Another rather strange idea from evolutionary psychology: a couple of scientists suggest an evolutionary advantage to depression. That it helps us think analytically, encouraging us to withdraw and obsess when faced with difficult social problems.

My own experience makes it very difficult to accept that it has anything other than a catastrophic ( Read more... )

What I should be doing: cleaning up for the annual real estate inspection tomorrow ( Read more... )

Nine out of 10 Australian women have regular "fat days" and most are miserable about their bodies

Big fat lies and damned statistics: "The new report tells us 68 per cent of Australian men are overweight or obese. But it's ridiculous to lump overweight and obese people together. Do the maths. If you stand 1.83 metres like me, then you enter the ( Read more... )

From Something Awful, useful phrases translated into Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, such as "There are crocodiles in my pants". (I can still read bits of this. Hee hee hee hee hee.)

From TV Tropes, Never Live It Down explains so much about fandom (Owen, Gwen, Spike, etc etc etc).

Christian beliefs still strong, says survey: "More than four in 10 ( Read more... )

Letter in the TWT this week referring to "the extravagant claims made by a section of the screaming popularist (sic) media", ie, the fact of global warming, which has been "exposed by a prominent Australian geologist, David Archibald". As far as I've been able to find out, Mr Archibald works for the oil exploration industry; his theory that sunspot ( Read more... )

Cassini has sent home some holiday snaps from Saturn. Wish I was there.

When Cats Attack

The latest Zero Punctuation, a review of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., made me laugh my bum off.

Richard Glover on the Revenge of the word nerds: "The language police have no interest in the content of what is being said; they don't even have much interest in ( Read more... )

Cardinal Pell continues to insist that condoms increase HIV transmission, describing them as "a significant cause of the problem".

Specifically, he states that:"Condoms give users an exaggerated sense of safety, so that they sometimes engage in 'risk compensation'. In one Ugandan study, gains in condom use seem to have been offset by increases in ( Read more... )

PhD student works out exactly what it is insulin does.

The Tree of Life as a Tube Map

Happy Snake Day. ;)

You may remember my posting about the local rag owned by a climate sceptic and misused to promote his ill-informed views. From a different local rag (The Northern District Times, 4/3/09), another sceptic's letter, betraying much the same ignorance:I am distressed that the blame is placed on excessive carbon dioxide. How ridiculous. Carbon dioxide ( Read more... )