Off with his head!

John Oliver is bound for the Tower of London to have his head cut off. From this week's edition of The Bugle:

John: As we know, this queen's got back, Andy...I'm not ashamed to say that: Queen Elizabeth has got back. She's got a big butt, and I cannot lie. All the other royals can't deny; when Her Majesty walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in my face, I get sprung.

Andy: Do you, John?

John: I do. It's a compliment, Andy. My anaconda don't want none, unless my monarch has bum, son. She can do side bends or sit-ups, but don't lose that healthy butt.

Combining Sir Mix-a-lot ("now Lord Mix-a-lot since the tragic death of his father") and Her Majesty in the same paragraph: truly disturbing and yet completely hysterical.

People who work with Drosophila...

Should not be allowed to name genes any more. As if "sonic hedgehog" weren't silly enough, the naming of the Fringe genes in the Drosophila Notch signaling pathway leads to ludicrous names such as "manic fringe", "radical fringe", and "lunatic fringe" for the vertebrate homologs. You know it's bad when you can tell what organism a gene was first discovered in based on the silliness of its name.

Oh, and it turns out that these critters aren't really fruit flies, anyways.

Commenting code

It pays to reread your code and its comments from time to time; while reviewing an analysis script I wrote this morning, I noticed this particularly politically insensitive comment:

# Purge people of "other" ethnicities

Needless to say, I removed this comment so as not to leave the impression that I am in favor of genocide.

For those who are curious, this comment was attached to a line of code that removes data from subjects whose ethnic backgrounds we are uncertain about. Without doing so, it becomes difficult to correct for the effects of population admixture in genetic analyses.

Quote of the day

From this cracked.com article:

[A] few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.

To which someone posted in the comments:

I want to meet the guy working at Seimens who proposed the "Zyklon" trademark idea: either he's a liberal prankster with balls the size of tanks, or he's got the most rocking gestapo accent ever.

Quotes of the day

The first quote comes from this week's edition of The Bugle:

John Oliver: Is not the biggest story of [the recent British elections] that yet again, the landslide winner was the concept of people not giving a shit about things?

Andy Zaltzman: That's always going to be the way, John, though. That's what we fought the wars for. We fought wars so that we have the right not to give a shit about stuff.

The other quote comes from the comments on an old post by PZ Myers, dealing with suggested research topics for a creationist science fair:

97. Why did God make birds to fly?

Because otherwise that sappy John Ashcroft song would have been "Let the Eagle Plummet," and that just wouldn't have been the same!

One more thing...

To check off my "things to do in life" list: Go to a Pink Floyd concert. Or at least get close enough by attending last Friday's Roger Waters concert in Dallas.

The first set opened with "In the Flesh" (from The Wall) and featured (listed here in no particular order):

• "Mother" - featuring the audience responding "Hell, no!" to "Mother, should I trust the government?"
• "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"
• "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"
• "Wish You Were Here"
• "The Fletcher Memorial Home" - visuals updated to include photographs of bin Laden.
• "Southampton Dock"
• "Sheep" - featuring the appearance and escape of a giant inflatable pig (see photos)

This set also featured a new song from Waters called "Leaving Beirut", which is based on his experience hitchhiking through Lebanon as a young adult. Definitely a song worth listening to, especially if you can the visuals (pencil drawings) to go along with it.

The second set featured a complete performance of The Dark Side of the Moon, with an encore performance of some of the most recognizable songs from The Wall ("The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", "Vera", "Bring the Boys Back Home", and ending with "Comfortably Numb").

All in all, an excellent concert, worth much more than the $30 ticket price. Photos from the concert are available through my Flickr page.

Edit [7 May 2008]: In response to a Facebook comment, neither David Gilmour nor Clare Torry were there, but Roger Waters did have other band members (whose names I don't remember) in their places. You really had to listen very closely to notice the difference.