A flat earther has the excuse of believing the evidence of their own eyes.

That’s what we’re enabling by telling everyone to get sick and not worry about it.

Well, not really of course, but nonetheless. If there was any way to do this, it could work. I read recently about a creative researcher, Dr. Corina Amor, who may have insight into curing old age1, allowing all of us to live to 130 or so. Let’s say it worked and we could get this out to everyone on the planet. Suddenly all the geezers at the top of the game would be looking sixty, seventy, eighty years into the future. It’s not just their grandchildren who’d have to deal with Florida being underwater and the entire Midwest USA being […]

Is it a prion disease? Have aliens orbited Make’EmStupid Satellites to keep us in our place? Why is this happening everywhere at once all over the world?

People have lost their fear of infectious disease and now they can’t figure out where a lethal threat fits into the scheme of things.

I’ve been leaving this comment everywhere I can think of, because I’m impressed with this article by a reporter who looked at superspreader data very carefully. Jonathan Kay writing in Quillette. The main groups of infection arise from places where people are in close proximity, indoors, and talking, laughing, singing loudly. That fits a pattern of mainly airborne infection by large droplets. Being in close proximity for extended periods, such as members of the same household, is also very good at spreading it. But in terms of people you’re less close to, it seems to do best in enclosed areas […]

  Update, May 3, 2020 The indications — not proof yet! — are that larger-droplet infection is the main route of transmission. Probably not the only one, aerosols (small, floating droplets) and surfaces still require caution, but larger droplets seem to be the main one. In news-you-can-use, that means physical distancing and masks, any masks, including folded tea towels, are the two most important preventive behaviors.   1) The importance of social distancing, self-quarantining, self-isolating, and the like: Shows how Hong Kong and Singapore — both with very dense populations! — slowed the spread of covid-19 to about one tenth […]

Denying biological reality is more la-la than being a Flat Earther. At least a Flat Earth *looks* plausible if you’re completely ignorant. Denying biological sex is denying how babies get made and that is something all of humanity is rather clear on.

He makes it sound as if this doubling is a great force beyond human influence, like a solar storm or a meteor strike. It’s not. It’s human reproduction. We’re helpless only because the subject is so untouchable it can’t even be said out loud. What’s up with that?.

[This started as a comment on a post about this topic. It’s since expanded.] One of the side effects of all the discussion around including transwomen in women’s sports has been the regular repetition that women are slower and weaker and can’t compete with the male-bodied. I wanted to add a biologist’s view on that and then mention something I saw about ultramarathoners. So I’ll start with women being smaller, weaker, and all the rest. When I was young and foolish I once asked my biology teacher why it was that way. It seems to cause nothing but problems. She […]

So, this is a thing Tomi Lahren (Ph.D. Bobblehead Studies) twittered in ref to the latest London attack. (No link to source. Search for it if you need to.) Hey liberals, this is what we are fighting against while you fight weather. Since you don’t get out much, let me show you the sequence. Climate change → drought in Syria → some people ruined → some of the ruined young men join angry groups → Daesh (=ISIS or whatever they’re calling themselves today). It’s not even many steps. Maybe you could follow them. So I’ll fix your tweet for you. […]

If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is [much] tinier than theory predicts.

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is hell.

There are a whole range of traits commoner in males than females, so there must be some unstraightforward factor that affects males more than females. And there’s one very obvious prenatal difference between males and females: all mothers are female, so female fetuses are likelier to have a hormonal environment aligned with their own than male ones.

Who said there’s a gene? They’ve never managed to find one yet. Probably for the obvious reason that there have to be hundreds for any complex trait.

I keep seeing this stuff. So-and-so many people “believe” in evolution. Fergawdsake. Do you “believe” in carpentry? No.