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Fun with Buckyballs as fridge magnets.

2012-01-10T01:49:00.001-08:00

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Facebook Is Making Us Miserable

2011-12-13T00:30:00.001-08:00

This article sums up why I no longer read Facebook, just post to it via Twitter/Instagram/etc.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5867268/facebook-is-making-us-miserable

via Byline

Chris (via iPhone)

about.me/harrysaxon

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Our balcony Christmas lights. Garden lights go up soon.

2011-11-30T22:49:00.001-08:00

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2011-09-04T11:56:00.001-07:00

Just finished ziplining for the first time. Had a blast, hung upside down with no hands, the whole nine yards

Our route home after dinner.

2011-09-03T19:56:00.001-07:00

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So far today I've sat in front of a coach house and read - just what I'd do at home. Except for this:

2011-09-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

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We have created an appropriate #PAX atmosphere in our suite using @wilw approved methods.

2011-08-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

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2011-08-24T20:56:00.001-07:00

PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX PAX w00t PAX!

2011-08-07T00:56:00.001-07:00

As much as I bitch about Best Picture, the greatest Oscar miscarriages of justice since 1994 have been in Best Original Song.

2011-06-24T02:45:00.001-07:00

Just finished watching S5 Buffy and S2 Angel. Can not believe how emotionally gutting "The Gift" is even after 5 or 6 viewings.

2011-06-20T21:29:00.001-07:00

Tonight's BBQ: Chicken legs in tex-mex tequila wet rub, fresh mussels, asparagus, all grilled in hickory smoke, with Cobb's cheese bread.

2011-06-18T01:15:00.001-07:00

Neighbours having grad party. Lot of crappy music, but the enthusiastic rendition of "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" made me want to join in.

2011-06-17T10:10:00.001-07:00

Another horrid article from a Toronto paper, hoping we never win b/c our fans don't deserve it. I'd cheer for Bruins over Leafs now.

2011-06-16T23:18:00.001-07:00

100,000 people downtown, a few hundred rioters, many professional instigators. 11,000 volunteers cleaned up today. Ok with those ratios.

2011-06-16T13:17:00.001-07:00

Adios, playoff beard. You were really hot and itchy, and I won't miss you.

Game. Fucking. Seven. Roger's foot touched. Most important game this city's ever seen. Go #Canucks go!!!

2011-06-15T17:27:00.001-07:00

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2011-06-14T22:42:00.001-07:00

I'm done with the media, the could'ves would'ves should'ves. Our season boils down to 1 game. It's our turf. We are awesome. Go Canucks go!

Game 6. This one's for the Cup. Roger's foot was not touched, new theory. Go #Canucks go!!!

2011-06-13T17:27:00.001-07:00

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2011-06-10T22:00:00.001-07:00

Amazing. Fucking. Game. My prediction of Canucks in 6 still holds. So in love with this team. Full of booze and Tojo's. Go Canucks go!!!

Game 5. The most important game in this team's history. Roger's foot was touched. Go #Canucks go!!!

2011-06-10T17:20:00.001-07:00

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2011-06-09T21:48:00.001-07:00

Wow, South Park was unusual this week. I know it's not, but felt like a final episode. Suspect big changes in store next half-season.

2011-06-07T19:45:00.001-07:00

Tonight's BBQ: Alder-smoked grilled prawns in sweet/fiery Gulf Coast marinade, grilled asparagus, and a loaf of Cobb's garlic/chive bread.

2011-06-06T20:49:00.001-07:00

That was a pretty funny game. I find it an encouraging sign that this didn't shake my confidence a bit. Always believed it would be in 6.

2011-06-06T01:26:00.001-07:00

Just finished the Martin-penned "Game of Thrones" episode. Fantastic. Peter Dinklage is turning in one of the best acting performances ever.

2011-06-03T21:37:00.001-07:00

Just finished BBQ chicken, strip loin and prawns marinated in olive oil, lemon and fresh herbs from the garden, with margaritas. Summer FTW.

2011-06-02T12:41:00.001-07:00

I haven't shaved, or even trimmed my beard, since April 9th. Now realize that an untamed neck beard is like wearing a scarf - all the time.

2011-06-01T21:45:00.001-07:00

Holy hell what a game. And downtown Van is INSANE. Whoo-hoo! Go Canucks go!!!

Here we go. Game one of the freaking Stanley Cup Final. Roger's foot has been touched. Go #Canucks go!!!

2011-06-01T17:28:00.001-07:00

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2011-05-30T23:48:00.001-07:00

I'm OK with the anti-#Canucks vibe pouring out of much of Canada. It means I'll never have to pretend to cheer for "Canada's Team" again.

I really love having a backyard. This is why.

2011-05-30T20:01:00.001-07:00

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2011-05-27T13:07:00.001-07:00

Did the Canucks trade Raffi Torres? Right before the final round?! http://ping.fm/FbvBP

2011-05-24T22:10:00.001-07:00

OMG I love EVERYTHING. GO CANUCKS GO!

Game 5. Nearly late, had to touch Roger's foot. Time to put this one to bed. Go #Canucks go!

2011-05-24T18:21:00.001-07:00

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2011-05-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

Well, Canucks made it an exciting 3rd and found their penalty kill. Never really thought they'd sweep this series anyways.

Game 2. Touched Roger's foot again. Go #Canucks go!

2011-05-18T18:20:00.001-07:00

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I never guessed Kid Rock would have the most extensive laser rig I've seen since Floyd.

2011-05-17T20:58:00.001-07:00

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Game 1. Very tense, but we touched Roger's foot, should be all good. Go #Canucks go!

2011-05-15T17:04:00.001-07:00

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2011-05-09T17:33:00.001-07:00

Hello, 2-goal lead. How I've missed you. Canucks

2011-05-06T22:04:00.001-07:00

I can't believe the PAX 3-day badges sold out in only 22 days. I got our '09 badges months after they went on sale.

2011-05-02T00:04:00.001-07:00

How awesome is it that Obama's twitter announcement of OBL's death was tweet number 1337. I mean... come on. What are the odds?

Game 2! Go #Canucks Go!

2011-04-30T18:02:00.001-07:00

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2011-04-27T00:14:00.001-07:00

Wow. Just, wow. It is a privilege to cheer for this Canucks team. Best night ever. Bring it on, Preds, the monkey is dead.

Game 7. Time to kick some ass, boys. Go #Canucks go!

2011-04-26T19:07:00.001-07:00

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2011-04-24T22:38:00.001-07:00

Canucks got beat by bad luck & bullshit refs tonight; they were the better team by far. We will win this. I refuse to believe otherwise.

2011-04-24T18:38:00.001-07:00

Is this fucking happening? And fucking Chicago is booing an injured player? That city's fans make me sick.

2011-04-22T00:24:00.001-07:00

Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck. Motherfucking fuck, mothering fucking fuck fuck motherfucking fuck, noitch, noitch noitch.

2011-04-21T19:01:00.001-07:00

Game 5! Go Canucks go!

A D&D update.

2011-03-15T00:36:00.001-07:00

So the Pillars of Pentegarn have been busy lately, but unfortunately not with D&D matters.

I still have an older blog about our tenth session to put up and will get around to it soon. But that's from back in January. Real Life(tm) has intruded on our D&D sessions horribly. Doug (Lardli) couldn't make the last couple of sessions, so we swapped things around and I DM'ed an adventure for the rest of the group over two sessions. It was the Free RPG Day Dark Sun adventure that's floating around on the inter-webs.

It was a lot of fun switching to the DM role for a bit, though I'm nowhere near ready to trade in the joy of playing Toby for a regular tour of duty behind the screen. Dark Sun is kind of interesting, but I don't think it's really a fit with us long-term; the bone and stone, sword and sandals vibe would be rather oppressive before long with this group. We have more of an Eberron vibe.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun. It was kind of liberating for the PCs to use pre-rolled characters and not fuss about rolling up. The adventure was very well written, with a nice combination of dramatically different skill challenges and combat encounters. Two arena-based encounters were part of it, and we especially enjoyed the first arena encounter, which used combat skills but prohibited direct combat and involved using terrain and bull rushes in a Capture the Flag-ish encounter. A particular highlight for me was the second skill challenge, which was basically "CSI: Altaruk", involving the use of skills to investigate a murder scene.

All told, a really enjoyable diversion in our D&D world, but after doing two sessions in Dark Sun, and then missing a couple weekends due to RL(tm) commitments, I'm absolutely dying to inhabit Toby's sneaky shoes and get back to the Keep on the Shadowfell next weekend.

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Here's @janesong in her Apple Pi shirt for Pi Day.

2011-03-14T16:59:00.001-07:00

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2011-03-03T10:35:00.001-08:00

People using backgrounds and custom fonts in email is the worst. You are not special enough to force me to read a bright blue Papyrus font.

2011-02-13T22:49:00.001-08:00

Just DM'd a D&D session for the first time in 20+ years, a one-off Dark Sun adventure. Was a lot of fun.

2011-01-26T23:55:00.001-08:00

Those bitching about the amazing-looking PSP2/#NGP unannounced battery life, please read: http://www.gamefront.com/we-the-spoiled-gamers/

2011-01-23T22:04:00.001-08:00

Finished the COD:Black Ops campaign today. Some fun missions but ambivalent about it. Next up, Alan Wake or AssBro.

2011-01-22T20:11:00.001-08:00

I bought a new Canucks hat right before the game. If Edler scores a hat trick I'm totally throwing it out there.

2011-01-20T20:17:00.003-08:00

Consensus of my seatmates at the game is that Wellwood's nickname has been changed to "Driftwood".

2011-01-20T20:17:00.001-08:00

Consensus of my seatmates at the game is that Wellwood's nickname has been changed to "Driftwood".

2011-01-19T16:18:00.001-08:00

Just finished Mass Effect 2. Not only a brilliant game, it's the best sci-fi story I've seen in years. Can't wait for the conclusion.

2011-01-19T01:16:00.001-08:00

Just ate my first Creme Egg of 2011. So happy.

2011-01-18T10:41:00.001-08:00

Couldn't agree with this guy more - The Best Part about a Smartphone Is Never Having to Call Anyone http://t.co/MEh8X8j via @gizmodo

2011-01-09T11:53:00.001-08:00

Today's plan: Video games all day, D&D in the evening, beers & a couple Walking Dead epis before bed. How's that for a slice of fried gold?

2011-01-07T21:37:00.001-08:00

I knew the Canucks had a pretty terrific team this year, but I never expected anything like this.

2011-01-07T15:13:00.001-08:00

CoD: Black Ops, AC: Brotherhood and Borderlands just arrived; Halo Reach and Alan Wake on their way. Yay for Boxing Day sales.

2011-01-05T11:14:00.001-08:00

Misconceptions http://xkcd.com/843/

2010-12-31T11:26:00.001-08:00

Just finished the first Walking Dead hardcover collection. It's fantastic, makes me even more excited for S2 of the TV series.

Telus pt. 2: Resolution through the power of Twitter

2010-12-10T00:47:00.001-08:00

Readers of this blog well know I've been having problems getting my Telus internet hookup up and running since I moved a few weeks ago. Frustrated by the many false promises I got from Telus, I posted this tweet a few days ago; shortly after I posted this blog.

So right about 24 hours after I posted these, my wife gets a phone call, from someone identifying themselves as an executive with Telus in Alberta. They said they'd seen "Chris" on Twitter post about Telus problems and wanted to get it resolved as quickly as possible.

Telus then did so; not long after my wife getting this phone call, a Telus technician was at our house, and he got my internet up and working as quickly as possible.

The power of Twitter can be quite amazing. Note that I'm anonymous enough on my Twitter and blog that they only had a very common first name to go by; they must've correlated this with the dates and service problems I mentioned in the blog in order to contact my wife about our account. That accounts for the 24 hour delay in response, and I'm quite surprised it took less than 24 hours for them to figure out which one of their customers was "harrysaxon23". I'm duly impressed, though it's weird that some foul-mouthed Twitter/blog ranting got a much better response than the traditional channel we explored, of 5+ hours spent on the phone with various Telus employees.

While I've been angry with Telus about these problems, I'm very happy with my service now that it's up and running. I'm very impressed with the way they got things working so quickly, as it turned out there were several fairly intricate problems with DSL service to my address that all got fixed very quickly.

I'm only sorry that it took so long to receive the attention any paying customer deserves when trying to get service hooked up in their home, and that our time - and their employees' time - was wasted with hours on the phone trying to receive the results that 140 characters on the right social networking site delivered.

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Why Telus is the worst company I've had the misfortune to deal with.

2010-12-06T14:52:00.001-08:00

I just need to rant about this piece of shit fucking company.

Three weeks ago we contacted Telus - western Canada's telephone monopoly - to get our phone line and DSL service switched off at the old house and turned on in the new house. After just under an hour spent on hold, we finally get through to someone. They're useless, and it takes another 20 minutes before they can connect us to someone who knows or can do anything. They said no problem, and they'd have it switched over by the 20th of November.

Of course, the 20th came and went, no internet. So we phone them (45 minutes on hold) and bitch. So sorry, the work order didn't go through. It'll be switched on by the 24th. Plus, they'll give us a free month. OK, not happy, but fine.

The 24th comes and goes. We call. Oops, the work order STILL didn't go through. Now we're seriously pissed. Lisa gets scary mad at times like this, and after another interminable session spent on hold, she lets them have it in a calm, reasonable, furious way. We come out of this with an absolute promise to have the internet turned on by the 29th. Plus, they're giving us three free months internet and three free months Telus TV if we'd like to sign up with it. Also, they're sending us a new router/modem because I hated the old one. Still mad, but placated, we await internet hookup.

You guessed it, the 29th comes and goes, still no internet. We get in touch with them yet again (no long wait this time, someone finally gave us a direct number). Apparently, the internet has been turned on, but our old modem/router doesn't work with it. Fortunately, they sent us a new router the week before, it's arriving on Dec. 3rd, and we'll be good to go.

Once again, no router on the 3rd, so no internet for the weekend - again. Annoying, but that's how the mail goes sometimes. It arrived today.

Yup, it is exactly the same piece of shit Siemens fucking router that I already had. And it still doesn't work with the fucking internet.

Those of you in the US who bitch about your internet providers - you have no fucking idea. I only have one other option for high-speed internet, and it comes from a crappy little local cable company who offer a whopping 5 megabit connection for the same price as Telus's 25 megabit connection.

Fuck you, Telus. I hope your shareholders give thanks every day this company gets to operate in a country where they don't have to actually compete in the free market, because this company would go down faster than their incompetent employees' moms.

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2010-11-16T12:56:00.001-08:00

Unlock Rock Band 3 Pre-Order Guitars http://www.rockbandaide.com/9822/unlock-rock-band-3-pre-order-guitars/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unlock-rock-band-3-pre-order-guitars

Over social networks?

2010-11-13T01:56:00.001-08:00

I'm feeling done with social networks even before I feel I've really started.

Facebook... I just don't care anymore. I'm tired of net-illiterate friends and relatives commenting and posting. Most of it is 1980s Fidonet lame. A month of people thinking "LOL" means "Lots Of Love" is one month too many.

Twitter is better, but only barely. I'm starting to feel like I'm swapping a few SMS messages with friends while spammers assault me. It's just not enjoyable anymore.

Anyone else getting as disillusioned with the big social networking sites?

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2010-09-24T23:59:00.001-07:00

Netflix. $8/month. All I can watch on my TV, computers, and iPhone. All synced so I can pick up where I was no matter where I am. Holy shit.

2010-09-19T00:06:00.001-07:00

Arrrrr, it's officially Talk Like a Pirate day! Hoist the mainsails, and raise ye a mug 'o grog to the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Raped to sleep by dickwolves, and other off-colour humor.

2010-09-11T02:17:00.001-07:00

Not long ago, Penny Arcade came under attack for making a joke in which a character said he was "raped to sleep by dickwolves". Feminist bloggers, supported by rape survivors, got really pissed off about it. It broke very mainstream for a webcomic about gaming (one that has a serial rapist as a recurring character, no less). It's okay to make fun of a lot of things, apparently, but rape isn't one of them. A major argument amongst many rape survivors is that such jokes "trigger" (which is a hot-button phrase in these communities) a remembrance of their experience, which is an unpleasant experience.

Okay, this is what slightly pisses me off. Crime-wise, I'm pretty sure most people in the western world would agree that rape ranks right up there with murder in terms of heinous crime. There are no murder survivors, though, so the pain of jokes made about killing people is only felt by those close to the victim, so they don't get much shrift. Nonetheless, jokes about killing people are abundant in the world without anyone getting overly upset.

The bloggers who got so up in arms about the "raped by dickwolves" comic themselves talk about how they weren't offended by the comics in which Gabe and Tycho murder each other over games, but are offended by the concept of a slave being raped because "it happens in the real world every day". Like people killing each other over material possessions doesn't happen every day. Anyway...

On to what REALLY pisses me off. I've never been raped by another human being. But I have been raped by cancer. If you think that is a tasteless analogy... well, fuck you. What I went through is as bad as many rape victims. Just because the perpetrator was a bunch of fucked up cells in my testes - and doctors trying to save my life - doesn't make it any less visceral and unpleasant. This post is about to get graphic and ugly. You have been warned.

So, the joy of my experience begins with one of my balls swelling up to the size of a healthy Sunkist orange. Any idea that such a sight, while comical to behold, is comical for the person undergoing it, let me disabuse you of the notion. It fucking hurts. Like getting lightly kicked in the balls every few minutes hurts. Ladies, the best I can do is someone giving your nipples a really hard pinch every few minutes. Not unbearable, but sure as fuck not pleasant.

Next, after enduring this for a few days, comes the surgery. In my case, the surgery had complications. I had massive internal bleeding which led to me screaming incoherently at the top of my lungs in the middle of the night for around an hour, until nurses were given permission from a doctor warm in bed to shoot me up with enough opiates to put me into a haze a heroin junkie would envy. I don't mean to disparage the warm-in-bed doctor, as he was at my bedside at 5am to rush me into emergency surgery before I died.

So I get through the emergency surgery. All good. But I can't piss afterwards, things are so fucked up in my groin region. So the fun of a catheter is my next experience.

Let me tell you, I would rather take a half-dozen cocks stuffed up my ass in prison next to the experience of having a tube shoved up my pee-hole without anaesthetic. Can you imagine, both ladies and gentlemen in the audience, having a 3/4" tube shoved into your bladder, up a hole that is barely an 1/8" in diameter? Slowly? It was excruciatingly painful, not to mention humiliating.

As unpleasant as the procedure might be, it was next to nothing compared to the indifferent nurse who ripped this tube out of my cock two days later, without warning or ceremony. I nearly threw up from the pain and shock, and many others less steadfast in their resistance to nausea would have succumbed to the urge to spray chunks over the crowded ward for whom my predicament was entertainment.

This is what my experience was like. And I'm lucky - the surgery worked, I didn't have to undergo radio- or chemo-therapy. Seven years out, I'm cured; despite a couple extra blood tests with my annual physical, it's just not something I have to worry about. In short, I survived the experience.

Here's the thing; I don't get mad when people make jokes about people with one testicle. I don't get upset about jokes about Lance Armstrong. Tom Green, or cancer in general. In fact, I'm distressed by the fact that people around me - even my wife and close friends - get visibly uncomfortable around me when such jokes are made. I really don't give a shit. I survived a horrible experience, one which was as traumatic to me as rape - and, once again, if you don't believe getting a tube shoved into your bladder is as unpleasant as rape, fuck you - but it didn't destroy my sense of humour.

Yes, I'm sure that rape survivors - and my empathy goes out to them, nobody should have to live through it - have the extra burden of degradation to go through, since their experience wasn't at the hand of medical professionals. But if their argument is about how jokes about it "trigger" memories... well, welcome to the human race. All kinds of horrible experiences can be triggered by people talking about them. YOUR particular trigger doesn't deserve any more special attention than the guy who hears a joke about killing his parents when his brother actually did the deed; or about people with only one testicle; or about people who were raped. Life fucking sucks. Get a helmet, and stop reading comics that make it absolutely clear that they don't consider any subject taboo, and nor should they.

Either everything is sacred or nothing is. The people who think nothing is are a fuck of a lot more fun to be around than those who believe the former.

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2010-09-02T01:12:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty happy about living in a place where the air outside is filled with the smell of growing corn this time of year.

2010-09-01T23:45:00.001-07:00

Pretty much finished packing up for PAX. Fittingly, I think I have nearly as much luggage space for chargers and cables as I do clothes.

2010-08-27T15:33:00.001-07:00

Well today was the unpleasant capper on a shitty week. A most heartfelt TGIF - and PAX next week should make up for it.

2010-08-27T09:28:00.001-07:00

just tried new Google Voice feat. in Gmail. Free calling from computer to any phone number in US/Canada with basically no setup? Yes plz.

2010-08-25T23:48:00.001-07:00

I killed a meaty spider as big as my palm, now have a serious case of the jibblies. Seeing movement out the corner of my eye everywhere.

2010-08-25T13:48:00.001-07:00

Watched the 12-minute Lost "epilogue" from the S6 DVDs. Kind of neat but not really what I was hoping for. Polar bears again, really?

2010-08-24T00:58:00.001-07:00

Watching "Rome". Titus Pullo just ripped out a dude's tongue with his teeth. Do not fuck with Titus Pullo. Srsly.

2010-08-21T23:59:00.001-07:00

I'm re-watching "Rome" right now, just finished S1. Forgot just how incredibly good it was. Shame they couldn't fulfil their vision for it.

2010-08-21T02:07:00.001-07:00

Still addicted to the Buffyverse thanks to my recent Angel marathon. Watching the musical right now. Can't stop the signal.

2010-08-07T01:03:00.001-07:00

Just finished watching Angel a month (almost to the minute) after I started. 110 epis in 31 days. Terrific, though not quite as good as BTVS

2010-08-06T03:17:00.001-07:00

I deeply pity those who have not experienced the 175-odd hours of the televised Buffyverse. Greatest TV narrative ever. No contest.

2010-07-16T11:58:00.001-07:00

I just saw the Stanley Cup!

2010-07-07T20:47:00.001-07:00

Geekend loadout: Junk food, steak, tequila, beer, Coke, energy drinks, RedDeadRedemption, & the first two seasons of Angel. Here. We. Go.

2010-07-07T14:13:00.001-07:00

Let the Geekend commence!

2010-07-04T22:33:00.001-07:00

It took me longer to warm up to the Green Day iteration of RockBand than The Beatles, but I quite love it now. There's just so much energy.

Evolution and 100 million year old mammal hair

2010-07-03T01:03:00.001-07:00

Ok, I just have to rant a bit about this to get it out of my system. A group on Facebook pointed me to an anti-evolution group. Bored and tipsy, I went over to it to have a look. It was pretty depressing, but this post at the top really got to me. It's a 4-minute video about the recent discovery about a 100 million year old strand of mammalian hair found in a chunk of amber.

What bothers me is that the narrator clearly has no idea about what evolution by natural selection is or how it works. They make two particular attacks that bother me:

1) "How do they know it's 100 million years old." Um. I don't know exactly. At 100 MYA, it's not carbon-dating. It was probably found in a geological strata that has been reliably dated using potassium-argon dating or just plain strata dating that reliably places it. Or maybe it's well established that it takes at least that long to turn tree sap into amber. Not my field, but this stuff is as well-tested and reliable as any process in science. If you deny this you deny electromagnetism.

2) Their real issue is the quote in which one of the scientists involved in the paper says that it demonstrates that mammal hair was established a very long time ago, it worked as well as it needs to, so it hasn't really evolved since then. They laugh at this - "the mammal hair is so perfect that it doesn't need to evolve, but the mammal itself needs to evolve from rat to lemur to whatever? As dumb as evolution is, it just keeps getting dumber."

This demonstrates such a lack of knowledge that a first-year biology student would burst out laughing. Evolution isn't about "perfection"; it's about sexual selection. It's simple. Some genetic differences provide a survival advantage to a creature. This survival advantage lets them live longer and produce more offspring. More individuals in the next generation have this survival advantage, and they in turn live longer and produce more offspring. Eventually, nearly all members of the species will have this advantage.

What's clear with this discovery is that mammal hair, 100 MYA, had reached a point where the actual structure of the hair didn't provide any survival advantage to one generation. No mutation of the structure of the hair provided a competitive advantage to the generation which had the mutation, so the minor mutations stayed minor. This, bear in mind, is just the structure of the individual hair itself, not how the hair is grown on the skin or other minor changes.

For example, many cat species have thicker, longer and denser hair on their skin than other species, because they evolved in colder climates where keeping warm provided a survival advantage. Thus, Maine Coons have long, thick, dense fur that kept them warm in a way that Siamese cats didn't need in their warmer climate. Nonetheless, both an individual Siamese hair strand and a Maine Coon hair strand, under a microscope, have most things in common, as well as in common with all other mammals. One just grew more of them (or thicker, thinner, etc.) on their skin than the other.

Look at the well-known evolutionary example of the gypsy moth, whose natural habitat are white-barked trees. When the air was clean, the white ones dominated and the odd mutated black moth was easily spotted by predators and eaten early in its life, producing less offspring. When the Industrial Revolution blackened the trees of their habitat, the white ones became easier to spot to predators, the black ones were better camouflaged, so after time the black moths dominated the species. Once the air got cleaner, the trees got whiter again, so the white moths eventually became dominant again.

Most of the rest of the moth other than their wing colour - the wing shape, the body shape, the number of legs and antennae of the moths, etc. - are the same, because their antennae and leg configuration provided no survival advantage to either colour of moth. There were probably mutations of these as well during that time - moths born with an extra set of legs - but they didn't either hurt or favour the lifespans of the moths with these mutations, so they didn't really change from generation to generation.

This is first-year college stuff. This isn't a complicated or difficult concept to get around. It's something that is observable all around the world, like the small population somewhere in South America whose males mostly have blue penises, just because chicks a few thousand years ago thought blue penises were hot so they hooked up with those dudes more often.

I just have to believe that these anti-evolutionists need to completely ignore the facts and the way evolution works in order to push a faith-based belief system. It's depressing and upsetting, and I'll be trying to not click on those kinds of links anymore to spare myself from a half-hour lost preaching to a choir of people who most likely aren't nutbags.

Posted via email from harrysaxon.com

2010-07-03T00:24:00.001-07:00

Remind me to never click on a link to an anti-evolution group again. It's too depressing, enraging and hilarious at the same time.

2010-07-02T22:32:00.001-07:00

Monster 10-hour RockBand session today - mostly RB: Green Day. Haven't played like that in ages, totally exhausted (was drumming on Expert)

2010-07-01T13:23:00.001-07:00

Happy Canada Day!

2010-06-25T08:29:00.001-07:00

to everyone out there I'm friends with here but not yet on Xbox, feel free to add me. Gamertag: harrysaxon

2010-06-15T10:07:00.001-07:00

People at the hospital keep calling my father Gabrielle instead of Gabriel. Which is funny, all the moreso since he goes by his middle name.

2010-06-12T23:21:00.001-07:00

Another fantastic DoctorWho - Matt Smith especially. I have no lingering doubts, he is 100% worthy of the role. Greatest TV series ever.

2010-06-10T00:48:00.001-07:00

so. happy. two of the songs confirmed for Rock Band 3 are Sister Christian and Portions for Foxes! Never thought we'd see Rilo Kiley in RB.

2010-06-07T01:26:00.001-07:00

on stupid FB Family Feud; half the seafood people say they'd "hate to see on a restaurant menu" I've eaten dozens of times and love. WTF?

2010-06-06T22:42:00.001-07:00

This week's DoctorWho was fantastic. Not just the best of Matt Smith's first season, but one of the best of the rebooted series, period.

2010-05-31T15:39:00.001-07:00

I find it absolutely hilarious that Megan Fox is being replaced in Transformers 3 by an underwear model with no acting experience.

2010-05-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

Had a spectacular sirloin from the hindquarter my dad bought, one of the best I've had in years. Built a yummy pan sauce on tequila & lime.

2010-05-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure that eDiscs are the greatest invention of the 21st century.

2010-05-28T12:28:00.001-07:00

I just saw a kid wearing a Calgary Flames T-shirt and a Yankees baseball cap. Never wanted to bitch-slap someone so badly before.