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razib | August 28, 2006As a child it seemed that everyone preferred Lion Voltron to Car Voltron. I was a contrarian and asserted that I preferred Car Voltron, and yet in my heart of hearts I knew Lion Voltron was the true bomb. Is there an evolutionary psychological reason why Lion Voltron would be more popular than Car Voltron? I mean, there are lions on national flags, but cars? Lions play a role in mythology, and C.S. Lewis even selected a lion as a Christ analogue. Could it be cognitively lions give us more "free information" and inferential power? Could it be that Lion Voltron simply fit into a more…
purepedantry | August 27, 2006You be the judge?
Meanwhile, Cruise has been busier pushing Scientology than anyone knew. According to a just-declassified State Department schedule, Cruise visited then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on June 13, 2003, just an hour after Armitage had met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. (It's speculated that Armitage outed Valerie Plame as a CIA spy at that meeting.)
Cruise was accompanied by Tom Davis, head of the L.A. Celebrity Center for Scientology, and Kurt Weiland, Scientology's veep of communications.
What was discussed? "Only Armitage can answer that question,…
stcynic | August 27, 2006Here's a very funny clip from comedian Greg Giraldo on getting old and watching Mtv.
stcynic | August 27, 2006I came across this picture on another blog. I have no idea where or why it was taken, but the juxtaposition of the three people in it is jarring to me. I wonder if Bin Laden is rethinking his love for Whitney now?
Did Ariel Sharon knock on their door and wake them up? Or did they dress like that on purpose?
grrlscientist | August 27, 2006My eyes are grey naturally ..
Your Eyes Should Be Green
Your eyes reflect: Striking attractiveness and danger
What's hidden behind your eyes: A vivid inner world
What Color Should Your Eyes Be?
Okay, since you know all of my secrets, dear readers, tell mo some of yours; what color are your eyes and what color does this test say they should be?
stcynic | August 26, 2006I found this on Youtube and wanted to share it with everyone. It's a video for the song Biko, by Peter Gabriel. Stephen Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist who was killed by the police in 1977 while in custody. I was at the Amnesty International concert in Chicago in 1986 and heard Peter Gabriel perform this song live. It's incredibly powerful. And if you ever get a chance, rent the movie Cry Freedom, which is about Biko and Donald Woods,a white journalist who escaped South Africa to tell his story to the world. It's an profound movie, with Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline…
pharyngula | August 25, 2006It's almost over, so work fast to wish archy a pleasant second half century.
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2006I'm going to NYC this weekend, and I was wondering what I would leave on the autoblogger thingee (I really do like that ScienceBlogs feature). Fortunately, some idiocy regarding stem cells came bubbling up from the comments.
The commentor writes:
I find it incredible that a child of holocaust survivors would be so dismissive of those who have concerns about experimentation on humans, even if they are embryos.
Sure, you think they are wrong, but your baseless arrogance and attitude of superiority to them is, well, just stupid.
This is then followed by his(?) usual screed about the…
tqa | August 25, 2006You are teaching the introductory "How to use the microscope" lab. Your students have done a cheek swab, made a slide, and are looking at it under the scope. A young woman in the class flags you down, and asks you to help her identify something on the slide. The object in question is smaller than the other cells on the slide, but is well preserved and clearly visible. It has a round head and long tail.
What do you do?
Do you:
A) In shock and unable to help yourself, say "That's sperm!" at a volume clearly heard throuhout the classroom
B) Whisper or write the word "sperm" so that only the…
tqa | August 25, 2006It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here goes.
This one looks a little more eclecitc than usual.
1: Flags of Freedom Neil Young
2: Begin the Begin REM
3: The Philosopher's Drinking Song Monty Python
4: For What It's Worth Rush
5: Lookin' for a Leader Neil Young
6: Me and Bobby McGee Janice Joplin
7: Democracy Leonard Cohen
8: Linger…
thusspakezuska | August 25, 2006Each year, Beloit College publishes a list that gives you a sense of what the world looks like to matriculating college students. Read the latest list and weep at just how out of touch you are with this year's entering college students.
stcynic | August 25, 2006As a follow up on the question of Christianity and Adolf Hitler, I refer you to this 2003 article in Free Inquiry. I don't agree with all of it, nor do I really put the blame for Hitler on Christianity (we must bear in mind that a great many Christians both risked and gave their lives to fight against Hitler and to protect his victims and hide them from Nazi soldiers). But I don't think any reasonable person familiar with the history could deny that centuries of Christian anti-semitism, found in both Catholic and Protestant traditions and advocated by prominent church fathers and theologians…
tqa | August 24, 2006For those of us who have been wondering why the FDA concluded that Plan B can safely be used by 17-year-olds, but should only be sold to those 18 and over, there is finally an answer: the FDA is afraid that pharmacists and pharmacy cashiers cannot correctly subtract. If you go to the FDA's latest website on Plan B, you will find links to pdf files for two memos, one by Center for Drug Evaluation and Research director Steven Galson, and one written by Acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach.
The Galson memo is largely silent on the 18-year-old age restriction, saying only:
Regarding the…
tqa | August 24, 2006Plan B has been approved, and the right-to-lifers are screaming bloody murder and threatening to sue, but they aren't the ones who lost. We are. We, in this case, means anyone who has an interest in good healthcare. We, in this case, means anyone who thinks that politics should not be involved in the approval of medications in this country. We, in this case, means anyone who believes that someone else's faith does not belong in their bedroom or body. We, in this case, means everyone who isn't part of the reactionary Christianist wing of the Republican Party. We all lost. They are crying…
stcynic | August 24, 2006We start with this excerpt from from his book The O'Reilly Factor:
My thing was the music: I was a dancing machine. Sock it to me, Donna Summer! Let's shake this place, Gloria Gaynor! Get down! Now, this was the lad of a quarter century ago, okay? But I make no apologies. I loved the all-out dancing, and quite a few girls loved to dance with me. The dancing got me dates. The dancing said (since you couldn't hear any words in those places under the rotating mirror balls), Hey, let's have some fun and see what happens next. Even Catholic girls had their inhibitions lowered by the howls of the…
stcynic | August 24, 2006Anthony D'Amato of the Northwestern University School of Law has a new paper available at SSRN that compares the statistics for the last 35 years on access to pornography and the incidence of rape. The religious right likes to argue that pornography increases rape, but the statistics certainly do not bear that out. The correlation actually cuts strongly the other way. As D'Amato points out, rape has decreased by 85% since 1970, while pornography has become vastly more available and more popular. That doesn't prove causation, of course, though there are hypotheses that make such an argument.…
purepedantry | August 23, 2006I don't really know why, but for some reason this Flickr page makes me want to buy an "I [Brain] Cognitive Science" T-shirt. Brainy women are hot.
Hat-tip: Mind Hacks.
stcynic | August 23, 2006I wonder what Godwin's law would say about this restaurant in India?
When Hitler's Cross restaurant opened four days ago in a Bombay suburb, local politicians and movie industry types were on hand to celebrate beneath the posters of the Nazi leader and swastikas.
The owner insisted then -- and still does -- that the name and theme of his new eatery is only meant to attract attention, even if it has outraged Bombay's Jewish community.
"It's really made people very upset that a person responsible for the massacre of 6 million Jews can be glorified," Elijah Jacob, one of the community's leaders…
stcynic | August 23, 2006God I love Youtube. Here's a series of clips from one of the funniest comics working today, Christopher Titus. The clips are from a one man show he did called Norman Rockwell is Bleeding. The show was absolutely brilliant, exploring his incredibly dysfunctional upbringing, with an alcoholic father and literally insane mother, and makes it both poignant and hilarious at the same time. That's not easy to pull off. I'll put just the intro here:
tqa | August 23, 2006Good rule of thumb for graduate classes:
If discussing a paper that you have not actually managed to finish (or possibly start) reading, quickly flip about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way into it, read a paragraph, and come up with a question/discussion point.