Friday, October 26, 2012

Women's votes ... and the anus, and Penis Worm?

The oversimplification of the "women's votes" in the presidential election has been driving me insane.  The sales pitch as if "women" are some kind of a lobbying group like the Sierra Club or the Chamber of Commerce.  If there is no talk of the "men's votes" then by the same token would it not mean that there is no "women's votes" either?  If men can have various political attributes that can disperse them all over the political spectrum, why treat women as if they are all the same?

Ah, I forget that there is no point arguing with fools!

Samantha Bee does an awesome job on this point. 

So, that led me to the "organ" that Samantha Bee satirically meant when she says that men use to think and act. 

No, not really.

It was a Scientific American tweet that got my attention.  About a "penis worm." Yes, you read that correctly. Now, say that with me: "Penis worm."

Apparently, some new insight from this penis worm could shake the evolutionary tree.  I thought it was something about the penis and the tree of knowledge that got us into trouble in the first place :)
Members of this branch — the protostomes — have historically been defined by the order in which they develop a mouth and an anus as embryos. But gene-expression data suggest that this definition is incorrect
Ok, stop the presses. If any species can't figure out the difference between a mouth and an anus, well, that is serious trouble right there!  Or, wait, this confusion between mouth and anus explains Donald Trump's craziness.

Jokes aside, I had no idea that life forms were also classified in biology based on these two openings:
a major step in evolution occurred when an embryonic ball of cells formed two indentations as opposed to one, giving way to a separate mouth and an anus rather than the single opening that creatures such as jellyfish and sea anemones have. In 1908, animals with a mouth and anus were divided into two groups. In the protostomes (from the Greek for ‘mouth first’), the mouth formed first, and the anus second. In the other, the deuterostomes (‘mouth second’), the mouth formed after the anus.
So, do you now have the same question that I had?  Are humans protostomes or deuterostomes?  I.e., did our mouths form first or was it the anus that formed first?  I am afraid you might not like the answer :)

1 comment:

Ramesh said...

Ha Ha Ha. Now how on earth did you come to know such things :):)