Happy Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day, everyone! This year the Society of Non-Theists had a fairly simple event, since we have so much other stuff going on. We just had our annual Darwin Fish fundraiser selling cool evolution oriented merchandise.
We sold a lot throughout the day, and made about 150 dollars! Woot! Now we can spend even more money on pizza. And the club members rejoice.

Of course, I’m not too surprised that our fundraiser did well. It does well every year, especially since we hold it in the LILY, the biology building.
I mean, can’t you just tell that’s the biology building, with that artwork in the background? The hands of God coming out of clouds and creating the first cells is totally a biologically sound theory…right?

Regardless of artwork that annoys the biologists, it was a good day for evolution. I saw a random person wearing a Happy Birthday Darwin pin, which made me super happy. I also got to briefly teach my honors freshman class about evolution! We’re learning about mutations and selecting bacteria that can survive in certain environments, so it was somewhat relevant. The professor asked if I would explain evolution to them, since I like it so much.

I have to say, I was really impressed. Everyone already understood the basics of the theory without the misconceptions. I specifically wore my Darwin Athletic Club: Survival of the Fittest t-shirt and asked them why it wasn’t really correct, and they got it right: that strength and endurance doesn’t necessarily mean an individual is fit – it’s reproduction that matters. They also asked extra questions about epigenetics and kin selection. I was really impressed for freshmen! The intro biology class has been updated since I last took it, and is a lot more evolution heavy – looks like people are actually understanding it now!

Not sure anything can make Darwin Day better than teaching our future scientists about evolution.

Send an Atheist to Church

Next week the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University will be having a fun charity event: Send an Atheist to Church. People will have the opportunities to raise money for charity and save our souls at the same time! How neat is that? Here’s all the relevant information, which can also be found on the Facebook event page (please spread the word!):

Thursday 2/18 & Friday 2/19
9:00 am to 4:30 pm
UNION ground floor tables (by Zia Juice & Starbucks)

The main goal of this event is to come up with a creative idea to raise money for a charity that everyone can agree is very important in our community. We also want to show that non-theists are open minded about religious ideas, and that we’re willing to learn more about other people’s faith. The way it works is as follows:

1. Make a cash donation – ALL proceeds go to Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County.
2. Choose what denomination of religious services you want us atheists to attend.
3. The more money donated in a denomination’s name, the more visits it receives.

Currently participating denominations include:
Baptist (Faith Baptist Church)
Episcopalian (Chapel of the Good Shepard)
Orthodox (Saint Alexis Orthodox Church)
United Methodist (Wesley Foundation)
Judaism (Purdue Hillel)
Buddhists (Purdue Buddhist Society)

If you see certain religions missing from our list and you know a place of worship (in the Lafayette area) that would like to participate, please let us know before Thursday and we will ad them to the list! The more, the merrier! It doesn’t have to be a Christian denomination – “Church” is used just for a catchy title.

Inspired by Hemant Mehta‘s book, I Sold My Soul on eBay

Anyone can donate, regardless if they’re a Purdue student, a member of a participating church, etc. If you can’t physically come to make a donation during the listed times, you can also make a check out to Food Finders Food Bank (be sure to note what denomination it’s going toward!) and mail it to:

The Society of Non-Theists
Stewart Center, Box #566
128 Memorial Mall
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2034

So if you really want me to go visit the Baptist church or something, send a check! Not only will it tickle me pink because it’s going to a good cause, but you’ll get a blog post out of every church service I have to attend.

This is our first year trying out this event, so I hope it goes well. We’ve had a little trouble getting churches to participate – a couple outright said no, but most are unresponsive. Hopefully if this is successful this year and we prove this isn’t some nefarious plan to interrupt their services, more places will trust us next year. I have to say, I’m really excited. I’ve never really been to church, and I’m curious to see what it’s like.

So, go spread the word! Donate! Wish us luck!

Woman’s Last Stand

I know my 10 Most Sexist Super Bowl Ads post got quite a bit of attention. And by “bit of attention” I mean hordes of anonymous trolls calling me a fat, ugly, lonely, humorless, overreacting, man-hating lesbian who needs to either get back in the kitchen or get back to blogging about topics that don’t make people uncomfortable. These comments really don’t phase me, since 1) Obvious trolls crack me up, 2) Misogynistic comments prove my point, and 3) My lesbian friends are super awesome, so I take that as a compliment.

To all of you who actually left civil and enlightening comments, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I thank you.

Anyway, since the internet is way too serious of a place sometimes, I figured I would share this spoof of the Dodge Charger ad:

I’d put a bet on how many comments it’ll take for someone to call me a hypocritical misandrist*, but I just ruined that by stating it here, didn’t I? Oops.

*Sexism is bad, regardless if it’s targeted toward women or men. I’m not sure how many times I need to say that. Maybe I should put that in big bold letters above my banner for newcomers, so they don’t shit bricks every time I blog about sexism. Of course, watching them shit bricks is kind of fun.

Woman's Last Stand

I know my 10 Most Sexist Super Bowl Ads post got quite a bit of attention. And by “bit of attention” I mean hordes of anonymous trolls calling me a fat, ugly, lonely, humorless, overreacting, man-hating lesbian who needs to either get back in the kitchen or get back to blogging about topics that don’t make people uncomfortable. These comments really don’t phase me, since 1) Obvious trolls crack me up, 2) Misogynistic comments prove my point, and 3) My lesbian friends are super awesome, so I take that as a compliment.

To all of you who actually left civil and enlightening comments, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I thank you.

Anyway, since the internet is way too serious of a place sometimes, I figured I would share this spoof of the Dodge Charger ad:

I’d put a bet on how many comments it’ll take for someone to call me a hypocritical misandrist*, but I just ruined that by stating it here, didn’t I? Oops.

*Sexism is bad, regardless if it’s targeted toward women or men. I’m not sure how many times I need to say that. Maybe I should put that in big bold letters above my banner for newcomers, so they don’t shit bricks every time I blog about sexism. Of course, watching them shit bricks is kind of fun.

Take the Blag Hag 2010 Census!

I like data. No, really. Whenever there’s something I can measure or perform statistics on, I do. I like to graph my weight over time, find correlations between silly variables like doucheyness vs. time spent dating a guy, and create networks that diagram which of my friends have kissed each other (it’s a frightening web).

Don’t worry, you don’t have to make out with anyone against your will. But I would like you to complete a short survey!

I’m mainly curious about some of the general demographics of my readers, what you guys like about the blog, and what I can do to improve it in the future. I figure now is a great time to start collecting this sort of data. My blog is creeping up on it’s first birthday, and I think it would be pretty neat to have a regular data set throughout my years of blogging. Wouldn’t it be cool to see how it changes over time? I didn’t ask as many questions as I could have because 1) I’m limited to 10 and 2) I didn’t want to annoy you guys. But I still like getting a general idea!

Feel free to post comments and complaints in this post as well, though I have allotted you a free response question on the survey if you’d like to make a completely anonymous comment. I promise this isn’t a nefarious scheme to sell your demographic information to some mega corporation – at most the data may be posted anonymously as a couple graphs in a later post.

So, please take the survey!

What we can learn from ancient human DNA

What can we learn about a person just from looking at their DNA? As our knowledge of genetics continues to grow, we may even be able to figure out what they look like. Research published in Nature looked at the genome of an ancient human using 4,000 year old hair that had been preserved in Greenland’s permafrost. From looking at genes that cause known traits, we can learn a lot about his appearance.

  • Male
  • Type A+ blood
  • Brown eyes
  • Darker skin
  • Stocky body
  • Dry earwax
  • Shovel shaped teeth
  • Thick, dark hair
  • Tendency toward baldness

Okay, as an aside: Who is the lucky artist who gets to draw a reconstruction of an ancient human, or the feather patterns on dinosaurs? Is this someone’s profession, or does a grad student do it? Maybe I can finally find a way to combine my art skills with my biology skills!

Anyway, it’s pretty cool that we’re able to learn about the actual physical appearance of someone just from their genes. Think about the implications in forensics cases when all that’s left is tissue that’s beyond identification. But that’s not the thing that made this paper Nature-worthy. All of these genotypes are very similar to modern Siberians, which tweaks our current understanding of human migration. Jerry Coyne summarizes it well over at his wonderful blog, Why Evolution is True:

Oh, and the really interesting result is this: the DNA suggests that the individual had components of genes still present in East Asian and Siberian populations, but not found in modern-day Inuits or people from South and Central America. This suggests that there were two separate invasions of North America from Asia: the one that gave rise to native Americans, South Americans, and modern Inuit on the one hand, and that leading to the presence of Saqqaq in Greenland. Those latter individuals probably came across the Bering Strait, and then, hugging the Arctic, made their way eastward across North America and then to Greenland.

That conclusion is of course tentative because it’s based on only this single genome. Still, based on the sequence, and the tentative phylogeny showing that this individual’s ancestors split off from the ancestors of their closest living relatives (the Chukchis of eastern Siberia) about 5,000 years ago, anthropologists may have to revise their conclusion that there was one invasion of North America from eastern Asia around 18,000 years ago.

Very neat stuff! Though I would like to see a study using modern humans to see how accurate these sorts of predictions are. Take maybe ten individuals with various phenotypes, sequence their genomes, have the researchers try to reconstruct their appearance without previous knowledge of what they look like, send it off to an artist, and see how close we can get! I’m not sure what profound result this would show other than if this method is useful or not – just seems like a really cool thing to try out. Can’t we do science for fun every once in a while?

I fail at sleeping

I’ve never been good at the whole “sleeping” thing. I take forever to fall asleep, I wake up frequently, I never feel well rested, I get sleepy throughout the day. It’s not the sort of passing insomnia caused by a stressful event or a particularly hard work load (though the later is more likely voluntary sleep deprivation, which I also sometimes do). My failure to get a good night’s rest has existed since literally as long as I can remember, probably since I was five years old.

My memories of insomnia as a little kid are kind of hilarious, in retrospect. As a kid I believed the mantra of “Parents can solve everything, therefor you should tell them all of your problems.” Oh childhood innocence. But it was rule I followed very closely, especially when I couldn’t sleep at night – which, unfortunately for my parents, was fairly often.

During one of my sleepless nights, I would slowly open the door to their bedroom and creep over to my dad’s side of the bed. Looking back, I am so amazed and relieved I never caught them in the middle of some hanky panky – probably because they quickly got used to me barging in on a fairly regular basis (sorry Mom & Dad – what else are kids for?). The exchange was always the same:

Me: Daaaddddy? … (if father did not awake, insert poking here)
Dad: *wakes up* huuhh what?
Me: I can’t sleep.
Dad: Grumble.

He would then take me downstairs to the couch, put on All Dogs Go to Heaven, and then wait until I fell asleep.

Yeah, my dad can’t stand that movie anymore.

Soon he was putting on the movie and leaving me there. And after that, my sleeplessness was met with “And what do you want me to do about it?” and I learned to go sleep on the couch without harassing my dad. (As an aside, my dad asked me recently why I always woke him up and never my mom. That’s because she was a much deeper sleeper, and I knew I wouldn’t get any help from her. Poor dad, suffering from child logic.)

I also used to sleepwalk a lot when I was little. Apparently I would go into my parents’ room babbling nonsense, one of them would tell me to go back to bed, and my zombie like self would listen. I still do minor sleepwalking-like things, but never actually walking around (with one exception). I’ve been prone to sleeptalking, especially when I’m having an angry dream. Sometimes I’m shouting so loud in my dreams that I’ll mumble it, much to the confusion of roommates and boyfriends. I’ll actually sleepcry more frequently than I’ll sleeptalk, which is simply bizarre upon waking.

But the thing I do most frequently is also the thing that freaks out roommates the most – sleepsitting. All I’ll do is sit straight up in bed and stare facing forward. I usually wake up after sleeping in this position for a while, think “Oh, I’m doing it again,” and then lay back down to go to sleep. I completely freaked out my first college roommate, who thought I was possessed or fucking with her when I did this one night. This almost always happens when I’m having a particularly stressful week, so I have no idea how chemicals are messing with my brain to produce this effect.

Even ignoring these bizarre sleep habits, I’ve never been a good sleeper. It usually takes me anywhere from a half hour to an hour to fall asleep, sometimes up to two hours on a bad night. It doesn’t matter how exhausted I am. Once I’m actually sleeping, I’ll still wake up at least twice a night, sometimes up to ten times; I’m not even sure if I know what it’s like to sleep without doing so. The only perk of this is that I always vividly remember multiple dreams from that night, and I frequently lucid dream (“Oh, hey, this is a dream. Time to fly around, weee!”).

Then I’ll usually wake up multiple times before the alarm goes off, frantically checking the clock. An hour left. 45 more minutes. 30 minutes. 20. 15. 10. 5. 2. It’s maddening. And when I finally wake up, I’m never well rested, and I’m lethargic and falling asleep throughout the day. The only mild solution I’ve come up with is allotting myself 10 hours for “sleep,” assuming I might actually sleep during 7 or 8 of those hours. Problem is, I’m an overbooked college student who hardly had eight hours to set aside for sleep.

The utterly maddening thing, however, is that I sleep fine when I shouldn’t be sleeping. On the rare occasion that I nap (I try not to, since I know it makes sleeping at night even worse), I will be out like a light and go into super deep restful sleep. If I’m a passenger in a car, I can’t keep my eyes open and I’ll be gone no matter how uncomfortable the situation (I blame this on my parents – when I was little, they’d drive me around to get me to fall asleep). If I’m sitting at the back of a giant boring lecture after getting 3 hours of sleep, I have no problem microsleeping while managing to not drool all over the desk, snore, or be distracted by the lecture (I know, naughty Jen).

But it seems like the second I lay down in a real bed, I’m wide awake. It’s worse when there’s something I have to wake up for in the morning, but it’s still not perfect on weekends. I’ve never harassed doctors about it, since their general reply (and the reply of others) is that I’m just stressed and anxious.

…Okay, which is totally true.

Regardless, it’s still annoying. I know there are a thousand tips I could be following to get better sleep. Exercise (ha), going to bed at the same time (haha), eating at regular times (uh, I’m a college student?), avoiding caffeine (the only thing keeping me functional during the day), and staying away from the computer before bed (ahahahahahaha). Maybe I’m doomed to my sleeplessness because of my lifestyle. Maybe my constant sleep deprivation is the cause of my sarcastic, mildly cranky personality – aka, the source of all my blogging inspiration – so I don’t actually want to cure it.

At least I can rest easy…well, rest easier knowing that mild to moderate insomnia is associated with increased longevity. I can be sleep deprived even longer!

EDIT: I forgot to include my one sleepwalking exception! This happened maybe a year ago-ish. I had been watching way too much Food Network on TV, and had a hilarious sleep walking episode. I “woke up” semi-conscious, thinking I was participating on Iron Chef. My bed was the prep station and my desk was the stove top. I literally got up and started moving my blankets around, thinking they were food, and then walking back and forth to my desk. The strangest part was that I was semi-lucid during all of my hallucinations, which is why I remember this episode. The whole time I was thinking nonsense like “Man, this food is so hard to cook because it’s not really food, it’s blankets. Wait, what? Oh well, must keep cooking.” At one point my imaginary Chairman demanded cookies, so I literally walked over to the bathroom and stared at the toilet paper. “This isn’t cookies, this is toilet paper. But he wants cookies. Can the toilet paper be cookies?” Eventually I woke up enough to realize that I was playing imaginary Iron Chef, and I walked back to my bed and went to sleep.

The brain is an amazing organ.

EDIT 2: Damn, apparently I already blogged about my Iron Chef sleepwalking. I have no new material, folks. Oh well, go there if you want a more detailed and hilarious description of my sleepwalking.

When art meets biology: Caddisfly jewelry

No, this isn’t jewelry in the shape of a Caddisfly – sorry, entomologists. It’s actually quite stranger than that: the Caddisfly larva are the artists!You need to know a little bit about Caddisfly life history to completely understand what’s going on:

Caddisflies have aquatic larvae and are found in a wide variety of habitats such as streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, spring seeps, and temporary waters (vernal pools). The larvae of many species make protective cases of silk decorated with gravel, sand, twigs or other debris.

They usually look something like this:Then artist Hubert Duprat got an idea:

Having been in the past a naturalist he knew that the larvae are remarkably adaptable: if other suitable materials are introduced into their environment, they will often incorporate those as well. So in the early eighties he started to collect the larvae from their normal environments and took them to his studio. There he gently removed their own natural cases and put them in tanks filled with his own materials, from which they began to build their new protective sheaths. When he began the project, he only provided the caddis larvae with gold flakes. Since then, the larvae have enjoyed various semi-precious and precious stones, including turquoise, coral and lapis lazuli, as well as sapphires, pearls, rubies, and diamonds.

Isn’t that neat? I know some people would be a little grossed out owning jewelry that was once an insect’s armor, but I think it’s pretty cool. Sometimes art created by nature is just as beautiful as art created by a human.(Via sex, art, and politics)

A preemptive blog apology

Hey everyone. This is just a bit of a warning that I’m going to be busier than usual during the next couple of weeks, and thus posting may temporarily slow down. How busy? I’ll be out of the state on graduate school visits approximately 40% of the time during the next four weeks. Here’s my slightly insane schedule:

2/16 – 2/18: Cambridge, MA
2/20 – 2/23: Seattle, WA
3/3 – 3/7: Stanford, CA

Yeah, at this point I’m glad I decided to only apply to my top three schools. Can’t imagine having to do more than this, like some of my friends.

Problem is that not only am I out of the state and busy interviewing, but I also don’t have a lap top. That means I probably won’t be able to make any significant posts even if I get a minute to breathe. So consider this a preemptive apology for my likely absence. Sorry guys, my future is just a tad more important than blogging at the moment.

On a related note, a couple of people have asked me if I’ll have time to grab a coffee or something. I won’t at Harvard, I probably won’t at Stanford, but I will definitely be available in Seattle. I have all of Saturday the 20th to explore and goof off. I already know a couple of my readers (hopefully not axe murderers) are keen to hang out; so if you’re in the area and interested in an informal meet up, let me know. I’ve already seen the touristy stuff in Seattle, so it would be nice to do something different.

Alright, back to work!

10 Most Sexist Super Bowl Ads

EDIT: I’ll put this disclaimer up top, since I think no one is actually reading my comments. I realize that sexist advertising does work, but I’m disappointed that it does. These ads stereotype men just as badly, if not worse than they stereotype women. I’m not sure why all you guys are raging at me so much since I’m on your side. Now if you’ll excuse me, apparently I have to go prepare to tear off some testicles and shave my head or something (thank you, commenters, for proving my point).

There was so much buzz about the Tim Tebow/Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad that it ended up being kind of anticlimactic. I’m fairly apathetic about football; I’m one of those people who dutifully watches all of the commercials and then leaves the room when the actual game is on. But Jesus Christ – are Super Bowl ads always this sexist or have I just not been paying attention?

This year was so bad that it was hard to narrow them down to ten. But here’s a showcase of what I consider the 10 most sexist ads from the 2010 Super Bowl:

10.

Motorola – Megan Fox | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
Hurrrrr Megan Fox in a bubble bath. Everyone ogles her and/or frantically masturbates. That has everything to do with a cell phone.

9.

Bridgestone – Wife or Life? | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
Ha. He loves the tires on his car more than his wife. That’s funny, right? …Right?

8.

Bud Light – Lost Parody | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
You know, I think this commercial is actually meta-sexist. It’s actually showing how fucking annoying it is to have men totally disregard your opinions because you’re a woman. Too bad Budweiser fails to recognize this in nearly all of their other commercials.

7.

E*TRADE – Babies and the Ladies | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
Apparently even babies have stereotypical hyper-jealous girlfriends.

6.

Dove – Life Cycle Song | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
Men are the ones who are strong and brave and have to do random silly crap for their obligatory wife, right? I didn’t realize Dove was originally just for women, but apparently I’m just not manly enough to recognize that.

5.

GoDaddy.com – Danica Patrick at Spa | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
Yep, because two stereotypically hot women talking to each other sexily while one rips her clothes off has everything to do with web hosting. Not to mention it totally reduced Danica Patrick to nothing but a hot babe. I’m not a NASCAR fan, but it’s quite an accomplishment to be the first woman to win an Indy car race. Apparently that doesn’t matter when you have boobs.

4.

GoDaddy.com – News | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
…Ditto.

3.

Dodge – Promise to my Wife | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
God, women. They’re just so bitchy and demanding. They all make men do such tedious things like basic hygiene, and never, ever, ever have to do what her partner wants. I mean, psshhh, what relationships feature compromise? Instead you must assert that you want a fancy, manly car that obviously no woman would also want!

2.

FloTV – Spine Removal | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
All men like sports. All women like shopping. Men who do not conform to these strict gender roles are whipped, spineless, and girly, therefor buy our product. …Uh, what?

1.

Bud Light – Book Club | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
You know, I don’t know if women or men should be more annoyed by these commercials. At least my gender is being portrayed as the one who is trying to engage in thoughtful intellectual conversation. Men? Yep, you’re just all beer, sexually innuendo, and douche baggery. The problem is we’re supposed to see this sort of behavior as humorous – I mean, who would want to go to a book club?! Anyone with a Y chromosome must sympathize with that dude, and run out and buy some Bud Light. Oh, and women? Eh, they’re probably too busy drinking wine coolers or something, no need to advertise toward them.

I know there are probably going to be people who will say I’m taking this far too seriously. But you know what? These types of commercials are fucking annoying. It has become the norm to make fun of women as jealous, domineering, wet blankets whose goal in life is to whip men into submission and ensure they never ever have fun. We’re supposed to laugh at these and go, “Ha, his girlfriend is a bitch. Amen brother.” Why do people want to condone this?

Not only does it stereotype both men and women, but it effectively ignores women as consumers. These are targeted towards men, because obviously the Super Bowl is so pumped full of testosterone that anyone with a uterus runs away from all TVs screaming in fear. If it’s not a joke about a stupid girlfriend, it’s something pink and flowery that somehow assumes I want to lose weight.* Can’t we just…I don’t know, have gender neutral ads when gender neutral products are being advertised?

Sigh, I give up for now. I guess I’ll go paint my toenails and emotionally manipulate some men before I go to bed.

*If you haven’t done so already, you must go watch Sarah Haskins’ Target Women series on advertisement towards women. She’s hilarious, but the commercials are kind of depressing.