Category Archives: Science

Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers

Posted on by
Reply

On the one hand, this sounds like it supports the notion that stay-at-home dads are less “manly.”

On the other hand, in a earlier age, men had to do the hunting and heavy lifting, as well as producing the maximum number of babies (given the incredibly high infant mortality rate).

But time moves on, and the Big Balls types no longer have such an evolutionary advantage. Nowadays, families with fewer children — at least in the First World — have a survival advantage. And co-parenting also helps prepare the offspring for a world where success at social interaction is more important than throwing hands.

Source: Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers | PNAS

“We’re cops: we know donuts”

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t know where the quote at the top of this post comes from, but I do know that the police in Orlando FL don’t know Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze from methamphetamine.

The City of Orlando paid $37,500 to a man to settle a lawsuit after police officers arrested him for what they thought was meth but actually was glaze from a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins pulled Daniel Rushing over after seeing him fail to come to a full stop when pulling out of a 7-Eleven store. She then used one of those “presumptive” field-test kits to determine that the flakes on the floor of Rushing’s car were meth, and took him to jail.

Fortunately, Rushing was able to post bail, and eventually the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did a more thorough test and determined that the substance in his car was sugar from a doughnut.

The scary part is that many people plead guilty based solely on the field test, and the substances are never re-tested by a crime lab. Yikes!

Source: Man arrested after cops mistook doughnut glaze for meth gets $37,500 from Orlando – Orlando Sentinel

Further reading on drug analysis: http://www.ncids.com/forensic/drugs/drugs.shtml

Idaho Republicans want public schools to use the Bible as a science and law textbook

Posted on by
1

Here is the language, in pertinent part:

Be it further resolved, that the Idaho County Republican Central Committee encourages the Idaho legislature to draft and support a bill stating that the Bible is expressly permitted to be used in Idaho public schools for reference purposes to further the study of literature, comparative religion, English and foreign languages, U.S. and world history, comparative government, law, philosophy, ethics, astronomy, biology, world geography, archaeology, music, sociology, and other topics of study where an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.

It’s odd that the good burghers of Idaho left mathematics off their list. After all, 1 Kings 7:23 definitively gives the value of pi as 3. None of that bullshit “trillion digits of pi.” Ignoring the Bible on that would be irrational.

Source: Idaho Republicans: Public schools should use the Bible as a science and law textbook

Noted atheist reveals his secret religious side

Posted on by
1

Richard Dawkins has had his “come to Jesus” moment. In an interview with Internet content provider Television Four, Dawkins admitted:

“Science requires a suspension of common sense,” he concluded, “because it’s very far from common sense.”

Since atheists often say that faith is the suspension of common sense, it’s clear that Dawkins truly understands the difficulty of differentiating science from religion.

via Richard Dawkins: Science has evolved faster than human mind’s ability to understand it.

Another self-righteous asshole rants against people he fears. And his name is Sam Harris.

Posted on by
4

Sam Harris has a Ph.D. from UCLA and somehow thinks that entitles him to tell other people how to live their lives. His latest blathering includes:

“There are people who have really been terrorized by their parents, and people who terrorize their kids with a fear of hell, for instance. I hear from people who their entire life — they’re in their 40s and they’re only now just coming out of the prison of having spent their entire lives being afraid of being tortured (for) an eternity by Satan. This is in the 21st century, in the United States.”

Harris is one of those zealots who can’t stop themselves from evangelizing. In his case it’s against religion, but the zealots on both sides all pretty much sound alike.

Yet Harris is worse. He pretends to be a scientist, then assembles a couple anecdotes and thinks that he has proven a law of nature.

Hey, Harris: Bite me!

Atheist Sam Harris rips the head of the National Institute of Health for pushing religious ‘bullsh*t’.

Federal review stalled after finding forensic errors by FBI lab unit spanned two decades

Posted on by
Reply

Was it a coverup?

In 2012, the FBI began an investigation into their hair and fiber lab after being alerted to flawed forensic evidence involving microscopic hair matches which may have led to the convictions of hundreds of potentially innocent people.

It seems that so many problems were uncovered in the lab’s findings that the Bureau decided to halt the review in August of 2013. Now the Department of Justice has stepped in and directed that the reviews of problem cases be resumed.

Kudos to Michael E. Horowitz, Justice Department Inspector General, and whistleblower Fred Whitehurst.

Federal review stalled after finding forensic errors by FBI lab unit spanned two decades – The Washington Post.