Floralia continues:
------------------------------------------------Took the Bio test today. I think I did... better, at least. Not that that was hard. Interestingly, I took the exam in the room which houses the school's insect collection. I didn't realize it at first, but my professor enthusiastically declared "You get to take the exam with the company of 80,000 arthropods!" That's when I noticed the massive safes. Yes, they lock up their bugs at night. All 80,000 of them.
(You can stop reading here if you like, that's the end of things that actually happened to ME today. Rest is just philosophatin'.)
I mean, I guess bugs are worth a lot on the black market to collectors, so they probably don't want them stolen. And that's an impressive collection. They must have had several different benefactors bequeath their collections. Which makes sense, I guess. Can you imagine going to a will reading and hearing, "And to my second-cousin Geraldine, I bequeath my extensive collection of Arthropoda, gathered painstakingly over the course of my life."
Though there are worse things. One collector donated several hundred carefully captured and stuffed birds to the school. They are currently on display in the Spaulding Life Sciences building second floor, row after row after row of them, from finches to owls all the way to large sea birds, and every time I walk down that hall to talk to my professor and walk past all those birds in their neat little glass cases with their carefully filled-out labels I am reminded of Ed Gein. I know, I know, I eat birds, at least until they find a way to enact my dinosaur consumption plans. But there's a difference between doing what biology tells us is okay and even necessary with other creatures and using them for pure, useless decoration. It's like...
"Certainly one could state that, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans his killing with considerable care and deliberation. Like the serial killer, he decides well in advance the type of victim--that is, which species he intends to target. Also like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans with great care where and how the killing will take place--in what area, with what weapon. What the serial killer and trophy hunter also share is a compulsion to collect trophies or souvenirs of their killings. The serial killer retains certain body parts and/or other trophies for much the same reason as the big game hunter mounts the head and antlers taken from his prey...as trophies of the chase." ~Gareth Patterson, conservationist, in "The Killing Fields"
See, way more eloquent than me.
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I don't have anything interesting to say about my own life these days, so instead, I'll talk about someone else's. Did you hear about the
Nigerian woman who married four women? She's a Muslim, and now she's a Muslim with four wives, on the run from the Sharia law police.
Now, let's look at this. Besides providing fantasies for young men everywhere, it's an interesting issue. Muslim men are allowed four wives; "...marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four" (Women 4.3, the Koran). So that's not the issue. The issue is, of course, that she is a woman. But wait a minute...
"And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you? Lo! ye come with lust unto
men instead of women. Nay, but ye are wanton folk." (7:80-7:81, The Heights)
"What! Of all creatures do ye come unto the
males, and leave the wives your Lord created for you ? Nay, but ye are froward folk." (26:165-26:166, The Poets)
"Must ye needs lust after
men instead of women ? Nay, but ye are folk who act senselessly." (27:55, The Ant)
"And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Lo! ye commit lewdness such as no creature did before you. For come ye not in unto
males." (29:28-29:29, The Spider).
That's all the Quran has to say about homosexuality, and admittedly they make their point quite clear. Man-on-man = bad. But. Not once does it mention woman-on-woman. Never. And it's pretty clear reading that thing that women and men are held to different standards. Thus technically the Koran doesn't object at ALL to Ms. Maiduguri's marriages.
And since God was only revealed to them through the Koran and Mohammad, they've got nothing here. Nothing. If Allah sees it as a sin, he will punish them, and feel kinda dumb for not thinking to include that tidbit in his book, but they have no support for their "OMG EVIL" claims.
Well, they do have support. It's just in the form of a whole mess of guns.
As for me, I fully support this, on account of 1. Homosexuals should be allowed to marry, and 2. Polygamy should be legal provided that all those involved want it to happen and are of the correct age, and can get out of it (divorce) if they want to. If some grown woman doesn't mind hitching up with a guy who's already got two other grown women around the house, and neither of the previous wives objects to the newest addition to their little sorority, I say go for it.
Heck, I think that if ten bisexual folks, male and female, all want to have the right to live together and visit each other in the hospital if one is ill, they should be allowed to all marry each other. The only flaw in that plan is that no one will ever know who the kids belong to. But hey, that's their problem. And anyone that complains about it being a perverse environment to raise children should just think about all the crazy kinky stuff married, heterosexual couples with kids do behind closed doors. You don't expose the kids to it.
(And yes, I know that it's impractical and would screw up the legal code and all that jazz, but it's not like EVERYONE would be doing it. You'd get a bunch of people who did it for the novelty of it and then divorced later when they realized it was dumb; then you'd get some people who believed it was right and
would do it for real, but the social stigma would be too great. You'd get maybe a hundred, two hundred polygamous marriages maximum, and the lack of legal repercussions for it would mean that women in a BAD situation, who wanted divorce but not to have her husband thrown in jail, wouldn't be afraid to go to the authorities. You can regulate legal stuff MUCH easier than illegal stuff.)
I mean, I guess bugs are worth a lot on the black market to collectors, so they probably don't want them stolen. And that's an impressive collection. They must have had several different benefactors bequeath their collections. Which makes sense, I guess. Can you imagine going to a will reading and hearing, "And to my second-cousin Geraldine, I bequeath my extensive collection of Arthropoda, gathered painstakingly over the course of my life." 
"Certainly one could state that, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans his killing with considerable care and deliberation. Like the serial killer, he decides well in advance the type of victim--that is, which species he intends to target. Also like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans with great care where and how the killing will take place--in what area, with what weapon. What the serial killer and trophy hunter also share is a compulsion to collect trophies or souvenirs of their killings. The serial killer retains certain body parts and/or other trophies for much the same reason as the big game hunter mounts the head and antlers taken from his prey...as trophies of the chase." ~Gareth Patterson, conservationist, in "The Killing Fields"
I don't have anything interesting to say about my own life these days, so instead, I'll talk about someone else's. Did you hear about the Nigerian woman who married four women? She's a Muslim, and now she's a Muslim with four wives, on the run from the Sharia law police.
That's all the Quran has to say about homosexuality, and admittedly they make their point quite clear. Man-on-man = bad. But. Not once does it mention woman-on-woman. Never. And it's pretty clear reading that thing that women and men are held to different standards. Thus technically the Koran doesn't object at ALL to Ms. Maiduguri's marriages. 
Heck, I think that if ten bisexual folks, male and female, all want to have the right to live together and visit each other in the hospital if one is ill, they should be allowed to all marry each other. The only flaw in that plan is that no one will ever know who the kids belong to. But hey, that's their problem. And anyone that complains about it being a perverse environment to raise children should just think about all the crazy kinky stuff married, heterosexual couples with kids do behind closed doors. You don't expose the kids to it. 
There exists an incredibly cool insect whose habits I must share. It's called the green ant (or green tree ant). They make these cool complicated nests in trees out of branches and leaves, and they eat pretty much any caterpillar or other bug that happens across their path. But that's not the cool part.
glands that produce a soothing pheromone that chills out the ants and reminds them that this is a food-producer, not food. So the ants don't eat the caterpillar, they drink the honeydew-- and they protect the caterpillar from predators. They make him a little nest on the edge of their colony in the tree, and they make sure he gets enough to eat, and then when he's ready to turn into a butterfly, they continue to guard the pupa and they let the butterfly crawl out of the nest and fly off without hurting it.
