purepedantry
Posts by this author
January 30, 2008
My Friday rant about intellectuals triggered lots of interesting comments, both positive and negative.
Treb:
I know it was a "rant", but, wow, is it ever funny to hear someone rant that they are open-minded and someone else is not. Sounds like a high school column about trying to be cool.
caynazzo…
January 30, 2008
I took the Jeopardy contestant search exam online last night on a whim, and quite frankly it kicked my ass. Did anyone else take it?
The format of the test is 50 multiple choice questions for which you have 15 seconds to respond. Let me just tell you that 15 seconds is just enough time to choke…
January 30, 2008
I was distressed to read this at Wired because usually I feel like they are more on top of things. This is by Thomas Hayden:
Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can't really embrace it. Science describes the world with numbers (ratio of circumference to diameter: pi) and…
January 29, 2008
The NYTimes has an article today about the "science" of online match-making. I put that in quotes because there really isn't any clear evidence about whether it works either way.
You have no doubt seen the ads on TV for the two most popular match-making sites: eHarmony and Chemistry.com. These…
January 25, 2008
Intellectuals, I have had it with your crap. I have had it with your Laputan thinking and your Utopian fantasies. I have had it with the assumption that people who do not instantaneously agree with you are somehow mentally deficient.
I have had it with being lectured by people who know nothing…
January 24, 2008
This review by Luiz Pessoa in Nature Neuroscience Reviews has to be the most intelligent things I have read in a long time. He argues that the notion that cognition and emotion are separable modules -- a notion that permeates the popular impression of the brain in our society (and more than a few…
January 23, 2008
I am pleased to announce that Pure Pedantry is being joined by another wonderful, erudite and articulate co-blogger: Kate Seip. Kate formerly ran a blog called Anterior Commissure that many of you have probably read. She is a PhD student at Rutgers, and she also co-organizes the Science…
January 23, 2008
This paper was covered by CNN last week, and I didn't have a chance to talk about it then. It is a case study by Tobinick and Gross in the Journal of Neuroinflammation where a patient with Alzheimer's disease (AD) injected intrathecally (into their spinal fluid) with a TNF-alpha antagonist called…
January 22, 2008
kevin had this to say on my post about cosmologists speculating that floating brains could appear in empty space:
A good scientific principle: if you theory yields results that are patently ridiculous...
I disagree with the way you wrote this. "patently rediculous" according to what standard? The…
January 22, 2008
A lot of people on ScienceBlogs are talking about this paper, Hockings et al., which shows that male chimps will trade food for sex. The food in this case is papayas stolen from nearby farms; foraged food is apparently not traded in particularly large amounts. The chimps will also give papayas to…
January 21, 2008
A Book Of Music
by Jack Spicer
Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end.…
January 21, 2008
xkcd is not only awesome, but also wise. Exhibit A:
Quantum Pontiff has an awesome post explaining a concept from quantum theory called contextuality using a surprisingly easy to understand example of Santa and his elves.
These guys use an industrial robotic arm to hurl fireballs. Sweet. (Hat-…
January 21, 2008
Although typically Americans have greater and more rapid access to surgical procedures than people in other countries, we do not possess a uniform superiority in the speed of health care access. One excellent example of this is visiting the Emergency Room. ER wait times have been increasing…
January 18, 2008
That's right. I'm talking to you, Lou Dobbs of CNN.
What fascinates me about you is that although you are a thug of at least comparable measure to Bill O'Reilly -- what with your nightly anti-immigrant rants -- your thuggery seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the liberal establishment. If…
January 17, 2008
In neuroscience, we spend a lot of time studying the normal function of the nervous system, and we spend a lot of time studying disease processes that can impair this function. What we don't typically do is study how functional recovery can happen. Functional recovery is how an neurological…
January 16, 2008
So some of the SciBlings have been playing with one of the newer "rate-your-impact" websites called QDos. (The Internet is such a narcissistic place.) Basically, through an algorithm I don't entirely understand, it calculates the impact factor of your name. You can then compare it to other names…
January 16, 2008
From a previously unexamined skull, scientists have established that 8 foot long, 1,500 pound rats roamed South America 4 million years ago:
Imagine a rodent that weighed a ton and was as big as a bull. Uruguayan scientists say they have uncovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent…
January 16, 2008
Finally:
A long-awaited final report from the Food and Drug Administration concludes that foods from healthy cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as those from ordinary animals, effectively removing the last U.S. regulatory barrier to the marketing of meat and milk from cloned cattle,…
January 16, 2008
This 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…
January 15, 2008
Dennis Overbye of the NYTimes had this to say of cosmologists who are speculating about disembodied brains spontaneously generated in empty space:
If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists, who gave us dark matter, dark energy and speak with…
January 15, 2008
The Unknown Citizen
by W. H. Auden
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
…
January 15, 2008
In response my book review of Russell Korobkin's Stem Cell Century, John Thacker responded:
The sad fact of the matter is that Korobkin may have identified the moral premise underlying Bush Administration policy generally, not just for stem cell research. A similar moral premise seems to be at work…
January 14, 2008
Scientists at the University of Minnesota have created new beating hearts in culture using a technique called decellularization:
Decellularization is the process of removing all of the cells from an organ -- in this case an animal cadaver heart -- leaving only the extracellular matrix, the…
January 14, 2008
Ronald Bailey at Reason also argues that whether a Presidential candidate believes in evolution matters:
Does it matter what presidential candidates believe about biological evolution? After all, they are running for commander-in-chief, not scientist-in-chief. For example, why not practice…
January 11, 2008
I hate you IO Digital Cable. I haven't the foggiest idea where you are or what you sell but I hate you. I hate you because of this commercial (see below fold) which has been running on a continuous loop on cable and has now been shown 4,000,000,000 times in NYC alone.
(Picture of Angry Crab by…
January 10, 2008
Canto XIVby Ezra Pound
Io venni in luogo d'ogni luce muto;
The stench of wet coal, politicians
. . . . . . . . . . e and. . . . . n, their wrists bound to
their ankles,
Standing bare bum,
Faces smeared on their rumps,
wide eye on flat buttock,
Bush hanging for beard,
Addressing crowds…
January 10, 2008
Presh from Mind Your Decisions has this exquisite game theory post explaining how you maximize your chances of finding your true love by dumping the first 37% of people you date:
For the sake of this discussion, I define true love as the best person who is willing to date you. Even if that's not…
January 10, 2008
This question came down the pipeline from the SEED overlords:
Why don't they make a birth control pill for men?
The short answer is that they do make various methods of contraception for men, but most of the more effective ones are surgical rather than pharmacological. Also, given the early…
January 10, 2008
Boo Universe! Boo American politics and your absence of choices!
You can try this electoral quiz that tells you who you should vote for here. The Universe has apparently determined that I should vote for Ron Paul -- which is really unfortunate for the Universe because I ain't doin' it.
Try for…
January 9, 2008
Keeping with my attempt to actually do book reviews, I have the first of what will hopefully be a continuing series. I am reviewing Stem Cell Century by UCLA Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy contributor Russell Korobkin -- with Stephen Munzer in some chapters.
This book examines the legal,…