The Universe in One Year

When you get a little perspective, you may feel insignificant, but that very improbability makes your life all the more significant. Have a happy new year!

via Starts with a Bang

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Seven Wonders of the Microbe World

Bacteria, and the fact that we have to use antibiotics against them every now and then to combat powerful diseases, may conjure up nasty and scary feelings for many people, but let's not be too quick to come up with sweeping generalizations, since you yourself are more bacteria than human :)

The following video, from The Open University, illustrates some of the awesome ways bacteria have exerted an incredible influence in the world for as long as we have historical records.

You like your beer, for instance? Next time have a toast for our fellow unicellular organisms because without them, your beer would just be some nasty, bitter juice that tastes like piss :)

Oh, did I mention they also write some awesome romantic poetry? :)

And for more, check out how viruses invade your body. It's scary, but a testament to the blind ingenuity of evolution.

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Meet the Lampyridae (or firefly)

One of my favorite aspects about science is that since it's an attempt to discover how the world works, we can't assume that our a prioris and preconceived notions and expectations will be confirmed by new discoveries, or even that we could easily foresee whether and how some discoveries might turn out to be relevant to us.

Take a pretty basic and interesting question: what's up with fireflies? Why do they glow? Well, it turns out that when scientists try to answer that seemingly simple question, they end up coming up with applications that could literally save your life one day, as the following animation shows:

I totally want a glowing hamster now :)

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Still kicking, sorry about the confusion

For those of you who noticed and were concerned with a very personal post a few days ago, thank you for your posthumous words of kindness, but everything is all right. That was an entry I created a while ago to be automatically posted on Christmas, should something happen to me before that date (you never know when you might get run over by a car, when the bridge that you drive to work on might collapse, when your heart might decide to call it quits, or when Jesus decides to rapture your ass). It seemed like a nice way of getting to say a little something to my family without their expecting it.

With the hectic nature of the end of the semester and the then-approaching holiday season, it slipped my mind to reset the automated post for another year, and I didn't realize it got posted until about two days after the fact, by which point a number of you were worried. I am very grateful for the kind messages and concern I received, though.

The good thing about this mishap? This blog is just not popular enough to create a major frenzy :)

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Friction - A Christmas Party Trick

If you need to entertain your holiday guests, especially those with a competitive streak, and you have a couple of old phone books laying around, Stephen Fry and his QI guests are here to teach you a simple and inexpensive party trick you can use on them while simultaneously teaching them a simple lesson on the physics of friction.

I cannot be held responsible for any objects that get broken in the process :)

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

There are many things to like about this Oscar Wilde classic (adapted and animated below), what with the witty aphorisms and one-liners, but if there's something that can only be described as haunting about this tale, it's not the supernatural nature of the portrait nor the exchange of one's soul for the promise of everlasting physical beauty, but the question of whether one can bear to see one's reflection.

Can you look fairly at the choices you've made, including those that have affected and hurt others, and still like and respect the person that looks back at you?

Find other classics and thought-provoking stories in the literature tag.

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The Richard Feynman Series - Beauty

Beauty is one of those tricky concepts to define because although most of us have an intuitive sense of instances of beauty, and can usually recognize it when we see it, we can't come up with an overarching theory about why all the things we consider to be beautiful are considered beautiful while other things are not.

Still, one thing about which many people agree is that science and philosophy strip the world of beauty by reducing it to a bunch of cold, abstract theories and equations. But as the late Richard Feynman makes clear in the following stunning video (which is itself an excerpt from the documentary The Pleasure of Finding Things Out), that prejudice is based on a embarrassing mischaracterization of the nature and the motivation behind serious investigation.

I know exactly what you're thinking... tell me I'm wrong :)

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Christopher Hitchens - We'd Be Better Off Without Religion

I've just learned that the prolific essayist and inimitable public intellectual and agitator Christopher Hitchens has succumbed to the cancer he's been battling over the past year.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Hitchens was a force to be reckoned with. Whatever the subject, at the very least he always had something interesting and thought-provoking to say.

In the following excerpt, Hitchens argues for the motion that "We'd be better off without religion." Now that he's gone, we can think of these ideas and realize that while he was with us, the world was a better place because of his eloquence, his courage, and his wit.

And because it would be totally appropriate on this occasion, I'm stealing the following picture from The Friendly Atheist to make a humble toast to Hitch:

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Tempest Milky Way Time Lapse

With the semester coming to an end, I'm buried neck-deep in student term papers, final exams and class projects, so I won't have time to go into some rant today... and probably next week too. I need to save all my mental energy to accurately assess my students' work

Instead, I thought I'd try to invoke the aesthetic of the sublime and stimulate the senses with the following spectacular time lapse video of the Milky Way on some stormy nights

And if you want more, you can always visit the time lapse tag, but be careful, it can be addicting :)

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Death to Pennies!

Far more often than we would normally like to admit, our beliefs and behavior are driven by forces that are completely irrational and that, if we just gave them a moment's thought, we'd realize we ought to stop, like, yesterday.

Whatever the subject matter, these beliefs and behavior are usually based on an unquestioning acceptance of traditions passed down through the generations. The problem, of course, is that tradition by itself is no criterion of reasonableness.

When I was in high school, two of the things that could get me going on a rant were the uselessness and irrationality of pennies and the fact that we don't include sales taxes in our prices. Apparently, others are starting to speak out too:

And if you're worried that this would be "unpatriotic," suck it, it's been done before:

Now, before you go rid the world of pennies, be careful where you try to dispose of them:

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The Chinese Room Thought Experiment

The rise of computers in the 20th century, and especially their exponentially increasing computational capacity and speed, has gotten many curious minds to speculate as to whether it is possible at some point to create computers that can think. Those who believe in things like the computational singularity, such as David Chalmers, think it's just a matter of time before we have to bow down to our new mechanized overlords.

Here is a Philosophy Bites interview with Chalmers on just such a question:

Others, like philosopher John Searle, however, think that, given everything we know about computation, it is impossible, even in principle, for computers ever to think, no matter their computational capacity. To prove this point, Searle came up with what has come to be regarded, by supporters and detractors alike, as a classic thought experiment: the Chinese room, which you get to learn about in the following 60 seconds.

For more on questions of mind, consciousness, personal identity, etc., visit the Brainspotting tag.

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Inside Nature's Giants - The Big Cats

Their loud and guttural roars can send chills up and down your spine, even from great distances. If they're running for you, and you're not protected by some sort of fence, you're dinner. If giraffes, crocodiles, zebras, wildebeests and elephants all succumb to these cats' strong jaws and sharp teeth and claws, you don't stand a chance.

Lions and tigers are the largest felines in the world, and becoming top predators has required the development of some impressive adaptations.

Continuing with the Inside Nature's Giants series, the team dissects a lion and a tiger to understand the details of the anatomy and physiology of the hunt, starting with a dissection of the larynx (which produces those frightening roars), and making their way to understand their retractable claws, their muscular bodies and their powerful jaws and sharp teeth.

And while dissecting a tiger is basically enough to get a decent understanding of their evolutionary success, lions are a different story, particularly because their survival depends upon social cohesion and cooperation, since it is not unusual for them to have to take down some massive pray that no single lion could do on his/her own. But their strict social hierarchies also have some disturbing consequences...

Watching these documentaries helps me realize that I would not survive in the wild...

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Rick Perry - Swrong

You may have seen, and been shocked by, the recent Rick Perry ad in which he came out (get it?) and made his religious lunacy and homophobia explicit on national television. Many people originally thought this had to be some sort of joke: no sane person would ever be dumb enough to publicly announce the basis of his candidacy on the outright intolerant bigotry inherited from a bunch of barely literate goat herders. Then again, Perry is not sane, or smart (here's proof of his idiocy).

Of course, his latent and repressed homosexuality was betrayed by his fashion statement, as he was wearing--and you just can't make shit up like this: a jacket almost identical to one of the gay characters from Brokeback Mountain, which was just fabulous :)

Anyway, here's the now infamous ad that became a meme machine:

Those statements about faith are just what you would expect from the same idiot who decided, when his state was confronted with a massive drought, to pray for rain. That's what he did. I kid you not, and how well did that work out? Oh, right...

Anyway, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. Here he is engaging in a little thoughtful introspection and self-reflection:

And yes, while the message seems to be all backwards, maybe you missed the more subtle points. Pay attention again and see if you can find the subliminal message this time:

Regardless of his real position, pretending to represent Christianity kind of doesn't work when Jesus can speak for himself:

And if we really want to generalize as to who's responsible for the real problems, well, you're probably not going to like the truth, you god-fearing vagina penetrators...

And talking about disenfranchised groups, who's standing up for dinosaurs? This guy:

There may be a lot of stupidity on the internet, but thankfully there's also great opportunity for individuals to stand up and make fun of the retarded ideas of a guy who wants access to 21st century state-of-the-art weaponry while having backward stone-age beliefs...

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Miniatur Wunderland

If for some reason you ever get to visit Hamburg, you'll definitely want to reserve some time to visit Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest model railway in the world. You've probably seen the traditional model railway before, but you've never seen one quite like this. Sure, there are moving trains and nice landscapes, but it also includes computerized action sequences that take place in the miniature equivalent of various actual cities and tourist attractions around the world. Just check out the video, I guarantee you'll be impressed.

Any of you, dear readers, live close to the Hamburg area and have an extra couch I could crash in if I ever manage to make my way over there? :)

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The "War on Christmas" Begins Again...

When Thanksgiving rolls around, there are a few things I don't want to look forward to, even though deep down inside I know are inevitable: bad Christmas music (virtually all of it), the commercialization of yet another holiday, and the self-victimization of Conservatives who refuse to acknowledge that we live in a pluralistic society. This is the so-called War on Christmas (about which we've reported before with the comedic genius of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert respectively).

The latest set of lame arguments tries to go the patriotic route by claiming that Christmas has been, even before the inception of this nation, an American tradition.

Well, these idiots are about to get schooled :)

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Of course, the worst part of it all is that it's all just a big distraction from the real problems we fail to acknowledge and confront. Makes me mad :(

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Bach Visualized Through Math

You've no doubt heard the claim that some of the greatest musicians of all time had an intuitive sense for mathematical proportion and harmony. It's no coincidence, for instance, that the musical scale was invented by that most eccentric of mathematicians, Pythagoras.

And if you're familiar with your Leibniz, you might remember that he once claimed that "music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."

Well, the following animation beautifully illustrates this abstract claim in as concrete a way as it is possible to do...

And if you need the sound of a more familiar rendition, we aim to please:

And why stop at music? Take a look at the the fibonacci sequence throughout nature.

May your day be blessed with beauty... and math :)

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Shelly Kagan vs William Lane Craig - Is God Necessary for Morality?

It's been well understood by philosophers for the past 2,500 years, thanks to Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, that there is ultimately no real connection between God or religion and an objectively binding morality: the latter can exist without the former, and the former only gets to be considered good in virtue of the independence of the latter (otherwise we just have a viciously circular argument).

Nevertheless, the idea that morality depends on God is still just as popular as ever, and it is even held by some otherwise intelligent people, one of whom is William Lane Craig, who, in the following debate against philosopher Shelly Kagan, articulates better than most this seemingly obvious but ultimately self-defeating position.

The interesting thing to notice in this debate is how easily Kagan sweeps the floor with Craig's black and white thinking, appeals to consequences, arguments from personal incredulity, and other fallacious presuppositions. It's an intellectual bloodbath well worth watching...

For a different take on this issue, you can also watch William Lane Craig debate philosopher Louise Antony. Craig's arguments are, if I remember correctly, exactly the same, but Antony's take is different from Kagan's, and brings in a different way to counter Craig's wild assertions.

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Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tysoon

So what do you get when you mix up a smart comedian (like Stephen Colbert) and a fun and eloquent popularizer of science (like Neil deGrasse Tyson)?

Answer: one and a half hour of thought-provoking and funny awesomeness.

Enjoy your weekend.

I would have still included a philosopher to help Tyson through some of those tough Colbert questions regarding the value of knowledge, but that's just me.

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Damon Horowitz - Philosophy in Prison

As you probably already know from this blog, TEDTalks are awesome: bring in some of the greatest minds in the world, working on the greatest and most interesting questions, with the best and most creative ideas, give them 18 minutes, and they will awe and wow you.

Well, when they brought in philosopher Damon Horowitz, he only needed about three minutes to inspire a standing ovation and blow everyone out of the water in what can only be described as one of the best TEDTalks of all time...

But you don't have to be in prison to study philosophy and be free. There are plenty of other practical reasons for deciding to study this mother of all intellectual disciplines.

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Inside Nature's Giants - Polar Bear

Continuing with their exploration of the anatomy and physiology of the giants of nature, the team travels to the North Pole in search of a polar bear: the largest land mammalian predator in the world. Because of the difficulties of finding polar bears at all, never mind fresh carcasses, this episode requires the collaboration of a local hunting community whose survival depends on using every last scrap of these animals without wasting anything. And because of the weather conditions, every move is a race against the freezing clock.

Now, the first and most obvious question is just how these bears manage to withstand the intense freezing temperatures of their natural habitat. The answer, it turns out, and this should throw you for a loop, is that a polar bear is a black animal with transparent fur that looks (but isn't) white. Yeah, I was floored too.

But that's not the whole story. We also get to understand, among other things, exactly why there are polar bears to begin with and how they manage to cope with diets that would literally kill us.

Did you see the polar bear attacking that walrus that was probably twice its size?!?

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The Ice Finger of Death

So I never knew this before, but apparently when seawater freezes, it forces salt out, thereby making the water surrounding it more saline. That starts a chain reaction with which you may be more familiar: the saline water has a lower freezing point and higher density, so as this super cold water freezes, it starts to sink away from the surface ice, creating an ice stalactite, otherwise known as a brinicle. But as David Attenborough explains, this is just the beginning:

I love how scientists have managed to figure out exactly why this happens...

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Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department

On its surface, the political and economic philosophy of libertarianism sounds very promising because it appeals to values we all esteem highly: individual rights, freedom, personal responsibility, merit, etc.

For all its growing popularity, however, libertarianism is deeply flawed. There are many ways to show this. One is through careful and rigorous conceptual analysis carried out by philosophers such as John Rawls.

Another is to let The Onion do the work in less than a minute:

Also, ma' house was burning :)

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99% v 1% - The Data Behind the Occupy Wall St. Movement

There's been a lot of buzz, support, mocking, complaining, sympathizing, talk, etc. about the We Are the 99 Percent slogan behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The idea is quite simple, and it refers to the incredible disparities concerning political power, income, wealth, access to basic social services, and other differences that separate the vast majority of the American population from a 1 percent elite minority who basically owns the country and manages to exploit the other 99 percent to further their own interests at the expense of the majority.

But are the numbers an accurate representation of the situation? In the following animation from The Guardian, we learn that things are not quite as simple as they seem:

Yeah, it's worse...

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Police Brutality at UC Davis

Agree or disagree with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, there are a few things that no one can really dispute. For one thing, this is a non-violent grass roots movement intent on raising consciousness about corporate greed and corruption. There may be no unified set of goals or specific demands at the time, and that's fine, it is to be expected from a population that, while unsure about how to proceed, realizes that business as usual is no longer an option.

Second, these protesters are engaging in public, non-violent civil disobedience. As such, while they are sometimes publicly breaking the law (without creating any violence), they are fully prepared to live with the consequences of their actions, and when they get arrested, they offer no violent opposition. In all of this, they are to be commended for living up to the principles of non-violent civil disobedience set down, among others, by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

As you may have heard, a shocking pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis last week has gone viral. Defending the thoughtless and heartless actions taken by two police officers who doused a peaceful crowd with pepper spray, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza argued that the protesters posed an imminent threat to police officers because

"there was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

Well, as you can see in the picture above, a bunch of students sitting down and locking arms in solidarity is not exactly what you would call a "volatile situation," but if you need further context to understand what happened, check it out for yourself:

I think the only plausible solution is to force these assholes to inhale a whole canister of pepper spray and then be dragged in handcuffs to jail...

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Cosmos - The Lives of Stars

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, Carl Sagan famously argued, you must first invent the universe, and for that, you're going to need stuff. But where does the matter that make up the cosmos come from? How is it created? If all matter is composed of three tiny particles (protons, neutrons and electrons), how do we explain the diversity of matter all around us?

In this installment of the widely celebrated documentary series Cosmos, Carl Sagan explores the origin of the chemical elements, how these relate to the birth, growth and death of stars, and even a little general relativity for good measure.

For more on the nature and origin of the elements of the periodic table, check out Jim Al-Khalili's wonderful documentary series Atoms (parts 1, 2 and 3), or his history of chemistry (parts 1, 2 and 3).

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GOP Derp

Apart from Mitt Romney (whose success seems predicated on his opponents predictably putting their foots in their own mouths), one Republican who must be thrilled about the lack of intelligence and eloquence among the current GOP candidates is George W. Bush :)

By comparison, these idiots make him seem like an articulate, nuanced, moderate and intelligent scholar...

Let's start with Rick Derp Perry:

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Then we have Herman Cain being a douche, followed by Rick Perry drunk off his ass...

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Then some more of Cain's dickishness, and Perry tripping over his own thoughts:

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But Herman Cain isn't just a douchebag.... he's also an idiot... and a douchebag:

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Of course, the only semi-reasonable candidate, John Huntsman, will never win the nomination... that would just make too much sense for these folks...

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Time Travel and the Grandfather Paradox

Nothing beats boredom quite like philosophy. You start with almost any seemingly simple question, you do some heavy thinking, and before you know it, like when we were first introduced to Zeno of Elea (or even his mentor, Parmenides), it turns out motion may just be an optical illusion.

Now we get to explore the grandfather paradox. It's pretty obvious that if you wanted to kill your grandpa, a simple piece of technology like a pillow could get the job done. But what if you've suffered a lifetime of bad jokes, anachronistic war references, patronizing judgments for being 'metrosexual', and countless stories about how easy you have it now compared to a hundred years ago, when he had to walk five miles naked and barefoot through the snow so they could make it to school?

How could you get rid of the old geezer? Could you be so annoyed that you just get into your time machine and travel back to a time before he even met grandma and kill him right there and then? That would solve all the future annoying moments you've suffered for years... but wait, if you kill him before he meets your grandma, he can't knock her up with your dad, and if your dad is never born, then he obviously could not get your mom preggers with you, but then you would not be born, and if you're not born, how could you possibly travel back in time to kill gramps? Oy vay!

Ask the right questions, and a universe of fascinating opportunities opens up to you, or at least you get to kill boredom for a while. Either way it's a win-win.

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Vodka Tampons

Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives, and hide yo' husbands because according to some high school security guard who obviously has easy access to demographic private data concerning teens, housewives, teachers, corporate lawyers, top politicians, celebrities, federal judges, scientists and homeland security classified information, there is a menacing and ubiquitous trend threatening the innocence of everyone you know and love: they are literally getting drunk off their asses. Stephen Colbert reports.

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Of course, chances are the security guard was hammered during that interview :)

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Michigan's Children Speak Out Against Republican Pro-Bullying Legislation

As we learned recently from Stephen Colbert, an anti-bullying bill in Michigan is sparking controversy. The bill was originally inspired by the tragic story of Matt Epling, a teen who committed suicide in 2002 after falling victim to anti-gay bullying. The fact he wasn't gay doesn't change anything.

The controversy surrounding the bill arose because Republican Senator Rick Jones introduced a clause that made an exception for bullying perpetrated due to "a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction."

The problem, of course, is that instead of protecting the victims of hate and bigotry, this nominally "anti-bullying" bill actually provides license to promote bullying, and a blueprint to teach bullies exactly what excuses to use to get away with their hatred.

Luckily, many have seen through the smokescreen, including children, and they are writing their representatives to let their voices be heard:

And here is Senator Gretchen Whitmer responding to this pro-bullying legislation:

Obviously, this is the wrong time to say this, but she's kind of cute, huh? :)

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Bill O'Reilly's Logical Blunders

It's difficult to overstate the importance of the skills associated with critical thinking. Obviously, you want to have the ability and the know-how to recognize and evaluate the quality of arguments and the evidence provided to support them fairly, and to develop defensible arguments of your own whenever you want to persuade others that your point of view is worth endorsing.

But critical thinking is not just about mental skill. It also requires the adoption of certain moral values without which those skills we talked about before might be put to bad or unfair use. Some of these values include integrity, honesty, humility, and the ability to recognize when you've made some terrible logical blunder. Of course, when you simply re-affirm bad arguments, even though they have been shown to be fallacious, defending them is only going to require that you produce even worse arguments, rife with fallacy and dishonesty, so even if you don't believe in the values above, it would still be better to cut your losses and quit while you're ahead.

Anyway, in my critical thinking classes I usually assign a project that requires students to identify instances of certain informal logical fallacies as they occur in the real world, and the following is a two-minute sample based on the now infamous episode in which Bill O'Reilly thought he could "prove" the existence of God based on his own ignorance (just go to the second slide to see the logical analysis).

If he had just said "my bad, I made a mistake, that really was a bad argument" he probably would not have lost the respect of so many people...

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The Word - Bully Pulpit

Everyone agrees that bullying is a problem (ok, maybe bullies don't agree... ah, fuck'em), but it's hard to blame children and teens for engaging in that kind of reprehensible behavior when they're just following in the example set by bigoted adults and institutions who hide behind the sorry excuse of 'morality' set by their stone-age homophobic religious beliefs.

So, Stephen Colbert reports, when the state of Michigan tried to pass an anti-bullying bill, it should come as no surprise that fundamentalists agreed to pass the bill on condition that kids still be allowed to behave like total assholes only if they could use religious conviction as their lame excuse.

In other words, bullying is wrong, unless our backward religion says it's all right...

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Of course, my first reaction would be to say that the upside of this bill is that it would now give smart kids license to freely bully religious idiots on perfectly moral grounds (for being douchebags), but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to solve the problem of bullying by allowing more bullying, tempting as it might be...

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Psychic Helps Police Waste Valuable Time

Ok, now I'm confused... I thought The Onion was supposed to be fake news...

This just in: The Psychic Headquarters have been closed due to unforeseen reasons :)

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Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature

Having just published a voluminous book whose title was inspired by the immortal words of a guy who met his tragic end by having his brains blown out in public :), Steven Pinker argues that despite some obvious fluctuation, violence has seen an overall historical decline over the past few thousand years, and that we are living today in the least violent era our species has ever seen.

That may sound ridiculous to you, what with the world wars of the 20th century and our increasing technological capabilities to wreak havoc in scales our predecessors couldn't have dreamed of, but Pinker is no dummy who argues in lazy generalizations, and he's got plenty of corroborating evidence to make his point.

More interestingly, perhaps, is why violence has declined over time, and if you're already familiar with Pinker's work, you know things are about to get interesting when he starts invoking philosophy, history, evolutionary psychology, economics, cognitive psychology, rational-decision theory and other fascinating disciplines. And as if that weren't stimulating enough, the lecture is followed by a discussion with Matt Ridley and some Q&A.

For more, check out the Steven Pinker tag.

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GOP Race Heats Up as Comatose Candidate Steals Thunder

While many of the current GOP presidential hopefuls have recently found themselves in the middle of embarrassing controversies (like spending countless weekends hunting on camp "Niggerhead," or facing accusations of sexual harassment, or denying the validity of scientific research, or finding themselves in the middle of multi-billion dollar corruption schemes, or being responsible for the execution of innocent people, or just for being either boring as hell or bat-shit insane), The Onion reports that Congressman John Clarkson has kept himself away from controversies for the past eight years by being in a coma.

But as one should have expected, it wouldn't take long for Clarkson to be involved in a sex scandal of his own...

Sources confirm that GOP candidate Herman Cain is thrilled that Clarkson has diverted the pervert spotlight off him, even if only temporarily :)

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Philosophy Monkey on Google +

With all the social media around, one can't help but try to keep up with these trends, so for those of you hip to the changes, I'm officially announcing the creation of the Google+ page for the Philosophy Monkey blog. Be sure to follow us and share with everyone you know!

Of course, you can still always subscribe to our rss feeds, you can like our facebook page, you can follow us on twitter, and you can... I'm sure I'm forgetting something else, but you know what to do to get your daily dose of mental awesomeness :)

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Daniel Wolpert - The Real Reason for Brains

I know what you're thinking, but no, it's not for feeding zombies... but it's also not "for" thinking either because brains evolved long before any organism developed the ability to think and reason. So, while thinking is a great adaptation of the brain, it's not exactly its original raison d'être.

In the following fascinating and amusing TEDTalk presentation, Daniel Wolpert argues that brains evolved to control movement. Don't believe me? Well, is it just coincidence that the only animal in the world who eats its own brain, the sea squirt, does it only after it's found a permanent abode? Probably not...

Anyway, the most interesting part of the presentation is when Wolpert provides a nice introduction to Bayesian probability theory, and then makes a convincing argument that this is how brains learn how to produce behavior and beliefs. As you may already be able to imagine, this provides a great starting point for those working on artificial intelligence and robotics.

Now, if you want to investigate the evolution of the thinking mind (beyond the sea squirt), you could start by reading this fascinating primer on evolutionary psychology by Leda Cosmedis and John Tooby.

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Duelity - Scientific Creationism and Religious Darwinism

According to the records of the General Organization of Development labs (GOD),
it took a mere six days to manufacture a fully-operational universe,
complete with day, night, flora and fauna,
and installing Adam as its manager to oversee daily functions on Earth.

That's one story.

If thou shalt believe the Book of Darwin,
t'is five billion years later after The Big Bang
that we behold what the cosmos hath begat:
the magma, the terra firma, the creeping beasts, and mankind,
whose dolorous and chaotic evolution begat the gift of consciousness.

Duelity is a split-screen animation that tells both sides of the story of Earth's origins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the history and language that marks human thought.

And for another account of creation full of pseudo-scientific jargon (and great music), check out Michael Shermer's Genesis 2.0

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Stephen Colbert Occupies Occupy Wall Street

Inspired by Dick Armey and how he co-opted the Tea Party and gave their fringe beliefs a national platform, Comrade Che Colbert wants his Super PAC to capitalize on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement.

So, he met with two young idealists whose democratic, political and social awareness, while admittedly quirky, demonstrate a level of intellectual sophistication you just don't see among tea-baggers.

In the process, Colbert managed to produce a hilarious interview showing his off-the-cuff comedic genius:

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And here's the dramatic conclusion

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Hilarious :)

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Phil Plait - An Asteroid Impact Can Ruin Your Day

The dinosaurs say: No shit, Sherlock!

Still, while the title is sort of obvious (and almost question-begging), Bad Astronomer Phil Plait (who apparently hosts some TV show? I'm disconnected from the world since I have no TV) delves into some interesting details about what scientists have discovered about celestial bodies whose paths sometimes cross the path of our own little world, and even some of the ways in which we might be able to avoid such a collision in the future.

For more, check out our TEDTalks tag.

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Awkward Halloween Moments

Reposted from ReverendFun.com

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When Pat Robertson Is the Moderate Among Conservatives

It would be no exaggeration to claim that the Republican Party is full of extremist ideologues. One clear example would be the fact that there have been times when people like former President-of-the-National-Rifle-Association-you'll-only-take-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-hands-Charles-Heston have been the voice of reason among conservatives.

But just to prove how bat-shit insane the GOP is becoming, the person now urging them to tone down the crazy is none other than Pat "gays cause hurricanes" Robertson...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The 180 Club... love it :)

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Science - What's It Up To?

Science claims to be looking for cures for diseases, save the planet from the multiple dangers that threaten it, and to want to solve and understand the mysteries of the universe, but Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, sat down with a conservative conspiracy theorist bimbo to try to uncover what science is really up to... and discovers instead that you can't underestimate how bat-shit-insane and idiotic you can be when you let your retarded ideology determine the shit that comes out of your mouth...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Wow... and I thought Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann were idiots...

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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

"Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet, just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the idea. They fear that a biological understanding of the mind will be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, dissolve personal responsibility and strip life of meaning and purpose.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker (bestselling author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, and The Better Angels of Our Nature) explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings.

He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmatic myths: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has an immaterial soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from scientific discoveries about human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hard-headed analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts."

Don't you feel just a little bit smarter now? :)

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Michael Winslow - Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin

In the animal kingdom, there is no sound imitator quite like the lyre bird. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've got to check this out.

But if there is anyone who might be able to outperform the lyre bird, it would have to be Michael Winslow (Sgt. Larvell Jones from Police Academy, in case you don't remember).

In the following clip, which starts as some ordinary beatboxing, Winslow manages to invoke the spirit of some of the most radical electric guitar you have ever heard, and he's just getting started...

I never realized just how talented this dude is... I always assumed that the sound effects in Police Academy were exactly that, just sound effects. I stand humbly corrected.

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Herman Cain's Nine Nine Nein Nein Plan

I don't know why it is that (with the possible exception of John Huntsman) virtually every Republican candidate does better with their base whenever they make irresponsible, racist, bigoted and divisive remarks, or when they dismiss the value of education, critical thinking and/or scientific research.

In Herman Cain's bizarro pizza world, difficult and complex economic, social and political problems ought to be solved by appealing to solutions based on empty soundbites (after all, the man is proud of his disdain for reading, erudition and having complex thoughts), and whenever that doesn't work, he thinks we ought to just fry a couple of Mexicans...

The Colbert Report
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If he were to build that fence, I wouldn't be surprised if he made sure the signs were written in English...

But why stop with Mexicans when you can discriminate against Americans too?

The Colbert Report
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