This was supposed to be a one-day trial, two days tops. We are now going into our fourth day. Jury deliberated most of today, went an hour into overtime, will reconvene tomorrow. Nails are being bitten, ulcers are being eroded, and I am out of clean underwear. This could go either way. I will say […]
“… And an Almost Fanatical Devotion to the Pope”: or, Truthiness Goes Technical
Category: ass-hamsters, evolution, sciliticsOkay, let’s do this. The author is Satoshi Kanazawa. The Journal is the Social Psychology Quarterly. And the paper is “Why Liberals and Atheists are More Intelligent“. Ignore for the moment that first stirring of doubt (more intelligent than what? Isn’t that kind of a glaring omission in a title?) because after all, it comes […]
Screen Grabs, Blog Jabs
Category: art on ink, Squidgate, writing newsOkay, first up: the whole bench-warrant thing has been resolved. I am no longer a fugitive. I have a good lawyer (thanks, once again, to so many of you: speaking of which, gratitudinal e-mails now 52.8% completed!). Now all we have to worry about is a justice system that criminalizes the flinch response. Should be […]
On the Lam
Category: SquidgateOnce again, I was going to do a science post today. I was going to review a recent paper purporting to show that athiests and liberals are smarter than conservative religious types, and (bet you won’t see this coming) I was going to savage it as junk science. And once again, the world has thrown […]
Eulogy and Dissection.
Category: eulogyI was planning on getting back to science this time around: an opinion piece on gengineered non-suffering livestock, perhaps, or a review of recent progress in telematter technology. But someone died last night, a distant member of my immediate family: someone I ended contact with years ago, save for one brief shining moment back in […]
Calling Nina Gislop…
Category: Squidgate…who lives somewhere around Vancouver, and whose e-mail and twitter IDs have mysteriously vanished sometime in the past couple of months, whose sparse Google tracks lead to dead ends. And who made a generous donation to the Squidgate/Kibble Fund before disappearing. If you’re out there, in this universe or that parallel one, thank you. (Thankyoumails […]
Anyone going to this?
Category: sentience/cognitionI’d like to, but am coming down with some kind of sore-throat/stuffed-sinus/flesh-eating-virus thingy, and have decided that I should probably quarantine myself today. If any of you locals are going to be checking it out, though, I’d be grateful for an executive summary.
The Oatmeal.
Category: misc“Comparing moms to an octopus would be like pitting an army of savages against one well-oiled gatling gun sitting atop a hill. The mothers would charge the hill, hurling rocks and sticks; they’d roar righteous, compassionate battle cries of warriors who believe they are fighting for the betterment of humanity. They’d truly fight from the […]
The Neurology of Transcendence
Category: ass-hamsters, neuro, sentience/cognitionSo just a day or so after we revisit “A Word for Heathens” — a story exploring the social ramifications of neurotechnology that induces Rapture On Demand — here comes a paper by Cosimo Urgesi and his buddies showing a relationship between the posterior parietal cortex and something called “Self-Transcendence” — an index, if we […]
Since I don’t have time for a thousand words…
Category: art on ink, writing newsThis gorgeous and moody piece illustrates a chunk of my backlist. Two guesses which one.