Via DarkSyde:

If you saw Fahrenheit 9-11, you might remember a scene with a pair of Marine recruiters filmed in a Michigan Mall. One of those featured was Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar. This individual allowed Michael Moore to film him (?-DS) at work even though he knew that Moore opposed the war. Obviously he was proud of his work, or he surely would not have granted permission.

Plouhar is described by those that know him as one hell of a guy. Indeed, despite his short brush with fame, what a lot of people don't know is that Staff Sergeant Plouhar originally enlisted in the Marines in 1995, but took a four year hiatus after donating a kidney to his uncle, saving his uncle's life in the process.

Whatever our views on the wisdom of the war, or lack thereof, we must recognize that there are two distinctly different kinds of war supporters: Those that put yellow magnets on their car, and those that report to the recruiter station to put themselves in harm's way. Both may genuinely believe in the military action in Iraq, but one deserves far more respect, imo, than the other.

Staff Sergeant Plouhar was one of those. Not long after Fahrenheit 9-11 was finished, he shipped out to Iraq himself where he served with distinction in Anbar Province--one of the most dangerous regions in Iraq. Last Monday, Staff Sergeant Plouhar was killed in action. He was thirty-years old and had 38 days left in his deployment.

Good point:

"We are born, and we're given a certificate to prove we exist. When we graduate, when we get married, when we buy a house or a car--there is a piece of paper that legally confirms these things. When we go to the grocery store and buy our lettuce and tomatoes and beef, we get a receipt that states what we purchased and how much it cost. Yet when we perform the most important duty as citizens--when we cast our votes--we do not have any way of knowing if our vote was recorded correctly or if it will be counted...ladies and gentlemen, I submit that our vote is more important than our lettuce and tomatoes."

--Ion Sancho (the Florida elections supervisor who helped expose Diebold & DRE voting machine flaws)

RIP, Harriet.

The party of "family values" continues to amaze and impress me.

Political consultant Carey Lee Cramer (R), credited with an anti-Al Gore ad in 2000 that showed a young girl picking daisy petals and ends with a nuclear blast, is charged with molesting two girls, including the one in the ad, according to McAllen Monitor.

Gay marriage will lead to legalized pedophilia. Reproductive health care is the root of all sexual immorality. Godless liberals want to turn your children gay. Vote Republican.

Read the baby powder scented Final Solution of our enemies from beyond, otherwise known as:

File this one under, "Zomg, I Luv Teh Internets."

So today I was wandering about an internet news forum that I frequent (wait, it gets even more nerdy), and I started kvetching about my recent neuro qualifying exam. One of my fellow forum-goers tried to cheer me up by reminding me of the joys of science. The following discussion ensued:

"...Yeah, scientists sometimes do a pretty good job of naming things. Like Schwann cells, for instance. You can't tell me that's not a smooth name. Schwaaaaaannn. Though I also appreciate the increased action potential conduction velocity provided by the myelination of neuronal axons by the Schwann cells. (Let's hear it for showing off!)"

"Pfft! While the nodes de Ranvier are indeed cool, astrocytes rule supreme."

"I don't see how you can possibly assert that basic structural support and maintenance of homeostasis can compete with the rapid and exciting progress of saltatory conduction. I mean, astrocytes just lay about all day providing scaffolding for the real action."

"You dare knock the synaptic transmission modulators and their electrically-coupled syncytium? Philistine! Saltatory conduction is so base - neurotransmission is where it's at."

"You synapse-lovers, so fixated on flinging chemicals at each other from across the cleft. It's barbaric."

"Some of us are just about interaction, while you are nothing but a fan of self-release."

"It's always a popularity contest with you. 'Ooooh, look at me, I integrate excitatory input from three different afferent pathways!' 'My inhibitory impulses regulate the function of two feedback loops!'

Peer pressure, that's all it is. You depolarize your postsynaptic membranes every time some yahoo spits glutamate in your direction. Well, MY voltage-gated channel acitivity is regulated by summation at my own axon hillock, not by whatever the cool kids are releasing at the moment."

"And yet you remain in a refractory frigid state not due to someone else's premature gamma-aminobutyric acid burst, but by your own impotence."

"Look, not all of us can become maximally permiable to current flow every 2 miliseconds. So I inactivate from time to time. So what? I'm not a machine, dammit!

I always knew that's what this was really about for you. You're looking for some younger, more conductive membrane so you can run off and make a bunch of cute little low-resistance vesicles together. Why don't you just admit that it's because I'm fat?"

"It's not so much that you're fat, it's that you have layer upon layer of concentric lipid-bilayer deposits wound around your projections, the removal of which you see as a fate worse than apoptosis."

"I'll have you know that there are plenty of folks out there who like a little insulation on an axon. Not everybody is attracted to anorexic processes with their membrane hanging out for all the world to see. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering the unmyelinated hussies you hung around with before we met."

"Unmyelinated is just an ugly word bitter glial-dependants such as yourself use for those whose potentials last longer and are slower to climax."

"As if I could ever be jealous of some puny little fibers that can hardly maintain an impulse across a dozen microns! Maybe some easily-impressed immature membranes can be driven to threshold by your weak EPSPs, but it takes a lot more to trigger conformational changes in my voltage-gated membrane proteins.

Oh, and you know that time I claimed to be firing repetatively? I was faking it."

Wow. I mean...wow.

Hat tip to Daddio.

A fun story and picture from the BBC today, headlined "Tabby cat terror for black bear." The resolution isn't great, but this picture shows Jack the cat (the orange blob at the foot of the tree) defending his property against an intruding black bear (the dark blob clinging to the tree top). The bear eventually came down from the tree, only to be chased up another tree by the infuriated tabby.

I submit this as Exhibit 1 in my case for why the word "pussy" should most certainly not be used to refer to someone who is weak or cowardly.

Well, that settles that debate.

Tip-o-the-hat to Brian, who pointed me toward the Knox College commencement address that Stephen Colbert delivered on Saturday. It's good enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with John Stewart's 2004 commencement address at William and Mary (which still has a standing link on the right side of this page).

PS: My qualifying exam is on Wednesday. If you've got a pipeline to any particular diety who might be bribed into pulling some cosmic strings on my behalf, now would be a good time to sacrifice those chickens you've been saving up.

Happy Mark Of The Beast Day!

Contrary to what some might tell you, 06/06/06 is not nearly as Satanic a day as 06/01/06. 666 only holds a special place in our superstitious hearts because of a mistranslation. The real Beastly number is 616.

And yes, I used WorldNetDaily for that last link on purpose, because of the bit at the very end.

The National Post quotes Elijah Dan, professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Toronto, as saying the new number won't likely have an impact in the popularity of 666.

"Otherwise, a lot of sermons would have to be changed and a lot of movies rewritten," he said with a laugh. "There's always someone with an active imagination who can put another interpretation on it. It just shows you that when you study something as cryptic and mystic as the Book of Revelation there's an almost unlimited number of interpretations."

Indeed, there are an unlimited number of "interpretations" of the Bible. And if your "interpretation" just so happens to be disproved by factual evidence, well, no big deal, because the truthiness of a belief is determined by how many people will go along with it.

Argumentum ad populum FTW!