CompilerBitch's Journal

The story just broke this morning. Read about it here. The full supreme court decision is here.

Wow. This is a big deal.

I just thought that the first two entries on that list kind-of, um, worked well together...

Original story at BBC News

Apparently, the Amazon Molly is a female-only fish species that reproduces by mating with males of other species in order to trigger reproduction, but by a bizarre quirk all offspring are not only female but clones of their mothers.

This gives me an irresistible urge to quote Dave Barry. Sorry, someone was going to do it, so I thought I might as well get in with it first:

Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around and around for hours, looking for some place to go, until finally the female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of them that it doesn't make any difference.

       -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"

Squeeeeeeeeee!!!!!1111!!!1!!

They get around a bit, these here tenacious_snails...

This video has been doing the rounds at work, with lots of oohing and aahing and OMGWTFBBQing, so here it is for all to enjoy.

What is the most unusual food you've ever eaten... and enjoyed?

That's a tough one, because I'll eat nearly anything. Hmm... I suppose if I've eaten and enjoyed it, then *I* pretty much by definition don't find it weird. But of the foods that people frequently won't go near, I love haggis. I used to eat black pudding when I lived in north east England, but seldom do these days. And raw fish, and fish eggs. And sprats, whole, on black bread in the Russian style. I like a few Russian things, like cabbage pie, борщ, the little cabbage parcel things with meat and rice inside that I can never remember the name of, etc. But that's not *that* unusual, I suppose.

Oh, yes, I know what I can say. It's a drink rather than a food, though. Another Russian thing: квас, (prounounced 'kvass'). It's kind of a weird fermented fizzy drink that looks like coke and tastes like Marmite. I really like it. I'm weird. Yeah, laugh it up, I know, I know.

Though I should say that once, in Moscow, I was given a weird soup with bits of meat, vegetables and sour cream. In a base of квас. Maybe someone can remind me what this horror-concoction was called, but no one was very surprised when I didn't like it. I mean, cold soup, fair enough, I can deal, but FIZZY and Weird as Hell? C'mon!

omnisppot asks who our common LJ friends are and how I know them...

augeas I know via panzerpenguin, I think, though I've also bumped into him lots at Hinoeuma when I used to sound-engineer there.

davefish I know via doseybat, my ex. We were basically part of the same extended social circle for the last 4 years or so that I lived in the UK.

spidosaur Is doseybat's ex, which is how I know him. ~~~waves~~~, if you're watching.

vulcanita I met via spidosaur, via doseybat.

naranek I know via the Cambridge goth/geek scene.

I seem to be having a period of doing-new-stuff recently. One thing I've never done is post one of those, go on, ask me anything you like, comments screened, anon OK memes. I was generally a bit scared to do that, though I'm not sure why.

Anyway, here goes: Ask me anything you like. I'll reply in a separate post (or posts, if I need to lock them), by email, or (if you request it) by unscreening your comment and replying to it.

(You can probably blame marnanel for this, along with a quiet afternoon that should really involve me running around buying art supplies and changing my bed linen).

Go on, go for it! Ask away. I'll be gentle. (Mostly)

(reposted fortenacious_snail -- you can read her post here. I can't get directly involved in this for various reasons beyond my control, but I can at least draw people's attention)

http://kolakowskiforjudge.com/

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I'm leaving this as a public post because I want people to see this. For reference, that could very easily have been me, many times at school, and once, on a train from London to Oxford in 1997. I survived. This is a reminder that not everyone is so lucky.

                     == PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==



Region:                            ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

Geographic coordinates:            53.321N,   0.313W

Magnitude:                        4.7 Mb

Depth:                            10 km

Universal Time (UTC):             27 Feb 2008  00:56:45

Time near the Epicenter:          27 Feb 2008  00:56:45

Local standard time in your area: 26 Feb 2008  16:56:45

Location with respect to nearby cities:

  48 km (30 miles) S (178 degrees) of Kingston upon Hull, England, UK

  69 km (43 miles) NE (55 degrees) of Nottingham, England, UK

  79 km (49 miles) E (94 degrees) of Sheffield, England, UK

203 km (126 miles) N (357 degrees) of LONDON, United Kingdom

Read all about it here

Today, I have mostly been:

• 01:48 Just treat myself to Bicycles & Tricycles by The Orb. T'is very good. #
• 03:24 [wow obsessiveness] Just hit level 40 with my warlock. I can has burning demonic horsie! :-) #
• 15:26 Feeling ill. Maybe some kind of stomach bug. Watching Star Trek, moderately bored. #
• 22:07 Feeling grotty again. Early bed, methinks. #

(feel free to add me on Twitter if you prefer)

Today, I have mostly been:

• 07:31 I am awake far too early this morning. Gaah. Lying in bed reading the ocaml manual. #
• 20:28 I can has new socks (lots). But no ripstik in Target. Poo. #

(feel free to add me on Twitter if you prefer)

Today, I have mostly been:

• 00:18 Had a great evening with Ruth, Karen, Les and Veronica. Am under orders to get a ripstik and actually learn to not fall off it. Now, sleeep. #
• 09:12 Anyone want to do lunch or [dinner/some other evening thing] today? #
• 13:36 Lunch with Guillaume. Now back in the office. Still persuadable to do something tonight that isn't unpacking (save me!) #
• 15:35 Fiddling with the ocaml integration in Eclipse. Upgraded everything. Works. Is pretty nice, actually. #

(feel free to add me on Twitter if you prefer)

Today, I have mostly been:

• 00:05 I had a go on a Rip Stik tonight. Woohoo! They are awesomely cool. #
• 13:20 Back at Ames after a considerably epic all-night chatting session in Oakland. #
• 13:23 *wants a ripstik* They are soooo cool. #

(feel free to add me on Twitter if you prefer)

Hi folks,

I was chatting to foxypinkninja the other day, expounding my usual rant about the inadequacy of English when defining imperfectly understood concepts related particularly to gender and sexuality. It occured to me that there might be a more effective, admittedly geekier, solution that could put an end to all world strife. Well, probably not, but it would be fun, anyway. Chatting a bit more to doseybat today made me decide to post about the idea before brain fade did for it and consigned it to the maybe-perhaps-when pile.

( Caution: (Work-safe) geeky content within )

That is all, move along now... :-)

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