… they may reveal insights into the holy grail of life — Immortality.

Sommer kept his hydrozoans in petri dishes and observed their reproduction habits. After several days he noticed that his Turritopsis dohrnii [Jellyfish] was behaving in a very peculiar manner, for which he could hypothesize no earthly explanation. Plainly speaking, it refused to die. It appeared to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reached its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew.

Sommer was baffled by this development but didn’t immediately grasp its significance. (It was nearly a decade before the word “immortal” was first used to describe the species.) But several biologists in Genoa, fascinated by Sommer’s finding, continued to study the species, and in 1996 they published a paper called “Reversing the Life Cycle.” The scientists described how the species — at any stage of its development — could transform itself back to a polyp, the organism’s earliest stage of life, “thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality.” This finding appeared to debunk the most fundamental law of the natural world — you are born, and then you die.

A Typical (I must say amusing) Internet Comment Thread.

Ignited by this article at Reason.com re: Voluntary Taxation.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 4:48PM

Taxation is always about forcing. A voluntary tax is an absurd idea, especially coming from people who think people are always rational with their money.

I realize that if libertarians ever got off the hobbyhorse of condemning the poor and elderly for being moochers and started realizing it’s the wealthy who have indeed been “coddled” in recent decades, then there would be no point to you existing.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:51PM

And if/when you ever realize how much hatred you have of rich people, you might come to the conclusion that such hatred has been misplaced all along and that it accomplished absolutely nothing.

Which is what higher taxes will also accomplish.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:52PM

And all that on top of your hatred of straight people, too.

iggy| 11.26.12 @ 4:54PM

And the coddling of the wealthy is the direct result of the same welfare state that breeds low income dependence on government programs.
It’s almost like the problem you’re complaining about is actually your fault.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:57PM

Almost? Shit, iggy, you nailed it. Now Tony’s going to have to flop on his princess bed and cry himself to sleep.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 5:21PM

Don’t whine about my jocular heterophobia if you’re going to make these kinds of comments, butch.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 5:22PM

Fuck you, asshole.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 5:22PM

Oh, and it’s not jocular if you actually mean it.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 5:55PM

You really fancy yourself a telepath don’t you.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 6:05PM

Really, no. And neither is Chris Matthews.

Another fascinating specimen seen on the beach this morning during my walk with Lucy. Big as a Frisbee.

Bigger.

Later in the morning I left our beach house to return to Anchorage, and about forty miles north of Seward I remembered I left the coffee maker on, one without an automatic shutoff. I briefly considered going back to unplug it, but decided against it thinking what’s the worse that can happen? — the house will stink like burnt coffee when we go down this weekend, or maybe the carafe will be cracked or so badly caked with burnt coffee it will be unusable. Still, when I got home I googled “mrcoffee shutoff fire.” The top hit was a forum where someone had asked if they should be concerned about having left their coffee maker on for three days, if it might cause a fire.

Reply #3 said:
If it doesn’t have automatic shutoff, you should be very worried. The apartment below ours left their pot on overnight, and by the morning there was a fire. The smoke smell was terrible. Please, get someone into your place to turn it off.

Great — that’s all I needed to hear! Fortunately, I found the phone number of our new neighbors who live in Seward year round. They were happy to help us. I gave them the number to the combination lock on the house, and asked that they call me to confirm I had in fact left the coffee maker on. Minutes later they called me back to say I had, and that already (only 4 hours) the carafe was badly burned and the house smelled like burned coffee.

And then they asked if I had seen the black bear wandering the beach while I was out with Lucy. Uh, no, I didn’t. Evidently it was spotted out there only minutes after Lucy and I returned to the house. Pretty late in the season to be seeing bears out ‘n about.

I wondered if black bears eat frozen Jellyfish.

Seen this weekend near our beach house. One might suppose this fella was frolicking (do Jellyfish frolic?) a bit too long in the surf, joyriding onto the rocks and back into water, over and over again — Whee! — blissfully unaware of the looming tide change. He wasn’t alone; we saw dozens more scattered about the beach. Bad genes? I doubt that explanation. Given the prolific nature of Jellyfish reproduction there are certainly thousands more genetically identical to this guy who were not so careless.

Did you know some species of Jellyfish reproduce asexually? In others, sexual reproduction occurs when the males ejaculate into the water and the sperm swim into the mouths of the female (no snickering guys) in search of her eggs.

Mystery picture, also taken during Thanksgiving at the beach house. And no, the rings of Saturn is incorrect.

 

Norton Malbec Reserva — 2009

winemaker’s notes:Deep red color with hints of purple. Expressive on the nose with notes of ripe black fruits, violets, and tobacco. This wine has round and sweet tannins, ripe red fruit and figs followed by a long finish.

I agree. Yummy. $13.99/bottle @ Costco.

I knew I was in California when…

 Bigger.

… leaving my hotel room one bright, sunny morning to walk to Starbucks and then to the conference, I passed by some California girls who were, well, just sorta hangin’.

During the week I was in Redwood City I must’ve walked over twelve miles. When I attend conferences, if I don’t stay in a room at the conference venue I like to stay about a mile or so away so I can walk to and from each day. This past week was perfect, I stayed in a mid-line hotel about 0.8 miles from the conference, with a Starbucks located conveniently in between. Every morning was clear, sunny, and windless; perfect for a walk along a serpentine path lined with pines and the occasional eucalyptus tree. Twice for dinner I walked to the nearby city of San Carlos, about 2 miles each way, ending up on Laurel street which is packed with restaurants, bars, and shops. No evidence of a bad economy here — the bars and restaurants were filled with well quaffed patrons buzzing about this and that, blissfully unaware, it seemed to me, of any looming fiscal cliff.

My last day there I connected with my friend Kevin. He’s gainfully employed as a scientist with Big (more like Medium) Pharma. We went for a nice 30-miler starting at his house, through the Stanford campus, out to the Portola Valley, back through Stanford, a stop at Philz Coffee, where they make it one cup at a time, a loop around Googleplex and then back to his house. I rode my old Merlin which now belongs to Kevin. It felt good to be in the company of friends.

A little shout out to the cute Stanford coed who took our picture.

Bigger.

In the dead of winter in Alaska, when I close my eyes and imagine road biking in California, this is what I envision. Kevin leads the way.

Just me, or is there not something decidedly amusing about the title of Broadwell’s book:

So Philip Roth is done writing books. Finished. Outta here. While I have yet to have my first short story published.

It’s like getting out of the water and transitioning to the bike when suddenly you hear, over the loudspeaker, the names of the top finishers of the triathlon.

In a day after lament Lileks opines:

[…] I thought about a friend who’s pro-small business, pro-military, pro-religious freedom – of course! This is America! – and she will vote for Obama. She believes that the state should take more property from people who die with X amount of money in the bank and give it to other people, and while she’s not exactly sure about what X should be, this is necessary because of Fairness.

That does seem to be the dominant idea in the land these days, no? The State shall have the power to do X if the objective is Fairness. The details – and the actual result – are less important. If you believe the State should do these things, why, it stands to reason that it can, and and hence any limitation of the powers of the State is a mulish obstruction of a better world.

Good people do not vote against such things.

Later in the piece Mr. Lileks nicely captures the core of my lament:

But. I see the world through skewed eyes, I know. It strikes me from time to time that this is an exceptional nation, as flawed as any human endeavor, but unique in human history: a society whose foundational concepts are not rooted in blood or clan, or impossibly airy proclamations of transnational brotherhood and human rights granted by, and subject to revision by, a council of our betters who regard the governance of man as a blade that scrapes everyone level. Rather, we were devoted to something rare in human history: liberty. (I use the past tense because the word’s been replaced by Freedom, which has come to mean The Fun Things, and also means freedom from being judged for any reason.)

I disagree only insofar as I believe Fairness has replaced Liberty in this country. It has become the highest virtue according to those who would turn up their noses at the quixotic few who still cling to their silly notions of idealism, such as “Liberty.” We should, these nose-turners insist, cast our favor instead toward the directives of Fairness dictated by the State. You want to ask these people, “Now who’s being quixotic?”

It is tempting to think a Romney presidency might have championed the goals of the quixotic few, those of us like Mr. Lileks who see the world through “skewed” eyes,  but I really don’t think it would have. Knowing there was never really a choice is truly something to lament about.

At a site devoted to the discussion of kidney stones (because you can find everything on the Internet), I came across the following remedy (for men) to hurry the passage of a kidney stone.

Drink at least one liter of water as rapidly as possible. Then drink a beer (strong diuretic). Resist peeing until you can’t anymore. Then go to the bathroom and lightly squeeze the tip of the penis to prevent going right away, allowing pressure to build in the urethra. Then release.

Worked like a charm! Pen point shown for scale. Kinda roundish and brown with a gnarly tooth-like projection in the center.

Whew.

Bigger (if you dare).