Lab Monkey

I dislike militant Christians and atheists alike, and John Scalzi says what I think:

But — but — what about all those horrible atheists taking over holiday displays with crucified Santa skeletons? Surely that’s evidence of a war! Well, no, it’s evidence of some non-believers taking a page out of the PETA playbook, i.e., being dicks to get attention and to make a point. I do strongly suspect that if we didn’t have some certain excitable conservatives playing The War on Christmas card when a business says “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” and such, there would be less incentive for certain excitable non-believers to make a public show of desecrating Christmas symbols, but that’s just an opinion and I don’t have anything to back that up. What I do know is that the War on Christmas crusaders and the Santa crucifiers deserve each other; the rest of us, unfortunately, have to watch them both make public asses of themselves.

(via Chad Orzel)

The trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is out on Apple’s site.

The Nature Research Center sounds like a pretty neat idea, part presentation space and part lab science space:

At regular intervals during the day, scientists will present to NRC visitors using the cutting edge technology and media of the SECU Daily Planet and its 40×40-foot, high-definition screen.

….

The NRC features research labs where scientists from the Museum, UNC System Schools, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or visiting scientists conduct their research while visitors observe “science in action.”

….

There will also be three Investigate Labs designed for visitors. These spaces provide visitors with a set of hands-on activities and research skill-building exercises to guide them through the process of using scientific tools and conducting scientific inquiry. Most experiences here will be designed and led by Museum educators, scientists and their graduate students.

It always seemed like there wasn’t enough science in science museums aimed towards adults. After all, adults have plenty to learn about science. My mother, for example, took her last science class before I was born, which was in the 1980s, and yet besides a few exhibits in natural history museums, and some optical illusions, the vast majority of science museums definitely cater to the kids out there.

Congratulations, by the way, to David Kroll of Terra Sigilata and Take as Directed, who is the new head of Science Communications Director in a new wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

A good response to the really strange blog post by Penelope Trunk:

When a publication like TechCrunch spews some nonsense about what women want, it means that the next time I go into an interview with a male founder (and they are overwhelmingly male for some reason that I’m not going to address here, but that Penelope assures us has nothing to do with bias) who has read that nonsense, he may be thinking, consciously or subconsciously, “she doesn’t really want to work at this startup because she wants to have a baby.”

And frankly, that sucks for me and all the other women like me. Oh, did I mention that there are lots of other women like me? There are.

I thought Penelope Trunk’s post was very strange. It’s not like there are too many people saying “it isn’t good that women are choosing to stay at home instead of working.” Sure, some women might feel guilty about staying at home instead of taking some sort of ambitious career, but I bet far more women today feel guilty about choosing that more ambitious career over staying at home. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with either choice (nor are they necessarily mutually exclusive if partners/men actually start helping out), and making people feel guilty about a choice that doesn’t fit what they want isn’t good, but there’s also doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with encouraging women to break into currently male-dominated fields.

Matt Gemmell:

The keyboard, touchpad and screen are the computer, in terms of what you’re directly interacting with. So every part you’re going to interface with is notably substandard. Right.

You’d assume that the final rating would duly castigate the manufacturer, but it’s actually 7.8 (presumably out of ten).

Kind of sad, really.