The Quantum Fishies

This is Wong-Foo:

Wong-Foo is not doing his job.

Wong-Foo's job is to eat the Quantum Fishies. The Quantum Fishies are the offspring of my two guppies, Preggers and Studly. (I'll get some photos up as soon as I remember to charge the batteries for my camera.)

Preggers and Studly are very good at their job. Their job is to make snacks for Wong-Foo. Wong-Foo's job is to eat the snacks so the tank doesn't become overcrowded. It's an eco system thing. Keep up, people.

But Wong-Foo has gotten lazy, and there are FOUR more fishies in the tank than there should be. They are the Quantum Fishies: Nuon, Gluon, Lepton, and Quark. They are little more than a pair of eyes each attached to a small, transparent body and tail. They do not swim, they do not move. They disappear from one location and instantly reappear in another place in the tank. It is not magic: it is Quantum Tankanics. They are here, there, and everywhere, few in number, but nearly impossible to count. They are the Quantum Fishies.

I knew it was bad,

but I didn't realize it was THIS bad. Good god almighty.

Counter of boiled dead fish larvae

alright, i guess an explanation's in order.

after my sophomore (2nd year) at college (uni), i got a job as an assistant in an envronmental laboratory at a nuclear power plant. the plant didn't have a cooling tower, it drew it's cooling water from Long Island Sound, ran it through a closed system, and dumped the boiling water back into the Sound. The lab's job was to assess the impact this had on the ichtheofauna (fish) of the surrounding water. We did this by dropping ultra fine nets into the water in front of the giant pipes where the hot (temp, not radioactive) water came out and collected many, many, many, many, many samples of the crap that came out with the water.

What we caught were shredded, boiled fish larvae and eggs. They had to be preserved in formaldehyde (yuk!), labelled, and analyzed under a microscope. I would take a jar, strain and rinse the formaldehyde and dump the contents (about a pint's worth of shredded fishy crap and plankton) into a dish and look at it carefully under a microscope. I would determine the species of the gross, boiled, shredded, disgusting dead baby fishes and record how many of what species and at what stage of development got fried by the system. also eggs. how many people do you know that can tell the species of a fish from it's egg? huh?? huh??? that's what i thought. (caviar don't count.)

Then we'd put the crap back into the formaldehyde, record the data, and stuff it all on a shelf somewhere so the Big Cheeses who own the plant can manipulate the numbers to prove that they're not destroying the fish population of the Sound.

When I took the job Ithought I would be doing good, solid, environmental research. I didn't realize that I would be used to justify the continuation of an abominable environmental practice brought about because the residents of the extremely posh nearby communities didn't their costal views spoilt by a giant cooling tower, which would then lower their property values. So we commit genocide on the fish instead. Fair trade.

I suppose I could have described the job as "lab assistant," or even "corporate whore," but that just wouldn't generate the same intrigue as "counter of boiled fish larvae," would it? :)

Halloween News

Happy Halloween, y'all. I've been having a browse through the Guardian online, an activitiy in which I attempt to indulge on at least a semi-regular basis. Today there were several articles which had me grumbling out loud to myself in my room. At moments such as that, I feel the need to share my grumbles with beings other than my assortment of potted plants. So here we go:

Blair refuses to 'undermine' troops with Iraq inquiry

Hang on a minute. How does an inquiry into the start of the war "undermine" the troops? The only people the TRUTH undermines are the criminals. Since we all agree that boys and girls on the ground being shot at are not responsible for starting the war (that credit falls squarely on the politicians), than revealing the truth can in no way damage or tarnish them. Headlines like this make me cringe. This could have come right out of the mouth of W. What are you hiding, Tony???

A huge war chest and soaring ratings -- Clinton looks beyond the senate

Is anyone else remotely bothered by the blatant double-entendre of the word "chest" in this context? How are we ever going to elect a woman if we can't get past the fact that she has boobs, people! Get over it.

Elephants pass mirror test of self-awareness

Cool. I've been saying it for years. Glad science finally caught up with me. Hopefully the recognition that elephants are self-aware will put that much more squeeze on the need to enforce the ivory ban. Probably not (hasn't done much for the chips or gorillas), but here's to hopin'. *raises mug of blueberry tea, takes swig*

New 'divorce' rights for unmarried couples

I have a real problem with this. I appreciate that the government is attempting to achieve what it thinks is protection for people suffering unfortunate financial consequences of breaking up, but in doing so they are seriously restricting the rights of citizens and effectively out-lawing unmarried cohabitation. By granting financial settlements including cash lump sums, monthly support, property, and even part of one partner's pension (!!!) to cohabitees who split up, the government is effectively saying you can't live together outside matrimony because by living together we are recognizing you as married. They are making the act of moving in together a significant financial committment. If people wanted that financial committment, then they could get married! Simple! The government is removing that in-between try-it-out-and-see-how-it-goes stage of unmarried cohabitation as a stepping stone option in many couples' relationships. This is a really really bad idea.


That is all. You may now proceed to eat your candy.

'God's Rottweiller' In The Doghouse

(over the wrong issue)

There's been loads and loads of press coverage lately about Ratzinger, er, Pope Benedict the whatever. Ugh, I can't even bring myself to say it. He'll always be Ratzinger to me.

Mostly he's been taking flak for insulting pretty much everyone on earth, espeically the muslims. Well, to be fair his insult of the Jews was actually a lot worse to my mind (stood in the middle of Auschwitz and told them that the real victim of the Holocaust was Christianity), but he's been getting press for pissing off the Muslims because the Muslims are reacting more. It's the cartoon fiasco all over again. Someone does something thoughtless and insensitive, the world Muslim community responds by:
a) rioting
b) calling for blood
c) burning churches
d) all of the above
If you guessed "d", you're a winner! Give yourself a gold star, genius.

Now, I have a hard time getting too riled up over this because the way I see it, people on both sides are being selfish fuckwits. I really have no sympathy for either of them, the Pope or the Muslims. One's an asshole (again), the others are over-reacting. Again. Lose-lose situation. Moving on.

The one that's really got me is the whole Intelligent Design thing. Ratzinger is about to bring the Catholic church into it. The Church has never mandated a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. Not for a few centuries, anyway. Because of this, it doesn't have big problem with the idea of evolution. Pope JPII was fairly progressive in terms of scientific achievement. He recognized the accomplishments of Darwin, didn't have issue with evolution or natural selection. Heck, he even apologized to Galileo and his descendants for the Churche's big fuck-up over the whole solar system thang.

Ratzinger is about to undo all that. (Well, maybe not the solar system thing, but given enough time, who knows?) If the Church reverses its position on evolution and goes over to the side of the narrow-minded fundamentalist idiots known in America as the Religious Right (known in my mind as the Religious Wrong), it will be a major doctrinal shift that will have ramifications for Catholic education all over the world. Catholic schools will no longer be able to teach evolutionary biology. And what of all the Catholic universities? Highly respected institutions like Loyola University and Notre Dame will have serious propblems on their hands. Will they eject their biology departments, or risk excommunication? (I got $1000 says the Jesuits over at Loyola take excommunication before they sacrifice the qualitiy of their education. Any takers?)

In an age where technology is developing at an exponential pace, education is more critical than ever. It is no longer enough to know the three Rs to survive in society. One must be scientifically and technolgically literate as well. The difference between the Knows and the Know Nots is rapidly becoming as significant as the difference between the Haves and the Have Nots. It is into this 21st century setting that the Pope is seriously handicapping all his followers, attempting to force them back into an age of blindness and ignorance. In his role as shepherd, Ratzinger is not leading with the hand of compassion and understanding. In his narrow judgment and condemnation of human behavior, he is not doing his flock any favors.

Penis Post

A new drug for premature ejaculation is available, reports this week's issue of New Scientist. In a clinical trial of 2000 men, all of whom typically ejaculated less than 1 minute after penetration, the time to ejaculation was:
1.8 mins for men on placebo
2.8 mins for men on 30 mg dose, and
3.3 mins for men on 60 mg dose.

This struck me as lovely news, until i read the following:
"Marcel Waldinger, a neuropsychiatrist at Leyenburg Hospital in The Hague... is concerned that phaymaceutical compaines may be trying to 'pathologise' a condition... that belongs to normal sexual performance." In his 2005 study among the world's males' time taken to ejaculate, the average man lasted only 5.4 mins. (yes, that really is a decimal point.) In Turkey, the average was only 3.7.

5.4 mins!?!? really? um, wow.

Here's what this says to me. This says to me that popular culture has led us to have unhealty, unnatural, unrealistic expectations of men's staying power. We've seen this effect before, in our obsessive desires to have microwaists, DDboobs, and perfect tans all year round. At the same time that we've been bombarded with unrealistic expectations of our bodies, we've also been bombarded with equally unrealistic expectations of sexual performance. Egad. I actually feel sorry for men. (and Turkish women).


In related penis news: Bluto is defiantely a boy.

There was considerable doubt as to the authenticity of the little guy's true gender, as it's rather difficult to tell with hamsters. But this morning as I took him out of his cage so i could clean it, i was rubbing his belly and i accidently encountered, his, um, all right i'll just say it: i rubbed my hamter's cock. Not deliberatley, mind, but apparently he likes having his belly scratched a little too much.

I feel like i need a shower.