A blog is fine too

I wanted to do a research paper on Louis Wain, but it wasn't viable.

I had some midterms this week. I'm not happy with my performance. I'll blame Leibniz rather than Newton since I think I did splendidly on my physics test. Did you know Leibniz invented binary notation? Neat!

But that's not important.

I've started on my Halloween costume. It is not one of these, but it will be great. More on that at a later date.

Anyways, what I wanted to comment upon was something I encountered doing another ethics assignment.This time it was about bloggers and citizen journalism and standards of professionalism and... The case study was about Josh Wolfe and whether he is a journalist or not. I came down on the affirmitive side. If I was allowed to cite Wikipedia I'd point that he is included in the category: American journalists, but his Journalist of the Year award is better evidence. I'm sure that was one of the citerion they used when considering that categorization as well. As the class went on, I realized the class didn't share this opinion. I'm an introvert naturally and even more so when I feel myself in the minority opinion. I'm not elequent enough to win an argument against so many. I know the internet is serious business, but the class just sounded like Andrew Keen. I know by writing this, I am confirming many of the criticisms they expressed. In my amateur opinion they sounded a little afraid of the Internet. I don't blame them, but being a luddite just makes you sound butt-hurt. Everyone knows the internet is just for porn and cats anyways.

I've digressed. I did a little reading about Mr. Wolf while I was hastily writing why the Internet needs protection and found that he ran for mayor of San Fransisco in 2007. He failed spectacularly. More interesting to me were the write-in candiates. One vote for Robert McCullough and he's in the municipal history books. I just got my ballot, perhaps I shall try for some of this cheap immortality.

Baby Pig

Piglets are adorable.

Gross! I feel like Randall Munroe!

I woke up a short time ago. I slept much longer than I had planned. There was one dream about going cycling with a girl I've had a crush on since elementary school and another about Spider-girl having the venom symbiote, or something. I don't really remember. Things are still hazy. This will be fun.

Whenever I have a dream about someone, I feel compelled to tell them the next day. It's a weird compulsion, I know. I usually resist the temptation to write something retarded on their FaceSpace wall, although I write foolish things on everyone's walls, including my own. Given that I am blogging about it now, it is clear: I have no established custom regarding my stupidity. In any case, I imagine that it would not be as flattering to tell a pretty girl that I had a dream featuring her as I would like to imagine.

In short, I have no idea what girls want, aside from proper dental hygiene.

Fortunately, I can take solace with my heterogametic brothers; no one knows! It is a scientific mystery! I am referring to the Nature special I watched last night, What Females Want. The second half, What Males Will Do, is on next Sunday and I encourage you to watch the spectacle of showboating and rejection throughout the animal kingdom. The bower bird remains a personal favorite of mine.

Females, as always, remain free to contact me for the purpose of enlightenment.

Sexual Omnivores

The gibbon will never threaten to stab you, and in fact, cannot speak. In the event that the gibbon does speak, please disregard its advice.

Given the liberties of obscurity, I am free to post a link to this story which ties in quite well with this past post and reminds me of this program without anyone thinking I have some sort of preoccupation with monkeys. But really, it's only for gibbons.

Swingin' Apes

No one reads this. Or at least, I imagine so. It will take a great deal of comments to dissuade me from this position. Part of me clings to this idea, of zero readership, to allow myself to remain frank and uncensored by a readership, although I rarely speak on personal issues as it is (this isn't a LiveJournal, or so I hope!). I am conflicted, however, as part of me desperately wants to be witty and not ever desire to spout garbage like oh, I wrote about that on my blog. Or I am so blogging this. I always imagine a short, hairy hipster saying such things, and I fancy myself no such thing, although I was briefly amazed at how hairy my arms are during my volcanology final today (which was lovely, thanks for asking!). I am also not very tall. Perhaps there is cause for concern. Alert me if I mention my blog in rl. I did that ironically, really. I should have said rly for greater affect. Or I could have gone with the srsly combo, but I dislike the word seriously fairly intently because of past exposure to Grey's Anatomy. Oh well. Did you know alert is an anagram of alter? It's true!

See? That's the sort of trumpery I just couldn't produce if I had an audience. They would be disgusted. I am a little disgusted as well. Perhaps that has something to do with this I found. It is a very long account of someone's experience in Borneo doing research on orangutans. I haven't read it all, but it is hosted on a university's website, so I assume it is credible. This isn't the first account of orangutan-on-woman sexual assault I've heard of, this one is referenced on the wikipedia article on animal sexuality, which also includes this gem:

"Masturbation is common in the animal kingdom ... We have a Darwinist mentality that all animals only have sex to procreate. But there are plenty of animals who will masturbate when they have nothing better to do. Masturbation has been observed among primates, deer, killer whales and penguins, and we're talking about both males and females. They rub themselves against stones and roots. Orangutans are especially inventive. They make dildos of wood and bark."

I'm no primatologist, but it seems like the bonobos still have a leg-up. I'll finish this up with the specific quote from this account of Borneo so you don't have to read the whole thing to get to the action:

When Mr. Scott and Mrs. Ann neared the camp, they saw an orangutan--Apollo Bob--who seemed to want to play. He wrestled with Mrs. Ann a bit and she thought it was innocent fun, until he grabbed her by both ankles and jerked her to the ground and started to mount her. Mr. Scott tried to pull him off, but orangutans are real strong. He said later it made him understand how horrible it must be to witness your wife or girl friend being raped and be able to do nothing about it. The struggle moved across about thirty feet of the trail, with Mr. Scott being able to do nothing but grab the back of Apollo Bob's neck and push his head toward the ground so he couldn't proceed. About then, Mrs. Anne (with an e at the end of her name) heard the ruckus from camp and came running, and, knowledgeable primatologist that she is, exploited the fact that humans are tool-using animals and orangutans for the most part are not, and grabbed a stick and chased Apollo Bob away.

At least I wasn't a rabbit, I guess.

You probably don't want to type monkey sex into the Google. Ever. Although I did find this image kind of funny.

White Whale

Technically, it's an orca, so the title of the piece is a little deceptive as Ahab hunted sperm whales. Still pretty neat. My mom decided to decorate one of the family bathrooms with an orca theme and when my sister was like 4 she believed that every body of water contained killer whales, including my waterbed and puddles. Being the ass that I was/am, I used to jump on my bed to torture her, but luckily, "Free Willy" (as she had named it) had a secret tunnel that he could use to swim to my parents' waterbed. She also used to stick orca toys in the sink and fill it with water, thinking it would come alive when submerged. My mom always drained these, and my sister cried. Good times! I've told all these stories about orcas and my family and completely omitted the time we visited Keiko and my mom got a great picture of him and my sisters and his three foot long erect penis.

Wired News - AP News

Fearnbach said the white whale stood out.

"When you first looked at it, it was very white," she said Thursday.

Prosthetic Dog Testicles

A man won an Ig Nobel Prize for this idea. I can't stop imagining this guy feeling up his dog's balls for comparison. He gets a wikipedia article for his trouble.

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This Old Razorback

I just finished listening to Huckabee's little speech about gun rights and "putting the IRS out of business" and I found it odd that he kept referring to himself as "this old razorback" in a sort of folksy way. In kind of makes sense when you consider it's the mascot for the University of Arkansas, but still. It's a wild boar...

Razorback - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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DOG LUPUS

I'm more of a cat person, but I'm watching this show on PBS and loving it. I especially like learning what behaviors are hard-wired into different breeds. Some of them look so ridiculous! Ridiculously cute!



NATURE . Dogs That Changed The World . Selective Breeding Problems | PBS

Immune system disease
In autoimmune disorders, an individual's immune system, which normally works to fight off foreign invaders, launches a misguided attack against its own tissues and cells. A number of inherited diseases compromising the immune system have been noted in dogs, including primary severe combined immunodeficiency (a dog version of the "bubble boy" disease) among Basset hounds, Cardigan Welsh Corgis, and Dachshunds. Addison's disease, an autoimmune disease that affects the hormone-producing adrenal glands, occurs more frequently among several particular breeds, including the Bearded Collie, Portuguese Water Dog, and Standard Poodles. Diabetes mellitus, an autoimmune disorder affecting the body's response to sugars, shows up more frequently among Samoyeds and Australian Terrier dogs.

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Invasive Species

Invasive species are a real problem, but it's hard to take it seriously when they are referred to as Nazi Raccoons. It makes it sound like they deserve it.



Cryptomundo.com » Nazi Raccoons

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Things which freak me out

Things like this, freak me out.

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Spitting Spider-man!

Stan Lee forgot a power of extreme awesomeness:

Spitting spider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Aww, shucks

I just uploaded that video to YouTube, the one of the spider. I was feeling quite accomplished until I decided to check and see if it would show up in a search, but instead I found that OPB had already uploaded it. Dang. Here's their video.

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The six-eyed sand spider

It is very deadly, but very friendly. I don't know why, but this spider is as adorable as spiders get. It buries itself! It is awesome.

Silence

I had a most devious thought during a heart retching, for all who love quality in their music, rendition of "Silent Night". One of those thoughts that once planted, supplants all previous opinions regarding a topic. It is one of those things I like to share with people every so often, because I am an awful person, to watch their reaction, sometimes to justify my position in regard to something they enjoy. Like when someone asks if I would like some eggs, I always shake my head sadly and say to them, "No, I don't eat eggs, and it saddens me that you do. Would you eat any woman abortion? Why then do you eat the hen's?" The wiser ovivore, a word which i feel to be true in its description but can find no accreditation to, would correct me at this point saying that not all eggs are fertilized, in fact most commercial eggs are not, and it would be more akin to menstruation. Whatever comparison will be made between menstruation and abortion, I choose the latter in my comparison because of its potent cultural oomf. But I have digressed, in my searching for the word ovivore through wikis and dictis, so I propose to lay down the thought (though not as eloquently as I would hope) which I first thought of during the meetings in a brief respite form the lecture on obeying the honor code in its nth reiteration. Whenever the song "Silent Night" is sung, be sure to not think about it applying to stillbirths. It totally ruins it.

Today I made a life changing decision based on very poor information

Today is the 31st. Which means I will no longer be using Clone High quotations as subject lines. No one cares about that.
I think my sister killed my iguana. I'm trying not to let it bother me. I'm simply bad with pets. I know I didn't have as much to do with this one's demise (it was sick when we got him and never fully recovered) and I kept it around for at least a year more than it would have otherwise. But man, it still hurts a little. Especially since it was probably due to something really silly that he finally expired, like not misting the cage daily or something. I don't know, its starting to make me teary.
I lifted a huge load off my chest today; I withdrew from calculus. After getting 40 out of 107 possible on the last exam, the professor actually suggested it. He's pretty awesome and I feel bad for not taking full advantage of everything he offers. I think I'll continue going to his class, he invited me, what a nice guy. All in all, I feel very relieved about not having to worry about failing the class any longer, as i surely would have.
Maybe I'll get an ant-farm or a nice friendly chiapet or some other plant. I might do okay with those. Plus I could maybe train the ants. I'd feel less bad about their deaths as they aren't individuals and i've had some run ins with them before.
The calculus class was one of the few things I really admired about this campus, well, not the course, but the teacher's flexibility and dedication to student's individual success. It left me with a very good first impression of the campus. However, great pressure has been relieved from me in its removal from my schedule. This campus has a palpable constriction to it. From the inability to watch family guy, to the requirement of religion classes, to a dresscode Jesus wouldn't fit, this place is confinded. Doesn't help that its built in the middle of nowhere. The religion is one of strict rules and obiediance, which I was somewhat delighted to hear has a negative affect on some students with perhaps up to 40% at risk for eating disorders. We talked about it a little today in psychology class, the professor was hesitant to give any numbers, and i inferred that one from spontaneous generation. Anyways, the religion is suffocating at times. I should be used to this sort of pressure by now. Hell, I track and schedule my day around the drugs I take. I was going to tie that in with pressure in a clever way, but the drugs have worn off by now, and it's not worth the effort. Anyways, I just want some more relief from the pressure, probably won't get any. Thats why I play video games. City of Heroes was an escape. I miss it. "This ain't no ice cream social"...whine whine whine