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Soccer Observations

I gained about fifty pounds my freshman year in college (from ~190 lbs in high school to ~240 labs by the end of the year), owing to taking up rugby and a beer-heavy diet. Since then, people who meet me generally assume that I played football in high school-- in fact, that was probably the biggest indicator of the weight gain (other than, you know, clothes fitting differently)-- people stopped asking me whether I played basketball, and started asking what position I played in football. In fact, I never played organized football-- basically because the coach when I was in Jr. High was a jerk,…

New Lab Rodent Recommendations Rile Researchers

Research using lab rats or mice funded by the NIH is regulated by a set of guidelines that have very recently been upgraded. Mother rats and mice with litters are now recommended to have more room than current guidelines require. The new guidelines are not hard and fast rules, but researchers are concerned that not following these guidelines would jeopardize funding, and it appears from my reading of them that the new cage size guidelines are minimum requirements that must be met. The main difference that is causing some discussion about the new guidelines is that cages that hold females…

Ruins of Childhood

The other day I found and photographed another tree house ruin. I decided to re-post the following piece from September 2006 and make these things a steady presence on Aard, with a category tag of their own. If you've ever taken a walk in the woods near a housing area, you've seen them: modern archaeological sites, full of artefacts and building debris, abandoned to the elements in a way that is unusual in the well-organised industrialised world. They're settlement sites of a particular subculture with its own rules and customs, thriving on the fringes of mainstream society. I'm referring to…

Life's a riot with JA vs JA

"I am the milkman of human kindness, I will leave an extra pint". But not today; try Dover beach if you want me being nice. In this strange shadowy incestuous world of the blogosphere, it is hard sometimes to remember that there's an outside world, and even otherwise well-informed and intelligent people find the banter somewhat confusing. In this case the offending item is a tweet of mine, and I keep forgetting that Twitter forwards my tweets to fb, where people not in the know may actually read them. And the offending words are: This definitely wins tweet of the month, and quite possibly of…

Caesar's Bath Meme

I saw this on John Coleman's blog and thought it was an interesting idea. You should be reading Coleman's work, by the way. He is on the staff of Crux, the pro-ID magazine, but he is a really bright and thought provoking writer. Anyway, the meme is this: Behold, the Caesar's Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can't really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), "Nice. Nice. Not thrilling...but nice." Well this could be interesting. Only five? Okay, in no particular order...…

Unintelligent Design and Eternal Life

Writing at the Huffington Post, John Blumenthal offers a humorous take on intelligent design: Thanks to Michele Bachmann, the tired concept of Intelligent Design has once again become a topic of conversation among Creationists, most of whom, ironically, often sound like Neanderthals. In case you don't know, this boneheaded theory claims that the human body is simply too remarkable to have come into being through millions of years of haphazard evolution, and that some super-intelligent deity must have been the engineering wizard behind the miracle of our anatomies. Miracle? Really? If you're…

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part Two

Of course, I also had time to explore Philadelphia a bit. Vacations are not built on chess alone. During my explorations I stumbled upon the Reading Terminal Market. It's a pretty spectacular collection of small concessions, most of them selling food of one sort or another. Here are a few random shots to give you the flavor: That one had me wanting to buy some veggies and make a big salad in my hotel room, but there were a few practical problems with that. That's a lot of sausages. Sadly, a handful of photos can't really capture the feel of the place. It seems to go…

Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 5: Sunlight

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog goes on sale in fine bookstores everywhere tomorrow. But maybe the four previous posts explaining why dogs should care about quantum physics haven't yet convinced you to go buy a copy. So here's another reason, one appropriate to this solstice season, when dogs in the Northern Hemisphere will start to enjoy longer days again: Sunlight. You like sunlight, right? Of course you do, unless you're a vampire. And what dog doesn't like a sunny day? Well, you have quantum physics to thank for sunlight, because as hot as the Sun is, it's not nearly hot enough to burn…

Links for 2009-12-10

The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of "EVERYONE THINKS they are open-minded. Scientists in particular like to think they have open minds, but we know from psychology that this is just one of those attributes that people like to apply to themselves. We shouldn't perhaps have to worry about it at all, except that parapsychology forces one to ask, "Do I believe in this, do I disbelieve in this, or do I have an open mind?" The research I have done during the past ten or twelve years serves as well as any other research to show up some of parapsychology's peculiar problems and even, perhaps, some…

NYC Trip: American Museum of Natural History

Some colleagues organized a bus trip to New York yesterday, which I went on, on the grounds that a) it was cheap, and b) in a few months, we won't be doing much traveling at all for a while. This required me to get up at an ungodly hour to catch the bus on campus, and the trip itself reminded me of why I don't take public transit, but on the whole, it was a good day. And, of course, blog fodder. The purpose of the trip was to take students from the intro Astronomy classes to the American Museum of Natural History to see the planetarium show (cue Fountains of Wayne). As this show takes less…

Saturday Football - the Duel in the Desert

It's the last regular season game for ASU - the Territorial Cup game against the University of Arizona Wildcats. At the beginning of the season, I don't think anyone would have predicted that ASU would have a 3-5 PAC-10 record and U of A (4-4) would have beaten three ranked opponents in a row entering into this game. Both teams have a 6-5 record overall and the winner gets a (possible) bowl game. U of A hasn't been in a bowl games since 1998; ASU has been in five since then. An ASU win would send the team to the Emerald Bowl on December 27th. Best case scenario for coach Dirk Koetter is…

Friday Bookshelf - The Second X

It's Friday and though I have no heart for blogging, I promised you last week a new feature called "Friday Bookshelf". I feel some obligation to deliver, especially since I can't seem to get the damn Joy of Science discussion posts finished and now I'm sure they'll take even longer with this new blog malaise on top of a weekend full of activities planned by Mr. Zuska. I've had migraine all day and I haven't eaten so this is bound to be a mess, but for what it's worth... I made a daring move and took the SECOND book off my bookshelf. It's called The Second X: The Biology of Women by…

Why the Mona Lisa's eyes follow you around

[originally posted on March 16, 2005] I've taken only two pictures of the Mona Lisa, and both turned out about the same: they captured the frenzied attempts of dozens of tourists trying to take a picture of the most-recognized image in the world. Here's the one I took last summer: I hadn't noticed it until now, but the motion of the painting in the background seems to mirror the chaotic struggle of the tourists with their cameras. I wonder if the Louvre's curators placed it there as a sort of an inside joke. But this post isn't about museum curators, it's about one feature of the Mona Lisa…

Why the Mona Lisa's eyes follow you around

I've taken only two pictures of the Mona Lisa, and both turned out about the same: they captured the frenzied attempts of dozens of tourists trying to take a picture of the most-recognized image in the world. Here's the one I took last summer: I hadn't noticed it until now, but the motion of the painting in the background seems to mirror the chaotic struggle of the tourists with their cameras. I wonder if the Louvre's curators placed it there as a sort of an inside joke. But this post isn't about museum curators, it's about one feature of the Mona Lisa that's supposed to mark Leonardo as a…

Where's the science?

Around this time last year the New York Times listed 100 "Notable Books of 2007." Chad was upset that there were no science books on the list, and so was I. I penned a rant about this sad state of affairs, but Carl Zimmer (an occasional contributor to the NYT) made a point that made me eat my words. This subject has come up once again now that the 2008 list from the NYT is out, which Chad still feels is sorely lacking in science titles despite there being several science books on this year's list; I firmly believe that this is a big part of why we're messed up as a society-- the most…

Framing Atheism? Sport and Spectacle in the SciBling Colosseum

Gladius in one hand and scutum in the other, I enter the SciBling Colosseum... Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant (Gladiators didn't actually say that, but adds a nice touch, no?) Matt and Revere are already battling over two topics that always seem to provide a good show for spectators and participants in the blogosphere: Framing and Atheism Read their posts for full disclosure, but to recap: Nisbet: * Dawkins et al. have generated more discussion of atheism and critiques of religion, but is the this particular brand of discussion productive? Not only is it polarizing, but it lacks a…

New insight into what makes things appear "glossy"

What makes something look glossy? At first, it doesn't seem like a difficult question -- it's something smooth and reflective. But if you were to attempt to draw something that looked glossy, how would you to it? Now, the problem suddenly gets a lot more difficult. Taking a look at a photo of a glossy object might give you some clues. Here's an example: I took this picture of my watch using the webcam on my computer. Notice that you can see the reflection of the computer screen in the bottom half of my watch face. You can't see it on my face though -- my face isn't glossy. So one component…

More commentary on animal rights extremists.

In an op-ed by Tim Rutten in today's Los Angeles Times: No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for the sake of self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral equivalence between the lives of humans and those of animals. I think this is essentially the point…

Louis Agassiz + Alexander Agassiz + Charles Darwin + Coral Reefs = High Entertainment and Science!

There are many fascinating stories linked to the early days of evolutionary biology and geology, and more than one of them is intertwined with our understanding of coral reefs. I had always thought that Darwin's interaction with the question of how coral reefs form was central to Darwin's own formation as a scientist, in part because of Charles Lyell. Lyell was the Big Kahuna of geology and earth science of the day, and had more or less established the standing theory of how coral reefs formed. Darwin, on observing reefs "in the wild" very quickly realized that Lyell was mostly wrong, and…

I don't mind working nights

Friday, Thursday, Sunday--when you're working the night shift, they're all just words. Days run into other days and their names become meaningless, signifiers only of times when the mail comes and when it doesn't. I don't mind working nights for a couple of weeks at a time. There's a kind of camaraderie among the members of the night shift, a smirk we share when we catch each others' eyes in the elevator and the coffee line. We all know that what we are doing is not normal, and in some way prevents us from being completely normal. And, we say with that smirk, it's cool. When I work nights,…

"Julian Assange Denounces Hactivists"

That would be an interesting headline to see. Even more interesting is the fact, as far as I know, that we haven't seen it. For that, there should be consequences. Rant below the fold. Not work safe. Grrrrrrrr. Julian Assange and his Hactivists can kiss my ass. Did you hear that? KISS MY FUCKING ASS!!!! I've gotten more "your password was compromised" emails in the last day or so than I've ever seen since the beginning of the Internet. Why? Because you have the maturity and perspective of an overtired baby with diaper rash. Item: According to their own Rhetoric, Julian Assange is…

2012: an actual review

Julia ended up with a minor concussion today. Too many face palms during the movie 2012! But seriously folks, we did just watch the movie 2012, and I can make a few comments on it. I'd like to start out by making a list of academic and applied areas that were butchered by the movie: Ship building Geosciences (all of them) Aerodynamics Physics (all areas) Geography Archaeology Political Science Psychology But otherwise, it was fun. The premise of the movie is that the Mayans had it right: At the winter solstice 2012, which is the end of the 13th cycle of the current Long Count, the world…

The "R" word: why we shouldn't fear health care rationing

An easy way to kill a debate on health care policy is to use the "R" word. We saw this early in the HCR debate with overheated talk of "death panels" and other nonsense. But we ignore the real issue of rationing at our own peril. Those of us who favor real HCR must embrace rationing, coopt it, show our opponents how it is inevitable. Nowhere is the the Right more hypocritical than the issue of health care rationing (OK, maybe with sex stuff, but...). Everyone who studies American health care knows that we already ration; we just do it irrationally. Current rationing allocates resources…

Terry Pratchett and the ubiquity of negligent chance

As you all should know, the inimitable Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He's writing about it as long as he can, and so far he's remarkably lucid and open…and also, you can tell, a bit angry at the sheer arbitrariness of the disease and the difficulty in finding treatment for it. …it is strange that a disease that attracts so much attention, awe, fear and superstition is so underfunded in treatment and research. We don't know what causes it, and as far as we know the only way to be sure of not developing it is to die young. Regular exercise and eating sensibly are…

WSJ Reporter on Iraq

I posted a bit of this email from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad in the Andrew Sullivan post below, but there's more worth reading in it. It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President…

Adam "Dreamhealer" and science: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I wil probably lose some respect from some of my readers by admitting this, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Dan Brown novels. I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code immensely as a jolly good read, as long as you're not too much of a stickler for anything resembling historical accuracy. Ditto Angels & Demons, although even I cringed at one of the most ham-handed bits of author foreshadowing every put into a highly popular novel. (Those of you who've read Angels & Demons no doubt know exactly what I'm talking about.) In fact, I'll probably eventually get a copy of Dan Brown's…

Yet more on uneasy symbiosis of mainstream and citizen journalism

The note below was originally a response to a comment that Bora Z left on my "More on uneasy symbiosis (mashup? smashup?) of mainstream and citizen media, but given the interest in this subject I thought I best give it its own post. Thanks for writing, Bora. The limitations of small papers that you point out echo closely Helen Branswell's comments in Effect Measure's post; she defended an all-subjects-reporter colleague (whom I take it had been slighted about his flu reporting) along similar lines, noting that he had too much ground to cover to do them all in the sort of depth she was able…

The Implications of the First Derivative for Unemployment

In short: seven long years. A few months, when everyone was getting all het up about the observation that the rate of increase in the unemployment rate (the second derivative) was decreasing--that is, more and more people were losing jobs, but more and more wasn't growing as fast as it once was, that struck me as pretty thin gruel. Well, the implications of the first derivative--the change in unemployment--are pretty grim too. Mark Thoma: How long will it take the unemployment rate to go back down to 5 percent? A rough estimate can be obtained by looking at the rate of decline in the…

GOOD and U.S. Air Force Call for Contributors to “Mind of a Quadrotor” Project

Guest Blog from the USA Science & Engineering Festival Sponsor United States Air Force The U.S. Air Force and GOOD are pleased to announce the start of the  second project in The Air Force Collaboratory, an interactive online platform  that invites science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)  inclined students, educators and innovators to solve some of the Air Force’s toughest challenges. Over 900 ideas have already been submitted by participants in the first project of The Air Force Collaboratory, “Search and Rescue 2.0.” Contributors, whether new or returning, are now asked…

How to attend a poster session in Second Life

I've been reading quite a bit lately about Universities setting up virtual classrooms in Second Life, so when Bertalan Meskó from ScienceRoll invited me to come give a poster, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Besides, I'm going to be teaching an on-line bioinformatics course this spring for Austin Community College, so this seemed like a good time to find out what the fuss is all about. Tomorrow, Bora Zivkovic (A Blog Around the Clock) and I will be the first ScienceBloggers (that I know of) to give poster presentations in Second Life. Our talk will be at 4 pm GMT, 12 noon EDT, and…

We're Nation approved

Writing a pseudonymous blog day after day can be wearing, especially as you get no personal recognition for it. That's the point of a pseudonym, after all. But sometimes things happen that are even better than personal recognition. On January 6, 2009, Vintage Books published the trade paperback original of THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, edited by Richard Lingeman and Scienceblogs.com is recognized in it and Effect Measure gets a special mention. Here's a promotional description:. Part Whole Earth Catalog, part 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and part Zagat, THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Fruit Flies And Global Warming: Some Like It Hot: Researchers working in Australia have discovered ways in which fruit flies might react to extreme fluctuations in temperature. Short-term exposure to high heat stress ("heat hardening") has been known to have negative effects on Drosophila. But Loeschcke and Hoffmann discovered that it can have advantages too. Flies exposed to heat hardening were much more able to find their way to bait on very hot days than were the flies that were exposed to cooler temperatures, but the heat hardened flies did poorly on cool days. Beating Heart Muscle With…

Food Storage Class Starting Thursday

So apparently in my sleep-deprived, brain rotted state, I managed to leave out the start date of my food storage and preservation class - it starts on Thursday, August 23rd, ie, this Thursday.  I still do have spaces, and as it is asynchronous and online, you don't have to be able to drive to my house ;-) (which is probably good, since it isn't very clean at the moment.)  It will help all of us build up that reserve and deal with the summer's glut before the long winter (and high foot prices) to come!  Email me for more details or to register at jewishfarmer@gmail.com.  Cost of the class is $…

The Best of May

I posted only 128 posts in May - the reason for this reduction in numbers I explained here. Traffic has suffered only a little bit so far, I'll keep an eye. Looking back at the month, I noticed how many videos I have posted: about half are very informative and thought-provoking, the other half are hilariously funny. Take a look. So, what did I actually blog about last month? There was some serious science on this blog last month, e.g., Why social insects do not suffer from ill effects of rotating and night shift work? and Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! I celebrated my birthday and…

The Evolution of Peeps

It is really sad when an independent book store closes. It is even sadder when that book store was not just a shop but also a center of local community, a place where people gathered to have coffee, talk, interact with boook authors, take art or yoga classes, participate in theater or children's activities. But the economic downturn is affecting everyone and Market Street Books in Southern Village was forced to close by May 1st. I went there a couple of times last week, to commiserate with the employees and volunteers who were packing, wondering what the future will bring for them and picked…

Mindcasting

On Twitter, mindcasting is the new lifecasting: Even a few years ago the word "blog" inspired that peculiar mix of derision and dismissal that seems to haunt new media innovations long after they're proven. A blogger was a lonely, pajama-clad person in a dark room, typing out banal musings he mistook for interesting ones, to be read by a handful of friends or strangers if they were read at all. That blogs have now become a fixture of media and culture might, you'd think, give critics pause before indulging in another round of new media ridicule. But it ain't so. Twitter, the micro-messaging…

Olivia Judson needs a primer on Science Online

Oh-oh, Olivia Judson is not up-to-speed on Open Access, Open Science and Science 2.0 stuff - though the article is interesting and thought-provoking: As a system, it was a little clumsy -- photocopying was a bore, and if I wanted to spend a couple of months writing somewhere other than my office, I had to take boxes of papers with me -- but it worked. I knew what I had and where it was. Then the scientific journals went digital. And my system collapsed. On the good side, instead of hauling dusty volumes off shelves and standing over the photocopier, I sit comfortably in my office, downloading…

MS Excel is the tool of the Devil!

There is a good reason why scientists in general despise MS Excel. It is cumbersome, non-common-sensical, and the stats cannot be trusted. The graphs are ugly. I am sure it took a lot of hard work to design Excel (and Word), but if I were Charles Simonyi, I would hide the authorship of those two programs as much as possible. Charles went to the Space Station, after all, paying for the ticket out of his own pocket, so there is something much more exciting (and safe) to brag about (not to mention dating Martha Stewart). There are so many good pieces of software out there, many capable of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Same-sex Attraction Is Genetically Wired In Nematode's Brain: University of Utah biologists genetically manipulated nematode worms so the animals were attracted to worms of the same sex -- part of a study that shows sexual orientation is wired in the creatures' brains. Secrets Behind Butterfly Wing Patterns Uncovered: The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist. Ancient DNA Reveals That Some Neanderthals Were Redheads: Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Power Of Altruism Confirmed In Wikipedia Contributions: The beauty of open-source applications is that they are continually improved and updated by those who use them and care about them. Dartmouth researchers looked at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to determine if the anonymous, infrequent contributors, the Good Samaritans, are as reliable as the people who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain. X-effect: Female Chromosome Confirmed A Prime Driver Of Speciation: Researchers at the University of Rochester believe they have just confirmed a controversial theory of evolution.…

The Death of a Friendship

Two months ago, Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received a call from the Pentagon: Donald Rumsfeld would like to see him as soon as possible. Adelman said he knew then that this meeting might be their last. "I suggested that we were losing the war," Adelman, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld, told The New Yorker magazine in an interview posted online Saturday. Adelman and Rumsfeld had been friends for 36 years. Adelman first worked for Rumsfeld during the Nixon Administration, and then was Rumsfeld's assistant when he was the Secretary of…

Not an “accident”: Joshua Halphin, 25 suffers fatal work-related injury in Springfield, MO

Joshua Halphin, 25, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, March 24 while working at a construction project in Springfield, MO. The News-Leader reported first: [The victim] “…was off-loading supplies from a lift onto the fifth floor of the complex when he lost his balance and fell.” The incident occurred at about 12:30 pm at the site of a new student apartments on E. St. Louis Street. The project developer is Aspen Heights. Springfield, MO is the home of Missouri State University (MSU). The Aspen Springfield student housing complex will be the largest to-date for MSU students. KY3…

Gingerbread Cult of Saint Lucy

A re-run from 12 December 2006. Tomorrow's the feast-day of St Lucy, and my son's school started off the celebrations a day early. So this afternoon, along with a lot of other parents, I had saffron buns and watched kids in Ku Klux Klan and Santa outfits form a long line and sing Christmas carols. One end of the line was mostly a few bars ahead of the other. As a pretty recent tradition, the morning of 13 December is celebrated in Sweden with quite a bit of ceremony. It involves white-robed, predominantly young female carolers led by a candle-crowned girl, performing a specialised repertoire…

Skiing Break

Last week was skiing break for my kids. I couldn't find anywhere good to stay in the mountains, so we didn't go off on holiday. Here's what we did for fun instead. Dinner at the home of a Chinese friend. It was one of those no hablar parties that spouses in multi-ethnic marriages know all about. The food was great and everybody there except me spoke Mandarin - loudly and incessantly. I've never minded much: this time I had brought a book and there was a computer to play with. Birthday party at the home of an Iranian friend. He used to be a death-metal kid. Now he's a pro-democracy Persian…

Monday WSOP Update

Warning: this post contains spoilers Day 5 saw some big names come and go. Annie Duke busted out in 88th place. She lost a huge hand with pocket kings and that crippled her. She managed to stick around another couple hours after that, but couldn't catch a hand. Jeffrey Lisandro is still in the top 10 with over 3 million in chips. Prahlad Friedman is right in the middle of the pack with about 1.6 million. Allen Cunningham is hanging in there at 1.3 million. And Humberto Brenes is squeaking along with 600K. All the rest are either online qualifiers or European players. The chip leader, Jamie…

Tangled Bank 96 - Toadally

Hey everyone, and welcome to the 96th Tangled Bank blog carnival! This is where you can toadally catch up with the best recent blog writing on the life sciences. Beasties Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life explains why bright blue tits make better mothers. Tangled Up In Blue Guy gives us a run-down of the phylogeny of bioluminescent animals. Podblack Cat describes her contribution thus A brief look at taxonomy quirks(and you thought being famous had perks...) -Crypto-zoo claims,Real wacky namesAnd Seuss shows some science in his works! Jeremy at Stand Up For REAL Science discusses…

Sociologist Disappointed With Skeptics

In the current issue of Antiquity is a review of G.G. Fagan's edited volume Archaeological Fantasies (available on-line behind a paywall). I reviewed this book favourably back in September: it's pretty much a skeptical attack on pseudo-scientific archaeology. Antiquity's reviewer, however, doesn't like the book at all, and for an interesting reason. Wiktor Stoczkowski is a sociologist of science working in Paris, and he isn't very interested in the interpretation of the archaeological record. His main concern is with the dynamics of current society. "The editor of the volume insists that its…

Internet Laws and Framing

Despite efforts to avoid such foolishness, Kevin Beck inadvertently drew my attention to what people are calling "Blake's Law," which apparently briefly had its own Wikipedia page, but now appears to redirect to the Pharyngula page. Blogdom really needs a killfile. Anyway, the Internet "Law" in question is stated as: In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one. This is notable mostly for being a really beautiful piece of-- wait for it-- framing. The "Law" is consciously formulated to…

Not All That Much of a Paradox, Really

In general, EuerkAlert has been a useful source for drawing my attention to interesting things that I might not otherwise notice. Every now and then, though, there are press releases that just make me faintly embarrassed for everyone involved. Such as yesterday's announcement from LSU: Subhash Kak, Delaune Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at LSU, recently resolved the twin paradox, known as one of the most enduring puzzles of modern-day physics. [...]The fact that time slows down on moving objects has been documented and verified over the years through repeated…

John West

Right now, as we speak, I am giving John West brain cancer with my mind. Update: Jesus Christ Im bored. 'Seven Myths about Darwinism'-- the last 4 have been the same damn thing. I should have gotten drunk first. He answered 3 4 questions. 3. 3. 4. I didnt ask my big-gun Q, but I got him over misrepresenting the New Scientists article. Please act shocked he boasted about DARWIN WAS WRONG! Update #2: I really wish I brought my Nintendo DS to John Wests presentation on 'The Seven Myths of Darwinism'. I just started counting things I was so bored. But Ill list the 'seven' here for…