Have you ever noticed that real polymaths tend not to call themselves polymaths?

I was alerted to the existence of Jonathan Bishop on twitter: he is, apparently a super-genius who will “write papers on-demand” and “work with leading academics” in just about any field. As proof of his bonafides, he plasters a photo of him wearing a mortar board everywhere. I’ve got one of those goofy hats somewhere, I should start wearing it more often. So I’d look smart.

The hat is silly, but what he says is sillier.

I’d like to know whether HERV is linked to Lucy’s more rigid brain as I believe schizophrenia makes the brain less ‘rigid’.

My question now is: can/did retrotransposons viruses transfer from fruit flies to humans via fruit to create more rigid brains?

So many assumptions: what does Mr Bishop know about endogenous retroviruses? What does he know about the molecular biology of Lucy’s brain? What does it mean to say a brain is more or less rigid? Where’s the link between this putative rigidity and endogenous retroviruses? Why are we drawing a link between australopithecines, schizophrenia, and retroviruses?

To answer these questions, I checked out Mr Bishops’ website. Something about it reminded me of Kent Hovind, for some reason.

Hi, my name is Jonathan Bishop. I am an IT polymath with professional expertise and Masters degrees in the scientific, legal and economic aspects of online communities and e-learning systems. I have direct experience in working in government, industry and academia and using this to push the boundaries of online community and trolling research. I hope that by the end of my career to have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge, practice and policy in the fields of information technology, the arts, law and sciences.

Oh. Well. I guess that settles that. Of course, when I looked at his publications, just about all I see are conference presentations at IT meetings; I don’t see much evidence of a polymath.

You have reached The Official Website of Jonathan Bishop. I am regarded by Incisive Media to be one of ‘Britain’s foremost exporters of online community and e-learning research to the USA and Mainland Europe‘. I am regarded as the leading authority in the world on trolling and increasing participation in online communities.

Never heard of him. Oh, and the “trolling research”? He’s got a couple of blog entries about some incident at a football game. If that’s all it takes to be an expert in trolling, I must be the Einstein of trolls!

I told him that he was babbling BS. So he replied:

We’ll see Mr Myers when my empirical research paper on plasticity and social/emotional/cognitive imparment is published!

Oooooh, he’s submitted a paper. Where, I wonder?

I sent it to Nature Neuroscience, so it will probably get into the Daily Mail after! I am based at the Insitute of Life Science!

Heh. Chewtoy. He’ll probably appreciate the brief surge of traffic this post brings to him.

Enriching Vibrants? WTF?

I thought Dave Futrelle was pulling an April Fool’s joke for a moment. He’s got post up, full of quotes, on these conversations racist MRAs are having about Enriching Vibrants. That phrase sounds like great name for a New Age band, but no…it is apparently a term of art for having sex with immigrants or non-white people. I think. Their scribblings are so incoherent and badly written, and they are so incapable of making a simple clear point, that I have no idea what they could actually be talking about.

But Futrelle’s links are valid. I looked at those sites, and the “vibrating enrichers” stuff is only a small part of the offensiveness flourishing in the Men’s Rights cesspit of the internet.

Unless…could it be…are the MRAs just the grandest, most elaborate, extended April Fool’s joke ever?

I get email

This is the ladies-love-me edition of I get email.

Susan wrote to instruct me in my religion, and tell me about her husband.

My dear sir-you are not an atheist. You are quite simply “your own god”-and you worship at the altar of your intellect. I am married to your counterpart-also a professor-also a biologist-and I pray for you both.

It’s true. I have a little altar next to my computer, and I burn fruit flies on it to honor my intellect.

I’m a little confused, though: so she’s saying her husband is also an annoying obnoxious biology professor and non-atheist? I have a clone, maybe? It’s weird that a theist would stay married to such a person. I don’t think a true believer could possibly stand me.

Amanda also sends her best wishes, although I think she’d be better off sending a love letter to Kent Hovind.

I find it to be a fascinating fact that all people who try to spread the truth and are successful get thrown into jail or end up being highly debated and persecuted for it. Hmmmm… Ever stop and think about how the bible tells us this will happen?

Furthermore, if anyone thinks they are stopping Dr. Hovind from spreading the truth they are foolish to have the slightest thought of it. Because he is still spreading the truth and people are converting. . . yes even in prison! He has been put in the exact place of the type of people that Christ came to save in the first place and show his mighty power. So it’s not like you have stopped him. But only the ignorant would think so.

I am so sorry to say that men with your type of mental dementia are so blinded and hardened from the truth and the only people who believe anything you say are people of the same ignorance and make believe. There is NO evidence to support any of the other creation theories. They’re all guesses. I don’t hate, I feel pity. It is such a shame that people are so willing to fight the truth before easily accepting it. Which is another fact the bible states will be wide spread. People will fight so hard to disprove the truth when it’s so easy to see and let the testimonies and scriptures minister for themselves!

Tell me, if by chance the bible was a fake (which it is not), why is it so necessary to teach the world that there is no hope? That there is no meaning or purpose to life and that all the people you love who died are never going to be endured again… Why is it such a mission for you people? So you can encourage more people to see life as a fluke and not care about consequence? It’s sick. All you want to do is hurt people but it’s absolutely thrilling that the people who know God and the truth are not the least bit angered or affected by your lies. . . rather we pray for you to see the truth before you no longer have the chance.

Here’s a little challenge. Why don’t you set out on a mission to debunk the bible. Prove it isn’t true and that the word of God is fake. And in 3 years come back and tell us your findings. I can guarantee they won’t be the same conclusions and “theories” you have today.

Well gosh then! I hope Kent gets to spend many more years in prison, since even Jesus wants him there.

I guess she really doesn’t like evolution

I’m giving a midterm exam on evolution this morning. I hope none of the students snap.

Associate Professor Stephen M. Kajiura was reviewing with his evolution class in GS 120 for a midterm when FAU student Jonatha Carr interrupted him: “How does evolution kill black people?” she asked. Kajiura attempted to explain that evolution doesn’t kill anyone.

And then, Carr became violent.

A fellow classmate, Rachel Bustamante, was sitting behind Carr prior to her outburst and noticed she had been avoiding looking at the professor until 11:35 a.m. — that’s when she snapped. The classmate reported that Kajiura was discussing attraction between peacocks when Carr raised her hand to ask her question about evolution. She asked it four times, and became increasingly upset each time Kajiura’s answer failed to satisfy her.

…fuckin’ evolution, I hate this shit.…You better shut the fuck up, before I fuckin’ kill you!

Exam time really is kind of stressful for the students.

Manology 101

There I was, minding my own business, when out of the blue some random guy going by the name “principles101” tweets at me…

@pzmyers time for some real biology lessons: goo.gl/obiC

Oh hellz yeah, I think, I love me some biology lessons. So I follow the link, and it’s a free textbook, it says. Only it’s at some site called Manhood Academy, with cheesy clashy glarey page design, and … you can guess where this is going. Sure, it’s a free “book” that you can download, but there isn’t a speck of biology in it. It cockily calls itself “The Principles of Social Competence“, but it isn’t even that — it’s a ridiculous fantasy novel, 292 pages long, in which the authors stroke themselves by inventing elaborate dialogs and scenarios in which the manly men they are instructing all emerge victorious, with gorgeous cowed women clinging tremblingly to their burly powerful arms.

Mostly this is accomplished by pretending that women are like puppy dogs, and it is the man’s job to train her. For instance, if you encounter a girl who doesn’t know how to take a compliment, there’s a little script for what you should say:

“No that’s the wrong answer. You don’t just say, ‘Hah, right.’ That’s a total turn off. You need to learn how to show some appreciation. When I tell you that I like the way you smile, that it turns me on, you should say, ‘Oh my god! That’s soooooo sweet of you!!!! Thank you!!!!.’ See, just like that. That’s the right way to do it.”

You know, if I tried that on a real woman, rather than the Barbie doll the author is posing in his mind, she would either be rightfully creeped out and run away, or she’d focus her withering scorn on my assumption that her purpose in life is to “turn me on”.

Apparently, though, I just have to be persistent.

By consistently punishing a woman’s dysfunctional behavior, she will eventually submit to your will. This means she now fears your authority and values your expectations.

Once a woman submits to your authority, you need to reward her with your praise and affection to maintain her submission.

Give her a biscuit, too, and if she forgets her training, slap her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

There’s the usual caricature of feminism — “At its heart, feminism represents women’s desire to control men” — lots of long-winded pop pseudopsychology, all larded up with so much random clip art that it will make your eyes ache. Oh, and please do read the section beginning at page 238: “How to handle bitch behavior”. Apparently, the best way to handle a woman is to just call her a “bitch” over and over again until she cries and succumbs to your irresistible manhood. Then you can call her a “cunt” to make her beg for your lovin’.

It’s an eye-opener. There are actually men in existence who are that stupid that they believe that BS. Look and laugh: if you’ve ever been curious about what exactly is so unbelievably inane about MRAs and PUAs, it’s a useful example.

The beginning of the collapse of Catholic morality!

Hooray! You promise? Can I help?

The ever-demented Michael Voris, Real Catholic™ has a new video out in which he identifies unambiguously the first domino that will cause the collapse of Catholic morality: masturbation.

He does look like a world-class expert in wanking, and he must enjoy the subject since he promises to talk about it for hours, but I think that rather than just babbling about it, action is more important. I want you all to make some time this week to “destroy Catholicism”, my new favorite euphemism for jacking/jilling off.

You know, suddenly Bill Donohue’s mad rantings sound extremely filthy.

The most revolting aphrodisiac ever

All right, is there nothing so disgusting that someone somewhere won’t eat it in the belief that it will make their penis hard? Nepal is suffering from goldrush-style violence over the harvesting of yarsagumba, a purported ‘natural viagra’. This is yarsagumba:

Yarsagumba is the result of a bizarre parasitic relationship between fungus and insect. Spores of the Cordyceps mushroom invade and consume the larvae of the Himalayan bat moth, which live underground at altitudes of 10,000 to 16,000 feet for as long as five years, feeding on roots before they commence their metamorphosis into moths.

After the fungal spores have killed and mummified the larvae, they send up a spindly brown stem, a tiny knob-headed mushroom – and then they are very likely to be picked.

Sound familiar? It’s Cordyceps, the parasitic fungus that alters the behavior of its insect hosts. The Nepalese are carefully gleaning high-altitude fields, looking for shriveled dead insects with fungal stalks sprouting from them, and selling them at high prices on the global market.

What was the first person to pick up one of these and chew on it thinking? “I’m desperately starving and about to die”?

Anyway, the article claims that it’s actually effective.

The fungus’s reputation is powered by the anecdotal reports of consumers as much as by ancient tradition: In other words, it appears to work. And medical research has backed up claims for its efficacy. A study at Stanford University’s medical school found an increase of 17-ketosteroids in the urine of men taking daily doses of yarsagumba, which indicates an increased production of androgen and other sex hormones in the adrenal gland and testicles.

Controlled animal tests offer credible evidence that regular yarsagumba use decreases recovery time between orgasms and increases the volume of semen production. In another blind trial on human subjects, 65 percent of Cordyceps eaters reported an enhanced sex drive.

I don’t know if I quite believe it. I looked for some of these articles, and not much turns up on PubMed. There are a few articles in places like The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (not very credible), and a few studies in tissue culture that show an effect on steroid synthesis in tumor cells. Nothing incredibly definitive, although I suppose it’s possible it has some effect…but nothing that justifies going all gangster over it.

Well, other than that gullible people will go crazy over imaginary magical herbs.