Author: Josh Witten

http://www.thefinchandpea.com

Pirate Duck

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate duck is me
I’ve got a patch
I’ve got a bill
I’ve got a curvy sword
I’ve got oily feathers
So no water gets on board
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate duck is me

via Tumblr

What rhymes with “Spinoza”? – Ros Peters’ “The Philosophy Song”

MC Shanahan is on tour today. So, y’all get stuck with me. In what may be a repressed hope that you will follow the back links to my stand-up comedy set at Bright Club Cambridge. Kind of sad, eh?

Bright Club featured the comedy musical stylings of Rosalind Peters, and we were featuring what was undoubtedly the nerdiest song of the night, “The Philosophy Song”. I’m pretty sure the lyrics were composed after Ros asked, “What rhymes with Spinoza?”

Bright Club – Scientists, make with the funny, NOW!

My understanding is that doing stand-up comedy is considered one of the most terrifying things a human being can possibly do, after all the things that are actually terrifying. Thanks to Bright Club Cambridge I got to be both terrified and very sweaty last Friday (ventilation por favor?).

You may laugh with me or at me; but only leave a comment if you pick option 1.

*Minor language warning for one or two naughty words.

Continue reading “Bright Club – Scientists, make with the funny, NOW!”

Useless

Twitter was grumbling this morning about a paper in PLoS ONE titled, “Mapping connectivity damage in the case of Phineas Gage”. Phineas Gage is the legendary railroad worker that had a tamping spike driven through his skull and survived. The authors used a computer to model the damage done by the tamping spike, estimate how that would have disrupted Gage’s neural networks, and look for correlations with his reported behavioral changes.

Sounds gimmicky. Nerds don’t like gimmicks. Words like “useless” and “waste of time” were bandied about. Why study a dead guy instead of living people with brain injuries that you might help?

I am not equipped to pass judgment on the results of this study. I do, however, have experience with the issues raised by experiments that may require human subjects. This study may be fatally flawed, but it was not wasting resources and Phineas Gage was more than a gimmick. Continue reading “Useless”

The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 2

*SPOILER ALERT*

Previously on The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess. . .

. . .we discussed how incredibly unlikely it would be that Rick would be the only available blood donor for Carl among the group of survivors on Hershel’s farm1. This led us2 to wonder what the blood type of his mother, Lori Grimes, might be. It is not at all unusual for a parent to not be a compatible donor for their child, especially for a direct transfusion. Lori is pregnant and her blood type could be important to the health of the wee baby Grimes (WBG). Continue reading “The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 2”