Recently I was reminded of a bit of old lore about rapists: just as vampires cannot speak the name of Christ, rapists cannot speak the name of Andrea Dworkin. Which in turn reminded me of the sorry state of the common wisdom imparted to women as regards our personal safety: we are given nonsensical instructions about avoiding attractive clothing and seedy bars, but no one mentions the real-life practical tips that could save our maidenhoods from creepy crawly creatures of the night, vampires and rapists alike.

Below the fold: Three foolproof tricks for identifying rapists! And the things you should keep in your purse at all times - if you’re not a slut who’s asking for it.
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From Left2Right to Pharyngula to you and me: High-Speed Plate Tectonics and Young Earth Creationism. Yow! Before we indulge ourselves in pointless nitpicking, let us address one misconception that seems to have come up among even the reality-based participants in this discussion:

Whatever Wegener might have thought, Pangaea was not “primordial”. Before there was Pangaea (c. 250 million years ago) there was Rodinia (c. 1 billion years ago). Before that, there may or may not have been other supercontinents, Columbia or Pangaea: Episode I or what have you - it’s hard to tell when most of the evidence has been swallowed back into the mantle. But it’s generally accepted that the continents have been stuck together and pulled apart at least twice. Since Genesis only allows for mentions one such event, it’s silly to claim that the modern story of multiple supercontinents was a Biblical hypothesis.*

But we shan’t let that ruin our fun with Do-While Jones, a hammer, and our trusty lumps of silly putty. Oh, no.
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Now tell me, Dearest Readers, what kinds of meat you’ve been eating lately:

Protomonkey!

It was a while ago that I was busy* looking up mammalian phylogeny, but it seems that our closest non-primate relatives are tree shrews. After that, there’s some dispute as to whether it’s bats and flying lemurs or bunnies** and rodents.
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How many entries do I have sitting in draft mode? A lot. One or two of them are halves of good posts. Why haven’t I finished any of them? I don’t know.

Which science fiction writer are you? I’m Hal Clement. [via]. I’m also Long Drugs “Goth Black” matte interior latex paint. Like, whoa.

Something weird is happening here. Has malicious Google-doping replaced high school bathroom graffiti?

1. The LA Times wrote an article about me! Or at least me considered as a demographic phenomenon:
   

   Iowa suffers from an alarming brain drain: It loses more of its young, single, well-educated adults than any state except North Dakota. In search of bigger cities, hipper crowds and warmer weather, young Iowans flee in such numbers that demographers predict the state will face a drastic labor shortage within two decades.

   Desperate to keep the state’s future from bolting, the Republican leadership in the state Senate is proposing trying to entice young adults to stick around by abolishing the state income tax for everyone under 30.
   […]
   Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, has tried […] holding cocktail parties for former Iowans living in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. He boasts of recruiting more than 1,000 people back to the state in four years of aggressive promotion.

   But that’s not enough to offset Iowa’s losses.

   L.A.’s allotment of weather and hipsters is lovely, for sure, but if they had consulted me for the article, they would’ve mentioned the fact that Iowa’s public universities are being systematically torn to shreds by the same people proposing this tax cut. Ditto public arts funding. Ditto public library funding.

   Also there aren’t any earthquakes.

   (link via the shiny new LA Times Addict, which in turn was off BoingBoing)

2. If Language Log says it, it must be true: nerds are funny after all! At least for nerdy values of “funny”:
   

   My reasoning, such as it was, involved several steps, or at least the interaction of several vague ideas. First, the phrase ” for values of * that” indexes a subculture that includes programmers as well as mathematicians and others. Second, Michael Silverstein has already used the word metapragmatic to refer to folk reasoning about (reasoning about) meaning in context (in the phrase “metapragmatic ideology”, which also sounds good, though I couldn’t figure out how to use it in the space and time available). Finally, the originally cited remark was based on treating the interpretation of the word neat as if it were the instantiation of a variable. (I presume, FWIW, that it was in response to some remark like “That was a neat party last night!”).
   
   […]
   
   […] I admit that it’s not normal to limit the instantiations of a variable to the contextual interpretations of a word — but the young woman overheard on Fulton St. was using the language of mathematics to express an insight about an aspect of her life not defined by any prior formalism. Our colleagues in the humanities call this a “metaphor”, or sometimes a “joke”.

It’s unfortunate that the top Google result for Roe vs. Wade is a site full of anti-abortion propaganda. Following
RadGeek’s suggestion, then, it’s time to start pointing out more appropriate sources of information about abortion.

This has been a public service announcement. Now, I need some more ripe-key-limeade - in what universe does it make sense to have limes turn yellow when they’re ripe? I demand that botany be rejiggered to look more like a cartoon.

Goodness, isn’t Joe Lieberman a hideous piece of slime? No slimier, I suppose, than the 59 other Senators who voted to confirm Alberto “It’s Not Torture If The President Approves” Gonzales - but it’s much more satisfying to pick on a slug in sheep’s clothing.

Anyway! Look at Lieberman’s charming remarks about the use of the word “quaint” to describe the Geneva Conventions!

I think, respectfully, Judge Gonzales was being restrained and diplomatic in using the word “quaint.” To offer these benefits […] the ability to receive scientific equipment, musical instruments or sports outfits […] would not be quaint, it would be offensive. It would be ridiculous. It would be ultimately unjust.

Joe Lieberman would be offended if I tried to send a trombone to an imprisoned family member - and they say feminists are overly sensitive! To be fair, he was specifically talking about sending a musical instrument to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, so perhaps he wouldn’t find it offensive if I tried to mail a trombone to someone who was being held in Gitmo indefinitely without trial.

Terrorist suspects are not generally well-known for their trombone skills, so it probably would be ridiculous if I chose one at random and mailed him a trombone. Plus trombones are more expensive than the usual amount of my charitable contributions, and that’s not even counting postage. Yes, it would definitely be ridiculous - I guess one out of three ain’t bad. No wonder this man was almost Vice President!

I’ve decided that it’s superly duperly fun to sneak up on people on the Internet, and when they’re not looking, type at them…
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I’ve been listening to KCRW today, and more importantly to their fund drive. The last pitch they delivered was to “take control” of “your station” which entails, of course, giving them money and then not paying attention to what they do with it.
Oh yeah I feel the power of ownership there, baby!

Public radio personalities will say anything and everything during fund drives, so one oughtn’t read too much into this… but they’ve repeated variations on the same argument all morning. KCRW is member-supported, not member-run. I gave them money last year and it most certainly did not bring me the chance to vote for an additional transmitter in Altadena or a statutory limit on the amount of Air that can be played in a week (I like Air, but really!) or even station board members a la the Pacifica model.

I hate seeing people innocently suggest that opening one’s wallet is the same thing as being active and creative and in control of the universe. Stupid capitalism.