LMNOP

He Also Hates Ice Cream, Pizza, and Warm Woolen Mittens

Prior to yesterday, I thought that people were mostly good.  And then I read this article about a man who wants pandas to die.

According to the article:

The BBC wildlife expert Chris Packham has questioned the millions spent trying to save the giant panda from extinction and suggested that the bamboo-eating bear should be allowed to die out "with a degree of dignity".

Apparently Packham believes that, among other things, pandas are at an "evolutionary dead-end" because of their reliance on bamboo, and that it it makes sense to "pull the plug."  Yes.  Those are his words.  Pull.  The.  Plug.

Seriously, Chris Packham?  Anti-panda?  That's the stance you're going to take?  Really?

Needless to say, I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this one.  However, I am also curious to hear what other issues Mr. Packham has an opinion about.  Maybe he his career goal is to find scientific reasons to hate things that were previously only thought to be lovable.  If that's the case, I would like to propose some ideas for journal articles he could write.  Like this:

Or maybe this:

Or perhaps:

He might as well.  Once you're known as the guy who wants the pandas to die--well, it's not like you're going to come back from that.  It's time to just enjoy being an asshole.

Dinosaurs for Sale!

Opportunities for dinosaur ownership just don't come up often enough these days, but Oct. 3 is looking promising.  That is when, according to this article, approximately 50 "impressive, museum-quality" natural history artifacts, including some dinos, will be auctioned off at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas.  The big seller is supposedly going to be a T. rex named Samson, with an estimated value of $2 million - $8 million. According to the article:

Prepared at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Samson’s skull is regarded as one of the finest and most complete T. rex skulls in existence, and displays 22 teeth. The skeleton contains approximately 170 bones, more than 55 percent of the total bone count of an entire skeleton.

That's nice, but this is not the best economy, and we don't all have millions of dollars to be spending on fossils.  That is why I have browsed the auction catalog and come up with some more budget-conscious picks to bid on.  All of the following picks come in well under the million-dollar mark, with auction values starting as low as $1,000!

Best Bargain-Bin Item: Lot 1, "A Fine Fossil Fish"

[Estimate: $1,000 - 1,250]

According to the catalog description, this Diplomystus dentatus specimen is a "requisite acquisition for any serious fossil fish collection."  More importantly, it is also looking like the cheapest thing you can buy in this particular auction--well, either this or the lame-ass "Ammomite with Bite Marks," but frankly, if you're going to drop a grand on a fossil, it shouldn't have a bite taken out of it.

Best Thing to Buy if You Really, Really Like Vertebrae: Lot 19, "Triceratops Vertebra"

[Estimate: $1,250 - 1,500]

If you buy one vertebra this year, I recommend you go with a Triceratops vertebra.  Their vertebrae have a "distinctive appearance" featuring "three horns and a large bony frill, which, besides giving this creature lasting celebrity, may have served several purposes."  From the looks of it, I think one of these purposes could definitely be 'most awesome pencil holder of the past 35 million years.'

Best Thing to Impress the Ladies: Lot 21,"Set of T. Rex teeth"

[Estimate: $7,500 - 10,000]

Some background: a couple years ago, I was in a bar with my sister Kate and her friend Ashley.  Ashley was approached by extremely hardy-looking man in a Hawaiian shirt.  Despite it being Saturday night at a bar, this man was dressed like a.) he was on a boat, and b.) he had never been anywhere else in his life other than on a boat.  Not knowing what to say, Ashley simply pointed to the shark tooth he was wearing around his neck and said, "Sweet tooth you got there, man."  The guy looked Ashley directly in the eye and said, "Lady, I've got a shark tooth at home that's as big as your hand."  The amount of confidence in this statement led me to believe that this comment had been used to impress many, many women in the past.

Which brings me to this item.  I cannot say the shark tooth line successfully worked on Ashley, but I can't help but think that if it had been an entire set of T. rex teeth that man had mentioned having at home, well--he and Ashley would probably be married by now.

Most Practical Purchase: Lot 30, "Pair of Dinosaurs Known as 'Xenia' and 'Ben'"

[Estimate: $500,000 - 600,000]

This is a true recession special.  For an estimated $500-$600K, you get two Late Cretaceous Einiosaurus procurvicornis (a Triceratops relative) skeletons for just a fraction of the price of one T. rex.  The fact that E.p. is not one of your big-name dinos definitely does not mean you aren't getting quality here!  Ahem: "The virtuoso mounting of these specimens is exemplified by the treatment of Xenia's skull, which can  be turned from side to side. The skeleton is completely modular: almost every bone can be removed from the armature for scientific study; metal clips and cradles are used to secure the bones to the armature."  Additionally, "Ben's" skull can be rotated along two planes, up-and-down as well as side-to-side."

Dude, I know exactly what I would do if I had this pair of dinosaurs.  Xenia would stay at home on display in the  living room (note to self: get way bigger house ASAP).  Then I would pull Ben along behind me all day in a giant wagon, and whenever anyone asked me a yes-or-no question, I would say, "I don't know--let me ask my DINOSAUR.  Ben, do you think we should have turkey burgers for dinner?"  Then I would shake Ben's head yes or no in response.  Because I could.

Best if You Can't Afford an Entire Duck-Billed Dinosaur: Lot 22, "Dinosaur Arm"

[Estimate: $9,000 - 11,000]

Yes, it is possible to buy a full Edmontosaurus annectens ("duck-billed dinosaur") skeleton, but like I said: bad economy.  Instead, let me recommend this tasteful single arm of the same species.  The listing boasts that this lovely arm is "offered on a custom stand," which is a relief, because I have seen those generic, non-custom Edmontosaurus annectens arm stands they sell at Kmart, and those things are CRAP.

Those are my picks, but there's plenty more to see in the auction catalog here.

The Future Is Coming, and It Looks Like a Giant Lego Pulling a Rickshaw

Yesterday The Big Picture put up a collection of photos of robots, and it was awesome.  Here are some of my favorites.

Evidently this is a robot showing off its ability to manipulate delicate objects, but I thought it was just the villain from Inspector Gadget preparing to enjoy a cold beverage.

This is an underwater robot called RoboLobster.  It was designed to perform the highly complex task of reminding you that RoboLobster is the coolest word ever.

This robot will eat your brains.

I love that there is a robot that can shoot nets to capture robbers.  Like the scientists were thinking, "I know!  Let's make a state-of-the-art, futuristic device that employs law-enforcement techniques inspired by those 1920s movie bank robbers who stole those big dollar-sign sacks!"

"Farmer Wu Yulu drives his rickshaw pulled by a his self-made walking robot near his home in a village at the outskirts of Beijing January 8, 2009." 

I want a giant Lego Man FarmBot.  Now.

"The 350,000 yen (US$3,480) Paro, a cooing baby harp seal robot fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, is developed by Japan's Intelligent System Co, to soothe patients in hospitals and nursing homes."

This may be the best invention of all time.

Someone Call Bruce Willis

Umm, did you happen to feel a strong breeze yesterday?  Maybe it was the crap weather--OR MAYBE IT WAS THE SECRET ASTEROID WHIZZING BY EARTH AT 12 MILES PER SECOND.

I try not to be an alarmist, which is hard when you watch as much TV as I do and therefore are trained to believe that every phone is tapped, every person is a potential murderer and every little cough or ache is a sign of cancer.  But, with effort, I am generally able to remain convinced that everything is going to be relatively OK. 

And then I see headlines like this:

SURPRISE ASTEROID???  Um, How surprise-y are we talking about?

 Discovered only days ago, asteroid 2009 DD45 zipped between our planet and the moon at 13:44 universal time (8:44 a.m. ET). The asteroid was moving at about 12 miles (20 kilometers) a second when it was closest to Earth.

"Discovered only days ago?"  Um, this shit does not fly with me.  I was under the impression that technology was at the point where we were aware of this kind of thing a lot sooner.  I don't know where I got this impression (OK, maybe I do), but it seems reasonable enough.

Now, it's not like we are talking about the Texas-sized asteroid that threatened to put an early end to Ben Affleck's relationship with Liv Tyler (as well as the rest of the Earth) in Armageddon.  According to National Geographic, this is a small asteroid:

At just 65 to 164 feet (20 to 50 meters) wide, the asteroid "was much fainter than anything visible to the naked eye" even during close approach, Spahr said.

However, according to New Scientist:

That rivals the size of the asteroid, estimated to be as small as 30 metres, that slammed into Tunguska, Siberia in 1908, creating a powerful blast that levelled 2000 square kilometres of forest.

So sure, this asteroid would have only destroyed a small fraction of the Earth's surface.  BUT THAT'S A BIG FREAKING DEAL IF IT'S YOUR FRACTION OF THE EARTH IT SLAMS INTO.

In conclusion, I would like to respectfully request that the scientists in charge of space stop misappropriating their time and resources and doing stupid things like demoting Pluto and MAKE SURE HUGE ROCKS AREN'T ABOUT TO KILL US ALL.  Thx.

Doesn't Look a Day Over 42,500

This is Wilma.

She is a life-size rendering of a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal woman.  Wilma was commissioned by National Geographic for this story and designed from fossils and DNA information from a particular female specimen.  Because the DNA of the woman they based her on suggested that she was a redhead, scientists named the reconstruction Wilma after Wilma Flintstone.  However, from the neck down, she's built a bit more like Fred (Neanderthals were pretty stocky).  Click here for the photo gallery.  I would post a picture, but big W is somewhat nakey-nakey and I know some of you are at work.

Anyway, I don't think Wilma looks too bad; give this lady a shower and a hairbrush, and you've got someone who would meet the standards of even the pickiest Geico caveman.  Check out those natural highlights!

I didn't read the whole National Geographic article, but let me know if you make it through all 10 pages.  I will be worrying about more important things, like starting a letter-writing campaign to get Wilma on the cast for season three of American Gladiators.

A Sprinkling of Linklings

In keeping with the newly-announced LMNOPolicy of posting links whenever the hell I feel like it, here are a few things worth clicking--although I'm warning you now that they border on educational.

• An early wedding present to Jerome, from science: more evidence that dinosaurs are secretly birds.
• This so-called "best cure for hiccups" is suspiciously simple--could it really work?
• Human beings may have come close to extinction 70,000 years ago.
• Polar bears want to know if they're endangered, pronto.

Completing This Week's Eyeball-Poking, Face-Flinching, Hybrid-Driving Series of Posts About Me Being a Wuss

Note: I did not start off this week intending to post exclusively about things that would make me seem lame and/or wussy.  It just kind of worked out that way.  It wasn't even really very hard.

Bodies-The Exhibition opened in the DC area Saturday and will be here until October, which means, I fear, that I'm going to end up getting dragged to it by someone.

Bodies, for those of you who haven't heard of it, is a travelling exhibition of dead human bodies and body parts that have been preserved and set out fordisplay.  This MSNBC article describes it pretty well :

"Divided into displays that focus on the body's different systems — muscular, skeletal, circulatory, reproductive and respiratory — the exhibit features a variety of organs, as well as diseases that affect them.

A smoker's carbon-colored lungs are placed side-by-side with a healthy pair; dark spots of a stroke victim's brain are shown beside a normal one, extreme cases of cancer show up along with healthy specimens.

One part of the exhibit shows an entire circulatory system, minus any other body part, suspended in liquid and illuminated against a dark background, creating a sort of 3D silhouette created by blood vessels.

Another area of the exhibit simulates the view an MRI scan provides cross-sectional views of a body by physically slicing it and separating it in a display case.

Still another portion — complete with a warning to exhibit-goers and a disclaimer that the specimens were obtained through natural deaths — shows fetuses in various stages of development, as well as one in utero and another of conjoined twins."

In other words, EW EW EW has been organized into various displays of OH MY SICK so that we can learn about the OMG VOMIT that is the SERIOUSLY BLARRRRRRGH of GROSS GROSS GROSS.  Or at least that's how I see it.

I'm squeamish enough that I literally cannot picture how any human being would actually want to be a surgeon; in my vision of society the job of a surgeon is the kind of undesirable service like garbage collection or armpit smelling that somebody has to do but nobody should actually want to.  You probably think I am exaggerating, but I don't even really like looking at the muscles poster in my gym for more than a second or two.

Unfortunately it is right by the water fountain and I have to turn my head in the opposite direction in order to look at anything but the poster, so I end up getting fixated on the disgusting neck muscles and the fact that for some reason skin has been drawn over the woman's face, fingers, and feet.  The worst is the feet--it looks like a pair of Peds made out of human skin.

So anyway, the point of this post is that I just know one of my nerdy-ass friends is going to want to go to this exhibition and I'm gonna end up getting browbeaten into coming along and forking over my $30 just to spend an afternoon walking around an exhibit hall shivering, wincing, and throwing up in my mouth repeatedly.  Life is unfair.

Still Not Impressed With T9 Word Prediction Technology

I mean come on, you'd think even the simplest of programs would have realized by now that I'm constantly typing "oh snap" into my cell phone, not "oh soap."  And yet it's always the latter that my phone helpfully suggests to autocomplete for me.  "Oh snap" makes sense!  "Oh soap" does not!  An abacus could have figured that out by now!  Come on, phone, get with it.

To See What Your Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchildren Will Look Like, Tune In to MTV on Mondays at 10

Via Kottke comes this report on a theory suggesting humans will evolve into two sub-species ("a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass") in 100,000 years' time.  Additionally, according to evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry, humans will reach a "peak" in the year 3000, after which they will become too dependent on technology and be sent into decline.  They will be taller and more attractive than we are today; however--

Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.

So basically, in the next millenium the entire world will function like one big Real World-Road Rules Challenge: a bunch of objectively attractive people who are incapable of rational social behavior and also completely unable to work together.

True, this is a scary thought, but come on--we have been aware for years that our descendants are screwed. We know we're basically dumping them in a runaway train to Freakshow Disasterville and then jumping off the back while there's still time to enjoy things like emotions, teamwork, and turning the Amazon into timber. 

Anyway, I'm lending my support to Oliver Curry and his theory.  Two sub-species of humans?  Real-World-Road Rules gone mad?  It doesn't take a lot of effort to sell me on that.  But in case my more discriminating readers (Adam) are holding out for even more evidence, here are three theories and one fact I have come up with.

1. The Theory That Everything BBC Says Is Right. I went to journalism school and learned from journalism professors, so I know this.  BBC would not have gotten on this story if it wasn't accurate.

2. The TI-83 Theory of Evolution. This is a theory I made up a while ago to explain why I feel like kids of the future are going to be extremely socially deficient.  Basically, the use of MySpace and other social networking sites will render them incapable of actually making friends in person (most people born after 1988-1990ish already show signs of this affliction).  Those of us born before then learned how to make friends manually, and though we may now use Facebook and MySpace to maintain friends or even make new ones, we are still relatively well-grounded in the basic principles of human friend-making.  It's like how in Math in school we always had to learn how to do things the long way before the teacher showed us how to do it on the TI-83 in 10 seconds so that we knew how things worked conceptually.  Kids today don't get the conceptual knowledge when it comes to making friends, though, because each one has a MySpace page to do the legwork for him.

3. The Theory That Gattaca Was a Credible Pieces of Scientific Discourse. I base this theory on the fact that when I first rented this movie in 1998 I was obsessed with it. By that time I had completed high school biology, so although I cannot recall the exact specifics of how the movie convinced me that the development of a genetic caste system was indeed plausible, I know that whatever logic was used must have been airtight. 

4. The Fact That You Can't Prove Me Wrong Anyway. That's the best part, really.  I can believe whatever the hell I want about the future and get away with it because you have no way of showing me otherwise.  Sure, you can disagree with me, but you can never actually prove that I am wrong (unless you invent time travel). So why not just agree?  It will make the world a better place.

Agree or disagree, one lesson we can all take away from the BBC article is that "evolutionary theorist" is a pretty sweet gig.  You enjoy all the perks of being a scientist (getting quoted by BBC, telling people at your high school reunion that you were quoted in the BBC, free pens) with no actual chance of being proven wrong in your own lifetime.  By the time 3000 rolls around, the worst thing that can happen to Oliver Curry is that some future human comes across his theory, laughs at how dumb and wrong it is, and posts it on his website or something.  Big deal, future guy.  Oliver Curry made his money already and he's been dead for nine centuries now, so he could care less what you think of him; you, on the other hand, are very much alive and should probably start worrying more about the fact that Earth is due for another asteroid sometime soon.

For more on the future: Read this post from Matt Price's guest blogging stint
For even more on the future: Wait until it happens?

I Guess This Explains American Idol Auditions Once and for All

Reading this article will make you really paranoid (title: "Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find; They're Blind to Own Failings, Others' Skills").  The main idea is that, according to some research, "people who do things badly are usually supremely confident of their abilities--more confident, in fact, than people who do things well."  Here's the part that has basically left me haunted:

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

``Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

Umm, cool.  So, is there any way for me to determine whether or not I am living my life inside a sealed box of lies borne of my own blissful ignorance?  No?  Awesome. 

Anyway, that's why I made you read the article--so we can all wonder if we are incompetent together.