You're Telling Me...

NZ Finds Black Cocks Hard to Swallow

Thanks for the link, Gawker!

And now for our moment of unbridled consumerism:

I want an iPod Nano! Want, want, want!!!

Whew.

Thanks.

Science Question of the Day

This is an actual question from one of my students. I always like it when the kids are thinking, and the answer is interesting, so I thought I would post it for all to read. Names have been changed and questions edited to protect the students, though nobody is really innocent.

Dear LaBlonde,

Why do some animals reproduce sexually (who have the ability to reproduce asexually) in times of crisis?

The answer

You are referring to 'facultative sexuality': the ability to change from asexual to sexual reproduction in times of environmental crisis. The benefit to this process lies in the fact that, although we've been talking about individual genes in class, in complex organisms a single trait may depend on the actions of several genes. To have the most beneficial phenotype for an environment, you will need to a specific combination of alleles for these genes. In asexual reproduction, individuals pass their allele combinations to their offspring unscathed, allowing the offspring to be just as successful at navigating the environment as the parent was. This is fine as long as the environment is stable- well-adapted parents produce well-adapted offspring. No, I'm serious, although anyone who ever attended Thanksgiving at the boyfriend's relatives might disagree. (Ba dum CHING!) However, when things go badly, the old gene combinations might not be good enough anymore. In fact, in a changed environment, who's to know what will work well and what will drag you out of the gene pool? The best solution is to produce many, variable offspring, with the hopes that one will contain a more idea genotype. The good thing about sexual reproduction is that between crossing over and the random assortment of paternal and maternal chromosomes in the gamete, an individual will not pass their complete genotype to their offspring- it will get mixed up with alleles from the other parent, and potentially produce a more ideal genotype for that environment.

As one can imagine, this sort of free-and-easy switchin'occurs mostly in our low-on-the-food-chain brethren (and sistren), such as microbes, aphids, and some plants. This is a shame, given some of the dates I've been on. Asexuality doesn't sound that bad to me.

Ben Stein, how could you?

Otherwise known as the boring teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off ("Bueller?....Bueller?), Ben Stein has written this defense of G-Dub for the American Spectator. In it, he refers to the great leader as:

"..the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue."

Stein must have a strong immunity to cognitive dissonance if he can say this about a man who doesn't mind snubbing the NAACP. It's not surprising, really. The man was a speechwriter for Nixon; that would suppress anyone's gag reflex after a while.

About the hurricane

There's been a great deal of coverage in the mainstream press regarding not just the slow federal reaction to the Gulf Coast disaster (see these pieces in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune if you haven't gotten enough coverage yet), but also the fact that FEMA has been in the city for three days without restoring anything that remotely resembles order.

What has arisen amid all this speculation, though, is the suggestion that the slow response is due to the fact that a large number of the victims were poor and black. If this is the case, it is a staggering indictment of the current administration. I'm not an unfair person; I like to at least try to see both sides of an issue, and since most of my friends are foaming-at-the-mouth liberal democrats, I thought I'd try to find some foamers on the other side. Also being rather lazy, I thought I'd get the opinions of the usual suspects: Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. The truth, then, probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Ann did not disappoint. Not only did she not even mention the suffering in the Gulf Coast, her website features a fantasy dialogue about Ted Kennedy's genitals. I shit you not. And you have to admire her style- why post a link to relief sites (hell, even I did that) when you can fantasize about the sagging balls of an elder statesman?

Rush, on the other hand, decided to use his considerable influence to encourage people to put aside their differences and help each other. Ha Ha, just kidding! He says: 1) people didn't leave New Orleans because they were poor, and they were poor because the (mostly democrat) people have an 'entitlement mentality' and just expect the government to step in when AN UNIMAGINABLY POWERFUL ACT OF NATURE DESTROYS ALL THEIR POSSESSIONS... whew, sorry. Anyway, those silly people- maybe next time they'll learn not to be so poor!

The best part, though, is 2) the press is actually demonstrating reverse racism by not showing all the suffering white people. I'd like to comment further, but just read it for yourself.

You might ask why I'm even worried about the comments of a single conservative blowhard. Because for the New York City area, WABC, the local affiliate that carries his program, has a 3.5 Arbitron rating. Even in the blue states, people are listening to this garbage.

For further criticism of the great leader, check out . Michael Moore's open letter to George W. Bush. Funny and incisive at the same time.

Eat ME, Rachel Ray

She's America's foodie sweetheart, with something like 18 shows on the Food Network. With her big teeth, gratingly nasal NY accent, and sad tendency to wear overly tight, roll-highlighting shirts tucked into her black jeans, I can see why she's popular with both men and women. She certainly makes me feel better about myself, and, if I were a guy, she would bring back many fond memories of that girl in college who always picked up the phone at 3 am, and was totally happy to clean up your apartment before she left the next morning.

Also, she posed for FHM. What, you couldn't make Maxim's 'Girls of Rochester' issue?


So why is poor Rachel the target of my displaced agression this afternoon? I made mushroom risotto for dinner last night, and it kicked ass. But she's the one with the show, because she knows how to make a salad out of grapefruit from a jar. Christ.

Not about the hurricane

It appears that this was an unfortunate time to start a blog; the most talked-about topic is the hurricane, and I don't feel I have anything substantive to add. Instead of talking, contribute to the American Red Cross.

If that weren't enough of an inauspicious beginning, I celebrated my birthday last night, and any remaining wit is failing to penetrate the vodka fog. Speaking of vodka, I highly recommend Pravda . The food is delicious, and oh, the sweet, sweet booze....

But just so you don't feel shortchanged, here's a picture of a car jacked up on hydraulics.