My latest column for Seed, Variant Genes-in-Waiting, is now online. If you subscribed, you would have already read it earlier this week.
By the way, my mom subscribes, too, and she gives it a thumbs up. I’ll have to find out what she thinks about my next column, which is all about beetle testes (and that’s all you get to know about it—you’ll just have to wait).
It’s been a busy day—if you’ve noticed it’s been quiet here, it’s because I’ve been driving back and forth to St Cloud to help my son get situated in his new apartment, and also, by the way, today is our wedding anniversary — note that my wife cleverly scheduled it to be exactly one week after my birthday, making reminders easy.
I was going to make some lecherous joke about getting lucky tonight, but it would be superfluous since I seem to have been in luck for twenty seven years.
Trust me, this is really good — it gets it all exactly right.
The latest Nature reveals a new primitive mammal fossil collected in the Mesozoic strata of the Yan mountains of China. It’s small and unprepossessing, but it has at least two noteworthy novelties, and first among them is that it represents another step in the transition from the reptilian to the mammalian jaw and ear.
Don’t rush to get tickets to New Zealand just yet—the colossal squid is frozen in a block of ice, and they don’t plan to even start thawing it for another year (there aren’t any other reasons to visit NZ than to see the squid, right?).
To minimise handling of the precious specimen, the colossal squid will probably have its temperature raised, over days, in the tank in which it will finally be “fixed”.
“We don’t want to move it too much,” says Marshall.
“When a thing like that is in the water, it’s neutrally buoyant.
“But, of course, when you get it out of the water, you’ve got a big lump of weight and you could try lifting it and your hands would go right through.
“Already it’s got puncture marks from the net.”
Once un-frozen, the creature will be fixed, or embalmed, and then a long-term preservative will be used.
“What I mean by a fixing tank is a tank that you lay it out in, in a natural position, and you then make all the adjustments – align all the arms, pack out the body and all of that. Then you have it in a, say, 5% formalin solution.
“It will require the biggest tank of anything we’ve got.”
Basically, we’re not going to know any more details for a good long while.
Garrison Keillor has done it again: he’s written another insipid article loaded with casual bigotry, this time against gays. I’m pleased to see that Dan Savage has savaged him, so I don’t need to go on at length.
However, this really isn’t the first time Keillor has done this—he has a history of unthinking stereotyping and rejection of gays and atheists. He’s an excellent example of why, when I see the Religious Right and the Religious Left, I don’t think the problem is the Right or Left…it’s the Religious.
My criticism of Keillor from 2005 is below the fold. Not only does he reject atheism and homosexuality, but he does so on the most trivial grounds—gay people want to get married to economize on their wardrobe? It’s nuts.
Last month, I tried a new motivational tactic to reward good commenting, allowing you to nominate and select one of the commenters here for the Order of the Molly award, acknowledging excellence in commenting. Kristine Harley and Scott Hatfield won that recognition that time around. I said it was going to be a monthly phenomenon, and what do you know, another month has come by, and it’s time to do it again.
This is an important award, I’ll have you know. As Kristine noticed, it got some people worked up — John A. Davison is going on at some length about it, although, to be perfectly honest, he only seems to be talking to himself and his little friend, Martin. Still, it is amusing.
Anyway, this is easy. You can see the previous thread for examples, but all you have to do is name some commenter whose contributions you enjoy, and maybe say a word or two to convince others that your choice is worthy. I’ll count up all the mentions on Sunday, and declare a winner then. Don’t turn this into a serious competition, though—it really is intended to just celebrate the good ‘uns, and there will be more opportunities to recognize people in the future.
Isn’t abstinence-only sex education wonderful?
Here is a spectacularly pretty and weird animal: stalk-eyed flies of the family Diopsidae. There are about 160 species in this group that exhibit this extreme morphology, with the eyes and the antennae displaced laterally on stalks. They often (but not always) are sexually dimorphic, with males having more exaggerated stalks—the longer stalks also make them clumsy in flight, so this is a pattern with considerable cost, and is thought to be the product of sexual selection. The Sphyrocephala to the right is not even an extreme example. Read on to see some genuinely bizarre flies and a little bit about the development of this structure.
