Friday Cephalopod: that’s the weirdest octopus I’ve ever seen

This is the Octoprof. Do not be shocked at its frightful appearance.

The Octoprof is a Lesser Blue-Ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa), who is a postgraduate at the University of the Gulf of Mexico, Shallow Waters (not her native habitat; she’s Australian, but emigrated to be closer to larger populations of her research subjects). Her focus of study is the reproductive biology of the invasive terrestrial species Homo sapiens – an animal which has of course been a source of tremendous concern amongst terrestrial biologists over the past thousand-ish lunar cycles, especially those whose research has a conservation focus.

Owing to a peculiar birth defect which gives her a faint but noticeable resemblance to the detested Homo sapiens (she has a serious malformation of the mantle and of two of her tentacles, which gives her a ‘face’ and ‘hands’), the Octoprof feels a strong and frankly embarrassing affinity for her research subjects. She has been criticized heavily for this unprofessional attitude by her fellow academics, most of whom would understandably prefer all research funds concerning homo sapiens to be focused on eradication measures.

It’s going to appear at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, 3-13 August, and is apparently trying to raise money to attend the event. I hope it can raise a surplus and use the excess to pay for cosmetic surgery.

How does it breathe? I don’t see a siphon, unless it’s those two tiny holes in the front of its cephalon — they’re so small it certainly can’t use them for propulsion. Poor thing.

One class down

I tackled my big class, genetics, yesterday. Final exam graded, and final grades submitted to the registrar. Two smaller classes to wrap up, probably will get them done today, except that I’ve got another job to do: it’s time for the end-of-the-term lab audits by the discipline safety officer, who is…me. I get to spend my morning checking fire extinguishers and chemical waste containers and ticking check boxes.

Summer is almost here.

My plan for today

I’m all done with classes! But I still have a full schedule. Here’s my day:

  1. Walk down to the gym, put in a half hour or so.

  2. Walk to the coffee shop, plunk my butt down and drink a cup.

  3. Grade.

  4. Grade.

  5. Grade.

  6. Grade.

  7. Grade.

  8. Grade.

  9. Grade.

  10. Grade.

  11. Grade.

  12. Grade.

  13. Grade.

  14. Grade.

  15. Grade.

  16. Grade.

  17. Grade.

  18. Grade.

  19. Go home and pass out.

It is a good plan. It is the best plan.

What do Louise Mensch, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Piers Morgan have in common?

They’re all British grifters, notable incompetents in their own country who came to America to exploit the cachet of an otherwise useless accent. These are people so stupid and obnoxious that people were mocking them ceaselessly at home, so they came to a country where gullible people think a British accent makes you sound intelligent. It’s a really familiar con, too.

So prevalent is the British mountebank in America that it has long been a literary trope. Perhaps the earliest specimens of the genre were the King and Duke from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Claiming to be disinherited British royalty, these two “rapscallions” swindle their way across the Midwest, conning gullible, small-town Americans with their schemes. A century later, F. Scott Fitzgerald described the type in The Great Gatsby. “I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about,” Nick Carraway observes while in attendance at one of Jay Gatsby’s magnificent parties. “All well-dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something…They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.”

It’s too bad it doesn’t also work the other way. I think the impression an American accent leaves in the UK is that one is crass and loud and vulgar, which doesn’t help leave a good impression at all. If you’re going to try and dump Piers Morgan on us, it would only be fair if we could send you a Bill Maher, you know.

The Cult of Instant Pot

My daughter got me one of these infernal devices for Christmas, and I am becoming a devotee. Yesterday, I made split pea soup in it, tossing in 5 cups of water, two cups of split peas, a few carrots and tiny potatoes and a pinch of salt and garlic (garlic goes with everything), and zapped it in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes, and the results were perfection, the creamiest tastiest pea soup I’ve ever made. None of that overnight presoak nonsense, either.

I’m only mentioning it because I’ve been looking forward to day-old split pea soup all day long, and shortly I will be consuming it again. It was so quick and easy I’m going to have to fix it more often, like every day. If there are drool marks on this post, you know why.

OK, I might have to exercise a little more restraint than that, unless I am willing to be served divorce papers.

On second thought, maybe some humans are alien enough

This is the trailer for a house for sale in Beverly Hills. It is not safe for work.

OPUS | Red Band Trailer from Drew Fenton on Vimeo.

It’s going for $100 million. I have no plans to sell my house, but if I do, it’ll be going for a lot less than that. I am going to steal one idea from them, though, and put up a video. It’ll be shot on my iPhone, and it’s going to feature me, in a speedo, painted gold and writhing on our couch. The offers will come pouring in.

Watch the skies!

Or, how not to get a bachelor’s degree:

According to UK Police, UK statistics instructor John Cain had been working late in his third floor office in the Multidisciplinary Science Building on Rose Street on Tuesday night. About midnight, he left to get something to eat. When he returned about 1:30 a.m., he tried to unlock the door, but it was blocked by something.

“He yelled out that he was calling the police and then the door swung open and two young men ran down the hallway,” recounted UK spokesman Jay Blanton.

Shortly after police arrived, one of the students returned and confessed. Henry Lynch II, a 21-year-old junior majoring in biosystems engineering, gave police an earful, including that he’d climbed through the building’s air ducts to the ceiling above Cain’s office and dropped down into the room, then unlocked the door and let in his friend, sophomore Troy Kiphuth, 21, who was not in Cain’s class.

Lynch also told them he had already tried to steal the exam earlier that evening around 6 p.m., but couldn’t find it. And, he said, it wasn’t the first time: Earlier in the semester, he’d successfully stolen another exam from Cain’s office, but he assured officers that he had not shared the answers with other students.

Lynch apparently gained access to Cain’s office all three times by climbing through the building’s ducts, and dropping down through the ceiling. How he got into the core of the building remains under investigation.

I rather doubt that Mr Lynch will be graduating from the University of Kentucky, nor will Mr Kiphuth, who deserves to be kicked out for the stupidity of trying to help cheat on an exam in a class he isn’t taking.

I think there’s probably a way to get into my office by removing some of the ceiling tiles in the hallway and working your way through the space above (which isn’t structurally strong enough to hold your weight), and then crashing through the tiles in my office. But then they too would be foiled by my filing system and never find what they’re looking for.

Done but for all the grading

Scattered throughout this semester, I’ve been discussing my EcoDevo course, Biol 4182, Ecological Development. It’s done now, so I’m just going to make note of a few things that I’d do differently next time around.

  • Fix the squishiness. I envisioned this as more like a graduate level course — a 15 week conversation on ecological development, with a textbook that kept us centered. Assessment was largely subjective, based on students demonstrating their understanding in discussion. I had an oral exam, for instance, where we just talked one on one. I think that went well, but in the end, I’ve only got a few specific metrics to use to assign a grade, and much of it will be built around how well they engaged with the material.

    I don’t mind that, but students are a bit bewildered by the absence of hard grades throughout the term. I’ll have to incorporate more detailed assignments next time around, something where they go home with a number that they can work on improving, artificial as all that is.

  • Personally, I greatly enjoyed the student presentations, and I want to do more to have students bring their interests to the course. I might include a student poster session next time — a different medium, and if in a public place, bringing in new perspectives.

    The oral exam was also valuable in getting to know where their interests were. I think I’d schedule it earlier in the term, when I do it again.

  • No way will I ever offer this course at 8am again. It was stuff that required interaction and attentiveness, and somedays it was tough to wake everyone up. These were really smart students, too, so the fault isn’t in them, but in timing.

    Maybe I’d do it at 8am if the college provided a big pot of coffee with donuts every day for the students in compensation. Hah, right.

  • One of the most dramatic effects on student participation was making it mandatory that they ask at least one question a day. Late in the course I added that requirement, and it worked surprisingly well — I could tell they were paying attention to try and find something to pursue further. They also asked good questions, so it wasn’t just pro forma noise. I’ll do that from day one in the future.

    It would be nice if that provided one of those non-squishy metrics I need to add, but it worked too well — they all met that minimal requirement easily. Guess I’ll just have to give them all As.

  • I was bad. I got summoned to Washington DC for important grant-related meetings twice during the semester, which rather gutted two weeks out of 15. That was unavoidable, but while I managed to cover the material in my syllabus, my hope that we could go a bit further and get into the evolution and development side of the textbook was thwarted. But then I never get as deeply into the subjects of any of my courses as I’d like.

    Next time, if I have planned absences, I’ll try to bring in colleagues from ecology or environmental science to cover for me, and keep the momentum going. I was really reluctant to do that this term because…8 goddamn am. I wasn’t going to ask that of anyone.

What I really got out of the course was getting to go in twice a week, even at an ungodly hour, and getting to think about more than just basic, familiar stuff. The core courses I teach in cell biology and genetics are fine, but fairly routine — I know those subjects inside and out, and the challenge is in improving the pedagogy, not in getting exposed to new science. +1, would do again.

Also, one of the best things about small upper-level classes like this is that I can get to know the students a little better, and they reaffirm my faith in humanity because they actually are smart and thoughtful and likeable (I can say that now, I’m not sucking up, because they’ve already done the course evaluation and turned it into the office). Maybe I should just give everyone an A+, with gold stars and smiley face stickers.

Today is the last day of teaching until August for me

I ought to sit back, laugh, and drink champagne, except, unfortunately, that tomorrow the deluge of term papers and lab reports washes up to my door and inundates my office with work. Then there’s the small matter of a final exam next week.

I’m thinking I may actually be done done next Wednesday.

But I’ll still find time to see the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie tomorrow!