Dr. Kiki’s Flame Tube

I love my flame tube. Distributed by Tubemogul.

There is something primal about watching flames jump to the sound of music.

Are you at TED?

The world’s most inspiring conference begins this week, and all over the blogosphere people are talking about it. Somehow it seems as if everyone is attending when in fact fewer than 1500 people have been accepted for attendance.

The TED conference has grown in popularity over recent years with the advancement of new media technologies. What was once seen by few, and passed along by word of mouth is now broadcast around the world with the help of new media.

Yet, even with the attempt to bring inspiration to more than the individuals in a lecture hall, I can’t help but see TED as elitist. First, the $6000 price tag makes it nearly impossible for the average person to attend. Even with scholarships, the reduced rate of $2000 is more than most can afford. This financial barrier insures that only the elite can take part. There seems to be an assumption that the most inspiring ideas come from those in the higher eschelons of society. Sure, those people can afford “better” educations, have good jobs, and lifestyles that allow them to innovate. But, there is amazing work being done by people who make no money. Couldn’t those financially less fortunate benefit from the amazing ideas at TED? Couldn’t they have something to offer?

I can only imagine what could happen if the people at the TED conference were to rub shoulders with the “riff-raff” instead of the “thinkers”. But, if that were the conference, it wouldn’t be TED. Would the speakers come? Would the people want to be there?

That said, the talks at TED are inspiring. People are doing amazing work of which everyone shold be aware. I will be watching from my office chair.

Cute Robot!

“Living better with robots”

That’s the motto of the Personal Robotics Group at MIT’s Media Lab. I totally agree that robots will make much of our human lives easier and even better. And, if quality of life improvement equals better, then this little cutie is sure to play a crucial role in humanity’s future.

On the Lists

Each year there are several lists compiled of the top this of that’s of the past year. I’m honored to once again be on the Wired Sexiest Geeks list even though there aren’t any pictures of me in a bikini available to the public on the web. It is a testament to the idea that there is more to sexy than being scantily clad.

More exciting, however, is my inclusion as a runner up on Violet Blue’s top 10 sexiest geeks list (Thanks to some comments, I just realized that the site is potentially NSFW. You know, attention is a funny thing. I didn’t even see the sexy pics and ads lining the article on either side.)

Her list is full of sexy, brainy, geeky people who do amazing things in the world. Violet has a method for choosing her annual top 10, which (I have to say) is an improvement over the bashfest that Wired has developed. (I do hope that Wired improves their voting system if they have a sexiest geeks contest next year… please!)

Anyway, thanks for almost putting me in the top 10, Violet! I’m sure that I was number 11… 😉

Kids These Days…

Finally, scientific proof that what the graying generation has been saying for years is true.

“Researchers compared responses from teens in 1975 and 2006, asking questions about their qualities and abilities. The study, published last month, found that today’s kids consider themselves to be far more intelligent and capable than their 1970s counterparts, and more likely to report being “completely satisfied” with themselves.”

The study also says that 93% of teens feel good about themselves. I want to know how this is possible. It’s amazing, but such an impressively large percentage. I mean, I think it is good for kids to grow up with healthy self-esteem. As someone who has dealt with and still does occasionally deal with self-esteem and body image issues, I know how debilitating a negative self-image can be. But, it seems statistically improbable for so many young Americans to be personally satisfied.

The article suggests that the extreme satisfaction might be too much of a good thing. Over-confidence can lead to attitudes of entitlement and laziness.

What do you think?

Biodynamic Pseudo-science

Oh, please!

As Steiner himself put it, “Spiritual scientific truths are true in and of themselves and do not need to be confirmed by experiments.”

Find me a vomit bin where I can expell the pseudo-scientific quackery that was regurgitated in this article. A great article, by the way, but the subject was rather disturbing to my skeptical and scientific sensibilities. (WARNING: It does contain severed cow heads and astrology masquerading as astronomy!)

“We do astronomy,” says Philippe Armenier, a French-born Biodynamic consultant now living in Santa Rosa. “It is quite complicated. We work with the planets and constellations. Astronomy is for plants. Astrology is for human beings.”

And my favorite quote:

“If you seed three days before a full moon, it’ll germinate faster and stronger and your plants will be more fruitful,” says Sue Porter of Porter-Bass Vineyards. “In the olden days, people used to shut down barber shops before the full moon. No one in his right mind would get a haircut; it’d grow back so fast. People used to know a little bit more.”

All I can say, is don’t buy the biodynamic BS. It will be a waste of your money.

(Thanks for sending me the link, Maura!)

The Curse of the Unhappy

I absolutely love Mark Morford’s writing, and here yet again he drives the point home regarding the recent reports of television and depression coming from the General Social Survey. I hardly think unhappiness is the result of television, although it is still obviously in question, but as Mark so eloquently puts it:

“They don’t say, in this new study from the General Social Survey that found that unhappy people tend to watch lots more TV than “happy” people, even though it’s only about 30 percent more, and by the way who the hell knows how they calculated such a percentage, maybe something to do with retinal tracking and blink rates and blood viscosity, or perhaps just how many times the ghostly image of Tyra Banks or Keifer Sutherland or some hellspawn teen from “My Super Sweet 16” slithered into a study subject’s nightmares later on, after the TV flickered off and the Cuervo ran its course and the Ambien kicked in. Just a guess.

Anyway, they don’t say, in this cute and obvious new study, what everyone already knows: that there’s an entire universe of unhappy things that unhappy people also indulge in besides watching way too much TV, and perhaps those things are all interrelated, and it might be worth exploring those things too, because oh my God don’t you know this here life is a veritable liquid madhouse of unhappiness? A giant smoldering smoothie of misery and angst and vague feelings of inadequacy and spiritual barrenness? It’s the American way.”

Happy Halloween!!!

I do love this holiday, although I haven’t had sufficient time to plan for it this year. Boo!

What is my favorite part of this Pagan day? The candy? The costumes? Nay, say I… the scary stories!!!

And, what is more frightening than the usual creatures of the night?  You might think it would be whatever is attacking and killing the most well known night-romping creature, the bat. That’s right, brown bats and others in New England are succumbing during their winter hibernation to an unknown cause. The only clue scientists have so far as to the cause of death for the little flying mammals is the white fuzz that grows on the noses of the bats; a strange fungus of the species Geomyces. Unfortunately, colonies that are afflicted with the fungus lose a large portion of their populations during the hibernation period.

The only thing that to me is even scarier than things that kill scary things are people who promote irrational thinking. I’d like to thank Kent Archie, Nerd for hire, for sending me a truly terrifying website reminder of with what science must contend. Sauropods in Africa. I haven’t stopped screaming yet from the shock.

Announcing…

The SkepticBlog has officially launched. I will be blogging there once per week on Fridays as a part of an effort to promote skeptical and critical thinking by the fabulous team of The Skeptologists. I don’t know that I’ll only blog science there, but that would make sense. In any case, it will be different stuff from what you read and watch here. So, go ahead and add it to your RSS feed reader as something else to ingest with your morning coffee.

Not Taking Responsibility

When is it ok to not take responsibility for your actions? When is it ok to be passive in your approach to life? Is it ok to maintain anonymity when your actions may have forever changed someone’s life?

I ask these questions because of a report out this week in the PLoS online journal regarding an anonymous approach to telling people that you might have given them a sexually transmitted disease. The method uses postcards, and seems to be quite successful.

On the one hand, I understand why it works. I can see the appeal, and why it would be successful. STD’s are looked down upon in our society. They are socially embarrassing to the people who have contracted them. Hence, there is a problem with the reporting of STDs to sexual partners. If you could tell past sexual partners that they might be at risk without actually having to tell them it was you, wouldn’t it make you more likely to be honest?

Any method that can increase the rate of reporting is a good method because it will lead to more people being tested and treated, and to a decrease in transmission. So, I would never say that this isn’t a useful program.

However, I think it points to a problem in our society with the acceptance of sex as a natural process. And, moreso, acceptance that sex with more than one partner over one’s lifespan is a fact of life for many people. It’s hard to face up to something that is viewed as dirty by society. The way that we teach children to view sex is the starting point for many of the problems that we’re now trying to solve with things like anonymous postcards.

Second, the postcard approach makes me feel like we as a society are saying that it is ok for people to disregard personal responsibility. Where’s that going to leave us?