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.

The Mass Libel Reform Blog — Fight for Free Speech!

This is a message from Simon Singh:

This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics.

The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.

You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.

The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.

If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.

We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign

I’m still wondering, Mr Stewart

He’s a funny guy, but I’m still completely baffled by Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. He supposedly addressed his many critics last night; somebody tell me what it means, other than that it was an amusing self-deprecating schtick.

It still doesn’t answer the question! He is aware that there’s a problem of perception here:

I do think the rally was about something, just not necessarily what they wanted it to be about or what they think it was about…

Excellent, I could have just missed it. I’m sure Jon Stewart will now take this opportunity to clarify. And here it comes, here it is, the ultimate meaning and message of the rally:

“be more judicious in our blanket slandering”

Insert trademark Stewart double-take, followed by disbelieving stare into the camera.

That’s…nice. Who would have thought that that could be a cause that would draw a few hundred thousand people together in a mass event? It really doesn’t address the complaint that it was an exercise in false equivalence, though, since gathering a mob of cheerful liberal/progressive folk and telling them to stop the blanket slandering of the right wing does sound like he’s complaining about the wrong people here.

He does mention that now he and his fellow liberal pundits can spend the next ten years debating the point of the rally, which is probably true if the primary instigator is going to be that reluctant to state his goals.

For the manly men

In Australia, it’s Movember, when all the real Australians grow moustaches. I’ve never before heard “moustache” abbreviated as “mo”, but I guess there are things I have yet to learn about Antipodean accents.

Anyway, it’s all for a manly cause, too, to support research into prostate cancer and other men’s health issues, by gathering donations to reward gentlemen for doing what ought to come naturally to them, sprout hair on their upper lip. I’ve receive a couple of requests to endorse individuals cultivating lady ticklers, befborstels, and fanny dusters, but I’m just going to encourage every Australian to get out there and do what’s right for both your face and your prostate.