links for 2008-04-01

Tags
Categories

More like this

birds are gross - rosemary mosco The awesome turkey vulture. (tags: comics biology science silly) nanoscale views: Combined single-molecule electronics and optics "The two-sentence summary: we can do simultaneous electronic and optical measurements on single molecules (!) by using our…
Kieran Healy's Weblog - Elementary Particles "Particle physics has been in the doldrums a bit lately, so they could do with some interdisciplinary reinvigoration. Also, their research budgets remain quite large." (tags: social-science silly physics blogs) Crooked Timber » » Necrotrends: The…
Bad Baby Names - A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names - John Tierney - New York Times "During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. " (tags: kid-stuff psychology science society culture music) Gen Ed Reform --…
The Mentoring Gap for Women in Science :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education "[W]omen do not perceive that they are receiving the same level of advising and mentoring as men." (tags: academia science social-science psychology) On being a scientist and a woman…

That epilepsy prank shows how being juvenile can cross way over the threshold of being evil.

The article takes a bizarre turn in the late paragraphs, and the author curiously fails to explain some very obvious questions that would occur to any reader. Here's the strangeness:

"Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread -- since deleted -- planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold."

Okay, three obvious questions: Why does Anonymous hate EBaumsWorld, which seems to be just a collection of silly videos and pictures? What's the logical connection - even if the logic is quite tortured - between hating EBaumsWorld and launching an attack on innocent epileptics? Could the claim that Anonymous launched the attack just be an attempt by Scientologists to defame Anonymous?

Anybody out there in Uncertain Principles Land know the answers to any of these, or to the deeper mystery of why the reporter left these loose ends?