alie in wonderland

"I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:06:40 -0500

“I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.”

- Jean Prouvaire, Book IV (via incorrectlesmisquotes)

Happy retirement, Chris. Thanks for all of the amazing videos -...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:52:07 -0500

Happy retirement, Chris. Thanks for all of the amazing videos - the Internet will miss you!

More tribute to Commander Hadfield here.

yoisthisracist: anonymous asked: Yo, so I’m Catholic. I know the church structure is misogynistic,...

Wed, 29 May 2013 16:13:00 -0500

yoisthisracist:

anonymous asked: Yo, so I’m Catholic. I know the church structure is misogynistic, homophobic, and racist, so my question is do you think it’s better to work from the inside in order to change a messed up system, or to leave the system and try and change it from the outside?

Get the fuck out! Ruuuuuuuuuuuun! Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!

This is pretty much how I feel about Catholicism.

edwardspoonhands: Happy Birthday to My Favorite Person. Micah...

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:42:27 -0500

edwardspoonhands:

Happy Birthday to My Favorite Person.

Micah and I do this too…

thereallesmiscaptions: The Real Les Mis Captions

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:52:49 -0500

thereallesmiscaptions:

The Real Les Mis Captions

gingerhaze:

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:05:49 -0500

gingerhaze:

edwardspoonhands: gabydunn: megsokay: THE LAST ONE,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:09:39 -0500

edwardspoonhands:

gabydunn:

megsokay:

THE LAST ONE, RIGHT?

This bitch. I want a show of just her and Brienne. The end.

I haven’t been watching this series, and I’m sure the actress who plays her is fantastic, but this is NOT what Ygritte looks like.

Books: The last refuge of unattractive love interests.

Oh man, Hank, I said that too! And a bunch of people were like “Noooo, she’s always meant to be ATTRACTIVE, just ‘unconventionally’,” and I was like “No, she was supposed to be snaggle-toothed and weird looking”.

The irony of a man whining about his belief...

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:23:36 -0500

The irony of a man whining about his belief that Millennials are narcissistic and “entitled” is not lost on me.

thefrogman: I believe that there are a small group of women who...

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:48:36 -0500

thefrogman:

I believe that there are a small group of women who hate men just for being men. I believe that the textbook definition of the word misandry fits that description. I believe there are bad things that happen to men. I believe those issues should be addressed. I do not believe that a fringe group of women who hate men can be blamed for those issues.

Misandry was a dead word until recently. A group of men who feared the progress of feminism revived the word and used it to undercut the movement. They like having the power being a man provides and they don’t want to lose that. So they created a movement, found a bunch of legitimate issues that affect men, and tried to blame women for those issues. They called this misandry. It’s like conservatives using buzzwords like “death panels” to make people fear health care. They let people assume it meant Obama wanted to kill your grandma. They let their cute little phrase infect the minds of good people and convince them of falsehoods.

People are telling me that men cannot report rape without getting laughed at. They say this is misandry. It is the fault of women who hate men. But that just doesn’t make any sense to me. When I seek a logical explanation, it seems more likely that this is because men are supposed to be strong and women are supposed to be weak. And rape has been viewed as something that happens mostly to women. So if it does happen to a man, they must be weak. How did this idea of men=strong and women=weak start? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of misandry. It is an ancient patriarchy collapsing in on itself.

Feminism is about fighting inequality. It’s about erasing the strong/weak perception ingrained into our society. Misandry, as the term is often used today, is about trying to blame women for anything bad that happens to men.

If you want to fight to fix issues that affect men, go for it. But I would really consider distancing yourself from this term. It is used to evangelize folks into a movement that is very problematic. A group that can’t handle scrutiny of their comic books and video games, so they send death and rape threats. A group that calls women sluts and think they ask for rape if they show too much cleavage. Those are the people who coined this term, and you should want nothing to do with them or their language.

<3 you, Frogman.

fishingboatproceeds: wilwheaton: Somebody made this, and now I...

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:30:33 -0500

fishingboatproceeds:

wilwheaton:

Somebody made this, and now I have something in both of my eyes.

(via The Wisdom of Wil - Imgur)

It’s not about what you love. It’s about how you love it.

thumbcramps: hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:02:43 -0500

thumbcramps:

hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women.

also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.

anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!

HOW I FEEL AFTER EVERY TALK WITH MY PI

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:56:43 -0500

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

credit: Justin

Not even in grad school yet and this feels so true.

scinerds: Research suggests new approach for spinal muscular...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:54:45 -0500

scinerds:

Research suggests new approach for spinal muscular atrophy

ALS drug effects highlights potassium channel role

There is no specific drug to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a family of motor neuron diseases that in its most severe form is the leading genetic cause of infant death in the United States and affects one in 6,000 people overall. But a new multispecies study involving a drug that treats amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has pinpointed a mechanism of SMA that drug developers might be able to exploit for a new therapy.

The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reports that the drug Riluzole advanced neural cell development in a mammalian model of SMA and restored neuromuscular function and mobility in a Caenorhabditis elegans worm model of the disease.

Riluzole has already been tested as a therapy in a very small study of severely affected SMA patients. It failed to help. Nevertheless, what makes the new research encouraging, said Anne Hart, professor of neuroscience at Brown and senior author on the paper, is that the study traces the beneficial action of Riluzole to specific “SK2” potassium channels in worm neurons. Humans have these channels too, and if they can be more precisely targeted by a new drug, she said, that could make a more meaningful difference, at least for some patients.

“We’re not suggesting based on this that SMA patients should ask their doctors for Riluzole,” said Hart, who is affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science, “but we are suggesting that this pathway would be useful for therapeutic development.”

How Riluzole works

Because SMA has a lot in common with ALS, Hart thought Riluzole might still be worth studying in the context of SMA. To do so, she partnered with fellow researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital. They worked in mouse neuronal cells while her team at Brown worked in the worms.

For each system, the researchers created SMA models in different ways by disabling the gene that produces the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. Depletion of that protein causes SMA in people too.

In the mammalian neuronal cells, the Children’s Hospital researchers found that Riluzole promoted the growth of axons that was lacking in the SMN-depleted cells. However, Riluzole did this not by increasing SMN levels. Instead, the researchers found evidence that drug treatment matured the neurons more quickly in normal cells.

Most attempts to treat SMA have relied on trying to maintain or restore higher levels of SMN, Hart noted. But Riluzole, or a future drug, may instead be able to work by accelerating cell maturity.

In the worms meanwhile, the Brown researchers found that Riluzole restored two important neuromuscular behaviors of SMA worms: the pumping action that allows the worms to move food through their digestive tracts and the body bending that they perform when swimming.

To learn how Riluzole had this effect, they performed further experiments testing various potassium channels, including SK2, that Riluzole is known to act upon. Losing these channels didn’t cause more problems in animals with less SMN protein, but losing the SK2 potassium channels in particular made neuromuscular function worse. Without the SK2 channels, the drug Riluzole didn’t improve function.

“This told us that Riluzole improves motorneuron function by acting through SK2 channels, which we did not know before,” said lead author Maria Dimitriadi, a postdoctoral researcher in Hart’s group. “This is important bec

basilton: In the early years of space flight, both Russians and...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:28:06 -0500

basilton:

In the early years of space flight, both Russians and Americans used pencils in space. Unfortunately, pencil lead is made of graphite, a highly conductive material. Snapped graphite leads and particles in zero gravity are hugely problematic, as they will get sucked into the air ventilation or electronic equipment, easily causing shorts or fires in the pure oxygen environment of a capsule.

After the fire in Apollo 1 which killed all the astronauts on board, NASA required a writing instrument that wasn’t a fire hazard. Fisher spent over a million dollars (of his own money) creating a pressurized ball point pen, which NASA bought at $2.95 each. The Russian space program also switched over from pencils shortly after.

40 years later snide morons on the internet still snicker about it, because snide morons on the internet never know what they are talking about.

curveappeal: Swimwear, from H&M As a well-endowed lady,...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:14:33 -0500

curveappeal:

Swimwear, from H&M

As a well-endowed lady, can I just point how much I HATE that large bathing suits are basically invariably halter tops? GOD FORBID someone actually put in an underwire and some SUPPORT in a bikini. Wearing a halter top makes me feel like I’m wearing a yolk.

Almost as bad as the strapless wedding dress crap. 90% of wedding dresses are strapless, which makes no sense - who wants to wear a dress that they spend the entire day trying to keep from falling down?