I love how the comments section of the second linked article was instantly swarmed by bullshitters.
Are we really sure quarks aren't bullshit? I have trouble understanding them.
They come from a Joyce poem. Definitely bullshit.
Per OP1, it does look good. I'll do it if they make it a MOOC. Even if not it's a good reading list.
In our great state, when we have a societal problem with no obvious point of governmental intervention, we ask the schools to teach people about it.
They ought to do a graduate level version of this course, wherein it's explored how much bullshit there is even in respectable empirical science.
Quark is real, and made of quarks (and leptons). But non-quark things are also often made of quarks. Physics is confusing.
I'm just saying, I can see electrons if I'm really hung over, but not quarks.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering
OP: facebook linking and blog commenting should be taxed.
One thing that is missing in the syllabus is the particular history of organized disinformation campaigns. Really good US examples of this are the efforts of the tobacco companies to make cancer links appear uncertain. Robert Park's fantastic book Voodoo Science has a lot of good detail on the people and methods that delayed action by nearly two decades.
If I'm remembering right, quark co-disoverer Murray Gell-Mann held for years that quarks were not real, but merely a useful accounting device, only changing his mind when evidence for them was detected experimentally.
I think many scientists had similar views about Australia. But I can infer Australia on the basis of my own observation. I've never been there, but I've seen a kangaroo.
Of course quark is real! And required for superior stöllen.
Of quark course is real! Of real course is quark!
Why do we study vibrations, but not ESP?
Because there's no grants for studying ESP.
I finally read the link (it looked serious so I waited until I had absolutely nothing else to do). It looks really good. Week 9 gets at my own personal pet peeve.
The level of conference and fake journal spam (invitations to both publish and edit) is insane. Like most spam, it's hard for me to believe people fall for it, but they must.
I get invited to edit a journal, give a talk, or submit a paper maybe ten times a week. I know that no reputable organization would invite me to do any of those things, so I just send them to spam. But I wonder what it is like for people with actual qualifications but not enough experience to figure out what is a fraud without wasting time on it.
I'm assuming anybody with a brain can figure out that an invitation to fly to China to give a talk that comes without money to fly to China is a fraud. But I wonder about journal spam going to somebody who is active as a clinician but hasn't published anything but maybe a case not or two.
Maybe gmail could add a warning to it's spam filter. Warning: You should only pay page fees if you have a grant that will cover them.
"Also, your penis is probably big enough."
"If it isn't, the only reliable way to make it bigger involves a Mason jar and angry bees."
||
I am reading Thaler's Misbehaving about behavior economics (mostly about the way in which common cognitive biases lead people to make non-optimal or irrational decision and the degree to which the economics profession has, historically, tried to avoid thinking about that fact). I'm enjoying it. It's an easy read, entertaining, and contains a lot of useful concepts and examples.
But it does occur to me that, had I read the book in my mid-20s it would have made me feel very smart. I would have closed the book thinking, "there are so many obvious ways to make bad decisions which can be avoided with a little thought and effort. I will be vigilant." Reading it now it just makes me think, "there are so many examples of categories of irrational decisions which I make all the time, and will probably never stop making. The best I can do is to muster the energy to try to be rational some of the time."
That observation is, itself, so old as to be proverbial, but that book provides a good example.
|>
I don't know. 21 in particular doesn't sound so great to me, but you clearly have a better-informed opinion.
Do you think that President Trump falls asleep every night after having committed multiple acts of manusturpation while imagining the long, sinuous, alabaster fingers of Stephen Miller caressing, seeking, finding...probing?
I agree with 24. 19 and 20 are good, though.
I'm not saying that 21 appeals as an idea. Just that, as a conclusion to the train of thought it was well done.
21 is almost certainly the cheapest effective treatment, at least while bees last. But it might make you rethink your goal
If the bees don't work, try Asian hornets.
"...and that's when I noticed the pollen on my wife was from wild flowers and not the purchased pollen I prefer for my own dick-enlargement bees."
"The government refused our grant proposal to study colony collapse because it looked like it might implicate corporate agriculture so we ended up sneaking our project through as a penis enlargement study."
Anaphylaxis prophylaxis would be needed.
The "merkin of bees" guy at the fair will be great.