I don't. But how would you test that? If the claim you're making is that there's some underlying innate standard of beauty, but that this standard can be over-riden by culture, then how can this be made into a testable, falsifiable claim? You could run a thousand studies showing that beauty is culturally defined, and…

"Others disagree, and believe that the experiment merely shows that chickens can extrapolate from basic data. They can rate faces on a mental scale and know which is a step toward the image that will get them a mouthful of chicken feed, and which is a step away from the image that will get them their next meal."

I think social science gives us some of the most fascinating, and depressing, questions today. Is it possible to build a more just society? (For that matter, what makes a society just?) Will sexism ever die out? Racism, homophobia? If so, how can we rush them on their way out, and keep them from coming back? Can we?…

What are birds?

Eratosthenes of Cyrene measured the Earth's size, somewhat accurately, in the 200s BC. Admittedly, the error in his estimate was anywhere from 2% to 16% (depending on which ancient measurement unit he used, which is not entirely certain), much less impressive than 0.44%. On the other hand, he made the measurement more…

Much as I love TNG, I always had a hard time forgiving Picard for that one episode where he argued the Prime Directive means standing aside and watching while a whole civilization gets wiped out by its sun going nova. In the end, he had to be manipulated into (very grudgingly) saving a few of the natives. Bleh.

What? That makes no sense. You're basically saying that the only valid way to criticize something is to pretend that it doesn't exist. That's silly. If I watch a bad movie, I'm going to tell people "this movie is bad, and here is why I think it is bad." If I hear a poorly-reasoned argument, I'm not going to pretend to…

Yah, and if all Omnibudsmoon said about the article was "I came here for sci-fi, not law!" then I'd completely agree with you. But to me it seems pretty clear that the criticism seemed less "oh noes, io9 is writing about law," and more "oh noes, io9 is writing about law badly," which is rather different.

Can we stop dismissing criticism by saying "you don't have to read it," please? It's not a constructive reply. Firstly, it's irrelevant. If the points made in the critique are actually valid, what does it matter why the critic chose to read the article (or watch the show, or whatever else?) Secondly, it's possible to…

(Shrug) "It's common" is not, by itself, a very strong justification for doing things a certain way. If "it's the way things are usually done" were an adequate justification for anything, culture would never change, there'd be no social progress at all, and we'd be stuck in some sort of medieval stasis.

You must think the world is chock full of sad, shameful women.

Yeah, but the constant attempts to place the blame on Ukraine, it's hard not to attribute to malice...

Mars may seem more Earth-like than the Moon, but it's not really nearly Earth-like enough to truly make a huge difference to early colonists.

Yes! Honestly, Mars is fascinating, but I almost resent how much attention it is getting. The moon is a much nearer target, much easier (and cheaper — which given modern, very unfortunate, realities is a big deal) to reach, almost as interesting, and perhaps is a better site for our first off-world colony. If we could…

I'm sorry, but I can't help reading the comment as: "Singapore is a great country. The government tries to brainwash people. There is tons of censorship. Criticizing the government is illegal. It's a great country."

... The non-human DNA was from the bacteria that caused gum disease. We are already talking about it.

Eh?.. Sounds pretty standard. Lawyers being legalistic, precise, and as limited as possible in defining stuff that's relevant to a legal case, combined with technology less well understood than it is today... This does not seem odd. Funny in the same sense that lawyer jokes and complaints about our legal system in…

Oh, that's just bull-****. :P

"You're on the air with Frasier Crane!" "Doctor, I feel so alone, like I'm unique in the universe and there's no-one for me to relate to..."

Aye, especially considering that we're at the point of time where we'll soon have enough data to make this judgement, but don't yet. Makes this kind of discussion seem premature. I can see the point of it if we were a century away from telling what a typical solar system is, because then all we'd have is speculation;…