It’s rare that a book review makes me this incensed, but Dick Teresi’s smug throwdown of the new tome “Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids” in the New York Times Book Review this week did just that. While the book i[…]

Selected lines
“They have female external genitalia, a blind vagina, and no uterus.”
“His skin became very thick and formed loose spines that were sloughed off at intervals. When he grew up, this “porcupine man” married […]

Juicy quotes:
The reviewer died of boredom while attempting to find interesting lines from this book.

MACROECONOMICS Olivier Blanchard.

Okay, so the link between ‘economics’ and ‘science’ is pretty thin. But here we have i[…]

Juicy quotes:
“At the time, prefrontal lobotomy or orbitofrontal undercutting — a less radical
method of treating severe mental disorders — might have been useful in treating
severely psychotic patients without causing more disrupt[…]

After a miserable morning of standardized exam-taking in Brookline, Massachusetts, I happened upon a combination Russian grocery store and cafe. The cafe, on the second floor, is a giant space, with bare white walls, a massive skylight, and white-fin[…]

A new series in Proven by Science — punXoR science textbook reviews!

Juicy quotes
“The behavior of norbornyl systems in solvolytic displacement reactions were suggestive of neighboring-group participation.”
“Attack by acetate[…]

The United States government has boldly (ha ha) banned Courier New 12.
“In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared “Courier New 12″ – the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for y[…]

Settled into one of my usual neighborhood diner haunts this weekend, as I normally do, with a copy of the New York Times and a cuppa coffee. One of those real American kinds of diners where you can get eggs made fifteen different ways and the chocola[…]

Super Bowl Halftime Show: Play-by-Play
My scrawled notes, typed out for your amusement!
-J. Lo and other celebs instruct us in cautiously neutral tones to “choose to vote,” to soft U2 cocktail-party background music; any potential politic[…]

A new science curriculum proposed in Georgia for high school teachers has been edited to avoid all mentions of the term “evolution.” Republican state school superintendent Kathy Cox backs the changes — it’s a crusade of hers,[…]