I’d dismissed the problems with Obamacare enrollment…until now

I know it seems to be the comedy routine du jour to mock the software glitches plaguing the new health care program rollout. I hadn’t worried about it: I’d heard nothing but encouraging words about the program itself, and putting together a huge web service for the entire country is a gigantic undertaking, and I could imagine lots of ways it would run into problems, problems that would eventually shake out. I remember when we first fired up FtB, and saw it buckle under the traffic immediately!

But then I saw what the Oregon state health exchange website put up.

Oregon health exchange requires Microsoft Internet Explorer!

Holy hell. Who designed this abomination? It’s 2013, and they’re requiring users to access the site with Microsoft Explorer? And the submit button doesn’t work on any other browser?

I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this is so ridiculous and such bad design that I’m thinking sabotage.

Kraken man is back

He’s persistent, I’ll say that for him. I first encountered Mark McMenamin as an enthusiastic promoter of Stuart Pivar’s inflatable donut model of development. He then sank from sight, along with the pretentious septic tank salesmen, until two years ago, when he presented piles of ichthyosaur vertebrae as evidence that a giant cephalopod, a kraken, had been creating Mesozoic art by arranging the disks into a self portrait.

You may laugh now.

He presented at the Denver GSA meeting this year. Here’s his abstract.

THE KRAKEN’S BACK: NEW EVIDENCE REGARDING POSSIBLE CEPHALOPOD ARRANGEMENT OF ICHTHYOSAUR SKELETONS

MCMENAMIN, Mark A.S. and SCHULTE MCMENAMIN, Dianna L., Geology and Geography, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075

In 2011, we hypothesized that extremely large Triassic cephalopods may be responsible for certain anomalous aspects of an unusual assemblage of giant ichthyosaur skeletons in the Luning Formation of Nevada. The hypothesis has been criticized by researchers who do not accept the ichnological evidence suggesting that the skeletons were deliberately arranged rather than being deposited by currents.

Hydrodynamic considerations regarding the probability of displacement (PD) of ichthyosaur vertebral centra arrays (n=12) show that three different biserial arrangements have PDs of 17%, 89% and 100% respectively by currents strong enough to displace a single centra. The critical Specimen U array at Berlin‑Ichthyosaur State Park has PD=~100, indicating that it is highly unlikely that the biserial pattern was imparted by submarine currents. The unwinnowed wackestone matrix confirms that competent water velocities did not frequently occur in this deep-water depositional environment. The Luning Formation also hosts Protopaleodictyon ichnosp. and supergiant amphipods.

We recently obtained photographs of a retired exhibit formerly on display at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Museum of Natural History. The display reconstructed a well‑preserved Shonisaurus skeleton as it was found in the field. The exhibit is well documented by photographs from a variety of vantage points. The skeleton appears to have been partly disassembled during the Triassic, and a biserial array of centra very similar to the Specimen U array occurs adjacent to the nearly complete skeleton. The UNLV array has a PD=~100, again indicating that the biserial pattern was not the result of current assembly. Finally, at least three of these centra show what may be triangular bite marks removed from their margins.

His latest evidence consists of a second array of vertebrae in a line (that’s right, his earlier remarkable claim was based on a single example of bones in a line), and he is also claiming that a non-random arrangement of the bones can only be explained by an intelligent cephalopod, with no other natural processes possible.

Furthermore, as the Huffington Post credulously (their only mode) reports, he has additional evidence in the form of a giant fossilized beak. Here it is:

krakenbeak

It’s a fragmented, unidentified chunk of rock, a few inches long, which he extrapolates by comparison to a Humboldt squid beak he bought on eBay to be the tip of a giant beak belonging to a squid that was between 50 and 100 meters long.

That’s it. When ichthyosaurs decay, their vertebrae tend to fall in a line, and here’s a broken rock that kinda vaguely looks like a bit of a beak, and from this he builds this elaborate fantasy of a giant kraken roaming Triassic seas crushing ichthyosaurs to death and then sculpting their bones into squid pictures.

He should go back to praising balloon animals.

Whoops. I neglected to mention another indictment of his rationality: McMenamin is a “devout Christian” who also believes in Intelligent Design creationism.

My name is Mark McMenamin. I have completed a PhD on the fossils of the Cambrian Explosion, have published several books on the subject, and am a devout Christian. At the present time I am actively researching the latest fossil discoveries from Cambrian boundary strata.

Friday Cephalopod: A festive way to display your cuttlefish babies

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a clever scheme for aerating their babies that involves a little creative surgery on pop bottles. It looks good, though!

bubblingcuttlefish

I’m tempted to try something similar with zebrafish, just because. I don’t have a problem with keeping them supplied with oxygen, but I do have to maintain good concentrations of food available…and this would hinder more than it would help. But it’s the coolness of it!

If you can’t get rid of garbage, worship it

Every time you use a plastic bag at the grocery store or buy another bottle of water you are contributing to the deluge of one-use, throw-away plastic products that pile up in our landfills or float out to sea. One group in Baton Rouge is trying to raise consciousness with Sacred Waste, a performance art piece that illustrates the problem.

This performance art show is a unique blend of art and science – it conveys some of its information in some unusual and compelling ways: the costumes, the set, and all the props are made of discarded plastic – each costume is made of 100-300 plastic bags, one costume is made of about 300 plastic bottle caps, there’s a dragon made of about 3000 bags, and a tree made of plastic – yet we’re reminded that all the plastic on stage during the show only represents the amount of plastic Americans discard about every 100 milliseconds. One scene in the show personifies the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a whirling dance…one scene involves a shaman ecstatically scrawling the structures of polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene on a plastic screen…one scene depicts the flow of plastic through a bird’s body. Each scene in the show explores a different aspect of our relationship with plastic and mixes science with mysticism, animal instincts with consumerism, creation myths with post-apocalyptic evolution and the “new nature”. If we taught more science this way (just a little more of it, certainly not all of it) – we might change a lot of people’s attitude toward science, in the way that this whole show hopefully also changes its audience’s attitudes toward plastic.

They have a kickstarter to play at the New Orleans Fringe Festival. They aren’t asking much, but a little donation would be very encouraging.

Oh, and try to stop buying stuff in disposable plastic packaging, too.

Religion is destroying the nuclear family!

It’s not gays that are corrupting traditional family values, it’s god. The latest survey shows that members of Bible-believing churches are more likely to divorce than atheists are.

There are a number of explanations. Here’s one.

Secular couples tend to see both marriage and divorce as personal choices. Overall, a lower percent get married, which means that those who do may be particularly committed or well-suited to partnership. They are likely to be older if/when they do formally tie the knot. They have fewer babies, and their babies are more likely to be planned. Parenting, like other household responsibilities, is more likely to be egalitarian rather than based on the traditional model of “male headship.” Each of these factors could play a role in the divorce rate.

I also think there’s a difference between the sexes in traditional marriage, too: for women, it’s an obligation to live a life of service; for men, it’s a privilege to obtain a cheap servant who is required to give you cheap sex. That kind of differential can easily fracture what ought to be a partnership.

I’m relieved to see, though, that the article doesn’t imply that it’s something intrinsic to being an atheist, stating that it’s more like what slice of the socioeconomic pie you’re likely to get if you’re an atheist vs. a Christian, and it also suggests that the way to reduce divorce rates overall isn’t to get everyone to become an atheist, but to build a better social safety net and encourage more equality. Which also leads to more atheism, by the way, which is why the people suffering most under an unfair system will oppose changes to make it better.

I’m still going to deplore how all those religious organizations with “Family” prominently planted in their name are ironically poisoning the American family that they worship.