I’ve been mildly distracted by fish for the past week or two (something that happens frequently), so here is a little link dump to keep my nonexistent audience entertained!In case you haven’t seen it already, here is a straight-faced sendup of science journalism.
And here is a highly readable description of polymerase chain reaction. Unfortunately, if you have heard of polymerase chain reaction, you don’t really need to read the post.
A piece about “neurosexism”. Read it if you’re a scientist, a feminist, or, basically, a human who can read English.
Writing advice from Kirk, Spock, et al.
Wicked cool concept art: Star Wars set in feudal Japan.
A takedown of bad evolutionary biology in science fiction, which demonstrates an actual understanding of evolution! (If you’ve ever started yelling at your computer while reading a Cracked.com article (for reasons unrelated to sexism, racism, homophobia etc.), you’ll appreciate this article.)
Re: neurosexism
The author of this article makes an important observation: people like using cherry-picked science as a scoundrel’s haven after their (secretly?) bigoted opinion becomes unfashionable. This was the issue that Steven Jay Gould points out in The Mismeasure of Man, albeit with race rather than sex.
From what I’ve read, there probably some meaningful neurological differences between men and women (and a whole lot of non-differences). The “hardcodedness” of these things is pretty contentious, but whatever the result, I think the most important point (made by Gould) is that biological “inequality” does not and should not preclude social equality. Hence, studies of sex differences really don’t have bearing on anything to do with social justice or career selection, etc. People should be treated equally and given equal opportunities, full stop.