Paralleling my topic of gender determination for my senior seminar paper:  The Science of GaydarIt discusses sexual orientation being biologically based (which it is), and also talks about if certain characteristics that make a person look/act gay are also biological - everything from hair whorls, to fingerprint ridges, to penis size in gay guys.  ( Read more... )

Today I have:  played with legos, gone shopping with my mother and gotten a sweater and Christmas presents for more people, packed three boxes of stuff to ship tomorrow, and realized that I will be in DC in twelve days, and therefore have twelve days to get almost all of my history reading done.  Crap.

Brain sex test from the BBCYour personal ( Read more... )

This is amazing - 'Virgin births' for Komodo dragons.  It's actually parthenogenesis, but we didn't know Komodo dragons could do that!  (And wouldn't that mess up the whole Christmas story if Jesus was actually a product of parthenogenesis (which wouldn't work, because Jesus was male and Mary was, obviously, female, but still ( Read more... )

I'm reading the party platforms for the MN Rupublican and Democratic parties.  Yeah, that bored.  Anyway, I just came across this in the "Preserving Civil Rights" section of the Republican platform (which has 25 points):

That the lawful definition of a "Human Being" shall be:  'When the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of Mankind is joined.'

What?  ( Read more... )

...all by myself.  We talked about Creationism.  Again.  In more depth.  ( Read more... )

He brought up creationism in theology today. Specifically, if a building has an architect, the world must too. Because, according to Darwin, atoms and molecules randomly hit each other and created the world and animals and plants and sentient beings, but that just doesn't make sense, because random atoms couldn't possibly do that. I sat and stared ( Read more... )

Theology today was...interesting. ( Read more... )

More stuff on Pluto:  This amused me.  Thanks possibilities!  At least some people agree with me - New planet definition sparks furor.  (My brain must have been on holiday, because I hadn't put "cleared orbits" together with "Earth has asteroids that cross it's orbit" together to realize that according to the new definition, we are un-technically not a planet ( Read more... )

Some older looking guy just wandered into the back room and  looked at the laptops.
Old guy:  *wanders further into the back*  I could just swipe all these and no one would know.
Me:  *looks at self to make sure I haven't gone invisible*
Old guy:  *wanders out of the back, comes around the corner, sees me, and blinks*  ...Just kidding ( Read more... )

Summer classes:  My final verdict on summer classes is that one is nice, but two is not, especially if one is writing intensive.  Between working full time, having schoolwork for two classes, and it being summer, I'm going insane.  I don't know how people who go back to school while still working do it.  They certainly have my respect now (as well ( Read more... )