Hand-job monkeys? Hand-job monkeys!

Best comments thread I've seen in a while, and God Himself FTW.

Discombined

Robert Rauschenberg *1925-†2008.

Here are a couple of bikes he installed in Berlin. I'm putting them here because I thought the picture an appropriate choice to remember him by, as I too am in Germany (though not in Berlin) and will pick up my new bike from the shop this afternoon.

And here is his famous goat. I'm putting it here because I really like the goat. (Not only does it look good, it's really funny as well.)

Big media Roy

Roy Edroso is a man of parts. And one of those parts is that of intrepid naturalist, trekking through the foetid fever-swamps, turning over rocks and describing the small unpleasant creatures he finds there.

The Village Voice noticed and asked Roy to write a special election-year guide to the Bizarro World "blogosphere". The readership must have liked it, because the Voice has now signed Roy on to do a weekly M&M conference on rightwing bloggers every Monday. Extra special goodness: illustrated by Tom Tomorrow!

What, you're still here?!

Reasons to make sure ALL your windows are closed, part 8,927

The family are away for two days, so of course I went to see Iron Man -- nothing like a bit of subtle intellectual diversion to keep the synapses limber. Afterwards I dined, as I so often do when the family are away, at the Upper Westside (not great cuisine, to be mercilessly frank, but simple, cheap and good. Comfort food. Plus, Ralf the host shares my deep affection for NYC). I was gone oh, perhaps four or five hours all told. Now, our kitchen and living room give onto a terrace via double glass doors -- I think they're called "French windows"? -- and above each is a sort of small transom window that tilts open inward along the top. I left the living room transom open when I left, the better for air to circulate.

As things transpired, this was a mistake.

So I came home and there I was futzing about in the office upstairs when I heard noises below. These I ignored at first, as I was surely alone in the house. But then I heard them again, and then again once more. Hmm: better check it out. (If I were in Texas I've no doubt I'd have been cocking the "hog's leg" at this point.)

I walk around the ground floor, puzzled. Nobody there, nothing out of place. Where were those noises coming from, then? And that's when I see the intruder, standing on the living room sofa.

Continue reading "Reasons to make sure ALL your windows are closed, part 8,927"

A toast

Vivat; mabuhay; živjeli; fad saol agaibh; לחיים; to life.

Всех с Праздником Первого Мая!

Because people all too easily forget that liberalism is a revolutionary creed.

Debout, les damnés de la terre
Debout, les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passé faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout.

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain!

Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud.

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain!

Enjoy the day, citizens, comrades!

What a long, strange trip he made possible

Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann has died at his home in Basel. Hoffmann is, of course, the researcher who first synthesised (6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide (though like me, you probably just call it "LSD" when you ask for it down at the shop). Hofmann also took the world's first ever trip, entirely by accident. His skin absorbed a bit of the new substance and, suddenly, there he was, wearing a headband and playing hacky-sack at a Grateful Dead concert. (He repeated the experience deliberately a few days later, no doubt all in the cause of science.)

Nary a stitch of tie-die on him!
(Photo by Philip H. Bailey, shown here under a Creative Commons licence.)

Dr. Hofmann was 102. I had no idea he was still alive; I'd just assumed he died long ago. Though he looked like (and indeed was) a bürgerlicher Swiss industrial scientist, he retained throughout his life a keen and not altogether non-participatory interest in psychotropic compounds. Who knows, maybe we'd all live past 100 if we'd just drop more blotter.

To life

Illness is the enemy of life. Frank Darcy is seriously ill. He's staring the enemy in the face but he won't blink. To symbolise his resolve, he wants to propose a toast to life. And he'd like you to join in. This Thursday, the first of May. At 8:00 pm (in whatever time zone you find yourself in -- it'll be a round-the-clock virtual binge).

If you are faced with major illness, or somebody important to you is, why not get together with some friends on Thursday and raise your glasses. You can tell Frank about it at the website he's created; if you're on Facebook, this is an Event you can join.

His eyesight needs checking

The Editors has a post up about something so gobsmackingly stupendous that the word "ZOMG" might have been invented for it. Maybe even "ŽΩ]\/[ĢxxxØr§".

A man called Zirkle is trying to be elected to the US Congress¹. He made a speech before a group calling itself the "National Socialist Workers Party". Zirkle says he hadn't realised what these people were. Consider that claim as you look at this photo of Zirkle making his speech²:

Really, who among us hasn't absentmindedly made a speech in front of a shower of neonazis with swastika flags and portraits of Hitler on the wall at a party for Hitler's 119th birthday? It's a mistake anyone could make.

---

1) Surprisingly, in light of Jonah Goldberg's very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care, Zirkle is a Republican rather than a Democrat.

2) It was a nice speech, though. Something about Jewish pornographers enslaving white women.

Better music through science

It strikes me that one can usefully think of Adam Green as the illegitimate love-child of Jonathan Richman and Jim Morrison. Covers his music as well as his looks, in fact.

I am not worthy

No, really; I'm not.

This is bizarre. I read Pharyngula almost every day; at least, every day that I have time to read websites at all. Yet I noticed only tonight (and only because I was running a search to find a specific comment I had once written) that PZ's readership elected me to the Order of the Molly for February of this year. How on earth could I have overlooked that?!

Continue reading "I am not worthy"

The prosody of the genes

PZ Myers's Pharyngula site is blessed with a regular commenter who uses the nom de plume "Cuttlefish". Cuttlefish's comments invariably take the form of verse: witty, on point, and technically sound. (This versifying mollusc knows there is a lot more to poetry than putting rhyming words together.)

It's always a pleasure to read Cuttlefish's offerings, but the most recent one is an astonishing technical accomplishment. PZ's post was a response to a correspondent who didn't see how chromosome numbers could change, and asked for an explanation. PZ explains, at length but in easily digestible form, how chromosomes can break apart and reform such that (out of the same genes) entirely new chromosomes are built. And Cuttlefish, in comments, has created a wonderful poetic analogue to PZ's story of the genes. This isn't just amusing versemaking, it is poetry in the highest sense: making the words one chooses and the forms in which one arranges them precisely appropriate to the underlying concept one wants to convey.

You can find a lot of Cuttlefish's poems at this convenient website, BTW. And don't miss the post Cuttlefish was commenting, either!

Well done the girls!

In a few minutes we shall settle down to watch the DFB-Pokal Finale, or in English, the German FA Cup final. It's Bayern Munich against Dortmund, and the smart money has to be on Bayern. But an even more boring football ritual has already taken place this evening.

BTW, I'm not using "boring" in a pejorative sense. It's simply that Frankfurt is home to one of the very best football sides in ... well, in Germany, that's not open to question; in Europe, that's also closed to debate; possibly there is a stronger club somewhere else in the world but if there is, I have never heard of it.

No, I am not talking about the Eintracht (which is all that, but only in my fantasies). I am talking about the 1. FFC Frankfurt, our women's side.

And if it's all a bit boring, that's not the girls' fault. It's just that they are so damn good that the only suspense in German women's football is, "By how many points will the FFC be champion?". (That goes for Europe too, BTW; the FFC almost always win the UEFA cup.)

And, yes of course, they won the DFB Pokal this afternoon 5:1 (against Saarbrücken, but it could have been against anybody). Hats off to the girls! We love you, so don't misunderstand our wish that (because we love football itself even more) there be some other side that can spend 90 minutes on a pitch with you without being utterly humiliated!

UPDATE: The boys won, too. FC Bayern beat the hated Borussia Dortmund 2:1. But Dortmund at least provided for a bit of tension when they equalised in the 90th minute, for all the good it did them in the long run.

Now Bayern are all about "winning the treble" but, sorry lads, the third leg of the treble is the Champions League (modern vulgarity though it be), not the second-tier UEFA Cup. Good luck with that, but come back next year with the league, the DFB Cup and the Champions League under your belt before you start waxing grand about the "treble".

Let them eat spuds

Global commodity prices are shooting through the roof -- and foods are commodities. Rich firstworlders bitch and moan about the price of milk, thirdworlders go without. But hey, here's an idea: the poor can cultivate, and subsist from, the humble potato!

Hmm. Look, the potato is without doubt a most admirable tuber. But suggesting that we actively bring about a situation in which large populations of materially deprived people can afford no other sustenance than potatoes, on which they are literally dependent for their survival? That's just feckin brilliant. Because this arrangement has worked out so well in the past.

Spreading the good news of truth

If you want to learn something about a group of dishonest, contemptible people, go here: Expelled.

If you want to help make other people aware of that website, go here for a helpful suggestion.

Kin deletion explained!

Pity the poor makers of slasher films. It's getting harder and harder to find a hook to hang a film from. Long gone are the days when all you needed was a half dozen or so teenagers and a remote campsite. No, these days you need evil Slovakian youth hostels or the seven deadly sins. And now that those ideas have been taken, where does the would-be filmmaker turn?

Why, to evolutionary theory, of course. Before we proceed, let me introduce you to the Price equation. Here it is in its full form:

"Umm, yes," you might be asking, "but what on earth is it?" Well, as Steven Frank put it in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, it is nothing less than "an exact, complete description of evolutionary change under all conditions". What, all of evolution explained in a handful of tiny squiggles? Apparently, yes. (If you follow the link to his paper, Prof. Frank will walk you through what the squiggles mean.)

Continue reading "Kin deletion explained!"

Why we fight

Rod Dreher, a purse-lipped Church Lady from Texas, castigates a woman who wants a slinkily-tailored wedding dress, the slut. Now, Rod has always been a favourite target of Alicublog beatdowns, and it doesn't take long for Roy Edroso to bring teh contempt. But as Roy notes, this is about something much more important than a risible suburban Pecksniff:

Dreher frequently reminds us that Christians don't riot, as some Muslims do, when they perceive their values to be mocked. But he never recalls that for many, many centuries, Christians backed by the power of states harassed, exiled, and burned men and women who didn't conform to their prejudices in comportment or anything else....

It took us nearly two millenia and oceans of blood to reduce these savages to a noisome rump. We can spare a little attention to remember why we did it.

If you aren't reading Roy every day, you need to be.

Upward progressions

Don't you just love Magazine's "Shot by Both Sides"? What's not to like, really. Still, I prefer Buzzcocks' "Lipstick". Notice anything similar about them? (There is, but the explanation isn't particularly sinister.)

It's entirely arguable, you know, that nothing is so central to modern pop as Buzzcocks, that is, the original  Shelley/Devoto axis and the many artists connected in sub-Kevin Baconian proximity thereto. I mean, seriously. Fill in any blanks as you see fit.

Distributed intelligence at work

Like most people, you probably read Proteomics over your breakfast cereal. If so, your eyes surely goggled when you saw the review article "Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul: Proteomic prospective evidence" by M. Warda and J. Han. If you're a Star Wars obsessive, you'll have asked yourself, 'If they're fanboy enough to write an article like this, why can't they spell "midichlorians" properly?' But if you're a scientist, you'll be asking WTF that word 'soul' is doing in a journal about proteomics (or, really, in any scientific journal).

PZ Myers noticed the review and, after the obligatory eye-goggling, wrote about it at Pharyngula. A very odd article altogether, thought PZ. Lots of sound science in the thing, actually; but tucked in among the sciency bits are nodules full of screaming waka-waka.

And here's the waka-wakiest:

[T]he points that show proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating all other kinds of life. [Emph. added.]

Now, here's something to induce spontaneous orgasm in intelligent-design creationists. At long last, they can point to a peer-reviewed paper! In a respectable scientific journal! That proposes a creator! A mighty one, even!

Their orgasms are premature. As I learn from the many working scientists in PZ's comments thread, review articles like this, unlike original papers, aren't necessarily peer reviewed (depends on the journal, apparently). But that's the least of their problems.

Continue reading "Distributed intelligence at work"

Jack Chick, Muse to Genius

You've probably seen at least one Chick tract, perhaps in hard copy, perhaps on teh internets. They're pretty funny, but it's a bit ghastly to consider that Jack and not a few other people actually believe that sort of thing. The thought does put a damper on one's postmodern hipster-ironic laughter.

But I'm willing to cut Chick a lot of slack, for he has inspired great artists¹. Meet Alice Donut, one of my fave bands of all time, if yet more living proof that greatness and commercial success are not necessarily correlated in the world of "pop" music. Without further ado, here's Alice Donut and the Chick-inspired "Lisa's Father":

I'm sorry to say that the Donut version is, umm, pretty faithful to the original; which doesn't really speak well for Jack Chick².

The song's pretty good, but it's not the best the band has ever done. (Maybe Chick's spirit was weighing them down.)  Try this one now. Embedding is disabled, so click on the album cover to access the video of "Lydia's Black Lung", then crank your computer speakers up as high as they'll go. This one really does call for 11.

1 Then of course there's this, albeit in a different medium.

2 If you're really interested, you can click back to the homepage of that site to find the actual tract in four parts (Chick's own site, it seems, has grown a little embarrassed about showing it). The most charitable interpretation I can offer is that the particular problem Chick uses here as the peg from which to hang his Jesus rant is one he and his family are entirely unfamiliar with in real life. And as I wish evil on no one, I certainly hope that's the case.