Uncategorized « An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

May 30, 2010

Science Tattoos, Again

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: tattoos — Ethan @ 9:34 pm

I’m still thinking about what I want to get for the commemorative tattoo I was talking about here. Starting to narrow in down, and right now I’m leaning torward an armband featuring a Nepenthes pitcher, or possibly one of the bright red child’s microscope.

I am, after all, technically a botanist. Nepenthes are some of the most striking plants, and I have a deep love for them. I’m already starting to add it to my mental self-image. The biggest question is, which species?

I like the sassy look on this guy

But this one's more shapely

And so on.

I got the microscope for christmas when I was 5. I still have that microscope on my mantle. For a little while, I slept with it under my arm like a teddybear.

Either way, when it’s done, I’ll have to post it to the gallery here. The Science Tattoo Emporium has given me more entertainment than it should.

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April 28, 2010

<3

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: math, tattoos — Ethan @ 10:14 pm

I’ve been considering, on and off for a little while, getting another science-themed tattoo to celebrate my (hopeful) transition toward being a Real Grown Up Scientist (for one possible value of ‘grown up’). And because my other tattoos are getting lonely. I just stumbled on this in The Loom’s science tattoo gallery. And whoo boy am I tempted to crib the idea, maybe with a little graph–it’s a fairly simple equation that, when graphed, produces a heart shape. On the other hand, I apperently told a friend who planned to get the equasion for the Fibbonacci sequence on her arm that she’d be explaining it to strangers at the grocery store for the rest of her life. I don’t remember saying that, but she recently told me I was more right than she could have imagined.

The original tattoo-ee’s story is very sweet–she and her siblings all picked out tattoos after their mom was diagnosed with breast cancer (but is doing very well). It’s such a great design. I just had to share.

I <3 this tattoo

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April 22, 2010

Georgia Legislature: Embarrassing Us in Front of All the Other States, Again

Filed under: Government and Policy,Uncategorized — Tags: government, propaganda, psudoscientific asshattery — Ethan @ 11:22 pm

So, there’s a bill before the Georgia legislature right now, banning Georgians from non-consensually implanting microchips in each other. Fair enough, I’d figure that would fall under assault or something, but sure. Forcibly implanting something under someone else’s skin is Not Ok.

A few years ago, some friends of mine were doing a study on bats where they were implanting subcutaneous RFIDs about the size of a grain of rice into the animals and releasing them. They got drunk one night and decided they should inject themselves with a chip each, to see what it was like for the bats. Apparently, it hurt more than a little, but less than a fuck ton.

Yet no one is currently running around Georgia like a mad animal-shelter worker, tagging residents with their own home addresses in case they get lost (though that might do my brother some good). Nor do they plan to. As near as anyone can tell, the fine ladies and gentlemen of the Georgia state legislature are pushing SB 235 to protect us all from the Mark of the Beast ™, which they seem to think will take the form of a microchip implant (I think they mean an RFID tag, in this century. But who knows). Despite growing up mostly in the bible belt, I have no real idea of what the hell they’re talking about. I think it has something to do with Satan tagging people to take to hell, or somesuch. I don’t know, my parents are atheists. Form what I’ve pieced together from incoherent billboards and Chick tracts, the Unholy One will kick off the end times with some sort of game of Mafia, where if you get tricked into letting yourself get marked, uh, you lose. For eternity. Until Jesus un-tags you, or you reach base.
But the real question is, why is this matter up for debate in the state legislature? Are they tired of trying to end droughts with prayer? Trying to draw attention away from their massive budget shortfalls, their education cuts, or their refusal to pony up even a little bit of cash for mass transit, even when the federal government is offering to pay for high-speed passenger rail through the state? Getting bad press for trying to sue to stop Georgians from getting healthcare? Probably. But so what if the state falls apart for the next 10, 20, or 50 years? They’re protecting us for eternity. That’s why they can’t be bothered to worry about the trifling details of governing in this world.

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April 15, 2010

Another promise-to-post post.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: housekeeping — Ethan @ 10:52 pm

So, when was the last time I posted here? Before the last time I had to pay for the domain? Well, I’m gonna give it another go, here and there. I’m going to give myself a break on the all-science all-the-time format, and throw in some other things here and there. Let’s see how it goes. In the meantime, here’s a story about immortal jellyfish to haunt your dreams.

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April 23, 2009

Increased CO2 Fuels Poison Ivy Growth: I Guess We Kinda Had This Coming

Filed under: Government and Policy,Uncategorized — Tags: climate change, environment & ecology, sustainability — Ethan @ 10:56 am

So, when I first learned about global warming in 3rd grade or so, I figured it just meant that everywhere on Earth would get a little hotter. That was bad enough, since I grew up in the southeastern US where summers were already hot enough to make the backs of your hands sweat, and snow was a rare treat.

Of course, it’s not that simple–”Global Warming” got renamed ‘Global Climate Change” for a reason. Rising sea levels, coral reef bleaching, droughts, unusually cold winter storms, bizarre urban tornadoes–there’s a whole cornucopia of ripple effects, many of which are obvious in hindsight, but weren’t at the top of the common-sense list of things global climate change might do.

Now we can add healthier, itchier poison ivy to the shit list:

…carbon dioxide is, basically, plant food. I’m told that rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere affect different plants in different ways, but poison ivy is definitely one of the winners of global warming. For this unpleasant little weed, more CO2 seems to mean more growth.

…not only is poison ivy growing fat and happy on the spoils of our carbon emissions, but that plants getting more CO2 also produce more, and stronger, levels of urushiol—the toxin that makes the ivy so darned appealing to begin with.

All I have to add is: That fucking sucks.

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January 12, 2009

When Science meets Drinking

Filed under: funny,Uncategorized — Tags: funny — Ethan @ 6:06 pm

Man, this made me happy. Spagghetilogic got bored over the holidays, and fed a bunch of cocktail recipes into PLYLIP to get a genuine phylogenetic tree, treating each ingredient as a gene or marker. What’s interesting is that there are a couple of cases of convergent evolution, mimicry, and so forth.

To wit:

Note that you can make out several different “kingdoms” of drinks after a close look at the tree. I can make out the Gin kingdom, the Orange Juice kingdom, and the Amaretto kingdom, for starters. Then we have the outliers, like a 110 in the Shade, which nobody in his right mind would drink. These are the platypuses and slime molds of the drink world.

Makes me wan to mix up a bunch of these to study their, err, gross morphology.

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June 27, 2008

AWOL

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ethan @ 7:25 am

So, anyone who reads this blog may have noticed that lately there hasn’t been much to read. I’m in the middle of a sooner than expected move. It’s just across town, but it’s still a hassle. I’ll be back next week, once the utilities are transfered and the boxes are stacked somewhere where I can ignore them and blog.

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May 29, 2008

Good PR Indeed

Filed under: funny,Uncategorized — Tags: counterrevolutionary pleasures, funny, psudoscientific asshattery, science in the media — Ethan @ 9:28 pm

After decades of running of being a terrible magazine, perennial Mad Magazine imitator Cracked has metamorphosed into a sometimes funny, sometimes annoying web publication. Check out their 6 Most Badass Stunts Ever Pulled in the Name of Science, or at least the first page. No. 5, “Drs. Warren and Barry Marshall Drink Stomach-Eating Germs,” is one of my favorite semi-apocryphal science stories, second only to the laboratory urban legend about the undergrad who inadvertently overfilled an autoclave with still-frozen severed monkey heads.

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May 28, 2008

Newsflash

Filed under: funny,Uncategorized — Tags: funny, strange organisms — Ethan @ 9:53 pm

Making cyborg monkeys that can perform complex tasks via robotic arms wired directly into their brains is NOT OK. Not only are these folks going to have PETA all up on their asses, eventually the monkeys themselves will take their terrible revenge. Consider this your preemptive ‘I told you so.’

Via Boing Boing.

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May 17, 2008

The Right Wing Says Soy Makes You Gay

Filed under: funny,media and pop culture,Uncategorized — Tags: gender, homosexuality, intersex issues, psudoscientific asshattery, science in the media, sex, trans issues — Ethan @ 9:10 pm

Thanks to Bria for sending this my way. The article is old, but it’s some pretty amazing fear-mongering from a popular right-wing news blog thing. I’d never heard of ‘em before, but Wikipedia says it’s big. The guy says he’s warning parents about the risks of endocrine disrupters, but he gets it all wrong. For starters, apparently soy foods are the only source of estrogen mimics out there. Not biphenol-a, not DDT, not whatever DES might still be floating around out there. Just soy. Take a look:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

So, what is all that hippy food doing to our children? He mentions the toll endocrine disruptor can do to one’s fertility, and the sharp uptick in cancer amongst people who have been exposed to synthetic estrogens (not naturally-occurring phytoestrogens, like those in soy) early in life. But all of that pales in comparison to the fear of effeminizing little boys. And, apparently, here’s not difference between beingintersex, being a ‘feminine male’ and being gay. No matter that the assertion that gay men have a testosterone deficiency/estrogen surplus was disproved the moment someone developed a handy way to test hormone levels. Giving gay men extra testosterone just makes them want to have more gay sex, since testosterone tends to up your sex drive.

Honestly, I couldn’t stomach reading all 5 parts. I have a short attention span, and I’d need to artificially extend it to wade through all that psudoscience. Plus I can’t even figure out who this guy’s misinterpreting, because all his citation either lead back to the home page of the site, or to a 404 error. Which I guess says it all.

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