Sounds like something you morons could have some fun with.

4) Our dog used to bark every time someone rang the doorbell. We were able to stop him by kicking him in the balls as hard as we could every time he did it. Problem is, we canÂ’t see his balls anymore. I think we can get them to pop back out of his abdomen if we hold his head under water. My dad wants to just kick him in the ass until they fall back down. Which do you think will work?

They're all good.

An exhibition: Write a good question for PETA -- and here's the part where you morons will half-ass it -- and then actually submit it for their consideration. (That's "Ask Carla," PETA's "kindness consultant," but I think that's what Potfry is talking about.

Post your good ones here, if you like.

Thanks to Brett, but not Brett Weir, because that guy's an asshole.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (173)
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More science. And, sadly, more evidence we have got to cut down on carbon dioxide production. This world simply cannot afford to lose the precious hole in our ozone layer; why, the hole in our ozone layer is an important and diverse environment in which thousands of endangered species live in a web of complex interdependency...

Wait a minute. The hole in the ozone layer is a bad thing, I just realized. So if it's disappearing, it's a good thing. (I'm not sure than any owls or engdagered mud-shrimp live in the ozone hole, either.)

And yet carbon dioxide levels are higher than ever!

The feat was achieved through the strict control of chemicals that actually work to strongly deplete the ozone-- CFC's.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (42)
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Social, ahem, scientists are keenly aware of their image as do-nothing goofballs who are doing as much genuine science as your average gas-station attendant. (At least the gas station attendant works with pumps and stuff.)

But they're not going to change that image soon when they're producing "scientific scholarship" like this:

"I will present five short stories that tell us about different doors, giving insights into the way their existence is intertwined with the lives of the people that pass through a door, stand close to a door, loiter in the vicinity of a door, are afraid of not getting in through a door, and, finally, those that have a hard time getting out of the door," German academic Lars Frers says in his introduction to the work he will present for the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.

His primer on what he calls "doorology" explores the ambivalences of the human experience, specifically those produced in interaction with doors.

Doorology? Five short stories -- works of fiction -- that involve doors?

This is science?

The paper reflecting on the sock, which is to be delivered by Australian textile lecturer Alana Clifton-Cunningham, chronicles the diverse images and purposes of the lowly foot cover, from its role in a uniform signifying status, to an essential part of the Korean burial process signifying comfort en route to the afterlife, to a site for a corporate logo as pride of place on the ankle.

"Whilst the sock plays a somewhat silent role, it has been revealed that it is quite a significant part of our everyday dress. The sock has metamorphosed from the stocking to the sock which is now a fundamental part of most people's wardrobe."

Ummmm... yes, I concede the sock is "now a fundamental part of most people's wardrobes." I'm not sure how that's science, though.

One paper is about the eating of cheese as some sort of social signifier, and the adoption of upscale "foodies" of peasant forms of cheese. Actually, that's not necessarily an absurd topic to research; how we live and eat and such is a valid subject for academic study. Not sure how that's science either, though.

Thanks to Darwin's Moustache, who is still banned, but keeps sending me tips anyway.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (18)
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Now here's some interesting science, and not just because I love the results. (Well, mostly that.)

It confirms what we all pretty much know, but... there's a difference between "knowing" from anecdotal evidence and "feelings" and knowing through scientific testing and measurement.

When liberals are asked to think about conservatives, the parts of their brains associated with empathy shut down, and the region believed to be involved with distate and repulsion for "the other" lights up.

The human brain may have a built-in mechanism for keeping racially or politically distinct groups apart, a new Harvard study suggests.

U.S. researchers observed the brain activity of liberal college students who were asked to think about Christian conservatives. As they did so, a brain region strongly linked to the self and to empathy with others nearly shut down, while another center -- perhaps linked to stereotypic thoughts -- swung into high gear.

"It's as if you think that 'they' don't think like you do -- it's like you believe they are governed by a different set of rules when they think," explained study author Dr. Jason Mitchell, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University's department of psychology.

His team published its findings in the May 18 issue of Neuron.

According to Mitchell, social psychologists have long known that people engage different mental criteria when thinking about the possible thoughts and actions of people within their own ethnic, cultural or political group, vs. those outside that group.

The neurological mechanisms governing this process has been much less clear, however.

...

One theory that's gained credence among social neuroscientists is that people look to themselves when thinking about people they already include in their "group."

...

Previous studies have shown that an area toward the front of the brain, called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), always lights up when people think about themselves or people they consider similar to themselves.

But which part of the mPFC activates when people think about those outside their group?

To find out, the Harvard team hooked up a group of liberal Boston college students to a functional MRI machine, which tracks real-time changes in brain energy use.

They then asked the students to read detailed profiles of two people: one, a liberal-minded person much like themselves, and the other, a fundamentalist Christian conservative with views and activities very different from their own.

"We showed that there are distinct brain regions active in the mPFC," depending on the political stripe of the object in question, Mitchell said.

When the students thought about the liberal person, the mPFC's ventral region -- strongly associated with thoughts about the self -- got very active. But it quieted down when the subject was the Christian conservative -- instead, the mPFC's dorsal area took over.

"The dorsal region is a lot more mysterious," Mitchell said. "It's more engaged when I think about a dissimilar other."

"These data challenge the naive view that we bring the same mental orientation to bear when we think about those who are similar or different from us," said study co-author Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a professor of social ethics in Harvard's department of psychology. "In particular, it raises questions about who can, objectively speaking, sit in judgment on whom."

Mitchell stressed that scientists currently have no way to tell what kinds of thoughts get processed in the dorsal mPFC. But he suspects it could be responsible for stereotypic thoughts that fail to take similarities between people into account, and instead stress their dissimilarities. So, people may consult the dorsal mPFC when they make snap judgments that assume that the "other" does not think or act like they do.

Of course, the next step is to wire up some conservatives and prompt them to think about liberals. I have only anecdotal evidence as a guide, but I expect they'll find that conservatives similary disengage the empathy centers and engage the threat/other centers of brain-- but to a far less pronounced degree.

It has to do with self-definitions and self-esteem. Liberals have a far greater amount of self-esteem invested in being "liberal" -- and therefore a far greater emotional investment in deeming non-liberals to be inferior -- than conservatives have in defining themselves as conservatives. Although binary distinctions are more untrue than true, there is a difference here-- for most conservatives, conservatism is something you believe in, but it's not who you actually are. Who you are is self-defined by a host of other factors.

But for liberals, the self-definition is central, perhaps core, to their sense of self, and self-worth. They, too, have other self-definitions that are important, but for most liberals, being a liberal is, in fact, what they are, and not simply what they believe.

Again, this is just anecodotal evidence talking -- the fact that while I, for example, think a liberal is foolish and sometimes self-serving and mendacious in professing his beliefs, I do not actually usually think him to be evil or something less than human; on the other hand, I can count too many times the simple (reluctant) admission that I voted for George Bush has produced a reaction among liberals of the approximate vehemence of announcing, say, that I was currently being investigated for child molestation.

We'll see if science is able to confirm those unscientific, anecdotal observations and inferences, or if it dispels them.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (49)
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I don't think he turned this paper in. But I do think he did all the experiments, turned in a dishonest and unscientific paper, most likely with fudged data, and then wrote this accurate, honest, truly scientific assessment of his experiment.

Title, abstract, and conclusion:

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

Abstract: The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie. My careful theoretical modeling and painstaking experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is crap, as are all the available texts on the subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a complete waste of my time.

...

Conclusion

Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared [Computer Science]. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash.

He exposes a critical truth: college (and most definitely) high school science lab experiments primarily teach people how to lie about their data, and secondarily about futility and the total uselessness of experimentation, which really aren't the first things you want budding young scientists learning.

Teachable moments aside, it's frickin' funny.

Thanks to Oregon Muse (banned).

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (22)
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I didn't plan it, I just didn't feel like blogging today.

I think I've got a bad case of sleep apnea. I am, as they say, sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It doesn't help that until yesterday we had about ten days straight with no sun and lots of rain.

Anyway, sorry for the whining. Didn't intend to take the day off. If it's any consolation, I had absolutely no fun whatsoever.

Oh... I'll put up the links for the Cthulhu/King in Yellow stuff later.

I have to warn, again, that this is basically a personal interest, and further, the short stories I'll be linking don't necessarily stand on their own literary merit. Some are good, some, not so much. It's more about the tracing the beginnings of a subgenre of fantastic literature -- the proto-history of "weird horror" -- than a recommendation of stories you're sure to love.

So... skipping it might be warranted.

I'm interested, because this is my favorite kind of horror. I dig the sort of existential horror that suggests that the world is not as one imagines it to be, and that schizophrenics actually have a better handle on the way things really are than the supposedly sane. (That was my favorite bit of 12 Monkeys, too.)

So I apologize for the extremely narrow interest here. It was just an idea, something I intended to do anyway, and I thought there might be some geeks out there who had a similar interest.

After this turns out to be an unqualified failure, I'll suggest maybe some Wodehouse, if it's available online. (Hoping!) Now-- Wodehouse. There's something I can recommend without reservations.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (70)
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I mean, besides Hitler.

None other than Yale's super-star-freshman, the Yale Taliban.

He says it was necessary to make Hindus wear the badges, so that they wouldn't be harrassed by theopolice beating people for not being at prayers at the required time.

Which makes a kind of sense... if you accept the premise that VirtueCops ought to be beating people for not being at mosque in the first place.

But make no mistake-- Karl Rove is the real enemy. After all, he courts the Christianist vote.

Related: Clinton Taylor also tips to this Townhall column about moral relativism, cultural nonjudgmentalism, and the liberal fetishization of the savage and barbaric:

"Although the film invests time among the tribesmen, it never really explores the idea that one man's missionary work is another's ideological aggression."

ItÂ’s been months since I first read it, but this line from the Washington PostÂ’s review of End of the Spear still leaves me flabbergasted. Only one sentence prior, the author had noted that the Christian missionaries had "prevailed upon the natives to stop their deadly infighting, which threatened the very survival of the Waodani people." Which is worse, cultural and ethnic suicide or a bit of "intellectual aggression" by Christians? For the Washington Post and its ilk, thatÂ’s a tough call.

In a current context, this means plenty of bloviating about the genocide in Darfur, but no serious attempts to end it. In a withering editorial that scourged all who have allowed genocide to happen once again, The New Republic had this to say about the general liberal response: "All these proposals for ending the genocide in Darfur are really proposals to prevent the United States from ending it. It appears that there is something even more terrible than genocide in this very terrible world, and it is the further use of American military power abroad."

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (12)
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Update: Unconfirmed? See update at end.

And Christians will have to wear blue ones, and Zaroasterans red ones.

Meanwhile, all Muslims must wear virtually identical robes, so as to present a unified look for the return of the hidden 12th Imam.

Allah spits sarcasm at the new meme on the left-- that it's only "fearful" conservatives who worry about such trifles.

The important thing now is not to worry. Remember — worrying is what “fear-stricken” conservatives do. True bravery is affecting near-complete indifference to the prospect of a nuclear-armed, Holocaust-denying radical Islamic state forcing Jews to wear yellow insignia while simultaneously hosing down the front of your pants daily over NSA data mining.

Not Quite Confirmed: Some with good connections in Iran are having difficulty confirming this story.

A Google search gets a lot of stories on this, but it may just be a case of the telephone game, or understandably pissed-off Iranian exiles attempting a little propaganda against a regime that, in a better world, would need no propagadizing against. (In a perfect world, of course, it simply wouldn't exist.)

Thanks to Darwin's Moustache for the google-search link.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (74)
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It's not a flyin' car. But it is a plane that transforms into a car (they tail folds up, revealing a bumper!), so that you can drive the car to an airstrip, take off, touch down on an air strip, and then drive to your final destination.

And keep it parked in your garage when you're not using it.

Big problem: making the thing rugged enough to survive fender-benders on the highway without becoming utterly useless as a plane.

All for $150,000 by 2010, they hope.

I don't know. Look, if you have to flippin' drive to the airstrip anyway, is there really any advantage to this? Don't pilots drive to their airstrip anyway to get to their plane?

Basically, you're paying a lot of money to save on parking fees at your local airstrip. Which I can't imagine are all that high.

Still... it transforms!

Thanks to Jack Straw.

Posted by: Ace at 03:59 PM | Comments (37)
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We've all heard the rule that the first one to compare his opponents' political goals to those of the Nazis' loses the argument.

I'm afraid that rule has to modified. What if you compare your own political goals to those of he Nazis?

I'm big on border security, but I'm not as rah-rah as this guy is about Nazi efficiency of ridding themselves of undesirables and untermenschen:

Dear Jorge plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security - resources which will never materialize - in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America's wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic - it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

In fact, the hysterical response to the post-rally enforcement rumors tends to indicate that the mere announcement of a massive deportation program would probably cause a third of that 12 million to depart for points south within a week.

Wow.

Yes, I guess I "get" that if one wants to ballpark how long it would take to, um, evacuate an unwelcome population from one's nation, there are only a smallish number of test cases to look to.

But...

I'm not usually a fan of a thousand little ass-covering caveats before you say something that might be taken the wrong way, but, you know, this might have been a good time to say something bad about Hitler.

Eh, Let's Not Beat Around The Bush: Was I too mealy-mouthed? Well, I don't like accusing someone of being a Nazi just because of a poorly chosen phrase.

But.

The entirely non-judgmental, seemingly admiring way he mentions the Nazis' Final Solution for the Jews...

. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews....

"Rid themselves"?

Word choice matters. Ask Joseph Goebbels.

Coming Soon: Vox Day will discuss America's first, failed attempt at a guest worker program, when American and British slave-traders generously invited thousands upon thousands of Africans to take "jobs Americans just won't do" in the cotton, tobacco, and sugar industries.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (100)
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