Planned Parenthood Under Fire

…by shmucky little kids! A group who calls itself We Are The Youth have created a video about how Planned Parenthood are a racist group of murdering genocidulators and meanies who do nothing but eat babies and tax dollars. It might be a little harsh and one-sided, but that is what we’ve come to expect from the Pro Life group. Do yourself a favor, don’t watch the video. It’s awful, ham-fisted, and chock full of half-truths. To get an idea of what it is and where it falls just short of honesty, watch this video by ZOMGitsCriss instead. Not only is it actually accurate, but it’s a lot sassier.

Essentially, though, what it boils down to are a bunch of what look like wealthy high school right wing Christian children talking with reverb-verb-verb-erb-erb-rb-rb-b-b-b and overdone repetition, presenting their opinions as if they were a) factual, b) the opinions of the vast majority, and c) morally correct. I can’t help but point out that there is a reason that kids this age aren’t allowed to vote.

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Queen Of The Fruit Flies

I just read an interesting bit of news and thought I would share it. It turns out that researcher Masaki Kamakura has isolated a protein within royal jelly that is integral in the formation of queen bees. Royal jelly, aside from being a major fixture in the alt med community, claiming to boost the immune system, lower cholesterol, and help with inflammatory diseases, is made by and for bees. All bee larvae eat it for the first few days of development, but the queen bee gets it all the time.

Kamakura has published a paper in Nature which describes how he isolated the protein in question, and what happened when he gave it to fruit fly larvae. Essentially, the fruit fly got big. Real big. And he was able to evaluate what genetic trigger he was pushing by exposing the larvae to the protein.

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My Ethereal DNA Is Unplugged

Wow wow wow, thank you PZ Myers for posting this information! All this time I thought my various problems in life were based on environment, circumstance, and the fact that I am not the center of the universe! How wrong I was! It turns out I just need a DNAropractor.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Jim,” thinks you, “that sounds like complete and utter bullshit!” Well, as PZ has found out, it isn’t. Sure, on the surface all this talk of misaligned DNA code may appear to be the wash of the hog, but PZ had faith and it paid off both for him and the rest of us!

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Interesting Research Into Homosexuality

I must apologize to my faithful readers for last week. I’m afraid that I was swamped in all aspects of life, and that resulted in my writing damn near nothing all week. There were several scratched attempts at blog entries, but I would lose the thread of what I was trying to say due to the crush of other pressures, and the writing wasn’t worth publishing by the time it was finished. So as much as you missed me, I missed having coherent thoughts.

However, this morning I stumbled across an article on NeuroLogica about some fascinating findings in the area of sexual preference that I thought I would share. It turns out that the pattern of same-sex relations in mice can be impacted by manipulating the way their brains handle serotonin.

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Suicide, Murder, And An End Of Suffering

Suicide has been on my mind a lot lately. Not like that, silly. I’m not in any way suicidal, and even when the goin’ gets tough, I do not believe I have ever been so upset as to consider suicide. I wouldn’t say it was impossible for me to consider, but it is definitely not high on my list of things I see myself doing in the future. However, I have had several people in my life commit the act, one of whom did so within the last month. In her case, I really don’t know what the situation was; she never struck me as a depressed person, she hadn’t sent any of those traditional (though not obligatory) warning signals, and it came as a real shock. Before that was my best friend in the world, who many years ago jumped in front of a truck due to a bad case of an undiagnosed mental illness. I can’t justify the first one, but I understand the second. Mental illness isn’t easy, and while I don’t agree with what he did, I know that it wasn’t like he was in the right head space to make that choice.

My grandfather was a different story. He was an amazing man, a professional rag time musician who lived a great life until he was struck down with emphysema and skin cancer. His health deteriorated, as did his happiness. He lived hundreds of miles away, and as his body continued to fail, my father decided that he should come and spend his last days with us. I don’t really think (though I was too young to properly remember the situation) that he wanted to come, but felt like it was one of only a handful of options available to him. In the end, he knew he did not want to be a burden to us, and so he went into the garage, turned on the car, and asphyxiated.

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It’s A Big Ole’ World, Beware Of Jerks

During the days leading up to the G8 Summit in Calgary back in 2002, I found myself having to explain to a frightening number of people who should have already known just what it was that protesters were complaining about. Part of the problem was that many of the protesters didn’t know. I remember a big march through downtown’s Stephen Avenue Mall to the doors of The Gap, where several protesters took their clothes off. The main body of the protest had no idea what it was doing. I saw so many signs with George W. Bush’s head and the slogan Stupid White Man, but what did he have to do with the Gap?

But globalization is a strange force, and one that requires attention not just from the heads of the eight biggest industrialized countries, but from the people whom they represent, and those they do not. From a business perspective, we live in a world where business often becomes bigger than government, existing across the globe and accountable to nobody. A company can be headquartered out of the United States and have their operations in third world countries run through subsidiaries and intermediaries to ensure those two golden words, plausible deniability.

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Timeless Love

Romeo and Juliet… King Arthur and Gwenhwyfar… Helen of Troy and that guy who slaughtered all those people to get her back again… Adam and Eve… It seems like all the stories of timeless love really are nothing more than stories. When I was an ugly, nerdy kid, I would hear these stories (or in the case of Romeo and Juliet, eviscerate them line by line in a high school English class in what must have been an attempt to ensure that nobody would ever find a shred of beauty in Shakespeare’s words ever again) and wonder sadly what was wrong with me that I couldn’t even get a date.

Well, times have changed. I now find myself an ugly, nerdy adult blissfully trapped in a timeless love with a ridiculously wonderful woman whom I refer to on this blog solely as The Lovely Lady because I don’t need you creeps creeping on her. And today I saw a picture that makes me think that timeless love is possible. All it takes is enough amber.

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Justifiable Homicide

The last time I commented on the fine folks at NegotiationIsOver, they made threats against us and a few other luminaries of the tubes. Since then, I have from time to time gone to their site and noticed the revolting way that they promote direct action as a means to end the suffering of animals in scientific testing and the like, but I have not been stirred by any of their crap to comment here. Today, however, I cannot help but comment on a piece they are running about justifiable homicide laws.

Frankly, I find the controversy around the laws (and the interpretation of the NIO terrorists) rather strange. The laws are based on the Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act, a bill that was drafted by the anti-abortion group Americans United For Life. The first paragraph of the introduction tells a rather horrible story about a woman who’s boyfriend attacked her. She was pregnant with quadruplets, and as a means of protecting herself and them, she stabbed and killed him. She successfully defended herself on the grounds of justifiable homicide, and quite frankly, I agree wholeheartedly.

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Extra Right Hands And Bionic Ninjas

I have heard in the past about the brain’s ability to be tricked into thinking a limb is present. I don’t know if this is one of those “works every time” things or not, but you can relieve the phantom pain from someone who has lost an arm (for example) by fooling their brain with mirrors. That’s pretty amazing stuff, all related to the way that the brain maps out its understanding of the body, called a body schema.

But it doesn’t end there. Today, I read about a fascinating observational experiment where the brain gets fooled into accepting a limb that isn’t there. A rubber arm is placed beside the subject’s real right hand, and rather than knowing the difference, the brain takes the lazy way out and simply assumes that it now has three hands.

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Sky Prayers To A Sky Daddy

Okay, honestly, this just annoys me. I was over at Pharyngula catching up on all the gnus, and I caught this item (video below) about some pastors who were going up in a helicopter to pray for the city of Colorado Springs. So why does this annoy me? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Why does this bug me? Because this is a video of two guys going on a pleasure flight around their city. The altitude does not bring one closer to God so he can hear you better, you are just enjoying buzzing around the city and seeing it from this whole new perspective. Three people flying over a city isn’t going to change a thing about the lives of people down there. You want to be an instrument for His Divine Work? How about staying on the bloody ground and actually helping people? That might be a little more effective, non?

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