Friday Cephalopod

MAJeff bringing you some ‘pod porn, culinary style.
i-3cee61568c751a0d704504928bc5cbfc-DailyCatchCalamari.jpg
That’s the fried calamari at one of my favorite restaurants, The Daily Catch in Boston’s North End.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times, had an article on the return of the Jersey Tomato. Now, I’ve never had a “Jersey Tomato” so I’ll have to take the word of folks from there that it’s really tasty. I wouldn’t mind being one of the tasters they’ve got in the article, though. Coming from the rural Midwest, I’m pretty familiar with good produce.

I love the summer, and desperately miss my parents’ garden during this season. A few weeks ago, I bought some corn-on-the-cob from a local grocery store…I nearly cried, it tasted like field corn. Grocery store corn is worthless, and people here in New England have no idea what good corn is like (and it’s also impossible to get a good bratwurst here). Then again, anything that spends several days going from the field to a store isn’t going to be as good as something picked that day.

Living in an urban setting, the “picked that day” option is rarely available to me. This year, though, I planted a small window box garden on my landing–basil, mint, grape tomatoes, and a few other herbs (that window box got flooded during a couple of our early July evening thunderstorms–we’ve had a rainy summer in Boston). I’ve been eating at least one meal of fresh basil pesto per week, but now my tomatoes are starting to come in, which means basil-tomato salad for the rest of the month. It’s a good thing.

So, here’s to summer. To great tomatoes and corn and beans and peas and apples and peaches… To celebrate, share your favorite recipes. Let’s get seasonal. If you’ve got access to food coming right out of the garden, you’ll know why I’m stressing the seasonal aspect. There’s nothing quite like picking something and eating it right away.

I’ll get things started on the recipe front below the fold.
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And I make Guestblogger #3!

Hi all! This is LisaJ, and I’ll also be guestblogging here on Pharyngula for the next 10 days or so. I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to chat it up with you fine folks here on Pharyngula, and I hope I can do my part to keep everyone stimulated and satisfied.

I would first like to echo MAJeff and Danio’s sentiment and send a big thanks to PZ for inviting me to participate as a guestblogger. I too was very surprised and flattered to be asked. What a nice guy that PZ is! Just to briefly introduce myself: I’m a 3rd year PhD student studying novel functions for the pRb/E2F tumour suppressor pathway in nervous system development. Although this is my favourite protein pathway, largely because it takes up most of my waking thoughts and, you know, these proteins are just so awesome and multifunctional, I will likely be contributing various Science related posts during my time here, among other topics that will just come as I go!

I’m also a pretty proud Canadian girl, currently living in Ottawa, our beautiful capital city. Since alot of the posts here on Pharyngula center around the news, politics, crazy christian crusades, etc, going on in PZ’s fine country, the US of A, I thought that for my first post I would lead a little discussion on what makes its Northern neighbour such a special place… but also, not really that different at all in some respects.

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Guest Blogger #2, checking in

Hello Pharyngulites, Danio here in my second official stint as ‘guest blogger’. Like MAJeff, I’m very honored that PZ tagged me for the task, and I hope not to disappoint.

A bit about me: I am a postdoctoral fellow at PZ’s alma mater, the University of Oregon, working on zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a model organism for studying hereditary deaf-blindness. I also have a broad interest in science education and science literacy, especially at the elementary and secondary school level, so I do a fair number of tours and demos for different student groups. I don’t have as much time for more formal pedagogic endeavors as I’d like, but I have taught courses in Human Reproduction and Development in the past, and I have a special interest in the intersection of science and public policy in this area.

Why just “Danio”, you might ask? My identity is not a secret, per se. People in my field who are reading this can probably figure out who I am, and that’s totally ok. My choice to post under a pseudonym on Scienceblogs is out of consideration for my kids, who aren’t old enough to make an informed decision on whether or not they want to be publicly associated with an unapologetically godless Mama, and for my husband, who, as a healthcare provider, has to kiss a lot more ass than I ever do, and thus could also suffer by association.

I’m glad to be here and looking forward to posting somewhat regularly. In keeping with the theme that MAJeff has started us off with, here’s another question to mull over:

In reflecting upon PZ’s current journey to the Galapagos, what site of significance in the history of scientific discovery would you like to visit, and why?
(If that doesn’t do it for you, feel free to use this as an open thread).

Hi there everyone!

MAJeff here, and I’ll be one of your guestbloggers for the next several days. I’d first like to thank PZ for asking me to do this. I was more than a little surprised to get an email the other day inviting me, and I hope I can keep up the quality people have come to expect from the place.

I’m not sure of everything I’ll be posting about yet. But, I’ll probably be doing some of what I do when I teach, and that is asking questions. Y’all are a chatty bunch, so I probably won’t need to do much asking. Sometimes, though, I just like to get to know folks better, to move beyond argument and talk. As a sociologist, I study people. I don’t always understand them, but I do find them fascinating. Opportunities to get to know what drives folks are never to be turned down.

So, here goes: What is it about science that so enthuses all of you?

My brief answer–it’s not Boobies; not that there’s anything wrong with that, w00t–is below the fold….
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And I depart in a cloud of poetry

Once again, we open the floor to the lyrical expression of a few readers who have been inspired by the recent effusion of musical and poetical outbursts here. Fortunately for all, there is no gong hanging on the wall behind you, the judges…although some of these have been pretty good.

First up is a little poem written during the Dover trial by a very famous evolutionary biologist who has asked me to keep it anonymous. No confidence in the meter, huh? Or perhaps fear that declaring such talent will lead to the literary set distracting from the real work of biology?

I think that I shall never see
A theory dumber than ID:
It says that God can make a tree,
A beaver or a honeybee-
That God can simply get a whim
To make the small E. coli swim.
He waves His hand through Heaven’s air
And lo! Flagella everywhere!
But sometimes even God falls down
And makes a poor, pathetic clown:
Yes, poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make Behe.

The second submission is by a well-known atheist who does out herself.

Super Geek
by Greta Christina
(to the tune of “Super Freak” by Rick James)

She’s a very geeky girl
The kind you cheat off of in math class
And she will never let her teachers down
Once she takes her SAT’s

She likes the boys in the chess club
She says that Spassky is her favorite
When she makes a move, it’s rook takes bishop, check-mate
She’s very hard to beat

The girl is pretty bright now
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
The kind of girl you read about
(In Omni Magazine)
The girl is pretty brainy
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
I’d really like to test her
(Every time we meet)
She’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright with me, yeah
She’s a Super Geek, Super Geek, she’s super-geeky

She’s a very special girl
From her glasses to her Oxfords
And she will help me study AP math and physics
And AP bio, too

“Live long and prosper”‘s what she says
“Back in the chem lab I’ll be waiting”
When I get there, she’s got Number Two pencils
It’s such a geeky scene

The girl is pretty bright now
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
The kind of girl you read about
(In Omni Magazine)
The girl is pretty brainy
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
I’d really like to test her
(Every time we meet)
She’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright with me, yeah
She’s a Super Geek, Super Geek, she’s super-geeky

Judges?

As for me, it’s time for me to flee the country. Ta-ta, until I next find a wireless connection somewhere in South America!

A poll that matters, for a change

This is how to do it: the Big Think project wants you to look over their inspirational science profiles and vote for one — and as a reward, they’ll donate $1 to DonorsChoose, to fund educational projects. This is a win:win situation. For a couple of clicks, you get to be entertained for a few minutes, and you get to gouge a dollar out of Pfizer, and you get to help out school teachers. How can you not do it?

Apparently, they need 8000 more clicks to meet their quota and limit for the month. I bet we can do that in a day.

(By the way, I voted for Pardis Sabeti.)

Mollyfication, and some temporary changes

Have you been wondering who won the Molly for July? It goes to … Owlmirror, OM. Let’s hear some applause for the worthy champion.

In other news, you may recall that I’m going to the Galapagos Islands, and I’m leaving tonight! I shall be spending the next week and a half bobbing about in a boat in the Pacific, 600 miles off the coast of mainland South America, and while I’ll still be able to access the internet in a limited way, I’m going to be somewhat distracted. “Oh, no,” you’re thinking, “Pharyngula will go all silent and boring, and there will be no biological ejaculations from a godless liberal to add flavor to my morning coffee.” Have no fear! I could just schedule a blank post to appear every morning, and knowing you people, it would fill up fast — you don’t really need me to provoke you. But no, I have gone another route, and have recruited a few guest bloggers who will post a few things now and then while I’m off. We’re squaring things away with Seed right now, and I’ll let them introduce themselves at their own pace.

If you decide you like them better than me, I shall be heartbroken, but I will be kicking them off on the 18th of August anyway. Maybe they’ll be inspired to go on to new blogs of their very own…?

I’ll also be handing the whip and keys to the dungeon to Skatje. She won’t be quite as diligent in monitoring things as I am (17 — almost 18 — year old girls have a life, you know), but she will be available to skewer any trolls. Don’t cross her, she might be cranky about not getting to go to the Galapagos.

And today is going to be spent packing and tidying up the Myers mansion for the housesitters, a job that requires carefully inventorying the beer. It might be a while, especially if I decide that leaving all that good beer behind that Don Kane and Rachel Warga left here last week would be a waste.

Oklahoma, you can do better than Sally Kern

I’m afraid the odious Oklahoma legislator, Sally Kern, has opened her mouth again. She has declared herself a “cultural warrior for Judeo-Christian values. I despise the term “Judeo-Christian” — it’s so fake, and such a transparent attempt to tie morality to religion. So what are these “Judeo-Christian” values?

“I am not saying everyone has to be Christian; this is not a homogenous nation,” Kern said. “What you have to be is someone who believes in a Judeo-Christian ethic, in other words, in knowing there’s a right and wrong.

That’s it? Knowing that some things are bad to do and others are good is all there is? Pagans, heathens, wiccans, atheists, Muslims, and animists all know that; dogs seem to feel guilt, and we could even argue that jellyfish are able to see the world in these kinds of binary terms. So why pretend Jews and Christians invented it?

Oh…because she has to have an absolutist rational for parochial fundagelical American bigotry.

“Not all lifestyles are equal; not all religions are equal,” she said. “Was I saying all people are not equal? Heavens no; we were all created equal.”

Kern repeated her opposition to gay marriage and homosexuality, though the lawmaker said she supports people’s individual rights.

Pssst, Oklahomans: Vote for Ron Marlett this fall. Anyone but Bughouse Sally, please.

Power of prayer

Barack Obama will be giving his acceptance speech at the DNC outside, so what do the geniuses at Focus on the Patriarchy propose to do? They urge their followers to pray for rain.

Pathetic. Why not suggest instead that they pray for thunderbolts of doom, and that the earth split open beneath Obama’s feet and swallow him up with a chthonic belch of sulfur and magma? It would be just as effective.

I swear, god-botherers nowadays have lost all sense of style.