Simon succinctly gets at the crux of why I avoid these things.
NeuroLogica Blog » The Ultimate Argument from Authority
Dr. Steven Novella puts all the usual TV doctors to shame. Every time some new study, paper, or research comes out that supports a skeptical, atheist view, he’s still there questioning, poking, and never taking anything for granted.
Being a skeptic means, in the words of Professor Mad-Eye Moody, CONSTANT VIGILANCE and Dr. Novella shows us the way.
I made this.
Why? Because it’s been a long time since I’ve drawn anything fancier than doodles during a boring conference call, and I want to start drawing again, like I did when I was a kid.
How? I hand-drew and inked it, then scanned and colored it in the computer. I’d never done this process before, so I followed tutorials in webcomics.com and other places. Super fun.
What is it? There’s this old saying here in Puerto Rico which I love:
“Me va a llevar el diablo pelú en bicicleta.”which literally means
“The hairy, bicycle-riding devil is going to take me away.”which is just a fancy way of saying
“I’m fucked.”Also, you call someone el diablo en bicicleta when you want to convey that they’re awesome, fascinating or even intimidating.
Fuck yeah. I’m throwing ‘el diablo en bicicleta’ into casual conversation ASAP. It’s timely since I’ve noticed I say ‘awesome’ too damn much.
Our client was the resident internet marketing expert for a large internet based service. She was British and prided herself on a certain acuity that we in the States could obviously never aspire too.
One of her favorite things to point out was the chunky, unprofessional compression of our images. This went on for months. One day, we showed her designs for a microsite, lovingly rendered. And that complaint came back yet again. Finally, I asked her to go to her monitor settings. She did. “Is your monitor set to thousands of colors by any chance?” It was. My god. How many hours of our lives had we lost addressing her literally nonexistent issue?
Needless to say, once the Internet Expert changed her settings to the standard Millions of Colors, the quality of our comps jumped in her most considered estimation.
This shows nicely the fallacy of the arguments of people who are not actually experts, but who consider their opinions so important as to be equivalent to that of real experts.
Science gives us the tools to change our opinions for good reason. Unlike our loins which just keep making fools of us.
little tree (via ballookey)
Experimenting with not being so literal-minded with my photo processing. This is a result. I kind of like it.
Husband put the Jay Leno show on just now because Adam Carolla is going to be on, but I noticed Bill Maher was also a guest and shook my fist at the TV (because I seriously don’t like Jay Leno). Two atheists on one show ought to be my dream episode, but that Bill Maher is a little goofy.
Turns out science is good enough for him when it shows that there is no god, but the other scientists, the ones telling everyone to get vaccinated—they’re Big Pharma shills that buy into the vaccine dogma. You know—them.
Sir. You can’t have it both ways. The scientific method is one method. Scientists are called upon to defend their findings with extreme vigor. If the preponderance of evidence finds you solutions you like, you can’t ignore it when it comes to conclusions you don’t like.
Get the damn jab, sir. Or at a minimum, cut your own dogmatic preaching. It’s freakin’ dangerous.
And stop calling the scientific method ‘dogma’. It’s anything but. Dogma is what people on the Internet subscribe to when they read a blog entry by a person they like and therefore assume the opinions phrased therein are equivalent to the decades of hard work done by folks who know their phi from pi.
I’m totally hooked on this chapter-by-chapter review of ‘Twilight’. I’ve never read the books, but now I’m actually considering checking them out of the library because I just can’t believe something this bad got published. I must know.
In these two chapters it’s once again brought up that Edward watches Bella all night while she sleeps. In the humorous narrative of the review, Mark asks the question that Stephanie Meyer never asks of her character: Just what do you do all night while you’re sitting there? This is never answered: we’re just supposed to believe that Edward blankly stares at Bella all night.
Obviously, Stephanie Meyers never has sat watching someone all night long. I spent many nights with my husband when he was in the hospital, and far from being romantic, it’s agony. Yes he was injured, so that was perhaps a contributing factor, but “all night long” is actually a long time. It doesn’t feel long to those of us who mostly spend it sleeping, but ask an insomniac how long the night feels. It’s long. It’s much longer when you don’t have something to occupy your mind (like a House marathon).
Only an unimaginative git would think that it’s romantic. Only someone with zero experience in life would think it was a plausible activity for anyone with a brain to engage in voluntarily, and only fools would think this is a laudable activity for an allegedly fascinating character.
