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stcynic | March 27, 2006I've been trying like hell to find up to date information on the National Debate Tournament. The most recent information I could find last night was after the first elimination round when it was down to 16 teams. The way it works at NDT is that everyone with a 5-3 record goes to the elimination rounds and they have a partial double octofinal. In this case they had 30 teams with 5-3 records or better so the top two teams received a bye in the first elimination round and the next 28 debated each other to determine the other 14 teams that would make the octofinals. Apparently, Emory's top team…
razib | March 26, 2006Does my blog own me? Since girl scientist started it, I Ihad to go along....
18.75 %
My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.Does your weblog own you?
grrlscientist | March 26, 2006
62.5 %
My weblog owns 62.5 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?
I am especially curious to know what my blog siblings scored on this quiz. I think my results are skewed since I am unhappily unemployed, which means that I have no meaningful life whatsoever, outside of my blog, that is. And depending upon whom you speak to about the relative value of blogs, even that assertion is suspect.
tags: online quiz
grrlscientist | March 25, 2006
You Passed the US Citizenship Test
Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!
Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?
How did you do? I almost missed one of the questions (more below the fold)
Question 5; the year that the Constitution was written was .. 1787, but I went back and forth between that date and 1786. I finally just guessed that it was 1787.
tags: online quiz
stcynic | March 25, 2006I'm going to be on tonight with the HIllbilly Atheist. For those who don't know him, the Hillbilly Atheist is a good ol' boy from Oklahoma who is extremely funny. He has a radio show on the Freethought Media network, which is owned by the Infidel Guy. To listen to the show, click here. On the right hand side an inch or two below the top are three links tha say "Listen At" and it has three speeds, 128K, 48K and 24K. You actually don't need the top speed for it to sound good. We go on the air at 8 pm eastern time.
You can see a profile of the Hillbilly Atheist here and you can download some of…
grrlscientist | March 25, 2006
Here's a little pronounciation quiz that diagnoses if you are a Yankee (northern USA) or a Rebel (southern USA). The Alpha Dictionary will compute your score and tell you where you're coming from: are you (all) speaking Dixie English or are you(se) a Yankee Doodle Dandy? The higher your score, the deeper from the south you are coming; the lower your score, the more northern you are.
What's your score?
My score: 25% Dixie. I am a Yankee Doodle Dandy.
This makes sense since I am a true northern bicoastal grrl, and have been so my entire life (well, I've lived farther south on the west…
tlambert | March 25, 2006
One of the less pleasant parts of my job is talking to students that I have caught plagiarizing assignments. All too often, rather than admit to copying they will tell me clumsy lies and blame somebody else. Which brings us to Ben Domenech. Instead of admitting to his obvious plagiarism he claims that an editor repeatedly inserted plagiarized material into his pieces and that PJ O'Rourke personally gave him permission to copy his material. This isn't the best story he could come up with, since it was possible to check with his editor and O'Rourke who refuted his lies (Hat tip: Atrios).…
stoat | March 24, 2006Scientists forecast metre rise in sea levels this century says The Grauniad. I strongly suspect they have garbled things, though I admit I haven't read the original Science paper. I have read the NCAAR/UCAR press release Arctic, Antarctic Melting May Raise Sea Levels Faster than Expected.
The Grauniad continues Half of Greenland and vast areas of Antarctica are destined to melt if global warming continues at the same pace until the end of the century, scientists warned yesterday. Their research shows that the loss of so much ice will trigger dramatic rises in sea levels, ultimately swamping…
tsmith | March 24, 2006 So, much attention has been drawn to my comment pointing out that Rebecca Culshaw is a mathematician (well, isn't she?), while my elaboration in my very next comment was ignored. So I thought I'd take some time to highlight this, and discuss the problems in general with arguments from authority.
Let me review a bit:
When I made the "mathematician" statement, I was responding to Hank's promotion of Culshaw's post: "Here is a great piece by Dr. Culshaw, a Professor of Mathematics at University of Texas which elucidates the issue." Hank suggested this reference instead of the 3 sources…
stcynic | March 24, 2006I'd like to comment on a few more excerpts from the translation of the UN report. It's stunning how morally myopic this report is and how thoroughly they manage to point all the blame in the wrong direction. To wit:
The caricatures published are the result of a contest launched by the newspaper in answer to allegations according to which the Danish cartoonists were so frightened by fundamentalist Moslems that they wouldn't illustrate a biographical work on Muhammed. Thus the original motivation of the contest is the expression of a challenge and of an opposition to a group, the fundamentalist…
stcynic | March 23, 2006As a follow up to all the Liberty University nonsense, I thought I'd mention that this weekend is the NDT championships. They're being held at Northwestern. Tonight is the opening ceremonies, where they give away the Copeland Award to the top team during the regular season. This award is voted on and this year the top three are teams from Harvard, Berkeley and Michigan State. I just got off the phone with Will Repko, the MSU coach and a friend for nearly 20 years, who was on the road with his team on their way to the tournament and I wished them luck.
MSU probably has 2, maybe 3, teams in the…
stcynic | March 23, 2006The Pew Research Center has released the results of a national survey with some very good news for advocates of gay marriage. The good thing is that it's a tracking survey that has been done since 2003, so you can measure how attitudes have changed. The findings are very positive:
Public acceptance of homosexuality has increased in a number of ways in recent years, though it remains a deeply divisive issue. Half of Americans (51%) continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage, but this number has declined significantly from 63% in February 2004, when opposition spiked following the Massachusetts…
grrlscientist | March 23, 2006Animalcules, Issue 4 is now available. Animalcules is a small but growing bi-weekly blog carnival that focuses on all things microbial and, as usual, it includes some really fine writing. This issue, the first one to travel through the blogopshere, is being hosted by my blog pal, Bora, author of Science and Politics. Surprisingly, and unknown to me until this morning, he included a little something from Scientific Life, too.
tags: blog carnival
razib | March 22, 2006I saw The New World last night. It was pretty dull, but can anyone else see the resemblence between Q'Orianka Kilcher and Jewel Kilcher?
(coefficient of relatedness 1/8)
stcynic | March 22, 2006This, folks, is why liberty is infinitely more important than democracy. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we installed more or less democratic governments. But in both cases, with wide public support, the constitutions also allow for the imposition of Sharia, or Islamic law, and that insures that no matter how democratic the governments there will be no genuine freedom. There are two perfect examples going on right now that prove my argument.
In Afghanistan, they are prosecuting Abdul Rahman for apostasy because he converted from Islam to Christianity. He was arrested for this "crime" after his…
grrlscientist | March 22, 2006The 183rd edition of The Carnival of the Vanities is now available. This blog carnival does not cater to any particular topic or field; rather, its focus is to draw the public's attention to the very best writing about any subject or issue that has been recently published on a blog. This edition of The Carnival of the Vanities features a story about the Chinese blogger, Wu Hao, who was recently arrested, and it also links to a lot of writing about the war in Iraq that you will want to read. I am pleased to tell you that the host included my contribution in his "Pick of the Week" category.…
stcynic | March 22, 2006The UN report that I mentioned the other day concerning Denmark and the uproar over the Muhammed caricatures is now available online, but not in English. Agora (not to be confused with In the Agora) has a partial translation here and a post on the subject here. It provides a good opportunity to look at how legal language can be vague enough to mean whatever someone wants it to mean. Listen to this bureaucratic nonsense from the UN representative:
Their uncompromising defense of a Freedom of Speech without limits or restrictions is not in accordance with the international rules which are based…
grrlscientist | March 22, 2006I had meant to write more about my experiences at NYU last night, dear readers, but that will have to wait a little while because I went home early last night (tired) and because I have been struggling with a pinched nerve in my back that acts up whenever I become exceptionally stressed out (or whenever something good happens to me). This time, my little demon decided to awaken me from my sleep at 203 AM, and refused to respond to one pain pill, so 45 minutes later, I took a second one, which did the trick. As you might imagine, at the moment, I am floating around mindlessly in a cloud of…
jlynch | March 22, 2006I have to admit to having taught students that essentialism - the belief that species have an essence and thus could not evolve - was prevalent prior to Darwin. This was something I got from reading the writings of Ernst Mayr. Now along comes John Wilkins who argues "essentialism in biology postdates Darwin, and was in fact due to the revival of Thomism among German and French speaking Catholic biologists who were reacting to the metaphysical views of people like Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel." He notes that Aquinas' De ente et essentia [link] is the first example of the "argument from…