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 B...
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Thursday, 29 December 2011
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...
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
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...
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
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...
Friday, 23 December 2011
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...
Thursday, 22 December 2011
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...
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
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...
Friday, 16 December 2011
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...
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' workInstead, 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 nightsAnd if...
Thursday, 15 December 2011
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...
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
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...
Monday, 12 December 2011
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...
Sunday, 11 December 2011
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,...
Friday, 9 December 2011
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...
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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...
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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...
Monday, 5 December 2011
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...
Friday, 2 December 2011
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 ...
Thursday, 1 December 2011
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...
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
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...
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
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,...
Monday, 28 November 2011
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...
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
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...
Monday, 21 November 2011
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...
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...
Friday, 18 November 2011
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:The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More:...
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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...
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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...
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...
Monday, 14 November 2011
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...
Thursday, 10 November 2011
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...
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
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...
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
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...
Monday, 7 November 2011
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,...
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...
Friday, 4 November 2011
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 Bangthat we behold what the cosmos hath begat:the magma, the terra firma, the creeping beasts,...
Thursday, 3 November 2011
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...
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
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...
Monday, 31 October 2011
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...
Friday, 28 October 2011
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...
Monday, 24 October 2011
"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...
Friday, 21 October 2011
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...
Thursday, 20 October 2011
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...
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