Highway to hysteria

I swear, they’re trying to see how stupid they can get before my head explodes. Read Isaiah 35:8:

And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

Obviously, to any brain-dead literal-minded pismire of an evangelical Christian, that is a reference to I-35, the interstate that cuts through Minnesota and Texas. Obviously. Never mind that unclean PZ Myers has driven on it quite often, or that this is the road with the bridge that collapse, or heck, that it is just a long piece of concrete with trucks blatting out nasty hot gasses all day long.

Good god.

Don’t watch this video unless you’ve got an awesome tolerance for high-density super-concentrated stupid and dancing howling raving demented fuckwits. This is America, land of prophecies, dreams, and visions taken as insight, where imaginary demons and angels are supposedly fighting over a strip of pavement.

Must rest. Intracranial pressure rising…rising…rising…

(via Minnesota Monitor)

Say hello to Charlie

I have to second Steve — this is an amazing blog, The Daily Coyote. A woman and a cat living in remote Wyoming have a friend, a young coyote.

This has got to be a frightening relationship. That’s a place where coyotes are shot on sight, with no remorse … maybe if a few more people read about Charlie, though, they won’t be so quick to kill.

It’s not the ugly that offends, but the stupid

Here’s a horrible story: a man who bears a grossly disfiguring tumor on his face, one that threatens his life and has afflicted him since adolescence, is only now considering surgery to correct the problem.

Why not before? Because it might require (and now definitely would require) blood transfusions. And he’s a Jehovah’s Witness. You have to wonder what wretched, evil excuse for a human being among his church associates has been telling him that he shouldn’t get this life-saving surgery because God wouldn’t like it.

Zebrafish Lab Eureka!

This week is the second to last week of the semester before finals and everything is coming down to the wire, including my neurobio lab project. PZ was so kind as to come in and help me out this past Sunday morning; the morning after the blizzard had quieted leaving everything covered in various quantities of snow. In going over my methods we found that I wasn’t adding a drop or two of water on top of the auger layer with the immobilized zebrafish. The reason this is important is that so after the spinal cord severing is accomplished, the auger layer is separated allowing water to surround the fish immediately and preventing air exposure. The fish can then be pipetted up and put into a dish of water for observations. PZ also suggested using water with an increased concentration of calcium (14g/100mL) to facilitate better fish recovery. The fish should not be left however in the calcium water for an extended period of time because it can adversely affect development.

Repeating my methods and taking into practice the slight changes that PZ recommended, I found that after one day, four of eleven fish were still alive! After slicing up more than sixty fish with a 100% mortality rate after one day and wondering what on earth I could have been doing wrong, I was ecstatic. It’s unfortunate that this success has come so late in the game and the writeup for this project won’t show much for results other than how not to butcher zebrafish. I have learned quite a bit though about the interesting techniques I’ve been using and also about the differences in zebrafish at various stages of development. So with that, back to the lab I go to continue working with zebrafish.

Some good news!

After being imprisoned and facing a lynch mob, the teacher in Sudan whose class named a teddy bear “Mohammed” has finally been freed. She has a very positive attitude and says nothing but generous things about the people of Sudan, and thanks the Sudanese government for letting her have a bed while she was in prison.

I think she’s a bit deranged, actually.

A bed is an exceptional gift to a prisoner? She was sentenced to prison for naming a teddy bear? Mobs were howling for her execution for that “crime”? And she says, “I wouldn’t like to put anyone off going to Sudan.”

Too late. I’m quite put off, and think the Sudan is a hell-hole for lunatics.