Attention Span Demonstrations

Promise!

Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques aimed at mental and neurological conditions include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression, and transcranial direct current (electrical) stimulation (tDCS), shown to improve memory. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) has also shown promise.

Because women are whores!

A blog called Government Gets Girlfriends — written by and for "Incel" (involuntarily celibate) men who suffer from social anxiety — suggests a rather Orwellian solution to the problem of these dudes not getting laid: use hard-earned American tax dollars to pay women to go out with them. So... insurance-covered hookers.

Government should offer women money to go on blind dates. These women would freely apply for such a program, as would incel men. Every woman would have a limit of 30 dates. If she doesn’t find a suitable partner during those 30 days she will be fired to prevent scammers – however, she would be paid the full sum, as would a woman who finds a partner during one of these 30 dates.

Using this program, many involuntary celibate men would get their first date or improve their chances of finding a partner.

The man who runs the blog — "a fucked-up kid from somewhere in Europe" — has clinical depression and identifies as a former incel. However, this isn't really the root of his problem. I'll give you one hint: he denies being a MRA, but one of his posts is titled "Hello, Angry SJW Feminists" and another one is "A word on Tumblr feminist invasion." Hello, chip on your shoulder.

Call:

... [Thomas] Nagel's academic golden years are less peaceful than he might have wished. His latest book, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford University Press, 2012), has been greeted by a storm of rebuttals, ripostes, and pure snark. "The shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker," Steven Pinker tweeted. The Weekly Standard quoted the philosopher Daniel Dennett calling Nagel a member of a "retrograde gang" whose work "isn't worth anything—it's cute and it's clever and it's not worth a damn."

The critics have focused much of their ire on what Nagel calls "natural teleology," the hypothesis that the universe has an internal logic that inevitably drives matter from nonliving to living, from simple to complex, from chemistry to consciousness, from instinctual to intellectual.

And response:

Chorost’s piece is irresponsible journalism, for it’s meant to give academics the idea that there is a substantial and credible body of opinion that modern evolutionary theory is wrong, and that there’s suggestive evidence for some teleological force driving the evolutionary process. He dismisses critics like myself as simply disgruntled defenders of orthodoxy, and completely neglects the valid criticisms of Nagel’s book made by Orr, Sober, Leitner, and Weisberg. The Chronicle of Higher Education, of course, is widely read by academics and intellectuals.

What a pity that a science writer with an agenda, and a desire to be controversial, manages to both misrepresent and denigrate modern evolutionary theory. This isn’t sober and objective journalism, but tabloid journalism gussied up for intellectuals.

Will I wind up eating these carcasses?

This is the overriding message of Tianfu Morning News’s coverage today of the dead ducks in the river. With front page images of white-clad officials testing the water, we’re told that there is no danger to humans in the slightest. Right at the top of the paper’s coverage, there’s the following question and answer series to put everyone at ease:

Where did the dead ducks come from? Uncertain at this point.
Did the dead ducks die from some illness? Uncertain at this point.
How have the dead ducks been dealt with? Buried at an appropriate location.
Any impact on the sources of drinking water? No.
Will any of the dead ducks make it onto the market? No.

Please don't shoot me, I'm an artist.