Rio. Carnaval. Darwin?

I’m sitting here in Minnesota, anticipating another midweek snowstorm that’s on the way, and what do I learn? If I were in Rio de Janeiro I could be watching Carnaval. Heck, I could be dancing in the streets with a big fruity drink in my hand, blowing kisses to the lovely girls in exotic costumes.

Maybe I could even write it off. Look at this: one of the clubs is celebrating Darwin’s voyage of the Beagle with an hour-long parade. Here’s the announcement from the club.

Science still commemorates 150 years of the first publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the book that caused a true world revolution with the Theory of Evolution. The adventure lived by the English naturalist Charles Darwin on board the H.M.S. Beagle, the British ship that in approximately five years travelled around the world and had the mission of mapping South America, where it visited ports in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. And visited the Galapagos Islands, in Ecuador, which awoke the young scientist to the elaboration of his future theories. This scientific expedition will be relived by the samba school Union of the Island of Governor, in the same spirit of adventure present in the themes of past carnivals. The plot, being much more than a simple sea voyage, will travel through the history of the origin of the life and the evolution of species by means of the NATURAL SELECTION. The presentation will follow the sequence outlined by Darwin, one of the fathers of modern biology and ecological conscience, and show how groups descend from others, building a ramification he compares with a TREE OF LIFE. In Darwin’s theory, man loses the status of great master of the world, superior to all, showing that all life is related through a common ancestor. Its central message is that it falls on us a larger responsibility for the preservation of the planet.

It’s perfect. I’m sure it would please the old Victorian gentleman very much to know that his work is being celebrated with a grand party complete with 3500 participants, lots of scantily dressed women, brilliant costumes, and street-shaking music.

If you get the Brazilian station linked to above, you could watch it yourself at 7pm Eastern time tonight. I don’t even get that much.

Go to Dublin…for the science!

Since the World Atheist Conference is in Dublin this June, you should go just to test this scientific conclusion: the Guinness does taste better in Ireland. I think so, too. So here’s the experiment: buy a glass of Guinness in your airport bar, fly to Ireland, drink some more there. Attend the atheist conference to cleanse the palate, as it were. Drink more Guinness, get on the plane and fly home, and have another one.

Compare.

So now you have another reason to go. It’s an Experiment!

Ox gored, or at least penetrated

I saw the Baby Jesus Butt Plug, and I just laughed. But now, someone has made a cephalopod butt plug and matching ball gag, and my laughter fades to a nervous tittering while my eyes dart about confusedly. Should I be outraged? Aroused? Amused? Disturbed? All of the above? A boundary has been transgressed!

Fortunately, I’m old and greying, and can always fall back on the ignorant old coot routine. “Eh, sonny? What’s that? That’s a mighty big fishing lure you’re waving around there.”

I must be doing it wrong

I’m teaching human physiology this term, and those of you who have done it or taken it know that this kind of course is a strain to get through the huge volume of material. I think I must simply be a horrible teacher, though, because here’s an online physiology course that does a much better job than I do.

Here’s Your Chance To Skip The Struggle
and Master Human Anatomy & Physiology
In 3 Days Or Less… 100% Guaranteed

Wow. And guess what…it’s a $1985.00 value, available now for a limited-time only for the low, low price of only $37. And it’s been shown on the Martha Stewart show!

If that’s not enough for you, it has testimonials.

This might just be the best investment in my career as a chiropractor I’ve made in a long time.

I’m sold. Maybe I should just plunk down my $37 now and photocopy the images, hand ’em out in class, and be done with the whole course before spring break, and then I can spend the rest of the semester sipping pina coladas while loafing about in my underwear.

I noticed something disturbing. The CDs are illustrated with one photo and signature of Dr Ross, but the ad copy on the web has a different photo and signature of Dr Ross.

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What have you done with the real Dr Ross, you bastards?

Reproduction in Ireland

It’s all very confusing, and I’m not quite sure how they managed all these years…all those Irish children must have been the product of some amusing and peculiar accidents. At least the quacks are profiting from the confusion — here, for instance, is a mysterious bottle of an over-the-counter “organic” menopause relief remedy.

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It’s the limitation that is the stumper: “Do not use if pregnant.” Are there many women bumbling about in the pharmacy thinking that they need to be relieved of this problem of menopause?

And then there’s this headline, “I’d lost my baby then somehow fell pregnant thanks to acupuncture“. There are clear and unambiguous causes of pregnancy — “somehow” isn’t usually a word associated with the process — and, well, acupuncture isn’t any of them. Although I suppose it could be an insulting reference to her partner’s penis size.

Big time beast

Little Dougie (aka Ian Murphy) has hit the big time: he punked the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, by calling him up and pretending to be über-Rethuglican puppet master David Koch…and Walker believed him and babbled like a little kid on Santa’s lap. It’s a self-aggrandizing embarrassment, with Walker bragging about how he was Reaganesque, that he was pitting stereotypical blue-collar workers against the unions, and how he has a baseball bat in his office that he’d use to enforce his demands with the Democrats. It’s dreadful stuff, and when caught with his guard down it’s very clear that Scott Walker is against us, the people of this country, and sides entirely with the plutocrats and oligarchs. As Murphy sums it up:

So there you have it, kids. Government isn’t for the people. It’s for the people with money. You want to be heard? Too fucking bad. You want to collectively bargain? You can’t afford a seat at the table. You may have built that table. But it’s not yours. It belongs to the Kochs and the oligarch class. It’s guarded by Republicans like Walker, and his Democratic counterparts across that ever-narrowing aisle that is corporate rule, so that the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots can swallow all the power in the world. These are known knowns, and now we just know them a little more.

But money isn’t always power. The protesters in Cairo and Madison have taught us this–reminded us of this. They can’t buy a muzzle big enough to silence us all. Share the news. Do not retreat; ReTweet.

The revolution keeps spinning. Try not to get too dizzy.

Good work, Mr Murphy.

Oh, wait…that name sounds so familiar. I got a phone call once from Ian Murphy, too! And he interviewed me! At least I don’t think I was as big an idiot as Scott Walker.

They have funny standards of feminine beauty in Maine

The Rethuglican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has been dismissing the health risks from Bisphenol A, an additive to plastics which is known to be an estrogen mimic. His remarks take “Not even wrong” to whole new levels of crazy:

The only thing that I’ve heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.

Hey, I’ve heard that high densities of homeopaths and other quacks in your state gives off fumes that cause severe mental retardation in civil servants. Could it be?

Ladies of Pharyngula, who knew that if only you increased your estrogen levels a bit more, you too could sprout a lovely beard like me? I’m sure there are better ways to maximize your beauty than stuffing milk jugs in your microwave, though. I don’t recommend ever taking health advice from a Republican.