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PBS Test Pilots Wired Magazine Program Along With Two Other New Science Shows

Throughout January, PBS has been test piloting three science programs on channels across the country and via streaming video online at their Web site. According to PBS mag Current, one pilot is a spin-off of Wired magazine, another a "Science Investigators" version of PBS' popular "History Investigators" series, and the third a futurist "22nd Century" program. In combination with these pilots, PBS rolled out focus group and national survey project to monitor responses among the "innovative and inclined" segment of their audience. Doing this type of "real time" research as part of the…

OLPC

So Intel has pulled out. Well, fuck them. If you own Intel stocks and have no idea of what I am talking about, then screw your apathetic greedy self too. Here's what got me all riled up: businessweek article where the author has got it totally backwards. Not only is this [OLPC] profoundly anti-teacher, it also misinterprets experience learning. Children learn language by interacting with their family. Almost all learning takes place in a teaching context. Yes, of course, there is learning by the individual alone, but most "learning" takes place in a context of a guide, a coach, be it parent…

Fiddler crabs - more than just cute to look at

I know everyone is going to jump at once to talk about this mind-blowing research by some of the greatest scientists that have ever been associated with ecology, and I hate just writing about papers that everyone will talk about anyhow, but I decided I still had to comment on this paper. It may very well be the most important paper of the year, even more influential and ground-breaking than Ida (though I wouldn't mention that to her directly). Of course, I'm talking about the newest paper published in Marine Biology's "Online First", Fiddler crab burrowing affects growth and production of…

Galileo. Patronage. Dinosaurs.

Mario Biagioli, a historian of science at Harvard, wrote a book a dozen or so years ago called Galileo, Courtier. It's a study of the context of patronage, courtly virtue, and shifting credibility between philosophers and mathematicians in and around the time of Galileo's trial. Great book, fascinating to read, lots to say about it. But my point of interest right now is in the idea and practice of scientific patronage. Biagioli says in his epilogue that his story of Galileo helps highlight the shift in scientific patronage from earlier princely forms to later institutional ones, and that…

Antidepressant-Suicide Risk Update

This controversy has been evolving for the past three years.  Perhaps at this point it is no longer newsworthy.  But often, after a topic fades from the radar of the MSM, there are new findings. The journal, Psychological Medicine, has published a study about the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in persons treated with an antidepressant ( href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine" rel="tag">fluoxetine) for conditions other than depression.   href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1219444">Evaluating suicide-related…

Why I don't believe in gods

The New Statesman has an article that asked a lot of atheist luminaries and some lesser glowworms like yours truly to explain why they don't believe in gods. I don't think it's available online (I have a copy, though, and posted it outside my office door, so stop on by if you want to read it), but there is a discussion on the New Statesman blog. There are a whole bunch of entertaining short entries in the full article, but I'll just post mine — I gave them two reasons that I don't believe in gods. 1. The process. I am accustomed to the idea that truth claims ought to be justified with some…

Leaker-In-Chief Flubs Again

In 2004, the Bush Administration href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html">blew a Pakistani intelligence operation by revealing sensitive intelligence information.  In 2005, there was the Libby-Plame Leak.  Earlier in 2006, the Bush Administration href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2006/04/leaker-in-chief-reduxoffered-without.html">blew Operation Tiramisu, putting Israeli intelligence operatives at risk. By then, the phrase " href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/04/07/BL2006040700544.html" rel="tag">…

Deadlines rapidly approaching for two blog carnivals of note (plus a way to help raise money for an award without knowing where your wallet is).

First about those carnivals: *The deadline for submission to the second installment of the Diversity in Science carnival is midnight (EST) tonight. It's being hosted at Thus Spake Zuska and this month's topic is "Women Achievers in STEM - Past and Present." I myself am trying to get a post up before the deadline. If you get in under the wire, or have already written a post that you think fits the theme, submit it here. *The deadline for submission to the April installment of Scientiae, the women in science, engineering, technology, and math carnival, is March 29. The Candid Engineer is…

To the barricades in defence of Big Genetics

Over at Gene Expression, p-ter has a post up defending the "big genetics" approach, noting that large-scale hypothesis-free genetics studies have consistently yielded important results for follow-up detailed fine-scale studies. It's a sound argument. I've argued in the past that many of the fears expressed about Big Genetics are overblown: Will Big Genetics eventually swallow the entire field, as some critics of the Human Genome Project argued towards the end of the last millennium? I'd argue that this is unlikely, and that in fact the Big Genetics approach carries within it the seeds of…

Psychology Is Not Intuitive. k?

What is science? Fundamentally, science is a process of hypothesis-testing. Scientists observe phenomena, propose hypotheses to explain or account for some observed phenomenon, and design experiments to test those hypotheses. Then those or other scientists attempt to replicate the findings. In other words, science is performed in the following manner: 1. Define the question 2. Gather information and resources (observe) 3. Form hypothesis 4. Perform experiment and collect data 5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new…

How to Turn $10 into $5,000 in Less Than One Month!

It is a feeling of unbelievable joy. We have all felt it, at one time or another. For me, it is at its most palpable in a concert or a sports event with tens of thousands of fans. Initially, everyone is milling about, chatting, texting, a thousand unconnected specks. Then there's a moment capturing everyone's attention - a touchdown, a band jamming with pure, raw energy - and, in an instant, everything changes. Those specks converge into a single, connected, joyous crowd. Differences, stress, arguments, angst, worries fade away. Social media has figured out how to harness this ineffable…

Death vs. Taxes During a Storm

Yesterday in Minnesota, 546 vehicles drove off the road and 461 vehicles crashed into something (often, another vehicle) due to storm conditions. In one of those incidents, a person died. In neighboring Wisconsin, there were over 400 crashes and two dead. If this was a disease epidemic over the same time period, it would be way worse than the H1N1 flu or the cholera epidemic currently hitting Haiti. Yes, yes, I get that this is a temporary short term phenomenon, but if we put all the stormy weather end to end in time it would be an event of a week or two duration (depending on the year).…

Baffling and ominous

Who needs expertise and knowledge? In the bold new world of the Teabagger Republicans, all you need is a sense of privilege and outrage, and you too are qualified to do rocket science and brain surgery…or, at least, to complain about rocket science and brain surgery. Here's the latest brilliant idea from a Republican congressman: the National Science Foundation provides easy access to their database of grant awards online, so let's sic a mob of uninformed, resentful, anti-science gomers loose on the field of already extensively vetted (by qualified people!) awards and have them seek out…

Digging up the dirt on Singer

The dirt, in this case, is that he was once fairly sensible. In particular, he edited two books published by D Reidel:Global effects of environmental pollution, 1970, which was the proceedings of a Symposium, organised by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Dallas, Texas, December, 1968. ISBN 90-2777-0151-2 if you're interested; shelf-mark 334.2.c.95.254 south front 3, if you're in the UL. And The Changing Global Environment, 1975 (£55, paperback! Whew, the hardcover has a RRP of £100, but amazon offers it for £101 and is proud of the fact. Odd). ISBN…

Birds in the News 161

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, Leucosticte tephrocotis, photographed at Meadows Campground, Hart's Pass, in the Okanagan of Washington State. Image: Lee Rentz, 19 October 2008. Birds in Science The unusually intact fossilized skull of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was found on Peru's arid southern coast, researchers said. The fossil is the best-preserved cranium ever found of a pelagornithid, a family of large seabirds believed to have gone extinct some 3 million years ago, said…

Irrationality and the False Morality of the Mortgage Contract

With Big Shitpile rolling on, there's been a lot of discussion about the ethics of defaulting on a home mortgage. Several people have commented on the hypocrisy of denigrating homeowners for doing the same thing that businesses do, without any moral qualms, so I won't say any more about that here. What I do find odd is the inappropriate personalization of who holds housing loans. This is a typical attitude: Tom Sobelman, whose family of four lives across the street from Ms. Richey, at 3127 Club Rancho Drive, sees mortgages as a moral as well as financial obligation. He's still paying the…

Ron Paul nuttiness on swine flu

For somebody so out to lunch on so many issues there is something undeniably likable about Ron Paul. As congressthings, he and Dennis Kucinich (there's an odd couple) had the clearest and best positions on the Iraq debacle. And as a principled libertarian (there seem to be some big chinks in Paul's libertarian armor -- like reproductive choice -- but his passion is undeniable), there is something admirable about him. It almost makes you forget his principles are self-centered, wrong-headed and inhumane. Little gnome-like figures aren't supposed to be that unfeeling toward others. Anti-science…

Bob Costas’s pink eye and state paid-sick-days campaigns

After having delivered prime-time telecasts from the Olympic Games since 1988, NBC’s Bob Costas had to step aside due to a pink eye infection. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff opined that Bob Costas did the right thing, noting, “People turning up to work sick is actually a vexing problem for employers that could, by some estimates, cost them as much as $150 billion a year.” Sick employees showing up to work can more easily spread their diseases to co-workers and customers, as well as fellow carpoolers or transit riders. In Costsas’ case, his initial reluctance to stay home (or in his hotel room) to…

Chipotle's "Food with Integrity" ignores tomato pickers

The Chipotle restaurant chain's corporate philosophy is "Food with Integrity": "we can always do better in terms of the food we buy.  And ...we mean better in every sense of the word---better tasting, coming from better sources, better for the environment, better for the animals, and better for the farmers who raise the animals and grow the produce." The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and others wants to know how Chiptole's philosophy translates to the farmworkers who pick the tomatoes used in the restaurant's burritos.  CIW offers this snapshot into the workday of a Florida …

Where Old Computers Go to Die

The latest issue of National Geographic includes a story on e-waste thatâs worth reading â especially if you got a new computer, TV, or other electronic gift over the holidays and now need to figure out how to get rid of the old one. Discarded electronic goods often contain a few useful bits â drives, memory chips, copper used in wiring â along with toxic substances like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and beryllium. For an impoverished family, breaking down old computers can be a reliable way to earn much-needed cash, but the job is hazardous. Chris Carroll reports: June is the wet season…

I went to college in Connecticut. Deal with it.

Perhaps because it's college graduation and reunion time, L.V. Anderson at Slate has written a column entitled "People Still Say They 'Went to College in Boston,' Meaning Harvard? Please Stop Doing This." She claims that by giving such an evasive answer, one "buy[s] into the overblown mythos of Harvard and the presumption of Ivy League superiority." Or worse, it "functions as an elitist dog whistle," and that those who may "react inelegantly" upon hearing one went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton and others are "insecure people who perhaps have not yet learned that Ivy League schools confer degrees…

Bronze Age Mortuary Cult In Viborg

Yesterday I went to Jutish Viborg by train, plane and bus. This took a bit less than eight hours. Exiting Aalborg airport into the icy sleet I managed to walk straight into the glass wind breaker outside the turnstile, banging my forehead and knee. Everybody around studiously avoided noticing my antics. On arriving in Viborg I found the museum, met some colleagues and received a key for the visiting scholars' building at Asmild that I'm staying in. Then to the city library where there is warmth and (flaky) wifi, and where I am now sitting again. Wednesday ended in good company with…

Travels with dopamine - the chemical that affects how much pleasure we expect

How would you fancy a holiday to Greece or Thailand? Would you like to buy an iPhone or a new pair of shoes? Would you be keen to accept that enticing job offer? Our lives are riddled with choices that force us to imagine our future state of mind. The decisions we make hinge upon this act of time travel and a new study suggests that our mental simulations of our future happiness are strongly affected by the chemical dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries signals within the brain. Among its many duties is a crucial role in signalling the feelings of enjoyment we…

Book review: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse. Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices. See, the Muslims have one god. The Christians have three gods. And we Hindus have three 36,000,000 gods. Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from. -Balram Halwai alais Munna What a fucking joke. -Pinky Madam India is a land of chicken coops. The chicken coops have been in existence since Manu wrote that kings and priests came out of god's prettiest and purest body parts while shit-eating lowly men and women came out of his holy…

Update on the chip supply rumour from the FDA

Two days ago I reported a rumour that the FDA might have convinced genotyping chip provider Illumina to stop providing its products to direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies - a move that would effectively prevent these companies from being able to operate. The rumour seemed plausible at the time, based on two pieces of evidence. Firstly, a letter sent to Illumina by the FDA in June warned the company that the use of its chips by personal genomics companies appeared to violate FDA regulations: Although Illumina, Inc. has received FDA clearance or approval for several of its devices,…

The stupids

Blogging has been scant here of late for two reasons. First, I've got enough going on that blogging time is limited, and I don't have a lot I need to get off my chest. Second, the world is currently utterly dominated by the stupids. The climate change treaty negotiations at Copenhagen, which should be a serious event where scientists and policymakers hash out the most important global issue of our day, is instead a circus for douchebags and privacy-invading pricks. And, you know, douchebags and privacy-invading pricks are kinda my professional bread and butter at NCSE, so it's not a…

A Coturnix Sampler...

The Big Blogging Gurus suggest that one should often link back to old posts. I do that, actually, quite often, but now that I have moved my blog here, all the old posts are elsewhere. Over the next few months I will re-publish some of my best posts here so they get archived on this blog. In the meantime it is nice to have the permalinks of the best (and most likely to be linked) posts, or at least most interesting posts all in one place. I noticed that, when they moved to their new digs at SEED, several science bloggers posted their lists of "best of" posts. I found those lists very…

Indonesian Megavolcano Provides Rare Peek into Global Warming

tags: South Pacific Islands, Indonesia, Sumatra, geology, nature, volcano, global warming, Lake Toba, PBS, NOVA, television Sixty-two-mile-long Lake Toba, seen in the center of this satellite image, was created by the largest explosive volcanic eruption of the past 100,000 years -- an eruption whose aftermath holds important clues for us today about rapid climate change, Drew Shindell says. Image: NASA. Wow, there are days when I wish I had a television, and today is one of them. Why? Tonight, PBS is showing a really fascinating program; a NOVA show entitled Mystery of the Megavolcano that…

Around the Web: Apps = CD ROMS, Open Access saves lives, Questioning Clay Shirky and more

Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not enough like the Web Open Access to Scientific Research Can Save Lives The OA Interviews: Harvard’s Stuart Shieber (Pay special note to the comment by Sandy Thatcher and the devastating fisking of it by Stuart Shieber. And by devastating, I mean dev. a. sta. ting.) Questioning Clay Shirky Shirky, Bady and For-Profit Higher Ed Unlikely Pairing? (liberal arts schools get into moocs) A New (Kind of) Scholarly Press (An open access university press) Can researchers protect their open data? Visualizing the Uniqueness, and Conformity, of Libraries (cool…

Around the Web: Music industry business models, Silicon values, Disruptive innovation and more

I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With What Filesharing Studies Really Say – Conclusions and Links IS STEALING MUSIC REALLY THE PROBLEM? Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered. What Happened to Silicon Values? A call for disruptive innovation in science publishing what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger Two big mistakes in thinking about technology in education What's Wrong With Almost Every Old Media-Inspired New Media Startup What Is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in the Library? Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? So Shiny! Lest We Not Forget, iPads Require Purpose…

Open Access Week

This week - 19th-23rd October 2009 - is the Open Access week around the world - fitting nicely with the 5th birthday of PLoS Medicine. And when I say 'around the world' I really mean it. Just check out all the global events happening this week. The OA Week is co-organized by Open Access Directory, PLoS, SPARC, Students for Free Culture, eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) and OASIS. Many countries are participating this year, including some with numerous events all around the country. See, for example, all the events in Germany (there are 67 events in that country alone!),…

Feminism101

You know how on comment threads on blogposts about evolution you, sooner or later, get a commenter saying something that reveals complete lack of understanding of even the basics of evolutionary biology? It is usually accompanied by some creationist canard as well. What do you do? If you stop to explain the basics, the thread gets derailed. You REALLY want to discuss that latest study, not go back to basics over and over again. So, instead of explaining the basics, you post a link to the appropriate page on the TalkOrigins FAQ or Index of Creationist Claims and move on with the…

Scott vs. Comfort

You've probably all heard by now that Ray Comfort is coming out with his own butchered version of Darwin's Origin, with big chunks cut out of it, and a deeply stupid introduction slapped on. It's within his rights to do that, since the book is in the public domain now (as is, say, the KJV Bible), but it's also a metaphor for the sleaziness of creationism. They have no original ideas, so all they can do is steal the work of real scientists; their ideas are contradicted by the evidence, so their only strategy is to delete the parts that make them uncomfortable, and put a false spin on what's…

Inside Duke Medicine

If you came to either the first or the second Science Blogging Conference (or both) you may remember that, among other goodies in your swag bag, you also got a copy or two of Inside Duke Medicine, the employee publication for the Duke University Health System. And, you may remember it looked kind of....soooo last century ;-) Furthermore, it had its publishing model backwards - it was Print-to-Web, i.e., the well-crafted articles were first printed in hardcopy and then posted online almost as an after-thought. Well, that model does not work, so Duke got smart and hired a visionary - Anton…

Homepage, yeah!

Drumroll, please*.... Check out my brand new and unique HOMEPAGE!!!! I never had a homepage before. I never made a static web-page in my life. I made blogs. I made many, many blogs. And I always used my main blog (this one since summer of 2006) as my homepage. But now that I am all over the place, on various social networks, while reserving the blog for Most Important Stuff only, it makes sense to have a homepage that links to everywhere I am on the Web. It makes it easy to tell people in person how to find me. It makes it easy to make Moo.com business cards. It removes the need for a dozen…

Science 2.0 article in Scientific American

M. Mitchell Waldrop (author of the delightful book Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos) interviewed me and a bunch of others back in August about the changing ways of science communication. I completely forgot about it, but was reminded yesterday when he e-mailed me to say that the draft of the article is now online on the Scientific American site: Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk? The idea is that the draft will be improved by commentary by readers - and sure enough, there are already 19 comments there - before it goes to print in a future issue of the…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (SciBlings)

There are 103 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already many registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Here are some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. My Scibling and dear friend, Suzanne Franks, aka Zuska describes herself as...well, go and read how she describes herself. If you write something sexist, Super-Zuska…

A Really Challenging Geography Challenge

To join the Geography Challenge in support of your country, you simply need to select which country you will be representing and take the quiz. This quiz consists of trying to locate 10 randomly selected countries on a map of the world. It is different every time. You may take this quiz up to 3 times per day, but no cheating. It is a timed quiz. This is a really difficult geography quiz (or do I just think it is difficult because I don't know my geography very well?). Give it a go and tell me how you did. My scores; 3, 5, 7 correct out of ten possible (it takes a little while to figure…

Scientist Future Markets Spike on UK News

Grauniad reports Britain is in danger of running out of scientists: commoditity markets in Europe spiked sharply on the news, with the ten year future contract on physicists rising 20% in early morning trading; spot markets also rose sharply, with PhD chemists leading the rally to $274.18 per hour in early morning trading (for the benchmark liberal educated physical chemists favoured by industry). In the US after an initial spike in morning trading, the early gains were erased by the announcement that India was releasing some of its strategic stockpile of computer scientists, and news that…

Bora leaves ScienceBlogs, ground shifts under our feet

The fallout of the Pepsigate scandal continues. Bora's recent relative blogging silence left me with a bad feeling, an ominous feeling. A feeling like the other shoe was about to drop. Well, it did. Bora is leaving ScienceBlogs. As with most of Bora's giant summary zeitgeist posts, you just have to read the whole thing yourself. The comments too are incredibly heartfelt. For me, Bora always epitomized ScienceBlogs. He was always the ultimate SciBling and I was so thrilled to be blogging her next to him when I joined. Bora's also always really epitomized science blogging as a whole to…

Not an “accident”: Harold Felton, 36, suffers fatal work-related injury in Seattle, WA

Harold Felton, 36, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, January 26 while working at a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. Mr. Felton’s employer was Alki Construction. Q13Fox reports: Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes. King5.com reports: “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.” “For about 20 minutes, it was a rescue operation, but it became clear the man wouldn't make it.” Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Washington State OSHA program has…

Not an “accident”: Justin 'J.D.' Jorgensen, 30, suffers fatal work-related injury in Altoona, Iowa

Justin “J.D.” Jorgensen, 30 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, January 6 while working at an excavation project in Altoona, IA. His employer was JRS Excavating. WHOTV reports: the project was in a residential area where workers were “digging water and sewer lines.” the incident occurred about 8 am local time. an Altoona police spokesperson said that Mr. Jorgensen was working inside a trench that was “10 to 12 feet deep” and the “dirt caved in.” "family friends say he worked with his brother.” Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Iowa OSHA has conducted any…

Poker Blogs!

Well how do you like that, there are poker bloggers! And I just had to discover them 2 days too late to participate in the the Grublog Poker Classic, an online tournament for poker bloggers. Oh well, better late than never, right? That's right, in addition to being a heathen infidel who promotes gay marriage and godless EVILution, I'm also a degenerate gambler. Well, a degenerate poker player anyway. Up till now I've not blogged much about poker, other than to congratulate Paul Phillips on winning the Bellagio Five Diamond Classic. Poker is suddenly the hottest thing on television. The…

Student Post: Mirror-Touch Synesthesia. I Feel Your Pain

For this week's in-class "NeuroSlam" I spoke about a paper on mirror-touch synesthesia-- a condition in which an individual reports feeling an actual tactile sensation in response to seeing someone else touched. For example, this synesthete would feel as if someone touched their arm if they saw someone touching another's arm. Inspired by an fMRI of a mirror-touch synesthete that showed hyperactivity of mirror-touch network neurons (mirror neurons we all have in the somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, and parts of the temporal lobe that fire in response to touch and viewing touch),…

Late Medieval Seal Matrix

When someone dies their ID card and on-line banking code-dongle are destroyed to prevent identity theft. Their signature dies with them, so that's not a problem. In the past, people with a bit of money and influence had seal matrices filling the function of all these things. They "signed" documents by affixing wax seals to them, stamped with their unique design. And when the owner of a seal died, the matrix was generally destroyed and then molten for scrap or buried with him. For this reason, Medieval seal matrices are rare finds, and when they do turn up they tend to be in pieces. But…

Discussing Kelo on the Radio

It appears that I will be a guest on the Jim Babka show again tonight. He has asked me to come on along with Herb Titus again, this time to discuss the Supreme Court's Kelo decision the other day. I'll be curious to hear what position Titus takes. On the one hand, I know that he is a staunch defender of property rights. On the other hand, he did say the last time we appeared together that the 14th amendment only incorporated the first 3 amendments against the states, and Kelo involved state and local laws, not a Federal law. We will only be on for part of the show this time, not the whole…

What will it mean if LIGO detects gravitational waves? (Synopsis)

"Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea." -Richard Feynman When we look out into the Universe, we normally gain information about it by gathering light of various wavelengths. However, there are other possibilities for astronomy, including by looking for the neutrinos emitted by astrophysical sources -- first detected in the supernova explosion of 1987 -- and in the gravitational waves emitted by…

Great. It Just Had To Be An Atheist Math Professor.

Here's a charming story: A math professor at Michigan State University allegedly stripped naked, ran naked through his classroom and screamed “There is no f*cking God!” before police apprehended him, according to several reports. The professor's name has not yet been released, but online, students said he was “eccentric,” and that they “could probably have seen this coming.” A Redditor shared a grainy cell phone picture of the man in a hallway at the university as authorities restrained him. Another user, TheCookieKing shared more details: Background story: I was in Calc 1 at Michigan State…

Help a graduate student, take some time for a survey

Can you spare 50 minutes to help out a graduate student desperate for research participants? If so, please read below: Dear all, Within the context of my PhD project at Philips Research and Eindhoven University of Technology, I am developing a questionnaire that will help me to look at the relation between multimedia and feelings about the content. I would like to invite you to help me in validating this questionnaire. The goal of this questionnaire is to gain further insight in the relation between multimedia and feelings, mostly with regard to how your feelings about the shown multimedia is…

I must be doing it wrong

I'm teaching human physiology this term, and those of you who have done it or taken it know that this kind of course is a strain to get through the huge volume of material. I think I must simply be a horrible teacher, though, because here's an online physiology course that does a much better job than I do. Here's Your Chance To Skip The Struggle and Master Human Anatomy & Physiology In 3 Days Or Less... 100% Guaranteed Wow. And guess what…it's a $1985.00 value, available now for a limited-time only for the low, low price of only $37. And it's been shown on the Martha Stewart show! If…