I am exhausted

I've moved at least once a year in the past five years. I think I would like to not move again for a few years now.

But I love my new place, and my brand new bed should be here within an hour and twenty minutes (but seriously, who delivers on a Sunday between 8pm and 11 pm? Mattress Firm apparently). I will have pictures some time soon. Probably when I finally getting everything put away.

Audience participation

So I read several of the Science Blogs on a semi-regular basis and my recent platypus post has got me thinking it's kind of fun to write about science (clearly my vacation from classes has already started to make my brain melt).

What do you all think? I'm guessing some of you will be really bored by it but that's what the scroll bar is for. If you are interested, what kind of topics would you like to read? Do you have any burning questions that you would like me to address? Tell me, I'm all ears.

Speaking of ow...

My friend wants to try out for Atlanta's roller derby teams. And I'm going to the open house with her on Saturday. I will be blogging it.

Ow

I tried capoeira tonight, and it kicked my ass. Why do I keep forgetting that I'm a completely uncoordinated and clumsy person?

I was productive...

And now I'm going to go get a fancypants haircut.

Well, not a really fancypants haircut since I can't afford those but I am going to an honest to god salon. I can't wait to get my hair unpoofed.

Platypus? Platyplease!

As some of you may have heard, a draft of the platypus genome has recently been published. Since the platypus lineage split off about 166 million years ago, they have some features that seem pretty quirky to us eutharian mammals.

Here's a quality reproduction of part of one of the figures in the Nature paper published this week:






















In case you can't appreciate my ouvre, that's a platypus (monotreme), a kangaroo (marsupial), and a rat (eutharian).

All three groups evolved from the therapsids, a mammal-like reptile from the synapsid lineage. Meanwhile the sauropsids, which split from the synapsids about 315 MYA, have evolved into birds and reptiles.

This ancient split between what eventually became platypus and what eventually became reptile is interesting because the male platypus is a venomous animal. This is already unusual and totally bad ass for a mammal but it gets better.

The genes for platypus venom come from a duplication of the beta-defensin gene family, which we all have. In fact, the venom genes in snakes and lizards also arose from a duplication of beta-defensin genes, completely independent of the duplication in the platypus lineage. That is so cool!

Another really cool thing about the playtpus is that males have five X chromosomes and five Y chromosomes and let me tell you, that's a whole lot of sex chromosomes. It still isn't clear how sex determination even works in these animals.

In case you have a spare subscription to Nature laying around and you want to see the article yourself, it can be found here. If for some reason (god knows why) you don't have a subscription to Nature but you want to read the article anyway, let me know and I'll hook you up.

And since we're on the topic evolution, here's a segment from "This I Believe" on NPR where a plaeoanthropologist talks about how she doesn't believe in evolution.

All this fills me with warm evolutionary biologist fuzzies. I don't know how somebody can look at the platypus and its ten sex chromosome and not want to know how and why these chromosomes came to be. I can't imagine not being filled with glee at the discovery that snakes and platypus got their venom in the same way.

I just can't understand how somebody could only want to know enough to stay alive and comfortable. I just can't understand how somebody can look all this, say god did it, and call it a day.

Pop Kulture Korner

So I was reading a post over at Jezebel (and I'm assuming that you already read Jezebel since I mean, why wouldn't you?) and it referenced the Pink song "You and Your Hand" (or "U + UR Hand" for my younger, hipper, more textually gifted readers).

And I couldn't help but notice what's listed under "related videos". By which I mean, I couldn't help but get lost in the giant time suck that is YouTube. What fascinated me was how two songs could be superficially related, a la "related video" window, but still worlds apart when it came to registering on my feminist offense-o-meter.

Don't get me wrong, pretty much all pop culture is so saturated with misogyny that in my post-patriarchy gynotopia there will be no pop culture because it will have all been destroyed in the revolution. But I digress..

So I'm down with Pink. She's a'ight for the most part, although "Stupid Girls" kind of left that bitter taste of "I'm special! Not like those other yucky girls" in my mouth. But whev, more on this later. I do enjoy rockin' out to "You and Your Hand" so lets see YouTube thinks I might also enjoy.

Hmm.. "Before He Cheats", maybe he'll remember his last ex who trashed his truck with a baseball bat. I'll admit this song is actually kind of awesome, although not as awesome as Goodbye Earl. I mean, vandalism is totally wrong and I'm not condoning it but I am 100% supportive of Carrie Underwood decision to DTMF. I can see how it relates to telling skeezeballs to go fuck themselves but points off for taking a pot shot at fruity drinks.

"Call Me When You're Sober". Let me just say I would also completely support the decision of Amy Lee to dump her band, she has a powerful voice and it's painful to hear it drowned out by mediocre instrumentals. Anywhoo, Amy Lee DTMF for excessive drinking. Less skeezey than just kind of sad since presumably Carrie Underwood's ex-boyfriend was just a douchebag but Amy Lee's ex-boyfriend was an alcoholic.

Okay, "Girlfriend".. I don't really know where to start with this train wreck of a song. I realize that when you like somebody and they don't like you back it can make you wallow in self-pity for a bit. That's just pride fucking with you. But this song and "Sk8r Boi" are all pretty much about how the dude is a special and unique snowflake that other girls are too stupid to appreciate. This really pisses me off.

Systemic sexism means that you don't get to opt out. If you're cool enough and like enough "dude" things, you don't get to be an honorary dude. When you tear down a woman for not drinking whiskey, or for wearing make up, or for waxing her cootch you're tearing all women down. Discussion about the various concessions that we make to get by in a sexist society is one thing, taking a piss on other women because you personally don't do all that stupid girl shit? Well that's a whole 'nother game.

I hope that one day women realize they're shooting themselves in the foot when they tear down other women.

I think it's interesting that "You and Your Hand" has a bunch of links to other grrl power (I think? I'm still confused about how to characterize the relatedness) songs by other artists and in other genres, but the "related videos" for other songs tend to stick to the same sing.

Conclusion: I can't believe I spent my Saturday evening watching bad pop videos on YouTube and then writing a blog post about it. I see myself turning into a crazy cat lady, sans cats. I am done rambling now. A hot shower sounds way better than proofreading my post.