User talk:Armondikov

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Thread titleRepliesLast modified
Atmospheric chemistry Delingpole style519:29, 30 April 2012
Just wanted to say...716:23, 30 April 2012
LSU's educational standards get ever higher515:33, 17 April 2012
Chemists and safe words108:53, 11 April 2012
Thanks.718:22, 8 April 2012
Thanks for telling me guys!115:36, 3 April 2012
The Kool-Aid...700:16, 1 April 2012
Chemistry310:09, 29 March 2012
Chemistry meets Universal Darwinism420:05, 26 March 2012
Wazzock114:45, 25 March 2012
Dan Savage answers a profound philosophical question100:42, 16 March 2012
ADK007.svg208:26, 15 March 2012
The Walking Dead319:29, 14 March 2012
Let me guess215:41, 13 March 2012
For you114:35, 8 March 2012
The categories, they do nothing!1018:15, 5 March 2012
Thank you 004:49, 4 March 2012
1-star reviews1003:14, 25 February 2012
"Devil cannot create"100:56, 24 February 2012
Wittgenstein220:17, 23 February 2012
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Atmospheric chemistry Delingpole style

Is it just me or is Delingpole going crazy even by his standards (if that's possible)? Now he's peddling the imminent ice age stuff and frothing at the mouth over the "ultra-greenies" like the Royal Society and the CSIR, and Ben Goldacre, apparently. (Probably still butthurt over this tweet.)

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)22:28, 28 April 2012

It's funny 'cos delingPOLE is like a penis!!!!!!!!

Anyway, the point about climate cycles is that no matter how you spin it - cooling, no-as-bad-as or otherwise - pumping a fuck ton of CO2 into the atmosphere is by far not helping. So no, the "religion" isn't going to collapse, even if we do get a shock cooling spree a la Day After Tomorrow. The potential for the temperature to plummet is far more complicated than what Delingpole seems to suggest; not that I can gather what he's suggesting. Is he saying a) we shouldn't bother because warming from CO2 will work against this deadly cooling, because it's likely that this could make it worse by affecting ocean currents. Or b) ha ha ha, warming alarmists are wrong and... somehow we should listen to the cooling alarmists?

Scarlet A.pnggnostic23:23, 28 April 2012

Don't worry, global warming isn't happening, but it's good for ya! On the cooling article, I thought he was letting this guy make a guest post.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)18:26, 30 April 2012

Warming isn't happening... but if it was it would be a good thing... so it not happening is a bad thing... but that's a good thing. Yet these fuckers claim that climatologists are the ones with well-oiled goalposts?

Scarlet A.pngmoral18:48, 30 April 2012

No, no, you've got it all wrong. Warming stopped in 1995 1998 2005 2007 2011...

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)19:12, 30 April 2012

We didn't stop Judgement Day, we just delayed it!

Scarlet A.pngpostate19:29, 30 April 2012
 
 
 
 
 

Just wanted to say...

...your blog is awesome. I don't post much here anymore, but I still lurk, and for the past few months your blog has been by far the best part of this site for me. Keep up the good work!

Tetronian you're clueless17:48, 28 April 2012

It's just me talking shit whenever I have the time.

Scarlet A.pngtheist23:32, 28 April 2012

Aye, but it's good shit.

Tetronian you're clueless03:45, 29 April 2012

I suppose I'm just happy that someone reads it occasionally!

Scarlet A.pngnarchist04:27, 29 April 2012

Tetronian isn't the only one. Now where's my free air guitar?

The Spikey Punk I'm punking my punk!21:07, 29 April 2012

Please contact customer support: 0909 131 3224

Scarlet A.pngpostate09:36, 30 April 2012
 
 
 
 

I might use the blog to brainstorm a philosophy of science course - I know they're just first-years I'm teaching now but they really are quite useless at this. So perhaps it'll be less talking shit and more focused later.

Scarlet A.pngbomination16:20, 30 April 2012

I've actually linked someone to it once. Don't recall which post though.

Тysic semper16:23, 30 April 2012
 
 

LSU's educational standards get ever higher

Alties in the vet school now

Тycommunications wire16:58, 16 April 2012

There's nothing wrong with alternative medicine if it's just a supplementation of "scientific" med (for want of a better word). There are tons of herbs that have real effect for a variety of real illnesses kittah or human. (Cinnamon for example, really does stabilize your blood sugar, though they don't know why. Study after study has proven a direct link, and not just a correlation). Giving your cat pumpkin and valarium help digestion and "stressies".

Granted, i've never read one darn study to suggest that accupuncture does squat for anyone.

Pink mowse.pngGodot On a perdu le contrôle17:21, 16 April 2012

They're focusing on acupuncture.

Тysic semper17:22, 16 April 2012
 

Well, you what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work?

Scarlet A.pngpathetic21:54, 16 April 2012

Cept there are still hosts of people out there in the medical and "rational" community that bristle when you tell them things like "massage has real, medical benefits if done right", "eating a spoon full of sugar cinnamon helps the medicine go down", and "good ol' pot has a host of medical benefits". These types seem to think if it doesn't come in a pill, it's got no value to medicine.

Pink mowse.pngGodot On a perdu le contrôle15:31, 17 April 2012

Which is about as horrendously annoying as those who just shout "it's a placebo" without knowing what that actually means.

Scarlet A.pngnarchist15:33, 17 April 2012
 
 
 
 

Chemists and safe words

xkcd gets kinky.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)08:25, 11 April 2012

BUT IT'S AN ENZYME!!!

Scarlet A.pngpostate08:53, 11 April 2012
 

Excellent work. If I had a clue what to do, I would've been right there with you.

P-Foster Talk "Armed with the knowledge of our past we can charter a course for our future"--MX16:46, 8 April 2012

Well, the credit really goes to whoever found the first one without using RC to get to it.

Scarlet A.pngsshole16:48, 8 April 2012

Copy-paste into Excel or Word. Not that hard, really.

steriletalk16:57, 8 April 2012

How did that work? I searched through the source code and it seemed to have written over the entire thing.

Scarlet A.pngsshole16:58, 8 April 2012

Open the page, CTRL-A, CTRL-C, open Word or Excel, CTRL-V. It's a different format in Word/Excel, and everything is there. As it pastes, it writes everything down line by line. (Maybe just in Excel.)

steriletalk17:05, 8 April 2012

Either way, I'm stuck on a shitty work terminal with an archaic version of Firefox that refuses to update, so it's been a struggle to load things up without it crashing.

Scarlet A.pngnarchist17:06, 8 April 2012
 

(IE, You're overthinking it!!)

steriletalk17:05, 8 April 2012
 
 
 
 

Thanks for telling me guys!

Have I got the journal for you!

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)15:33, 3 April 2012

Totally.

Scarlet A.pngsshole15:36, 3 April 2012
 

The Kool-Aid...

...you drank it, didn't you? Wake me up when the Singularity is here. :P

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)23:31, 31 March 2012

Taste the hemlock flavoured kool-aid! The Singularity is only Twenty Minutes Into The Future!!

Scarlet A.pngtheist23:33, 31 March 2012

Is it past midnight in the UK yet? Loosing daylight saving today has thrown me off...

Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem23:35, 31 March 2012

Oh, yeah, I just realized it's already April 1 over there. What cult should I join? Maybe I'll "retire" and become a memeticist, or even (shiver) a Freudian.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)23:38, 31 March 2012

Wait, are you saying "Second Life exists, and is a computer program. The world exists, clearly, so it too must be a computer program." wasn't enough to give it away? I figured this would be slightly more original (though slightly more difficult) than the traditional stunt of going off to become a creationist like Trent did back in 09.

Scarlet A.pngsshole23:41, 31 March 2012

Oh no, it gave it away, I just didn't make the April 1 connection immediately.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)23:49, 31 March 2012
 
 

Time is an abstract invention of the human brain and the educated stupid. Physics doesn't need time. It is passed midnight, midday, sun-up and sun-down on the four points of the one true cubic Earth.

Scarlet A.pngpostate23:38, 31 March 2012
 
 
 

We should talk chemistry some time. I take hydrogens off compounds, albeit the complete story I have is on O-H bonds, not C-H. But hopefully we'll get there.

steriletalk04:36, 29 March 2012

That would be making the assumption I know what I'm talking about!

Scarlet A.pngbomination07:50, 29 March 2012

Never stops anyone else.

Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem07:54, 29 March 2012

Hehe, I've had to wing so many presentations on those grounds.

Scarlet A.pnggnostic10:09, 29 March 2012
 
 
 

Chemistry meets Universal Darwinism

They're coming for you! (Bonus: Read the bottom of the internet to see a memetics proponent jump into the mix.)

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)04:39, 26 March 2012

The issue with trying to bridge the gap between chemistry and biology that way is pretty much the same reason that memes can't follow a strict Darwinian evolution; the systems are far too volatile. As Darwinian evolution simply falls out of "descent with modification" there's no way you can apply that to a chemical system unless you're talking about autocatalysis, which while I think is a great idea for the "beginning of life", is a minute sub-set of chemical interactions. Certainly, reducing biological evolution to chemistry simply ignores a ton of emergent properties that are required for descent and modification to even make sense. This is like trying to ask whether a single atom, taken in isolation, is a solid, liquid or gas. You're talking about properties that simply don't make sense at that scale.

Either Pigliucci is explaining this remarkably badly, or Pross isn't actually saying particularly interesting. There's a trade-off between thermodynamic and kinetic stability, yes? And?

Scarlet A.pngtheist10:21, 26 March 2012

Oh no, parts of it are just plain wrong. He seems to be trying to make some kind of analogy from DKS to biological fitness, which doesn't make much sense. There are some other howlers in there as well, like evolution leading to increasing complexity and conflating evolution with natural selection. Why is it that people who are so enthusiastic about applying evolution to everything so often don't even understand it?

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)18:12, 26 March 2012

Dunno. Maybe the ID advocates have a point when they say evolution is there to destroy God, so applying it to everything would obviously kill Him off for good.

Scarlet A.pnggnostic19:28, 26 March 2012

Above I should have said "evolution inevitably leading to increasing complexity." Re: ID, this comes up a number of times in Biology and Ideology, just substitute any proponent of Universal Darwinism for Dawkins here: "Darwinism is not being presented as a representative element of the scientific enterprise, with a legitimate place at the round table of ethical and social debate. It is clearly understood as the defining account of reality. Where most evolutionary biologists would argue that Darwinism offers a description of reality, Dawkins goes further, insisting that it is to be seen as an explanation of things. Darwinism is a worldview, a grand récit, a metanarrative—a totalizing framework, by which the great questions of life are to be evaluated and answered."

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)20:05, 26 March 2012
 
 
 
 

Susan used to say it, perhaps that's where you remember it? or perhaps this? Sophiebecause liberals 22:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Sophiebecause liberals22:56, 24 March 2012

I've just heard "twazzock" being hurled at Jenson Button.

Scarlet A.pngsshole14:45, 25 March 2012
 

Dan Savage answers a profound philosophical question

But how would Aristotle answer?


Star of David.png Radioactive Misanthrope21:34, 15 March 2012

I am actually pondering how Aristotle would answer that one, but IMHO you can't argue with empirical evidence involving gobbling.

Scarlet A.pngnarchist00:42, 16 March 2012
 

Seems like File:ADK007.svg which you are using on the "Now" page has some empty flowtext. The old version has 2 pieces of flowtext, one of them empty and the other containing "\m/". If you are using Inkscape, you can remove the empty flowtext in the XML editor (Edit -> XML Editor), and convert the second to regular text (Text -> Convert to Text). After this, the file should render correctly in MediaWiki. If you used a fancy font, you should additionally convert the text to paths (Object -> Convert to Path).

Tweenk (talk)02:11, 15 March 2012

Yeah, been meaning to fix that, but only if I could think of a suitable logo to put there, so I've been ignoring it.

Scarlet A.pngbomination08:10, 15 March 2012

I thought it was censored for SOPA...

Peter horas non numero nisi serenas08:26, 15 March 2012
 
 

The Walking Dead

Is awesome! Watch it when you can. Actually, there's a Walking Dead marathon on Sunday for us. OuO

Dumpling (talk)19:09, 14 March 2012

Once I've caught up with Castle and Breaking Bad!

Scarlet A.pngd hominem19:24, 14 March 2012
 

Blech! I say skip it. Bland, one-dimensional characters, almost no action and no urgency to the plot (which moves at a snail's pace). At best you can say there are some nice setpieces with zombies, but that's dragged down hard by long conversations between characters we know almost nothing about.

To be fair, though, the most recent episode was pretty great. I just wish more were like that.

Cow...Hammertime!19:25, 14 March 2012

I'll be the first to say "the books are better!" even though I haven't read them all yet. The whole clinging-onto-the-constructs-of-the-past thing that seems to pervade the show is kinda hard to accept and the show moves slower than Lost, which actually had some mystery in it. If you watch it while muted you realize that the action scenes really aren't a whole lot besides some camera tricks and prop work.

Seth Peck (talk)19:29, 14 March 2012
 
 

Extremely ritualistic family meals aren't "normal" either.

Тyrannis15:23, 13 March 2012

I would say "extremely ritualistic anything" isn't normal.

Scarlet A.pngbomination15:36, 13 March 2012

There's a reason we have to buy new glasses, plates, and bowls every 2 years. Though the amount of milk lost has drastically reduced in the past ten years.

ТyYAUA15:41, 13 March 2012
 
 

[1]

Тyrant13:50, 8 March 2012

When I upload my brain, I'm definitely taking the fifty one Jessica Rabbits.

Scarlet A.pngd hominem14:35, 8 March 2012
 

The categories, they do nothing!

A cognitive linguistics paper just for you.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)16:37, 2 March 2012

I thought I just made this shit "cognitive linguistics" up...

Scarlet A.pngmoral16:42, 2 March 2012

Heh, nope, you would be a tenured prof in a linguistics or psych department if you had. "Cognitive linguistics" itself is a problematic term because it usually means "the branch of psycholinguistics that became George Lakoff's personality cult" rather than the more obvious meaning of "the application of cognitive psychology to linguistics."

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)16:57, 2 March 2012

I can see that the subtle differences there could cause confusion.

Scarlet A.pngsshole16:59, 2 March 2012

It's not really so subtle at all if you're familiar with the history of the fields, though. It's sort of like how "evolutionary psychology" often doesn't mean "psychology done from an evolutionary perspective," but "selfish gene + Cosmides and Tooby."

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)17:09, 2 March 2012

The "subtle" was sarcastic. :P

Scarlet A.pnggnostic17:16, 2 March 2012
 
 
 
 

Sometimes I just want to roll the clock back a couple of years to before I stumbled head first into fuzziness. Things were just so much better.

Scarlet A.pngtheist11:24, 5 March 2012

Too late, you have already unasked the question.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)17:35, 5 March 2012

Sometimes, academics ask questions that defeat the purpose of the intent of the underscored themes. This whole discussion on Categories by Danziger, creates a non "day to day life and use of language" and imposes, instead, this artificial construct of what catigories SHOULD do, and therefore why they are imperfect and imprecise. But what she wants them to do, and what they actually do do are two totally different things.

Her work on "language space and culture (1998)" just makes me wonder why she wants to prove her thesis, rather than wants to work with the proof she has to MAKE a thesis.

Pink mowse.pngGodotoi, putain, genial, merci18:15, 5 March 2012
 
 
 

Thank you for what you have done for me. I do not expect that we agree on science. But I genuinely appreciate you taking out the more spurious elements of the article. People do not listen to me because they assume I want the article to be completely uncritical, which is of course untrue. Cheers, Notedscholar (talk), March 03, 11:46pm

Notedscholar (talk)04:49, 4 March 2012

1-star reviews

I remember you said something about using the 1-star reviews on Amazon -- I found a great one on Gould's Mismeasure of Man, emphasis "mein": "I recommend instead books that are sound on these issues: Why Race matters (by Michael Levin); Race, Evolution and Behavior : A Life History Perspective (by J. P. Rushton); Mein Kampf; The Real American Dilemma: Race, Immigration, and the Future of America (by Jared Taylor.)"

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)02:14, 24 February 2012

I love how science is always right... till it contradicts what *I* believe.

Pink mowse.pngGodotGrow a vagina03:34, 24 February 2012

Hey, me too! It's so convenient.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)05:26, 24 February 2012

Because the 1-star trick totally works. Though I fear such reviews might be soon replaced by a simply dichotomy of like/dislike as in practice no one really works outside of a 4 point system anyway. You know, like Strictly Come Dancing judges only really scoring between 7 and 10 even though in theory they have 1-10 to play with? Pretty soon the entire world will be just one big thumbs up button that we kick any time we're feeling anything slightly stronger than pure ambivalence about something.

Scarlet A.pngd hominem08:46, 24 February 2012

Gaaah, a tvtropes link! I curse you for eternity! click...click...click..click...

Sophiebecause liberals12:19, 24 February 2012

Sorry, should have put the warning up. At least it wasn't to Oglaf.

Scarlet A.pngtheist12:27, 24 February 2012
 

what is teh one star trick, by the way?

Pink mowse.pngGodotGrow a vagina03:08, 25 February 2012

Only read 1-star reviews. They're a far better (and funnier) indicator of whether something is good or not than the 5-star ones, where it's slightly more difficult to tell well reasoned praise from the musings of a gushing sycophant.

Scarlet A.pngpostate03:14, 25 February 2012
 
 
 
 

"DON'T TRUST THIS BOOK! Scientists are now discovering that Gould misrepresented the science to fit his radical Marxist ideologies!"

In my experience, being accused of being a Marxist (unless you actually are Marx) is synonymous with being right.

Scarlet A.pngmoral08:50, 24 February 2012

Actually, the part of the book on Morton's skulls has been debunked. I don't know why he even went after that, though, since cranial capacity is not a proxy measure for intelligence anyway. Now it's a whipping boy of the self-proclaimed "racial realists," because if one of Gould's arguments was wrong, he was obviously just a PC-Marxist hack and racism is not racist.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)19:10, 24 February 2012

the funny thing is that the guy who's review you found is a real nut job. self styled "self educated biologist", math person who has discovred some new math or something. click his link to find out about him

Pink mowse.pngGodotGrow a vagina03:07, 25 February 2012
 
 
 

"Devil cannot create"

Yes he can, he created the dinosaurs silly! [1] [2]

ТyYes?13:50, 23 February 2012

The first link just makes me think of all the stuff I've read on dinosaur respiration and the calculations that essentially demonstrate that they had bird-like, rather than lizard-like, lungs.

Scarlet A.pngtheist00:56, 24 February 2012
 

Re: latest essays: Read und learn your Wittgenstein.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)19:32, 23 February 2012

This one seems like a more to-the-point explanation to me.

Scarlet A.pngd hominem19:44, 23 February 2012

Witty and religion interesting enough. I'm wondering if some of it is clumsily walking into ignosticism when they're saying "is P" is used in different senses. I'm pretty sure I could coax the "is P" out of a religious believer, and if they couldn't do that then their model of their own belief would be somewhat... well, crap at doing its job.

Scarlet A.pnggnostic20:17, 23 February 2012
 
 
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