Russian philosophy

I find myself wrestling with the meaning in this story of an epic struggle of worldviews.

A dispute over the existence of God between four Russians drunk on a litre of pure alcohol resulted in the death of two of the drinking buddies, news agencies reported on Monday.

The disagreement began at the weekend when the female house owner, her son, a male roommate and undisclosed male relative drank the litre of pure alcohol, “which they downed with snow,” a police investigator told RIA Novosti.

First, I’m wondering whether downing 250mL of 190 proof alcohol improves one’s philosophy, or renders it incomprehensible. That’s only an interesting question because most philosophy is incomprehensible even when sober. I’d do the experiment, except I’ve often worked with beakers full of lab alcohol, and no way are they at all tempting.

The second big question is about the outcome: the story explains that the son knifed the other two men to death, but it doesn’t mention what his position on the existence of gods was.

So did the atheist win, or the believer?

Does it even matter in a grim cold universe, where we’re all doomed to eke out a futile existence until we die, where we’re either meaningless sputterings of a few pounds of electrified meat, or the serfs of immense beings who will snuff us out painfully, slowly, eternally and with casual disregard if we fail to properly praise them incessantly? Does anything matter? The snow falls. It will cover us all.

Pass the lab alcohol, tovarisch. Budem zdorovy.

I would like to apologize to all the women in the universe

It’s got to be rough. On the one hand, you’ve got monsters like Tucker Max or Joe Francis (the Girls Gone Wild guy) hitting on you hard, expecting you to respond with instinctive lordosis so they can grapple you in amplexus; and on the other hand you’ve got the Nice Guys, who think that buttering you up with smarm will generate exactly the same response. Jezebel provides us with an example of the latter behavior. This guy is creepy, be warned.

So, whatever happened to the idea of just treating women as people?

Vignette from the grading wars

I just finished off one big chunk of grading, and on this exam, as is my custom, I give students a few bonus points with an easy question at the end. It is also my custom every year to have one of those easy questions be, “Name a scientist, any scientist, who also happens to be a woman,” just to see if they’ve been paying attention.

About 10% of the class leave it blank. C’mon, it’s a free 2 points on a 100 point exam! Over half the time, I get the same mysterious answer: Marie Curie. We do not talk about Marie Curie in this class at all, and it’s always a bit strange that they have to cast their minds back over a century to come up with a woman scientist. Next year, I should change the question to “Name a scientist, any scientist, who also happens to be a woman, and isn’t named Marie Curie,” just to screw with their heads. They won’t be able to think of anyone but Marie Curie.

Second runner up is Jane Goodall. Again, we don’t talk about her, but I guess she is well known.

The one new answer this time around, though, and the one that made me laugh, was this: “Louise Pasteur.” Ah, the plight of the woman scientist…now students have to reach back into the 19th century and give a man a sex change in order to think of one.

Made me laugh. Didn’t get the student any points, though. I am so harsh.

OK, your turn: can you name ten female scientists off the top of your head?

It’s a strange phobia

The latest xkcd is an odd one. I know some people freak out a teeny tiny bit at the thought, but it never bothers me.

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I’m a first child, and I calculated back when I was conceived, and estimate that it was almost exactly the day of my parents’ wedding — which was an elopement. The two of them ran off at a young age to Idaho where they didn’t need to get parental permission to marry, and right away they had me. I find that wonderfully romantic and have always had the knowledge that my parents loved each other very much (and were also a bit crazy and impetuous and careless…well, and also loved kids a lot). The squeamishness about parental sex has always seemed a bit weird to me — don’t people want their parents to be happy?

Of course, I don’t want to know the details, OK? That’s personal and private and should remain between the participants, no voyeurs allowed.

And I definitely don’t want to know about my kids’ sex life. I just want them to have a happy one, and that’s enough knowledge for me.

Hmmm…maybe that’s the root of the fastidiousness—a concern for the privacy of the individuals involved?

Watch out for Zombie Newton and Zombie Leibnitz!

They might be stirring in their graves and preparing to rise to do battle. A medical researcher named Tai has published a method that he has called “Tai’s Model”, which is “a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies“.

I think — now I am a mere biologist, so this might be beyond my feeble gooey brain — that I vaguely recall doing something sort of similar to this many, many years ago, as a way to approximate an integral, and it might be something like 350 years old. I guess we’ve forgotten.

By the way, I’ve discovered a marvelous and efficient way to multiply numbers together by adding logarithms; I’m thinking I should publish it as Myers’ Method. I wonder if it’s patentable?

Cheaper than NASA

I’d love to visit Mars, especially if I could go with some dolphins. And now, for a mere $1550, I could attend the Dolphins & Teleportation Symposium 2011 and learn how to teleport!

This Workshop will include interspatial communication, quantum merging, E.T contact, teleportation to Mars, swimming in gentle waters with dolphins, sound healing, heart opening, cell activating, soul leadership, your planetary mission, laughter and humor, divine feminine, Geomancy, higher consciousness, the transformation of the ages, sacred wisdom societies, Martian life & artifacts, creating new timelines, mysticism and physics, empathy, intuition and creativity combined with logic and wisdom; PLUS Alternative 4 – the benevolent, peaceful reality we are creating.

That all sounds wonderful, except for the “heart opening” part. This could all be a front for a sinister cult that draws loving people in with tales of dolphins and laughter, and when they get you alone in the seminar room, the black robes are donned, the chanting begins, and out come the razor-sharp obsidian knives and you learn that the magic teleportation requires a sacrifice of a heart to the dark dolphin gods. At least all the participants will have wisely gotten high before the blood starts flowing.

Oh, well, I’d still go. Do you think they’ll pay my way to come over and cover the event for a popular and widely read blog?

Scientists with style

I think more scientists should be in GQ. Larry Moran exhibits both style and craftsmanship with his handmade haberdashery.

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Now you might think I should be envious — I should have such panache! — but the tinfoil cone simply isn’t my way. Here in the frigid North, unlike temperate Toronto, such a device would refrigerate our heads, and we turn to fashions with élan and insulation.

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Now you know why I get written up in Playboy and Larry doesn’t.

Of course, some people have a boot fetish instead. It’s very impractical: no way could you wear those and two pairs of thick woolen socks at the same time.