I have no idea. I think my clock face is melting.
(Also on FtB)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is a beautiful illustration of the flaw in applying human sexual conventions to non-human organisms. researchers studying deep-sea squid found that all of the squid, male and female alike, were speckled with sperm packets — the males just flick these things out at any passing squid, on the chance that it’s a female. It’s silly to call this bisexuality or same-sex mating, though — it’s pretty darned common in invertebrates. Many species of sea urchins, for instance, indulge in synchronized ejaculatory orgies: on one or a few days a year, all of the individuals in a colony simultaneously spew eggs and sperm into the water, to the degree that they can turn the ocean milky white with semen and ova. Do we call that homosexuality? Is it even right to refer to it as an “orgy”? It’s just indiscriminate fertilization.
The authors of the paper, at least, get it exactly right.
In the Royal Society paper the team writes: “In the deep, dark habitat where O. deletron lives, potential mates are few and far between.
“We suggest that same-sex mating behaviour by O. deletron is part of a reproductive strategy that maximises success by inducing males to indiscriminately and swiftly inseminate every [squid] that they encounter.”
It’s every boy’s dream, just hosing everything down with semen, just to be sure.
(Also on Sb)
I’m not going to post this email I received, simply because it is insanely long, 15,000 words of random caps and peculiar color changes. Just to give you a taste, this is the subject line:
Subject: SCIENCE, AND THEOLOGY {{ Cogent Word for the 100’s of new ears in Science and theology we contacted/called last week around earth }} CHIMERISM, deaths/Wolbachias/satans attack upon Adams Society, ULtra Microbic Life Force/death Force — How does the Harlot called death ride Adams children and cause death and aging??? Listing below — {{ A Brief Word on obamas Buffet taxes, and Word that all most pay their share, Very well stated }} The Holyone has been Shaking Greece trying to tell Germany and all do not feed them any more — Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy Esq; Die at Fifty one, but hours from each other — His Quakes now become stronger to Oklahoma and Canada —- SCIENCE allowed Gamers to finish their Research — “i” gather those of increased knowledge and wisdom…Death and aging now end…..It has begun…Bring home your Missions…Dubai city is soon no longer…..
What I did want to share, though, is that this one is illustrated. Along with the author’s claim that he’s the prophet specifically sent to gather the 144,000 people who get to go to heaven, he included a lovely illustration of his lord and master, Jesus, who just happens to look rather European.
Earlier this semester, I gave my first-year students a thought question. I do this now and then just to wake them up and get them thinking and talking — in this case, I wanted them to speculate and also think hard about how they came up with their answers, and how they would try to evaluate them. Here’s the question:
Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record about 150,000 years ago. The first record of systematic agriculture appears about 10-15,000 years ago. The Industrial Revolution began about 300 years ago. People nowadays seem to be coming up with new ideas at an increasingly rapid pace. What’s going on? Why did it take ancient hunter-gatherers over 100,000 years to invent farming, but going from the invention of the airplane to passenger jetliners took less than a century?
Now The Economist comes up with an interesting chart that might explain some of that.
SOME people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person’s life is just as much a part of mankind’s story as another’s. If people do make history, as this democratic view suggests, then two people make twice as much history as one. Since there are almost 7 billion people alive today, it follows that they are making seven times as much history as the 1 billion alive in 1811. The chart below shows a population-weighted history of the past two millennia. By this reckoning, over 28% of all the history made since the birth of Christ was made in the 20th century. Measured in years lived, the present century, which is only ten years old, is already “longer” than the whole of the 17th century. This century has made an even bigger contribution to economic history. Over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010, according to an updated version of Angus Maddison’s figures.
The figure is a little murky: the units and axes aren’t clearly explained. The bars are percentage of the total, so “years lived” actually means the percentage of the total number of human years lived. So when “years lived” for the 20th century reads out as about 27, that means that 27% of all the years lived by all humans occurred in the 20th century.
I might show this graph to the class next year when I ask the question, but I’d still get to emphasize that the how of knowledge is really important: a serious flaw in the chart is that they don’t explain how they came up with, for instance, their estimate of relative economic output in the 5th century.
The 21st century is off to a roaring start, isn’t it?
(Also on Sb)
This is a beautiful illustration of the flaw in applying human sexual conventions to non-human organisms. researchers studying deep-sea squid found that all of the squid, male and female alike, were speckled with sperm packets — the males just flick these things out at any passing squid, on the chance that it’s a female. It’s silly to call this bisexuality or same-sex mating, though — it’s pretty darned common in invertebrates. Many species of sea urchins, for instance, indulge in synchronized ejaculatory orgies: on one or a few days a year, all of the individuals in a colony simultaneously spew eggs and sperm into the water, to the degree that they can turn the ocean milky white with semen and ova. Do we call that homosexuality? Is it even right to refer to it as an “orgy”? It’s just indiscriminate fertilization.
The authors of the paper, at least, get it exactly right.
In the Royal Society paper the team writes: “In the deep, dark habitat where O. deletron lives, potential mates are few and far between.
“We suggest that same-sex mating behaviour by O. deletron is part of a reproductive strategy that maximises success by inducing males to indiscriminately and swiftly inseminate every [squid] that they encounter.”
It’s every boy’s dream, just hosing everything down with semen, just to be sure.
(Also on FtB)
I’m not going to post this email I received, simply because it is insanely long, 15,000 words of random caps and peculiar color changes. Just to give you a taste, this is the subject line:
Subject: SCIENCE, AND THEOLOGY {{ Cogent Word for the 100’s of new ears in Science and theology we contacted/called last week around earth }} CHIMERISM, deaths/Wolbachias/satans attack upon Adams Society, ULtra Microbic Life Force/death Force — How does the Harlot called death ride Adams children and cause death and aging??? Listing below — {{ A Brief Word on obamas Buffet taxes, and Word that all most pay their share, Very well stated }} The Holyone has been Shaking Greece trying to tell Germany and all do not feed them any more — Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy Esq; Die at Fifty one, but hours from each other — His Quakes now become stronger to Oklahoma and Canada —- SCIENCE allowed Gamers to finish their Research — “i” gather those of increased knowledge and wisdom…Death and aging now end…..It has begun…Bring home your Missions…Dubai city is soon no longer…..
What I did want to share, though, is that this one is illustrated. Along with the author’s claim that he’s the prophet specifically sent to gather the 144,000 people who get to go to heaven, he included a lovely illustration of his lord and master, Jesus, who just happens to look rather European.
Green eyes, really? And not even a hint of a tan? Is it cloudy all the time in heaven or something?
But the other interesting thing about it is that the author has apparently been looking for science images to bolster his credibility, somehow. The amusing part is that he replaces the scientific caption with his own…it sorta changes the impact of the picture. This one, for instance, looks to me like some photomicrographs of developing Arabidopsis — it becomes something more nefarious when filtered through the twisted mind of my correspondent.
His other obsession is with chimeras, which he seems to think are truly evil. I think he seized upon the image below because it says “merge”, when all it really is is a digital merge of confocal images viewed at a couple of different wavelengths.
I like this one best, though. It ought to be titles “SCIENCE OFFENDING GOD!”
It goes downhill from there. The rest is ranting about Obama, sodomites, droughts and hurricanes, larded with lots of bible quotes…the usual pedestrian stuff I find in my mailbox.
(Also on FtB)
Earlier this semester, I gave my first-year students a thought question. I do this now and then just to wake them up and get them thinking and talking — in this case, I wanted them to speculate and also think hard about how they came up with their answers, and how they would try to evaluate them. Here’s the question:
Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record about 150,000 years ago. The first record of systematic agriculture appears about 10-15,000 years ago. The Industrial Revolution began about 300 years ago. People nowadays seem to be coming up with new ideas at an increasingly rapid pace. What’s going on? Why did it take ancient hunter-gatherers over 100,000 years to invent farming, but going from the invention of the airplane to passenger jetliners took less than a century?
Now The Economist comes up with an interesting chart that might explain some of that.
SOME people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person’s life is just as much a part of mankind’s story as another’s. If people do make history, as this democratic view suggests, then two people make twice as much history as one. Since there are almost 7 billion people alive today, it follows that they are making seven times as much history as the 1 billion alive in 1811. The chart below shows a population-weighted history of the past two millennia. By this reckoning, over 28% of all the history made since the birth of Christ was made in the 20th century. Measured in years lived, the present century, which is only ten years old, is already “longer” than the whole of the 17th century. This century has made an even bigger contribution to economic history. Over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010, according to an updated version of Angus Maddison’s figures.
The figure is a little murky: the units and axes aren’t clearly explained. The bars are percentage of the total, so “years lived” actually means the percentage of the total number of human years lived. So when “years lived” for the 20th century reads out as about 27, that means that 27% of all the years lived by all humans occurred in the 20th century.
I might show this graph to the class next year when I ask the question, but I’d still get to emphasize that the how of knowledge is really important: a serious flaw in the chart is that they don’t explain how they came up with, for instance, their estimate of relative economic output in the 5th century.
The 21st century is off to a roaring start, isn’t it?
(Also on FtB)
Lookie there…Jen McCreight of Blag Hag has moved in to the commune, and she’s already complaining about the kitchen responsibilities and bedroom noises. She better keep her hands off the cartons labeled “PZ” in the refrigerator.
The state of Georgia is planning to execute a man for murder tomorrow, on the basis of a very shaky case in which most of the witnesses have recanted their testimony, and who have said the police pressured them into their initial accusations. I can’t make any judgments on whether he is guilty or innocent — the case has not been made strongly enough to justify an irrevocable and terminal decision. That is why it is criminally wrong for the state to kill him for this crime.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is about to commit an injustice. Write or fax them at (404) 651-8502 now.
You can also send a message through Amnesty International. It’s a disgrace that our country is about to do something as horrific as what we condemn Islamic regimes for doing — a barbaric punishment on the most tenuous grounds.
(via RDF)
(Also on FtB)
The state of Georgia is planning to execute a man for murder tomorrow, on the basis of a very shaky case in which most of the witnesses have recanted their testimony, and who have said the police pressured them into their initial accusations. I can’t make any judgments on whether he is guilty or innocent — the case has not been made strongly enough to justify an irrevocable and terminal decision. That is why it is criminally wrong for the state to kill him for this crime.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is about to commit an injustice. Write or fax them at (404) 651-8502 now.
You can also send a message through Amnesty International. It’s a disgrace that our country is about to do something as horrific as what we condemn Islamic regimes for doing — a barbaric punishment on the most tenuous grounds.
(via RDF)
(Also on Sb)
