In honour of of the East End of London I bring you Cute Fings Friday, because I didn’t have time to do it yesterday.
My boss found my blog a little while ago, and the first thing he mentioned was that he didn’t realize how much I liked bunnies. But they’re so cute! How can you NOT like bunnies?
This week’s feature bunny is the Mini Lionhead. Here’s a cute set of bunnies (for sale!) that include a few lionheads. Then there’s three more cute pictures: 1, 2, and 3.
And here’s a great rundown of the top bunny photos on Cute Overload.
GERMANY JUST BEAT ARGENTINA! THEY’RE GOING TO THE SEMIS!
That game was so intense. It’s been twenty minutes or so and I’m still shaking. I was on the phone with my mom during the shootouts and my batteries ran out just as Ayala tried to pick a fight with everyone. I’m sorry mom!
The BBC has a report on a recent study showing that the more older brothers you have, the more likely you’re gay, and that this is due to biological factors, not social ones.
…the effect is probably the result of a “maternal memory” in the womb for male births. A woman’s body may see a male foetus as “foreign” … prompting an immune reaction which may grow progressively stronger with each male child. The antibodies created may affect the developing male brain.
I have two problems with the interpretations of this study. First of all, it treats homosexuality like it’s a developmental disorder caused by brain damage. Are we really going to put homosexuality in the same box as Rh disease? Besides, you don’t develop antibodies over time. You either have them or you don’t. When you come into contact with a foreign body for the first time, you build up antibodies and make memory B cells. When the foreign body is gone, the antibodies start to die off and the B cells remain; the B cells will freak out any time it encounters the same antigen from then on.
I also disagree with this concept of maternal memory from an evolutionary perspective. To ensure your genes are passed on, you want to have lots and lots of kids, both male and female. If I’m going to build up a bunch of anti-boy antibodies every time my mate puts a Y chromosome in me, it sure won’t help me none. The purpose of reproduction, if I’m not mistaken, is to make lots of little babies of both genders so those babies can do the same. (When they’re grown up.) After thousands and thousands of years of evolution, I don’t think women would have that kind of design flaw still programmed into them, if it ever was in the first place.
I really don’t understand how a single chromosome could change cell proteins enough to identify a boy as a “foreign” body inside his mother. Gender may be this huge thing that we think is so important, but there’s really no difference between a male and a female fetus except that after about a month and a half you either get testicles or ovaries, and the former makes testosterone. What’s there to fight?
I’ve prepared a list of the computing/ psychology course options for cognitive science students in years 3 and 4, whether I’m interested in them, and whether they’re offered this year.
EDIT, Thursday the 29th, 9:54 AM: What a bunch of liars! According to the School of Computing CISC 481 is offered, but is it in the calendar? HELLZ no. What a bunch of jerks.
CISC 220*, 223*: Unrelated to cognitive science. Not interested. Offered.
CISC 325*: Already took it. Offered.
CISC 340*, CISC 365*: Unrelated to cognitive science. Not interested. Offered.
CISC 425*, CISC 454*: Reputedly horrific courses. Offered.
CISC 453*: Required. Offered.
CISC 481*: Interested. Not offered.
PSYC 203*: Already took it. Offered.
PSYC 205*: Unrelated to cognitive science. Not interested. Offered.
PSYC 215*, PSYC 271*, PSYC 272*: Already took it. Offered.
PSYC 300: Unrelated to cognitive science. Not interested. Offered.
PSYC 305, PSYC 321*: Hugely interested. Not offered.
PSYC 365*: Sorta interested. Offered.
PSYC 385*: Already took it. Offered.
PSYC 420*: Interested. Won’t let me enroll because of a bug in the system.
PSYC 421*: Hugely interested. Not offered.
I’m currently signed up for 4 courses, none of which are the ones I was truly excited about. Well, except for the one that’s a requirement. I need to sign up for my thesis course and I can’t; that’s my fault. But I also need to sign up for 3 more of the above courses, and I can’t. They’ve raped the cognitive science programme of all its interesting courses. Human memory, psycholinguistics and human perception, all cut.
I tried to sign up for COGS 420, which has PSYC 220, 271 and 370 as prerequisites. I have those prerequisites, but not those codes because they were changed last year. So I can’t take it. I can’t take ANYTHING that I’m interested in or that actually applies to my degree. This happens every year, and I’m so sick of it. I’m in my final year, for pete’s sake. I refuse to take filler courses that have nothing to do with my degree. I don’t have a year to “do things over.” If I don’t complete my requisite courses this year, I don’t graduate. I DON’T GRADUATE.
Farecast is a neat little web app that predicts the best time to buy airfare. I never know if I should wait until the last minute or buy early (take our failed trip plans for the World Cup, for example), so this could be a really useful tool in the future.
It’s in beta right now and only Seattle and Boston are represented as departure cities, so you can be sure any Canadian cities are out of the question for the next few months. Toronto isn’t even on the city request list yet. But once it is, hoo baby! I’m going to Cuba. Cheap. Hasta del Fuego, por favor! Che Guevara!
I’ve been writing a little story series for my other blog, and I’m almost finished Part 2. I was just rereading a paragraph for flow, and I wasn’t sure about one part of a sentence. Instead of deleting it or putting a question mark next to it, without thinking I commented it out using C notation. Anyone else ever done this? Zoe, I’m looking at you.
