Raining babies...

I have always struggled to get to grips with the concept of the baby shower. Firstly, the very phrase fills my head with gruesome images of babies falling from the heavens, hither and yon, kasplattering on the ground, leaving pacifiers bouncing around in wanton fashion. A grizzly show to be sure.

"... And so in most parts of England and Wales it will be a fine dry day, with isolated baby showers as the evening sets in. Best get your hose hooked up for the cleanup in the morning. "

Secondly, I'm suspicious that the baby shower idea is simply another prefabricated "celebration" contrived to weedle one's friends out of their hard earned readies under the absurd understanding that we who choose to tip Mother Earth ever closer to her inevitable, apocalyptic population crisis are somehow deserving of praise and financial reward. Logically, shouldn't we be buying them gifts to offset our brood's carbon emissions? Well, all that is for tomorrow's parents to ponder, because as far as I'm concerned we got some top gear and I'm buggered if I'm giving any of it back. There are CDs with lullaby covers of Metallica and The Cure? Who knew? Genius.

So, in summary, the group of people that my wife and I have affectionately come to know, over the years, as "people we know" threw us a terrific bash for the humanoid-to-be. My old foe, Mr. Lauderdale, chronicled the event in pictures. If you put them into a little book and flick them, you will have a fun little animation that makes absolutely no sense at all. There will be no shortage of onesies in the Reverend's household, to be sure.

Thanks to one and all. I particularly appreciated the ale-warming machine. It's important to keep good ale at the right temperature, especially when children are involved, and I'm glad my American friends have finally come to understand and accommodate this philosophy.

Page 123

I don't normally follow these "tagged" trends, but this one seemed appropriate for some reason.

I was tagged by AnInsomniac with the following meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people and acknowledge who tagged you

Et voila...

"Instead, I_Ca does not increase linearly with the concentration of [Ca²⁺]_o. Apparently channels, like enzymes, can have a maximum velocity for passing ions, and the permeating ions compete for binding sites within the channel. The ions do not pass independently, but wait their turn."

You won't appreciate it, but this passage is very much relevant to the research I'm doing at this very moment.

To The Lou Crew: consider yourselves tagged!

Stoicureanism

Believe it or not, the term, Stoicureanism, doesn't receive a single hit on Google.

You read about it here first, folks.

I'm opening an online school, right here and right now. It's going to be bigger than Scientology, just you wait and see.

A thorough* defence of this new ancient ideology will be forthcoming.



* And by "thorough", I refer to the adjective's standard definition for use within serious philosophical discourse; i.e. vague and obfuscatory.

Possibly the finest elevator play ever performed (but never written)

Horrifying, poignant and slightly beautiful.


[edit: Oh man. Apparently the elevator alarm was ringing the whole time.]

Global warming potentially stimulates rapid evolutionary change in penguins...

[Via TheOtherGW, CoG]

Every coin has two sides and an edge...

This is a personal and thought-provoking article on Barack Obama by a Chicago reporter, published last month.

It doesn't shake my faith in the fact that Obama will make a better president than Hillary, but I think even the most ardent supporter of any politician is duty-bound to explore the darker sides of their political champion's rise. Even the best, brightest and most well-meaning of public servants usually must sacrifice certain values in the early stages of their careers in order to get that crucial leg-up into a position where they can more readily affect change and pursue their true goals. Obama is no different, but like the African American Chicago residents interviewed in the article, I'm prepared to acknowledge the necessity of those sacrifices and give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

"Obama's aloofness on key community issues for years frustrated Lucas and many other South Siders. Now they believe he was just afraid of making political enemies or being pigeonholed as a black candidate. Lucas says he has since become an ardent Obama supporter.

"His campaign has built a momentum of somebody being born to the moment," Lucas says. "He truly gives the perception that he could possibly pull us all together around being American again. And the hope of that is worth the risk when you look at the other candidates. I mean, you can't get away from old school when you look at Hillary.""

The biggots our teaching are children!

Came by this little gem via The Austringer.

Alright, so it's a wee typo/spelling snafu from a creationist science teacher. We all do 'em from time to time (I know I do). But isn't the irony just a little sweet? At least he gave the opinionated student 20/20...