A Fondness for Beetles

 
By now everyone has heard the story. There are almost as many species of beetle as all the rest of the insects put together. This is what prompted J.B.S. Haldane to say that God has "an inordinate fondness for beetles."

Now that's fine if you're an ordinary person, but if you're into taxonomy the huge diversity of beetles presents some really tough problems. Christopher Taylor describes one of the problems of classifying beetles in The Diversity of Ground Beetles.

Apparently God isn't the only one who likes beetles.

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Best Canadian Sci/Tech Blog

 
The Canadian Blog Awards are for "Celebrating the best in the Canadian blogosphere." Here are the nominees for Best Sci/Tech Blog.

• AmberMac.com
• Climate Audit
• Sync, the Tech & Gadgets Blog
• Synchro Blogue
• 9th Sphere
• Post Darwinist
• Bad Astronomy
• DeSmogBlog
• Eco-Can News
• A View from the Isle
• Serendipityoucity
• Techvibes
• Column 2
• Colliding Universes
• Mindful Hack
• Dusan Writer
• The Tyrannosaur Chronicles
• XsampleX

I'm not sure why Bad Astronomy is on a list of blogs that celebrate the best in the Canadian blogosphere but that's who I voted for. I'm hoping that Phil Plait is NOT a Canadian 'cause that would point out how silly these awards really are.

Wouldn't it be funny if Mindful Hack or Post Darwinist won? That would say a lot about the people who vote for these things.

I support Canadian Cynic who refuses to participate ...

Another year, another incarnation of the Canadian Blog Awards, and another request to please delete CC HQ from any and all categories in which we've been nominated for a fairly simple reason -- we're not interested in any popularity contest in which voters seriously have to choose between CC HQ and batshit crazy, racist, white supremacist, Nazi sympathizer loons like Kate McMillan and Kathy Shaidle for "best blog."

I wish I could take the same stance but nobody nominated me for anything. Damn, I don't even get to withdraw my nomination.

BTW, I'm not familiar with most of these blogs. Can anyone point me to the wheat among all the chaff?

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Canada's New Minister of State (Science and Technology) Is a Chiropractor

 
It's true. Checkout the Stephen Harper website, which incidentally, is supposed to be the Prime Minister's website.

The Honourable Gary Goodyear
Minister of State (Science and Technology)

Cambridge (Ontario)

Gary Goodyear was first elected to the House of Commons in 2004 and re-elected in 2006 and 2008.

Prior to entering federal politics, Dr. Goodyear practised chiropractic medicine and worked as an advisor to investment firms in the biomedical industry.

Dr. Goodyear was a co-designer of a three-year post-graduate sports fellowship program. He also co-authored “Practice Guidelines” and was Public Relations Director and Past President for the College of Chiropractic Sports Sciences in Toronto. Dr. Goodyear has taught at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College and the University of Waterloo. He has worked with many athletes, both amateur and professional, including serving as medical services chair for the Ontario Special Olympics.

Dr. Goodyear is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.

It's bad enough that we have a chiropractor advising the government about science but this particular one seem especially unqualified. He also practiced acupuncture when he was actively seeing patients. Dr. (sic) Goodyear is strongly supported by evangelical christians (e.g. Christian Conservatives). That may not have anything to do with his ability to understand modern science. Gary Goodyear was endorsed by Vote Marriage Canada, a group that opposes gay marriage.

The website of the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College has a lengthy article praising the 4 MPs who are chiropractors (3 Conservatives, 1 Liberal) [Chiros on the Hill].

“The single biggest criticism of politicians,” explains Dr. Colin Carrie, Class of ’89 and Member of Parliament for the electoral district of Oshawa, Ontario, “is that they don’t listen.” Chiropractors, he says, are educated to be exceptional listeners. “Regardless of our political stripes, we want to do what’s right for our patients and our constituents.”
It’s people skills, agrees his colleague and fellow Conservative Dr. Gary Goodyear (MP for Cambridge, Ontario). “Every chiropractor has to be a people person, that’s what we were taught at CMCC.”

Goodyear, Class of ’83, and Chair of the Committee of Procedure and House Affairs, adds with a laugh that his advisors have had occasion to remind him not to be quite so hands-on when dealing with his constituents. “My election team has actually told me to stop touching people so much, but I can’t help it. It’s just natural to me. As a chiropractor, you automatically love people. Chiropractic is a touchy-feely profession—that transfers.”

Interestingly, all four chiropractic MPs tell similar stories about how—for each in his or her own way—they have come to view their constituents in much the same light as chiropractors perceive their patients: “You can’t be a successful chiropractor without good interpersonal skills,” explains Dr. James Lunney, (Class of ’83, Nanaimo-Alberni, BC). “Our job as chiropractors is taking complicated issues, and finding ways of explaining them—interpreting X-rays, for example—you have to be able to communicate to your patient what needs to be communicated.” The job requirements are strikingly similar, he says, on Parliament Hill. “Any chiropractor who deals with patient issues successfully has the skills to make the transition into politics. If you can manage a practice, you have an aptitude for politics.”

I'm beginning to see the parallels between being a politician and a chiropractor. This is not complimentary to politicians.

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Good IDEA?

 
The Discovery Institute is promoting the IDEA Center.

As part of our efforts to support academic freedom on evolution, we are teaming up with the IDEA Center (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) to help students in starting an IDEA chapter on their campus. Such campus clubs are a fun and educational way for students to examine all sides of the debate over evolution.

IDEA Clubs are student-initiated clubs that foster academic freedom as students learn about scientific evidence that supports intelligent design and also learn about modern evolutionary theory. IDEA Clubs are a growing network of student-led clubs on university and high school campuses around the United States with thirty new chapters formed to date. (my emphasis)

Here's a challenge for everybody no matter which side you are on. Finding anti-evolution articles on the IDEA Center website is trivial. All the standard lies are there, sometimes in multiple articles. But can anyone find a single bit of evidence that supports Intelligent Design Creationism?

What about modern evolutionary theory? Is there anything on the website that comes remotely close to explaining modern evolutionary theory?

I didn't think so? How many campus have clubs of IDiots like this?

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Riding in the Car to Get Cherries

 
Riding in the Car to Get Cherries is a painting by Kanzi who also gave it the title. The painting is part of Apes Helping Apes.

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Were Neanderthals stoned to death by modern humans?

 
Were Neanderthals stoned to death by modern humans? is the provocative title of a press release reported in New Scientist. The author of the study is interviewed,

Human aerial bombardments might have pushed Neanderthals to extinction, suggests new research. Changes in bone shape left by a life of overhand throwing hint that Stone Age humans regularly threw heavy objects, such as stones or spears, while Neanderthals did not.

"The anatomically modern humans would have this more effective and efficient form of hunting," says Jill Rhodes, a biological anthropologist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, who led the new study. A warmer Europe would have opened up forests, enabling longer range hunting, she says.

Rhodes and a colleague studied changes to the arm bone that connects the shoulder to the elbow – the humerus – to determine when humans may have begun using projectile weapons.

"If we're trying to understand whether anatomically modern humans had projectiles, then why not read the signature that it can imprint in the skeleton," Rhodes says.

The paper by Jill Rhodes of the Department of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College and Steven E. Churchill of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University appears in The Journal of Human Evolution under Article in Press.

Rhodesa, J.A. and Churchill, S.A. (2008) Throwing in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic: inferences from an analysis of humeral retroversion. [doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.08.022M]

Here's the complete text of the conclusiosn from that paper.

Clinical evidence from professional and college-level throwing athletes reveal differences in the humeral retroversion angle both between athletes and comparative (non-throwing) samples and between the dominant (throwing) and non-dominant limbs in the athletes. Comparative analysis of humeral architecture, specifically the humeral retroversion angle, in Pleistocene fossil humans has the ability to contribute new insights into the origins of projectile weaponry by examining the individuals who would have wielded those weapons. While the data is equivocal (in part because of confounding variables that affect humeral retroversion and in part because of small fossil sample sizes), we can reach two conclusions. First, while Neandertals tend to have high amounts of humeral retroversion, the overall pattern between limbs and between sexes strongly suggests that it is not due to habitual throwing behavior. The humeral retroversion data is largely consistent with other lines of evidence pertaining to projectile weaponry; the preponderance of evidence, ranging from fossil spears and Mousterian lithics to the articular and diaphyseal morphology of upper limb bones, suggests that Neandertals did not habitually employ long-range projectile weapons ([Churchill et al., 1996], [Schmitt et al., 2003], [Shea, 2003a], Shea, 2006 J.J. Shea, The origins of lithic projectile point technology: evidence from Africa, the Levant, and Europe, J. Archaeol. Sci. 33 (2006), pp. 823–846. Article | PDF (774 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (15)[Shea, 2006] and [Churchill and Rhodes, in press]). It is worth noting that earlier hominins also lack humeral torsion, further demonstrating that the increased retroversion found in Neandertals is unlikely to be linked to throwing. Second, we cannot reject the suggestion of projectile weapon use in the European Upper Paleolithic. The patterns seen in bilateral asymmetry in humeral retroversion angle suggest a variable use of throwing in the middle Upper Paleolithic (and thus great inter-individual variation in asymmetry), perhaps related to regional differences in hunting practices or the importance of projectile-based hunting. The levels of asymmetry seen in late Upper Paleolithic males are consistent with the regular use of projectile technology by this time.

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a disconnect between what's in the paper and what's in the press release? Why would the author allow the press release to say something that cannot be found anywhere in the paper?

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Creationists Fight Dirty, Scientists Don't

 
Martin at The Atheist Experience has been posting about the Texas State Board of Education hearings on science standards. Several members of the board want to "teach the controversy," which means teaching the creationist lies about evolution in an attempt to discredit it. His latest posting (Crippled dogs and one-trick ponies) is quite interesting.

Martin points out that when creationist board members use the standard lies and misconceptions to make their point about flaws in evolution, the pro-science witnesses should be prepared to hit back just as hard. They lose credibility if they waffle.

This is not a scientific dispute. Creationists don't care about science.

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This Is Ridiculous

 
The New York Times has an article by Nicholas Wade on Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million. It outlines a possible method for re-creating extinct organisms from a knowledge of their DNA sequence. The idea is to produce a mammoth.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with this kind of speculation. After all, we all did it back when Jurassic Park first came out. But there's a time to be serious as well. Why in the world would we want to spend $10 million of valuable research money to bring back the mammoth? I can see the importance of resurrecting the dodo or the sabre tooth tiger, but mammoths? Who need them? Do they even taste good?

Wait a minute ... there's even more exciting news in the New York Times article. George Church, a "genome tecchnologist" at Harvard Medical School was interviewed. He describes out a way to resurrect Neanderthals.

The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.

But the process of genetically engineering a human genome into the Neanderthal version would probably raise many objections, as would several other aspects of such a project. “Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning, and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans,” said Richard Doerflinger, an official with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Dr. Church said there might be an alternative approach that would “alarm a minimal number of people.” The workaround would be to modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee, which is some 98 percent similar to that of people. The chimp’s genome would be progressively modified until close enough to that of Neanderthals, and the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee.

“The big issue would be whether enough people felt that a chimp-Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable, and that would be broadly discussed before anyone started to work on it,” Dr. Church said.

What a clever way to get around all the ethical issues (not)! However, aren't we missing the point here? Why would we want to clone a Neanderthal in the first place? (BTW, you need two of them.)

What if the Neanderthals turn out to be smarter than us—a distinct possibility? Wouldn't they take over all the good jobs, like university professors? And what if they turn out to be stupider than the average human? Don't we already have enough creationists?

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[Hat Tip: john hawks weblog: Clone your own Neanderchimp baby?]

Closed for the Winter

 
We've just had our first significant snowfall in Toronto and the campus maintenance people have sprung into action. The main ramp leading into my building from the subway station has been closed for the winter. You may recall that this is the entrance where the expensive stone walkway is useless [If you build it, will they follow?].

Toronto is in Canada. In Canada we have real winters, with snow and ice. You may be asking yourself why anyone would build an entrance that has to be shut down for five months of the year. That's a very good question.

This entrance was constructed a few years ago when the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (CCBR) was built. The ramp consists of wood slats with about one centimeter spaces between them. I'm told that a special kind of wood was used and it's very expensive.

Here's the problem as it was explained to me. First, it is difficult to clean ice and snow from a wooden walkway without damaging it. Second, when this kind of wood gets wet it becomes very slippery. That means you can't use salt to get rid of the ice without creating dangerous conditions in the winter.

I'm told that the university and the architects have been unable to reach agreement on who should fix this problem.

CCBR was designed by the architectural firms of Alliance & Behnisch Architekten. The architects won the Royal Institute of British Architects Awards (RIBA) in 2006 for this building [RIBA 2006]. They also won the Governor General's Medal in Architecture for 2008 for this building.

Here's part of the press release from the University of Toronto.

The Governor General's Medals in Architecture recognize outstanding achievement in recently built projects by Canadian architects. These awards are administered jointly with the Canada Council for the Arts, which is responsible for the adjudication process and contributes to the publication highlighting the medal winners. The recipients of the 2008 Governor General's Medals in Architecture were selected by a jury of distinguished architects.

Elizabeth Sisam, assistant vice-president (campus and facilities planning), said buildings like the Donnelly CCBR are very complex and boast many notable features.

"The CCBR is a very clever design that knits the Medical Science Building to the CCBR while being respectful of the heritage buildings and at the same time maintains and enhances pedestrian routes and entrances through to the campus," Sisam said. "Below grade, there are research laboratories that extend all the way to the sidewalk. The inside of the building in the area of the laboratories is a flexible design allowing the research teams to expand and contract. The exterior has a very unique treatment, a 'double façade' which is an excellent example of sustainable design."

The original design did not "knit the Medical Science Building to the CCBR." That was only added after many of us complained about the original design and the Dean of Medicine (David Naylor) intervened to provide extra funding to build the proper connection. In the original plan the buildings would have been quite separate.

The end product does not "maintain and enhance pedestrian routes and entrances through to the campus." The entrance off College St. requires that you climb up an annoying two flights of steps inside the building before gaining access to the lobby where the cafeteria is located. The direct entrance to this lobby from the other side (see photo above) could only be considered an "enhancement" by someone with a wicked sense of humour.

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Science 2.0

 
You may have heard of Science 2.0. It's the latest "revolution" in science. You can read a nice summary from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [Science 2.0 You Say You Want a Revolution?].


Personally, I think blogging is going the become part of the culture in the same way that newsgroups did in the past except that more people are going to read the blogs. I don't think it's going to be a revolution. I don't think the majority of scientists and students are going to become regular readers of blogs. The blogosphere culture is not for everyone. Many of my colleagues are completely turned off. Blogging is going to be just one more way of communicating science and sharing ideas.

I'm skeptical of OpenWetWare (OWW) and other software that allows you to put all your notes and protocols on the web. Right now, most labs don't make shared electronic versions of protocols and notes even though we've been able to do that for 25 years. I don't see why that's going to change. My notebooks have lots of comments that I've scribbled in the margins (F**k - forgot to add magnesium!). I don't know why I'd want to share that with everyone on the planet.

I've done lots of "secret" experiments in my lifetime just to check out some crazy idea. So have the graduate students and post-docs in my lab. Does this sort of thing never go on in the labs that have adopted open access lab books? That doesn't sound like any kind of lab that I'd like to be in. Too much control for my liking. (According to the article it's "where the cool people are." I don't think so.)

Open-Access Journals are here to stay and will only increase in popularity.

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[Hat Tip: A Blog Around the Clock]

Reprogenetics and Genetic Variants

 
Reprogenetics is a company that offers the following service.

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis consists of the biopsy of a single cell per embryo, followed by its genetic diagnosis through different techniques (FISH, PCR, or CGH), and the subsequent replacement to the patient of those embryos classified by genetic diagnosis as normal.

Reprogenetics provides PGD analysis to IVF centers, including diagnosis of aneuploidy for advanced maternal age (such as Down's syndrome), repeated IVF failure, recurrent spontaneous abortions, chromosome translocations and inversions, as well as for gene defects such as Cystic fibrosis, fragile X, Myotonic Dystrophy, Thalasaemia, Tay Sachs, and others. We can also provide an experienced embryologist to perform embryo biopsy and cell processing.

Other tests may be offered soon including predisposition for diabetes and other genetic diseases.

The research director of Reprogenetics was interviewed for an article that appeared today on the Nature website [Gene testing of embryos needs guiding]

Last week, at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco, California, researchers cautioned that they do not yet advocate this use of genetic tests. But as the technology advances, consumer demand is likely to overwhelm societal ethical qualms. "If people think they can make their babies healthier at year one, year two, or in utero, they will do it," says Jacques Cohen, research director at Reprogenetics, a genetic-testing company in West Orange, New Jersey.

...

Cohen says that as the understanding of disease genetics progresses, use of tests that seem controversial now may become more acceptable in the future: "If you had the chance to decrease your child's risk of a disease like diabetes and you didn't, society would blame you."

I assume this is a profit-making company. I wonder why Nature chooses to rely on the opinion of someone who has a vested interest in the technology? Especially someone who has an opinion like that?

What can he be thinking? Does he think that the average American in the future will be forced to undergo in vitro fertilization to avoid being sued by their children?

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[Hat Tip: The Sciphu Weblog: This pisses me off a little]

Nobel Laureate: Sinclair Lewis

 


The Nobel Prize in Literature 1930.

"for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters"

Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951) won the Noble Prize in Literature for his novels about average Americans doing non-average things. The prize committee specifically mentions Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth.

Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Arrowsmith is a novel about a scientist. It is one of the first works of the 20th century to describe the realities of being a scientist and really should be required reading for all science students. Lewis relied heavily on his scientific adviser, the microbiologist Paul de Kruif, and the novel is based loosely on Félix d'Herelle. Here's how the novel is described in the presentation speech on the Nobel Prize website.

THEME:
Nobel Laureates

Arrowsmith (1925) is a work of a more serious nature. Lewis has there attempted to represent the medical profession and science in all its manifestations. As is well known, American research in the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, and medicine ranks with the best of our age, and it has several times been recognized as such from this very platform. Tremendous resources have been placed at its command. Richly endowed institutions work unceasingly on its development.

That even here some speculative persons want to take advantage of their opportunities may be regarded as inevitable. Private industries are on the alert for scientific discoveries and want to profit from them before they have been tested and finally established. The bacteriologist, for instance, searches with infinite care for vaccines to cure widespread diseases, and the manufacturing chemist wants to snatch them prematurely from his hand for mass production.

Under the guidance of a gifted and conscientious teacher, Martin Arrowsmith develops into one of the idealists of science. The tragedy of his life as research worker is that, after making an important discovery, he delays its announcement for constantly renewed tests until he is anticipated by a Frenchman in the Pasteur Institute.

The book contains a rich gallery of different medical types. We have the hum of the medical schools with their quarrelling and intriguing professors. Then there is the unpretentious country doctor, recalled from Main Street, who regards it as an honour to merge with his clientele and become their support and solace. Then we have the shrewd organizer of public health and general welfare, who works himself into popular favour and political power. Next we have the large institutes with their apparently royally independent investigators, under a management which to a certain extent must take into consideration the commercial interests of the donors and drive the staff to forced work for the honour of the institutes.

Above these types rises Arrowsmith's teacher, the exiled German Jew, Gottlieb, who is drawn with a warmth and admiration that seem to suggest a living model. He is an incorruptibly honest servant of science, but at the same time a resentful anarchist and a stand-offish misanthrope, who doubts whether the humanity whose benefactor he is amounts to as much as the animals he kills with his experiments. Further we meet the Swedish doctor, Gustaf Sondelius, a radiant Titan, who with singing and courage pursues pests in their lairs throughout the world, exterminates poisonous rats and burns infected villages, drinks and preaches his gospel that hygiene is destined to kill the medical art.

Alongside all of this runs the personal history of Martin Arrowsmith. Lewis is much too clever to make his characters without blemish, and Martin suffers from faults which at times seem obstructive to his development, both as a man and as a scientist. As a restless and irresolute young man he gets his best help from a little woman he encountered at a hospital where she was an insignificant nurse. When he begins to drift about the country as an unsuccessful medical student, he looks her up in a little village in the Far West, and there she becomes his wife. She is a devoted and simple soul, who demands nothing and who patiently waits in her solitude when, bewitched by the siren of science, her husband loses himself in the labyrinths of his work.

Later she accompanies him and Sondelius to the plague-infected island where Arrowsmith wants to test his serum. Her death in the abandoned hut, while her husband listens distractedly to another and more earthy siren than that of science, seems like a poetically crowning final act to a life of primitive self-sacrificing femininity.

The book is full of admirable learning, certified by experts as being accurate. Though a master of light-winged words, Lewis is never superficial when it comes to the foundations of his art. His study of details is always as careful and thorough as that of such a scientist as Arrowsmith or Gottlieb. In this work he has built a monument to the profession of his own father, that of the physician, which certainly is not represented by a charlatan or a faker.

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Gene Genie #40

 
The 40th edition of Gene Genie has been posted at Human Genetics Disorders [Gene Genie Edition 40].

NSGC Conference exibit and MBA thesis poster presentation videos from the October 24-28 2008 AEC Conference by Chavonne Jones

The beautiful logo was created by Ricardo at My Biotech Life.

The purpose of this carnival is to highlight the genetics of one particular species, Homo sapiens.

Here are all the previous editions .....

1. Scienceroll
2. Sciencesque
3. Genetics and Health
4. Sandwalk
5. Neurophilosophy
6. Scienceroll
7. Gene Sherpa
8. Eye on DNA
9. DNA Direct Talk
10. Genomicron
11. Med Journal Watch
12. My Biotech Life
13. The Genetic Genealogist
14. MicrobiologyBytes
15. Cancer Genetics
16. Neurophilosophy
17. The Gene Sherpa
18. Eye on DNA
19. Scienceroll
20. Bitesize Bio
21. BabyLab
22. Sandwalk
23. Scienceroll
24. biomarker-driven mental health 2.0
25. The Gene Sherpa
26. Sciencebase
27. DNA Direct Talk
28. Greg Laden’s Blog
29. My Biotech Life
30. Gene Expression
31. Adaptive Complexity
32. Highlight Health
33. Neurophilosophy
34. ScienceRoll
35. Microbiology Bytes
36. Human Genetic Disordrs
37. The Genetic Genealogist
38. ScienceRoll
39. Genetics & Health
40. Human Genetics Disorders

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My Desk

 
Eva re-starts another meme.

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I Hate Ironing

 
But these guys seem to like it. What am I missing?

I've been following this sport for several years and I still don't get how they do it. Maybe I need a new iron?

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[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic, of course.