I am an excellent (written) test-taker. I am good at educated guessing. I am (or used to be at least) also really good at memorizing. I educated-guessed my way through the final exam of a biology course for which I had skipped almost all the classes to score a B. I could stay up the night (or two nights in a row) before an organic chemistry exam ( Read more... )

I heard a talk a few months ago here from one Professor Mary Poplin from Claremont (whom, when I opened e-mails about her, I kept confusing with Mary Poppins) partly regarding her studies on high performing teachers in low performing schools ( Read more... )

While I've never written directly about them, I have spoken quite a few times on various "paradigm shifts" in science. (One can scan my topics list if interested.)

( definition of a paradigm shift )

Two of the most fascinating questions yet to be answered by science, in my opinion, are how developmental biology works and how the brain works. This is because they are, relatively speaking, some of the most complicated processes known.

On the other hand, while the questions asked by psychology are some of the most fascinating to me, psychology as ( Read more... )

I admit that I am almost as annoyed by all of the recent football status updates on Facebook as I was with all of the political ones. I am quite tired of seeing them.

I admit that this is probably a case of me being "highbrowish". (I stole this term from C.S. Lewis, who felt the same way about sports as I.)[1] It is a flaw in my character; it is ( Read more... )

I never thought I would have so many posts devoted to steroids, but I do....

Last time I brought them up was in light of Dr. Paul Bloom's talk on my campus.[1] Bloom found from his studies that it was primarily the fact that most people think most people think that steroids are cheating, not that they actually logically came to that conclusion ( Read more... )

Poll Incest or OK?( Read more... )

In Paul Bloom's talk, he gave the statistic that 90% of Americans think steroids are a huge problem in sports. When asked why, people usually answered "It's cheating," or, "Because the side effects are so terrible."

It seems Bloom was as confused as I was back when I posted an entry on steroids.[1] Bloom, however, was better able to study this ( Read more... )

How about an entry a day early this time? ...and my first video entry.
A long while ago, a former LJ user posted an equally fascinating and disturbing Internet site that showed how much magazines change the way a model looks before publishing her image on a magazine page:

Exhibit AThe girl on the cover, by the way, was only 14 years old ( Read more... )

It is frustrating as a scientist whenever people make the logical fallacy of assuming one thing causes another just because observation or studies indicate a correlation. (It is doubly frustrating when such claims are made by "scientists ( Read more... )