Sasquatch is ill-served

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Melba Ketchum issued a press release announcing that she had sequenced Sasquatch DNA. That was back in November.

It stalled out at that point. It turns out the paper couldn’t get past peer review, and no one was going to publish it. We’re all heartbroken, I know.

But now she has overcome all the obstacles, and it’s finally in print! You can read the abstract.

One hundred eleven samples of blood, tissue, hair, and other types of specimens were studied, characterized and hypothesized to be obtained from elusive hominins in North America commonly referred to as Sasquatch. DNA was extracted and purified from a subset of these samples that survived rigorous screening for wildlife species identification. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing, specific genetic loci sequencing, forensic short tandem repeat (STR) testing, whole genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) bead array analysis, and next generation whole genome sequencing were conducted on purported Sasquatch DNA samples gathered from various locations in North America. Additionally, histopathologic and electron microscopic examination were performed on a large tissue sample. vel non-human DNA.

Umm, yeah, I know, it kind of falls apart in the last sentence, but that’s what it says.

How did she get it published?

Well, she says she bought an existing journal and renamed it (the Journal of Cosmology was on the market, and I hoped most fervently that that was it…but no, JoC is still online). So she owns the journal. It’s now called De Novo.

Then she came out with a special edition. It’s Volume 1, Issue 1. It contains precisely one paper, hers.

You should be laughing by this point.

The online journal is a mess. The layout is funky-ugly, it’s difficult to figure out how to actually get to the paper, and when you navigate to it, it’s got a wretched little “Buy Now” button imbedded in a couple of intersecting blocks of color in a hideous table-like layout. It reminds be of the esthetics of JoC.

Anyway, it’s $30 to buy a paper so bad they had to build a custom journal around it to get it published. Not interested.

Dating tips!

Rats, it’s too late. If only the girls had studied these dating tips back in the day, I might not have grown into the sullen, resentful, entitled git illustrated here.

dancing

driving

And my favorite…

deserve

There’s the root of the whole problem! Men deserve your complete and total attention at all times!

While we’re on the subject of how the wimminz ought to behave, I should mention the F00t’s new video, titled, “Do Hot Girls Have All the Advantages?” Yep, it’s about how women have an edge by just being pretty.

Let that sink in for a bit.

Oh, I wish I were pretty! Then there’s an interesting reply: Why Can’t Thunderf00t Be More Like Indiana Jones? Isn’t it interesting how we can overlook superficial attributes in a man, but they’re always prioritized in women? And how some people can look on this skewed perspective as advantageous for women?

Although, I have to say, I don’t expect the guy to look like Indiana Jones, but am just dismayed at how he’s looking more and more like Pat Robertson every day. Robertson recently fielded a question from a young viewer about how he was troubled that his father seemed to be growing more distant from his mother; his answer was basically that his mother just wasn’t pretty enough, which was why all the romance is leaving the marriage.

One more: misandric pants.

The important things in life

Luis Martinez stopped at the Subway sandwich shop and ordered this thing they call a Philly Cheesesteak…and he ordered it with ketchup. The Subway worker, Lawrence Ordone, objected.

"That’s when I flew off the handle," said Ordone.

"He shoved a chair to the side, like knocked it down to come at me, and I said, ‘This is going to be serious,’" said Martinez.

"I said, ‘Let’s go, fight me like a man,’" said Ordone.

"I was scared. Next thing, I’m thinking a gun’s going to come out," said Martinez.

Ordone said he blocked the customer so he couldn’t get out.

"He threatened to kill me in front of my wife," said Martinez.

These are important issues that a man should engage in battle over: everyone KNOWS that a true Philly cheesesteak is served with ketchup and fried onions. The abomination that the Subway serves lacks both. And now we have learned that Subway employees are willing to fight to the death to preserve their heresy.

Oh, and American cheese? Pffft. It’s supposed to be Cheez-Whiz.

By the way, Ordone was fired — Subway apparently objects to their employees assaulting customers. They still, however, refuse to serve ketchup.

Briefing from the radioactive badlands of the American Southwest, 1954

[We are fortunate to have this transcript, taken by a company stenographer, from one of the early efforts of the resistance to instruct an army company in tactics. Although we now have more sophisticated technologies to hold these invaders in check, it is instructive too see how the American military in the 1950s struggled to cope with an unusual enemy, a struggle that was described in an excellent documentary produced by Warner Bros.]

Men — and ladies — the purpose of this briefing is to instruct you in the basic anatomy of the enemy. We have lost many soldiers to the assumption that these are just elephant sized beasts and that this is an exercise in big-game hunting; post-mortem analysis has found that many wounds that appear as if they should be instantly lethal actually miss major organs and allow the monsters to rampage on relatively unimpaired. I am here to shake up your assumptions and give you better targeting instruction so that you will more effectively kill the enemy.

Get this out of your heads right now. These are not overgrown familiar animals. These are giant ants.

[Read more…]

Wait, that’s not a super-villain!

Here’s an interesting scenario: how an ‘evil’ super-genius could take over the world. Basically, it involves building a new nation-state which openly and thoroughly embraces science and technology, not just electronics, but also biotechnology. It’s a little bit pat — apparently, there are no trade-offs and compromises in building a super-scientific nation, and none of the technologies ever create any new problems of their own — but what struck me most is that there’s nothing villainous in the story at all. It pisses off conservative nations (like the US), and makes everyone panic over the imminent obsolescence of their technologies, but no, the ‘super-villain’ isn’t trying to harm anyone, but just trying to advance humanity.

Also, there’s a Mary Sue element to it all. The guy just moves to a poverty-stricken African nation, and purely by the power of his amazing intelligence, instantly raise a science city…infrastructure isn’t an issue, the collaborative nature of science doesn’t come into play, he just takes over this large population to do the manual labor for his genius.

Sorry, the world doesn’t work that way. It is an interesting twist on the comic book super villain, but it’s been done before — isn’t this just Dr Doom?

Darwin and I have something in common!

Apparently, Turkey is publishing “A series of books for primary schoolchildren, describing Charles Darwin as a Jew with a big nose who kept the company of monkeys and other historical figures in anti-Semitic terms.” Darwin was Jewish? Well, checking my email rather than my pedigree, I have a long list of people who’ve tried to insult me by calling me a “dirty Jew”, too.

Maybe ol’ Chuck and I can share the honor of being titular Jews. I’ll have to introduce myself when we meet in Sheol..