biology
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Meta Stuff
ICYMI: Emmy Noether, Stay-at-Home Dads, and the War on Experts
Teen Skepchick The Physics Philes, lesson 84: My Damp Collection Mindy examines how oscillations slow to a stop. What it Means to be a Woman in Nerd Culture: The Fake Geek Girl Alice discusses one aspect of what it’s like to be a lady nerd. Mad Art Lab What Can You Tell from a Color-Coded Chromosome? Color-coded cells are beautiful,…
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Meta Stuff
ICYMI: January 12 – January 18 on the Skepchick Network
Teen Skepchick Danica McKellar’s Fun Little Bites of Mathy Goodness Elisheba reviews Math Bites, the new web series aimed at getting girls interested in math. Will You Be Disappointed in Me? Olivia pinpoints one of the hardest things about being a millennial. Why Skepticism Needs Social Justice, and a Call to Arms Grim argues that not only does skepticism benefit…
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Meta Stuff
ICYMI: November 24 – November 30 on the Skepchick Network
Teen Skepchick The Physics Philes, lesson 75: Physics and Biology! Living Together! In Space! Mindy explores what apparent weightlessness is and what happens to the human body in sustained weightlessness. Suspension of Disbelief: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire Olivia reviews the second installment of the Hungar Games franchise. Mad Art Lab Sagan Day 2013 Repost – We All Live on…
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Featured
Is Sexual Orientation a Biological Sex Trait?
In a recent article on Neurologica, Steven Novella made the following claim: Biologically there are three aspects of sex – primary sexual characteristics (genitalia and reproductive organs) secondary sexual characteristics (distribution of hair and body fat), and sexual orientation. This is a claim I have encountered before, so I want to take this opportunity to debunk the notion that sexual…
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Activism
Why Did Almost All Answers on Quora Make My Head Explode? (Part Last)
Welcome to the final installment of “WTF is wrong with you, Slate? Why are you posting this crap?” If you haven’t already, you may want to read parts one and two. Let’s get right into the last three paragraphs of Dan’s answer. We (and I’m a passionate gender egalitarian) may want to say it was because of “those prejudiced men…
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Feminism
Why Did Almost All Answers on Quora Make My Head Explode? (Part Two)
Yesterday, I wrote about an absurd question which was answered on Quora and cross-posted to Slate, increasing the internet’s exposure to faulty, mythical beliefs about human nature by probably at least a bazillion-fold. Today, I’m going to deconstruct the answer to that question provided by one Dan Holliday. Bear with me, because it’s a lot of bullshit to unpack, and…
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Feminism
Why Did Almost All Questions on Quora Make My Head Explode? (Part One)
Over on Slate, there is an article that was cross-posted from an answer to this question on Quora’s Feminism category: “Why did almost all societies believe that women were inferior to men?” Quora is basically like a glorified Yahoo! Answers, and it is premised on the idea that people can pose questions and random other people “with first-hand experience” will…
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Feminism
Essentialist Neuroscience
Despite the best efforts of a few awesome scholars, essentialism is alive and well in the neurosciences. An article posted on Salon on August 5 describes the results of a study in Behavioral Brain Research wherein the authors reviewed research done on sex/gender (they conflate the two) differences in a decision-making experiment known as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The…
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