The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for Caturday, 2013/05/04

It appears that my college funding is safe for now — the annoyingly urgent appointment this week has been taken care of, giving me some time before other matters need attending to…

So far, I’ve finished 12 lessons in my course module in only two weeks, taking care of some essentials needed to make it in whatever college study is pursued, either online or in a live classroom environment.

I’ve been doing some fractals, of course, but mostly as a reward after study to better motivate myself — Oh, yes, and watching Doctor Who as well, going through season six, on my way to the current eps.

I’d like to spend a bit next week doing more editing on my story draft and a few ideas I’ve been playing around with for blog posts. There’s a tension going on between posting on skeptical topics and posting on things that interest me that aren’t, well, very skepticky. Not good.

That’s something that needs to be resolved.

I may not be able to blog regularly once college starts, but I’ve until the 20th of this month to enroll. Come then and afterward, I’ll post whenever reasonably possible, but lessons come before blogging depending on what the course load turns out. We’ll see.

I will keep in contact with my online community of peeps, despite my absolutely horrid social skills. You guys (and gals) are special, even if we don’t chat regularly — Who would have guessed that people I’ve never seen in real time could be so awesome?

My Bloggies

• Fear of the Light
• Fractals of the Week: Thor’s Day XaoS Edition
• from 2011, “Who Gives a Crap About Precision?”

Others’ Bloggies

• Ready for the End of the World
• Despicable Me 2
• Cat Thursday — Schrodinger’s Cat Again
• Breaking News: Australian Newspapers Band Together to Protest Anti-Vaccination
• Left Hemispheres Friday Link Dump 5/3/13
• Agenticity, Patternicity & Belief

Science, Gnuz & Odd Stuff

• Hundreds of UFOs swarming over Perth. Or not.
• Right wing fringe is now a cynical money-making ‘racket’
• Woo Bombdetectors — the End of Dowsing for Death
• Misinformation in the news continues to prosper because no one complains
• Evolution in US schools: Student shortchanged, misinformed, or completely ignorant
• Graphology rubbish: No better than astrology or numerology
• Lose-iana: Getting smacked for scientific ignorance
• Kevin Trudeau files bankruptcy
• Papua New Guinea is still burning “Sorcerers” at the stake
• Revelation that ‘six-inch Alien is Human. Siriusly.
• Lose-iana continues rejection of the real world
• Over a quarter of the people in the US are just plain paranoid
• Woman missing for 11 years found — Psychics were NO help at all

Bloggy Stats

• 127,551 sharp pairs of eyes since 2008/12/28
• 1,893 comments posted,
• 2,082 posts published, including this one,
• 196 WordPress subscribers,
• 2022 Twitter fellows,
• 245 Tumblr fellows,
• 19 Likes on this site’s Facebook page…

…Thanks so much! Words fail me right now.

And Still They Move (w/Ann Druyan)

The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for Caturday, 2013/04/27

English: Simon Singh speaking at TAM London October 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Goodness Gorgeous…and Rocky…and Mr Eccles! Today was a bit of a mess, since I got almost no sleep last night, though I’d been ‘banking on sleep’ over the week, which helped me get through the day without too much fuzzy-headedness. I’m getting normal sleep this coming morning, hopefully. This week has been good so far, and study is coming along swimmingly, with the seventh lecture in my math course coming up soon, probably tomorrow afternoon at the comic shop. I’m correcting any gaps in my math skills while prepping for college next month for the Summer, and if not, there’s always the Fall semester, but we’ll see. I’ve noticed for a while that I haven’t been doing very many “skepticky” posts, so I’ll be addressing that soon. After all, this just wouldn’t be a skeptical blog if I didn’t critique something at least once in a bit! Onward, then, me hearties!

Bloggy Lynx

• Channeling Sagan… a quote born of a friend’s dream…literally.
• Making Sense of How Life Fits Together — Bobbi Seleski
• The Daily Show — Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Book Review: The Invisible Gorilla, by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons My review of a book on cognitive illusions and myths, and how to avoid them.
• Caturday’s Astronomy Pix 2013/04/21-27
• Fractals of the Week: Fortresses & Fastness More Mandelbulbery

Others’ Bloggies

• Around our Garden
• Cat Thursday — ANZAC Day
• The Left Hemispheres Podcast Ep. 17: Oh Islamophobia, you bad girl.
• How To Step Outside of Your (God)Box
• Confusing Standards for Censorship: Chopra Edition
• Backdoor Creationism
• DONE! Lords Pass Defamation Bill #LibelReform
• NECSS Simon Singh interviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss

Science, Gnuz & Odd Stuff

• For Scientists, Some Philosophies are a Dead End
• Poker Players Arms Give Away Their Hands
• What does modern prejudice look like?
• Sharon Hill: Mystery Foot, Therefore Bigfoot
• Origin of Jupiter’s Water Solved — The Massive 1994 Comet Bombardment
• New Scanner Can Make Brain Images While Mice Move
• More Background on that Fourth-Grader’s Creationist Science Quiz
• Mechanical Sculptures Built From Discarded Objects
• Take the Pew Research Center’s Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz
• The Big Five Personality Test, Online
• Why does anything exist? Scientists find a bit of the answer
• Religion and Mental Health: New Study Links Belief In ‘Punitive God’ With Emotional Problems
• Gorgeous altimetric radar map of the Ishtar Terra region of Venus
• List of Free Science Books: Physics Database
• 1960s Satellite Images Add to Evidence Of Shrinking Sea Ice

Bloggy Stats

• 127,107 keen-eyed peerings,
• 1,883 comments approved,
• 2,073 posts published, including this one,
• 194 WordPress subscribers,
• 2,015 Twitter fellows,
• 237 Tumblr fellows,
• 19 Likes on this blog’s Facebook page,

Thanks to all of you!

A.C. Grayling – Atheism, Secularism, Humanism: Three Zones of Argument

The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for 2013/04/21

The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

G’day, such as it is. Last week was incredibly bad, especially with the tragic events of 4/15, and I’ve nothing new to add to the discussion that you probably haven’t seen already.

I’ve lately posted this for Caturday, but decided to delay this posting till Sunday, which turned out to be fortuitous: I’ve just today completed a book titled The Invisible Gorilla, on a variety of cognitive illusions that we all experience daily and ways to mitigate them.

I’ll be posting a preliminary review on Goodreads tonight with a more comprehensive treatment later this week on this blog.

In a nutshell, the book deals with the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, causation, potential and lastly, tying them all together, the illusion of intuition, that by which the others so often fool us.

I’m also going through a copy, borrowed from library, soon to be replaced by one I buy for myself, of Copi’s Introduction to Logic, which is proving to be incredibly interesting.

So. Much. To. Learn!

Also, the most recent Fractals of the Week post got Mentioned on Twitter this morning by @symbiartic, and that’s just cool, just as long as I don’t let it go to my head… Thanks, Glendon!

Here’s hoping for all of you that this new week is better than last, so be well and be brilliant!

Namaste, to all my peeps.

———–Bloggy Hub———–

• Doctor Who – The Doctor – Alone This is one of the best Who tributes I’ve seen.
• We are verbs. Why I think that labels are a poor descriptor of people…
• Fractals of the Week: Monstrous Mandelbulbery More foolishness with fractals via Mandelbulber…
• Carl Sagan’s thoughts on the existence of Aliens Sagan’s frankness on this is to be admired…
• Douglas Adams on Time Well Spent A fractal quote of the author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and a former writer for Doctor Who
• Caturday’s Astronomy Pix for 2013/04/14-20
• Reason, Reasoning & Unreasonableness II Here, I tie together some loose ends left by this post, and the first Reason, Reasoning, & Unreasonableness.
• Marie Curie on Understanding A fractal quote of the co-discoverer of radioactive elements.
• Karen Gillan for z’Ombéal: SAY NO TO BRAINS This PSA is a bit of undead humor by the actress of Dr Who companion Amy Pond..
• Thomas Insel Toward a new understanding of mental illness
• Elyn Saks — A tale of mental illness from the inside A moving story by someone who’s had it far worse than I. This one’s worth watching.

———Others’ Bloggies———

• GLAM – EasyBib A handy resource for making a bibliography for proper article documentation
• Cat Thursday — Scams & Hoaxes Cute kitties, and resources for avoiding or foiling online scams
• The Ocean “Anthropocentric” Good metal, via the mighty Left Hemispheres blog
• Friday Link Dump 4/19/13
• Jindal — Teach the Controversy Steve Novella roots out the fallacies of Bobby Jindal’s support of so-called ‘academic freedom’ laws.
• Predicting the Future
• Two-headed pig spared in China Strange but rather cute, the unusual pig’s bacon is saved…
• Watch out for hoaxes and malware that take advantage of tragedy A useful warning post-Boston Marathon bombing for those of us online…

———-Bloggy Stats———-

• 126,726 steely gazes cast by all you keen-eyed peerers since 2008/12/28,
• 1,871 comments approved so far…so close…,
• 2,066 posts published, including this one,
• 190 WordPress subscribers,
• 2,003 Twitter fellows,
• 235 Tumblr fellows,
• …and 18 Likes on this blog’s Facebook page

Thanks, much, all of you!

———-Michael Shermer: The Pattern Behind Self-Deception———-

The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for Caturday, 2013/04/13

Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor (photocredit: wikipedia)

Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lately I’ve been in one of my brooding Ninth Doctor (or Second Doctor, take your pick) moods. I’m not happy with the current progress of my education.

Meh. *Hiss*

Yes, I know that’s irrational, unnecessary and counterproductive, so I’m pacing myself by mixing study with relaxation, while using more objective gauges of my learning rate so I don’t drive myself barmy that I haven’t memorized in one sitting the complete plays of Sophocles or the text of the essential dialogues of Plato.

Impatience does me no good, and it is a quick path to burnout and failure. Focus.

This has been a good week, otherwise, and has been quite fun. I’ve just come back as of this typing from a good walk on the beach while having some *Aha!* moments which should serve me nicely during the next week. I’ve done a book review for Massimo Pigliucci’s Answers for Aristotle, see below, which I rather enjoyed working on. I hope it was objective, fair, and piques your interest.

———–Bloggy Lynx———–

• The Storytelling of Science commentary
• Doctor Puppet Episodes 1 & 2 a new discovery I’ve found…on the Nerdist channel…
• Only a man… …a quote by my antihero, the Mirus, upon being asked exactly what he is…
• The Safe Cracking of Dick Feynman the unusual pastime of Richard, the Feyn man of science
• Fractals of the Week: Mandelbulber Macromutations back after a week’s hiatus, some new experiments in using MB3D
• Book Review: Answers for Aristotle, by Massimo Pigliucci
• Caturday’s Astronomy pix for 2013/04/7-13

———Others’ Bloggies———

• Guinea Pig Update
• Cat Thursday – Cattitude
• Underground: The Julian Assange Story
• Left Hemispheres Podcast Interview Ep02 – Hemant Mehta
• Derren Brown’s Fear and Faith: Inducing Religious Experience
• Friday Link Dump 4/12/13
• Feminism and Humanism

————-Sciencey & Odd Stuff————-

• Apelike Fossils show hint of Human Ancestry
• Russia’s Putin Announces $50 Billion in New Space Spending
• Creepiest Headless Portraits from the Victorian Era
• Geoengineering Our Way out of Trouble?
• Nine year old autistic Indian girl claimed to be psychic

———-Bloggy Stats———-

• 126,280 keen-eyed peerings since 2008/12/28
• 1,857 comments posted,
• 2,058 posts published, including this one,
• 188 WordPress subscribers,
• 233 Tumblr fellows,
• 2,000 Twitter fellows,
• 18 Likes on this blog’s FB page,

Thanks, all of you ^(;,,;)^

———-Bonobo: Cirrus [Official Video]———-

——–Animated Mandelbulb———

hat tip to Steve Barry

The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for Caturday, 2013/04/06

Mr Eccles beholds a fractal universe…

G’day. This Eostre week saw an annoying bit of illness on my family’s part…Every one of us has at some point gotten sick, possibly a cold or something, including moi, so I’ve mostly been staying indoors, save time at the local library earlier today making fractals.

Speaking of that, I’ve started up again with MB3D for generating new images using some of the ideas I’ve had in the meantime while minding the cats and generally taking care of the house.

The dental appointment went well, except that I may have to have work done at some point, the funding needs of which may preclude my entry to college for this summer — Grrr! — I might have to rely on video courses if I’m forced to delay live or online college enrollment, but we’ll see…

I’ve started on Massimo Pigliucci’s new book, ‘Answers for Aristotle’ and learned some very interesting things while foraging amongst its pages — I’ll post a review when I’m done — it’s very good, and I’ve already given it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.

But things are looking well, all things considered, so with this post I end another great week of blogging, and wish you all the best this upcoming week!

Stay brilliant!

———–Bloggy Lynx———–

• A Postulate of Conspiracy Theories
• It is with heavy heart…
• A 2nd Postulate of Conspiracy Theories
• A 3rd Postulate of Conspiracy Theories
• 2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate — The Existence of Nothing
• xkcd: Voyager 1
• Caturday’s Astronomy Pix for 2013/03/31 — 2013/04/06

———Others’ Bloggies———

• Cat Thursday — Robots Featuring the mighty Jigglypuff, and other, lesser felines
• Genesis of Memory a book review by Kate Campbell
• Hector Avalos on Religion and Violence: A New Theory for an Old Problem
• Militant Atheism?
• Sharon Hill’s Talk at the 2012 PA State Atheist Humanist Conference
• Little Kitten — Sound and Science with Jad Abumrad
• The Great Easter Chavez Google Bing Twitter Flap of ’13 When dogmatic ideology leads to irony
• Child Full of Stars on a new fiction release by S. A. Barton

————-Gnuz & Stuff————-

• Extrapolating a really stupid poll about reptilian conspiracy
• Mother Maria cures diarrhea. What a saint.
• For vaccination promotion, positive messaging not always better
• Popoff scumbaggery continues — Selling miracle water to wash away debt
• The virility diet is a bit floppy
• NASA to get $100 million for asteroid-capture mission, senator says…
• Scientists print self-assembling ‘living tissue’

———-Bloggy Stats———-

• 125,916 steely gazes targeting this site since 2088/12/28
• 1,846 comments approved…please, keep them coming!
• 2,050 posts published, including this one – Yay! Another arbitrary milestone!
• 188 WordPress subscribers – thank you all!
• 1,986 Twitter fellows,
• 19 Likes on this blog’s Facebook page,
• 233 Tumblr fellows,

Thanks, all of you, for making this blog what it is as an experiment and learning endeavor!

———-Les Chats Ninjas———-

——-Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Trailer——-