Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
From a conversation with a friend on a recent Facebook post. A memory of a memory, #academic ghosts haunting the dusty rooms of my brain.
I once spent a very enjoyable afternoon in the #University of #Minnesota #Biostatistics department library reading through century-old bound volumes of #Biometrika, which is now a somewhat obscure #journal, but was in its day instrumental to the development of #statistics. All the great names were there—#Yule, #Pearson, #Fisher, et al.—and it was a clubby little world back then. Everybody who was anybody in statistics knew everybody else.
Just like today, they used a lot of space in their papers refuting each other's papers. But the writing style was completely different, much more personal: many of the papers read more like conversations than the structured, pedantic language of modern journal articles in practically every field. "First I tried this, but it didn't work, so next I ..." "Like I said to so-and-so in a recent letter ..." "According to whosit, such-and-such is true, but frankly, whosit is an idiot."
Well, I recognized what they were doing: forming #cliques and having slow-motion #flamewars. Everything old is new again. Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off stripping out the modern pretense of detachment.
"When asked by Nature how the papers made it through review, a Sage spokesperson responded that the publisher relies on journal editors to make ind...
For anyone who's wondering about the precise phrasing above: yes, #chronons travel backward in time, while anti-chronons travel forward. Our *perception* of time going forward is created by all the chronons rushing past us in the other direction. It's one of those odd historical naming conventions like #electrons having a negative charge, or an "east wind" meaning air blowing west, that we're stuck with now.
You'd think that with our current understanding of temporal mechanics, we could fix this—but every attempt has failed, often messily. I suspect it was written into the same #Time #Travel #Exemption #Act that keeps #Hitler alive.
It always fascinates me how #hairstyles in both the distant #past and far #future change, decade by decade and even year by year, at exactly the same rate and in the same way as the present. My #hypothesis is that whenever anyone starts a #historical or #science #fiction #movie production, the #chrononic (or anti-chrononic, as the case may be) #displacement #field sends a signal backward or forward in time to subtly alter reality and keep everything consistent. Otherwise the #universe would fall apart. Trust me, I'm a #scientist.
#Tarbosaurus: "You look so yummy I could just eat you up! Be my valentine?"
#Deinocheirus: "No."
(art by Tuomas Koivurinne)
Real #wolves are fascinating, beautiful, awe-inspiring creatures. #Direwolves were pretty neat too. I really wish people could appreciate the actual animals without feeling the need to mythologize them.
One of my favorite concert memories is of being at an #Einstürzende #Neubauten show when some yob in the audience shouted "set shit on fire!" ... and #Blixa #Bargeld snapping back, "We do not need to set things on fire. We have #Rammstein to do that for us."
"For example, there’s a good argument to be made that #humans, #chimpanzees, and #bonobos all belong together in one #genus, either #Pan or #Homo. It’s only our desire to see ourselves as something special that causes us to put them in one genus and us in another. If #ravens—probably the smartest **living** #dinosaurs, although some #parrots give them a run for their money—were building a #taxonomy, they’d undoubtedly lump us together with our close relatives. But they might go to great lengths to separate themselves from #crows!"
I like to think I can still turn a nice phrase now and then.
https://dinosaursworld.quora.com/If-Troodon-was-not-real-then-which-dinosaur-was-the-smartest-2
It's been at least a decade since I thought, "I really need a #drink," and a good bit longer than that since the thought was followed immediately by the action. But it's been on my mind much more recently, for reasons it's not my place to discuss, and even if it weren't for those reasons I'm not sure it would ever quite go away. For everyone who will never stop #craving #alcohol or anything else: I will happily help you celebrate every inch of ground you take back and hold.
I get the appeal of climbing #Everest. It’s not something I’ll ever do myself, but if I were younger and richer, I might consider it as a goal. My beloved #mountains here in #Colorado can be plenty challenging, but they aren’t even #foothills to the #Himalayas—more like foothills to the foothills. So yes, I understand the draw.
#Snowboarding down? I don’t get that at all. It’s not #mountaineering, just pointless showboating. I won’t say I’m glad this guy perished in the attempt, but I’m not sorry about it either.
From a long-ago Facebook post: "#Pirates *generally* aren't scientists. But let's be honest here, what #scientist hasn't at least occasionally looked at the sad state of grant #funding and been tempted to run up the Jolly Roger?"
It might be the angle, but that looks kind of peaky and heavy-tailed to me. I suspect whoever designed the church adheres to the Leptokurtotic Heresy.
From a recent conversation elsenet:
"Not a fan of the whole #alpha / #beta / etc."
"Not a fan of reality eh?"
"Reality is much more complicated than labeling people by Greek letters. If you really think that kind of thing makes sense, well, have fun with it. Don't expect the grown-ups to play along."
I really need to stick to my vow to stop engaging with these clowns.
Nice overview here. I'm particularly pleased that they acknowledge the uncertainty about what #supercontinent will form next: too many stories present one of the possibilities (usually #Pangaea #Ultima) as a near-certainty. We know for sure that there is at least one more supercontinent in #Earth's future, and probably more, before plate #tectonics stop entirely in a billion years or so. Everything else is informed speculation at best. All this has happened before ...
Performative support for the #Israeli government does not provide cover for welcoming literal #Nazis into the ranks. There’s a lot more to the issue than that, and I do believe there is a significant and disturbing #antiSemitic* strain on the left. But it’s not the blue team that will bring the barbed wire and ovens.
*Everyone knows what “anti-Semitic” means, yes? Okay, good. Moving on.
I just encountered the phrase "#conservation of #worship" to describe the way #religious #fundamentalists assume everyone worships *something* just as fervently as they do, and that strikes me as brilliant.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
