Michael Flynn's Blog, page 86

Sing a New Song

No Wonder Stoolies Seldom Sing

Saw the following reported on James Chastek's site:

The LA Times described an experiment performed 40 years ago on 1700+ toddlers.

In the experiment, the toddlers were exposed to a series of 12 tones. Some were "pleasant," but others were high-pitched and followed by a "jarring sound produced by 'jangling metal objects'."

The toddlers were hooked to a polygraph to record their reactions to the sounds. The idea was that they would associate the high-pitched...

Oh Death, Oh Death, Won't Ya Hold me Over For Another Day....

Where is Thy Sting?

At 300 days into the year the estimate worldwide death totaled almost 49 million. During this time Dengue Fever killed twice as many people as Swine Flu and diabetes and malaria about a hundred times more, each.
media.mercola.com/ImageServer/public/2009/November/swine-flu-deaths.gif

But who knows how reliable some of these numbers are from some corners of the world. Don't take the last few digits seriously folks.

Illegal Aliens, Part the Second

Where Are They?

Fermi famously asked the question, "Where are they?" regarding alien life. According to incantations - I mean, calculations - there has been plenty of time for them to make it here. So why haven't they shown up?

The basic prayer is something called the Drake Equation, which is actually disguised to look like a real equation, perhaps in the hope that no one will notice that none of the terms in it is even remotely calculable. The equation runs:
The Drake equation states tha...

Illegal Aliens

Will Aliens Look Like Us?

In this Scientific American article www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm Michael Shermer states that the odds that "intelligent, technically advanced" aliens would look anything like a bipedal humanoid are close to zero

He claims to argue this in a YouTube video, produced by the "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science" [sic:].



However, as you can see, he does not reason or argue this, he merely asserts it. His main argument - his only one, really - is tha...

m_francis @ 2009-11-26T23:08:00

Will Aliens Look Like Us

In this Scientific American article www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm Michael Shermer states that the odds that "intelligent, technically advanced" aliens would look anything like a bipedal humanoid are close to zero

He claims to argue this in a YouTube video, produced by the "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science" [sic:].



However, as you can see, he does not reason or argue this, he merely asserts it. His main argument - his only one, really - is that...

Thanksgiving Football

They Do One of These Every Year

The granddaughter went to the bonfire tonight. The video if of last year's fire. The Easton Red Rovers/Phillipsburg Stateliners is the oldest high school football rivalry in the US, which means in the world. Every year on the night before Thanksgiving, Easton ignites a giant bonfire to celebrate the upcoming immolation of the rivals from across the river. Last year, a Stateliner archer tried to ignite the bonfire prematurely by firing a flaming arrow from th...

Now You See It

The Death of the Middle Class

Statistics is a funny thing. That's why we all laugh in stat class.

Suppose we read [or, more likely told, by a newsreader:] that median household income was $40,000 and that 20% of Households are below $30,000.

But now, median household income has plummeted to $25,000, cut nearly in half! And the % of households below $30,000 has more than doubled - to 57%


But consider these five households, making 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 kilobucks, resp. What happened was th...

Discovering the Past

Score One for the Higher Criticism

(h/t Mark Shea)

The Coming Apocalypse

Damn, I Missed It



Must have been out of town that day.

More on Alien Life Forms

First Contact


h/t Quodlibeta