Chicks dig a man with a big brain.

The listserv at my local campus is now exploding with all manner of uncouth and unruly commentary, stemming from one student’s rant against the Creationists handing out free water and atheist-hatin’ literature on the Student Union Quad. The discussion jumped the shark within an hour of its starting, but its entertainment value has only increased: “these people are actually calling atheists and agnostics “bad” people (which is a form of racism)” … what? Give me some Baba Brinkman.

If I want to hear arguments that reference evolution, I’m going to hold them up to Baba Brinkman’s standard. His beats are jazzy and smooth, ready to blend in with the cubicle hum, but his rhymes are laced with acid and research. Over the course of The Rap Guide To Human Nature, Brinkman explains how game theory, ovulation, microbial disease vectors, and any number of Gladwellesque data points all fit in to evolutionary biology and behavior. Heavy stuff indeed, but the rhymes make it easy to remember. My advice to all you creationist-haters out there: Remember your Brinkman gems and drop them on those pamphleteers. Or use them on the ladies:

“My histocompatibility complex is majorly intoxicating – girl, I’m so symmetrical”

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Hide the knives, here comes Miss Li.

I’m digging Late Night Heartbroken Blues, the 2006 debut album by Sweden’s Miss Li (aka Linda Carlsson). Miss Li — it doesn’t feel right to address her as an unadorned “Li” — sings in lovely lilting English, and with the sort of edgy little-girl warble that you associate with girls who shred your heart with the casual off-handedness that some people use to pick at their beer bottle labels during conversation.

Witness the video for “Oh Boy,” a song which is more than a bit twee, but whose video (a tribute to the Cure’s “Close To Me” video, intentional or not) is quite fun:

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