What is that thing?

The Tully Monster has been an enigma for half a century. Now it’s been reconstructed on the basis of analysis of 1200 specimens.

tullymonsterrecon

That thing is weird. It’s been extinct since the Carboniferous, though, so we’re not going to be catching any nowadays, unfortunately. Note the eyes on stalks; the tubby body; the long ‘snout’ terminating in a toothy jawed mouth. People have been grappling with its taxonomic identity for decades, and it’s been labeled as various kinds of worms, or a mollusc, or an odd relic of some Cambrian phylum.

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Online Gender Workshop: Innumeracy

Online Gender Workshop, as ever, is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.

A new and interesting series of posts directly related to gender should commence later today. And, yes, I’m aware that life came along inconveniently and too-long delayed my promised gender-sudoku post. That, too, will come, but not immediately.

Here I just want to point out of bit of innumeracy that bugs me. Why innumeracy in the online gender workshop? Ultimately for the same reason as the sudoku-gender connection: the biggest problems caused by our gender systems are with

  1. The compulsory nature of the system, and
  2. The poor thinking we humans do both implementing and reflecting on the system.

Any general improvement in critical thinking among the various peoples of the world should be of use in correcting #2, at least over time. And so I can be a bit of a martinet on the issue of carefully and critically thinking for oneself.

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Asymptotes get in my way

wedding1

I know we have a lot of polyamorous people on this network, and people who are not interested in long term relationships, but that’s not me. I’m a devotedly monogamous kind of guy, and today is our 36th wedding anniversary, so I had to do some math. (Isn’t that everyone’s response to important dates?)

Percent of my life spent married to one person: 61%

Whoa. That’s disappointing. That number is just not big enough. So I had to fudge it a bit. We started seriously dating in 1976, so…

Percent of my life spent romantically involved with that person: 68%

That didn’t help much. Only 2/3 of my life? She’s so much more.

But hey, I met her for the first time in third grade, so maybe I can nudge it up further.

Percent of my life knowing that person: 86%

That really feels like cheating. She was just that other kid in class who was better at math than I was, so that shouldn’t count.

I know 100% is mathematically impossible because there were those 8 empty years where I didn’t even know she existed, but I have to strive for a percentage that approximates her importance. At least 99%. I estimate that in order to reach the point where I have spent 99% of my life married to Mary, all I have to do is live to be 2300 years old. And she has to live that long too, or there’s no point.

We can do that. Easy.

Then maybe we can aim for 99.9%.

The cephalopods tried to stop him

Ted Cruz wrote “25 things you don’t know about me” — it’s got one interesting thing about him, and leaves off the most important point.

6. I was once bitten by an octopus at the beach and got terribly ill. (Yes, apparently octopuses can be poisonous.)

Yeah, dumbass.

But what I want to know is…forget Cruz, did the octopus survive its poisoning?

Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court?

Obama has announced his nominee for the open Supreme Court slot, and I am unimpressed. Apparently, he’s a compromise: a centrist (which in America, means leaning rightward) who won’t get the Republicans in congress too upset. There’s also one weird comment in that report:

Supreme Court nominees tend to be in their early 50s. In choosing Judge Garland, Mr. Obama very likely gave away the possibility of a justice who would serve on the Supreme Court perhaps three decades. Instead, he imposed a sort of actuarial term limit on the nomination and thus his legacy, offering Senate Republicans a compromise not only on ideology, but also on tenure.

Compromise, compromise, compromise. We always compromise. The other side never does.

Obama noted some good things about Garland.

The president said Judge Garland is “widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence. These qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned him the respect and admiration from leaders from both sides of the aisle.”

You know, I could believe all that — conservatives can be decent people, of course. But what I’m concerned about is the issues. What’s his position on women’s reproductive rights? Are we going to see more creeping religion in government? What about campaign finance reform and the excessive influence of billionaires on elections?

Not a word about any of that in the article. He’s a total cipher as far as I know. But there’s lots of stuff about all the Republicans who love him, and how Orrin Hatch has been promoting him for years, which just screams at me that I can’t trust him.

An atheist watches Gods of Egypt

I attended Gods of Egypt last night, just because I could, and because it looked so bad. And it was. It was so awful, I sat there the entire time wondering “why?” and “how?” This makes no sense! So afterwards I figured it out: the full history and lore that led to the investment of millions of dollars in this movie.

We have to go far back into the misty depths of time to witness the beginnings of Egyptian mythology. We have to go back to 1976.

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A random question about DST and alarm clocks

I just had this weird thought, provoked by the recent time change, and I went browsing through apps to see if anyone had thought of it before. Nothing jumped out at me.

What I want is an alarm that can be set off at a time relative to sunrise…so, for instance, instead of setting it for 6:30, I’d set it to go off one hour before sunrise. Anyone know of such a thing, for an iPhone?

I was just wondering if it would make more sense to map one’s sleep schedule relative to the solar day, rather than some arbitrary bureaucrat somewhere telling you that this week, you’re expected to get up precisely one hour earlier than last week.

Yada will kill you with his detox

Right now, a lot of people are sitting around, jaws agape, at this fervent crackpot, YADA. I figure everyone’s mandibular condyle needs a good workout, so I’m sharing.

Beware of the BLACK devils!!!!!! Having a menstrual cycle is unhealthy and the only reason a woman has one is because her body is sick. The same people that told you about your menstrual cycle are the same ones that gave you your diet… Yada

Posted by YADA on Monday, March 7, 2016

Obviously, this is bad science and non-factual, despite the vehemence of his assertions.

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An atheist watches The Witch

thewitch

Mary and I saw The Witch at the Morris Theatre this weekend. I liked it very much.

“But,” you say, “it’s a supernatural horror story. How can an atheist see something like that and not sneer at it?”

Easy. It’s a movie. I believe that movies actually exist. I also enjoy some superhero movies in spite of the fact that they postulate huge violations of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. I like movies that tell me something about the human condition, and big budget spectacle is a distraction from the story at the core.

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