The Oyster’s Garter

Tubes: they’re not just for the internet anymore. A series of giant ocean tubes has been proposed as a solution to global warming. The tubes are supposed to pump up nutrient-rich water from the depths, which will foster phytoplankton growth, which will soak up carbon dioxide, which will then sink back into the deep as the phytoplankton die.

Now, I am just a baby biological oceanographer, but I think this is unlikely to work. It’s a very similar idea to that of iron fertilization - vast areas of the ocean have plenty of nitrogen and phospheros but are limited in plant growth because of lack of iron. The whole iron-fertilization thing came to a head when oceanographer John Martin famously said, “Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.” Sadly, no woolly-mammoth-rampaging was forthcoming, due to these problems:

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Most people think that sugar makes kids hyper, even though it’s been proved to be a myth. After all, you can just see their little minds go “boing!” after having soda or candy. A recent study in the Lancet, posted by Angry Toxicologist, might explain this contradiction - it’s not the sugar, it’s the preservatives.

Angry Toxicologist explains way better than I could:

They took 153 3-year olds and 144 8-9 year olds and gave them a sweet drink with either sodium benzoate, a common preservative, and a artificial colors/flavors mix or a placebo. The amount of preservative/color/flavor is less than what many children get in a day. They were tested on a standard hyperactivity index, as well as a attention test. The children were given different drinks on different weeks and since it was double blind, neither the children or the scorers (parents/teachers) knew which drink they got. And since the same children were tested on both, you don’t have to worry about variation between children as much.

Both sets of kids were more hyper when they had drunk the artificial color/preservatives in the bug juice. Scary, because preservatives are EVERYWHERE.

And you know, I’m all in favor of the existence of preservatives. It’s great that we have ways to make food not go bad without having to can or salt or dry it. I don’t want to go back to picking weevils out of my hardtack. But as a society, we’re addicted to cheap, sweet, fatty, deathless food - and as if obesity wasn’t trouble enough, it has to make kids hyper too.

Here’s a PDF of the Lancet study if you’d like to read it yourself.

Every marine biologist, whether ecologist, geneticist, fisheries specialist, etc., has experienced the dread cocktail party question. We can see it coming, like a giant flaming speeding train OF DOOM. There is no ducking. There is no escape. Some well-meaning yet conversationally challenged person is going to get you in a corner and ask, “So, do you like, get to talk to dolphins?”

Fortunately, the marine biologists of the world have a bold defender, Milton Love. A fish expert and wearer of fine rockfish tattoos, he has written “So, You Want to be a Marine Biologist?”

I think it should be required reading, not just for starry-eyed 11 year olds drawing dolphins on their notebooks (some of them grow up just fine, thank you very much), but for anyone who might possibly attend a cocktail party any time in their lives. So, for everyone.

Because if I hear that question one more time, I’m going to say, “No, I have never talked to dolphins, since it would be much like talking to a drunken frat boy with a prehensile penis. I’d rather arm-wrestle a Giant Pacific Octopus than come within a mile of a bottlenose on the prowl.”

Eric adds: Milton Love says Marine Biologists never date. Something about the odor. I must beg to differ. Marine biologists are eminently datable. No comment about the odor.

Ben Stein is in a new movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It appears to be typical creationist/intelligent design whining about how their religion should be taught as science. (If you want more about this, I recommend the excellent blog The Panda’s Thumb.) And poor Darwin, who was a practicing Christian, is abused most shamefully.

But the extra-fun thing about Expelled is that there’s an article in the New York Times today about how they’ve been lying about their movie to get interviews with prominent scientists. Because God just looooves deceivers! P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula adds:

We were lied to, and they tricked us. It’s that simple. They ought to simply ‘fess up to it — it’s not as if we can take legal action against them or do anything to suppress their movie, since we all signed quite legal releases. They ought to take a little pride in the fact that, in their dedication to Jesus, they successfully deceived Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, myself, and who knows how many others.

This post is going to end with a bone-eating snotflower and kinky sex. But first, some background:

Evolutionary biology began with a simple principle: choosy females, slutty males. The idea was that eggs are energetically expensive - the egg itself is big and filled with baby food, and then the female still has to bear and maybe raise the babies. In contrast, sperm are energetically cheap - males can easily produce millions a day, fertilize all the eggs they want, and never have to deal with the consequences.

But of course science is a human endeavor, and the men (mostly men, at that time) saw what they wanted to see - nature reflecting human societal mores. The huge influx of women into biology coincided with the onset of genetics, and suddenly slutty females and homemaking males appeared everywhere in nature. (Incidentally, homosexuality is also found in nature - the gay penguins being the most famous example - but that is a post for another time.)

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A group of Chinese scientists think they can use carbon nanotubes in shifting layers to actually create an invisibility cloak. The theory of it was proven last year, when a separate team of scientists found they could render a very small object invisible to a microwave, but it required very precise positioning of the tubes. The Chinese scientists are saying they can layer the nanotubes to achieve the effect of invisibility to regular light waves. The shifting of the layers will not reflect much light, in fact light will bend around it.  The real question is how they’re going to get the nanotubes to surround an entire Klingon Bird of Prey, and then recede so they can fire their photon torpedoes. Obviously important practical problems still remain.

Nothing makes a Mac person more smug than the woes of a Microsoft product. And man does it sure look like Windows Vista is a turkey. A short summary of the problems: It won’t let you make Firefox your default browser, the pre-installed backup software doesn’t work properly, software makers aren’t jumping to upgrade their software to use Vista functionality, and it will check “the legitimacy” of software on your computer and even delete stuff it doesn’t like. Actually, that last one is a doozy. Here’s what how a reviewer form the Toronto Star described the pre-installed anti-virus software Windows Defender:

Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated “high” or “severe,” even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

Really? It will just delete stuff? That’s so not OK.  And those are just a few of the myriad reasons not to use Vista that the Internet provided. No wonder a C-Net blogger is calling for Microsoft to just abandon the whole project.

The only thing better than tardigrades (they’re the cutest little moss creatures that you’ll ever see) is TARDIGRADES…IN SPACE!

And these tardigrades don’t have tiny spacesuits, either. They are going to experience the cold vacuum without any protection. If they live, they will be the most badass invertebrates of all time. Cause there’s no way the run-of-the-mill scary invertebrates like giant squid or stomatopods could survive SPACE.

And what really puts the delicious butter cream icing on the nerd-cake is that the acronym for this project is TARDIS.

Thanks to Jarrett Byrnes from making this glorious experiment part of my life.

Past fish in space posts.

I like geek-boys. (Eric would be the first to confirm this). Being a geeky girl, nothing makes me happier than planning for the zombie invasion or speculating on BSG Season 4. But really, there’s no need to BUY nerd-love. Nonetheless, the Linux Users Group at Washington State University are auctioning themselves off. To sorority girls. In exchange for a makeover.

Now that’s just pathetic. I love me some PROUD geek boy, not some pathetic groveling sitcom-emulating geek boy. And there is nothing less attractive than the unfortunately common phenomenon of the Entitled Nerd. The Entitled Nerd feels like he deserve to date model-hot girls, regardless of his own charm or attractiveness. He ignores geeky girls with whom he actually has something in common and drools pathetically after stereotypical cheerleader types who he doesn’t even know. When he is inevitably shot down, he turns into the dread Nice Guy (sniveling about how girls just don’t LIKE nice guys) or the classic Misogynist (which I think may lead to the Women in Refrigerators phenomenom).

So, Linux lads of Washington, grow a pair. Gird your loins. Have some dignity. If you want to meet some lovely & nerd-esque ladies, I suggest you go to some fanfic conventions.

Say you were a female African bat bug. When you’re not sipping the finest of bat blood, you keep busy trying to avoid sex. It’s not that you’re an unhip sex-negative bat bug, it’s just that sex involves a large sharp penis-spear being shoved into your abdomen. Talk about penetration! Of course, it’s not just a girly problem – the male bugs go about shoving their penises into each other’s abdomen too. What with the pain and the infection and the death, it’s not the most comfortable way to perpetuate the species.

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