Atomic Nerds

Session 9.

This one seems to be gaining a reputation, but it’s one of the few recent examples of a really solid psychological thriller. It’s set in an actual abandoned insane asylum, and the basic plot involves a small crew of hazardous materials workers assigned to clear the asbestos out of the abandoned nuthouse. With only one location and a limited cast, this is a killer atmospheric horror piece that relies on the characters involved, some very tight writing, and the setting to slowly wind the tension up to the screaming point. You do need to pay close attention for this one to make sense, though- there are no big reveals and it hands you nothing on a platter. Judging by reviews, this is a love-it-or-hate-it film. We love it.

Dead Alive

AKA Braindead. This is pretty much the opposite of Session 9. No complex psychology here, though there is a surprisingly sweet love story interspersed with the carnage. This is mostly notable for being a low-budget cult classic of a zombie where the director- Peter Jackson before he got famous- is clearly there almost purely to have fun. Zombie moves usually have some kind of political message and rely on an apocalypse scenario; there’s no apocalypse and no politics here, just a young man with an exponentially increasing number of problems in his life, starting with his mother disapproving of his girlfriend, continuing with his mother’s becoming a zombie, and culminating the house party from hell. There’s a kung fu priest. There’s a lawnmower. There’s a zombie baby. Not for the squeamish, as this movie has oceans of blood and gore, but if you’re a fan of zombie movies you’re probably not squeamish anyway. The only thing that makes it any less wonderful than Army of Darkness is the lack of Bruce Campbell.

Exorcist III

Stingray’s not as fond of this one as I am, but I consider it a must-watch. Don’t let the fact that it’s a sequel, or the fact that Exorcist II was epically bad, deter you. The author of the novel Exorcist was based on got almost complete creative control, and he made an almost totally different kind of movie with it- like Session 9, it’s mostly psychological thriller. It relies heavily on the out-of-the-park performances by George C. Scott and Brad Dourif- add in some creatively done scares that are much subtler than the ones used in Exorcist and you have a thoroughly watchable horror movie. I actually don’t like Exorcist very much, because many of the scares that were fresh and original then are tired tropes now. Alien held up pretty well despite the same phenomenon, but Exorcist really didn’t. Exorcist III was simply never well-known enough to be widely copied.

Tremors

Broke into the wrong god damn rec room, didn’t ya?!

I don’t know if there’s anyone in the gun-nut crowd that still hasn’t seen this movie, but they damn well should. I hesitate to put this under “scary movies”, because it’s really not all that scary, but it’s a wonderfully fun B monster movie. It’s also one of the very few where the over-the-top “crazy survivalist” is not only absolutely right and the only fully prepared character in the movie, but a sympathetic sort who helps his neighbors through the crisis. The other characters are charming enough, but Burt Gummer totally steals the show. It’s also one of the few “oh crap, trapped by monsters in an isolated setting” movies where once people realize what’s going on, they’re mostly pretty smart about it. The first sequel is worth checking out, too.

Haunted

This is another one that I think more of than Stingray does, but if he wants to complain he can do his own list. Most likely the reason I like it so much better is because ghost stories are a weakness of mine; if a movie is marginal but mostly ghost-driven, the odds are that I’ll end up more or less liking it and he’ll hate it. (He has a similar thing with monster movies, if you ask me.) This one isn’t marginal, but our respective preferences put it in his “pretty good” category and my “great”. It’s a lovely atmospheric period piece, set in 1920s England during the “spiritualist” craze. The main character is a psychology professor dispatched to the countryside to debunk someone’s ghost problem. The twist at the end is pretty good- you can spot it if you’re alert, but it neither forces itself into your awareness nor hides to the point where no viewer could have guessed what was going on. It also benefits from being an almost totally different movie the second time through; Sixth Sense is no longer interesting once you know what’s really going on, but if you ask me this one only becomes creepier. It also gets bonus points from me for a subversion of a trope that’s been particularly popular of late.

In The Mouth of Madness

This one did scare me the first time through, but I’ve liked it ever since because it’s essentially a love letter to horror fans from John Carpenter, one of the greats of the genre. It’s a solid story with a reasonable twist, it’s pretty, it’s got a great score, but mostly it’s references-a-go-go. It’s also got Sam Neill having a ball, a story that ultimately owes so much to Lovecraft it gives him a writer’s credit, and one of Charlton Heston’s last roles. We end up watching this one again at least once a year or so.

Event Horizon

This is another one that seems to be gaining some popularity over time, though at the time it was dismissed as either a Shining wannabe or an Alien wannabe. I suppose you could call it part 2 of Sam Neill goes to Hell in a sense, too. It’s a very nice blend of psychological thriller and special effects scare-a-thon, and the thing I like best about it is how GOOD the writers were at finding people’s phobias and giving them a hard twist without resorting to worn-out tropes. There are a few scenes in this one that I still have to watch through my fingers. It’s also one of those movies with many rewards for the careful and alert viewer- it doesn’t *require* you to be, like Session 9 does, but there are many cool extra touches that you’ll only see on multiple viewings.

Dead End

This is the only one on the list that we don’t have on our DVD shelf, because it scared the piss out of me at the time and I haven’t really felt the need to do it again. It takes one of horror’s more basic plots- family lost in the woods, increasingly horrible things happen to them- and executes it about as well as can possibly be done. There is a twist at the end, and I didn’t see it coming, probably because I was too distracted waiting for the movie to either kill ALL the characters and put everybody out of their misery or stop teasing. The family’s fear and panic and attempts to get out play out very realistically, and even though few of them are very likeable, their deaths hurt. The movie isn’t even an hour and a half long, but it feels much longer. Nothing was very special about it except the quality of the execution, even though the basic idea has been done to death. I suppose it might not be that scary, it might have just managed to push my own buttons well- I have no sense of direction and have been very lost very late at night as well- but it’s worth a go.

More later if I think of ‘em, and the odds are good that I will.

You know you’re a blog junkie when…

…You dream you’re throwing a Halloween party*, Glenn Reynolds passes by the front windows and decides he likes your pumpkin, and the next thing you know there are a hundred strangers in your living room demanding a cheese plate that doesn’t exist.

*This was the most implausible part of the whole dream.  The only circumstances under which we’d throw a party would be Martha Stewart kidnapping the dogs and threatening to make cunning little hat and mitten sets out of them unless we gave a gracious yet witty holiday offering.

Ok, that last post was a bit dense, and not of much interest to non-nerds. To lighten things up a bit, I’m going to join the unofficial recipe sharing meme that’s been going around of late. The catch is that this dish was created “for the first time” this past Sunday. It does not to my knowledge have a name.

I was too sore from the range cleanup day on Saturday to want to muck about with any heavy lifting, and possessed of an appetite, I wandered into the kitchen to see what I could find resembling edible. Coming up with nothing appealing, I decided to just whip out a knife and skillet and see what happened. Here’s the result:

4-5 strips thick cut bacon
1/2 a white onion
1 baking potato
4 eggs
shredded cheddar cheese

First, beat the four eggs with a shot of milk as for scrambled eggs. Set them aside for now. Next, chop the onion. Dice the bacon into roughly 1/4″ cubes. If you have a mandolin, using that on the potato would probably work out better than just slicing by hand. I wound up with roughly 1/8″-1/4″ slices (across, like for chips, not lengthwise), which didn’t work quite as well as I would’ve liked. More on this shortly. Get a heavy, preferably cast iron, oven-proof skillet up nice and hot over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook just long enough to get it rendered a bit. Once you’ve got some grease in the skillet, add the onion. Turn the heat down to medium, and add a pinch of salt. This is more of a sweat than a sauté. Once the onion starts to soften and get fragrant, spread the onion/bacon mix out evenly. Layer the potato slices over the top one slice deep. Don’t overlap too much, and just do one layer. Cover the bacon/onion entirely though. Leave this alone for about five minutes. Let the steam coming up off the onion start to cook the potato layer. After about two minutes, turn your oven on to 375F. After the five minutes are up, pour the eggs in. Slosh it around a bit for good even distribution, and chuck it in the oven. When the oven gets to 375F, set the timer for 7 minutes. You flatlanders will need to play with this portion; water boils at 193F here, so cooking time varies a bit from what y’all are used to. When the timer goes off, spread the shredded cheese over the top in an even layer, just enough to cover things nicely. Give it another five minutes or so on the timer, or until the cheese is thoroughly melted. Pull it out and serve. LabRat thinks some sour cream would go well with it, which we’ll try next time I whip up a batch. At this altitude/time/temperature combination, the potatos didn’t quite cook all the way through, but down where there’s air you may not have this trouble with thicker spud slices, so tweak as necessary to get them the way you like.

Now here’s the lighter part: This recipe needs a name. The last time I had an “original” creation, it wound up being called “Cram Hole Chicken” after trying to come up with something else and a frustrated outburst of “It goes in the cram hole! It’s cram hole chicken!”. Odds are this artery-clogger I just described is nothing new, and probably floating around in some cookbook I haven’t read yet. If you’ve seen this recipe before, an actual name would be cool. Failing that, it’s contest time. Whoever comes up with the best name for this dish, defined as whichever one LabRat and I choose through our highly scientific process of whatever makes us laugh/cry/hear angelic choirs the most will get one (1) batch of my hot cocoa mix, which I almost wound up in a contract to provide to our cigar club for resale. Ready? GO!

Since I’ve been a bit light on ideas for my own contributions ’round here of late, I’m going to spend a little time boring most of you to tears. Here’s your fair warning: If you don’t care about what goes on under the hood of your computer, now would be a good time to peruse some of the excellent talent available over on the right in the blogroll. Otherwise, hit the link and buckle up.
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It doesn’t need to be complicated, but discovering you’re out of baking soda in the middle of making it tends to throw a wrench in the works. Overall verdict: Damn Tasty. LabRat liked it enough that I’ll get to make it more often, which pleases me to no end. I might tinker around with about a teaspoon or two worth of sugar, but only in the dark of night away from the windows. I don’t want the cornbread purists to catch wind and fly through the internet to punch me in the throat.

The previews for Love in the Time of Cholera are starting to show up on TV. It looks absolutely stunning. Gorgeous people who are actually attractive in that timeless way rather than the weird modern way Hollywood favors, gorgeous sets, gorgeous period dress. Despite all that, I kind of doubt I would have wanted to see it anyway; love stories bore me, as they tend to rely on people being stupid in highly specific and predictable ways.

But, I have another issue with it. See, when I was a kid I was a lonely bookworm of an only child who didn’t have a whole lot of friends to play with and spent most of her free time reading. I was often out of things I hadn’t read several times already, so I’d break into my parents’ collections and see if I could find anything interesting. Since my father was a doctor and spent some time in the Indian Health Services, I found his copy of Where There Is No Doctor, a guide intended for physicians and aid workers in the third world. Cholera and how to cope with it was extensively covered. Cholera has kind of a neat, exotic ring to it as a word, but as a disease it’s one of the most humiliating and revolting ones out there; it kills by basically destroying your ability to retain any water in your intestines, and turns you into what amounts to a biological tube where water goes in one end and comes out the other, more or less without stopping on the way through. The dehydration is very quick and severe and can be very swiftly fatal. One piece of advice the book had for handling cholera was suggesting the construction of a cholera bed, which is basically a rubber sheet with a sort of sleeve in the middle that goes down to a bucket. The bucket must be emptied often. It helps to keep the, ah, infective material from spreading everywhere- you can empty the bucket somewhere relatively safe where it won’t re-infect the local water supply, which would keep the epidemic going more or less indefinitely otherwise.

I look at the title of the movie and INSTANTLY think of the cholera bed. I’m pretty sure I would NOT be able to look any steamy bedroom scenes without a pretty awful mental train wreck.

I get on surprisingly well with those traditionalist Christians that aren’t completely insane, for an agnostic* whose major intellectual passion is evolutionary biology. So long as they can refrain from ignoring or abusing me because I’m “hellbound” (violating some of the strongest instructions of their own religion in the process), we can generally get on in a friendly manner when the topic of discussion is not religion, and civilly when it is. I long ago got over that phase where I was tempted to treat them as badly as I would have complained about being treated, and still regard it as an embarrassing one I’m glad was over as fast as it was. It was actually 9/11 that did it- I realized that there were REAL religious lunatics in the world and I really shouldn’t be so concerned about the ones that wished me no violence, just rhetoric.

My extended family is pretty evenly split between atheist/agnostics and devout Christians, mainly Methodists. We don’t fight about religion, and to my memory we never have. (Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but never to me.) We don’t because even though our faiths differ drastically, we all share the same values- most crucially, the sense that one has a bit of a family obligation to listen for at least a little while if the speaker is being polite, and that one also has a family obligation to limit lecturing. Consequently, I got a few mild speeches from my grandmother about her own faith, which I listened to attentively because she was my grandmother, and that was pretty much the end of it. Most of us love to debate, so there have been a few more jocular sparring matches, but there’s no shunned family members or mockery, even behind backs- that I’m aware of. In the end, we all believe in respect, honesty, responsibility, good humor, and so many other things in common that the question of our technical beliefs regarding the existence and nature of a deity seem not to matter all that much. This phenomenon was what led to one of my Captain Obvious moments and the shedding of one of my stupider beliefs from my more militant days- we DO live in a very much Judeo-Christian society, because a big chunk of American values were formed from religious thought- for a long time in Europe the clergy and the educated class was one in the same. Even the Enlightenment was led by thinkers and philosophers with a religious background.

Given that, and that societies really do run quite well on basic Judeo-Christian value systems, when arguing with the devout I’ve quite often run into the argument that it’s an argument for faith because those value systems DO work well and because they’ve historically worked well for Western civilization. There’s only one problem with that: faith cannot work that way.

When you start with the proposition “The Bible is the revealed word of God”, it’s completely logically sound to follow with “therefore, trying your best to live by its tenets will produce the greatest good and happiness”. It’s an if-then that no one would argue with. But it doesn’t work both ways; starting from “the Biblical values tend to work well for individuals and societies”, it does NOT logically follow that “therefore the Bible is the revealed word of God”. A far more likely conclusion would be “the religion has been so successful and long-lasting because its actual instructions for daily life are based on sound observations of human nature”, which need not necessarily be Divine in origin. Anyone willing to watch people for awhile can start to see common mindsets and mistakes that tend to lead to long-term misery for short-term gain.

The very definition of faith involves that it not be arrived at logically. It is accepting God for what He (she, or, it) claims to be and accepting that whole-heartedly. Some say that this is evidence that religion is bullshit, but I don’t; if there is a God, what we think about the potential shadiness of not providing regular proof has absolutely no bearing on what that theoretical God would see as appropriate to ask of humanity. Just because something is circular doesn’t mean it’s wrong- I see morals and values as being important because they make civilization possible, and civilization as being a good thing to aim for because it gives us values to structure our lives with, which is pretty goddamn circular but also not, I think, wrong. However, the very nature of faith as it is presented to us means that it is not only impossible, but also theoretically somewhat offensive to God as He is described to have “faith” for pragmatic reasons. For one, it wouldn’t be faith, and for two, it WOULD be dishonest- the Bible has some sharp things to say about dishonesty. Ironically, therefore, I get opted out of Christianity because I’ve deeply embraced one of its core values: honesty with myself and others. I don’t believe that God chose to wash away “original sin” via the blood sacrifice and resurrection of a son in human form. I can’t. Maybe that’s my loss, maybe that’s my realism, but that’s the way it is. It would actually make my life EASIER to “convert”; it wouldn’t require any major behavior changes because of that values thing, and it would gain me far greater social acceptance in American life in general- especially among the conservatives I tend to associate with most- but it would be a lie.

And now just because I’m starting to not be able to stand myself with all this serious high-minded crap, here’s a quick message to the folks that argue that we should post the ten commandments in public because “they apply to everybody”: only about half of them do, you arrogant morons. The rest of them are of ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE to secular life unless your actual agenda is to make it less secular. Know what the first four** are? Look it up. Now try and tell me with a straight face that the only reason people disagree with this idea is opposition to acknowledging religion at all.

*Agnostic in the T.H. Huxley sense, which boils down to “not enough data for me to form a solid conclusion”, not “gosh, I just dunno”.

**It depends on the religion and the sect. However, in all versions the first four are exclusively theological commands.

As it turns out, the wandering albatross really is just wandering. It’s butt-lost, or at the least it has no destination in mind. Plus ten to metaphor score.

As a warning before you click, the picture they have up is… rather disturbing. I’m probably going to be seeing that damn bird in my dreams tonight. Between it and the one from yesterday, the Bleiman brothers seem to be celebrating Halloween with what the MST crew called “good old-fashioned nightmare fuel!”.

ETA: This seems to be Cool Science Saturday. There’s an awesome post over at Bioephemera with some compelling art, a few remarks on the relationship between curiosity and empathy, and a case of art imitating life… and also links to my next addition to the blogroll.

Cool beans.

Neo-neocon has a post up about first memories. She relates hers, and asks for her readers to weigh in with theirs. I already have- if you have a clear idea what yours is, do me (and her, but around here it’s all about ME!) a favor and share yours.

I find this subject intensely interesting, mostly because I’ve always been very curious about what the inside of other people’s heads sound or feel like, ever since realizing that it must sometimes be drastically different from my own experience. For me, life is all about words and text; most of the time, I think in complete sentences. I sort through strong emotions or uncertainties by having what boils down to a rough-and-ready Socratic dialogue with myself. I can’t really calm down or deal with upsetting emotions unless I have the headspace to do that- and until I have, I might not even KNOW how I feel about something. (If I’m in touch with my feelings, it’s mainly by Pony Express.) This is one of those fundamental differences of internal experience that leads to me having a very tough time dealing with people who seem to lead with their emotions- I can only barely empathize with them, and usually have to work out what they must be thinking and why based on what they say and do rather than putting myself in their shoes.

I’m a bit strange as a learner, as well. If I read something or write it down, my recall is excellent- I don’t have an eidetic memory, but it can be pretty close if I’m truly interested. I can easily multitask with reading, and that’s normal for me; right now I’ve got three open tabs on my browser because I’m writing something- normally it’s four or more and I keep bouncing back and forth between them reading different things. Unless the show or movie is tremendously gripping, I’ve usually got a book in my lap when I’m watching TV. It’s totally different with things I hear; if I’m reading something and you’re talking to me, unless something you say dings an internal alarm (“The dog is on fire!”), you probably might as well be talking to yourself. I might track slightly with the conversation, and even respond appropriately, but I won’t remember a damn thing you say. Needless to say, this little quirk drives Stingray absolutely insane, since he can never predict whether or not I’ll remember something he said- whether it was trivial or important doesn’t matter, just whether I was actually giving him my full attention at the time, because that’s the only way I can remember anything I hear. I never, ever listen to talk radio in the car (or effectively at all), because the voices are so distracting it would actually make me a dangerous driver- either I’m giving it my total attention or it’s just dissonant cacaphony. I only have a few books on CD for the same reason- I can listen to them on a long trip if I’m the passenger, but if I were the driver it would be unworkable. Right now I’m listening to Nirvana as I type, because the background music helps me concentrate by blocking out other noises, and Kurt Cobain’s caterwauling is so garbled the lyrics don’t distract me. (Death metal and screaming punk are also ideal for this.)

I already went on extensively about my first memory, which was realizing I had learned how to read. I have always suspected that that IS my first memory specifically because of that- that I can’t remember anything before that because my thought processes became increasingly verbal after that, and basically left me without the ability to put earlier memories of sounds and images in context enough to make them snap into clarity as a memory. I do have earlier “memories”, but they’re just jumbles of noise and pictures; I have no idea what any of them actually *mean*.

In her post, Neo-neocon speculates that her first memory is what it is because it carried a strong emotional context that was the major theme of her early life. I know my first memory is also attached to that- to my first sensation of independence, or at least the possibility of independence. I hated being a kid not because my childhood was lousy, but because I deeply resented being short, awkward, stupid, and necessarily dependent on adults… so maybe that has something to do with it as well. Now I’m not sure.

It’s still a good memory, though.

I think I finally figured out what LawDog is talking about when he mentions the activities of Kee and his tea.

Bastard came by when we weren’t looking and added racing stripe… er, layers to our tea! Kee riced all my tea too! What’s next, giant prison-rape-victim looking mufflers on the teabags?

MEChA claims responsibility for California fires

Apparently, California already knew the fires were likely to be arson, and there’s photos of folks with their identities concealed throwing Molotov cocktails, which means it’s less likely to be a group of idiots trying to take credit for a natural disaster or someone else’s handiwork than I’d otherwise be inclined to think.

My question: why does the word “terrorism” appear nowhere in this article? It’s a group committing violence in order to spread fear to try and get a political aim accomplished. It’s textbook domestic terrorism. Is it because the immigration situation is already touchy enough that no one wants to use the t-word? It’s all I can figure, because it would be very damn difficult to even begin to argue that if the story is true, this isn’t terrorism.

What are these people thinking? Is this like Manson’s fever dreams, do they WANT a race war? Do they think they’d have a chance of winning it if it came to that? Part of the reason there’s as much debate as there is about immigration is that most Americans DON’T hate Mexicans or hispanics on general principle- and some of them like them enough that they don’t see why people are complaining about having more of them. I’ve always said that the immigration debate really isn’t and shouldn’t be about whether or not you like Mexicans, but a lot of people DO think that’s what it is.

Americans don’t react well to terrorism. There are few places in the world with as solid a track record of a population reacting in a very FINAL way against its perpetrators. Even if they didn’t set that fire… they have to be suicidal, stupid, or both to pull something like this.

This could get extremely ugly…. especially since it just occurred to me that black and hispanic street gangs in California are already known to loathe each other.

Hat tip: BobG

ETA: The story is fake.  No wonder I wasn’t seeing anything else about it.

Ah bin HAD, and had good.

Kang gets fed outside. This originally started as a simple way to separate the dogs while they’re eating, and a way for me not to have to worry about sudden urges during a meal when she was too young to have good bowel and bladder control, but now it’s pretty much just because. (Both dogs have decided the most delicious food in the world is whatever is in the other’s bowl. I’m thinking of just switching their bowls and feeding locations off and seeing if that makes them happy.)

Open bowls of water attract insects in the high desert. Normally this isn’t an issue, but today it managed to draw in a half-frozen, sluggish yellowjacket. Kang hates yellowjackets, ever since one stung her in the mouth when she snapped at it.

Because she is not ENTIRELY a bright dog, she snapped at it again and it stung her again. She made an unhappy noise, backed off a few paces, shook her head, stared balefully at it….

…And then proceeded to step smartly forward and stomp it to death with her forepaw.

Clever girl. Sometimes.

I’ve already linked Ursula Vernon’s art here. She’s the cheerful surrealist, the woman responsible for my Weird Fruit prints, and for the utterly unforgettable Valley of the Wang.

She also keeps a Livejournal. She’s had a rather chaotic year, one that’s included a number of moves, and, well, it seems there have been some casualties.

Really, in a parallel universe, that could have happened to me. I’d never considered the ramifications, either. If Amazon thinks I’m a strange, twisted person now (and it does, judging by MY recommendations)… man, I don’t even want to think about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Worst Boob Job Ever. Do not click this link if you are a) in a place that does not approve of the viewing of uncovered boobies or b) adverse to the sight of uncovered boobies or c) not of age to view uncovered boobies.

Seriously, I could do better with a pizza slicer and a water balloon.

I do not understand what would posess anyone to look at that and say “Yeah, that looks good.”

After another season of bitching about the heat, we finally decided to pony up and make the months between June and September livable rather than the exercise in heat-stroke avoidance they usually are. That’s right, it’s finally time to join the civilized industrial world, up our contribution to global warming, and get some damn air conditioning.

Unfortunately, this process does not occur by magic. Workmen are everywhere. The attic access next to my desk is open and pouring cold air in like a pitcher, and the big bay doors on the front are wide open to make sure we get a breeze for good measure. LabRat and the cat are freezing, I’m holding my own since the main server is temporarily living under my desk and pumping out heat like a furnace. Fortunately, things have warmed up a bit since Sunday’s snow storm, but it ain’t exactly balmy out there. The dogs, meanwhile, are safely ensconsed with family, since this would pretty much overload Kodos no matter how you sliced things.

Content may be a bit light today.

While reading the local paper’s obituary column today looking for people I don’t like, I found something rather unexpected. Dr. Robert Bussard, a name that should be instantly familiar to any Star Trek geek, and moreso to physics geeks, died recently in his home in Santa Fe. Being chock full of on the ball reporting, the local paper didn’t manage to get news of his October 6th passing out until today, but that’s not the point. Dr. Bussard is probably best known as the originator of the Interstellar Ramjet, and for the eponymous Bussard Collectors in Star Trek. The basic idea is to use magnetic fields to attract loose hydrogen ions in space for use as fuel in a fusion reactor to propel a ship to speeds that would make space travel at least slightly less impossible. He worked on the nuclear powered rocket program at Los Alamos National Labs in the 50s, and had been concentrating his more recent efforts into practical fusion power.

I hope all your questions have been answered now, Dr. Bussard.

Just when I was starting to feel like this daily writing thing was now more or less automatic, I woke up this morning with my desire to blog evaporated like fog in the desert. Not a lack of ideas. Not a lack of time. Not a lack of mental coherence. I just don’t wanna. Since bitching about things here occasionally leads to the problem magically resolving itself- my shoulder started to feel much better the day after whining about that, and Kang started settling better shortly after posting about THAT- I’ll just grump about not wanting to write instead.

Meanwhile, I’ll be giggling madly at this, an unexpected offshoot of the TV Tropes Wiki*. It’s “Wild Mass Guessing”, the creation of completely out-there yet oddly compelling theories to explain aspects of the plots of movies, shows, or other series. It’s been a fan pursuit since time out of mind, but the invention of the internet makes it about ten thousand times more efficient.

It’s one of the manifestations of my underlying geekiness that I just LOVE doing this kind of stuff, to a ridiculous degree- the nuttier, the better, and the more random and unlikely to have larger overarching plots the series is, the better. I’m only sorry there’s no entry for Dead Like Me; I would have a test audience unlikely to shun me forever for sharing our theory that Joy is actually middle management for the Divine.

*warning: the tropes wiki is a timesink of truly epic proportions. Do not start exploring unless you have literally hours of free time to kill; the temptation for one more click is overwhelming.

In answer to some questions about the assault by monkeys on a New Delhi bureaucrat…

1)Yes, they can be imported. Rhesus macaques are second only to crab-eating macaques in rates of primate imports to the U.S. Talk to Covance or Charles River Laboratories, though you’ll have a fair wad of red tape to deal with.

2)Yes, they can survive in DC. Rhesuses live in temperate climates, and as New Delhi and many other places prove, they’re very good at urbanizing, like most intelligent omnivores.

3)I don’t know what would necessarily drive them to attack bureaucrats; I’m betting this guy was having tea or breakfast while reading his paper, and the monkeys, having learned that they can successfully bully people out of food, decided to appropriate it. However, as they ARE quite bright and definitely aggressive and resourceful, training involving suits, ties, and ugly haircuts associated with delicious nuts and fruits would be relatively simple. Give me a big wad of grant money and I’ll prove it.

Pick up Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon if you want a graphic illustration of the potential of monkeys for havoc in the appropriate places. I think the monkey in the story was a capuchin rather than a rhesus, but it shouldn’t make much of a difference.

Of late in the news is yet another in a long series of James Watson’s public remarks about sociobiology that gets folks into a tizzy. As usual, the bulk of the debate has begun to take the following shape:

Side A: “WAH! He’s racist/sexist/homophobic!”

Side B: “Screw you, hippie, you just don’t like it because it’s not PC!”

The fact that both sides are technically correct doesn’t really help. Science reporting (like most reporting, in fact) is notoriously bad, because reporters typically have only a very shallow understanding of science themselves, limited space to report in, and relatively little ability, thanks to that shallow understanding, to evaluate the quality of their information sources. Watson gets press because he won a Nobel for an advance in biology (though his actual prize was for “physiology or medicine”), so it sounds like an expert’s opinion- but Watson is a biochemist, not an evolutionary biologist or even a geneticist. He’s as qualified to comment on those things as an astronomer is qualified to comment on quantum physics- the astronomer might be saying knowledgeable things, but if he does it’s because he educated himself on the subject enough to be knowledgeable, not because his expertise in astronomy makes him so.

Terry Pratchett calls the vast oversimplifications required to boil down complex scientific subjects into terms that students with little or no background in the subject can even begin to understand “lies-to-children”. Lies-to-children are necessary, because there is absolutely no way in hell you could explain to a nine-year-old or someone otherwise unschooled the true complexity of the subject- all you need to start from is not quite the truth, but a lie that can help develop their thinking to the point where getting the truth or just a lie that represents a closer step to it is something they can wrap their heads around.

Genetics and evolutionary theory are chockablock with lies-to-children. As it has turned out, almost no genetic systems work like the simple Mendelian inheritance we all learned about in high school biology; traits that really do depend on only one or two alleles to express are infinitely less common than ones that work in concert as byzantine systems of multiple genes with several assorted kinds of “go” or “kill” switches, plus they need environmental conditions that may or may not always be clear to express, partially or wholly. It is hugely complicated, and even at the college undergrad level by necessity a good deal of what you learn will be lies-to-children- and once you get beyond that, the geneticist’s role largely becomes one more person taking little buckets full of new knowledge away from the vast ocean that is still unknown territory. One of the things that makes Watson’s remark about how mothers should be able to abort babies identified as carrying a “gay gene” stupid is that all research thus far plus some common sense about genetics indicates there is almost certainly no “gay gene”- not that being gay isn’t likely to have a strong genetic component, but that there are probably multiple genes plus some environmental conditions involved in making the final determinant, which makes a prenatal test for “gay” all but totally useless. Seen in that light, the remark either then becomes the statement of someone looking to stir up controversy among those too ignorant of the science involved to evaluate it correctly… or someone who is simply rather ignorant themself, which I think is most likely. If there’s been one consistency in Watson’s pattern of foot-in-mouth disease, it’s a pattern of thinking the link between single genes and expressed traits, especially extremely complex traits like intelligence, is much stronger and more universal than it is.

With evolution, the lie-to-children that most people get is a fraction of the truth: evolutionary change is the result of mutation sorted by natural selection, with natural selection defined as the favoring of whatever traits make the organism fitter than others. And as it goes, it’s true, or at least it’s a pretty good brief summing-up. Later on in the education process, concepts like genetic drift are introduced, and different kinds of selective pressure, and going into what the definition of “fitness” really is and what the wider implications are, and generally weeding out the kinds of errors of perception that people are prone to- like concluding that if evolution makes organisms more fit, than clearly evolution is a process of progress or perfection. Complicating this is the relatively recent arrival of the field of sociobiology; studying how evolution affects behavior and how we can apply observations from the natural world to insights as to why people behave the way they do even though it might be contrary to social pressures or rational sense. The idea that genes affecting behavior isn’t just an idea from the bad old days of eugenic “science” is in itself fairly new and radical. People are leery of the idea for a very good reason- people whose understanding isn’t as advanced beyond lies-to-children as they think it is run some twisted places with the concept, and more cynical folks use it to lend a gloss of scientific respectability to their personal agendas. Historically speaking, there has been FAR more of this than there has been good sociobiology; the fear is a very reasonable one.

Between the phenomena I’m talking about and the most recent comments by Watson, using race and intelligence to discuss the way these kinds of bad reasoning snowball seems very natural. And, in fact, I plan to do just that- I’ve realized that if I want to, I can mine the subject for quite some time, and since I’m always looking for ways to make writing great wads of words easy as well as interesting, that makes me happy. But this is already getting lengthy enough, and in grand blogger tradition I’m going to use the example most irritating to me personally to make my point.

I’m talking about the facile concepts that get thrown around as the “truth” of male/female relations. There are many, but there are two that get thrown out as some kind of sociobiological Holy Grail on the gender wars- or Holy Hand Grenade when used by misogynists/misanthropists/people who just want some way to justify the shit they pull.

1. “Men are programmed to want to fuck as many women as they can, and women are programmed to find the best and richest male and make him stick with her.”

2. “Humans are not naturally monogamous.”

(more…)

After several months of working out 4-6 times a week and doing things like pushups, elevated pushups, shoulder presses, snatches, cleans, push jerks, push presses, and bench presses, I’ve finally injured myself…

…Training Kang, who has hit the Five Month Rebellion and hit the end of the leash, with all her considerable strength, from an angle I was unprepared for, one too many times.

I’m off upper-body work for I don’t know how long because I hurt myself on a puppy. How embarrassing.