A little while ago, the cast and crew of NECSI were sitting around eating pizza and birthday cake, and Justin, who happened to be visiting today, told a story about “a friend of a friend.” This fellow, so the story goes, is polygamous, and his mother recently found out.

“How can these people do that?” she asked. “How can they live with themselves? It’s just downright shameful behavior. I mean, mixing Greek and Latin roots in the same word! Any son of mine will be either polyphilic or multigamous.”

I have no idea whether or not this story is true, but now that I’ve repeated it on the Internet, it will be.

Not only that, but I’m not even au courant with the people who are behind the times. Why do I say this? Well, Coturnix points to a query from CBS News:

I received a query from CBS News technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg about “the older generation” on Facebook. Do you have a story to share about your experiences on Facebook, particularly in relation to teens, many of whom call us over-40s “the creepies”? Or do you know teens or twenty-somethings willing to say how they feel about parents and geezers coming online and inspecting their Facebook profiles? CBS News will sort through the responses and may seek to interview some of the respondents.

I’m not on Facebook, nor do I have a spot on MySpace; I’m just not interested. Consequently, I don’t know the lingo. Stuck as I am between the teenage years and the over-40 realm, I’m just old enough that I can be moderately ignorant of both. However, I will say that “the creepies” sounds exactly like the sort of thing old people imagine young people say, rather than a word young people actually use. As America’s Finest News Source once reported,
Continue reading I’m Out of Touch →

“There’s a link on Slashdot about how to solve NP-complete problems in linear time using Peanut M&M’s! There’s also an interview with Dr. Doofus McRoofus in New Scientist, where he says quantum computing proves the reality of time travel! Plus, a mathematician at the University of Trivialshire has apparently announced a new number system where you can take not only square roots, but also the square roots of square roots!”

No kidding.

Udo Schuklenk’s Ethx Blog also pointed me to a site which lets you create a map showing all the countries you’ve visited.

You can try it out yourself, too. The program includes Alaska automatically if you say you’ve visited the United States, but I can claim that honestly as well.

A study — in fact, a British study — has found that nasty language and curse words in the workplace can help employees form social relationships, improve morale and reduce stress.

Hey, Eric, you wanna get some Chinese food after we finish that $&^%(*%$!#!@ conference book?

The original article is behind a paywall, which is one sure way to provoke invective. Consequently, I can’t find out more about the researchers’ methods or the particular environments they studied. Do the same basic principles apply to an automotive oil-change franchise and to an autoerotic, oil-crazy right wing “think tank”? Inquiring minds want to know. Baruch and Yeruda conclude their abstract as follows:

A certain originality element stems from the fact that, focusing on swearing language, the paper found it necessary to use swear words (avoiding usage of the explicit form); bearing in mind the purpose of the paper, the paper hopes that this will not cause offence to the readership of the journal.

I guess the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is stuffier than the linguistics journals which publish research on, say, the proper rules for infixing expletives.

Via Udo Schuklenk’s Ethx Blog and Russell Blackford.

It feels very much like a Monday morning today. The beautiful autumn day in Cambridge happening right now is completely ruined by the fact that I have to be awake for it. In case anybody else is having a similar problem, here’s a joke to brighten your mood.

Q. What’s the difference between Dinesh D’Souza and the Hindenburg?

A. One is a giant, flaming fascist gasbag, and the other is a dirigible.

‘Nuff said:

Thanks to Displaced Aussie via Bad Astronomy (where people are saying that the fire photo was doctored).
Continue reading Travolta Seen in Hell →

Apparently, Coral Ridge Ministries have been sending out a mass e-mail, warning their flock about the “New Atheist Crusade to ‘Evangelize’ America.” I quote a paragraph:

Just this summer, while our children and grandchildren were away at Bible camp, hundreds of other children were attending a new, nationwide network of camps designed as training grounds for young atheists. These camps feature talks on famous “free thinkers” such as Isaac Asimov and Ted Turner . . . and games such as the “invisible unicorn exercise” where campers must try to prove that imaginary unicorns, used as a metaphor for God, don’t (STET) exist.

Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop! The target-rich area alarm is going off — helmsman, set the deflector shields to Screensaver 2 and put the Long-Range Bogosity Sensors on full scan.

First, let’s observe that the “training grounds for young atheists” feature speeches about free thinkers. While I think there are certainly a great many free thinkers about whom children should be informed, summer camp might be better spent looking through telescopes and hunting for fossils. Not surprisingly, that’s what Camp Quest does, plus creating UFO photos, roasting s’mores and the like. Maybe the Coral Ridge folks are projecting their own obsession with prophecy and Leader figures onto the freethinkers?

Second, what’s with that big “STET” notice? Are they afraid that a copy editor will change “don’t” to “do”? Or should “(STET)” really be “[sic]” — maybe the Coral Ridge evangelists are afraid of giving the impression that invisible unicorns don’t exist?
Continue reading Coral Ridge Ministries: Panic Mode →

Warraq wins the Internet:

I don’t want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I get stoned. And then commit adultery.

Spoken in debate, the night of 9 October 2007.
Continue reading Ibn Warraq on Capital Punishment →

According to Brian Switek,

A raptor can take an entire clip of automatic weapon rounds to the chest and only seem slightly annoyed by it.

He’s a real-for-life paleontology person, so he should know. More importantly, he just watched Raptor Island (2004). All the more reason to impress upon the children that raptors do not know fear.

In my previous post, I tossed out the following observation:

It is, at any rate, folklore among the anti-creationist blogging community that non-American scientists are more likely to use the word “Darwinism” and its variants than American ones are, although it seems that outside academic circles, “Darwinism” and “Darwinist” may have negative connotations everywhere.

This got me thinking. There are umpty-ump science bloggers on the Net nowadays, and more commenters than one could shake a phasmatodean at. This is a big pile of people, and though it has very fuzzy boundaries, one might justifiably call it a subculture. What, then, are its cultural icons?

If your eager and curious niece finally started using the Internet for something other than MySpace and wanted to become part of this whole skeptical, scientifical shindig, what would you tell her? Who are the personalities of this world? What are their clashes, their feuds, their running jokes? Who hangs out at their places? What are the books which everybody has read, or at least pretends to? Set forth, if you can, the stuff which everybody knows — the hidden curriculum of our Network campus.

Just got back from Chinese food. During the conversation — I dare not try to reconstruct exactly how — we came to the topic of the Siege of Leningrad. The following line was then uttered:

“In Soviet Russia, life sucks marrow out of you!“