Culture
sheril | September 24, 2008So uh, anyone else besides Letterman and I wondering why Sarah Palin can't take over? Because that's sort of, you know, the whole VP role...
Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain made a surprise announcement that he was suspending his presidential campaign and called on Democratic rival Barack Obama to postpone their first debate until Congress hammers out a plan to steady the financial markets.
Obama rebuffed McCain, saying it's ``more important than ever'' for the candidates to tell voters how they would deal with the crisis. He said they can work with Congress while campaigning. ``It is…
cmooney | September 24, 2008My latest Science Progress column just went up: It's about the controversies surrounding CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which many people crazily think is going to open up black holes, turn us all into strangelet particles, etc. There's no basis for it--but, there was a good deal of basis for scientists to expect this kind of public reaction. For the Large Hadron saga is, as I write,
...a particularly noteworthy example of what is today almost a general principle regarding major scientific events that draw mass attention. Members of the public, having scarcely followed the underlying research…
sheril | September 24, 2008Sure, it's only an advertisement, but when 'bounty hunter' makes the list before 'research scientist' (except with regard to forensics, likely due to cable tv), it seems to me science can use a bit of a PR boost, no?
Then there's also this annoying animated ad rotating in play on our right sidebar. Folks, we have no control over these and I hope Seed takes it down immediately. I'm not buying Reebok.
razib | September 23, 2008Austin Bramwell makes a point that has been noted elsewhere:
Instead, perhaps a plurality of the rich private school kids in Manhattan--even at historically Protestant schools--are Jewish. The Jewish Daily Forward goes so far as to report that Trinity and Dalton, two of the top private schools in New York, are “largely Jewish.” An entire media industry follows the lavish bar mitzvahs of Manhattan private school kids. The closest real-world model for the high school in Gossip Girl, The Dalton School, has historically been the most recherché school for Jewish New Yorkers. (Most WASPs prefer to…
sheril | September 21, 2008
More pics with readers, bloggers, and zoo critters from Bora and ScienceWoman... We had so much fun that I seem to have forgotten to step into photos.
* UPDATE: More pics here, here (where I actually make a cameo), and here.
razib | September 19, 2008You might have heard that Richard Dawkins' website has been blocked in Turkey because of that moron Harun Yahya (H/T Thabet). Here's the justification:
His press assistant, Seda Aral, said: "We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people. We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not."
This isn't that strange of a claim; contemporary Anglo-American and to a lesser extent Continental…
sheril | September 19, 2008Don't forget to join Bora, Abel PharmBoy, Greta and Dave, James Hrynyshyn, ScienceWoman, Kevin Zelnio, SciCurious, Russ Williams and I at Scienceblogs one millionth comment party at the North Carolina Zoo!
Meet us tomorrow at the North America entrance at 1 p.m.
razib | September 19, 2008The intelligent can be wrong very coherently. The intelligent can be right very coherently. The stupid can be wrong very incoherently. The stupid can be right very incoherently. The intelligent can do some stupid things very quickly. The stupid can do many stupid things very slowly. The intelligent are good at extrapolating, so they can assert the absurd rationally from absurd axioms. The unintelligent are not good at extrapolating, so they may reject the absurd from absurd axioms, despite acceding to absurd axioms because of their lack of inferential capacity.
razib | September 18, 2008Excellent summary. I don't have anything to add obviously; I've heard/read all the fragments, but nice to see it all in one place from people in the know. H/T The Elf.
razib | September 18, 2008In my post below responding to David Goldstein's implication that intelligence has been subject to strong directional selection I put up a chart from the GSS which illustrated the fact that women who have weaker vocabularies tend to have more children. If you don't believe that intelligence "means anything," and that it isn't heritable, read no further.
On the other hand, if you think intelligence as measured by something like a vocabulary test is important and that it is heritable, below the fold I've placed some charts which show the same relationship between number of children and vocab…
razib | September 14, 2008A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics:
Volumes of research show that people in different geographic regions differ psychologically. Most of that work converges on the conclusion that there are geographic differences in personality and values, but little attention has been paid to developing an integrative account of how those differences emerge, persist, and become expressed at the geographic level. Drawing from research in psychology and other social sciences, we present a theoretical account of the mechanisms through…
razib | September 12, 2008As I mentioned earlier, I bought the domain stuffscientistslike.com, and have set up a minimal weblog, Stuff Scientists Like. I'll post there now and then, and plan on constructing a quiz similar to the one for Stuff White People Like after I get a large enough list.
razib | September 11, 2008Andrew Sullivan responded to my post, Science is rational; scientists are not:
...One of the greatest errors of modernity is simply conflating the truths of one world of experience with the truths of another. I guess Michael Oakeshott instilled in me the sense that this confusion is the central intellectual problem of modernity. It is indeed at the root of a great deal of our difficulties. It is a mistake to apply the truths of science to that of history or aesthetics or politics. They are simply different categories of understanding the world. And the most profound mistake in human thought…
razib | September 11, 2008Guadalupe Storm-Petrel has a post, Stuff Scientists Like. Here' a few things I'll add to this list....
1 - Proofs. Because you're certain.
2 - LaTeX. Because non-nerds get confused and might think you're talking dirty.
3 - Precision. Because you can't always be certain, but would like to reduce your uncertainty.
4 - Computers. Because they're more rational than you.
5 - Food chemistry. Food + science ⇔ heaven!
I actually bought the domain stuffscientistslike.com, so I'll be collecting submissions there.
sheril | September 11, 2008originally published September 11, 2007
Dear New York,
We've been together a long time and although I'm terribly unfaithful, you always welcome me back with open arms because you know no matter how many states I've slept in, I'm yours. And truth be told, I love you. You're my city - center of the universe - and there will never be another to take your place in my heart. DC and Maine were fun, North Carolina's been good to me, and I'll never forget the college years in Boston.. but New York - you ROCK my world! You'll always be home.
Two years ago I composed an OpEd to commemorate the…
razib | September 9, 2008My two previous posts, Science is rational; scientists are not and its follow up Scientists are rational?, generated a lot of response. I would like to clarify and refine my thoughts and some of the arguments brought up in the comments. Some propositions:
- A few scientists are responsible for most scientific advancement
- The practice of science has varied as a function of time; e.g., the gentlemen scholar of the Victorian Age vs. the modern scientific-industrial complex which necessitates the grant-monkey
- Even the brilliant scientists who are responsible for most productivity are…
sheril | September 9, 2008According to John Tierney:
It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India's or Zimbabwe's than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.
These findings are so counterintuitive that some researchers have argued they must be because of cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But after…