Atomictumor

OK, so I’ve only had this cold thing for about a week or so, and it didn’t start getting all up in my business until Saturday, but I’m totally freakin over it.

This whole “having a body” thing is getting irritating.  Sure, there are upsides involved with it (alcohol) but at this point I’m thinking its more of a liability to me, what with the stuffed up head pain, and the coughing fits, and the constant flow of bold yellow nasty coming from deep within my sinus cavities, forcing me to heave-ho that crap through my nose on a constant basis, which causes a coughing fit, which makes my head hurt, which makes me realize that I have (once again) more of that nasty crap in my sinus.

It started getting better yesterday, and kinda took a little downslide again today.  I’m not near as bad feeling as I was this weekend, but my patience for it has totally worn out, and I’m ready to go all “Incredible Voyage” and shrink down and kick some cold infection stuff’s ass personally.

But that requires a shrink ray, and then the existential problems involved with shrinking myself down and entering into my own body, not to mention the medical/biological hurdles involved in actually locating and personifying a cold virus so that I can put my size 15 (which would then be something like a size .0000015) into some kind of gooey, virusey, ass.

I guess I could go the futurama way and put my consciousness into a tiny microscopic robot that would tool around inside me and kick an ass or two, but then I gotta get nanoengineering in there, and if I had all these skills to begin with, well, I’d probably have cured the damn cold anyway.

So, to summarize:

1. Over it
2. Alcohol
3. bold yellow nasty
4. downslide
5. shrink
6. existential problems
7. very, very small feet
8. anyway

So I was sitting around this morning, thinking about an audit thats going on and finalizing some wicked awesome plans for the weekend that weren’t really finalizing very well, and pondering on Bos’s truck difficulties, and my world domination difficulties, and the whole 5 year plan thing, and I think I came up with a mutually beneficial situation.

(Click to embiggen)

So yeah, it basically goes like this, we put together a satellite, and put Bos’s truck into orbit.  Once in orbit, the color will change from Purple to Red because of oxidation issues, and cosmic radiation.  It will also grow a front license plate.

Anyway, hook Bos’s truck up to the satellite, which will hereafter be called “Truck Dropping Satellite of Doom”.

As the name implies, the sat will be hooked up to a remote controller, which I will have in a certain safe place.  I will then be able to extort my way out of doing whatever I don’t want to do, by implying that I will drop a truck on them from orbit.

I don’t see a flaw in this.

The Missus was cracking a hardboiled egg for the kids. Spotz said he couldn’t believe that some dinosaurs ate other dinosaurs eggs. So I told him that weasles and snakes ate egg yolks, too. Then the Missus pointed out the obvious that we’re nest robbers, too. I said yeah these eggs would’ve become little chicks if we hadn’t grabbed them first.

The Missus then raised a very important question. Are those chicken eggs fertilized? I said yeah, sure. I mean how else would they get fertilized if they weren’t before they hit the nest?

Well as it turns out they just may not be. Check this page out for more info, but here’s the gist:

Birds, like mammals, use internal fertilization. Many species of birds lack a penis; instead, the male just has a genital opening (cloaca), which must be positioned against the female’s genital opening (also called a cloaca) for sperm transfer. Male chickens, however, do have a small penis to facilitate mating. In any case, after copulation, which only lasts a few seconds, the sperm quickly swim up the oviduct toward the ovary. The sperm can stay alive in the oviduct for several weeks, ready to fertilize the next egg cell (oocyte) that appears.

Oocytes are produced in the ovary, packaged with yolk within a thin protein membrane, and released one at a time into the funnel-like infundibulum of the oviduct. The oviduct is a tubular passageway leading from the ovary to the outside world. It is also an assembly line in which the various layers of the egg are constructed. After an oocyte-yolk package is released into the infundibulum, it lingers there for about 20 minutes. If sperm are present, then the oocyte is fertilized and becomes an embryo. But if no sperm are around (that is, if the hen has not mated), then the egg still proceeds down the assembly line of the oviduct. In this assembly line, albumen (egg white) is added around the yolk, shell membranes are added, and the shell itself is constructed. Finally, the complete egg is pushed through the vagina and out the cloaca.

If the egg has been fertilized, then the embryo inside has already divided several times but remains a group of unspecialized cells. When the egg is incubated at about 37 to 38 °C, the embryonic cells differentiate to form a chick, which will hatch after 21 days. If the egg has not been fertilized, then the oocyte within will never grow or divide, and the egg will never hatch. The eggs you buy at the supermarket are eggs that have never been fertilized.

Who knew?

I love cable.

Did I mention that?

I watched, last night, a show on the Science channel about the efforts of scientists working on longevity drugs, with the optimistic viewpoint being that medicines and treatments and whatnot would be available to retard the aging process, and eventually to prolong life indefinitely.  Without zombies.  Well, no more than there are now, at least.

Now, I’ve called myself a transhumanist once or twice, after a few drinks.  I think the logical next step in human evolution would be a self imposed step, wherein the mind oversteps the matter, and jumps over nature.  I’m not the most versed on the subject, and I understand the pessimistic viewpoint that

• only the rich would have it, creating an uber upper class that would forever keep my sorry ass down,
• or that life would become meaningless without death around to make you hurry up and take that trip to Greece (Mel, you promised to put me up, remember),
• or that the overwhelming population would rapidly make the planet uninhabitable
• or that OMG nobody wants to live forever

but I think the reality of things would be similar to the effect that antibiotics, or polio vaccines, or even birth control, have had on the human consciousness over the past decades.  Some problems, but for the most part smooth sailing.

And I used to totally be behind the idea of living for a few hundred years, and even more into the idea of choosing when and how you die.  I think (call me crazy) that death is as beautiful and necessary to the human condition as birth is, and that it should be celebrated, to an extent, more than it is in our society.  As a survivor of death, however, I see it as a brutish, impolite and impatient relative, somebody who busts into your house, stays for way too long, eats all your food, stops up the toilet, and leaves you feeling horrible about the world around you.

I used to want to believe in longevity treatments and possibilities to avoid death, and now I think its an interesting prospect because we, as a society, need to get to know death better.  It doesn’t need to be swept under the carpet, killing the dinner conversation and making the neighbors look at you oddly, and I don’t think it should ever be particularly light conversation, but it needs to be more respected, and it makes sense to me that by making it part of your life, making the choice “I’m going to keep taking the longevity pill until the next time Halley’s Comet comes”, or “until I’ve been to every country that has a y in it” or “Until I think I understand it” would liberate so much of the human condition.

And what of God?  Many folks I’ve talked to have the idea that something like this would be taking from God’s domain, but I find that a narrow viewpoint.  I don’t see why humanity would be given the gift of a mind that could stave off death, without that being a ‘gift of God’.  Now, I’m still not in God’s country club, and haven’t yet bought into a particular theological point of view (other than the sights I’ve seen), but my thinking seems to hold water.

I don’t know, however, if I’d be drinking the elixir myself, or at least not for very long.  However, I’d love having the choice.

Discuss.

We’re thinking about composting here at the Cemestos Gardens.

The Missus saw this contraption that Martha Stewart built. Here is another set of instructions for the same sort of system. Martha let’s you play with worms when you compost her way. Those worms will freeze in the winter, though. Perhaps AT would let us winter the composter over at his place.

I like this.

Do any of you all compost? Have any suggestions for composting on the cheap, in other words, less than $25U.S.?