Get your nerd on

If you want to get your nerd on, deep in the paleontological weeds, keep reading. Otherwise my explanation of this recent fossil find won't interest you in the least.

 

You've been warned......

 

Meet Saccorhytus, at 540million years old, he is believed to be humans' oldest deuterostomic relative. This remarkably detailed fossil was found recently in China and "deuterostome" means "two mouths".

 

At only 1mm big, he probably lived inbetween grains of sand in the oceans. What makes him special is we believe that he was the first to break away evolutionarily from the dominant protostomic creatures based on how their earliest gestational cleavages took place, radially or spirally.

 

Up to that point, spiral cleavage in the early stages of gestation limited where germ cells ended up, meaning that the mature creature probably took in food and excreted waste through a single opening. But with radial cleavage, the options for germ-cell development were limitless and the anus and mouth openings formed at opposite ends of the blastula with the rudimentary gut formed in-between.

 

All chordates, and more specifically all verterbrates, like humans, snakes, and chickens, have a common ancestor from long ago at the end of the pre-Cambrian era.....excitingly, Saccorhytus is believed to be him.

 

Here are helpful pictures of the fossil, an artist's concept of the creature, and what Earth looked like during that time.

 

 

 

Clinton's get put out to pasture

I think it's both hilarious and telling that the Clinton Foundation is closing up shop. Heh heh, there are no more favors to sell, influence to peddle, or access to hustle so nobody cares any longer what they have to say.

Lacking anything relevant to say, media point out crowd size

The media are experiencing what is known as "collective existential angst"....... the foreboding feeling that the failure to achieve a goal exposes the group to questions of relevance and purpose. They can't believe they failed to install Hillary as President they way they did Obama. Or more accurately they can't believe the unsophisticated, unwashed American people didn't vote they way we were told to by them.

Because they are petty, small crybabies, the media delighted yesterday in pointing out how Obama's inaugural crowds were bigger than Trump's, as if that fact is somehow universally meaningful and vindicates them(the media) in not choosing Trump.

Here are the reasons the crowds were big for Obama but not Trump:

1: the threat of violence from despicable, Trump-hating, democrat vermin probably kept some people away.

2: local protests(89 protest permits were issued to Trump-haters for yesterday) prevented or at least dissuaded people from attending.

3: Unlike Obama/Hillary voters, Trump supporters tend to have job responsibilities that come before a road-trip to DC. Somebody has to work, after all, who's going to pay for Obama voters' idle, leisurely lives of parade watching?

Shrinking the federal government

Heh heh, just read about a survey of federal employees that showed how 1/3 of them are seriously thinking of quiting their jobs after Trump's inauguration. Hilariously they cited Trump's intention to freeze federal hiring and shrink the federal labor force as the reason for their disgruntlement.

Just so I'm clear, your stand against Trump shrinking the federal labor force is to voluntarily shrink the federal labor force yourself?

Go for it and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. The vast, bloated, federal bureaucracy is rife with fraud, waste, corruption, duplicity, redundancy, graft, and bamboozlery and it needs to be shrunk, dramatically.

We should check back with these folks in like three months, where I predict a similar outcome as the crybaby celebrities who threatened to leave the US if Trump won.....as if somehow their not living among us is punishment, and not a blessing, for the American electorate. None of the beclowned celebrities left town and neither will these bureaucrats. They'll all still be in their lavishly compensated but useless jobs, sucking at the public teat as they've always done.

Nerd alert

If you get this, be proud of your nerdery......

 

 

Unintended consequences of mirror selfies

If you are a co-ed at Tulsa, it's probably better if you do NOT take mirror selfies. 

 

Another opportunity to make fun of Lindsay

Heh heh heh, has-been Lindsay Lohan may have converted to the cult of Islam. Heh, that sounds about right.

Since nobody in Hollywood will have anything to do with her, she probably figures she can score some anti-America brownie points back home and one day return in some form of acceptability.

Has Islam lowered its standards on women and alcohol, drugs, nudity, smoking, and sex and I didn't hear about it?

Heh heh, Biden gets a participation trophy

As politicians go, I'd bet Biden is probably a pretty fun guy to hang out with and I think he's a decent, though misguided, guy.

Still, this pretty much sums up the Obama presidency. People receiving things, just for having breathed.

Cory Booker begins his drive for the presidency today

Sen Cory Booker is going to do something today that has never happened in US Senate history......testify against another sitting Senator in confirmation hearings. He opposes the appointment of Jeff Sessions from Alabama as Trump's AG.

Booker fancies himself the next President Obama and he figures this is the best way to raise his profile with democrat voters around the country......being a race crusader against a white guy from Alabama.

Check all the boxes Cory, I'm sure another aggrieved race hustler is just what the democrat party needs.

Here Sen Booker demonstrates for the cameras how he would have thrown the winning TD pass last night agianst Sessions' home team Alabama.

 

My run-in with black ice

I was getting a little stir crazy last night so I ventured out to the grocery store to grab some dinner, check out the roads, etc.

The drive was fine until I chose an alternate route home, whereupon I found myself on a sheet of black ice, on a small 100yd hill. With tires spinning, my momentum carried me to within literally 5 feet of dry pavement.....then I stopped and began sliding backward.

Luckily the crown of the road guided my car into the gutter and my back right tire into the grass, stopping my slide, rather than careening back down the hill into a crash.

I thought about abandoning my car and hiking home but it would have taken at least 45 minutes, with groceries, in 19F weather, in the dark. Wisely I called my friend Darrell instead.

Darrell and his son Charlie showed up a little while later in their big 4WD Dodge Hemi PowerWagon and pulled me the final 5 feet onto dry pavement. (Man, I gotta get me one of those)

It's noteworthy that I saw people in 3 different houses peek out their window at me sitting on the ice unable to move and not one of them came out to ask if I was ok, maybe make a call for me, or offer a warm beverage......what is wrong with you people?

So I'd like to thank Darrell Vines and his son Charlie who left their warm home and rescued me last night. That was cool.

Across the pond, they have the guts to mock Islam and ISIS

If any group deserves mockery it's ISIS, but moonbat politicians and the western media revere Islam too much to allow it without sanctimonious cries of racism and bigotry. Thank goodness the BBC ignored them and made this hilarious parody of ISIS. I only wish SNL or other comedy troupe in the US had the guts to do it. Enjoy!

             

Our carelessness let the Russians in

Why is everybody getting the vapors over Russia trying to "undermine our democracy" and "commit this cyber act of war" and "influence our free election"?

There are maybe 40 countries who are sophisticated enough to hack other countries and we all try to hack each other....all the time.

There was no propaganda disseminated, disinformation peddled, psychological ops perpetrated, or fake news trotted out as real news. The only thing that happened as a result of the Russian hack was that dark, disturbing truths about Hillary, Podesta, Huma, Weiner, Donna Brazile, and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz were revealed. Nothing was made up and no lies were told. No American voters were tricked into voting for Trump or not voting for Hillary.

Most importantly, none of it could have happened if Hillary and Huma hadn't communicated via her rinky-dink bathroom server, Podesta hadn't used "password" as his password, or Huma hadn't used her pervert husband's laptop for secure communication.

Putting the blame on Russia when you handed them the information on a silver platter is like blaming the guy who stole your car out of a city alley when you left the windows down and the keys in the ignition.

Good doggie

Heh heh heh.....who's a good doggie?

Bruce Springsteen beclowns self

I've never heard of Marc Maron or his stupid podcast, but recently Bruce Springsteen went on for an interview in which he continued to rage against Trump for promoting racism, bigotry, and intolerance.....all standard, manufactured complaints about the right from the dopey left.

Hey Bruce, you're little more than a silly jester who we pay absurd amounts of money to amuse us from time to time. We don't care what you think, or even IF you think, your role in our lives is essentially that of "clown". So shut up and get back to singing and dancing.

Ed's movie review and bonus editorial

So we just finished watching "Snowden". I thought the story as I understood it was laid out well and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a terrific job as Snowden. Importantly, they made the point in the movie that Snowden went out of his way, to the extent that he could, to make sure no US assets were endangered by his actions.

Now, I realize that a lot of my friends here despise Ed Snowden as a traitor, and predictably an Oliver Stone film will always take the side opposite the US government, as this one pretty much did but, objectively if your government is authorizing itself in secret to do things it probably shouldn't, clearly outside of its purvue of fighting terrorism, is it really treason to reveal that?

The argument for domestic surveillance and data collection is always, "Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, then what are you worried about?"

Look, I operate an inconsequential, two-bit blog that is highly critical of the government. What happens when criticizing our government becomes, not illegal, but just "anti-American"? Can the NSA trawl back 10 years for every negative statement I made in order to intimidate me into silence, the same way the Clintons used targeted IRS audits to intimidate their critics into silence?

I don't know if Snowden is a traitor or not, I'm just saying the unaccountable bureaucrats in government don't have a good record of honesty, ethics, and responsibility and I don't trust them as far as I can kick them with what is otherwise benign data on me.

The Russians did it