Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Well, it did, but now it looks like North Korea's internet might be getting DDOSed. Interesting timing, given recent hacking by North Korea.
Michael Egnor has replied to my dismissal of his claims that memories can’t be stored in the brain with a curiously titled post, Understanding Memories: Lovely Metaphors Belong in Songs, Not Science. I was a bit confused, at first…I don’t recall using any song lyrics or poetic metaphors in my post on the subject, but then as I read his post, a light dawned. He’s talking about himself.
Here’s why it’s a good idea for everyone to understand a little basic statistics.
Stacie Chapman’s heart skipped when she answered the phone at home and her doctor — rather than a nurse — was on the line. More worrisome was the doctor’s gentle tone as she asked, “Where are you?”
On that spring day in 2013, Dr. Jayme Sloan had bad news for Chapman, who was nearly three months pregnant. Her unborn child had tested positive for Edwards syndrome, a genetic condition associated with severe birth defects. If her baby — a boy, the screening test had shown — was born alive, he probably would not live long.
Sloan explained that the test — MaterniT21 PLUS — has a 99 percent detection rate. Though Sloan offered additional testing to confirm the result, a distraught Chapman said she wanted to terminate the pregnancy immediately.
Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, has made a bizarre post in which he reveals that he knows nothing about how the brains he cuts up work. Egnor claims that it is impossible for the brain to store memories. Yes, he knows that neural damage can cause loss of memory, that certain delicate areas of the brain, if harmed, can destroy the ability to make new memories, and he waves those awkward facts away to announce that there is simply no way memory or information of any kind can be stored in a meat-organ like a brain. He doesn’t say where memories are kept, then, nor does he account for any of the physiological correlates of memory, nor does he seem to give a damn about any of the neuroscience experiments that have teased apart the underlying molecular mechanism. By pure reason alone, if we can call his argument a product of reason at all, he deduces that the brain could not possibly have any way of storing memories.
Whoa, Oglaf had a very insightful panel today. As you can tell from the fact that I’ve blurred out part of that first panel and have cut out most of the comic, it is most definitely not safe for work — it takes place at a sex competition — but that last line is wonderful.
Sex exists by replicating itself but not for anything.
How romantic! I just learned that “the word mistletoe is a compound Old English word combining ‘mistel’ (which means “dung”) and ‘tan’ (which means twig) because it looks a bit like bird poop on a stick”.
