The Stories and Novels By Derek Ward
When someone looks at me and says “I know what I saw,” I am fond of replying “No, you don’t.” You have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under.
Dr. Steven Novella, neurosurgeon and skepticism advocate
This looks interesting. Very interesting.
I wonder if one of the apps would give you cool reticles, so you can pretend to get missile lock on that annoying car in front of you. FOX TWO, MF’ER!
Personally, I’d like to play with it before dropping $300-$400, but I’m still cleaning up drool.
H/t Alan
In a somewhat humorous twist, this claim was issued in “The Margarita Report.”
I will admit to believing in climate change, and even that humanity has played a role in it. Empirical evidence has shown it’s not been quite the radical increase that most of these groups have been shrilly screaming about, but there’s been some.
Now, let’s for a moment assume that all of their claims about climate change are true and we do face a global catastrophe. What will produce the technologies needed to reduce carbon emissions, or possibly even reverse the effects? Which economic system has been responsible for developing a high tech industry base?
To those groups who wrote this Margarita Report: be quiet, grow ups are talking.
Sometimes the amazing becomes the mundane, and it isn’t until it’s gone that we realize how amazing it actually was. What am I talking about?
The brother and I went to Oklahoma to visit family. During a long conversation with our uncle, we were talking about growing up in Florida during his days and ours.
One thing I remember fondly is every so often hearing the windows rattling and realizing that it was the shuttle flying over. It happened enough that it was a curiosity, but relatively mundane. Now that the shuttle is gone, and my niece and nephew aren’t likely to experience something like it, I realize just how amazing it was that we had a spaceship flying over our heads to land.
According to this article from Ars Technica, the U.S. Navy is set to field test its new rail gun in 2016 aboard the USNS Millinocket. The video in the article is pretty nifty as well.
It makes me wonder if/when we’ll be switching out our chemically-propelled small arms for hand-held versions of these. FSM, I love living in the future.
You would have been a hundred today.
A person who probably saved more lives than anyone else in human history should be better known.
Even by me.
H/t Borepatch
According to three new studies, multivitamins don’t work against heart disease, cancer, early death, or declining cognitive ability. This just adds to the evidence that multivitamins do little more than give you expensive pee.
“Enough is enough,” declares an editorial accompanying the studies in Annals of Internal Medicine. “Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements.”
Why? Because most people get enough vitamins through the foods that they eat.
Better nutrition and vitamin-fortified foods have made these problems pretty much history.
Now when public health officials talk about vitamin deficiencies and health, they’re talking about specific populations and specific vitamins. Young women tend to be low on iodine, which is key for brain development in a fetus, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Mexican-American women and young children are more likely to be iron deficient. But even in that group, we’re talking about 11 percent of the children, and 13 percent of the women.
So, unless your doctor (doctor, not woo-practitioner) prescribes a vitamin for a specific deficiency, quit wasting your money.
The Japanese have attached a cannon to the ISS. Supposedly, it’s for launching small satellites called Cubesats.
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blockquote>J-SSOD stands for JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer. According to the Japanese space agency, “it is a mechanism for deploying small satellites designed in accordance with CubeSat design specification (10cm×10cm×10cm) that transfers the satellites from the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo’s airlock to space environment and releases them on orbit.<\blockquote>
Don’t be misled! This is the first-generation KEW launcher for the UN!*
*Yeah, I know that’s so much bullshit. I just wanted to see what sort of readers that spiel would bring. Actually, it’s pretty damn cool.
H/t Tam
We’re not allowed to call the Higgs boson the ‘God Particle’ anymore because now there is evidence that it exists.
Sean Carroll, physicist and author
Giggle, chuckle, HAHAHA!
A new study was released on PLoS One that links those of us who support gun rights to racism.
After accounting for numerous other factors such as income, education and political ideology, the researchers found that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.
Each one point increase in symbolic racism (a modern measure of anti-black racism) was also associated with a 27 percent increase in the odds of opposing bans on hand guns in the home. After accounting for those who already had a gun in the home, the odds were reduced to a non-significant 17 percent increase. However, the authors note that this reduction is unsurprising as opposition to bans on guns equates to self interest on behalf of those who already own a gun and do not wish to give it up. And racism was already strongly associated with having a gun in the home.
Oookay…. So what exactly is this “symbolic racism” that I am being accused of harboring?
Symbolic racism supplanted old-fashioned or overt/blatant racism which was associated with open support for race inequality and segregation under ‘Jim Crow Laws’, but it still captures the anti-black sentiment and traditional values that underpinned blatant racism. Symbolic racism has also been found to be related to stronger opposition to policies that may benefit blacks (e.g. welfare), and greater support for policies that seem to disadvantage blacks (e.g. longer prison sentences).
(Emphasis mine)
So, let me get this straight. If I don’t support policies that the authors of this study (and their ilk) deem as pro-black, then I’m somehow transmogrified into a “symbolic racist.” And gee, it’s amazing how many of those policies are held by fiscal and social conservatives, who coincidentally, tend to own guns at a higher rate. I wonder if the authors of this study considered opposition to gun control as part of their “symbolic racism.”