Monday Morning Cute: Multi-legged, primordial squee

Posted on September 23, 2013 by wellsdc

The horseshoe crab has some pretty terrifying ancestors, as I have discussed here in the past. It may also have descended from the less-terrifying, more -intriguing trilobites, which went extinct over 100 million years ago after a 300 million-year run. In addition to horseshoe crabs, the trilobites may have developed into horseshoe shrimp, believed to be among the oldest living species on Earth, remaining nearly unchanged for about 200 million years.

It’s also strangely cute:

"A Noodly Encounter" by jurvetson [CC BY 2.0], on Flickr

I suppose “cuteness” is a highly subjective concept.

They are very small, roughly 2 to 4 millimeters in length, which has a great deal to do with their apparent cuteness. If the creature pictured above were, say, the size of a Ford Fiesta, I would not be discussing its cuteness, but rather wondering how I could get my hands on a tank.

Not cute. Fortunately, also not real.

Photo credits: “A Noodly Encounter” by jurvetson [CC BY 2.0], on Flickr; DocCrystal on darkcrystal.wikia.com.

This Week in WTF, September 20, 2013

Posted on September 20, 2013 by wellsdc

Original idea by Videmus Omnia; Original remastering by Antonu [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Some search results are quite meta. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

– If you are a blogger who likes to include picture in blog posts, you are probably familiar with Wikimedia Commons, the crowdsourced site for Creative Commons and public domain images. Since pretty much anyone can upload pictures there, it seems inevitable that some of them will be…….controversial. Some of it might even be called “porn.” To combat the scourge of free porn, which is literally not available anywhere else on the internet, public pressure led Wikipedia to root out and delete all of the porn on Wikimedia Commons. Except that they gave up on it. This made Fox News mad. Which made giving up totally worthwhile.

– Due to what a manager calls “some major budgetary changes,” nurses at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville will soon be responsible for taking out trash and cleaning toilets in their patients’ rooms. Because nothing helps a hospital run more smoothly than an angry, demoralized nursing staff. Also, consider cross-contamination risks. Seriously, though, I wonder if the administrators urging the nurses to “pull together” are making any comparable sacrifices. Maybe they should scrub toilets for a bit. Builds character, you know?

– An Indian-American woman won the Miss America crown this week. This has angered a subset of Americans who seem determined to ensure that America cannot have nice things. Critics (although that seems too generous a description) somehow managed to link this to the anniversary of 9/11, while also making obligatory 7-11 jokes. Sigh.

Photo credit: Original idea by Videmus Omnia; Original remastering by Antonu [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Inconvenience the Cat

Posted on September 19, 2013 by wellsdc

While looking for consumer products that might assist us in keeping our wonderful, beautiful, loving, adorable, absurdly destructive dogs under some modicum of control, I came across a “pet gate with small pet door”:

Via wayfair.com

Similar products abound on the internet. I haven’t had a cat since I was a kid, when we found the one cat in the universe that did not prompt severe allergic reactions, so I may be a bit rusty. My question is this: How pampered must a cat be to have its own little door? Aside from the most geriatric of cats, I suspect most of them could hurdle that gate.

Before “Game of Thrones,” There Was “Nightflyers”

Posted on September 18, 2013 by wellsdc

Science fiction based in the future is fascinating for what it tells us about the present, or at least the period when the particular work was produced. The scifi movies of the 1980’s are especially interesting now, in the sense that they might have anticipated technology that has not yet happened, like distant human space travel, but failed to anticipate technology that did happen, like flat-screen computer monitors. Their most egregious predictive failure, of course, was in the realm of fashion. Many 1980’s scifi movies now look like period pieces about time travelers from the 1980’s going to the future.

I vaguely recall a movie from my early teenage years called “Nightflyers.” Mostly, I remember noticing that it starred Catherine Mary Stuart, a/k/a Maggie from “The Last Starfighter” and Regina from “Night of the Comet.” It was released in 1987, and it looks like what you might imagine would happen if a spaceship captain grabbed a group of people out of an era-appropriate diet cola commercial and sent them out of the solar system. Story-wise, it’s a but like “2001: A Space Odyssey” meets “The Breakfast Club,” if HAL had a mullet.

About the only reason it grabbed my attention recently is that I learned it was based on a novella of the same name by George R.R. Martin. That makes it at least worth a look. Luckily, the whole movie is on YouTube, albeit broken down into multiple parts. I made it all the way to part 5, so see if you can beat my record. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Forget Your Worries for a Moment—Here’s a Pug in a Park

Gallery

Posted on September 17, 2013 by wellsdc

Few people know that looking directly into a pug’s eyes can substantially elevate your endorphin levels while simultaneously lowering your blood pressure. Don’t ask me how that works. It’s science. Anyway, here are some pictures I found of a pug … Continue reading →

The Art of Avoiding Breaking Bad Spoilers

Posted on September 16, 2013 by wellsdc

Via quickmeme.com

(Nonspecific spoilers ahead.) In an era where almost everyone has a TV show marketed directly to them, AMC’s Breaking Bad has developed a remarkably widespread—and fanatically devoted—following. The show now only has two episodes left of its five-season run, and it has been building up to what is generally predicted to be a humdinger of a finale. Last night’s episode, “Ozymandias,” certainly hit many people in the feels. That, in and of itself, should not be much of a spoiler. A spoiler, in my opinion, would have been to say that nothing of interest happened, or that the entire episode was about Data learning to be more human. Oops, wrong show, sorry.

Via quickmeme.com

I’ll be honest here: I think Breaking Bad is an incredible show, perhaps one of the best in television history, but I don’t love it the way some people do. I don’t feel the same emotional investment that I felt in characters from The Wire, not by a long shot.

Getting back to last night’s episode: in the era of the DVR, not everyone watches a show at the same time, meaning that some people were not interested in discussing “Ozymandias” at the water cooler this morning. In the era of social media, the water cooler discussion has expanded far beyond the water cooler. This raises an interesting question. In social media forums like Facebook, it is relatively easy to post spoiler warnings, but not so much on Twitter. What sort of etiquette, if any, exists to guard against accidentally revealing key plot developments to people who are not ready for them. Conversely, what is the responsibility of the spoilee to avoid discussions that might lead to spoilers? It hardly seems fair to ask people who have seen the episode, in all of its [redacted], to wait to discuss it until everyone has had a chance to see it. Continue reading →

Monday Morning Cute: Monkeys Making Friends

Posted on September 16, 2013 by wellsdc

Also from Mother Nature Network, the story of a pigeon whose friendship saved an injured monkey’s life:

This macaque was rescued from Neilingding Island in China after his mother abandoned him and left him for dead, according to the Daily News. His recovery was dragging until he made friends with this pigeon, and now the two are rarely apart.

Here’s a picture of a monkey riding on the back of a dog:

Has It Occurred to the Pearl-Clutchers that Miley Cyrus Might Be Deliberately Screwing With Them?

Posted on September 15, 2013 by wellsdc

Via laurapreponme.tumblr.com

An article on some website takes Billy Ray Cyrus to task for not condemning his daughter’s blatant acting-like-a-sexually-independent-young-adult in her latest video. (The article’s subtitle states “BILLY RAY CYRUS ENABLES MILEY BY APPROVING HIS DAUGHTER’S NUDE VIDEO FOR ‘WRECKING BALL.'”) When asked about her mostly-nude performance in the “Wrecking Ball video” (because a father’s opinion is the most relevant thing regarding anything an adult woman does), Billy Ray reportedly said:

“I’m a song man. A musician singer songwriter who loves all styles of music. But again…I come from the old school where it starts with an artist and a song …colliding if you will … in a moment where the song, the singer, the producer, the band and the listener become one. It wouldn’t have mattered if Miley would have worn jeans and a flannel shirt, a tux or a nun’s habit,” and that “her performance vocally on the tune reflects her root and sheer God-given talent.”

The author’s response to this supportive father, who is clearly proud of his daughter’s musical chops?

Seriously Billy Ray! It would have totally mattered! She might actually be taken seriously instead of the butt of every joke.

An expression of concern about a young woman being “the butt of every joke” is utterly, completely meaningless when it comes from the people making those jokes. Continue reading →

Epic Battles from History, vs. Petting Virtual Dogs. The Choice Seems Clear.

Posted on September 15, 2013 by wellsdc

I recently started playing Assassin’s Creed III, which, despite the number, is the fifth game in the series. (Assassin’s Creed II was basically its own trilogy.) It is set in New England during the buildup to the Revolutionary War (I’m only about halfway through the game, and we just fought at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill.)

The game offers many improvements to the controls, as compared to previous games in the series, and makes other changes that help game play. The new feature that I most like however, is that animals feature prominently into the game. By that, I mean:

You can hunt, and then sell meat, hides, pelts, and other spoils to merchants throughout the game areas;
If you run into redcoats, you have a fighting chance of getting away, but if you run into a wolf, cougar, bear, or male elk in the wilderness, you might as well just put the controller down, wait to regenerate, and find a different route; and
You get to pet domesticated animals.

Via tumblr.com

Really, I only care about the third thing. I thought Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was awesome for adding ziplines (although I still don’t quite understand why 16th-century Constantinople had so dang many of them everywhere), but the ability to pet a dog for no reason is gaming brilliance.

Sometimes, dogs will walk up to you and roll onto their backs, but unfortunately, there is no “belly rub” function. Get on that, please, Ubisoft!

Here are a few image macros that express my thoughts quite well: Continue reading →

More Talk of Secession from Texas Republicans

Posted on September 14, 2013 by wellsdc

KellyP42 from morguefile.com Texas Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman, when he’s not advocating for pre-birth voting rights, is apparently talking up Texas’ ability to go it alone as an independent nation (h/t Jenn). He apparently said in an interview that Texas is “uniquely situated because we have energy resources, fossil and otherwise, and our own independent electrical grid…. [Texas has] been very strong leading in the charge agains the Obama administration.”

People like this tend to wrap themselves in the American flag when it suits their purposes, then talk about taking their ball and going home when the rest of America doesn’t do exactly what they want. Democracy is messy, America is big and diverse, and affluent white men don’t always get what they want anymore. Sorry, Mr. Smitherman, but it’s life. (Also, no legal authority for secession exists.)

I could not find any specific statements Smitherman has made recently regarding the Pledge of Allegiance, but I do see that he was a guest speaker at a meeting of the Texas Patriots PAC on August 6, 2013, which reportedly opened with an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. (The minutes do not mention if it was to the U.S. or the Texas flag. Yes, Texas has its own pledge of allegiance.)

My question for Smitherman is this: Did you recite the pledge to the U.S. flag that day, and say the words “to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible…”? Continue reading →

Cryptic Philosopher

A Quantum Singularity of Pwnage