Finals week madness + sexy links

I've got my schedule for the next two days plotted out to the half hour, but it's all over on Monday. I'm shipping home an hour after my last exam ends. In tow: two computers, enough other electronic devices to keep a small army amused for decades, and an entire suitcase full of Christmas presents.

Many sexy links after the jump. Major tl;dr, but comb through and see if anything catches your eye.

Human interest

• D.C. city council passes same-sex marriage bill! Archdiocese of Washington fails reacts in a mature, responsible fashion. Click here for the evil. 
• "The White Stuff" is an opinion piece from one of my blog addictions, Daylight Atheism. The subject is the dearth of women and minorities in the atheist community. The tone is polemical, the language infuriating. I'm quite aware that most of the spokesmen for the skeptical are, well, spokesmen (see The Four Horsemen), and white at that, but that's no excuse for this kind of post-modern guilt-mongering bullshit. Hutchinson makes some valid points, but I resent the implication that the "luxury" of non-belief - specifically, non-belief based on rational evaluation of scientific evidence - is reserved for those so bathed in white privilege that they can afford to willfully ignore the problems of racial inequality. She seems deeply offended by the idea that science and the search for objective, testable truth can transcend such boundaries. But what the hell does something like "2 + 2 = 4" or "The Earth's atmosphere is approximately 78% nitrogen by volume" have to do with historical (and present) sociopolitical disparities? Must astronomers be ever mindful of the ghosts of Tuskegee in order to be good people? Does my lack of faith entail flouting my sacred duty of self-loathing for the distasteful privilege into which I was born? Anyway, it irritated me. It may interest/stimulate you. The author of the blog responds to Hutchinson here. 

Real stories Science!

• Octopi and coconuts! The BBC serves up cephalopodian hilarity. Watch the video for maximal happiness.
• Some of our distant cousins just took their place on the Language <---> Not-Language continuum. In a recent paper, Ouattara et al. find that Campbell's monkeys can alter the meaning of their alarm calls byadding affixes. Download the paper here.
• We may have detected dark matter for the first time! Maybe.

YouTube

• Damn, I love the Nutcracker. Here is some loveliness from the production I watch every year around this time: Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov, 1977. Skip to 3:41 for a pas de deux to my favorite Tchaikovsky number of all time. Kirkland was coked out, anorexic and desperately depressed at the time, and she is heart-breakingly fragile here. But those delicate legs are made of steel. Everything looks so easy. It's that odd mix of desperate painand profound strength that fascinates me about ballet. It's dismissed as a fluffy art form, but it has a great deal more depth than people give it credit for. There are so many scenes in so many ballets where the protagonist is, for one reason or another, dancing themselves to death. In almost every one, the predominant emotion in those scenes is triumph. Nessun Dorma comes to mind (loveliness is here... skip to 0:40) I hate opera, and this brought tears to my eyes.
• For some contrast, Svetlana Zakharova and her 7-mile legs do William Forsythe's In the Middle, Slightly Elevated. Gorgeous and spiky.
• I'm also working on suppressing a burgeoning fascination with Lady Gaga. Bad Romance is the trippiest, densest, most interesting music video I've seen in a long time, maybe ever.