Sugar and spice and everything nice, too

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I couldn’t resist. Shakespeare’s Sister has a satirical post on the female reproductive tract as a source of gay rays, and evolgen chimes in, noting the similarity of her diagram to the nematode vulva (it’s true—if mammalian vulvas are radiating gayness, nematodes are even more common; Ben Shapiro is probably crawling with hermaphroditic nematodes, all oozing sexual ambiguity all over him). So I had to repost my summary of the evolution of the mammalian vagina, and I want you to look at the diagram of Hox gene expression in the female reproductive tract. It’s like a rainbow! Admittedly, there are no disco balls, pink triangles, or floating Melissa Etheridge CDs, but this is research that has only just begun—as we get more details, we’ll have to sprinkle more symbols in there, and I think Shake’s ideas are excellent suggestions.

Once again, liberal leftist irony stands at the forefront of modern scientific research.

(Oh, and if any guys are feeling left out, I do have an article on penis evolution. All the pictures are in black and white, without any hint of a rainbow.)

Never trust science again!

Doonesbury hits one out of the park today—don’t trust science, it’s just too controversial.

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I like the definition: situational science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts. The Discovery Institute ought to etch that on their front door, filigreed in gold.

Drugs are how we get through meetings, though

While I’m off absorbing knowledge, entertain yourself with this video of drug-treated spiders. I’m going to be the one on caffeine, I think.

SICB update: last night was a social evening, and I got to meet John Lynch for the first time. In person, he’s actually exactly like he is on the blog: friendly and talkative, and he paid for my beer. Definitely an appeaser, in other words. Grrl Scientist was mysterious and prettier than the two of us put together (again just like her blog). Me? I was just surly and hateful, standing up every once in a while to deliver a ranty denunciation, just like the blog. They’d better agree with me, too—I get peevish with these people who always say I’m milder mannered in real life than they expect, and I might have to denounce them rantily, or have them put in a concentration camp and sterilized.

As for today, I can tell this is one of those meetings where there are long juicy sessions that suck me in for long periods of time. I’ll be parking my butt in room 103B for the symposium on “Linking Genes and Morphology in Vertebrates”, and I might not move all day, other than staggering out for coffee now and then.

The new geo-historical curriculum

We’ve got conflicting chronologies: a young earth history that is virtually all relatively recent human history, and a scientifically accurate one that encompasses 4.5 billion years of geological and biological change. How to reconcile them? Well, if we just divide everything in geology and biology by about a million and splice it together with modern history, we get this vastly entertaining timeline. Here’s a sample:

  • A.D. 1066: William the Conqueror invades England by walking through northern France.
  • A.D. 1215: Mega Fauna force King John to sign Magna Carta
  • A.D. 1304: Plate armor introduced ; Velociraptor hunted to extinction.
  • A.D. 1324 T.Rex becomes most popular Mongol Barbecue item after Golden Horde discovers gunpowder.
  • A.D. 1384: Dante describes Medieval Warm period in Inferno, his account of a field trip to the core-mantle boundary.
  • A.D. 1444: Flowering plants appear; War of the Roses commences.
  • A.D. 1484: Leonardo da Vinci designs Archaeopteryx.
  • A.D. 1492: Panama’s rise from sea thwarts Columbus’s discovery of Japan.
  • A.D. 1522: Sneak asteroid attack by Hernan Cortez smashes Aztec Empire

My namesake is also in it, and there are some interesting echoes in there.

  • A.D. 70: Paul, formerly Saul the Tarsier, develops opposable thumb and writes Epistle to the Cephalopods.

But of course! That’s the first thing he would do.

It all makes so much sense—and think of the money the schools could save by combining earth science and history into one class!