room.

"She took that box and called [Williams' publisher] Acuff-Rose and said, 'We have these songs — what should I do with them?' " McCall says. "And they said, 'Send them to us. They're largely our property, and we'll take care of them.' And they kept them in locked vaults to make sure they were cared for the way they should be."

The catalog was sold several times over the years and eventually came to the attention of producer Mary Martin. Now, Martin has organized an all-star cast to finish some of those lost songs and record them. Bob Dylan, a Hank Williams superfan, was one of the first artists she approached.

"At that time, the idea was to have one particular brave singer-songwriter view the lyrics and choose 12," Martin says. "Bob Dylan held those lyrics for over a year and a half, and I do believe that it was too mighty a task. So he suggested that he would do one, and then we decided it should be a compilation record."

Martin says it was important to her that the participants be songwriters, not simply arrangers or interpreters. The roster of talent on the disc includes Jack White, Alan Jackson, Norah Jones and many others. One standout is "Blue Is My Heart," which was recorded by Holly Williams — Hank's granddaughter.

"I think she really discovered a lot about herself, and I think she gained a huge appreciation for who her granddad was," Martin says. "She worked so, so very diligently to get it right."
#93
I've returned to my roots, or as near as I can be said to have. My ancestors were midwestern farmers, coal miners, business owners, they set themselves deep in the northern prairie. So I've returned, requested and welcomed by my parents for the moment. The time at El Museo was wonderful but there's no work for me right now, none paying anyway.

And I've missed it. I've missed the glacial till, those undulating moraines and drumlins interspersed with deep kettle lakes and shallow streams, topped with pine and maple forests. Standing out on the edge of a dry husk field of maize, this is big sky country, blue to the horizons as if the sky bows around, bigger than the sky I could see so close to the mountains.

I've missed the suck of autumn, every tree a giant straw. One day, all is green, and after the night of the First Frost, the trees, sensing the oncomming cold suck the chloroplasts from the leaves down into the roots, leaving behind the reds golds and browns of accessory pigments. Sometimes so fast you can watch the pull from stem to roots as a tree drains and drops its leaves.

But most of all, I've missed that chill, that dry feeling to the air that burns the lungs so pleasantly, like breathing in a light stimulant. The sort of feeling that makes you say, godDAMN it is nice out, that makes you walk a little faster and smile because no matter how fast you walk you will never feel uncomfortable. The bright, low sun and cool breeze balances.

You can drive down a county road in this weather with the windows down and huff this feeling, the smell of dust and bright sweet near decay, so near in this pre-autumn, a sneeze then from the leftover ragweed, the goldenrods cooling and browning in the fields, the insects rushing to fuck and feed before the next frost. Golden shed pine needles like large snowflakes.

People talk at the local hardware store in hush and you know it's coming, it's nearly here, just wait till tomorrow, and the hills will be on fire.
#94
Including 6 caddisflies.

Quote from: NYTimes - Phil TaylorInterior's Fish and Wildlife Service said it will initiate a more thorough status review to determine whether any, or all, of the species merit a listing as threatened or endangered.

"The Endangered Species Act has proved to be a critical safety net for America's imperiled fish, wildlife, and plants," Director Dan Ashe said in a statement. "Our finding today is the first step in determining whether these species need the special protection afforded by the act."

But final decisions on whether to list the 374 species will likely not occur within the next six years while the agency implements a court-approved settlement with WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity to issue final listing decisions on 251 "candidate" species that deserve protections, according to FWS, but are precluded by higher priorities. Those species include the lesser prairie chicken, walrus, wolverine, golden trout and Miami blue butterfly (E&ENews PM, Sept. 9).

Species announced today include 13 amphibians, six amphipods, 17 beetles, three birds, four butterflies, six caddisflies, 81 crayfish, 14 dragonflies, 43 fish, one springfly, two isopods, four mammals, one moth, 35 mussels, six non-vascular plants, 12 reptiles, 43 snails, eight stoneflies and 75 vascular plants, FWS said.


And one of those is a species I've collected.
#95
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Time to medicate.
September 28, 2011, 11:22:12 PM
I was talking to my mom the other day about how, if in high school I had alcohol readily available and had less respect for authority, I would have probably become an alcoholic.

And she said, "You mean, you would have medicated. Probably would have done you good, too".

And we both laughed. But see, it wasn't really in jest. High school was horrible, and the psychiatrists shoved all sorts of prescription speed etc down my throat to keep me from offing myself.

But would it not been that much cheaper to just drink good beer? I mean, anti-depressants are in many ways just simulating the endorphine releases that can be had by cheaper means in beer (for example), with fewer unknown side effects and a unfortunate but easily remedied morning after feeling to keep me from drinking too much. Sure, its dehydrating, but what anti-depressant doesn't claim to have dry mouth as a side effect. Sure, it decreases social inhibitions, but to a socially isolated depressed person this is far from a bad thing.

And you may say, it's a tool of the man, Kai, it's to keep you stupid and obedient. Really, for the past 1000 years that was the purpose of beer? Fuck that, man. Time to go back to proven natural alternatives. Time for another drink.
#96
Or Kill Me / It's all fake.
September 26, 2011, 05:37:47 AM
My cousins watch television. They love their television. The young ones watch Disney, the older watch sitcom and drama. While I was at El Museo, I stayed with family and so by proxy saw more than I cared of the stuff. And as bad as the banal idiotic childrens programming, the family dramedies and crime drama circuses were, the worst of it all to view was The Office.

Why The Office? Because the whole time I watched, I was struck by how completely ineffectual and worthless the day to day activities of these characters actually were, and that this is /exactly/ how office culture works. There was zero productivity, certainly no MEANINGFUL productivity, the sort that is enjoyable and gives life some meaning beyond the shallow two week survival tickets. I realized again just how utterly fake our whole "economy" is. We manufacture and sell useless junk so that other people can buy useless junk and throw it away so everyone will buy more useless junk, and then those who don't sell useless junk sell ineffectual, near worthless incremental services. Look again at The Office characters, they are the paragon of the American service sector. They "work" (if it could be called that) in a paper company which just distributes paper, doesn't make it, and they spend most of their time in petty interpersonal drama and "meetings", with some event on the horizon to take ones attention away from the dull meaningless existence they live.

THIS IS AMERICA. This is our worthless, completely ineffectual FAKE society. The economy is fake, the work is fake (and meaningless), our government is fake, IT'S ALL FUCKING FAKE. People are living until they die, and that's the whole of existence.

And now I have to be part of it.
#97
Techmology and Scientism / ATTN LMNO: PLEASE TO EXPLAIN
September 23, 2011, 05:25:22 AM
I'm not up on my particle physics, but unless our understanding of C is off and what that really means, this seems just plain WRONG.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8782895/CERN-scientists-break-the-speed-of-light.html

It is, of course, science news journalism, but it honestly doesn't make any sense. No quantum travels faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, since the mass would escalate to infinity. At least, thats how I understood it.

#98
Or Kill Me / Second Alexandrian Tragedy.
September 22, 2011, 05:48:57 AM
Imagine the most incredible library, filled to the brim with books. Millions of them, the most amazing books ever written. Texts that would inspire billions, that may teach immortality and the cures to all diseases, that demonstrate arguments on the origins of things, forgotten or hidden ideas and knowledge. Few have been read, and fewer yet have been read in detail.

And every day a stack is wheelbarrowed out the back and unceremoniously burned.


I refuse to use an emotional appeal, because such things are overdone and seldom sway your sort. Nor will I use economic or medical arguments, because those are too shallow for my purpose. The Second Alexandrian Tragedy, the accelerated extinction of species and lineages, is a loss of information. The great library described above is but mere scraps in comparison to what once existed, the fossil record and extant species a few torn pages compared to the greater diversity lost to time. This archive is a key to our very own existence, and holds illuminated manuscripts to the chain of being stretching back to Progenitors. We have barely scraped the surface. And each extinction is another book burned, forever lost, never to be known or understood.


All we have is scraps, and fewer tomorrow.
#99
Most people don't know about the things that go on above and below the exhibits of El Museo. Out of sight of schoolchildren and families is a whole different side to the museum's life, a life that's responsible for the public areas even being there (though the directors would like to think otherwise). A life, ironically, of death.

In the partially darkened upper and lower crypts the corpses are kept in long cabinets and shelving. Millions are impaled on iron pins, skinned and mummified, or drowned and pickled in Very Near Everclear (food grade, even). The air smells strongly of moth ball pesticides, and faintly of other solvents. This is a tomb, a catacomb, a morgue. And yet, the atmosphere is nothing if not cheery. The curators sit as grim reapers, collaborating with the collection managers to the sisyphian task of bringing order out of unending chaos. There are always new bodies coming in, we would have it no other way. More bodies means more study, but also more work. This is no funeral; the biologist undertakers are lovers of life and that's /why/ they are in this line of work. A thousand questions could be answered by just one of the specimens, studied under the right light, carefully enough. Each one is like a record in a government archive, well, that is if every record was an encyclopedia onto itself.

The reaping is a somewhat sad operation, but the Guardians of Natural History live with their guilt by trying to make amends. It may be thirty, 100, hundreds of years before someone retrieves a particular drawer for study, but they're meant to last. The preserved individuals, protected from mold, insects and climate, would last unto fossilization under these conditions. All this information, once lost, would never be regained. And it sustains the life of El Museo, like a great benevolent beast who eats the dead to bring forth new growth.
#100
Left El Museo today at 7 pm, and the sky was perfect blue, no blemishes. Just the sky, the water and The City.

I'm really not a fan of cities. The crush of people, most of them barely conscious, gives me anxiety. The air is generally unpleasant, road fumes mixed with carbon monoxide, sewer ventage and particulates, with the occassional wiff of dumster or dog shit. The traffic of crazies who can barely stay on the road and make it dangerous to cross at crosswalks when I've got the signal. I've handed out my share of single finger salutes. Then there's all the factors that I know but are more invisible, the actual cost of upkeep, the crumbling infrastructure, the bad schools and homeless veterans, the plutocrats up in their towers looking down.

Tonight it was different. I stepped out into the cool and sound of wind from the water, the sun setting behind the skyscrapers. The edge of the world was a rainbow from red to blue, and then blue all the way to the zenith. The blue was reflected in the towers and for a few minutes it really felt like something out of those futuristic novels, where the cities are clean paradises of the pinnacles of knowledge and humanity. It was one of those almost beautiful moments, where something that feels so dirty and ugly for so long takes on a glimmer as it grows on you, as you see it day after day and come to treasure it out of familiarity. Because the details become that much clearer with that constant attention. The blue silver of steel, the sheen of windows, the browns and tans and grays of brick and concrete. Like a human recreation of pillared fields of icelandic lava and tinted hills. The stench lessens, the people receed. Just a person and The City, a huge manufactured creature, nearly biological. The wind blows; The City breathes.