Haha, a funny
kcontreary | August 14, 2008One of my students in LSE's summer school microeconomics class sent me this video. At least I know something's sinking in when I talk about things happening on the margin...
purepedantry | July 7, 2008Found in an abstract:
The medial PFC, as well as the ventral tegmental area, also seem to participate in the generation of pelvic thrusting.
purepedantry | June 23, 2008George Carlin died yesterday.
I always loved his comedy, but more important to me Carlin affirmed my atheism at a time in my life when I didn't really know anyone else who felt that way. He poked fun at religion, and listening to his comedy made me feel like I wasn't weird to note the considerable irregularities.
Anyway, here is his best jab at religion:
When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit…
purepedantry | June 18, 2008This is pretty funny:
Why God Never Received Tenure at the University
1. He had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no cited references.
4. And it wasn't published in a refereed journal or even submitted for peer review.
5. And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world but what has he done since?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate his results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one…
purepedantry | June 3, 20081) Send you payment check in with the dollar value listed only as a complex limit.
Hat-tip: Zeitgeist
purepedantry | May 9, 2008This is funny. Daniel Drezner, having received the full professor status, lists the benefits:
6) Something better than that stupid f@#%ing pen ceremony. As this site observes, "The scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind in which mathematics professors ritualistically present pens to Nash was completely fabricated in Hollywood. No such custom exists."
In the actual ceremony, colleagues ritualistically present signed and notarized statements in which they confess that they were in error when they labeled your research as "putrid swill" back when you were a post-doc.
...
4) When required to wear…
purepedantry | May 8, 2008Stephen Colbert skewers as per usual...
"If we go to smaller cars, soon we'll be just like Europe."
Hat-tip: Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen
purepedantry | April 28, 2008This is pretty funny. Check out Dr. Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology.
Some of my favorites:
Evolutionary Psychology: A branch of psychology, unwittingly inspired by Charles Darwin and Rudyard Kipling, that describes how we behave through made up stores that guess why we had to behave. In this case, the stories are about what traits our ancestors had to evolve 250,000 years ago to survive. At that time, Mother Nature or evolution was especially demanding, and selected those behavioral traits that permitted survival, much like a mom selects out table manners in her kids. Since all the…
purepedantry | April 21, 2008This is from the Onion:
University of Iowa neuroscientists studying spatial learning and the effects of stress on memory announced Tuesday that a little son-of-a-bitch mouse ruined an experiment on cognitive performance by effortlessly navigating a maze that researchers spent nearly a year designing and constructing.
The test subject, a common house mouse, briskly traversed the complicated wooden maze in under 30 seconds or, according to the study's final report, roughly 1/8,789,258 as long as it took the lab to secure funding for the experiment. According to researchers administrating the…
purepedantry | April 17, 2008This is Megan McArdle on Cindy McCain's gaffe. She passed recipes from the Food Network off as her own:
The honorable thing to do is attribute, of course, but the McCain team still seems to be intent on pretending that Cindy McCain derives all of her recipes from First Principles.
I visualize a Cindy McCain in a lab coat furiously writing down the results of experiments and mixing bisque in a Ehrlenmeyer flask.
When it comes to recipes we are all hacks. Unless you have genetically engineered a new foodstuff, you are doing something that someone has done before.
kateseip | April 8, 2008Despite the stacks of research that I've had wonderful intentions of blogging on for a while now (one dealing with the origins of elephant testes, to Jake's delight), a brief post today will have to suffice.
You see things like this, and your heart just swells.
Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital
Bonus: I know the news anchor!
purepedantry | March 31, 2008From NPR this morning:
Students at the University of Texas at San Antonio were determined to uphold standards at their school. They wrote an honor code that discouraged both cheating and plagiarizing. But they weren't going to waste a lot of time writing the darn thing themselves. The wording of a draft of the honor code appears to match the honor code at Brigham Young University. The student in charge of the project says the lack of a proper citation was just an oversight.
Whoops. Not saying it was intentional, but if you are going to write something on plagiarism, make sure to use…
purepedantry | March 27, 2008The Biggest Toy Theory of Scientific endeavor: Science is not driven by curiosity or the desire for fame. Rather it is driven by the desire to accumulate bigger and more complex scientific gadgets. By this standard, particle physicists are gods walking among us. And if those gadgets could be used to irradiate a squirrel from a thousand miles a way, so much the better for all of us.
Exhibit A: The Large Hadron Collider (Click to enlarge)
purepedantry | March 5, 2008I got this flier from the American Academy of Neurology in the mail, and it cracked me up.
Check out under the title:
It actually says: "Now Featuring More Basic Science than Ever!"
Does that sound like a cereal commercial to anyone else?
American Academy of Neurology: Now with more cornflakes and fruity nut-clusters than ever!
Having never been to the AAN meeting, I have to ask: what was the major activity at these meetings before? Dancing and carousing? I guess it must have been medical practice lectures because that is the only thing I can think of them going away from...
High-five…
purepedantry | March 3, 2008I don't know if you have seen these, but Florida Orange Juice started a new ad campaign featuring commercials with the voice of Tom Selleck. (Magnum PI does like his orange juice.)
Anyway, the commercials show a beaker into which is being poured OJ. Tom Selleck then proceeds to say:
"Food scientists have spent years with their beakers and flasks and chemistry sets, trying to come up with something as good for you as Florida orange juice," says Selleck's deep baritone. "But they've never come close. Start your day with almost 25 percent of your daily recommended fruit and vegetable servings…
purepedantry | February 28, 2008This is just for Kara. A really common textbook for introductory economics classes is Greg Mankiw's. In the first chapter, he lists 10 principles of economics.
This guy has translated them into terms lay people can understand. Heads up: people are stupid. Just so you know what to expect... (video below fold)
Hat-tip: Megan McArdle
purepedantry | January 16, 2008This is too funny. My Mom sent this to me.
I don't know if people outside Colorado know who Doug Bruce is. He is this anti-tax activist from Colorado Springs who championed what is called the TABOR amendment -- an amendment that limits the ability of the Colorado state government's ability to raise taxes or increase spending. Anyway, he is extreme to say the least, and he was just elected into the CO State House of Representatives.
So when he is being sworn in, he kicks a photographer for taking a picture of him while he is praying at the beginning of the ceremony. Everyone was kind of…
purepedantry | December 14, 2007Sadly we are all susceptible. I spent like thirty minutes trying to ponder the answer to the question in this cartoon. Thanks xkcd. (Click to enlarge.)
This is a real issue for me. In order to get any work done, I have to barricade myself in what can be charmingly referred to as my "nerdtress of solitude" -- otherwise known as my windowless office.
purepedantry | December 11, 2007What does Jake do when he has nothing to do? (Actually Jake has quite a bit to do, but he is desperately avoiding writing a manual for the use of MATLAB for his labmates, and for this purpose nearly anything short of dental surgery will do.)
Choice #1: Read his friend's blogs. Why not? It is not like any of us have more productive things to do than inspect the inane details of our friend's work lives.
Usually pretty dry, but every so often you are rewarded with comic gold. For example, this choice comment from Jess Wade, my friend who works at Penguin publishing in the fantasy and scifi…