Between classes today I was talking with some people about what I had just written, mostly zombies, and we started talking about other ways the world might end. Joe brought up triple-stranded DNA, and how that could be pretty crazy.
Triple-stranded DNA has a wikipedia page, but there were very few words there that I understood. And anyway, it’s more fun to speculate about it without being constrained by what is actually scientifically possible.
So if scientists figure out how this all works, what could they do? I have nothing to back this up, but I’m pretty sure they could make some pretty crazy animals. With an extra strand of DNA, they could probably give these alien animals like superpowers or something. They could probably figure out how to throw like telekinesis or something weird like that onto the third strand. I don’t know if they would have to make entirely new animals to take advantage of this, or if they could take a current animal’s DNA, add another helix full of special powers, and create like a super giraffe. That would be sweet.
But I think that the greatest potential here is if scientists start giving a third helix to human DNA. If they start doing this, I would volunteer to have my DNA amplified. I’m sure there would be risks all over the place, but the rewards would totally balance it out. Like, what if a third DNA strand gives me superpowers like the Force? That would be incredible, even if I didn’t get a lightsaber too. Though if it were available, I would want a lightsaber as well.
I think the key here, and, again, no science supports this belief, is nanotechnology. We need to make these little robots, because that’s probably the best way to graft a third strand onto all of my DNA. Imagine if it were that simple. Like, you just swallow a couple of nanobot pills, and they go through your body like a molecular black ops team amplifying your DNA. And then like twenty minutes later you can move things with your mind and baffle stormtroopers. Who wouldn’t want to do this?
Seriously, science is pretty much the coolest; there are so many possibilities for weird shit that they can do, and I really want to see something crazy happen.
So I'm reading Jon Meachem's new autobiography/hagiography of Andrew Jackson, and it's really good. I wish I were further into it, but it takes a while to absorb so much awesomeness. Also, torts. A lot of stories about Jackson are fairly well known: his duels, attacking a would-be assassin, and the Battle of New Orleans. Some of them, however, are interesting and pretty unknown, at least to me, so I figured I would share some of them. Maybe turn it into a recurring feature, because Andrew Jackson is just that cool. If you disagre, you're wrong.
This first one, the one that prompted this whole idea, isn't actually about Jackson, but a member of Congress from while he was President, and Martin Van Buren's VP, Colonel Richard M. Johnson. For one, Johnson claimed that he personally killed Tecumseh during the War of 1812, making him either a badass or delusional. Either would be cool. He was also kind of a dick.
At various times in his life, Johnson had common law marriages with three different slaves of his. The first died in a cholera epidemic, not an especially uncommon occurence in the first half of the nineteenth century. The second, however, was a pretty hilarious case. This wife/slave was unfaithful to Johnson. Rather than handle this maturely, Johnson took an alternative route: he sold her and got with her sister.
It's stories like this that make me wonder how anyone can say that they don't like history. There's so much crazy stuff going on that it's impossible to find something you don't like.
After writing this, speculating about the continued existence of Megalodons, Gerber recommended the book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, about just that. It’s the story of the aptly named Jonas Taylor, a paleontologist/oceanographer/marine biologist, who believes that megalodon still exist. Everyone thinks he’s crazy, until a 60-foot behemoth, through an unlucky series of circumstances, is able to leave the trench and wreaks havoc throughout the Pacific.
The megalodon is able to rack up an impressive kill count while Taylor and some others are trying to capture it, before a climactic battle takes place between the predator, people trying to capture it, people trying to kill it, the media, and a fleet of curious onlookers. The ending here, and if you know anything about the Old Testament you can probably figure it out, is so absurdly unbelievable, even in a book about an extinct shark, that it is a little bit of a letdown.
The novel did have some great scenes, including an opening battle between a Megalodon and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I would recommend this book based on a person’s reaction to the back cover. In big letters it says, “Two Words: Jurassic Shark.” If you rolled you eyes at that, I would stay away. If that seems pretty awesome, give the book a shot.
Moving on…
A friend and I went up to Boston this weekend to visit a third friend before he goes to spend the semester in Tahiiiiits, and some aspects of the trip were definitely worth passing on. On the drive up we saw a scene straight out of Tommy Boy. As a white pick up truck was heading north on 95, its hood flew up, completely obscuring the driver’s view through the windshield. The guy in the truck handled it like a champ, acting quickly to get to the side of the road. Presumably he then removed the empty oil can.
Saturday night we went out to bars in Plymouth. After an early last call (1 o’clock? Seriously?), we were walking to the car when someone mentioned threw out going to Plymouth Rock. Then an incredible conversation happened; a girl walking behind us blurted out, “You should definitely go to Plymouth Rock, it dances!” The guy walking with her looked at us and said, “No, it doesn’t,” to which she replied, “It does when you’re on acid.” No one raised any further arguments.
On Sunday we went to the Museum of Science, which was pretty sweet. They had a planetarium, and although not everyone managed to stay awake through it, it was still pretty cool. There was also a three D movie about sharks, narrated by a kindly British turtle, which was fun. There was one part, though, that left me completely befuddled. At one point in the movie it looked like a whole school of jellyfish were floating at the audience. Some people decided to reach out to try to touch the jellyfish. Why would anyone do this? First of all, come on, you’re in a 3D theatre, do you think they’re actually there? And second, what if you reach out and are able to grab one? Then you’re just sitting in a dark theatre with a jellyfish in your hands, not a good situation. Finally, there was a presentation about electricity. At one point, the guy running it decided to show what would happen when electricity was passed from a generator to an ungrounded person and then finally to a grounded person. So he had a girl stand on a milk crate and a boy stand on the ground next to her, and started the electricity flowing. When it got going he had them reach their fist towards the other. As the electricity was passed to the boy it gave him a little shock, and he yelped. For most people, that would be the end of the presentation, but there was something clearly wrong with this kid. He reached his hand up again, same result. Ok, maybe he was just trying to put on a good show, and that would be the end. Or maybe not. He kept reaching his hand up, three times, a fourth, yelping each time. Finally, after the ninth time, the guy running the demonstration shut off power to the generator. If he hadn’t, I can only assume that the kid would have kept electrocuting himself.
And one last marine biology note. Here's a professor in Northeastern's Masters program:
And, some other thoughts:
Today Gov. Blagojevich appointed former state Attorney General Roland Burris to fill Obama’s Senate seat. He has yet to announce how Burris compensated him, though it is probably safe to assume it’s some combination of free legal advice and connections within the state Department of Justice.
It really bothers me when football announcers call an end-around a reverse. How difficult can it be to correctly call a reverse? I mean, seriously, the play is described in its title. If the ball is handed one way, then direction is reversed when given to another player, by all means, call it a reverse. But if the quarterback just hands the ball to a wide receiver, it’s just an end around. Stop fucking this up. Also, the Hail Mary is probably my favorite play name ever.
I recently tried to read Black Belt Patriotism, Chuck Norris’ political manifesto, but I could only get through about 25 or so pages. It’s not that Chuck isn’t a passable writer, I read his western novel The Justice Riders cover to cover, but he’s out of his mind. From what I did read, though, Chuck believes there are eight major problems facing America: no national legacy, no control over spending, not enough border control, no moral compass, not enough value for human life, no future for the children, no traditional family values, and no might to fight. There are a lot of right wing buzzwords in there, but I was still willing to persevere through it. I could look past all the name dropping and bragging. I was even willing to ignore that he left out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps not considering them to be big deals. But after what felt like the thirtieth mention of liberal judges legislating from the bench I couldn’t take it anymore. How is it that only liberal judges are said to legislate from the bench? Pretty much any time a judge issues an opinion he’s shaping the common law, in effect legislating from the bench. That’s what judges do. Why is there such a negative connotation? And why is it only attached to liberal, progressive judges? Seriously, this is pretty ridiculous.
Not to be a dick, but why are all these year-end retrospectives including Steve Fosset in with people who died in 2008? He died in 2007; I understand that his remains were found this year, but that’s still cheating.
So I may be taking the lazy way out with this, but there are a couple dinosaur articles I’ve found online that are pretty interesting, but I really don’t have much to say about them beyond maybe a couple sentences, so I’m gonna throw them up here together.
This article talks about research that has recently shown that the males of a couple species of dinosaurs, including oviraptors, had most of the responsibility for caring for eggs and young dinosaurs. This is pretty interesting, but I think I’m going to mostly ignore it. It’s just a lot more fun to think of dinosaurs as mindless killing machines.
Then there’s this article, which talks about an alternate theory for the death of the dinosaurs. Some researchers are saying that the big asteroid that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico 60 millionish years ago didn’t really kill much of anything, and that the dinosaurs, and a whole bunch of other animals and plants, were actually killed about 300,000 years later, when a bunch of volcanoes erupted, spewing poisonous gasses into the atmosphere. I’m pretty skeptical about this; not only is it pretty hard to accept that an asteroid six miles wide didn’t kill off any species, it also strains credibility to say that a series of volcanic eruptions in India poisoned dinosaurs everywhere. Some other scientists interviewed in this article say that this volcano theory has been largely discredited, and I’ve gotta agree with them. Still, it was pretty interesting.
I really love how people are still researching all sorts of different aspects of dinosaurs. None of this ever really gets old to me, and I’m really glad that some scientists feel the same way.
I saw this article the other day, and there is so much cool stuff in there something needed to be said about it. (CNN is talking about it too now)
For those who don’t want to read the article, it basically says that in the Greater Mekong, in southeast Asia, new species of plants and animals are being discovered at an absurd pace. In the last decade more than 1000 species have been found, and some of them seem really cool. One of the highlights is a bright pink millipede that excretes cyanide as a defense mechanism. They’ve also found a really big spider, a neon green viper, and a ton of other things.
But the highlight, without a doubt, is the Laotian Rock Rat. Scientists thought it had gone extinct 11 million years ago, but they’re still around. Honestly, the rat itself isn’t so interesting, but the possibilities it represent are awesome. How many other “extinct” animals are around that we just don’t know about? I’m sure that there are areas of, like, Carslbad Caverns that haven’t been explored; for all we know there are like saber-tooth tigers and spinosauri living down there, eating giant chinchillas and Neanderthals and just generally being awesome.
And there are probably even more cool animals in the ocean. Mariana Trench is probably the coolest place in the world, but because it’s so far under water no one knows. Now, I have no scientific evidence to back that up, but I can still say with utter certainty that there are Megalodons swimming around down there, making great white sharks tremble with fear. And yeah, I think that's awesome.
But honestly, it’s probably a good thing that we haven’t found these animals, because, unfortunately, people are really fucking stupid, and we would drive them all to extinction.
So Bill Conlin has decided to weigh in on the Raul Ibanez signing. He says a lot of stupid things. Here's the second half of the article, FJMed. The first half was mostly Ponce de Leon references.
Never mind that righty-swinging Pat Burrell averaged 141 strikeouts during his nine seasons here and never struck out fewer than 120 times. Is that the kind of consistency you're happy to have? In seven seasons as a regular player, the late-blooming Ibanez has averaged 93 strikeouts. Seriously, why do people keep harping on strikeouts? They really aren’t worse than any other out. I get that it can be frustrating to see Burrell jump back from a pitch down the heart of the plate for a called third strike, but that doesn’t make it any more of an out than a fly ball to right field. Yeah, Ibanez has struck out fewer times than Burrell has, but I’ll take Burrell’s .367 career OBP over Ibanez’s .346. Despite striking out less, Ibanez doesn’t get on base as much as Burrell does. Seriously, strikeouts aren’t relevant.
And he has a better career average vs. lefthanders, .268, than Burrell does against righthanders, .251. Um, this might be a dumb question, but so what? Burrell’s role wasn’t really ever to hit righthanders; against a RHP you would count on Howard and Utley for the majority of the offence. Burrell was there to provide balance when the team was facing a lefty. The more apt comparison would be Ibanez’s .268 career AVG against LHP against Burrell’s .276 AVG and .410 OBP against LHP.
However, I'm not going to buy into the Phillies' claim that Raul hits lefthanders better than he hits righthanders. His .305 average against lefties last season appears to be a statistical anomaly and should be discounted. Plus, he won't have a book on many National League pitchers. You’re absolutely right, this is without question an outlier. I appreciate your statistical acumen.
The best news? He has faced Mets ace Johan Santana 34 times and has a .353 average. Oh. Forget that last thing I said. Come on, you can’t really be saying that this is going to continue. It’s another anomaly, a small sample size. Even the most optimistic, diehard Phils fan has to expect some regression here. He’s not going to keep hitting over .350 against Johan.
Manuel will be juggling his lineups at a time when the National League is a little short of quality lefthanders. Santana has been something less than advertised - very good, but not exceptional I may be wrong here, but I would say that when a pitcher leads the league in ERA, IP, and ranks second in strikeouts he has been exceptional. Yeah, he only had 16 wins, but wins are a terrible measure of a pitcher’s performance. Jamie Moyer and Aaron Cook also had 16 wins, and they’re not that good. You can’t hold the Mets’ bullpen against him.
- and the Mets' bullpen is heavily righthanded with Scott Schoeneweis and Billy Wagner out of the picture. I just wanted to take a minute here and say Fuck You to Billy Wagner. He’s an asshole.
Only four of the 24 winningest pitchers in the National League last season were lefthanders. Santana and Moyer were tied for most wins with 16, followed by Cole Hamels with 14 and former Phil Randy Wolf with 12. Does Wolfie scare you? Again, just to reiterate, wins are stupid. Randy Wolf is not the 4th best LHP in the NL. And no, he doesn’t especially scare me, especially considering he doesn’t so much have a team right now. I am scared, though, by some of the LHP that some of the better teams in the league, and teams in the NL East, have: Santana, obviously, Clayton Kershaw, Andrew Miller, Jeff Francis, Scott Olsen, even Ted Lily. These pitchers give their teams a good chance to win against us, even when their ace, like Billingsley or Nolasco, isn’t on the mound.
Ryan Howard hit more home runs off lefthanded pitchers last year (14) than did any righthanded hitter but teammate Jayson Werth, who blasted 16. MVP Albert Pujols hit 11. Sleep easy. Werth absolutely kills lefthanded pitching, there’s no doubt about that. But Ryan Howard, while he’s hit a lot of HRs against lefties, only has a career OPS of .786 against them. That’s pretty miserable.
Chase Utley batted .277 against lefthanders last season, despite the hip injury that restricted his swing. And guess who was No. 3 behind Howard in homers off lefthanders? You'd be right if you said Utley, with 13 bombs. Yeah, Chase Utley is the man. Considering offense, defense, and the value of his position, Utley is the best baseball player in the world right now. This doesn’t have anything to do with, well, anything else, I just like saying it.
So let's not fly into a forum and chat-room frenzy over all this Phillies' lefthandedness. Think of all the righthanded pitchers who will have to face a lefthanded gantlet when Utley is back in a lineup that will include switch-hitters Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, Utley, Howard and Ibanez. That's a six-pack of dynamite. I counted the names in this paragraph four times trying to figure out who the sixth person he was referring to is. There isn’t one. Unless dynamite is commonly sold in six-packs, and I just had no idea this was a common expression, this maybe isn’t the best metaphor.
Manuel will have some flexibility. You could see a lineup against a lefthanded starter that opens with the World Series alignment that flipped Victorino and Werth in the Nos. 2 and 6 holes. Ask CC Sabathia, now in Yankees pinstripes, how that worked out. With Werth establishing himself as a certified power threat, Charlie could bat Shane No. 2, Utley 3, Howard 4, Werth 5 and Ibanez 6. I guess I could live with that. Still though, I would have rather had Delmon Young. Whatever.
And please don't start with, "Don't tell me they're gonna pay $10 million a year to a No. 6 hitter." The Phillies just got through paying $14 million a year for a guy who hit .257, struck out a ton, clogged the bases, hasn't driven in 100 runs since 2005, has never scored 100 runs, and is a seven-inning player. This last sentence is what motivated me to write this. Yes, Pat Burrell was making too much money. But after that, everything else falls apart here. Clogged the bases? Yeah, damn, I hate when baseball players get on base. That never works out. Like, in Game 5 of the World Series, when Pat led off with a double, clogging up the bases. Who cares that it led to the run that won the World Series, he’s slow. The purpose of baseball is to score runs, and you need to get on base to do that. As for not driving in 100 runs since 2005, is it maybe possible that there is a correlation between that and hitting behind Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, who both have been consistently driving in triple figures? When Ryan Howard is clearing the bases 45 times a year in front of him, the RBI opportunities just haven’t been there for Pat. As for this seven inning player nonsense, Ibanez is just as bad a fielder as Burrell; it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Bruntlett filling in defensively to protect late leads.
Yeah, I don't think that this was the best move the Phillies could have made. It kills me that they're giving up their first round pick in the next draft. There were better options out there, be it moving Jason Donald and someone else to get Delmon Young, or signing Juan Rivera, who I think is going to put up some pretty big numbers this year. Whatever, with Utley coming back healthy, Cole Hamels having emerged as one of the most dominant big game pitchers in the world, and Brad Lights Out Lidge, I'm still feeling good about the Fightins.
Also, I do really like reading Bill Conlin, and I don't want him to get fired. Titles are really hard to think of though. Eh, blame.
