Peter sent a link last week to a picture of fractal broccoli and now all of a sudden the stuff is everywhere. For definitions of "everywhere" limited to the Pasadena farmer's market, the fridge until we ate it, and the Internet.

It's not all that yummy; it's really just normal broccoli tasting. But that's not the point. The point is, this was obviously created by a fairly simple mutation in some broccoli floret regulator. So why haven't they tracked it down and made fractal everything? Or at least all the possible varieties of fractal brassica?

I understand that it's probably a pain in the ass to cross the trait into brussel sprouts the old-fashioned way, but if God didn't make fractal-inducing development process cockups to be genetically engineered into super-durable funny-colored fractal supermarket produce, then what's the point in theism?

Quizzes and memeage inside. I feel muffled and must defilter with zombie brains. Not thought! Squeak.
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In the real world, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is busy complaining that PBS teaches children to be nice to gay people.

LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

Fantasy Secretary of Education Gene Ray is working on a new initiative to bring Nature's Harmonic Time Cube into schools. However, he is running into problems with the NEA:

Dumb ass teachers fear Time Cube and will eat dung before debating it.
Dumb students are educated stupid.

Elephants ran away from tsunami. And carried a few tourists with them, but whatever.

We already know that elephants communicate seismically, and are pretty good at sensing vibrations underfoot. Not as good as a proper seismometer, of course, not least because you risk being squished when trying to retrieve your data. But they're much cuter than seismometers - cuter than most seismologists, too.

So I'm sure it would help the geophysical community's reputation if we all switched to elephant-painting seismograms.

PZ Myers links to Apostropher's coverage of graphic cuttlefish gender-bending with the observation that "I thought peddling molluscan sex acts was my job."

Indignant sniff! Here at Green Gabbro we've been peddling yicky mollusc sexuality for just yonks without needing to be all territorial about it.* Mollusc sex, like democracy, domestic responsibilities and the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, should belong to everyone!
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Thanks to Fafblog, I remembered National Pie Day just in time to travel to the local chain pie restaurant and eat pie.

I do wonder what genius strength reasoning went in to the decision to have National Pie Day in January, when only citrus fruits are in season. Citrus pies are wonderful, but is it really in the pie spirit to rub northerners' noses in the frozen wastedness of their winters?

Also, with National Pie Day being just two days before Burns Day, we incur substantial risk of a run-together Haggis Pie Day on the 24th. Yuck.

I already fucked up Not One Damn Dime Day by buying gas, of all things - not only buying it, but spilling a bunch onto the pavement 'cause the auto-pump-shutoff gadget failed. Sorry, fishies! But there's a much better game, over at Rad Geek People's Daily (among other places). So like the title says, let's play fantasy cabinet!
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Someone (okay, okay, it was Bill Poser) let stodgy prescriptivism out into Language Log:

Capitalization is part of the social convention for writing English. Like the alphabet, it isn't something that the writing system makes available for manipulation by individual users.

Ah, uh, er? I manipulate standard capitalization ALL THE TIME. Alphåbets, too, but that's only to be silly; nonstandard capitalization serves a variety of legitimate purposes. If it's not YELLING or Sniffing Distinction, it's a sort of facetious code-switching into sCriPt KiDd1e or eXtreme Marketing iDroid. Decry Apple's branding strategy all you want, it should be clear that capitalization is mutable in a way that alphabets and word order are not.

Responding to, say, bell hooks's argument against the orthographic standard with a snippy insistence that individuals simply must adhere to the conventions... isn't that a breach of a linguist's professional ethics? In any case, Wolfangel is quite right, it's a discourtesy.

And for the record: Here on the Internets I usually sign my name in lowercase out of pure typographical whimsy. I certainly don't care if you wish to capitalize it.

It's astoundingly simple to convince oneself that one's bodily crevices are merely homes for filth and decay, that one's blood is laced with poison or one's sweat is made of weakness. This is a cross-cultural habit; last night I postulated that body-hate is in fact a basic human instinct, and then I turned that instinct on my nose.

Let me tell you, pore paranoia strips have nothing on the ancient yogic practice of jala neti - especially not when you've got a cold. Neti, for those of you too lazy to click the link, is the practice of pouring warm saline solution through one nostril and out the other, thereby flushing out loads and loads of watery snot clumps! Even on a good day, there is way more snot in my sinuses than there is mysterious fatty goo in my nose pores, and last night I nearly ran out of handkerchief. Yogic wisdom 1, Bioré 0.

The creepiness doesn't particularly diminish with time, but it sure works better and faster than commercial decongestants. And it only feels a little bit like drowning, hoorah!

1. If liberal culture was more firmly entrenched, wouldn't we all recognize that the failure to give one's employees a day off "for diversity" is the same thing as allowing the Klan to solicit contributions in the cubicle farm? Racism hurts everyone, white privilege or no, and I'm being unjustly deprived of a nice day for a picnic. Waaah.
2. I'm curious about the etiology of colds. Why is a snotty nose presaged by a sore throat? And why is it only snotty in one sinus at a time?
3. Via Bitch, Ph.D comes an anecdote about Harvard's President's daughter:
   

   In his talk, according to several participants, Summers also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them ''daddy truck," and one ''baby truck."

   Just because you're "confrontational" and "straight-talking" doesn't mean you're not also "a sexist asshole". The numerous flaws in Summers's supposed "arguments" can be easily pointed out by any halfwit* and I leave them to it**.

   What I'm curious about is the unspoken assumption that if girls can be demonstrated to be more nurturing than boys, then they obviously can't be expected to be as good at math. Because the ability to do math can only be developed by skewering bunnies and kittens on your pencil, and then dancing in a shower of cute-baby-animal blood while reciting your multiplication tables.

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