The things that remind people of me…

They all seem to be demonic, or tentacled, or both. I am always flattered to get the email from people saying, “I found this stinking pile of slime covered with maggots, and I thought immediately of you!” (really, I am flattered—it’s nice to be associated with the weird and unusual.) However, I have to assure you that I don’t actually look anything like this handsome hunk of tentacles, although you’ll have to take my word on it—you won’t find any photos of me sans clothing to confirm that.

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Also, my wife doesn’t look anything like this sexy spawn of Cthulhu*. She’s much hotter, even if she lacks a chitinous crust or suckers.

*Warning: that link is to a page with photographs of a “nude” model, but she is sort of clothed in spikes and shells and other oddments. Links from that page are not really work safe—they get weirder, but much more overtly mammalian.

I really didn’t need to see that

Childbirth is a beautiful thing, I know…but a statue of Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug is just weird, and this one combines a couple of other strange conceptions.

The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with “water-retentive” hands.

Labor is not seductive. Putting a “pop-diva” in a rather sexual pose is not a celebration of birth and motherhood, I don’t think. Furthermore, it’s supposed to be a monument: a monument to the anti-choice movement. I’m sure there’s nothing Phyllis Schlafly and James Dobson would think represents their beliefs better than an anatomically explicit statue of the woman who sang “Baby one more time” naked and in a gynecologically revealing pose.

I’m thinking some New York artist is venting excess irony here.

(via Blog of the Moderaate Left)

God hates squid

From the comments, here’s something bizarre: creationists (at least the ones at Answers in Genesis) have defined life…and it excludes squid! I have yet another reason to reject the Bible, in this case for disrespecting perfectly wonderful invertebrates.

Many scientists make the distinction that vertebrates have hemoglobin,
hence red blood, and invertebrates contain other oxygen transporting
proteins, like hemocyanins, and do not have red blood. As far as
we’ve researched at this time, all vertebrates have hemoglobin and
invertebrates do not, though there may be exceptions we are not aware
of.

So, animals that contain hemoglobin (vertebrates) and therefore have
red blood can be considered “living” and animals that contain
hemocyanin, or other proteins (invertebrates) and therefore have blue
(pink/violet or brown) blood can be considered “nonliving”. This is
further supported by Scripture since the Hebrew for “blood” (dawm)
is derived from the Hebrew for “red” (aw-dam). And with Genesis
1:20-22 and Leviticus 11:10, there is a distinction between
“living” creatures and “swarming/moving” creatures that teem in
the waters. So the logical conclusion can be made that a “living”
creature is one that contains red blood.

There’s much more, but it’s all masturbiblation, picking at words and extracting far more significance from them than is warranted, all to determine that squid actually aren’t alive*. There’s hairsplitting in Genesis, and a silly exegesis of the dietary rules in Leviticus.

What I’d really love to see now, though, is the rhetorical squirming they’d go through when it’s pointed out that human embryos do not develop red blood cells until about the 5th week of development, and therefore the early embryo, by their own definition, is not living. Heh.

One bit of good news: this definition greatly simplifies the project to create an army of death-ray-wielding undead squid-men.

That revolting article about earwax and smegma

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Not all the email I get is from cranks and creationist loons. Sometimes I get sincere questions. In today’s edition of “Ask Mr Science Guy!”, Hank Fox asks,

I was thinking recently about the fact that wax collects in one’s ears, and suddenly thought to be amazed that some part of the HUMAN body produces actual WAX. Weird. Like having something like honeybee cells in your ear.

And then I started to think about what sorts of other … exudates the human exterior produces. Mucus, possibly several different types (does the nose itself produce more than one type?). Oils, possibly several different types. That something-or-other that hardens into your fingernails. Saliva, if you wanted to count our frequently-open mouth as sort-of exterior. What else?

Of course I know something about this subject, having taught physiology for a few years. My years of experience have also led me to notice that it is always the guys who ask about disgusting secretions. Why is that?

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Watch out for the mudghah on the sidewalk

Weirder. This is quite possibly the most stupid thing I have read yet on development from a creationist, from The Quran on Human Embryonic Development.

The next stage mentioned in the verse is the mudghah stage. The Arabic word mudghah means “chewed substance.” If one were to take a piece of gum and chew it in his or her mouth and then compare it with an embryo at the mudghah stage, we would conclude that the embryo at the mudghah stage acquires the appearance of a chewed substance. This is because of the somites at the back of the embryo that “somewhat resemble teethmarks in a chewed substance.”

Prepare to laugh or weep…here is the figure accompanying this pseudoscientific absurdity. I’ve tucked it below the fold to prevent fatalities; click through only if you are well-prepared and braced, aren’t elderly, infirm, or an infant, and have had all your vaccinations.

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