Aww, the creationists are criticizing me. It would be so darned hurtful if they actually had valid complaints, but as usual, it’s all half-truths, misrepresentation, and selective quoting … and projection. It’s amusing how their complaints are more accurately reflected back at them.
Who’s chattier, men or women? This is a simple study that strapped microphones onto subjects that turned on for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes so that the investigators could do word counts. Here’s the final tally of the average number of words spoken per day:
Men: 15,669 ± 8343
Women: 16,215 ± 7301
There’s no significant difference between the two.
Mehl MR, Vazire S, Ramírez-Esparza N, Slatcher RB, Pennebaker JW (2007) Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men? Science 317:82.
Oy, I have so much catching up to do…
All right, tell me what else is new in the universe outside the Pacific Northwest.
A scientist, Charles L. Rulon, debated an ID creationist, and here are the opening remarks he gave to justify joining in the debate. He first gave a list of reasons to not debate, which I’ll summarize in my own words here:
Skatje has posted photos from our zoo trip yesterday, and they include the scariest butterfly you’ll ever see. It’ll give you nightmares.
We also visited the Pike Place Market, among other things. We have now discovered the secret way to Skatje’s heart, for all of you fanbois out there: “bright orange pants up to his nipples”. I was wondering how he talked her into actually trying some smoked salmon.
Here are our goals for today:
We’re going to spend the morning screwing around downtown, and are going to be at the Seattle Center International Fountain around noon.
Skatje wants to go to the zoo, so we’ll do that in the afternoon. Then around sixish we’ll be peckish and I tried to find a place not far from Woodland Park, and could not resist the idea of the Jolly Roger Taproom in Ballard. So that’s where we’ll try to be.
Keep in mind we’ll be stumbling about in an unfamiliar city and struggling to find parking, so timeliness is unlikely to be one of our virtues.
Oh, no…of all the blue-nosed asinine laws. We showed up at the pub, and unfortunately, absolutely no minors are even allowed inside, lest they might see an adult consuming a beverage that contains 3% alcohol. This put us in a spot, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t quite persuade myself that I could sit inside and meet a few nice people while my daughter (who is chronologically only almost 17) sat outside on the sidewalk. So my apologies to any of you who might have showed up earlier this evening.
A new squid has been caught near Hawaii — much is being made of the fact that it has eight arms instead of ten, but that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me, since we have the example of Taningia danae with a similar arrangement. It’s more interesting that there is a preliminary assignment to the genus Mastigoteuthis, a curious and poorly understood group of cephalopods.
Here’s a curious poll: “If marriage is a sacred institution authored by God, should atheists be barred from marrying?”
One answer is sweeping the vote (and I don’t think sending the Pharynguloid horde over there will change the trend), but Austin is making an interesting point. If gay people can’t marry because their union violates some religious requirement, then shouldn’t atheist marriages also be invalid? It seems to me that if you are arguing that marriage is a divine sacrament — and obviously, I don’t think it is — then a consistent fundamentalist ought to be arguing for the denial of married status to unbelievers.
Thank God fundamentalists aren’t consistent.
