Apparently I'm justified?

Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome.

I'm dubious of the value in labeling everything a "syndrome" or a "disorder" or a "condition," but it's a pretty apt descriptor of my habits. I can wake up at earlier hours, if I have to. But going to sleep before midnight is hard, unless I'm truly exhausted. And that's been true for years, now.

And I rather liked this Achewood comic, which (while not exactly my attitude) does to some extent encapsulate my irritation that society treats sleeping late as somehow morally weak -- nevermind how many hours of sleep you're actually getting.

(Diagnosis and comic from toddalcott and comments therein.)

I like it when snark meets activism.

Those of you who don't follow American political news may not know that the Minnesota Senate race -- you know, the one from last fall -- is still pending. Norm Coleman is behind in votes, and has been throughout the process, but keeps pressing the appeals and recounts and so on, such that Al Franken (the apparent winner) still hasn't been seated.

At least one of the factors in operation here is that the longer it takes to seat Franken, the longer the Democratic Party is without their fifty-ninth Senator. Which matters a fair bit on close votes.

Well, somebody came up with an amusing way to give the Republican Party incentive to drop the appeals. To whit: the "Give a Dollar a Day to Make Norm Go Away" campaign.

The idea's simple: you sign up to auto-donate a dollar a day to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. They cancel your subscription when Norm Coleman concedes. (If you're worried he'll drag this out for months, you can also set it to end at a certain date.) So the longer he hangs in there, the more money's in the PCCC's warchest, to be spent against Republican opponents.

This just amuses me. It's kind of a "life -> lemons, you -> lemonade" kind of approach. And it's just the faintest bit snarky, too, without being really mean-spirited.

I'll be curious to see if Coleman files his new notice by Friday (the deadline) or not.

Correction: I got one detail confused with another race, so let me amend this to say: Coleman was ahead on election night, but (iirc) the margin was close enough to trigger an automatic recount under Minnesota law. Franken moved into the lead during that process.

Today's weird piece of trivia

Paracelsus may have been intersex.

The evidence for it is circumstantial, and depends in part on Oporinus' description of the man, which is hardly objective. But here, in summary, are the details:

1) Oporinus says Paracelsus had no interest in women, and was probably still a virgin.

2) There were contemporary rumours that he'd been castrated as a boy; certainly people other than Oporinus agreed he had no interest in sex.

3) The skeleton supposedly belonging to him (which matches well enough cranially not to be ruled out) has an "extraordinarily wide" pelvis -- which, for those who didn't teach intro archaeology four semesters running, is one of the major, though not perfectly reliable, methods of sexing skeletons.

4) That skeleton also doesn't show the characteristics associated with prepubescent castration.

5) Ergo, it's at least possible that Paracelsus was a genetic male with pseudohermaphroditism, or a genetic female with adrenogenital syndrome.

Like I said, circumstantial. The skeleton might not be Paracelsus'. He might have just been a really wide-hipped man. Etc. But it's enough that forensic specialists think it's a possibility.

Our culture so firmly categorizes everybody into male and female that it's fascinating to come across even circumstantial evidence for a major historical figure being intersex. And it sure adds an extra layer of unusual-ness to an already massively weird man*.


*Or whichever term you'd rather use.

atarashii kata o narau!

Today I had, to quote Lymond, a damned carking afternoon -- but then I went to karate and instead of doing sparring (which I was very much not in a state of mind for), I got to learn pinan nidan, which is the next kata in the sequence.

It's amazing how easily something like that can improve my mood.

And then I went and had tasty tasty fried rice with crab. So my day is looking fair to have a much better ending than it did a start.