Are there bonus points for going through Hec's and tommyrot's lists and attributing to the tv series/movie from whence each item came? (Crazy Ivan! hee!)

Kudos for Hec's early Pink Floyd reference ("Interstellar Overdrive").

Yeah, I was also just totally mystified as to why she needed me to do it for her. Edit: Gud, I'm currently in Massachusetts, but I'm available at a very decent hourly rate. You'll have to cover all travel costs, of course.

Are you keeping the clippings to see if they keep growing?

t taking notes

(Crazy Ivan! hee!)

Heh. The funny thing to me is that I just watched that episode (pilot ep of Firefly) last night with my housemate, and I had never before picked up on the name of the maneuver they pulled, but I finally heard it clearly last night.

This reminds me, I need to clip my fingernails. You don't happen to live in the Kansas City area Kate?

This reminds me - I have to clip my cat's nails. Kate, did you have to press on your boss's fingers to get her claws to extend?

On the evolution thing: In my high school biology class, there was one kid who would interrupt the teacher approximately every 30 seconds with something like, "But how do you know it's random?" "So you're saying that G-d had nothing to do with this?"

The way I think I'd explain it as a teacher, if there were parents or students objecting, would be something along the lines of, "In elementary school, you learn that, when you're writing a newspaper article, you're supposed to answer six questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. The goal of science, in studying evolution (where "life happened" is the "What"), is to answer Where, When, and How. The other questions, Who and Why, are certainly interesting, but neither of them have answers that can be analyzed by any sort of scientific processes, and so they are outside the scope of a science course."

One thing that I remember my biology teacher complaining about was the way that the textbooks were written. Most high school biology textbooks have a chapter on evolution, and no mention of it outside that chapter, making it easy to skip. His view, which I'd agree with, was that evolution is the basis of just about everything else in the book, and that almost every section (on anatomy, cell biology, etc.) should explain that the things are that way because they evolved that way, and go into an explanation of why.

I don't see why someone would even want another person to clip their nails unless they had Parkinson's or something—it should be quicker and safer to do it yourself than have anyone else do it for yo

It reads to me like a very fucked up power dynamic assertion.

His view, which I'd agree with, was that evolution is the basis of just about everything else in the book, and that almost every section (on anatomy, cell biology, etc.) should explain that the things are that way because they evolved that way, and go into an explanation of why

I couldn't agree more. (Of course, then we'd have to figure out a way to get public schools to afford the snazzy new evolution-based textbook, but that's a whole nother thing.)

"But how do you know it's random?"

According to Dawkins, natural selection isn't random at all.

Of course, then we'd have to figure out a way to get public schools to afford the snazzy new evolution-based textbook, but that's a whole nother thing.

It ain't going to fly here in the intelligence-free zone of Texas public school policy.

If someone offered to paint my fingernails, I'd probably accept because I can't do it for shit myself. Cutting/clipping, I can do by myself and can't imagine someone not being able to barring illness/injury/age related problems.

But I'd never ask someone who wasn't related to me by blood to paint my nails unless I was paying them.

According to Dawkins, natural selection isn't random at all.

I think the "random" that the teacher was referring to there was either random mutations or randomness in which genes in an individual get passed on.