Who Were the Sea Peoples?

We report... and then we decide: "Author Jodi Dixon, a final-year medical student at the University of Birmingham, U.K., describes a 2010 study of 315 students at London University in which 1 in 10 reported knowing a fellow student who had turned to prostitution out of financial necessity." This is supposed to indicate a big problem,  showing how common prostitution is amongst medical students. But wait a sec... the study says 1 in 10 students know someone who has turned to prostitution. And this is from a study at a single university, which surveyed only 315 students. So 1 in 10 of them would be 32 students. At this point, it might occur to one that 32 students is not an unduly large circle of friends for a single person to have. So it's quite possible that these 32 students all know the exact same person who is working the streets. And that possibility looms even more distinctly when one considers how, in a small community like a medical school, word that ...

(Hey, I just like having fun with the great names my readers have. How about that dude who is anti-hotel, for some reason?) In any case, in comments elsewhere, traumerei writes: "Don't think asking for Punnett squares for memes will go over too well with users of the term." Yes, very good point. Look at the following: This sort of construct is a very, very early achievement of genetic science. It turned out, of course, that most genes do not work in such a straightforward fashion, and genetic science has come a long way since Mendel. But even at this early stage, we see genuine scientific results, yielding nice, mathematical, testable predictions about what will happen in certain situations. Where, gentle reader, has "memetic science" achieved anything remotely like this? Where can we find memetics' punnett squares, that tell us what will happen when a green idea and a yellow idea "mate"? And here is a real kicker: it turns out that the...

Think about it: At the very time the English gentry were grabbing the British peasantry's land through enclosures, and the Native Americans land through thrashing the crap out of them, along comes John Locke, and works out, purely philosophically -- nothing to do with his class interests involved at all, mind you! -- that the Indians and the peasants had never really owned that land in the first place! That they had been using it for hundreds or thousands of years meant nothing: they hadn't mixed their labour with it, you see, like the gentry did. (Or really, the labour of some hired hand, because you know the gentry sure as shinola weren't out there fencing those pastures themselves .) It just happened to work out so nicely that it was actually OK to take these people's land.

My friend Juliard Velard has written the Knicks' official Jeremey Lin song !

The third most popular Google search term for finding this blog this week was "famous Italian people." Huh? Yes, this blog has mentioned Italy occasionally lately, but I don't recall doing any survey of famous Italian people. Why is Google sending searchers with that phrase in mind to here? The fifth most popular search yielding us hits is: "gene-callahan.blogspot.com" A hint: If you've got that in hand already, you don't need Google!

"Descartes, Locke, and Newton, took away the world... Berkeley restored the world. Berkeley has brought us back to the world that only exist because it shines and sounds." ******** "I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,       And live alone in the bee-loud glade.      "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;    There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,       And evening full of the linnet's wings.      "I will arise and go now, for always night and day    I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,       I hear it in the deep heart's core."

I've started using Zotero, and am getting the hang of it and digging it. One interesting thing: Zotero has converted me to one of its referencing styles, because I couldn't find the one I really liked and had been using in one of its lists. (I'm not saying it's not there: I just got tired of looking!) In any case, looking back, I'm amazed at how much fuss my professors made about what reference format to use on undergraduate papers. (And let me tell you, that took some looking back to see that far into the past!) As someone who publishes regularly now, I only once have had a journal tell me to re-submit a paper because my references were not in their preferred format. My response? I just submitted it somewhere else. I mean, really... I don't mind reformatting my references for you if you accept the paper, but you claim you need the references in your publication format in order to have it refereed ? The referees are going to say, "Whoa, I can't de...