I've written about the misery of majoring in biology here before so you already know that science is gross. I have more grossness to share.
Did you know that your face has mites on it called face mites? They are tiny arachnids, like ticks or spiders, and they live in the hair follicles on your face. They eat the sebum in the follicle and at night they come out of your follicles to mate. The freaks come out at night, if you will. So yeah, you have bugs making wonderful sweet sweet love on your face but don't worry, they don't have an anus so they don't poop on you. Don't take my word for it, here's a video featuring Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist who studies face mites. Next time you think your job is bad or stupid, just remember that Dr. Trautwein does this (probably using your tax dollars).
Also gross: the New York Times, the paper of record, recently ran a story about how macaques use stones to pleasure themselves. You won't get this monkey porn in the New York Post--they better not let my kids have access to the Times in school! Yet another reason to avoid macaques.
More grossness from the Gray Lady: Robert Hancock, a biologist at Metropolitan State University of Denver, discovered that the larvae of Toxorhynchites amboinensis, a species of mosquito, shoot their heads forwards to capture their prey. Kind of like a moray eel only with the whole head.
They have GIFs in the article if you want to see it in action. Or if you want further justification to major in art history.
I finally figured out what makes a sci-fi/fantasy TV show good. Any show set in some alternate world, whether it's the future, outer space, or some mythical realm of swords and sorcery, has to explain how all the alternate world shit works in addition to explaining who all the people are. If you botch setting things up, the whole thing falls apart.
For example, I watched a few episodes of The Expanse at Dave's suggestion. Although I like to break his balls I respect Dave's taste in books and TV tremendously and I expected to like it. But after a handful of episodes I'm just meh on it and I stopped watching. There's too many people in too many places, the United Nations has too much power, and there are too many rules about living on different planets and asteroid belts for me to figure out on top of all the criminal plot lines and political maneuvering. One plot line is clear--Mars and the asteroid belts need water and the only way to get it is by harvesting ice from some outer planets--but it makes no sense. Yoo mean tuh tell me dat deez fuggin stoonads ken put a civiluhzashin on fuggin Mars, but dey can't make wadduh outta elemental hydrogen and oxygen? I kawl boolshit.
Seriously though, I have too much to learn when I watch the Expanse and I can't keep it all straight. Seeing Joey Tribiani's nephew in a spaceship is confusing too.
I'm too stupid and too lazy to process it.
Similarly, I watched the first season of Wheel of Time and I do not plan on watching the second. It starts out as your standard medieval type of thing, but then a lady appears who can shoot what looks like DNA from her hands and she saves the day when a bunch of random monsters appear.
She tells a bunch of people that she's looking for "The Dragon Reborn" and it could be one of them. It takes a while to clarify all this hooey, and there is blatant theft from Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Yes, the whole swords and sorcery genre rips off LotR but this is ridiculous. They're practically running through Mordor at one point. "The Dark One" has an army of creatures that are orcs with dog heads. Superpowers randomly flare up in a bar. A wizard guides a band of trusting, less experienced people through a harrowing journey to defeat an evil force that has been silent for 3000 years, and only one of them can save the world.
Meanwhile, they run into all sorts of random people in random places that can do random superhuman things and there is no explanation for it. There are flashbacks to battles where neither side of the fight is identified. Eventually they explain the lady with the DNA hands--she's part of this sisterhood of badass DNA slingers (the DNA comes from The True Source (but not The Source)), and the whole society of them is very complicated and political, so you have to wrap your head around that while trying to understand how their powers work, when suddenly a man who can sling DNA shows up and that unleashes a whole new set of rules and backstory to digest. It's ridiculous.
Which is to say there's a fair amount of theft from Dune. A society of women who can use The Voice/touch The True Source to do stuff and men can't do it ... except sometimes they can.
Game of Thrones got this right. Season 1, episode 1 opens with a big scary slightly obscured monster killing people. The rest of season 1 is just regular humans with differing UK accents establishing themselves and their motivation. When something weird happens, like a Dothraki wedding, there is an outsider who sits in for the audience to ask "What the fuck is going on?" to another outsider who knows the deal.
By the end of season 1 you forget that that there is any magical shit involved whatsoever, until this:
And then you're like "Oh right, I forgot there was magical shit on this show!" but you're ready for it because you know who everyone is and what they're trying to do. You can wrap your head around all the mystical stuff starting in season 2.
So if you're going to run a sci-fi/fantasy TV show, explain the people first and the science/sorcery afterwards.
We've been awash in a sea of conflicting covid-19 information since the beginning of the crisis. I think I've found some good news amid this morass of confusion.
Our adaptive immune systems primarily involve two types of cells: B cells and T cells. It appears that T cells are more predominant when it comes to beating covid-19. You can read about it here.
In July 2020, a group of European scientists published an article in Nature describing how they tested a bunch of people who never had coivd-19 and found that about 35% of them had a T cell response. They attribute this to exposure to other coronaviruses. This means that about 35% of the population might have some preexisting immunity to covid-19. That's good news!
I learned about this from a friend who is probably the smartest guy I know (sorry Dave). He also posits that about 2% of the population of NJ already tested positive, which means that about 20% of NJ had the virus (the CDC says the true infection rate is about 10 times higher than reported).
Taken together, about 55% of the people in NJ should have some sort of immune response to the virus so we're close to the level needed for herd immunity. That's good news too!
This conclusion is further validated by my barber. I subscribe to a theory I call The Wisdom of Barbers. Barbers spend the day shooting the shit with men of all ages, ethnicities, races, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status. As a result they gather in an insanely broad range of views on whatever topic the feel like discussing and they can often crystallize that information into a prediction about the future. My old barber ran a presidential election poll for over 20 years and it was always right.
Anyway, I got a haircut the other day at my local barbershop, an uncle-and-nephew team who may or may not take your action on NFL games. My friend who told me about the European study also gets his hair cut there, so I asked the nephew if my friend told him about it too. The nephew said "No, but I read a paper published through the NIH and it says the number could be as high as 50%." I found the article in Science and he's right. This is more good news!
All of that said, my friend an my barber are both conservatives. My friend hates Trump but he's also a bit of a Blue Lives Matter guy (stuff like "If he had just listened to the police he wouldn't have gotten shot."). My barber voted for Trump and I'm pretty sure he will do so again (he's a Ben Shapiro fan). The fact that they and no one other than zdaughter's speech therapist (who may be kinda Trumpy too) talks about this makes me wonder if it's a right wing talking point.
I suspect it's both. For once, Republicans are speaking the truth and the virus will soon run its course, turning into nothing more than a relatively routine but life-threatening infection like measles. I predict this will happen around mid-October.
Why then? Because that's two weeks before the election. Of course this is when the virus will clear up. My old barber with the straw poll once told me "If you're ever at the race track and you see Bill Clinton, bet like he does. That lucky bastard could bet on a three-legged horse and still win." This is true--his shitty shenanigans never resulted in any real penalties and he's even allowed to speak publicly despite #MeToo. Trump is the same guy, a bizzarro Cill Clinton. Of course our T cells will save his lucky ass right in time to get reelected.
I eagerly await the FDA's approval of Trump brand T cells, yours for only $500 a dose or free when you buys a one year membership to any Trump brand golf club.
High school senior Jessica Lee dropped a little science in her yearbook quote:
Our readership does not include any chemists (sorry Mark, your bathtub crystal meth operation doesn't qualify you) so you likely don't have the periodic table memorized, making the joke hard to discern.
Still don't get it? Here's a Muppets-style cartoon mashup (featuring NSFW lyrics) to jog your memory.
"Tattoo on tittie sayin' B.I.G." gets me every time.
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