Thunderf00t does one good thing

He’s blundering about, wailing and whining, because he used a clip from another YouTuber without attribution, and she wrote him asking for a link or a mention, as she deserves, and he had a temper tantrum. Instead of just adding an acknowledgment for her contribution, he made a whole ‘nother video which is entirely about belittling and abusing her. No surprise there, I guess.

So what was the good thing? He made me aware of this YouTube channel, Draw Curiosity, which is mostly science stuff, and it’s excellent! I’ve subscribed, and maybe if more of us do, ol’ Phil may have accomplished one worthwhile thing with his ranty, petty noise machine.

Pterosaurs!

I’m still tinkering with making a weekly video, and here’s the latest.

It’s an exercise in learning some new tools, so be forgiving about the style and all that — give me another year or two and maybe I’ll be smooth and professional.

Why you a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y do not need a personal website as a scientist

I have to criticize this claim that YOU A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y NEED A PERSONAL WEBSITE AS A SCIENTIST, because it’s wrong. You don’t.

So, you need a personal website. Why? Because you need to stand out. Because you need to have a consistent presence when you change employers. Because the university profile isn’t sufficiently yours, and an academic networking site is too closed off. Because it gives you the opportunity to learn to communicate to a wide variety of audiences, including your peers.

There’s empirical evidence against this claim: there are many scientists far more prominent than I am who don’t have a website (and some who do), and there are scientists who are less prominent than I am who do (and some who don’t). Why, it’s almost as if having a website is irrelevant to success in science.

I’m on a university committee engaged in a job search. I’m a web nerd, and I didn’t do a single search to see if any of our candidates have a website. It wouldn’t matter if they do. My fellow committee members would look at me funny if I tried to suggest that Candidate X was particularly enticing because they had a website. We look at their CV, teaching statement, research plans, and recommendations…not what they say about themselves on the web. Get real: maintaining a web site takes time and effort, and we’d rather see that potential colleagues are doing good work in the classroom and the lab. It’s a matter of priorities, and “personal website” is very low on the list.

That said, however, a web presence is important for public outreach and communication. If public engagement is one of the criteria for a science position, not having some sort of actively maintained web presence is definitely a failure. There aren’t that many jobs that have that criterion, however. You could argue that we need to get better at reaching out to an electorate that keeps putting anti-science ignoramuses into high office, but that does not imply that everyone needs to become a PR expert. People who can inspire students and can generate new knowledge are still essential.

A mirror held up to who we are

Wow. Tom Björklund has been making these amazing paintings to humanize Neandertals. Here are a few examples:

It doesn’t take much — a father teaching his child, a flower in the hair — to wrench one away from the usual distanced view we have of dead bones and stone tools. These were people.

I’d like to see a similar approach to australopithecines. We can see emotions in a chimpanzee — you know that Lucy had just as rich a repertoire of feelings as they do. We can only imagine how they expressed them.

A different version of the Onion Test

The denizens of 4chan/pol have got it into their tiny little heads that the way to Save Western Civilization is for them increase their testosterone levels. There are a few little problems with that idea: they haven’t made the connection between “more testosterone” and “civilization”, and given that testosterone is an extremely common steroidal hormone in all vertebrates, and that bears get rather high testosterone levels without building cities and discovering writing, any connection would be tenuous. But apparently they’re fixated on this idea about manliness, and are looking for ways to naturally elevate their testosterone, and so have started consuming onions.

Wait, why onions? There’s another tenuous connection. Onions are high in antioxidants that help break down free radicals, free radicals are produced in greater volumes in metabolically active cells, some very active cells are sperm cell precursors that are dividing rapidly, so we should eat onions to preserve our precious Western male bodily fluids! There have been serious studies on this subject, and I found one in Experimental Biology and Medicine that reports a substantial increase in sexual activity in rats fed onion juice.

Onion (Allium cepa) is one of the most commonly cultivated species of the family Liliaceae, and has long been used in dietary and therapeutic applications. Treatment with fresh onion juice has been reported to promote testosterone production in male rats. Testosterone is the male sex hormone responsible for enhancing sexual libido and potency. This study aimed to investigate the effects of onion juice on copulatory behavior of sexually potent male rats and in male rats with paroxetine-induced sexual dysfunction. Sexually experienced male rats were divided into seven groups: a control group, three onion juice-treated groups, a paroxetine-treated group, and two groups treated with paroxetine plus different doses of onion juice. At the end of the treatments, sexual behavior parameters and testosterone levels were measured and compared among the groups. Administration of onion juice significantly reduced mount frequency and latency and increased the copulatory efficacy of potent male rats. In addition, administration of onion juice attenuated the prolonged ejaculatory latency period induced by paroxetine and increased the percentage of ejaculating rats. Serum testosterone levels increased significantly by onion juice administration. However, a significant reduction in testosterone because of paroxetine therapy was observed. This reduction was restored to normal levels by administration of onion juice. This study conclusively demonstrates that fresh onion juice improves copulatory behavior in sexually potent male rats and in those with paroxetine-induced sexual dysfunction by increasing serum testosterone levels.

So, in this one study, they found that rats who were juiced on onions had sex more often (and more quickly, but let’s gloss over that). I guess if you think ejaculating rats is a good proxy for civilization, that might be suggestive.

Except…

Don’t tell /pol/ this, they might panic…

The authors of the study are…Mohammed Z Allouh, Haytham M Daradka, Mohammed M Al Barbarawi, and Ayman G Mustafa. This might throw them over the edge. They’re already suspecting that they’re being tricked into gnawing on raw onions.

Should we tell them there are different varieties of onions, and not all of them are as sharp or astringent as the ones they’re suffering with? My father used to eat raw onions — but they were varieties like the Walla Walla Sweet onion, which as you might guess from the name, has a gentler flavor. He was also civilized and manly, which meant kind, supportive, and hard-working. I don’t think that’s the kind of civilized those guys are aiming for, though.

It all depends on how you define “success”

Sergio Canavero has been blustering for years about how he’s going to do a complete human head transplant. His most recent shenanigans was the horrible two-headed rat, in which he decapitated a little rat, killed a big rat, and stitched the two circulatory systems together to allow the big rat’s heart to keep the little rat’s unconscious brain alive for a few hours. It was a stupid waste; the big problem is and always has been to reconnect a nervous system in a functional way, and he’s not even trying to do that.

But now he has announced that he has successfully transplanted the head from one human being onto the body of another. Successfully. What does he mean by that?

He has successfully transplanted the head from one human cadaver to the torso of another human cadaver. No word yet on whether the patient has recovered consciousness or how he is feeling.

Are you impressed yet?

What will impress me is when these gullible newsrags wake up and realize that Canavero is a fraud, and they stop giving him free press for every ghoulish act of necrophilia he commits.