Only Dead Fish Go With the Flow

I can't get over how hilarious this thread is

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:23:02 -0500

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/i_get_email_36.php

This is what originally made me spit out my soda: “The ADA says sure the diabetic can eat sugar, just shoot up enough drugs. CRIMINAL really”

My immediate reaction was to tell my friend with juvenile diabetes he could just Stop Eating Sugar (tm), which would solve all of his diabetic problems!

And then there was this, which just took the cake:

“Wait… Brianp states that European countries have a higher “death rate?”

I think the entire world has the same “death rate…” 100%”

Dr. Tiller’s murder has been causing untold frustration recently. The most obvious reason is,...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:33:39 -0500

Dr. Tiller’s murder has been causing untold frustration recently. The most obvious reason is, of course, the loss of one of the nfew clinics in the country that performs a necessary medical procedure. The other problem that I have is, as always, the way that people discuss abortion.

See, the thing is, late-term abortions strike me as being more acceptable than elective abortions, because I always had this thought in my head that if a mother’s life was threatened, or if she was carrying a dead fetus in her stomach, she could have it removed.

But apparently the natural reaction to the phrase “late term abortion” is phenomenon known as a “knee jerk reaction” in which ones brain flies out of ones skull and starts bashing itself on the nearest brick wall.

Here is a good example

So, here we have the beginnings of something sane:

“Tiller did abortions in third trimester, when almost no one else would do them – which meant, inevitably, that he handled the hardest of hard cases. He performed abortions on women facing life-threatening complications, on women whose children would be born dead or dying, on women who had been raped, on “women” who were really girls of 10. His Wichita, Kan., office, barricaded against protesters, was reportedly lined with thank-you notes.”

This quickly degrades into something insane:

“They help explain why Tiller thought he was doing the Lord’s work, even though that work involved destroying something that we wouldn’t hesitate to call a baby if we saw it struggling for life in a hospital bed.”

So, uhm, could someone please explain to me why abortions which are necessary for the health of the mother or because, you know, the baby is dead or almost dead are morally reprehensible? Have these people ever hear of, you know, anencephaly (Please don’t look at that if you’re squeamish)? Surely they realize that a baby without a brain cannot survive outside of the womb for more than a few hours. Surely they realize the emotional trauma for everyone involved. Surely they realize that a 10-year-old rape victim cannot possibly carry a pregnancy to term.

The hard thing about this is that the idea of having to terminate a wanted pregnancy breaks my heart. I know people in my family who have had to suffer the heartbreak of delivering a stillborn child. It’s so infuriating because on the one hand there is the suffering and the heartache and the guilt, and on the other hand, there are the people outside of the door writing down your name and cursing you to hell for doing something which is not only legal, but your only real solution. I don’t know what to say to anti-choicers at this point other than “shame on you”.

I wish I felt like I could blame this solely on misogyny which I am sure plays a part, but at the same time I know there are people who don’t just have it out for women who still think late-term abortions are horrible and wrong.

And of course, I have my o-chem flashcards staring me in the face. The MCAT is in a week and a half, wish me luck.

Ginger Relieves Nausea in Chemo Patients

Thu, 14 May 2009 17:37:44 -0500

Ginger Relieves Nausea in Chemo Patients:

Thank you, Captain Obvious, you’ve saved the day again!

I also like how they assume ginger is mostly in soda and cookies. Sad, sad, uninteresting food culture.

I had to read this line about four times

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:35:06 -0500

“How can women supposedly acting freely and powerfully keep turning up tales of vulnerability-repulsive sexual partners, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, even rape?”

Source: Linda Hirshman

My first reaction is “Uh, because they’re HUMAN.”

I think the “repulsive sexual partners” is the first thing that gets to me. Mostly because despite being a loud, powerful, successful feminist I was in a soul-destroying abusive relationship for three years. I get really tired of the “Why don’t they just leave?!” bullshit because for some reason people don’t get that if you hate yourself you’re not going to do anything to make your life better. The only real way to make things better is a move to external, to focus on how you can make other people’s lives better, but when you are constantly at the whim of a malicious, manipulative, selfish person it is almost impossible.

Once you get to “rape” you’re way too far down the yellow brick road to come back to sanity. Sorry to break this to you, but you’re likely to get raped whether or not you’re wearing provocative clothing/drinking/doing crazy shit. I learned this at 11 wearing army fatigues and a baggy white T-shirt at a HAM convention. Moving on.

Even “pregnancy” and “sexually transmitted diseases” gets to me. Yeah, I know, these “free and powerful” feminist women are supposed to conform to the ideals of society too. They should always make the right decisions so that their parents have something to be proud of. I think this statement shows her ignorance about Jezebel entirely, because one of the realities of human life is that some people make mistakes, and often what women (especially those who are constantly expected to be bastions of society, like feminists) need is validation. That their mistakes don’t necessarily make them weak, they can make them stronger. I’ve made plenty of fucking terrible decisions for myself, but if I spend my whole life deriding myself for them (even those mistakes I continue to make) and not standing up for what I believe in because I feel I am suddenly a bad role model (Is anyone a perfect role model?), I will amount to nothing.

The editors at Jezebel are human. I am human. Feminists are human. My question for Ms. Hirshman is: Isn’t humanity a GOOD thing?

Photo

Mon, 11 May 2009 18:24:48 -0500

Shouldn't they be answering the question "Why is Dollhouse so terrible?"

Sun, 10 May 2009 20:27:00 -0500

Shouldn't they be answering the question "Why is Dollhouse so terrible?"

Why do you care?!

Fri, 08 May 2009 09:19:17 -0500

Why do you care?!:

I also don’t get why spicy mustard = Grey Poupon. One of the very few things in my fridge is Sweet & Nicely Hot mustard from the Mt. Horeb Mustard museum in Wisconsin. Seriously, guys, it doesn’t get more ~~normal~~ ~~American~~ Midwest than that.

LOL

Tue, 05 May 2009 17:41:00 -0500

Because the only solution to factory farming is weird shaped meat substitutes!!!*

It is also funny to me that just yesterday someone asked me if there was a vegetarian version of Cooking Mama.

* I think seitan is fricking amazing

"They say it was brought to the U.S. in Victorian times only as a means of reducing masturbation by..."

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:26:56 -0500

“They say it was brought to the U.S. in Victorian times only as a means of reducing masturbation by limiting sensation, in what has to be the biggest failed medical experiment in history.”

- Joel Stein, on circumcision.

Exactly what I’ve been thinking ever since I heard this.

Can someone explain every boring lecture for my MCAT like this...

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:02:52 -0500

Can someone explain every boring lecture for my MCAT like this guy? It would really help, thx.

"I believe that the worst thing the liberals did in this country was the Lyndon Johnson welfare..."

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:20:40 -0500

“I believe that the worst thing the liberals did in this country was the Lyndon Johnson welfare system, which broke up millions of marriages by funneling taxpayers’ money solely to the woman. That made the father and husband irrelevant.  ”

- Phyllis Schlafly

I LOLed so hard. Basically, feminism is bad because men are useless. Defending the patriarchy - ur doin it wrong.

Video

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:59:15 -0500

Video

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:32:48 -0500

Food Rules

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:34:47 -0500

In partial response to Michael Pollan Wants Your Food Rules.

1. Two fruits/day

2. Two servings of dairy/day (usually milk)

3. Only one piece of meat/day

4. No more than three eggs yolks/week

5. Never have more than two carbohydrates at any meal

6. Always have at least one serving of vegetables (or fruit, at breakfast).

7. If you want to eat something, just do it before it becomes an obsession.

Despite all this, nothing will reduce my body fat % other than exercising (forget weight, even dieting for 3 months only lost me 5 pounds, which says to me..I’m a healthy weight)

It’s not particularly surprising to me that Loco Roco 2 is the game that actually managed to...

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:36:00 -0500

It’s not particularly surprising to me that Loco Roco 2 is the game that actually managed to shock me back into playing video games again. It is fun, it doesn’t punish you for anything, and it is a handheld (which I am more likely to enjoy than more involved games because I am so. damned. busy.)

Though, I was surprised, because the one thing I didn’t expect Loco Roco 2 to be was racist. It didn’t really strike me until the second or third boss fight. The main enemy in the game has a distinctly African American voice, despite the nonsense words. The more I thought about this, the more the dreadlocks on the mojas stuck out in my head and screamed “Wow, this is so fucking racist.”

It shouldn’t surprise me, then, that someone else noticed this before I did.

Penny Arcade articulated it nicely, though for a much more obviously racist game, “It’s sort of like those Magic Eye pictures. You can’t see it, you can’t see it, and then wham. All you can see is the genocide.”

I loveded you, Mr. Fluffypants. This might also explain the...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:17:21 -0500

I loveded you, Mr. Fluffypants.

This might also explain the unhappy slump. :/

Life is trying to cheer me up

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:14:09 -0500

Just when I figure I can’t make it out of this cabin fever/constant MCAT studying slump I am in (in which I feel like I should just quit school, transform from geek into hipster geek, get a bunch of tattoos, and start working in a coffee shop), I realize that:

1. Tonight I get to make a freaking bonsai tree on the cheap because student organizations are awesome.

2. A certain famous atheist is actually coming to my school in the forseeable future(!!!)

3. We are doing action potentials in my biomedical instrumentation class.

4. No class on Friday! (Even though this means I’m just going to study all day)

Also, organic chemistry is the most fun I’ve had in years in school. It’s like jigsaw puzzles all the time.

Odin is Dead

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:09:05 -0600

My computer, aged only two years, has officially kicked the can.

If I were to describe it in layman’s terms, I would say this is really just a red ring of death. The thing was doomed from the start. Or at least from about a year ago. It started overheating until I had to prop it up on higher and higher platforms and use more and more air to keep the thing cool.

The motherboard just couldn’t handle it.

It was designed a “media center laptop”, to watch DVDs or movies online, but it hasn’t been able to do that for awhile, without overheating and shutting down anyway.

It’s the end of the era of futile actually believing that laptops are useful.

Odin is dead, but Asklepios should be in pieces on my parents’ doorstep in a few days.

Some details:

AMD (GASP BLASPHEMY) 2.6 GHz Quad Core

1 TB SATA HDD

4 GB RAM (2x2) DDR2 1066

Geforce 8800GTX (I do think Radeons are beating out nVidias this year, but Geforce is more affordable)

Total spent, including shipping (note that I don’t even have a case or a CD drive..I had to include this kind of thing in my total): $835

Sigh. At least I had money saved up for this very incident.

By the way, I’m currently typing on a super swank MacBook Pro I was able to borrow from work. It sort of frightens me, but it is fun to play with.

Back from the cold dark

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:55:49 -0600

I wonder if Barack Obama realized how much of a response he would get from the puppy comment in his acceptance speech.

"Overall, the performance was dismal and way below the standard expected in this course."

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:38:22 -0500

“Overall, the performance was dismal and way below the standard expected in this course.”

- Probabily Professor (but I got 14 percent above average!!!!! Fuck. Yes)