- An interview with the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who has a fascinating story. (From Jacob.)
- “In the rush to prove bias in a scientist who erroneously used skull-size measurements to demonstrate racial differences, the great historian Stephen Jay Gould may have succumbed to bias himself.” (From cerberus40.)
- Hollywood’s latest threat to humanity is a glacier. A really fast glacier. (From Paul.)
- Dreaming for women: Stephanie Zvan’s commencement advice.
From the last link:
Awesome.
Oops, that was supposed to be a blockquote. Does that not work anymore?
Cause it needs to be said: http://xkcd.com/86/
That is freakin’ awesome. *snaffles*
I thought the 2012: Ice Age link was a parody until I googled it.
Stephen Jay Gould was in the Simpsons episode where he lies about doing any actual analysis of the “angel” bones to Lisa … how hilarious.
Oh yeah, that episode was titled “Lisa the Skeptic”
Wow, a complete lack of knowledge as to how volcanoes, glaciers and weather work. I kind of want to see this, however, I suspect it should come with it’s own booze.
And it kind of reminds me of when the film company responsible for The Core asked the UW Geology Dept. to watch it. The woman who was supposed to collect their quote/review cards slunk out after the first fifteen minutes.
It’s funny what things will get you. When my wife was watching The Day After Tomorrow (I swear I was just “in the room”, honest), as I let all the stupid wash over me the part that jumped out at me was how they explained where all the evil cold was coming from. And I quote;
.
Jack Hall -Yes. The storm’s rotation…
…is pulling super-cooled air all the way
down from the upper troposphere.
Terry Rapson -But shouldn’t the air warm up
before it reaches ground level?
Jack Hall -It should. But it doesn’t.
The air’s descending too rapidly.
.
Speed overcomes physics. The stupid, it burns.
.
Roland Emmerich appearantly never used a bicycle pump.
The worst part is, using the same stupid scenario, the decending air would have been like a blast furnace which would have been even fracking cooler then the evil cold.
.
Oh, and while I was looking up the exact lines of incomprehensibleness to write this I found the novelization of the movie…
.
wait for it…
.
by Whitley Shrieber
birds of an f’ing feather, man.
“Speed overcomes physics. The stupid, it burns.”
.
This is the exact same idiotic principle as is behind the Burt Reynolds Pot-hole Jump and the bus jump in the movie Speed. Mythbusters tested and busted both (and several similar myths), so we’ve got science to back us up.
Dr Nora K Volkow, Neuroscientist: awesome! We need more like her.
As I have said before, I strongly believe addiction should be treated primarily as a medical problem and not a legal one.
WOW! That Wired article was so full of WRONG. I can’t believe you linked it totally uncritically! Did anyone here read the book? ANYONE?
Here are just a few of my incredibly incensed thoughts: http://cola82.deviantart.com/journal/41444409/
And I thought The Day After Tomorrow was annoyingly unscientific… At least the unscience there wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to the average man on the street, but a high speed superglacier, that’s just… wow.