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...

Read More

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,...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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:The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More:...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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,...

Read More

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...

Read More

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 Bangthat we behold what the cosmos hath begat:the magma, the terra firma, the creeping beasts,...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More