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grrlscientist | May 31, 2006Lack of sleep can affect your reaction times. This is a cute online game that tests how alert you are and also reveals the impact of a cup of tea or coffee on your performance. What was your reaction time? Did it improve after a cup of coffee or tea?
I have not tried this after a cup of coffee or tea. Yet.
Update 1: okay, after one cup of black tea, my reaction times are improving: 0.2042 seconds and counting (down), although I still rank as a bobbing bobcat. Next experiment: coffee.
Update 2: after a decent night's sleep and one vente iced latte, my reaction times have improved. I am now a…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2006I am sorry for my relative silence, but I have been experiencing several troubles recently. First, and worst, a stranger on the sidewalk bumped into me and knocked my laptop out of my hands such that it fell to the pavement, where it dented one corner and compromised the structural integrity of the metal case. It still functions, but I have to get it repaired. Besides the fact that my laptop is only six months old, it is the most expensive object I've ever owned, so I am just sick about this. I am heavily dependent upon my laptop for nearly everything from writing, communication and job…
stcynic | May 31, 2006Doug Theobald pointed out to me this morning that there is a larger misrepresentation in Paul Nelson's comments of a couple weeks ago. In his comments he said, in response to the list of theistic evolutionists that included Keith Miller, Howard Van Till, Ken Miller, Terry Gray and John Polkinghorne:
"Here's the problem though. All of them accept a philosophy of science that excludes intelligent causation by definition."
But that is absolutely false, as the response from Keith Miller shows (and it is equally demonstrable from the writings of the others on the list). And this lie has been told…
stcynic | May 31, 2006Radley Balko links to this hilarious story:
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the…
stcynic | May 30, 2006Keith Miller has asked me to make available the entire transcript of the exchange between he and Paul Nelson. To do so would require substantial editing on my part to format it here, so I'm just going to make the word file available for download instead. It is unedited by me and Keith assures me that it is the ful text of the exchange. To download the file, click here.
stcynic | May 30, 2006Paul Nelson has left a comment on the previous post that detailed his misrepresentation of the views of Keith Miller during an email exchange. He asked Miller for the full exchange and has now pasted in part of that exchange that, apparently, he believes vindicates his representation of Miller's views as accurate. Unfortunately for him, it does no such thing. Below the fold, I'll post the full comment from Nelson and then explain why he has done nothing to free himself from the charge of dishonesty.
Keith Miller kindly provided me with the remainder of our ASA correspondence about inferring…
grrlscientist | May 29, 2006
I have been working on Birds in the News for several hours already on this humid day, so I thought I was the only one writing a blog entry today. I was wrong. The Big Apple Blog Festival, issue 33, is now available for your reading pleasure. As the name suggests, this carnival is all about NYC, what it's like to live here, what people do to entertain themselves, where they go, and on and on. Oddly, especially in view of the fact that there are 9 million people living in NYC, and there are thousands of blog writers here, this carnival has become rather sporadic in its publication schedule for…
grrlscientist | May 29, 2006The mothership recently began asking us a question each week and then linking to our answers each Wednesday in a blog carnival-like format from the staff blog, Stochastic. (more about the rules here). This week's question is;
Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?
"Justify?" No. The public does not have a clear and precise understanding of scientific research so the public is not qualified to make decisions about how research money should be spent…
grrlscientist | May 28, 2006Thanks to my blog sibling, Orac, I now know how I will die;
What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
You will be sucked dry by a leech. I'd stay away from swimming holes, and stick to good old cement. Even if it does hurt like hell when your toe scrapes the bottom.Take this quiz!
Quizilla |
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| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code
And I thought I was going to be run over by a speeding bus. ...
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tags: online quiz, Edward Gorey
stcynic | May 27, 2006I have returned home from a day of baking in the hot sun to watch my best friend's kids play baseball and softball. It was blisteringly hot and I just scrubbed off the shell of sunscreen and sweat that had accumulated on my during the course of the day. But a good time was had by all. I also got to stop in at one of my favorite old haunts and was happy to see it was still there. I've spent many an hour in the Avalon Bookshop, a tiny little used book store in the town I grew up in. The place doesn't even have a real sign outside, just a paper one taped to the window. It's run by this old guy…
grrlscientist | May 27, 2006This is an online personality test, based on your drawing of a pig. I wanted to save my picture of a pig to share with you because I thought it was rather nice, especially considering that it was drawn online and freehand. Unfortunately, this site does not keep your picture available for very long after you've finished drawing it so be sure to "grab" it before it goes away forever.
I'll show you my results if you show me yours!
Ho-hum, inaccurate as usual, but I'll spare you the details.
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tags: online quiz, personality test, draw a pig
grrlscientist | May 27, 2006
The "Phylogeny" of Scientific Life.
Image: created by Websites as Graphics.
KEY: What do these colored dots mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags
After PZ posted the graphical representation of web tags for his blog, I couldn't resist doing the same for my site, especially since this graphic superficially…
grrlscientist | May 27, 2006
Take the quiz: What kind of cat are you?Alcoholic CatYou like beer and bars. Maybe you should calm it down before you get a beer belly, if you don't already have one.
Hey, this quiz is rigged, methinks! Quite honestly, I cannot afford an alcohol habit (my so-called "rent habit" leaves little for anything else!). Besides, I went back and changed all my overtly alcohol-related quiz responses (momentary lapses into wishful thinking, anyway) to something that is a little more respectable and realistic and the quiz still insists that I am an "alcoholic cat"! WTF?? Anyway, that said, what kind of…
stcynic | May 26, 2006I'm leaving town this morning and won't be back until Saturday evening. I'm going to visit my parents and watch my niece and nephew play softball and baseball, respectively. But I've not forgotten you all. I've got a few posts written that I've scheduled to post this morning every so often so you all have something to argue about while I'm gone. If any more of Larry's imaginary brothers show up, feel free to maim them.
grrlscientist | May 25, 2006This is a humble blog, as you know. I certainly do not talk about politics here as much as I do in real life, and everyone knows that writing about politics is the best way to gain a large and devoted readership. But I am most amazed and astonished to report that as of this moment, Living the Scientific Life has received more than 244,623 visits (122,499 as of 12 January 2006 at this site and 122,124 since 12 September 2004 at its original blogger site).
Thank you so very much, dear readers, for making me a small part of your life.
ddobbs | May 25, 2006My Scientific American Mind article on mirror neurons is out, and includes some amusing and apt photographs and art. Mirror neurons, as the story explains, are motor neurons that fire not only when we perform an action (like reaching for an apple) but when we see someone else perform an action -- or even, as it turns out, when we read, think, or hear about someone performing that action. This mechanism, discovered about a decade ago, seems to underlie much motor, social, and even cultural learning.
You can read the story here or buy the digital version online via Scientific American Mind.
stcynic | May 25, 2006According to Fox News:
It's now possible to replace a defective, damaged, or diseased penis with a penis grown in a laboratory -- in rabbits.
But the finding promises an amazing new treatment for infants, boys, and men who suffer penis disfigurement. The replacement organ would be grown on a penis-shaped matrix seeded with cells from the patient's own body.
There appears to be no truth to the rumors that the artificial penii look like Bill O'Reilly. It's odd that this was done at a Baptist university in North Carolina. An hour south, and the procedure would have been illegal. And in a related…
stcynic | May 25, 2006Well folks, the mystery has been solved once and for all. And - surprise, surprise - Larry is lying through his teeth. Here's what he had to say on his blog when someone told him that I had traced the IP addresses and found that the 2nd Dave came from his IP address:
I don't know if Ed Brayton said that, but if he did, he is full of shit.
For starters, Ed Brayton could be lying, and being the lousy scumbag he is, this is a strong possibility. But even if he is not lying, he is still full of shit. I use dial-up service, and my computer's local IP address changes every time I log on to AOL, but…
stcynic | May 25, 2006Jack Balkin pretty much nails the hypocrisy of Hastert and Pelosi and the other Congressmen throwing a fit about the raid on Jefferson's office:
The Bush Administration has, over the past six years, detained American citizens without any of the protections of the Bill of Rights, engaged in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, imposed new forms of secrecy to insulate itself from oversight both by the Press and by Congress, used the state secrets privilege to shut down any investigation into its mistreatment of detainees, hid and prevaricated about the evidence justifying, the…
stcynic | May 25, 2006This is interesting. Yesterday, someone claiming to be Larry Fafarman's brother, Dave, left a comment here. Larry is claiming that it's not really his brother. But then another Dave Fafarman shows up and says he's the real one and demanding the removal of the first one. Now, as you might imagine, I find this whole thing quite amusing.
However, at least one thing that the first brother said has been confirmed: he is indeed a member of the NCSE. That's not the sort of thing that would be public knowledge about Larry's brother, so that would seem to lend credibility to his claim. So at the…