Male Homosexuality: Side Effect of Female Evolution?

So I personally love evolution, it was one of the first scientific concepts that fascinated me as a kid and it still intrigues me just as much to this day. There was one thing about the theory and human behavior that I never thought added up though, and that was homosexuality. Basically, if Evolution by means of natural selection was the way it all went down, then why wasn't homosexuality just rubbed out of behavior in general earlier on since homosexuals couldn't have kids? I never could answer that question, and it has bugged me and more than likely countless others for the longest time. That is, until I read this article reviewing a recent paper which was published on the matter.

The long and short of it is, male sexuality, at least according to the statistical analysis done in the paper, is linked to female relatives on the mother's side having a larger than average number of children. This is hypothesized to act as a buffer against extinction, since in the event of a dip in the population these women will just let their loins burst with children, possibly because their attraction towards men is stronger than the attraction felt by other women. An apparent byproduct of this is that males who are the offspring of these females will carry the same genetic trait, and thus be more inclined to fancy the boys rather than the gals. Taken from the article:

"...if the authors are correct, we're not really talking about genes for homosexuality. We're talking about genes for "androphilia," i.e., attraction to men. The importance of the genes lies in what they do not to men but to women, by increasing reproductive output so powerfully that these women compensate for the reduced output among their male relatives. You can't isolate gay men as a puzzle or problem anymore. You have to see them as part of a bigger, stronger, enduring phenomenon."

I love the fact that the whole experiment is based on analysis of breeding data that was already there for anyone to look at and the primary investigator just took a fresh approach to it. It actually kind of reminds me of Mendel's peas, you know that little experiment which is widely accepted as the forerunner to all of genetics? It makes me feel good that the model that he began is still being used to this day, albeit with slightly more advanced statistical techniques, but still, ya gotta love Mendel. Anywho, read the article, it's nice and it clears up (at least in my mind) the debate whether Homosexuality is genetic or cultural.


Sexual Antagonism - A genetic theory of homosexuality.

Al Leong, I Salute You

Do you remember that guy who was in all kinds of action movies in the past who was always a bad guy (except for his bitchin' sweet facial hair, there's no way a Fu Manchu can be evil) and always ended up dieing in the end? Well I do, and it always bugged me that I saw him in dozens of movies but never knew who he was, so I looked him up on IMDB, and then on wikipedia. Apparently his name is Al Leong and has a huge cult following exactly because of his showing up in crap loads of action movies and just exuding bad guyness (and of course, that glorious stash). And so Al Leong, I salute you.

Iraq was premeditated!? Cheney and Rove were pulling the strings!? *GASP*

2004 CBS 60 Minutes Interview:

Scott McClellan, I owe you a beer

This guy's a class act in my book. This man was a part of the Bush administration and was told to tell the American people everything that the administration wanted them to know, and when he either found out or simply suspected that the administration wasn't on the level he did something about it. He wrote a book about his experiences in the administration, pointing out all of his suspicions and the questionable circumstances he witnessed as the White House press secretary and then talked about it in front of a Congressional committee, something that no senior level official in the Bush Administration has been willing to do and for which McClellan is taking all kinds of flack and criticism. So good for you, Mr. McClellan, for standing up for what you believe and speaking up in front of all of your former coworkers and friends, you're a real patriot.

I just hope that the talk of impeachment I saw from Congressman Wexler in the video linked below from the post by The Raw Story goes somewhere and isn't simply something that becomes empty rhetoric that never sees the House floor. Get your head out of your ass Pelosi and friends and realize that impeaching Bush would be one of the best moves the Democrats could make, as well as punishing a clearly corrupt and incompetant executive leadership that needs to be punished in order for this to never happen again.


Dem Rep. calls for impeachment at McClellan testimony: video

Quite Possibly The Best NERF Office War Ever

Good god man, this is the office war to end all office wars. With the largest array of NERF guns I've ever seen anywhere outside of a toy store, this is packed with foam dart pwnage and is so freaking awesome.


http://view.break.com/521743 - Watch more free videos

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

Image taken from original New York Times Article

Whooo, don't you love when the crazy conspiracy theorists are right for a change? I'm sure I'm the only blogger covering this (har har) but the New York Times is running a story about how the four major players in the oil industry which were in Iraq before Saddam Hussein nationalized oil (Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP) along with a handful of other American oil companies are getting no-bid contracts (though only 1 or 2 years long) to start oil production in Iraq:

'Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.'

Later on is my favorite part of the article though:

'The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

A clause in the draft contracts would allow the companies to match bids from competing companies to retain the work once it is opened to bidding, according to the Iraq country manager for a major oil company who did not consent to be cited publicly discussing the terms.'

This is just great, another way for the US government to hurt our reputation internationally both in terms of business practices, ethics, and energy consumption, and the icing on the cake is that people have been saying this for years, everyone kinda shrugging them off as crazies without proof, and then BAM, here it all is in its terrible terrible glory. Icing on the freaking cake. Enjoy future me, enjoy:

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

Possibly the best use of censor bars ever

THE BPA 'TOE JAM' FEAT. DAVID BYRNE & DIZZEE RASCAL

Slap Fight Game

Oh my God I've played this game for two minutes and it's already one of the most hilariously awesome things I've seen all week. It's basically a fighting game where all that happens is women slap each other. I absofreakinglutely love it. Below is a screen from the game. Those eyes man, those eyes.

http://nigoro.jp/game/rosecamellia/rosecamellia.php

Death From Above 1979 On Conan

I was just browsing the interwebs when I remembered the day I fell in love with Conan O'Brien's drummer Max Weinberg, and it's during this performance. Freaking great stuff, and it won Mr. Weinberg the utmost respect in me ol' noggin. Hats off to you sir.


Death From Above 1979

An Omen! Hopefully

So future me, here's the skinny on a dream i just had. Yes, I know, the dream journal thing is just sooo interesting, but bare with me. The setting is a little vague, because I'm the me of right now, but the setting is from the me of the past, around high schoolish. I walk with an enormous amount of people who I don't know into a really huge gimnaysyum that's been decorated with photos taken from the project we're supposed to be working on (it's some sort of field trip/colloquium class hybrid) or studying or some such, and it's a social experiment between groups of 18+ girls and 18+ guys. Also they're naked for some reason, and the study revolves around this fact somehow. Something about the social dynamics of naked chicks in a collosal hot tub (predictable college graduate dream eh?). I didn't really pay attention to the guys part of the social experiment (much to the dismay of the school field trip supervisors, for some reason), so I can't really elaborate on it.

Anywho I begin looking around the room for a familiar face when i spot some peoples from my high school across the room and I wave and approach them. They're all hanging out in a room that's separated from the rest of the high schools and once I get into the room I discover it's actually some sort of a bus or something, because when I walk in we're obviously moving inside of this little box with a few benches and desks inside it. In this bus are three of my old high school buddies, Joey C, Patrice, and Liz (I think that was her name, I'm so bad with names) but they're not the versions of those people I know right now, they're the versions I knew in high school. Apparently they didn't think the field trip project was interesting enough so I joined them and we just made up some bull shit answers for the credit, as is the cutsom amongst high schoolers, and ditched to hang out in some random place. I had no idea we were supposed to have answered any questions at all, but this apparently doesn't matter that much.

Joey (from the past) asks me (of the now) how my job hunt had been going, and I told him that I didn't get the job at Washington University (*sigh*) but I did get the job at UIC, and his immediate response wasn't some kind of simpathy for me and my sadness or anything, it was instead jubilation that I'd be in Chicago for a year and that I should live with the three of them so that we could all "play." I'm not exactly sure what that meant, but the next thing I know I'm actually decent at playing on my drum kit and we're in their idealized college studio appartment jamming out. The place is in a very colorful part of Chicago where there's plently to do and immigrants everywhere, and we all lived like a little family with four odly positioned bunk beds and murals and posters covering wth walls. I was having the time of my life, I was happy. Then i woke up. So Mr. Future me, what do you make of that?

Personally I hope it means that living in Chicago will mean that I'll actually have a good year filled with hanging out with my friends and not living with my parents and basically being miserable. Also I should give Joey a call, I haven't seen that kid in ages.

John Mcain Didn't Used to Scare Me

So now that the tickets for the two parties of the great two party government that is the US government have been decided (D-Obama, R-Mcain, future me) Mcain, who I used to really like maybe ten years ago (really I had no idea who he was at the time, I just read about and heard some great things he did way back when) but now that I keep reading his voting record for the past few years has been unsettlingly in line with Bush's every desire, that he apparently doesn't know how to use a computer, and that American troops don't really need to leave Iraq, I have some pretty big doubts about him and whether or not his administration would bring this country back fromt he brink of, well I suppose disaster is too strong a term, but what would you call it when going in the price of oil was $8 a barrel and now it's something around $135 a barrel?

Well rest assured future me, this little bit of information scared the living crap out of me when i read it and put Mcain in a very dark political place in the ol' noggin. Now given it's fair to say that this was still earlier in the Bush administration when Mcain said those thigns and he may not have known everything that had been going on and that he said those things when the Bush administration's approval ratings were at least reasonably high, but still. If there's any chance at all that vice president Cheney (who I like to call one of the puppet masters) will be involved in the next presidential administration my insides will just start shrivelling up and go cold. I mean this current administration has already cost me and my entire generation more than anyone could have ever thought possible (who do you think is going to pay for this war, the baby boomers?) but I'm also probably going to have to foot the bill for the leagues of baby boomers that will be retiring during my lifetime and wanting social security checks kust like their parents got when they retired. Seriously, if Cheney still has a political future that isn't all shrouded in shadows and secrecy but is instead left out on a platter for the most influential groups to claw at I don't know what I'd do, future me. Hey though, if the next administration needs more money to fuel some other damned fool idea they can always take money out of education, right?

Another Theory

Fox News Producer Ambushes Bill Moyers; Gets Taste Of His Own Medicine

I love this. Found at crooksandliars.com, Bill Moyers was ambushed by a producer from the Bill O'Reilly (Porter Barry) show for what appeared to be an attack piece asking him why he would not appear on O'Reilly's show, but he basically got served responsible journalism style. It's a great little video belittling FOX, and I love it. Enjoy future me, enjoy.

Developmental Aid Workers Are Killing Africa

Hey so over at Spiegel Online someone thinks that developmental aid workers are really why Africa has starving people, and his argument for why that is makes a lot of sense. Here's a snippet:

The aid workers are drawn to the arid lands, where the poor live and the help is urgently needed. Under normal circumstances, such areas don't contain many starving people because they are thinly populated. In the Sahara, for example, hunger emergencies are comparatively insignificant. But in northern Kenya, and particularly in the region's bordering desert land, such as the Sahel, they happen all the time.

And that's why the aid workers dig wells there to provide the inhabitants with clean drinking water. Soon enough, there's a downright crush around the well. Then, more and more cattle drivers and more and more nomadic shepherds bring their wards to the well. And these herds -- and especially the goats -- eat everything up. And, there, where you used to have someone coming by only rarely, a dusty little village shoots up, and then a little city. And, now, more and more aid workers are necessary to feed all the people who settle around the well and the feeding stations. Pretty soon, nothing can happen without aid. The area becomes hopelessly over-populated, and there is no way out of the dilemma in sight.

He goes on to mention that corrupt politicians, rather than building infrastructure for transportation of food and services rely on foreign aid to feed their people and blow the money either on themselves or on big flashy capitols and things that the state overall really doesn't need. Why do yourself what you can get for free eh? Read the whole article, it's relatively short and the guy seems to have looked at the situation pretty thoroughly.

Developmental Aid Workers Are Killing Africa

Mission Statement

Before this post I had tried doing various blogs that had a specific audience in mind and a specific kind of genre of blog in mind, and I thought that this kind of classification would make it easier to get myself to write something, anything, just because I want to keep writing and not lose all of those skills I picked up writing paper after paper in college. I tried the personal blog where I became a whiny high school student on the internet venting about their "feelings" and what not, I did the music blog thing but figured there was already enough pretension in the world, so now, I figure I'll just write to a completely new audience; me. Specifically future me. This will be like an electronic journal where forty years from now I'll be looking back and I'll see that I was into this movement or this piece of music or whatever I want to write about when I was just a young whipper snapper, because frankly writing to an audience outside of yourself when you don't lead an interesting life or don't really have an expertise in anything (at least to any practical degree) is just too much useless work, and I really don't care about entertaining other people right now. So, as of this post, I begin the great 'I don't give a crap about your opinion internet' experiment. Not that you ever write back anyway. Jerk.