![i-7798e58e95b9ea0e558b89193e58ca07-anomarokarisu.jpg](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/wp-content/blogs.dir/470/files/2012/04/i-7798e58e95b9ea0e558b89193e58ca07-anomarokarisu.jpg)
I would love to have a plush Anomalocaris, but this site is all in Japanese! Anyone know of an American source?
I would love to have a plush Anomalocaris, but this site is all in Japanese! Anyone know of an American source?
Everyone has heard of the Boston Molasses Flood, right? That was horrific and weird, but it was outdone by the London Beer Flood: houses were demolished by the torrent, seven were dead by drowning, and one dead by alcohol poisoning. I am truly impressed by the opportunism and low standards of that one individual … if you witnessed a river of beer flowing down the street, would you scoop up enough of it to kill yourself with excess? I guess I’m finicky enough that I wouldn’t stoop to cup a single handful to drink.
Unless it were a really good beer, that is.
(Does this story have some connection to the recent release of the Simpson’s Movie? It ought to.)
First we had that Wisconsinite caught trying to have sex with roadkill in Minnesota. Then it was decreed that it is illegal to have sex with dead animals, which I’m sure has distressed many a leather fetishist. Now I learn that the three Wisconsin boys who conspired to dig up the body of a dead young woman in order to have sex with it can only be charged with misdemeanor attempted theft, because it is not illegal to commit necrophilia in Wisconsin. I guess necrophilia is a victimless crime, after all, and our disgust at the perpetrators isn’t sufficient cause for serious criminal charges.
Still, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in Wisconsin.
This is just a slideshow of album covers for the most annoying songs of all time, and it’s fairly safe to view—it doesn’t actually play any music clips. I was just thinking (like an evil mad scientist—occupational hazard, you know) that if someone did string together the musical hooks for all of those bad songs, you’d either get the most devastating earworm ever, or they’d all just cancel each other out and you might get an earworm cure. Anyone want to try the experiment?
(via that Chimpanzee Refuge)
This will not stand. It’s a site called Octopus Faith, and it’s a promotion for a Christian women’s speaker, and her premise is analogizing faith to an octopus.
Every octopus is an atheist, though … they told me so personally. And they are not amused.
Next time GrrlScientist comes to visit, we’re going to have to record what she says early in the morning, and then play it back ten times faster — I have a suspicion that we’ll hear birdsong.
At least, that’s the way this video art installation by Marcus Coates works. He had people sing strange little nonsense tunes (you can hear one here) that, when played back at a greater speed, recreated the songs of wild British birds. Why, if GrrlScientist had only talked a little faster, I’m sure the whole house would have sounded like an exotic tropical island inhabited by parrots!
The Weekly World News, source of many an idle moment’s entertainment while waiting in the grocery store checkout line, is about to become an ex-tabloid. Bat boy will be homeless. Ed Anger will have no outlet for his rage. Fox News will have no competition.
American Journalism has lost a shining beacon, an ideal to which it could have aspired.
(via Decorabilia)
A correspondent just reminded me of this classic paper from the literature—it’s the only contemporary scientific work I know of that managed to combine a discussion of the induction of a tissue by TGF-β and BMP proteins with a discussion of the Hebrew noun tzela to suggest that the book of Genesis wasn’t talking about thoracic ribs at all. All us sneering atheist professors who’ve had to exhibit human skeletons to show the creationists in our classrooms that men are not missing a rib apparently should have been pointing a little lower — where humans are missing a bone.
This comment on the Panda’s Thumb leads to a very interesting entry on OMIM, the database of human genetic characters. We’re missing something.
OS PENIS, CONGENITAL ABSENCE OF
Deletion of the gulonolactone oxidase gene on 8p21 is a genetic disease that affects 100% of humans. Lack of the enzyme causes severe connective tissue disease and makes humans dependent upon dietary supplements of ascorbic acid; see 240400. Gilbert and Zevit (2001) pointed out that another genetic condition, affecting 100% of human males, is congenital lack of a baculum (os priapi; os penis). Whereas most mammals (including common species such as dogs and mice) and most other primates (except spider monkeys) have a penile bone, human males lack this bone and must rely on fluid hydraulics to maintain erections. The size of the rodent baculum is regulated by the posterior members of the HOXD (142987) set of transcription factors. Gilbert and Zevit (2001) suggested that it was not a costal rib but rather the penile ‘rib’ or baculum that God removed from Adam to create Eve (Genesis 2:21-23). Genesis also states that ‘the Lord God closed up the flesh.’ Gilbert and Zevit (2001) suggested that the raphe on the penis and scrotum was thought to be the surgical scar.
I’m a deformed mutant, a pathetic shadow of my bold, upright ancestors. My only consolation is that all you other guys are, too.
Having read Mooney’s Storm World last week, I can’t be too disturbed by this bit of news: the pizza man who is fanatically devoted to the pope, Tom Monaghan, is opening his new planned town dedicated to Catholic values next Saturday. There will be no porn or contraceptives available in town, but I hear there will be a whole clinic dedicated to pediatric proctology on Main Street.
Anyway, the town is Ave Maria, Florida. Mooney’s book points out that one of the looming problems from catastrophic storms and global warming is man-made, the growing investment in valuable infrastructure and population in precisely those areas at risk from natural disaster. This gives me an idea: I think the southern coastal states ought to give incentives to religious organizations to build along the shores. Pull back all those merely material and economic developed resources farther inland, and construct wall-to-wall religious enclaves everywhere that we worry about hurricanes instead, as a bulwark against acts of god.
We can’t lose. If they’re right, their prayers and purity will stave off disaster. If they’re wrong, well, no loss to the country if ten thousand churches get inundated.
It also puts a nefarious twist on the closing quote in the story.
Monaghan has said his goal is to help as many people as possible get to Heaven. And he hopes these homeowners will have a head start.
The Countess dropped me a note to say I might get a laugh out of this list of the 100 Unsexiest Men of 2007, and I had a brief, horror-stricken thought that the reason was because I was on it. That’s the only reason I read the whole thing.
Dick Cheney is only at 77? There’s something wrong there.