The Desert Mermaid

All the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are female, until they did that toady transsex thing. I think that people just don't care about the sex of a T-Rex.

I can tell you've seen some Mythbusters.

I never tried to beat Zelda II without emulation and the benefit of save states. That was during the era of games when the standard way to guarantee game length was to force the player to redo each level 1500 times until they had it memorized.

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Exactly! They point out right at the outset that all the dinosaurs are female, and then you hear folks talking about how that huge T-rex was one bad dude, and that part where he's chasing them or whatever is so cool. And when I refer to her as "she" they look momentarily startled.

I got Zelda II on my 3DS to try it out--last time I'd played it I WAS in kindergarten, and it was on a friend's NES. I don't know if I ever figured out what the hell I was doing. Now I at least have a purpose, but I AM always amused by how many game standards in the olden times were obviously artifacts of the arcades' money-making model.

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badgermirlacca.livejournal.com

Um. Is it also true that there's a high incidence of multiple sclerosis among men in the Arab peninsula? Because the whole-body-envelope thing is not exclusively female. *Everybody* covers up to avoid the sun, particularly in the Arab peninsula and North Africa.

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Possibly! I know that it's more prevalent in northern latitudes.

There's been a ridiculous spike in cases in Iranian women in the last 40 years, though--which seems to correlate with the full-body, mandatory hijab implemented after the revolution. Covering up to avoid the sun is one thing, but this is pretty much covering yourself in a blackout tent whenever you get near sunlight. So I suspect it's still more excessive overall.

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badgermirlacca.livejournal.com

Women did wear more Western clothing before the Iranian revolution, true. So maybe there is such a spike, which would be interesting (although surely doctors recommend supplements?). But I'd expect to see levels in men as well--not spiking, perhaps, but higher than what we'd see in the West.

Interesting to see the data, anyway!

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although surely doctors recommend supplements?

As I understand it, that's exactly what they're doing. here's the link to the article I found. Dad got interested and printed out more, but I'm not sure where they got to.

While I do think that the Iranian moral codes are weirdly pathological, that doesn't really extend to hijab in general. And I am guessing that even the most zealous proponent of the moral codes was not actually trying to give women MS. It just struck me as a fascinating illustration of unexpected consequences.

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...it would be, yeah, overreaching to think that they intended to give women MS. If for no other reason than MS leads to all sorts of things which would devalue a woman on the marriage market. Wow look at me being a jerk there. Sorry, I have been researching Hitchcock all day, and he was seriously an asshole. I think it is rubbing off. You know. In reverse.

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Dude was an asshole, yes. I always feel guilty that I think Rear Window and Psycho are awesome movies.

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redbird

I suspect there's some seasonality there: people who aren't forced/strongly pressured to cover up entirely may be exposing more of their bodies during the part of the year when the sunlight is less direct.

What I'm wondering about now is the incidence of rickets; the amount of vitamin D that's needed to protect against MS is almost certainly* higher than the amount you need to prevent rickets, but burqas might mean women and girls not getting even that amount.

* Almost because the last I heard, the correlation between vitamin D and MS looks pretty solid, but the causation is not proven. (It's also possible that this is one of those multicausal things where vitamin D deficiency increases the risk, but there's another factor, possibly an infection or genetic susceptibility. And some researchers think MS is two or more different diseases with similar symptoms, but that's not likely to get teased out until/unless they identify the cause of at least one of them.)

Edited Date: 2013-06-21 01:51 am (UTC)

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badgermirlacca.livejournal.com

I suspect there's some seasonality there: people who aren't forced/strongly pressured to cover up entirely may be exposing more of their bodies during the part of the year when the sunlight is less direct.

Not entirely convinced by this, because among the poor, there's no such thing as seasonal wear. (I am thinking about Libya, in particular, because I lived there for a year as a kid, and while my memory may not be absolutely accurate, I've retained an interest in the whole North Africa/Arabian Peninsula as a result. In winter, the highs are in the low seventies/high sixties during the day, and I didn't see any difference in what people wore.

I think my point is that we shouldn't get so fixated on burkhas that we forget that men cover up too. (And men are also enjoined to modesty, so the cultural rationale is in play there as well.) I'm not trying to downplay FEMALE OPPRESSION OMG, just add perspective.

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(If you come across any interesting news which has a reasonably scientific backing, I would be interested to know about it, as my husband has recently (well, within a year) been diagnosed with MS, and I am all about learning about things and mitigating symptoms. It might be too late, but hell, some extra vitamin D isn't gonna hurt.)

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redbird

1000 IU/day of vitamin D is easily available (one non-huge pill) and safe. Yes, it's possible to overdose on vitamin D, but you have to really work at it and/or be unlucky. (The only case I can think of offhand is someone who was aiming for high doses and got a supply of pills that contained a thousand times as much as it said on the label—and then, when he got sick, assumed that this was because he didn't have enough vitamin D, and increased the dosage.

Get plain vitamin D, not D plus calcium, unless you (or in this case your husband) are dealing with specific, known calcium deficiency. It turns out (population-level epidemiology keeps turning up surprises) that supplementing with calcium actually increases mortality in the general population. (This is relatively recent news; I threw away part of a bottle of Citracal and bought plain vitamin D when I heard about it.)

Disclaimer: I am neither a doctor nor a biologist; I have a BA in history and read a lot.

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westrider.livejournal.com

I've been taking 10,000 IU of vitamin D per day for a couple of years now, with only positive effects. I do absolutely shun the daystar, tho, and live in the Pacific Northwest, so I get basically zero actual sun exposure. And I weigh 350+ lbs. It correlates with weight, too.

But the point stands, you have to really work at it to OD on the D.

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Dang, I did not know that! Sorry to hear it.

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diatryma.livejournal.com

Nicola Griffith has had some pretty interesting stuff on her blog in the past year. She's been keeping up with research and mitigating her own symptoms as well as possible and has ties to an MS researcher.

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dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com

The term for when someone blanks out and appears to be conscious but unresponsive to the people around them is dissociative stupor.

Huh. Not what it was called in the '70s.

Museums are really concerned with pest control. Which makes sense, but I had never thought about it before.

*Pictures rat running away with mummy finger in its mouth*

Deep-frying is actually fairly easy; it's the battering/coating that is annoying.

Which is why I never make onion rings, even though I love above all things, even chocolate.

Although it is made slightly less so with the use of chopsticks.

Good to know.

You're supposed to replace thyme plants every 3-4 years lest they get all woody. I don't know, I'm so impressed that my thyme has lasted this long that I'd feel kinda bad replacing it.

Just put a new one in and leave the old one, too. Sometimes thyme lives for years and years without getting funky. Sometimes the new one dies first. Good to have a back up copy.

The Europeans call moose "elks." I have no idea what they call elks. Europeans are so confused.

Wapiti

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...not what it was called in the 70s.

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

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Yeah, it turns out that everything in a museum, probably down to the stone tools and plaster fossil casts, is edible to SOMETHING. They have a giant killer freezer and just straight up ice every single thing that comes into the place

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Heck, paint. Canvas. Wooden frames. Marble statues probably don't have much to fear, but anything else does.

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kelkyag

Humans are terrible for marble. Skin oils and acids do an impressive job of eating it. Also, it's flamable.

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But I don't think we count as pests.

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kelkyag

Humans who want/try to pet the artifacts are totally pests to museum curators. :)

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I've been told I'm a pest on numerous occasions. Granted, most of them were when I was still under age 8...

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Also, YES ONION RINGS. Damn those are delicious.

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kelkyag

The symbolic food of a Passover seder is not intended to be the main Passover meal. Which is good, because I also learned what food is acceptable for the Passover plate, and it hardly makes a good meal anyway.

It isn't intended to be the main meal, but some of it is yummy. :)

What's wrong with woody thyme? Is it less productive?

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What's wrong with woody thyme? Is it less productive?

Mostly it's harder to chew. :)

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kelkyag

Strip the leaves off the stems, or put them in a tea ball or satchet? But yeah, that's more work than just throwing in fresh sprigs.

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This list was awesome. Also if I ever get to name a butterfly (highly unlikely but not impossible) I shall name it The Minister of Agriculture and Transportation Butterfly. People will just be like, fuck you, butterfly discoverer, every time they spot it. It will be awesome, and at least half your fault.

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AWESOME. Especially if it turns out to be one of those butterflies that almost looks like a monarch, just to confuse people even more!

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Meanwhile, I'm imagining a butterfly with the pattern of a tractor on its wings.

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"Oh look it's a Monarch!"
"No, no, I think it's a Viceroy..."

"Actually, it's a Minister of Agriculture and Transportation."

"..."
"..."

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anagramofbrat.livejournal.com

wayment, i need a source for that diane duane/doctor who connection! and thanks for the excuse to reread that series!

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Well, there was that time she confirmed it outright, for starters ...

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By the way, she's been going through and updating the series so that it's all set around 2008-10 or so. You can get the ebooks at her site. I'm ambivalent about updating books most of the time, but the way the Young Wizards handle modern tech, I was all for this one. (Although Dairine is now a fan of the Clone Wars instead of real Star Wars, which is just WRONG.)

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pixel39.livejournal.com

The N. American elk is Cervus canadensis, the European analogue is the red deer (which are distantly related to our elk but closely enough that in controlled conditions they interbreed) which is Cervus elaphus. "Moose" is the Algonquian word for Alces alces (from which the word 'elk' is derived).

More than you ever wanted to know about elk, I'm sure. ;-)

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sofish-sasha.livejournal.com

The Europeans call moose "elks." I have no idea what they call elks. Europeans are so confused.

It's you Americans that are confused about the whole elk/moose business. :P Alces alces = elk, elch, elg, älg in various European languages. It may be that it was people from the elk-less Great Britain who went to American, saw some wapitis (Cervus canadensis) and said "'Ey, that looks like one of them elks I've heard people from the European mainland talk about!", and so the wapiti were called elks, even though they're not, and the actual elks were referred to by their Algonquian name. The annoying this is that, at least here in Sweden, people usually refer to elks as "moose" when speaking English, probably because that's the word we keep hearing in the many films and tv shows from the US that we watch here.

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I'm going to stand up in favor of Big Space Lasso. The special effects will be better.

As for your thyme, don't pull it out! You can always plant a younger one somewhere else, in case it gets woody, but I've always used mine for years and years and years! You just harvest the newer sections as it spreads, and if you get anything too woody you can either strip off the leaves before you put 'em in whatever or cook it whole and pull out the stem when you're done (which method depends on what you're cooking, of course).

I won't get into the elk/moose discussion. I used up my quota of elk argumentation on a tabletop gaming argument. As long as you don't try to convince me they hibernate in caves I don't care what you call 'em.

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I heard a lady at Yellowstone once asking if the big hairy buffalo (which are actually bison, but SHUT UP) standing nearby was animatronic.

Of course, she also asked if they turned off the geysers at night. I don't think she was used to nature.

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I've reached the point where people who know me will pre-emptively tell me to 'leave it' if we hear someone refer to American bison as buffalo. I still twitch.

Animatronic, though. Wow.

When we were up at Ape Cave last weekend a guy at the trail head turned his back to all the informational signage and asked me if it was "like, a real cave." As opposed to...? I wasn't quite sure. Not used to nature, indeed!

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My only defense is that in my head, 'buffalo' sounds a lot more like what that animal is than 'bison' does. It's the f's, I think. And the rhythm.

Come to think of it, that's my argument for 'elk', too. In my head, it's everyone else who is wrong.

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