A Culture Of Mediocre

Rap. Gangsta Rap. Hip Hop. Swag Rap. Grime. Pick a Sub-Genre.

We were afraid.  The youngsters were outa control, listening to the horribly horrible-est noise ever to emerge from the pits of hell; nobody'd ever come up with anything so evil ... and ... yeah - prob'ly not so much.  At least not considering that everybody's said exactly the same thing about every shift from one pop music era to the next, going back thru Rock-n-Roll and Swing and Jazz and all the way back to the fucking Waltz and beyond.

Insert standard rant(s) about American Pop Culture Is Bullshit - or - Stupid Corporate Bastards Are Killing The Vibe - or - what-the-fuck-ever, man.

Evolution, motherfucker - it gets shit done. 

hat tip = tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors

Things Change

hat tip = Facebook buddy VWE

Today's Podcast

Via Sarah Gray at Salon:

Happy Birthday, Charles

 

Darwin Implied

I'm not the only one who was left wondering if the the Xtianist Radicals would get their dander up over the Carnival ad yesterday, but Ken Ham's the only one I've heard anybody even refer to.  So OK - maybe we just have to wait a while longer for the obligatory outrage to build(?)  

Addicting Info beat me to the blog.



The problem is that JFK got the facts wrong when he tried to make the biology connection between humans and the sea, so of course that makes the whole Darwin thing just some atheist bullshit.

Addicting Info posted this as a follow up:

Today's Arrogance Of Ignorance

If ignorance is bliss, this is one happy lady:




John Cleese wraps it up neatly for us:



hat tip = Addicting Info

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome

Life goes on, but it may have to go on without us.

Black Fungus Eats Harmful Radiation in Chernobyl

BY CHRIS V. THANGHAM MAR 3, 2008 IN SCIENCE

Fungus living in the walls of a failed nuclear reactor in Chernobyl was found with high melanin content, implying it survived living under dangerous radiation. Fungus might be a possible food source in high-radiation places like outer space.

Black fungus was found growing on the walls of Chernobyl’s damaged and highly radioactive nuclear reactor by robots sent to scour the area. Later, scientists analyzed the fungus and found it contained high content of melanin, a pigment found in human skin that gives it color, as well as protection from solar and ultraviolet radiation.
Melanin is found in many fungal species. Scientists say the melanin found in fungus and humans are similar in chemical composition.

Nuclear (and other high-energy) reactions give off ionizing radiation, dangerous rays and particles that can damage genes and thus cause mutations and eventually cancer. With fungi, however, they seem to thrive under the same conditions.

Ekaterina Dadachova at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine explained the reason why fungi thrived in Chernobyl: She said just like pigment, chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow. The melanin helps fungi to make use of the ionizing radiation and makes them grow.

Researcher Arturo Casadevall, an immunologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York said to LiveScience.com:  "In general we think of radiation as something bad or harmful. Here we have a situation where these fungi appear to benefit, which is unexpected,"

So, the researchers wanted to test this theory and see whether it is reproducible. They did experiments on three species of fungi and found that ionizing radiation significantly boosted the growth of fungi that contained melanin.

As LiveScience.com reports: The researchers exposed two kinds of fungi – one that naturally contained melanin (Wangiella dermatitidis) and another that scientists induced to make the pigment (Crytococcus neoformans) – to levels of ionizing radiation about 500 times higher than normal, the doses one might see at high altitudes. Both species grew significantly faster, findings detailed in the May 23 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

Although fungi seem to thrive in nuclear radiation, they do not clean it. They are only able to harness the energy that radioactive materials give off.

Scientists say this ability of fungi to live off ionizing radiation could be useful in space. Dadachova said: "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets."

Makes My Head Hurt

Here's a map of neuro-transmissions in human muscle tissue:

Here's a map of neuro-transmissions in human brain tissue: 

And here's a map of galaxies somewhere out there in deep space:

Do we look for the similarities because we need similarities to be there?  

Or are there similarities because everything comes from the same stuff?

Deep Astronomy.com

This Just In

From the fine folks at UC Berkeley (of course - where else, right?). Well, no - it's The Onion actually, but it'll be fun to see if any of the usual knot-heads feel the need to get crazy over it.

But since we know there's a double-digit percentage of mush-brained dopes who'll believe anything you tell 'em, why not go ahead and present this as just something else all them libtards are trying to force us real 'Murcans to take on faith...?  They're not likely to check it out for themselves (these are the geniuses who have access to practically every tiny speck of truth ever discovered, but who still believe in Bigfoot, ChemTrails and FEMA Camps for fuck's sake).  And even if they do check on it, part of their programming is to reject anything they hear that contradicts the crap they're being fed 24/7, because it's further evidence of how vast and pervasive and deep-rooted the lefty conspiracy is.  So yeah - why not just let it play?

Challenging long-held views on the origins of divinity, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, presented findings Thursday that confirm God, the Almighty Creator of the Universe, evolved from an ancient chimpanzee deity.

The recently discovered sacred ancestor, a divine chimp species scientists have named Pan Sanctorum, reportedly gave rise over millions of years to the Lord Our God, Maker of Heaven and Earth.

“Although perhaps not obvious at first glance, there are actually overwhelming similarities between the Supreme Being of today and this early primate deity who preceded Him,” said Dr. Richard Kamen, a leading biologist who also heads Berkeley’s paleotheology department. “The holy chimp moved around on all fours, but its descendants eventually began walking upright to expend less energy while foraging across the infinite reaches of the universe. This of course led to the bipedalism of modern-day God.”

“In fact, you can see a distinct likeness to God in the chimpanzee deity’s skeletal structures, not to mention its prototypical expressions of vengeance and wrath,” Kamen continued. “The great-ape god was, however, considerably smaller in stature, having not yet developed the capacity to occupy all space and time simultaneously.”

According to experts, divine life began as a single-celled all-powerful organism roughly 3.6 billion years ago, eventually evolving into a multicelled, sponge-like deity that bobbed and floated across the chaos of the early universe. Kamen explained that over hundreds of millions of years, the godlike life form became more complex, with limbs that allowed for locomotion across the endless expanse of the heavens, and sophisticated photoreceptor cells capable of seeing all things.

Based on newly obtained evidence, the Pan sanctorum is thought to have first experimented with creation ex nihilo around 7 million years ago. Kamen noted that the chimpanzee deity made several early attempts to produce rudimentary solar systems, but on each occasion was spooked upon inadvertently creating fire, which is said to have caused it to screech loudly, angrily swat away the newly formed sun, and then scamper across the universe to hide from the flaming sphere.

“Natural selection played a huge role in the evolution of divinity, and in this regard, the adaptive value of Pan sanctorum’s immortality proved critical to its survival,” said Kamen, adding that with its opposable thumbs, the divine ancestor was eventually able to fashion primitive tools for creating crude oceans and basic mountain ranges. “Today’s Lord Almighty actually still has a small bony protuberance in the small of His back, the vestigial remains of a tail we believe was used by an even older, monkey-like god to facilitate climbing, allowing it to escape into the heavens when faced with danger.”
“That potential for threats made it an evolutionary imperative for the primate god to develop omnipotence,” Kamen continued. “As well as sharp claws and pointed incisors.”

Though its smaller brain limited its cognitive abilities, the chimpanzee deity is believed to have possessed not only self-awareness, but also spatial intelligence, object permanence, and a rudimentary capacity for knowing all that is, all that has been, and all that ever will be.

However, it was only relatively recently that the heavenly species developed the intellectual capacity for higher reasoning, critical thinking, and infinite wisdom, according to Kamen. For Pan sanctorum, he noted, the passage of divine judgment was “purely a matter of primal instinct.”

“While complex speech would not emerge until the evolution of the Cro-Magnon god from Pan Sanctorum, the chimpanzee deity was capable of using grunts and hand gestures to convey basic emotions such as happiness, anger, or the forgiveness of sin,” Kamen said. “However, it appears that the chimp deity often exhibited extremely aggressive behavior, in some cases unleashing its divine wrath with little if any provocation toward the mortal chimps it created in its own image.”

He added, “It is our understanding that these creatures lived in a kind of jungle-like forerunner to the Garden of Eden, until a day came when their enraged creator cast them out, flinging feces at them as they fled.”

Today's Eewww

Science (and the dogged relentless pursuit of What Da Fuck) does not always lead to rainbow-farting unicorns, or - really - to anything guaranteed not to make your skin crawl.  I can almost understand why some people just throw up their hands and say, "Fuck this - I'm goin' with Jesus".

Almost.

At about 2:05, you might feel a powerful urge to run and hide.



Go ahead - do some porn surfing with the key word 'hairy' - do it now.  I fuckin' dare ya.