Peter Erwin

... could only have happened during a mass extinction like the end Cretaceous, not 100 million ears earlier during the Jurassic. Therefore Archaeopterix fossils must be hoaxes. (4/4)

If you're curious about the first question: apparently both evolution and mass extinctions are driven by viruses from space, and so the appearance of a new class of animals such as birds ... (3/n)

From the Nature review: "Two things interest me about this otherwise worthless book: why it was written, and what effect it might have.”
(2/n)

I knew that Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe had written an article claiming Archaeopteryx fossils were forgeries, but not that they'd written an *entire book*.

www.nature.com/articles/324...
(1/n)

YouTube video by DisneyMusicVEVO Camille, Michael Giacchino - Le Festin (From "Ratatouille")

Watching Ratatouille again brought home just what a wonderful, joyful, gorgeous little song this is

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lS...

Steve Jackson Games is based in Austin, the most liberal part of Texas. Also, I don’t think the guy who posted this is quite as right-wing as you’re implying:

www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/...

That's full of charming odd, seemingly irrelevant details ("The wife tells her husband that she is fed up with this kitchen made of this Saturnian dark brownish stone and she would like to have a kitchen made of good wood coming from the forest of the Earth.")

[The poem has been written in the shape of a deciduous tree with letters (or ‘leaves’) missing from the text]: comm n pr ble whe writin p ems in the shape of decid o s trees is t at once t ere ar ives the fir t sti rings of he new aut mn breeze, he oems will begi to shake hemselves ge tly ntil their letters loos n like leaves, an they d start to float down then [The missing letters from the tree have landed on the last line to form the phrase] turntomushuponthegroun [The final ‘d’ is floating down to complete the phrase.]

To celebrate the first day of autumn, here’s a poem called ‘The Problem of Writing Poems in the Shape of Deciduous Trees’

Patrick O'Brian is a Great Conservative Writer His concern is the problem of right authority

Patrick O'Brian is a great conservative writer. Taking advantage of the Ganesh brouhaha to write a post that I have been wanting to write for at least a decade, if Sam Goldman didn't get there first and do it better www.programmablemutter.com/p/patrick-ob...

So I don't think there's much evidence that astronomy departments are discouraging African-Americans for something as astronomy-specific as being dismissive of astrology.

Table 4 of this report shows that African-American got 2015 bachelor's degrees in astronomy at ~ half the rate of the total college population. But this was a *higher* rate than for physics, atmospheric sciences, and earth sciences -- and almost all engineering fields.
ww2.aip.org/statistics/a...

*saying*, “The data’s not good” — that’s what *I* would most likely say — while someone saying, “The data aren’t good” would come across as (slightly) pedantic and unnatural. (2/2)

As a scientist, I think there’s a distinction between formal written language (e.g. papers), where plural data is fairly common (probably in part due to editorial enforcement), and spoken language, where singular data is fairly common. So I wouldn’t find anything wrong with a scientist (1/2)

and they never got around to trying to convert me.

The last time I was visited by Mormon missionaries (when I was living in Spain), they were seemingly so delighted to find a native English speaker (they were still learning Spanish) that we just ended up chatting about things like how the missionary training process worked, (1/2)

I am obscurely amused at how this meme is evolving, with the S. Korean woman shooting a pistol replaced by a Chinese man shooting a rifle...

(If you've used PyImfit in the past, there aren't a lot of changes; the jump in version number is more to signal that I think it's ready for general use than anything else.) (7/7)

PyImfit is available for Python 3.10-3.12 on macOS (Intel and Apple silicon) and Linux, and can be installed with either pip ("pip install pyimfit") or conda ("conda install -c conda-forge perwin::pyimfit") (6/7)

pyimfit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/py... (5/7)

pyimfit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/bo... (4/7)

The documentation includes examples of how to use Imfit's built-in bootstrap-resampling mode to estimate confidence intervals for things like bulge/total ratio, as well as how to use Imfit models with the MCMC code emcee. (3/7)

PyImfit allows access to Imfit's model-construction and fitting capabilities from within Python, including all the standard image functions and minimization algorithms. (2/7)

I'd like to announce the availability of version 1.0 of PyImfit [https://github.com/perwin/pyimfit], a Python wrapper around the (very) fast, flexible, C++-based galaxy image-fitting program Imfit [https://github.com/perwin/imfit]. 🔭 (1/7)

Aha, I thought I remembered there being a Language Log post about that:

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8667

The recent Ryan Gosling/x Film “The Good Guys”, which is set in early 1970s LA, had to digitally add in the air pollution when they showed views of the city. (Also, I think there was a brief bit of radio mentioning a “2nd stage smog alert”; I felt a nostalgic twinge of pain in my lungs.)

Well, me, too. I gather the “Using periods means you’re angry!” schtick is either a Millennial or a Gen Z thing, derived from their text messaging practices.

I was going to suggest leafcutter ants and their fungi, but I see someone already mentioned that.

Join comedian Sindhu Vee for a side-splitting journey into the world of parenting and raising teenagers. With sharp humor and relatable tales, she'll have you laughing from start to finish. Get ready for a hilarious take on family WhatsApp groups, parenting techniques, and the art of honest dialogue with teenagers. Check out more from Sindu Vee here - www.youtube.com/@SindhuVComedy Taken from Live at the Apollo - Series 14, Episode 6 Original Broadcast Date: Thursday 20th December 2018 Welcome to Jokes On Us - Where all the best stand-up comedy is fed, watered, and given free lodging. Feast your eyes on the most hysterical clips and compilations that we can get our hands on - from fresh new comics to classic household names right here on YouTube (and Facebook). Subscribe to unbox a hilarious collection of comedy content. Whatever your taste, we’ve got a giggle here for everyone. Sit back and laugh the night away… Jokes On Us! #JokesOnUs #Comedy #StandUp Incriminate Your Children | Sindhu Vee | Jokes On Us

Yeah, I've only seen YouTube clips of her, but she's one of my favorite new stand-ups. Here's a bit more of her, on parenting:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t2E...

Good Lord. (Well, I guess it does save three syllables...)

(Trying not to think of "transient ppl" as "ppl who flicker in and out of existence"...)

Sindhu Smashes It! Follow QI on Twitter ▶ http://twitter.com/qikipedia Follow QI on Facebook ▶ http://facebook.com/officialQI Follow QI on Instagram ▶ http://instagram.com/theqielves Subscribe on YouTube ▶ http://youtube.com/theqielves For more visit ▶ http://qi.com This clip is from QI Series P, Episode 14, 'Pathological' with Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, Ed Byrne, Rhod Gilbert and Sindhu Vee. QI | What's The Best Way To Open A Coconut?

That's just because you probably don't know the correct way to open coconuts. Let Indian/British standup comic Sindhu Vee demonstrate:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDT1...