humor
pharyngula | March 27, 2006Oh, no—the Frinksters (<--dead link) have been kicked out of the scienceblogs stable. This is somewhat disturbing, since I think they were a real plus for the group—science is supposed to be fun and profane and weird, after all—but I am assured that they were not evicted for content, but solely because the authors insisted on maintaining anonymity, which meant that all liability devolved on Seed Media rather than the authors. That does mean we can still make dick jokes (good), but it also says that anonymity here is not supported (bad). I guess that's the price we're paying for free…
tsmith | March 27, 2006Phew! Good to know we have a strong terrorist deterrent here. Seen just outside of Iowa City:
You just can't make this stuff up...
pharyngula | March 24, 2006Really…I was only joking about the war on Easter. The wingnuts didn't have to take it seriously.
What's worse is that Minnesota may be Ground Zero: this is a real fake sign, so I'm a little concerned that someone is going to find a reason to blame me. While a little plagiarism gets one fired, I'm not sure what the penalty is for starting a culture war.
In related news, property values in St. Paul have just shot upwards.
pharyngula | March 23, 2006Echidne has a great suggestion: a War on Easter! After all, our godless War on Christmas almost gave Bill O'Reilly a stroke, so maybe if we take a shot at him twice a year we'll finally see his head explode on television. Echidne is taking a hard line against little yellow chicks, which is a fine start, but I can think of a few others.
The date is ridiculous, changing from year to year and calculated by some absurd algorithm based on phases of the moon or something. It's on 16 April this year. I suggest that we fix it to 10 April every year: it's somewhat arbitrary, but it is Max Von Sydow's…
pharyngula | March 22, 2006Pharyngula has been nominated for a Cobb Award. No, actually, that's not quite right: you, the readers of Pharyngula, have been nominated for an award for Worst Community.
It sounds awful, but don't panic (they almost instituted a 'Most Super-extra Worst Professor EVAR-INFINITY' award, and then I might have been in trouble). Here's the description of the Worst Community award:
Worst Community is designated to honor left-blogs that for some reason don't allow comments, but also to single out for distinction blogs that genuinely have a lot of really dumb comments. Another purpose is to better…
grrlscientist | March 21, 2006
Horrors! The Martian Landers, Spirit and Opportunity, are filming on the planet Mars RIGHT NOW with their electron microscope-cameras, but not sharing this important information with us. However, my army of spies found a classroom biology documentary from the future that you will enjoy (follow the link or view the embedded video above by clicking on the little arrow). Why? Because it is all about sex. SEX SEXX SEXXX.
(There, that should increase my traffic, ha!)
I must warn you, dear readers, there is some clay monster nudity, along with simulated stop-motion sex in this film. This film is…
pharyngula | March 21, 2006As an exercise in futility, The Daily Transcript tries to categorize disciplines of the life sciences. Although there is a general air of truth to what he's saying, the problem is that, unlike the members of the Tree of Life, academic disciplines are free to hybridize and accumulate and change, so instead of blurry but recognizable terminal branches, you end up with an anastomosing rete, and no one can sort out precisely who is what.
For instance, I've got training as a neurophysiologist (electrodes everywhere!), a cell biologist (painting organelles different colors and watching the glowing…
oracknows | March 19, 2006As many have pointed out, Isaac Hayes, who happens to be a Scientologist, quit his role as Chef on South Park last week, unhappy that the show had produced an episode that made fun of Scientology. Apparently, it's OK with him if South Park makes fun of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but say anything derogatory about his religion, and Hayes is suddenly not so open-minded.
Now, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have released this statement through their lawyer in response to Comedy Central's recent pulling of a repeat showing of the episode in question in response to pressure by Tom Cruise on…
grrlscientist | March 19, 2006This was sent to me by a friend so I rewrote it a little and posted it here because I thought it might be useful to my blog sibling, Afarensis, in particular;
Anyone who has been job-hunting will probably agree that the interpretations for these bullet items (written in bold) that you typically see in job ads are (sadly) accurate;
Competitive Salary: We remain competitive by paying our employees less than our competitors.
Join our Fast-Paced Company: We have no time to train you and you'll be stuck introducing yourself to your co-workers.
Seeking Enthusiastic, Fun, Hard-Working People…
oracknows | March 17, 2006EoR reports that in Australia, legislation has been passed that allows people other than doctors to issue medical certificates for absences from work, including pharmacists, nurses, acupuncturists, and physiotherapists.
Quite naturally, he wonders when the "the reikiists, the homeopathists and the therapeutic touch" practitioners will want the same privileges and imagines the sorts of letters they will produce:
This is to certify that Joe Bloggs is suffering from
Stagnant qi
Liver toxins
Mercury poisoning
He will be unfit for work for two weeks while he strengthens his immune system.
Heh. I…
oracknows | March 15, 2006A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to a rather humorous video that asked what would happen if Microsoft had designed iPod packaging. (The old link seems to be dead, but the video can be found here.)
It turns out that the Microsoft was responsible:
Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla on Tuesday confirmed with iPod Observer that his company initiated the creation of the iPod packaging parody video that was first reported last month. "It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers…
tsmith | March 15, 2006*People Eating Tasty Animals
(From Animal Crackers via Science and Politics).
oracknows | March 14, 2006I'm feeling a bit envious right now.
Kevin Leitch has something I haven't. He's acquired his very own blog sockpuppet:
Someone (and it's really not hard to guess who) has created a little sockpuppet site for me. Whomever (ahem) it is has also started sprinkling the blogosphere with spicy comments from 'me'.
How cool is this? Someone (ahem) is worried enough about what I say to start a whole new blog to sockpuppet me!
I could get annoyed about such a thing but really, we have to look at it this way - I must be making a much bigger impression on someone (ahem) then I thought I was. Enough for…
tsmith | March 14, 2006Okay, so sure, it's admittedly nerdy, but sheesh, why all the haters? One of my favorite high school memories was a party we had in 1992, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the decimal point--complete with an all-night party at the local YMCA, a huge decimal point cake, and all sorts of incredibly nerdy games and the like. (Note: I never said I was exactly normal). C'mon, let the kids have some fun--one can't be too much of a nerd, right?
pharyngula | March 13, 2006
Alas, my mandate for today also includes traveling to St. Cloud State University to give two talks, one to the biology department in the afternoon and another to the philosophy department this evening. It looks like I get to be driving through the tail end of a snowstorm today, too.
It may be a little quiet here today. I haven't forgotten everyone, I'm just going to be excessively busy.
oracknows | March 12, 2006Regular readers of this blog since before the move to ScienceBlogs a month ago have probably wondered when everybody's favorite blog mascot would return. It's likely that Christopher Mims and the rest of the ScienceBlog editors probably hoped that he wouldn't, so as not to associate the Seed Magazine name with such strangeness. Perhaps even my fellow ScienceBloggers, some of whom may not be familiar with the wonder that is Orac's mascot, may find themselves scratching their heads and wondering, "WTF?" while wishing Orac would restrain his stranger impulses.
If only it were so easy. Orac has…
oracknows | March 11, 2006Need more cowbell?
Not if you're this guy.
Bummer.
Next we'll hear about miraculous "cowbell cures" from alties.
pharyngula | March 11, 2006Through the miracle of animation, Charles Darwin tells the creationists to "kiss my ass".
It doesn't seem very true-to-life, but he has had over a century to work up a bit of crankiness.
oracknows | March 9, 2006A little bird told me that today is PZ Myers' birthday and instigated a little blog birthday party for him among various science bloggers. I wondered how I might send my wishes to him for a happy birthday or whom I might invite.
Then it came to me. There was only one entity, one creature appropriate to the task, one being who hasn't been heard from on this blog in a while. Indeed, he hasn't been heard from since I made the move to ScienceBlogs.
Yes, you have to look below the fold to see it:
EneMan says: "Happy Birthday, PZ!"
(Who else could it be, but that tireless defender of colon health…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2006With one picture, a friend reminded me of my barely concealed longing for a horse when he sent this to me. Oh, cruel, wicked friend!
Oddly, that kid looks a lot like I did when I was young and cute (yes, I had freckles when I was a wee one).
But this picture makes me wonder what is it about girls and horses? about boys and dogs? Is this nearly universal, or do we only see this in America? Is this a recent phenomenon (within the previous 50 years or so)?
I do have my hypotheses regarding the girl-horse/boy-dog topics, but I was wondering what you all think.