Same-sex Penguins Hatch Their First Chick at New York Zoo

Same-sex penguin pairs aren't unusual.

A pair of same-sex penguins hatched their first chick at Rosamond Gifford Zoo in New York and the parents are caring for it like pros.
The two male Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) named Elmer and Lima were given an egg to incubate because the egg's biological parents have a history of accidentally breaking them. A chick hatched from the egg on Jan. 1 and is doing just fine with its same-sex parents, who keep the newborn penguin warm and fed. 

Hi Folk,

Last Saturday morning I woke-up, did my Transcendental meditation, got out of bed and turned on NPR (radio). I then heard most of a program on various trans topics. Here is a link to this podcast:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/trans-form...

Now, some of the mustard in our front yard is going to seed. To thrive in their nitch as a weed they, of course, have lots of seeds. Seeds are 1.0 mm by 0.5 mm. The cylindrical seed pods are about 4 cm long and about 0.8 mm in diameter. In the plant I picked, seed pods extend 20 cm below the initial flower every 8 mm or so. The flower has petals and male parts that look like pollen sacks. Since the plants are in seed, the pollen must have been released weeks ago.

I don't know who's seen this:

http://www.care2.com/causes/in-a-groundbreaking-move-the-doj...

Good going for the DOJ. I wish they'd have helped me 22 years ago.

I just read this a few minutes ago, forwarded by Kim on email. I thought we might appreciate the story.

-or- Imagined origins of large monster/creature myths.

Dear Authors,

For your holiday pleasure or need for nerdiness: This relates to a recent story, but also any story with small or shrinking beings/characters. This is just biophysics, no magic used!   The first part was written for something else.

I listened to "Science Friday" (USA-NPR) last friday; on the program was a neuroscientist talking about his research and a new book of his. There was a link to his article in the 2011 Ideas section of the Atlantic Monthly. I read the article, mainly about his 2011 book, and was impressed.

I just watched the last approx. 50 min. of Blade Runner, The Final Cut (2007), which I'd not seen before. I thought it was much longer the the original US theatrical version, but I looked it up; it's only one minute longer, 117 min. vs 116 min.

In the last part of the film, everything was happening more slowly and dramatically. The ending, with Deckard (Ford) and Rachael (Sean Young) driving north on the Pacific Coast Highway, was cut. There may have been other scene missing to give more time to the slower action.

Can anyone contact, phone, text, IM Jaden? See er Blog: I'm about at my limit 5-12-12 2:57pm.

E sounds clinically depressed. E might be getting close to irrational. One can not count on appealing to er reason, faith, charity, love, family, etc.

E needs to call er parents and go to a hospital emergency room or similar! Talking might help, but OTOH it might not. I think E needs to be with people who can physically stop er from hurting erself, taking those pills, etc. E also needs to see a psychiatrist ASAP.

I've Got It!

There was a recent blog about significant people in ones life having dementia.

My dad died of Alzheimer's at age 72 in '96. There are family stories of men dieing from doing crazy things, in old age, in my dad's family. I think the family might be a hereditary propensity toward Alzheimer's. My mom has Alz now at age 87; she's almost completely gone mentally. There is no evidence that hers has a genetic component.

Heck, this morning was really bad!

In 1993, I joined an online email group that we called TS Lesbians. We wished to avoid patriarchal language, such as he, him, his, etc. being default pronouns (used where the gender of the person referred to by the pronoun is unknown).

Use of she/he, him/her, etc. seemed literally correct, but awkward and wordy. Using they, their, etc. for third person singular, although it has been done for centuries, brings problems of whether other parts of speech in the sentence should be singular or plural.

Members, sisters, family, however you all define yourselves, thanks so much for your replies to my blog "Uber-nerdiness" about Asperger's Syndrome. People said some very interesting things.

I started a new blog, rather than replying to Gwen's latest, because I had some info that perhaps some of us haven't read.