They are utterly adorable, and I feel the stirrings of the maternal impulse deep in my mantle. The way their little bodies bob as they swim…awww, for cute.
(via Deep Sea News)
(Also on Sb)
They are utterly adorable, and I feel the stirrings of the maternal impulse deep in my mantle. The way their little bodies bob as they swim…awww, for cute.
(via Deep Sea News)
(Also on FtB)
What a curious phenomenon: this is a video of the notorious Fox Effect, in which an actor pretended to be an expert and babbled fluff and nonsense at an audience of psychiatrists, and they sat and swallowed it and came away with an impression that the speaker was competent. I knew the content was going to be garbage, but I have to wonder if my prior knowledge colored my perception, because listening to it now, it all sounded immensely vacuous — I kept trying to catch a cogent or useful point, and he never delivered any.
I wonder if this could be pulled off in front of an audience that deals with more concrete data than psychiatrists — could an actor speak in the language of gels and in situs and sequences and fool an audience of molecular biologists? I don’t think so; it’s too specialized and specific. But I could be wrong, somebody ought to test it.
The video makes a point that this effect could be important in teaching — it strongly affects student evaluations. All you have to do is go to the “Rate My Professor” site and discover that one of the categories for evaluation there is whether the professor is “hot” — and, dammit, I think I’ve failed on that parameter for my entire life (I haven’t actually looked, though: I shudder at the prospect of seeing those weird reviews full of disgruntled students who didn’t pass one of my courses).
(Also on Sb)
Tonight, at 8pm ET, the cast of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe will be bracing themselves with caffeine for their overwhelming plan to saturate the world with a non-stop 24 hour live program. I think it’s a kind of anti-homeopathy: they’ll be delivering a super-concentrated dose of an effective agent all at once to their audience. Tune in and listen, especially since it would be so sad if they were exerting themselves so magnificently to a tiny group of people.
I’m going to try and catch bits and pieces of it. Unfortunately, I’m not insane, so I will be getting more sleep than the SGU rogues, and I’m also going to be off in Fargo for Project 42. And I’m also up to my eyeballs in a grant proposal I must get done this coming week! Maybe listening to Novella in the background will make my writing potent enough to impress the agency administrators.
(Also on Sb)
What a curious phenomenon: this is a video of the notorious Fox Effect, in which an actor pretended to be an expert and babbled fluff and nonsense at an audience of psychiatrists, and they sat and swallowed it and came away with an impression that the speaker was competent. I knew the content was going to be garbage, but I have to wonder if my prior knowledge colored my perception, because listening to it now, it all sounded immensely vacuous — I kept trying to catch a cogent or useful point, and he never delivered any.
I wonder if this could be pulled off in front of an audience that deals with more concrete data than psychiatrists — could an actor speak in the language of gels and in situs and sequences and fool an audience of molecular biologists? I don’t think so; it’s too specialized and specific. But I could be wrong, somebody ought to test it.
The video makes a point that this effect could be important in teaching — it strongly affects student evaluations. All you have to do is go to the “Rate My Professor” site and discover that one of the categories for evaluation there is whether the professor is “hot” — and, dammit, I think I’ve failed on that parameter for my entire life (I haven’t actually looked, though: I shudder at the prospect of seeing those weird reviews full of disgruntled students who didn’t pass one of my courses).
(Also on FtB)
Tonight, at 8pm ET, the cast of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe will be bracing themselves with caffeine for their overwhelming plan to saturate the world with a non-stop 24 hour live program. I think it’s a kind of anti-homeopathy: they’ll be delivering a super-concentrated dose of an effective agent all at once to their audience. Tune in and listen, especially since it would be so sad if they were exerting themselves so magnificently to a tiny group of people.
I’m going to try and catch bits and pieces of it. Unfortunately, I’m not insane, so I will be getting more sleep than the SGU rogues, and I’m also going to be off in Fargo for Project 42. And I’m also up to my eyeballs in a grant proposal I must get done this coming week! Maybe listening to Novella in the background will make my writing potent enough to impress the agency administrators.
(Also on FtB)
The court-required month-long psychiatric evaluation of Dennis Markuze is complete, and the diagnosis is “Bi-polar, compounded by alcohol and substance abuse”. He is now in a substance abuse rehab center, with another court date scheduled for 2 December.
It sounds like he was a bigger mess than I expected. It’s a good thing he’s getting treated now.
(Also on Sb)
The court-required month-long psychiatric evaluation of Dennis Markuze is complete, and the diagnosis is “Bi-polar, compounded by alcohol and substance abuse”. He is now in a substance abuse rehab center, with another court date scheduled for 2 December.
It sounds like he was a bigger mess than I expected. It’s a good thing he’s getting treated now.
(Also on FtB)
