Sunday evenings very often suck for many people, e.g. those who have to get up and go to work early the next day after having two days off. Some people don’t get weekends off, or get two days off per week that vary from one week to another. Some people don’t have jobs. Some people are at work right now. Some people are in the hospital.
Anyway, for anyone who might be having a rough time just this moment, a dancing baby Groot might help, at least a little bit.
Here’s the musical accompaniment:
The news that Kari Byron will be leaving “MythBusters” is troubling. (Oh yeah, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci are leaving too.) In honor of ten years of top-quality television science (not once have they attributed anything to aliens), here is her tribute to R2D2.
She’s auctioning the R2D2 dress on eBay for charity, by the way. Continue reading
The Domestic Cat Genome Has Been Fully Sequenced, and It’s Fascinating, Annalee Newitz, io9, August 11, 2014
Now that we have this complete, annotated genome sequence, scientists will be able to analyze cat genetics much more effectively. Cats suffer from many of the same diseases as humans, including versions of leukemia and AIDS, so the cat genome may help us understand the development of these conditions better. Don’t worry — that doesn’t mean scientists will be experimenting on kitties. It just means that we can compare their genomes to ours to see whether there are similarities that shed light on why we are vulnerable (or not) to the diseases.
Cats also have what biologists call “a highly conserved ancestral mammal genome organization,” which means that many stretches of their genome haven’t changed much over evolutionary time. Put simply, domestic cats haven’t changed much since they first evolved. This could allow us to understand mammal evolution better. It could also answer a question that remains a mystery: why did dog domestication change canines so much, whereas cat domestication didn’t change cats much at all?
As migrant children face backlash, communities mobilize to drown out hate, Laurie Smolenski, Waging Nonviolence, August 10, 2014 (via Yes! Magazine)
I simply must give props to Stephanie Zvan for her account of determining the hull thickness of a certain famous fictional space station based on data provided in the opening credits, with calculations scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a bar, using a formula obtained via cell phone from her ex’s new girlfriend consulting a textbook, and reaching a disquieting conclusion. Continue reading
I’ve never been all that much into the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the massive set of books, comics, and other works that build on the original movie trilogy and, to an extent, the prequel trilogy. I will say that I have always respected the amount of work, attention to detail, and commitment to maintaining continuity that seems to have gone into building the SWEU. (With some major exceptions—[cough]Ewok Adventure[cough]—of course
Now, Lucas himself mucked about with the continuity a bit in the prequels, such as with the story of who built C-3PO, but the SWEU (mostly) effectively fills in the historical and narrative gaps of the world Lucas created.
Until Disney took over, that is, and proclaimed that the SWEU is not canonical anymore, to the extent that it ever was. (To be fair, Disney spent more on on Lucasfilm in one fell swoop than I’ve spent on Star Wars properties in my entire life, but that only means that, in a strict capitalist sense, they have more say over the Star Wars canon than I do individually. Strength in numbers, fans….)
Some people take Star Wars very seriously.
I probably shouldn’t find a brawl in the Ukrainian parliament so funny, but I do.
Someone took a candid photo of a fight in Ukranian Parliament that is as well-composed as the best renaissance art pic.twitter.com/BBhw6rdT3l
— James Harvey (@jamesharveytm) August 6, 2014
The images were posted to Facebook on August 2. The caption reads “Fight in the Ukrainian Parliament turned into Renaissance art.”
I just have to give props to anyone who can apply the golden ratio to a news photo.
During an enjoyable bit of geography geekdom on Facebook today, the discussion turned to the Kerguelen Islands, which are located in the southern Indian Ocean—or the Southern Ocean, depending on which map you use.. The remote islands are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, and the permanent human population consists exclusively of scientific researchers. I had a kind of odd fascination with the Kerguelen Islands as a kid, perhaps because they are a rather large land mass (2,786 square miles) in an exceedingly remote location (2,051 miles from the nearest land), so they are a fertile field for the imagination.
![By Varp (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/618px-Kerguelen_Map.png "By Varp (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
Most of the islands’ population appears to consist of seals, so I could envision myself raising an army there and proclaiming myself King of the Dog Mermaids. The islands might have a more Hensonian destiny, though. This is a picture of the Rallier du Baty peninsula on the main island: Continue reading
Women Are Hard To Animate. Thoughts on Representation of Women in Movies, Television and Games, Echidne, Echidne of the Snakes, June 12, 2014
My point is that these stories are picked from a certain angle, an angle of traditionally male heroism, and even when that is not the case most of us are lulled into believing that a handful of women in a large list of participants is a mixed gender setting in a movie or television series. Just think of the Noah’s Ark (which also consisted of all white characters). Probably a fifty-fifty distribution of men and women in some movie reads as a chick flick to many viewers.
One reason for all this is that we tend to see women portray womanhood in their roles, not play roles of individuals who have different temperaments, characters and so on. That’s why having a handful of women in a movie looks like inclusion, even if they all play the role “women,” because that role might be subconsciously compared to the number of dentists or gamblers or whatever in the same movie, never mind that most of the rest of that list are played by men.
Who Owns Your Womb? Women Can Get Murder Charge for Refusing C-Sections, Michelle Goodwin, AlterNet, June 13, 2014
The Art of the Hissy Fit, Digby, AlterNet, October 24, 2007
Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.
There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.
Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris Are Old News: A Totally Different Atheism Is on the Rise, Chris Hall, AlterNet, June 4, 2014
Tribal leader turns down thrilling chance to support the Washington Redskins, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, May 30, 2014
It’s almost sad that someone in their PR department sincerely thought that they were going to get a tribal leader to drop everything he was doing and just jet off to Washington to pat Dan Snyder on the head and tell him it’s cool for him to use a racial slur. I mean, I guess you’re supposed to try everything, but you’d have to be a complete idiot to think that was going to happen. What’s next? Are they just going to start dialing up random Native Americans and trying to get them to hang out with Dan Snyder and say he’s an OK guy?
Game of Thrones, Sex and HBO: Where Did TV’s Sexual Pioneer Go Wrong? Bethany Jones, Jezebel, June 5, 2014 Continue reading