But wouldn’t you know it, it’s an endangered species. If it weren’t for that, I’d happily wear Telipogon diabolicus on my lapel everywhere.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
But wouldn’t you know it, it’s an endangered species. If it weren’t for that, I’d happily wear Telipogon diabolicus on my lapel everywhere.
Yeah, yeah, NASA has probes going off to space, but the University of Washington has installed a probe in a much more interesting location: around an active hydrothermal vent off the coast of Oregon. I just learned that they also have a live camera feed 4 times a day, accessible from your local internet.
The next 14 minute stream will be in about half an hour from when I post this. The vent is covered in tube worms, palm worms, scale worms and limpets, so it’s much more interesting than anything the Mars Curiosity Rover has found, and it’s been ongoing every day, for years.
I hope that doesn’t hurt the Rover’s feelings. It’s been doing a good job, it’s just such a dead planet that it’s been banished to.
The one thing that needs more regulation is not guns, but pornography.
The medical literature on the negative effects of porn is underwhelming. I know Time magazine was recently all about sounding the porn alarm, but honestly the literature isn’t clear. Obviously attitudes about sex and sexuality are multifactorial and watching porn may actually be a symptom and not a cause. But you know what is clearly about harm? The literature on guns, which shows that a gun in the house increases the risk of suicide and homicide. I was really surprised by this, not that guns kill all kinds of people accidentally and on purpose, but that the literature on porn being harmful isn’t robust. Although one thing that might have the GOP concerned is that porn may have some role in religious and spiritual struggles. Fewer in the hard core religious right means, well, less of the voting block the GOP has so carefully cultivated.
So, how many people have been killed by porn?
Although I’m interested in that comment about porn causing doubt in religious folk. I’ve been promoting atheism all wrong–instead of science, I should be writing more about sex?
I’ll have to release a sex tape. That’s guaranteed to make people question the existence of gods.
While I’d rather be voting for Sanders in November, it’s good that he recognizes political realities.
“I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president,” Sanders said at a joint rally here. “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that.”
The 74-year-old self-described democratic socialist, who has been a thorn in Clinton’s side over the last year, pledged his support to his former rival: “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.”
And, I hope, do everything he can to chivvy her in the direction of progressive reform.
Police working security at a Minnesota Lynx basketball game walked off the job because members of the team were wearing these t-shirts.
Change starts with us
Justice and Accountability
The head of the Minneapolis Police Federation commended them for abandoning their job, and said If [the players] are going to keep their stance, all officers may refuse to work there.
I have to ask, what offended them? Justice? Or accountability? Or possibly it was that the names of two dead black men were listed on the back. Please be specific, Minneapolis police. Perhaps you could suggest some edits that would make acknowledging injustice and a lack of accountability palatable to you.
Selecting for one trait, or a small number of them, and failing to recognize that individual organisms must be integrated with their environment, leads to catastrophe, as this interview with Bill Muir explains.
Almost everyone who thought about eugenics at that time unquestionably assumed that creating a better society was a matter of selecting the most able individuals, or “hereditary genius”, as Galton put it. Against this background, consider an experiment conducted in the 1990’s by William M. Muir, Professor of Animal Sciences at Purdue University. The purpose of the experiment was to increase the egg-laying productivity of hens. The hens were housed in cages with nine hens per cage. Very simply, the most productive hen from each cage was selected to breed the next generation of hens.
If egg-laying productivity is a heritable trait, then the experiment should produce a strain of better egg layers, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the experiment produced a strain of hyper-aggressive hens, as shown in the first photograph. There are only three hens because the other six were murdered and the survivors have plucked each other in their incessant attacks. Egg productivity plummeted, even though the best egg-layers had been selected each and every generation.
The reason for this perverse outcome is easy to understand, at least in retrospect. The most productive hen in each cage was the biggest bully, who achieved her productivity by suppressing the productivity of the other hens. Bullying behavior is a heritable trait, and several generations were sufficient to produce a strain of psychopaths.
In a parallel experiment, Muir monitored the productivity of the cages and selected all of the hens from the best cages to breed the next generation of hens. The result of that experiment is shown in the second photograph. All nine hens are alive and fully feathered. Egg productivity increased 160% in only a few generations, an almost unheard of response to artificial selection in animal breeding experiments.
Weirdly, though, Muir goes on to claim that this experiment shows that capitalism is the best possible system, which just goes to show that American indoctrination is very effective. It seems to me, rather, that it shows that you can’t decide ahead of time what traits are desirable, but that they have to emerge organically in concert with other properties of the organism, and deciding ahead of time that humans must be guided by one ideology or the other is a huge mistake.
I’m not afraid to hide from the truth. I am descended from a Myers clan that lived in Iowa during the 19th century. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War even, was in the Vicksburg campaign, and ended up in New Orleans, where he was a casualty — of malaria, I suspect — and was discharged to return back to Iowa, where shortly after the war he lost the farm, and the family drifted west to wash up on the shores of the Pacific ocean, eventually.
So I happen to know that Iowa was a Northern state, whose citizens fought on the side of the Union.
So why does Steve King have a traitor’s flag on his desk?
I’m afraid that the answer must be that the Iowa gene pool was so greatly diminished by the departure of my family that only fools were left behind to elect even bigger fools to represent them…fools with no understanding or respect for their state’s history.
Yeah, that’s got to be the answer.
Please, for the love of gods, someone confiscate Sarah Palin’s thesaurus. I just read her rambling mess of a post about black people and hyphens and it made me want to hork up my liver. If I had any students who wrote like this I’d have to buy red ink by the bucket. This woman simply cannot write or speak without jingo and cliches.
#BlackLivesMatter is a Farce and Hyphenating America Destroys Us
Our prayers are with the fallen on that Thin Blue Line in Dallas. America lost heroes last night as men in uniform did their unfathomably courageous job running into danger to protect others from it. Honorable first responders deserve our utmost respect and support.
Shame on our culture’s influencers who would stir contention and division that could lead to evil such as that in Dallas. Shame on politicians and pundits giving credence to thugs rioting against police officers and the rule of law in the name of “peaceful protests.” It is a farce. #BlackLivesMatter is a farce.
Media: quit claiming the rioters are “peaceful” as they stomp on our flag, shout “death to cops!” and celebrate violence. It is sick. You perpetuate a perverted message evil men thrive on to intimidate and warp malleable minds that would believe one race matters more than another. Blood is on your complicit hands when you naively or purposefully refuse to tell of this movement’s truth.
Black Lives Matter? Yes – more than BLM “protestors” can grasp, as evidenced by their self-destructive provocateurism. Doesn’t it go without saying that Native lives matter, too? And Asian; and Eskimo; and Hispanic; and Indian… and every other race comprised of people who see clearly the agenda at play to weaken America through disunity.
Get fed up and stand up if you’re sick of being called racist when proclaiming EVERY LIFE MATTERS, black as much as white and every skin tone in between. Every innocent life – at every stage of life – on the side of good over evil, matters. Why let the damaging false narrative prevail if you know it is a lie?! Speak up! Join me in refusing to go willingly with society trying to crown deceptive political correctness the victor.
Self-descriptions that put any race in front of being an American are now used to further divide our nation. It’s time to acknowledge you’re either an American under our system of equality, law and order – and traditional patriotic spirit – or you’re not. Knock off the hyphenation of who we are. And knock off the shoulder chip if you’ve let “leaders” burden you with it through their example that sadly capitalizes on division for untoward purposes. That chip is crushing the people’s hope. My youngest daughter recently confirmed the sensibility in this when she stated, “It would be sad to call myself an “Eskimo-American” instead of just a proud American like everyone else.”
Seeing partial footage of this week’s victims’ tragic deaths at the hands of police officers is mind-boggling. It’s nauseating. Granted, early reports rarely encapsulate all the facts of individual cases, but my heart is with victims’ families as I sympathize with anyone defenseless in these situations. More so, I empathize if we find out any cop involved was in the wrong, for I abhor bad cops. I abhor police union leadership that regularly protects bad cops and discredits citizens voicing concern over bad actors in authority. I’ve been there. Many of you know my own experience with well-publicized, constant, frightening encounters and threats to my family to “bring us down” via a badge and gun. We suffered an exhausting era knowing we were defenseless against a bad cop, his union, and a gleefully politicized media never reporting the truth. Threats that included the promise we’d be pulled over for whatever reason, destroyed, and “any judge will believe the badge over the citizen.” The decade-long situation nearly devastated us. Political opponents still get off on all the situation cost us. So believe me, my personal experience won’t let me throw a blanket of blind approval over all law enforcement and those in authority. Still, last night’s disgusting acts that snuffed out officers’ lives is exponentially worse than any one bad cop, his union bosses, and the media’s verbose attempts to intimidate and falsely accuse.
So if we’re to take sides, I side with the Thin Blue Line. To side with our public servants trying to keep law and order amidst political agendas that clearly oppose that virtue is how the good guys win again. It’s the only way to ensure our best days will be ahead of us. Join me. Do not let today’s agenda redefine what it means to be an American. Do not sit still for it to fundamentally transform America.
God created us equally, and not with a spirit of fear. We’re given the spirit of POWER, love and a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7) Use it.
My translation:
Love the police without question.
Black people are evil.
Hyphens crush hope. Her daughter thinks it would be sad to admit to being a Yupik-American.
Cops are wonderful except the ones who break up the wild parties at the Palin house. But black people are worse than even unions.
Bible quote.
4.6 million people like Palin’s words, including 35 of my facebook friends, which includes one relative. Please go away, you horrible creatures.
As for the rest of you…please fundamentally transform America. It needs it.
You need to read this. If you log in via your google account, you are giving the game total access to your email, google drive, etc. That is not acceptable. Go to your google security settings and see for yourself…and tell it no.
It’s a brilliant little game, but one thing a day of playing it has convinced me of — its implementation is crap. Buggy, inconsistent, and now also, a security risk.
Our HHMI students are going to the Morris Theater tonight to watch Finding Dory (fish are biological, so it fits). You’re all welcome to join us at 7!
