Between skinnier and skinnier celebrities and fatter and fatter everyone else, I expect our culture to explode in a fiery rain of fad diets and rib bones any day now. Today’s news is a classic example of the perfect fat-storm engulfing the nation. Essentially, everyone hates fat people, even as more and more people become obese.
Though obesity is a health issue, the dialogue is a finger-shaking moral one. If you are fat, you are slovenly and bad. Let me tell you how disgusting you are, and then you will want to lose weight! In this article, the researchers (more…)
Last week, Oprah came clean about the minor endocrine disorder, hypothyroidism, that she shares with me and up to 25% of everyone else. Now, hypothyroidism (when the thyroid doesn’t produce enough hormone to regulate the speed of the metabolism) isn’t a big deal - my father has it, my aunt has it, my grandfather who lived until 97 had it - all I do is take a pill every day and get a blood test every year.
But hypothyroidism is a public health problem, since it often goes undiagnosed and causes all kinds of nasty effects, like weight gain, depression, infertility, and hair loss. So I was all excited that Oprah would get a lot more people to get their thyroid function tested and the world would be a happier place and bunnies and unicorns would frolic on the green, green grass.
“We’ve done exhaustive research into the data that are available that address all of those questions,” said Coleman. “If we bring back plankton communities to levels they once enjoyed, then how can there be negative effects from that? We are bringing plankton communities back to a baseline.”
When pressed, however, Coleman acknowledged that the “baseline” guiding the company was “unclear.”
In this article, they claim that satellite data shows that plankton is down 10% since the 1970s. On their website, they claim (citing a broken link) that plankton is down 50%. If they’re going to “restore” plankton levels, I hope they know which is correct. But I’m not holding my breath.
For my exhaustive review of Planktos’ claims, go here.
Zombie captions! An art installation project Night of the Living Dead on the side of building and allows people to text zombie-speech into zombie-bubbles. Though I’m not sure if there’s much to say besides BRAAIIINS - maybe SPLEEEEEN!
For more zombie awesomeness, watch the animated short series Zombie College. It takes place at Arkford University, a cheerful undead-filled version of Miskatonic University. Less evil gods, more yummy brains.
NOOOO!!! NOT THE MAKOS! glurggle blarg gahhhh… *ahem* I mean, I’ve been tagged with a HalloMeme to choose my favorite ocean-themed scary movie. Since I led a deprived cable-TV-less childhood, I missed out on all the fantastic 50s and 60s B-movies, but fortunately there’s been no lack of extreme silliness in recent years.
One of the finest of all marine movies is Deep Blue Sea (1999), in which super-intelligent mako sharks are GENETICALLY ENGINEERED O NOES by a hawt wetsuit-clad model-scientist working from a highly advanced underwater research station. Of course, when the sharks (whose super-intelligence also somehow translates to super-size and who don’t look like makos at all) inevitably escape, they eat LL Cool J’s parrot, chasing it down with Samuel L. Jackson and a bunch of interchangable beautiful people.
Here’s a clip of Samuel L. Jackson, who has failed to remove the mothereffing sharks from the mothereffing underwater research station.
Listen, I know this will come as a shock, but money talks. Generally the obvious doesn’t bear repeating, but Randy Olsen, an influential biologist and film maker, recently published a post on Shifting baselines.org that tries to argue that money is a poor way to motivate people. He cites a New York Times op-ed that talks about how the New York Yankees insulted Joe Torre by offering him a World Series bonus in his new contract. The op-ed argues that the bonus implies that Torre isn’t trying his hardest to get to the World Series, so he needs a the possibility of extra cash to motivate him. I can see why Torre was insulted and turned it down. He took the clause to imply that he wasn’t trying his hardest to reach the World Series, and a little more money might motivate him. Torre, an indisputably classy guy, decided he had money and championships enough, and walked.
China Mieville, best known for his astonishingly creative steampunk novel Perdido Street Station, has worked himself into a fine froth over a libertarian plan to build a giant ship-country. Mieville says:
It is a small schadenfreude to know that these dreams will never come true. There are dangerous enemies, and then there are jokes of history. The libertarian seasteaders are a joke. The pitiful, incoherent and cowardly utopia they pine for is a spoilt child’s autarky, an imperialism of outsourcing, a very petty fascism played as maritime farce: Pinochet of Penzance.
Now, I am no libertarian (growing up in New Hampshire squashed that right in the bud), but it is rather deliciously ironic that neither Mieville’s essay nor the Author Bio section mentions Mieville’s own book The Scar, which revolves around its own quasi-libertarian floating utopia.
Scientists have found the gay gene - in nematode worms. The worms have two sexes, male and hermaphrodite. Hermaphrodites can fertilize their own eggs, but only mate with males, never with other hermaphrodites. By switching one of the genes in nematodes’ teeny brains, scientists were able to make hermaphroditic worms attracted to one another.
This is neat, but I’m not sure that discovering the genetic or physical basis of gayness is that important to human gay rights. There certainly is a physical basis for hetero sexuality, and that hasn’t made the conservatives any more tolerant of contraceptives, Plan B, or the HPV vaccine. Still, the lead author of the worm study made my head explode a little bit when he said “They [the gay worms] look like girls but they act like boys.” Sexuality does not equal gender, even in worms.*
*Yes, Scott, this thought is attributed to your theory-of-sexuality expounding self.
Between skinnier and skinnier celebrities and fatter and fatter everyone else, I expect our culture to explode in a fiery rain of fad diets and rib bones any day now. Today’s news is a classic example of the perfect fat-storm engulfing the nation. Essentially, everyone hates fat people, even as more and more people become obese.
Last week, 
Scientists have found the gay gene - 
