Theoretical ecology of vampires

For some reason, I find this hilarious — it’s an exercise in applying the mathematics of population ecology to the dynamics of human-vampire interactions. It’s the real deal, the actual kinds of math used by those wacky evolution and ecology nerds, all built around some estimates of the rates of vampire siring measured against the rates that Buffy-style vampire slayers take them out. Here’s the kind of thing you’ll see in the document:

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I like it. In case you’re wondering, Buffy’s Sunnyvale reaches a stable equilibrium with a population of about 36,000 humans and 18 vampires.

(Hmm. I posted this in the “Life Science” channel of scienceblogs. Maybe I need to lobby for an “Undead” channel now.)

Minneapolis lulz opportunity

If anyone is in the Roseville area tomorrow, somewhere near Northwestern College, you might have an entertaining time if you drop in on a meeting of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association. I can’t even imagine what they’re going to say in this one.

God’s Design in Weather

Weather is more talked about
than any other topic. God has
arranged the weather system on
the earth. There are patterns to
this weather. How does a tornado
form? What causes hurricanes?
Why aren’t raindrops larger?
Science is about finding patterns
and then predicting what will
happen. The study of weather
allows us to think God’s thoughts
after him.

What does that even mean? Should someone bring up God’s apparent hatred of trailer parks?

The impeccable logic of evolutionary psychology: spit or swallow?

Jerry Coyne carries out an amusing exercise in reasoning like an evolutionary psychologist: why does human semen taste bad? It turns out that it is really easy to invent all kinds of entirely reasonable rationalizations for it: in particular, it’s to promote ejaculation in the orifice that is more likely to result in pregnancy, since women can’t get pregnant by way of their stomach. It’s all deductively logical, but built on premises floating in thin air, with no empirical foundation at all…the usual flaw on which evolutionary psychology fails.

It does open up all kinds of angels-dancing-upon-pins sorts of questions. By the same logic, shouldn’t most women find anal sex extremely distasteful and unpleasurable (there’s another subject for Coyne to use in an informal poll — or maybe not, unless he really wants a reputation as a perv). Would the unusual anatomical arrangement in Deep Throat be evidence against evolution? And say…shouldn’t there be selection against male interest in fruitless pornography? There’s potential for a whole industry to flower around the pursuit of these questions. With illustrations.

Battle of the Biology Bands — no one leaves alive!

Perhaps you remember the PCR song from Bio-Rad…or perhaps you tried hard to purge that from your memory. Then Eppendorf upped the ante with a pipettor love song. Now Greg Laden finds another pop tribute to PCR from Bio-Rad. The genre? Disco. By all that’s good and rational, not disco.

Two can fight this war against good taste. How about a big hair rock ballad to a tissue culture cell monitoring system?

That one needs an encore.

Little known fact: most molecular biologists dress exactly like that in the lab.

Say…isn’t this called treason?

The governor of Texas is ranting about seceding from the United States.

Speaking to an energetic and angry tea party crowd in Austin Wednesday evening, the Lone Star State governor suggested secession may happen in the future should the federal government not change its fiscal polices.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

I seem to recall from my history books that some states tried that, once upon a time, long, long ago. How did that work out?

I also seem to recall from not too long ago that Republicans were rather free in slinging accusations of treason at Democrats (Ann Coulter wrote a book about it, and Jonah Goldberg tried to imply it), yet here is a governor actively inciting mobs with the idea of secession, which is a rather blatantly anti-patriotic act. Funny how their attitudes change.

Oh, and for comic relief: Chuck Norris offers to run for president of the independent nation of Texas. I’m almost tempted to agree that they should leave the union, just for the hilarious spectacle.

A simple suggestion for improving the popularity of Catholic iconography

As I’m sure many of you are aware, one of the more superficially off-putting elements of the Catholic church is to walk into one of their buildings and see it decorated with images of writhing, tortured men in loin cloths — it’s like stepping into a S&M fantasy, and I’m really not into that (not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course, if that’s your thing…). If the walls were draped with these, though, my reflexive rejection of the whole idea of church attendance might be softened.

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I still wouldn’t pay any attention to the liturgy or the sermon or the hymns, though.

Somehow, I was also able to watch the whole movie that young lady was in without once grumbling about the banality of the plot or the ludicrous absurdity of mixing dinosaurs and cavemen, so she has proven powers in generating a willing suspension of disbelief, so I’m sure she’d be a perfect symbol for a religion.

Cleaning out the mythological clutter

Here’s a fine idea to benefit the public: an exchange progrram called Fiction for Fiction in which people can trade in their tired old religious texts for novels. It seems a little unfair, though: they’re offering great novels in exchange. Wouldn’t it be better to trade them some tatty old cheap pulp for the Bible? I think exchanging Gor novels for the Bible would be thematically appropriate. (Trading porn for bibles is also a good idea). The one big problem with these schemes, though, is that the organizers are going to end up with a big stack of even more crappy books than they started with.

An idea that doesn’t involve accumulating bad books is this one: debaptism. A fellow actually got a church to accept a debaptism certificate — he argued that because the original baptism was done against his will and without his consent, it was invalid and the church records needed to be amended. Of course, this was an Anglican church, and we all know how easy they are…I’d like to see this done with the Catholics or Mormons.

Anyway, all you have to do is a) buy the certificate of debaptism (£3), and b) live in the UK. Isn’t it just peachy that those of us who need it most live in places where we can’t get it? Some American group ought to run with this idea.

Yes, Virginia, Mad Scientists do exist

You have to watch this weird and engrossing video about Robert White, the neurosurgeon whose goal was to achieve a total body transplant. He’s the guy who was doing the monkey head transplants: cutting the head off one monkey, and sewing it onto the body of another…and it’s hard to get more Herbert West than that.

I’m afraid the freakiest part of the video for me, though, was that he has a reserved table at the local McDonalds.

The zombies of Boston

This looks like fun, but it’s a bit of drive for me: Steven Schlozman will be giving a talk on the neuropsychology of zombies. He’s talking about levels of activity in the brain and modeling of behavior, which could be interesting — fantasy and horror can be useful tools to get people interested in digging deeper into biology.

Where I always get stuck in any scientific examination of the entirely imaginary phenomenon of zombies, however, is the biochemistry and physiology. They just can’t work. They’re using meat to generate motion, but the properties of meat that can cause contraction/relaxation are dependent on a biochemistry that requires fuel and oxygen. Dead meat doesn’t do work! You just have to surrender to the premise and go with the story, because there’s no way it can be rationalized.