Thoughts on various scientific items stumbled across; a critic’s take on new discoveries; a civilian’s view of what it might mean.
Via /.: Biotech Firm Raises Furor With Rice Plan: The company also has ambitious plans to add its product to infant formula, a $10 billion-a-year market, even though the major food manufacturers have so far shown little interest in using genetically engineered ingredients. But Deeter says Ventria can win over the manufacturers and consumers by […]
On the mind/body front: Are body’s ills really all in the mind? When the woman, having experienced her fourth miscarriage, visited her physician, he gave her a surprising diagnosis: psychosomatic abortion. That is, she had lost the fetuses because of stresses in her life, particularly concerns about her religious affiliation and her husband’s unwillingness to […]
Team F_D breaks 10,000 in the F@H rankings!
Via Neil Gaiman: The 139 page PDF draft of Judge Jones’ ruling in Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Area School District et al. This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE’s argument that by merely disregarding the […]
George Monbiot writes: The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy […] with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. […] The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I […]
A couple days ago I commented on a recent article out of USC (that I saw mentioned on BoingBoing) that proclaimed: “While surprise is not a new concept it had lacked a formal definition, broad enough to capture the intuitive meaning of the term, yet quantitative and computable.” The part that I’d taken issue with […]
Via Boing^2: “Surprise! Computer scientists model the exclamation point” – – /sigh again? As A will no doubt attest, this is nothing new. There have been biological and mathematical models of “surprisingness” for quite a while. (Decades, if I’m not mistaken.) Does science have to take place at UC Berkley USC to be important or […]
Via Boing Boing: Cartoon Aliens re-enact Tom Cruise anti-psychiatry rant What I find particularly interesting here is how much Cruise’s knowledge of the subject rather unfortunately parodizes his position. Wait, allow me to rephrase: His passion for the subject matter combined with his confusion over specific terms parodizes his position. Tom: “Psychology” and “psychiatry” are […]
Via Boing Boing: the tale of Howard Dully, a California man who makes his living as a bus driver who had a transorbital lobotomy at age 12 in 1966. He describes how he’s always felt like he’s been missing something. And maybe he has. Kind of a gut-wrenching tale. And makes you think about what […]