Random Thoughts

Script stuff.

I feel stuck, stuck in the continued reflection of what DSM labels mean to individuals and how they conceive their identities. Perhaps this is because so much of what I read on the internet in our online community is about identity and labels. It seems many of us are focused on what it means to be autistic and who controls the right to label and define. I was going to say that nowhere else in the medical community do you see this war between patients and professionals, but that is not true. Take Morgellons. Please. But it's not just new, unexplained syndromes being bandied about in…

Looking at suchlike: Can somebody explain "Black Friday" in scientifically satisfying ways (read: leave your party book out of it)?  What is this seemingly dramatic drop in prices that is adjusted so to endanger public safety rather than to ensure a more "rational" adjustment over longer times that perhaps "naive capitalistic" models predict to be more lucrative for all (consumer, seller, society that ensures the marketplace)? Is this all plainly exploitation and procreation of an irrational mass of consumers that otherwise may not buy what they would realize not to need or is…

When I was a young guy living in Florida, on one station we used to get reruns of a television show called "The Saint". I liked the stick figure cartoon and the halo that would appear above his head in the beginning. Roger Moore was cool. He became the third actor to play Ian Fleming's British super spy James Bond (and the longest-running) and was the perfect choice. Yet most people remember the 'cartoon-y' James Bond films that came on his watch. He is unfairly derided as the worst James Bond now, and that is saying something in a roster that includes George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton…

What big trends can you expect to take hold in 2013?  THE WIRED WORLD IN 2013 is a new annual trend report that covers a broad range of topics across eight sections; from science to arts, politics to medicine and culture to the environment. I have two articles in the issue, one on science and one on environmental policy - that's right, Richard Branson and James Dyson only get one but they love Science 2.0 twice as much. You can buy it on newsstands, get it within the Wired UK app on iTunes/Kindle/Android or buy a digital copy at this link: If you already subscribe to Wired and want to…

Scientists take a great deal of pride in the Scientific Method, and not just because it’s a method named after them. The Method is the basis for their authority. It is the universally accepted tool for finding all facts about the universe, the unbiased straight-and-narrow path that we wish all of the world’s irrational people would find more often. Oh, you think that’s condescending? How do you know? What are your controls? I was thinking about this because I just wrote and published a novel (shameless plug!). I wrote at night for free while I got paid to do science by day. As I imagined the…

Since spot weather events are once again proof of global warming, reversing the trend of 2007 to 2011 when we were told that local weather was not evidence against global warming, it's time to think about the upcoming Ice Age - because we are having a big storm in the northeast, weeks later than when we had a giant snowstorm in 1980 Pennsylvania that knocked out our power for a week, so NYC media writers desperate for pageviews say it must be due to climate change.   I know that 1980 snowstorm got no coverage because back then weather events were just weather events - bad luck and not a…

Physics professor Paul Frampton of UNC Chapel Hill is sitting in an Argentine jail, busted for trying to smuggle out 2 kilos of cocaine, but that hasn’t stopped him from asking for a raise on his $107,000 annual salary - raise as in he wants it doubled. Hey, he has tenure. And a lot of citations. Frampton is in a spat with the school because he says they are improperly withholding his salary. They contend his being in an Argentine prison cell for virtually all of this year means he can't possibly be doing any work, even for a tenured professor. Life is never so simple. The school has to…

How do you make an A-list film with a B-movie budget?  You use clever writing, moody atmosphere and then some creative camera work. Result: a lot of fun. Two years ago I did a series on Halloween movies of the science-y kind (see "Dead Of Night": The Horror Movie That Inspired Hoyle's Steady State Model and others).  I was following a long tradition here at Science 2.0 , from early entries like Everything I Need To Know About Science I Learned From Watching "The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra" to Garth Sundem's Halloween Movies Vs Bad Poetry. So I know science-based Halloween movies…

Are you buying Halloween candy?  Don't you know they use child labor to harvest those cocoa beans?  You went to Chick-fil-A?  So you don't believe gay parents have just as much right to be annoying at a kid's soccer game as everyone else? It's increasingly the case that someone, somewhere, is going to make a value judgment about you based on what you buy and where. This is the sign of a new, militant mentality made easier by the Internet, right?  No, it is American culture 101.  The first American boycott took place in 1765, because of the Stamp Act, and it so…