Quick Update: Huffington Post and Gradaute School
It’s been a hectic month or so. I’ve been visiting a handful of graduate programs in psychology, so I’ve been traveling nearly every weekend. It’s exciting but really stressful.
In other news, I decided to give up eggs and dairy for Lent. I wrote about the decision for the Yale Daily News, which the Huffington Post also picked up.
Things are pretty rad.
PDF Briefs: 1/25
I am deathly ill with still no laptop, so today’s going to be a sit-in-bed-and-do-lots-of-reading day. But I thought I’d take the time to be lazy and start a series of posts just detailing some relevant links the internet has brought me in the last week or so:
Are we natural creationists?: Jesse Bering, author of the forthcoming Why is the Penis Shaped Like That?, released an excerpt his of 2011 book, The Belief Instinct, on his SciAm blog. He argues that we born with cognitive biases that predispose us to seeing purpose and design in order, citing the work of my senior thesis adviser, George Newman. Give it a read, and, if you like it, preorder The Belief Instinct in paperback. I highly recommend it.
Goodbye G-Spot, hello Confluent G-Zone: Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky, Urology Resident at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, recently combed through more than 60 years of studies in a recent metaanalysis published in the January 12th edition of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, determining that the G-spot is not a defined anatomical structure. But don’t despair, ladies and lady-pleasers, Jezebel writes that something is still going on in that area:
When you put pressure on the anterior wall of the vagina, it pushes on other things in the vicinity that respond to stimuli, including the urethra and clitoris, which Dr. Komisaruk says is “shaped like a wishbone and extends further down the vagina.” He says it’s all about the confluence of a number of different genitally sensitive organs.” Ooh, confluence. That sounds nice. Maybe we should ditch G-area and just start referring to it as “my confluence.”
Are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater?: Alain de Botton has stirred the pot with his recent TED talk entitled Atheism 2.0. He argues that atheists shouldn’t be so quick to ditch classically religious practice along with the content we object to. I’m sympathetic, but even if you aren’t, it’s an interesting talk.
Singles are dropping: Sleigh Bells kills it, Nicki Minaj less so.
Update #2: Winter Yale is best Yale
So the hard drive in my laptop is dead, which makes doing computer things (like say, daily writing for my Daily Themes course, or blogging) a lot less convenient. But my schedule for this semester is set, and I’m getting … Continue reading
Update
Dear Reader(s),
Apologies for the slow week. I’ve been preoccupied with: finalizing my class schedule, doing daily writing assignments for my Daily Themes course (Yale’s, if not the nation’s, oldest writing class), drinking Johnnie Walker Black with my campus’ secular group in memory of Christopher Hitchens, attending a celebratory Martin Luther Kings Cup gathering, discovering the hard drive on my laptop was broken (currently being tinkered on by student techs to see if it’s reparable), and receiving an invitation for an interview at 2 of my 3 top choice grad programs (still waiting on the third, fingers crossed?).
More posts will be sure to come in the next few days!
Dave Silverman on Tebow
Via CBS Local Denver
Continually seeking to test the adage that “all publicity is good publicity,” Dave Silverman, President of American Atheists, has most recently taken to talking about Tim Tebow.
CBS Local Denver interviewed Silverman, who claimed that Tebow was bad for football and a hypocrite.
“It’s not that Tebow prays, it’s that he waits for the cameras to be on him to do it,” Silverman says. “He’s totally faking.”
I don’t follow football in the least, and I don’t care much about Tebow at all. I still find him obnoxious, though, and am happy to see him pretty regularly poked fun of for his zealotry.
But I’m not going to imply the guy is insincere or a hypocrite just because I don’t like him. For all I know he’s a great Christian with all kinds of real religious faith. I don’t know, and I frankly I don’t care. But it bothers me when the president of an organization that is meant to represent atheists, regularly makes claims he doesn’t know a thing about. I don’t know if Tebow is sincere and Silverman doesn’t either, so it’s hard to see this as Silverman doing anything more than actively trying to be as controversial a dick as possible.
