About
My name is Jeff, and I write this blog. I work as an interface designer in Denver, CO. I am also an amateur musician and an atheist.
If you get religion to make yourself happier, be sure to get a lot of religion
Dan Ariely, Daniel Mochon, and Michael Norton polled people in the UK about their religiosity and their well-being. Of the non-religious, atheists were happiest, followed by agnostics and the just plain non-religious.
For the religious respondents, the researchers asked them how religious they were, and that response seems to have a strong relationship to happiness. The least religious religious people were on average happier than the agnostics but less happy than the atheists. The moderately religious were the least happy of all, but past that point, religious people just get happier the more religious they are. The most religious people were way happier than everybody else.
So hurray for them.
Tagged agnosticism, atheism, happiness, religion Leave a comment
It takes a society to make a cheeseburger
Waldo Jaquith considered making a cheeseburger from scratch. That is, truly from scratch.
I realized that my prior plan hadn’t been ambitious enough—that wasn’t really from scratch. In fact, to make the buns, I’d need to grind my own wheat, collect my own eggs, and make my own butter. And I’d really need to raise the cow myself (or sheep, and make lamb burgers), mine or extract from seawater my own salt, grow my own mustard plant, etc. This past summer, revisiting the idea, I realized yet again that I was insufficiently ambitious. I’d really need to plant and harvest the wheat, raise a cow to produce the milk for the butter, raise another cow to slaughter for its rennet to make the cheese, and personally slaughter and process the cow or sheep.
He concludes that a cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until about a century ago, when our society had developed to the point that it could bring all this stuff together in the same place at the same time.
Tagged cheeseburgers, food, society, waldo jaquith Leave a comment
Her dog was her coauthor
At the start of her career, NIH immunologist Polly Matzinger disliked writing in the passive voice and felt too insecure to adopt the first person. So she listed her dog, Galadriel Mirkwood, as a coauthor.
Their paper was published in 1978 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. When the editor learned Galadriel’s species, he barred Matzinger from his pages for the rest of his life.
Tagged dogs, polly matzinger, science Leave a comment
Cats have tiny spines on their penises
Regarding cat sex:
At first, the female will reject the male, but eventually the female will allow the male to mate. The female will utter a loud yowl as the male pulls out of her. This is because a male cats penis has a band of about 120–150 backwards-pointing spines, which are about one millimeter long; upon withdrawal of the penis, the spines rake the walls of the females vagina, which is a trigger for ovulation. This act also occurs to clear the vagina of other sperm in the context of a second or more mating, thus giving the later males a larger chance of conception.
The male cats don’t just get some action. They rake the female clean of any other guys.
Tagged cats, penises Leave a comment
Mark Landis, forger and donor
Mark Landis forges paintings and then shows up in disguise to museums to donate his forgeries. He’s been at it since the 80s, and his most favored disguise is “Father Arthur Scott”, a Jesuit.
He had dressed as a Jesuit priest because he had been taught by one in London, and was amused by the reaction. “I’ve helped out a lot of people. They come up to me at airports and tell me of their problems. There’s not much to being a priest. Some comforting words, that sort of thing. And a blessing.” He donated in the name Helen Mitchell because “it wasn’t mother’s name but it was grandmother’s, and mother would know in heaven, right?”
Tagged art, forgery, mark landis, museums, priests Leave a comment
If your kid is an atheist, make sure he’s not armed!
From Answers in Genesis, the same people who brought you the thrilling tale of the boy who did what his parents wanted him to.
Tagged answers in genesis, atheism, guns, kids Leave a comment
