Skepchick Quickies 3.26

It turns out that Amanda, our fearless Quickies correspondent, is currently engaged in some black-ops activity, fighting crime and globe-trotting in search of the perfect marzipan. Therefore, I’ll be your server today. Here’s what’s cooking…
- TEDxDeExtinction was a conference on species-revival science and ethics. The talks are over but the conversation continues. Bringing them back to life is Carl Zimmer’s excellent cover story. {via Amanda D.}
- A JetBlue passenger is accused of groping a woman’s thigh while she was sleeping. His line of defense? C’mon. It’s not like it was her boobs. Too bad she didn’t read #SafetyTipsForLadies. {via Mary B.}
- What are Right-Wingers freaking out about now? That the California Dept. of Education is raping the innocence of children with its LGBT-inclusive book list. {found via Shakesville}
- Everything Helen Mirren does is awesome. In this case, she slammed Sam Mendes for naming exactly zero females in his acceptance speech.
- Pussy Riot members Kot and Katya Samutsevich speak out in ’60 Minutes’ segment. Video included. Here’s the transcript
- Heck with the hoopla over the Lululemon yoga pants. Why are women wearing thongs to exercise? {via Elyse}
- Astronomy is beautiful, which is the reason Surly Amy calls on all of us to help ameliorate the deep funding cuts to important astronomy outreach programs like Cosmo Quest. Here’s more information on the impending sequestration cuts
- “Of the many ways that things can go wrong in bed, sleep troubles are probably the most prevalent.” Heh. Indeed. Elizabeth Kolbert’s Up All Night, a piece on the science of sleeplessness is darn interesting.
- If you go to MoMA, you might catch Tilda Swinton sleeping. Actually, chances are really good. And, here’s your bonus Swinton/Bowie mashup: Tilda Stardust.
- Clarissa Darling is back! And she’s going to Explain It All for you.
- Tumblr find: Cool Chicks from History: suffragettes, war workers, factory girls, socialites who got stuff done, ladies who ruled countries, and women who changed the world, even if it was just a little bit.
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From National Geographic…
Recipe for Resurrection
from the page
Can the red-breasted American passenger pigeon, hunted to extinction a century ago, be revived from museum specimens? Yes, say geneticist George Church of Harvard University and his colleagues. See how it could be done in this video.
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Featured image is the Furcifer pardalis or Panther Chameleon by Joel Sartore, National Geographic. Here are more striking photos of endangered species.
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I don’t understand the thong thing. G-strings and loincloths used during athletics isn’t exactly strange or new, though fundoshi and kaupina were usually worn by men. Lots of women wear underwear when they exercise, and lots of women wear thongs because they want to. Is there a problem with this? Are there people being judgmental toward each other for *not* wearing thongs?
I don’t even get the point of thongs. Twist the wrong way and you get one of those all-over wedgies. Why even bother wearing underwear in that case?
Copy & Pasted from my comment at The Mary Sue: “Sorry but Clarissa was older than me when the show was on and I’m now thirty. So you’re advertising to a group that doesn’t know the original content while also telling the group who does that you don’t think our lives are interesting enough anymore. Fail.”
Melissa Joan Hart and I are the same age…and her “little” brother, Ferguson (Jason Zimbler), was briefly a classmate of mine in high school. I wonder if the book will contain Clarissa dealing with the dot com bubble bursting, rising homelessness, the beginning decline of print journalism, and 9/11 and the increasing overreach of the NYC police state all while living a cockroach infested “apartment” the size of a matchbox for $1500 a month. Man, the late 90’s and early 2000’s around here sure were fun!