batshit genius scientist prophet goddess

Ed met and married Pamela Harrah, a Stanford graduate, in 1946. Their meeting was arranged by George W. Beadle, who had returned to Caltech from Stanford in 1946 to chair the biology division. That same year Ed had taken responsibility for supervising the extensive Caltech Drosophila Stock Center and was looking for a stock keeper. While still at Stanford, Beadle called Pam into his office and said, "Hey Pam, how tall are you?" to which Pam replied, "5'3"." Beadle then said, "Your new Boss is 5'4" tall, he's twenty-eight and maybe you will like him so much, you will fall in love and decide to stay there at Caltect." A few months after meeting, Ed and Pam were married; they remained so until Ed's death more than fifty-seven years later. It was Pam who, working as a technician in the laboratory in 1947, discovered the Polycomb gene, which Ed went on to report in his famous 1978 paper in Nature as the first "regulator of the regulators."

- p. 16, "Biographical Memoir," from Genes, Development, and Cancer by Edward B. Lewis and Howard D. Lipshitz

D'y'all wanna take bets on whether or not Pam gets credit in the paper? Any takers? I haven't looked yet, so I don't know. To be fair, at that time period she might not have gotten credit if she were male and not married to the PI; it only pisses me off because I've spent my *life* looking for women in science history, sometimes not even aware of it, and it just grates to find them hidden away in labs and footnotes of papers. I'm gonna find the paper now, and see if it soothes my nerves.

( ... )

The Wikipedia entry on Seahorse Courtship is both factually accurate and ridiculously well written and evocative. Go read it now. Or, I'll cut and paste here:

( Seahorse Courtship )

Now, it's important for me to make it clear that I do not endorse using natural history/biological facts about non-human critters as justification for any social narrative about humans. But I do want to point out why the Seahorse's mating habits strike us as so interesting--they turn our narrative of "females have the babies, males just provide the sperm" on its head. We don't expect that a male would be the one to be pregnant, but that's exactly what happens in seahorses -- it is a full role reversal as far as pregnancy and birth-giving are concerned.

And apparently, trying to explain why this happens is a big challenge for scientists. One of the long-standing theories regarding sexuality in the animal kingdom is that the "less-invested" sex is the more aggressive and risk-taking. Edit: Male seahorses are the more aggressive sex, where "aggressive" means fighting with other seahorses, usually males. "Less-invested" here means that fewer personal resources are consumed in the creation of offspring. Apparently, while the male seahorse does invest a lot of his personal *time* into the gestation and incubation of the young, he still invests only half as much of his own personal resources (food-and-oxygen-derived energy) than the female does simply in producing the yolky eggs. However, some scientists think that that having the male do the gestation and incubation means that there are shorter birth intervals -- while the male is taking care of the young, the female can eat and rebuild her reserves and make another clutch of eggs.

And because I cannot help but anthropomorphize, let me just say Awwwwwwwwwww, seahorses are so darn cute!



They are monogamous! They greet each other every day and swim around holding each others' tails, or holding on to the same bits of seaweed, and changing colors at each other. Their highly involved daily courtship appears to be very important in maintaining their monogamous relationship. She comes and visits him every day while he's pregnant! D'awwww!

From transvercity

I (also) prefer this version:

If you've NEVER had a crush on me, or wanted to sleep with me, play with me, date me, etc., feel free to post here.

Otherwise, I'll just assume y'all want me.

This is a copy of the email I just sent to Harry Mitchell's campaign:

I just received a phone call this evening from a company that I *think* was called Promarketing Survey. They asked if I had fifteen minutes for a survey. I assented, and the first part of the survey was very straightforward. I was asked how I was registered, and I was asked if I was interested in the upcoming elections, and I was asked if I had heard of and felt favorable about candidates for President and for Congress. That was all pretty normal.

After that, the surveyor told me he would read me news items, and I was to say if those news items made me feel more or less likely to vote for Congressman Mitchell. The first one was "Congressman Mitchell opposed a plan to fund a fence across the Mexican border." The second one was "Congressman Mitchell used public funds to create a liberal library." The third was "Congressman Mitchell says he opposes earmarks but actually has taken $ in federal earmarks." At that point I refused to take the survey any more.

The surveyor then said "Oh, can't you just help me out and finish it?" And I said "No, this is pushpolling, and I can't participate in this." And then he said "Well, can you help me out and just say it would make you strongly less likely to vote for him, since you had to put up with listening to this?" I said "No" and hung up.

I received the call at 6:37 PM on September 11. The number the call came from was blocked.

I hope this information helps you guys. I strongly support Congressman Mitchell, but more importantly, I strongly dislike voter manipulation of this kind. This should not be allowed.

---

I actually was almost willing to still give the survey the benefit of the doubt (though not participate) until the surveyor wheedled me to answer a question "strongly less likely to vote for him" in response to my refusing to participate further.

The surveyor actually introduced that "news item" part by saying: "Now bear with me because some of these sound a little silly, but let me just read them to you." I was immediately wary, and had to get the surveyor to clarify a couple of times what he was saying -- you're going to read me a news item and then I'm supposed to tell you if hearing that news item would make me more or less likely to vote for Harry Mitchell? Um.... And when I first balked, and first said "Hey, this feels like a push poll" the surveyor said "Yeah, that's why I gave you that little warning; sometimes some of these end up sounding almost like marketing or an ad." Yeah, buddy, they do. That's what you're doing.

I'm making this public because I'd like people to let others know about this; especially if you're in Congressional District 5. I really don't care how you vote, because it's your vote. But nobody should be trying to manipulate you like this.

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

Sometimes I forget how awesome David Willis and Shortpacked are: http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20061025.html


"But can they computate the power of love!?"

( Tweets! )

( Tweets! )

Today's xkcd has an important lesson for us all.

I want my rain.

( Tweets! )

This. Is. AWESOME.