Packers vs Falcons in the Georgia Dome

Our fearless leader! #12 Aaron Rodgers

Well, the Pack beat the Eagles, and in Philly too which is always a tough place to play. But it's not as tough as it will be this Saturday when they head down to Atlanta to take on "Matty-Ice" and the Falcons. Ryan has only lost a couple games in the Georgia Dome. But still, I think there is good reason to believe the Pack will come out ahead. First of all everyone seems healthy. There were no major injuries last week, and as far as I've heard, everyone has been practicing all week. Second, while it's a short week, the Packers have known for a couple of weeks that if they beat the Eagles they'd be playing Atlanta, and thus had a lot of time to prepare, as much as during the regular season. Whereas the Falcons didn't know until after the game Sunday afternoon whether they would be playing the Seahawks, the Eagles or us. Third, it seems that while some big down field plays are not being caught, Rodgers is making good throws and good decisions about where to put the football. So if the receivers would just start catching the ball, we'd be in good shape. Fourthly the last couple weeks have been hard on opponents trying to study film on the offense because many of the big play makers haven't had much play time or don't normally get the ball. Kuhn with his 3 TD's, Starks and his 123 yards on 23 carries, Crabtree on his TD catch...It's hard to plan an attack when you have no idea who will be out on the field. Fifthly (is that even a word?) the defense is on a roll, and making game changing plays. The newer guys are settling in, the older guys are playing as good as they ever did, and I think the word I would use when describing the defense at this point it the season is cohesive. They are playing as one entity, not 11 individuals...so I think they will be in tip top shape and good to go.
The Falcons are a good football club, but so are the Packers. It might not even boil down to who is a better team but to whomever has the last chance to score before the clock runs out. That's what happened last time we met the Falcons remember? If we just would have had one more minute! Those close game tend to be real nail-biters. I am already getting butterflies in my stomach! Yikes how the players stay calm I'll never know! Anyway, as the commentators say, the Pack is "in control of it's own destiny" and we'll see on Saturday which destiny they have laid out for themselves. Goooooo Pack GO!

To ease the pre-game tension I thought I'd post a little NFL joke to lighten things up. Go ahead and laugh it will make you feel better!

Q: Why doesn't Iowa have a professional football team?
A: Because then Illinois would want one too!

(For those of you that don't get it, it's insinuating that the Chicago Bears are not good enough to be considered "professional".)

Thats....Disgusting.

Not that any commercial about diapers is expected to be really appealing, but this commercial by Luvs is really gross, even for a cartoon.  I mean, is this a legitimate concern parents these days are facing? What in gods name they feeding their children that is causing them to have a "blowout"?  It certainly doesn't sound like something a healthy baby should be doing. And why is this (above) kid so happy? If my midsection was engulfed in an inner tube of poop I don't think I'd be too stoked about it. Nor would I be smiling or raising my arms in the victory position. It's just so gnarly. Maybe the parents shouldn't stuff their babies until they are about to pop and stick to normal diapers? Just think of all the couples out there who after seeing this will decide not to have kids. I saw it as an advertisement while watching Cosmos on my computer.) Watch it (the commercial not Cosmos) for yourself here and tell me what you think.

A High 5 For Sagan

I recently read Brocca's Brain by Carl Sagan. I have also been watching (on the internet) the 1980's series Cosmos that featured Sagan as narrator. What can I say? It's been a bit of a Sagan-fest for me lately. And its AWESOME! Not only was he an ambassador of scientific and critical thinking, but he also wore the most incredible outfits! After two episodes of Cosmos I guarantee you will be asking yourself why you don't wear more turtle neck shirts, and why you don't own a tan sports coat! It's epic. I literally love every ensemble he donned for the entire series. I was joking with my little brother that if I dress up for Halloween this coming year I am torn between whether I want to be Carl or Aaron Rodgers. Anyway....
The thing I have come to realize about Sagan, the thing that sets him apart to me (besides his maroon turtle neck and white shoe combo) is his ability to express himself, not only aptly, but poetically, and I'd argue exquisitely. He is able to not only convey facts and reality, but also a well placed sense of incredulity and awe at our own existence. Through his choice of words, Carl Sagan makes this world, the regular one you and I currently reside in, seem as magical as the factitious (and totally rad) one in Lord of the Rings.  Much of what he says I've read  about elsewhere but when he voices it, the information undergoes a metamorphosis inside my brain, and my body reacts to the chemical stimuli and I get goosebumps. If I really believed I had a "soul" I'd say he was speaking to it directly.
It seems to me (from my experience) that sometimes scientists (i.e. myself) get so caught up in the "nuts and bolts" of their given study they loose a bit of the amazing-ness of whatever their chosen field is. I think Sagan had the unique (and envious) ability to understand the small things without ever loosing sight of the bigger picture. And more importantly for you and I, he had the ability to express it to those of us who either aren't scientifically inclined, or are too analytical to remember that we are still human beings.
Many people believe in a deity, and I tried to as well way back when. I didn't get very far with that personally, but in a way I understand why so many people have been drawn to it. It's hard to turn away from the incredible notion that you were created specifically by God (or whomever). But you read/ listen to Sagan and holy sh*t! He reminds you that while it's unlikely that God exists, your life is still pretty freaking awesome because every atom in your body used to reside in a star, a sun, another world a maybe a billion, trillion miles away from where you are sitting right now. Maybe there is no God, but the elements that make up you, your brain, or your eyeballs reading this right now were at one time particles exploding off the surface of suns, in all corners of the universe, and finally (and randomly) they settled here on Earth. All the parts of you ( before they were you) were expelled to interstellar space and floated slowly through the void of space for millions, of years. And then through the myriad of evolutionary experiments and much biological recycling here on earth, here we are. Can this story, one of stellar birth, really be any less awe inspiring than one that begins in the mind of God? I don't think so. And that's why I love Carl Sagan and his blazer.

Art as Seen While Walking in San Francisco

Picking Apart a Crab

 My littlest brother has been in town for the last two weeks on his way to an adventure. I just dropped him off at the airport this morning for his flight to Alaska where he will be living for the next 4 months. We did lots of fun things while he was here, hiking, shopping, going out to eat, watching football etc. We also (my idea) bought a Dungeness crab from the grocery store to dissect on my kitchen counter one afternoon. It was really fun. We probably weren't as careful as a real carcinologist, and our tools were much more primitive, but it was still fun and really interesting. We were able to get a closer look at the mouth, gills, and reproductive apparatus. And although we never did find the heart, we discovered two glands(?) that look like bunched up spaghetti in the inner most reaches of the carapace. Yummm.
In preparation for our dissection I did a little reading up on Dungeness crabs, and learned some really interesting things. (For a more complete description click here for the paper by the US Fish and Wildlife Services.) Here are a few fun facts I thought I'd share:

Dungeness Crab:

Scientific name: Cancer magister Dana
Habitat: Off the coast of Central California to the Gulf of Alaska

Zoea

• Only male crabs are allowed to be caught for commercial sale.
• A female can lay up to 5 million eggs in her lifetime, with each  brood producing 1 to 2 million eggs!
• Baby crabs spend the first portion of their lives as zoea and float around in the ocean currents like plankton. They are tiny (about the size of the tip of a pencil) and don't look anything like a crab, with a beak and giant eyes.
• Dungeness crabs are some of the most "meaty" crabs with approximately 25% edible parts by weight.
• When crabs molt, the shed their entire shell including eye stalks and claws. For a neato time lapse video of a crab molting (and mating click here.)

 Here are a couple photos from our dissection! Enjoy!!!

Reproductive gonopods (male)

Jay carefully removing shell

Mouth with feeder arms

Portion of gill with feather like membranes

Strange But True Illnesses...

I have been slacking on my postings over the holiday, but not on my reading! Hopefully I will get caught up this coming week. Anyway over the last month or so I have come across some interesting illnesses in the books I'm reading and I thought I'd share a few of the stranger ones with you:

Micropsia: A condition where a person sees everything much smaller than it actually is, making them feel (or believe) they are becoming larger. Macropsia is the opposite.
Lycanthropy: A mental illness where a person believes that they have been transformed into an animal (usually a wolf, but not always) and behave accordingly.
Prosopagnosia: Also called face blindness is the inability of a person to recognize people by looking at their face, including friends and relatives

Playoffs? Don't Talk About Playoffs!

Well, last week's last game of the season against the Chicago Bears was....super stressful and not very high scoring. Not that there weren't some great plays, but if it had been another team playing I would have called it a yawner. I was surprised how few yards Kuhn got, but after scoring 3 touchdowns the week before it's what you expect. What kind of NFL team would the Bears be if they didn't spend extra time watching film on a guy that scored 3 TD's the previous game to figure out how to stop him? And even though he didn't get many yards, he offered just enough of a threat to allow Rodgers a couple passing plays down the field. There was a nice play to Jennings and the touchdown pass to Donald Lee.

Erik Walden #93 (Photo from here)

Likewise the defense was great! Erik Walden with two sacks on Jay Cutler was totally awesome! He sort of came out of nowhere (well, Miami actually), but helped to bring the final total defensive tally to 47 sacks  for the season, the best ranking for a Packers defense in franchise history! Nice job dude! And how about Sam Shields blocking some critical 3rd down passes, and keeping pressure on Cutler? He is really doing great. And the interceptions by Charlie Peprah and Nick Collins were...shoot, really, they may have saved the game. The first was in the end zone to Johnny Knox, and would have been a TD, and the last was a 2nd and 10 with 11 seconds left in the game to shut down the Bears final attempt to score! Just amazing.

So we made it to the playoffs!  It's weird because I always get these superstitious inclinations this time of the season. I am not superstitious, but none the less I get the feeling like I might jinx the team if I say something beforehand in reference to the playoff potential, or their performance, especially if I say something good. (For example did I jinx John Kuhn last week by saying he was unstoppable?!? Ha ha you decide:) I also find myself wondering, off the wall, totally nonsensical things like if I wear the exact same pair of socks I wore the last week would it help us beat the Eagles this Sunday? Or did we win against the Bears because I switched my favorite ring to another finger just before Lee caught that TD pass?
Despite the fact that I feel a bit that way from time to time, the I firmly believe the whole notion of superstitious behavior is totally ridiculous. And I'll tell you why.

From churchofgoodluck.com

I know lot's of people are superstitious, and they believe a rabbit foot in their pocket will help them ace a job interview, or a lucky shirt will help them score on a first date, but I don't think they really understand the big picture of what the world would be like if those objects really created good fortune for them. Can you imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world where not changing your underwear for a week could affect the outcome of sporting events? Or someone reciting a phrase before leaving the house in the morning could make them luckier than you and less likely to get hit by a car than you? Can you imagine loosing a job only because the idiot who got hired had a dismembered rodent limb in their pocket? Or how about having sex with some one you normally wouldn't because they wore their "lucky shirt" and not a different one? It would be chaos! And then what would happen when two people on opposite teams (or sides of a coin) do their lucky dance or whatever hoping for opposite outcomes? Would they cancel each other out?
I am not sure what provokes those feelings in me. It's probably nerves. Maybe it's feeling like I want to help them win and knowing there is nothing I can do that would actually be of any use, so I try to make up something because it helps me release the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. But whatever the reason it's still just...silly.
No matter how you look at it it superstition just doesn't make any sense, and thank goodness too. So (deep breath... and fingers crossed (ha ha...get it? fingers crossed is also superstitious..ha ha...I'm so hilarious!)) I am going to end this by saying Yes, we made it to the Playoffs! And I think we will win next week. I really think the Packers are a better team than Philadelphia, I think our defense can handle Michael Vick and I really think Aaron Rodgers will provide more "luck" for the Packers than all the crossed fingers, and un-laundered panties in the world.
GO PACKS!!!!