Friday, June 03, 2005
So, you've arrived in the fantastical city of saints and madmen... let's see how long you last!
Ah, yes, my typical experience in a new city:
FATED TO (DIE IN A) FIGHT
You last about halfway through your first night in
Ambergris - or perhaps until the darkness just
before dawn, if you're lucky. You are killed in
a random bar brawl, a street fight you
inadvertently started or an artistically
violent argument. Your body disappears before
dawn and you are not remembered.
How Would You Fare in Ambergris?
brought to you by Quizilla
In Search of that Pesky Hetero Gene
That one gene, the researchers are announcing today in the journal Cell, is apparently by itself enough to create patterns of sexual behavior - a kind of master sexual gene [in fruit flies] that normally exists in two distinct male and female variants.
In a series of experiments, the researchers found that females given the male variant of the gene acted exactly like males in courtship, madly pursuing other females. Males that were artificially given the female version of the gene became more passive and turned their sexual attention to other males.
My favorite bit of that? Describing homosexual male behavior as "passive."
I mean, all females are totally passive sexual partners, so males who go after other males or are interested in other males must be passive, too. My other favorite assumption in that is that females "act like males" when courting females, and males "act like females" when being courted. Why aren't they described as "acting like females interested in other females" or "acting like males interested in other males"?
They real key is this, of course:
But no one dreamed that simply activating the normally dormant male portion of the gene in a female fly could cause a genetic female to display the whole elaborate panoply of male fruit fly foreplay.
Key being, "dormant."
Yea. It was already there.
In all of them.
I Love Stealing From BFB
Ah, fat prejudice: the last one that's still PC.
"...fat people just don't work as hard or produce as much. I'll never hire a fat person, and I'll never say that for attribution. Whether true or not for the overweight population as a whole, I can't say, but it sure is my experience, and I hire based on my experience."
Oh, for fuck's sake.
