WordPress, the beautiful software I use to run this blog, has a feature where, when you log in to the admin area, it shows links to things the developers are blogging about.

In this way, I came across a link to this speech on hindsight, that the author’s given at graduations. I have no clue who this guy is, but the article’s funny. It quickly turns into a very predictable graduation speech, so you may not want to read the entire thing. Here’s a couple of highlights:

#10: Live off your parents as long as possible.

I was a diligent Oriental in high school and college. I took college-level classes and earned college-level credits. I rushed through college in 3 1/2 years. I never traveled or took time off because I thought it wouldn’t prepare me for work and it would delay my graduation.

Frankly, I blew it.

You are going to work the rest of your lives, so don’t be in a rush to start. Stretch out your college education. Now is the time to suck life into your lungs-before you have a mortgage, kids, and car payments.

Take whole semesters off to travel overseas. Take jobs and internships that pay less money or no money. Investigate your passions on your parent’s nickel. Or dime. Or quarter. Or dollar. Your goal should be to extend college to at least six years.

Delay, as long as possible, the inevitable entry into the workplace and a lifetime of servitude to bozos who know less than you do, but who make more money. Your parents and grand parents worked very hard to get you and your family to this point. Do not deprive them of the pleasure of supporting you.

[...]

#1: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.

This is the most important hindsight. It doesn’t need much explanation. I’ll just repeat it: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone. Nothing-not money, power, or fame-can replace your family and friends or bring them back once they are gone. Our greatest joy has been our baby, and I predict that children will bring you the greatest joy in your lives–especially if they graduate from college in four years.

And now, I’m going to give you one extra hindsight because I’ve probably cost your parents thousands of dollars today. It’s something that I hate to admit too.

By and large, the older you get, the more you’re going to realize that your parents were right. More and more-until finally, you become your parents. I know you’re all saying, “Yeah, right.” Mark my words.

Well, I got one part right. Undergrad alone took me six years, and now I’m back in grad school, delaying that job thing for quite a while. Too bad mom and dad didn’t finance everything…

Too many funny stories in the news today, like this one.

African Gray Parrot

Chris Taylor, a 30-year-old British computer programmer, grew suspicious of his live-in girlfriend when his pet parrot began to imitate her saying, “I love you, Gary.”

Ziggy, an 8-year-old African gray parrot, would also make kissing noises whenever the name Gary was mentioned on TV and would mimic Suzy Collins saying, “Hiya, Gary,” every time she answered her mobile phone.

Confronted with the evidence, Collins admitted to a month-long affair with a coworker named Gary and moved out of their shared Leeds apartment that same night.

I think many animals are smarter than we give them credit for. African Grays particularly are no dummies.

Meet Gohan and Aochan. Gohan, who’s name means meal in Japanese was dropped into Aochan’s cage last October to serve out the dark humor of his name’s sake.

Only problem was, Aochan was apparently in greater need of companionship than food, and the two have been friends ever since. Grab the kids — it’s a touching story the whole family’s sure to enjoy.

My wife informed me that she pulled up the site today from a computer at school using Internet Explorer and noticed that the content was down below the menus… I quickly identified the problem: this picture of the greatest arrogance I’ve ever seen (at least when it comes to science) was set inside a quote and too wide for IE.

My wife and I both use Firefox, and thus I hadn’t noticed the problem. It’s fixed now. Please, by all means, if you notice something like this that doesn’t look right, feel free to contact me and let me know.

And to everybody out there who likes surfing the web, you ought to give Firefox a try as your browser. I bet you’ll like it.

In keeping with my tradition of being a well dressed graduate student, for my second day of school, I’m wearing a t-shirt with the following design.

I designed this shirt msyelf in Photoshop (though I scanned the octopus from an invertebrate textbook). The story is a good one. I was taking a 5 week course on marine invertebrates while on Whidbey Island during the summer of 2003. Having exhausted the field biology courses I was interested in taking at Abilene Christian, I opted to take courses through the Au Sable Institute rather than sign up for things like immunology, cancer biology, or other courses on the pre-med (“dark side”) of biology. The Au Sable Institute is a neat place that promotes Christian stewardship of the world around us, and I greatly enjoyed my time there.

During the marine invertebrates course, the professor was talking about cephalopod evolution. Cephalopods are the most advanced of the invertebrates, with some amazing characteristics like relatively large brains, well developed eyes, and for many, the ability to change the color of their skin to match their environments. The professor made a statement something along the lines of “Cephalopods rule, in fact, you could put that on a t-shirt” and went right on with his lecture. I got together some friends and I designed this t-shirt and had it printed, and on the last day of class, everybody wore it underneath a jacket. When he opened his gift and saw his shirt, we all took our jackets off and everybody had a good laugh.

Today is a special day. At the moment this post is published, I should be beginning my first class in grad school. The schedule looks to be set. Evolution, genetics, and evolutionary ecology are on the ticket.

I’ll be sporting the latest styles appropriate for a graduate student. My flying spaghetti monster T-shirt (of which I’m so fond), cargo pants, and chacos.

My wife is doing her first day of student teaching. She’ll do kindergarten for half the semester and 4th grade the other half.

So today, in a very real way, marks a tangible first step for both of our hopes of going into fields we’re passionate about.

Kind of exciting. Kind of scary.

No, I’m not speaking of my Christian faith…

The fifth season of 24 starts this evening, with a two hour premiere tonight and a two hour show tomorrow. Jack Bauer will once again strive valiantly to save the world (or at least America) from evil doers of every stripe.

I consider most TV to be a complete waste of time. 24 is no different, except it’s an incredibly fun complete waste of time. It and ABC’s Lost are two shows that are actually good.

The premise behind 24 is that each episode is an hour long, and the whole season is an entire day. It’s essentially a male soap opera. Think Mission Impossible only with a lead character that doesn’t talk much and kills more people.

Now there’s a title that ought to catch people’s interest. Researchers have discovered an inverse relation between brain and testicle size among bat species.

In species where females mate promiscuously, male bats have proportionally larger testes and smaller brains. In species where females are monogamous, the reverse trend holds true.

The evolutionary hypothesis on why this exists is a good one. Since both brains and testes require lots of energy to maintain, there may only be energy for one or the other. In species where females are mating with multiple males, natural selection is strongly going to favor the male that can produce the most sperm. When that’s not an issue though, it makes sense that brain size and function is more useful than producing lots of extra sperm that aren’t needed.

I think other scientists should be quick to pick up on this work. I hypothesize that for any guy who’ll brag about his own, um, endowment, you’ll find the same inverse relationship holds true.

If you want to see what I look like while blogging, here you go. I own perhaps the coolest cat in the world — The Bruce. He’s half Siamese and half Scottish Fold. If you don’t know what a Scottish Fold is, you should follow that link. They’re really a wonderful example of the building blocks of evolution. Their folded ears were caused by a genetic mutation, one that we watched happen in the 1960s. We just added a little artifical selection pressure to help propel the gene responsible for this characteristic.

The Bruce is named after the character in Braveheart. He also has an insatiable need for affection and will generally follow you around wherever you go. This morning, he joined me for blogging.

For a long time, I’ve rather disliked the subtle messages that we communicate to our kids through kid movies. Nature and it’s relationship to humans are shown to be a block party. All the creatures hang out, the rules of ecology are simply non-existant, and nature is portrayed in a surreal way. Over Christmas I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and it certainly fit this decription.

Now I realize that I’m in grave danger of being labeled a fun-hater (by the only jury that counts no less — my wife). I think these kid movies condition us though (starting when we’re kids but continuing in adulthood for most people) to not see the connection between habitat conservation and conservation of nature. Most people just don’t realize that a front lawn is NOT a prairie with a crew cut. And leaving a few trees in the backyard or city park doesn’t constitute a forest.

While at the movies the other day, I saw a couple of trailers that really seemed to be put forth a more realistic message.

The first movie was Hoot. The premise is that children work to save a population of owls from impending suburbian development. On the one hand, the movie looks a little hokey and there are some birding inaccuracies with their trailer. They show a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) land on a police car at night (the owls are diurnal) and then give the call of a Great Horned Owl. It’s a shame too because Burrowing Owl’s calls are so much cooler. (They also give a shriek which is particularly neat, but I couldn’t find a vocalization of it on the net.) However, I got particularly excited when the trailer briefly showed the kids looking through the Sibley Guide to Birds (also known as the bible for birders) at the illustrations of Burrowing Owls. While the movie is certain to be ridiculed by those who think conservation gets in the way of progress, it does seem to portray the message that subdivisions aren’t compatible with natural ecosystems. That’s a message most people don’t understand in my estimation.

The second movie was Over the Hedge, and it looked to be good. It’s animated and done by Dreamworks, the same people that did Shrek and Madagascar. (I haven’t seen the latter, so I have no idea what their portrayal of the most spectacular island on earth, one who’s ecology is in tatters, is like. I did hear it was a funny though.) Over the Hedge has good voices too. From the trailer, the movie was a somewhat funny look at how wasteful our society can be, and how a group of animals with nowhere else to turn head for the suburbs to raid the trashcans.

All in all, these back to back trailers advertised movies with a subtle message — we share the earth with all living things — that I think is a positive, if small, step in the right direction.