Sunday Science with Dr. Tiki!

So, thanks to reichiere, we were alerted to the existence of NEW Stitch food at our local Freddie Meyer. We hastened hence....



...and were SHOCKED and AMAZED by the sheer variety of Disney-branded foodstuffs therein. We boggled for a bit, and then espied, making their way down the aisle, at the late hour the tikis choose for their marketing, a little Microsoft-drones-ish family, featuring tired mommy and tired daddy and a quite impatient kidlet perched on their cart. And it occurred, if Buzz Lightyear's picture featured on a package of frozen Brussels sprouts, said kid would probably demand them, and the 'rents did not look like they were in the headspace to put up much of a fight with said tiny titan.

So, anyways, we picked up a Lilo & Stitch Splasher or two or three (actually, eleven - we bought 'em out, plus grabbed the display, leaving a crumb too small for the other Whos mouses, so don't even think of going to the Bellevue Freddie for your Stitchie needs). And hied home for EXPERIMENTATION!!

( Science! )

Sexism: it's still neat-o!

Via wintersweet....

How To Get Published in Nature: Try Not To Be Female

If you find yourself in the condition of being unavoidably female, and you aren't willing to undergo a sex change operation, then your best publication strategy may be to hide the XX affiliation.

The title of a recent publication on this issue is self-explanatory: "Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors" by Budden, Tregenza, Aarssen, Koricheva, Leimu, and Lortie. Sadly, as the authors note, double-blind review is "rarely practised". If your name screams out "woman", you may be better off with an initial.

Of course, this is nothing terribly new; just a very nice and thorough documentation of the effect in one journal, Behavioral Ecology. The authors observed a 7.9% increase in female first-authored papers after double-blind review was implemented at BE. That's an increase three times greater than the increase in female ecology graduates across the same time period of the study. No similar increase was observed in comparable journals that continued with standard review practices. The authors also note that the double-blind review process may eliminate bias against less well-established researchers, where women in the field are concentrated.

Double-blind, in case ya don't know, means the reviewers don't see the names of the authors of the paper, and vicey-versey. That's all, just no author names, but same old paper. And so, reviewers have to actually review the science therein, instead of knowing it's their old buddy, Sparky, who's doing the research.

Zuska then links to the eminent science journal Nature's blog, where the reaction boils down to, "Double blind? We don't need no steenking double blind!"

If you're a private company, and you have a new drug, and you want the US gummint to approve that drug, you're required to do double blind studies about its efficacy - give it to people who don't know whether they're getting the drug or a placebo, and where even the docs giving out the drug don't know. That's because everybody's suspicious that doctors have biases and patients have biases.

But, if you work for a science journal, evidently, unlike the other 99.99% of humanity, you don't have any biases!!! Well, that's just darned neat.

Stormy weather

What is is tiiiiiikiiiiiii????

Well, let's open the box, shall we? (Japanese speakers, please, don't shout out the answer.)

( It's getting hot in here )

Bad Stitch

A sample of the sparkling diaglog which is our bread and butter at Casa de Tikistitch:

Us: We should have got one of these tee shirts for you.
Mr. Tikistitch: Why?
Us: Because you're a bad Stitch.
Mr. Tiki: YOU'RE the bad Stitch!



Us: No, you're the bad Stitch!
Mr. Tiki: No, you're the bad Stitch!
Us: You're definitely the bad Stitch!
Mr. Tiki: You're the good Stitch and the bad Stitch!



Extra bonus touch: sleeve says, "Zap!!!"

Meet Mr. Tiki's Newest Friend!

Us: Meet your new friend, Mr. Tikistitch!
Mr. Tikistitch: *runs away*

( P.S. )

SpookyPop

Somebody on the steamfashion group (yes, we read SteamPunk Fashion, so sue us) just mentioned these guys. Wow. Lots and lots and lots of stuff we totally don't need.

P.S. Before anyone starts writing in comments, yes we're aware most of the stuff is OOAK artwork and not really available to waste money on, which is kind of better, but not totally.