Daniel Dennett - How to Tell If You're an Atheist

The human mind is both beautiful and frustrating. We have minds that can contemplate the meaning of infinity and consciousness, on the one hand, and we can be blind to what's right in front of us, we can lie to ourselves, we can simultaneously embrace mutually exclusive beliefs, and we can be in complete denial about the most obvious of things, especially when those things have something challenging to say about our identity.There's a clinical condition...

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Woody Allen reads "My (Socratic) Apologies"

If you follow me on Google+, you may have noticed that there was recently a new trial for Socrates in which the previous verdict of guilty was overturned (by an impressively small margin). Philosophy was just barely vindicated by the new ruling. And people say we don't make progress :)If that's too much seriousness, however, you may enjoy the following short story, written and read by none other than that philosophically-minded comic, Woody Allen,...

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Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity - Spark

The ancient Greeks knew that if you rubbed two pieces of amber, you'd produce static electricity, but apart from that, it would be another two thousand years until this weird, invisible, ephemeral, mysterious and (literally) shocking phenomenon would be systematically studied, controlled, stored, understood and made to flow continuously. But as with any nascent science, there were false starts, one question answered only leading to more questions.In...

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Five Historical Misconceptions Busted

If your knowledge of history comes from movies and popular culture, chances are that your historical understanding is probably more of a misunderstanding.Admit it: you think of Vikings wearing horned helmets, you can't not picture Lady Godiva riding naked through Coventry, you pity Napoleon's shrimp-like height and assume his quest for conquest was just compensation for being short, etc. And let's not get into the Roman vomitorium or Christopher...

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Hans Rosling - Religion and Babies

When Hans Rosling speaks, I listen. The nice thing about him is that he much prefers to base his beliefs and opinions on data and evidence than on ideology. So, when I saw the title of this talk about the relationship between religion and babies, I was sure he'd have something mind-blowing to say, something that few of us, if any, would have imagined based on prior presuppositions.And the relationships he shows really are impressive and somewhat...

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Cameron Diaz Flirts with Sir David Attenborough

If you've been spoiled by multiple BBC documentaries narrated by Sir David Attenborough, as I have, then you've probably experienced the cringing sensation that it is watching those documentaries when they're narrated by other people, like Sigourney Weaver or Oprah, for instance.And if you're Cameron Diaz, and you get a chance to meet Sir David, you'll probably get your panties in a bunch and basically offer yourself to him, as she did :)And just...

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Brian Greene - Why Is Our Universe Fined-Tuned for Life?

Have you noticed that wherever Brian Greene goes, computer animations go with him? Well, this TEDTalk presentation is no exception :) I'm starting to wonder whether this might be the physicist equivalent of a comfort blanket...In any case, and as you may expect if you're familiar with him, he lays down the case for string theory, and explains some of the fascinating implications if string theory and the cosmological theory of inflation...

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The Center of All Things

Historically, it is perfectly understandable why our ancestors believed that we were the center of the universe: it really looks like we are!What naturally happens during the development of an individual in infancy, absolute ego-centrism, is mirrored at the collective level during the infancy of a civilization. But just like children grow up and become disabused of their former ego-centrism, civilizations also have to grow up and give up childish...

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Manuel Lima - The Power of Networks

The art and science of formal classification owes its origin to the great philosopher Aristotle, who conceived of a conceptual tree whose trunk and branches denote different divisions of ontology, hierarchies of being, logical and natural relations, etc. This tree metaphor became ubiquitous until very recently. It's been used to map historical and genealogical changes and hierarchies among subjects ranging from family blood lines to languages, the...

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Ring of Fire Eclipse Moon Shadows

I've always loved (and been curious about) how leaves distort the path of light waves. If I were to speculate, I would guess that maybe they... actually, who are we kidding? I have no idea, plain and simple. Anyone out there who can help?So I'll admit that I don't quite get the mechanism, but when you combine that weirdness with the Ring of Fire eclipse that occurred a couple of days ago, what you get is a thing of beau...

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The Section Quartet covers Muse's Time Is Running Out

Just a little bit of musical deliciousness to pick you up on this rainy day.And if you like Apocalyptica, you'll love th...

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The Banned TED Talk - Rich People Don't Create Jobs

Over the past few years, TED has grown into a household name due to the amazing lectures and presentations that they've made publicly available to the entire world. TEDTalks are presentations about ideas that are worth spreading.Well, Nick Hanauer decided to give a talk about an idea he considered worth spreading: how we've been brainwashed to believe, despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, that taxing the wealthy is what drives unemployment...

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Richard Feynman - The Essence of Science (in one minute)

I'm shamelessly stealing this from Robert Krulwich's blog, and verbatim at that (remember, shamelessly), but simply because the original is so eloquent and poetic that I would not presume to improve upon it:"Here it is, in a nutshell: The logic of science boiled down to one, essential idea. It comes from Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, who wrote it on the blackboard during a class at Cornell in 1964.Think...

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What Is the Self?

If you're not used to thinking philosophically, here's a bit of a conceptual conundrum for you: you have certain personal and professional goals, projects and desires that you'd like to accomplish and satisfy. And presumably, much of what you do is, to varying degrees, something that you do for your the sake of your future self. You are used to thinking that you have a self, that you will continue to have an enduring self through time, and that there...

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Inside Nature's Giants - Kangaroo

When you read the title of this entry, your first reaction might be bewilderment. Kangaroos are among nature's giants? Well, yes and no. The largest kangaroos on record, who stood at an impressive ten feet tall, went the way of the dodo a long time ago, so their present-day descendants are not as impressive as you may expect. Still, kangaroos today are the largest living marsupials, so that helps them qualify.But you've already come to love this...

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Fight Club - Chemical Burn

You've most likely watched the movie at some point. I recently also read the book. Both experiences are similarly soul-hitting, thought-provoking and existentially disturbing. Enlightenment through self-destruction? Freedom through loss? Power through lack of control? Immortality through suicide?If you don't experience some major cognitive dissonance after watching the movie or reading the book, then either you are some Nietzschean hero or, more...

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David Eagleman - The Brain and the Law

There is almost universal agreement among philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and other mind researchers that the mind has a physical basis in the brain. Sure, we don't yet understand the particular mechanism through which the brain produces conscious experience, but most serious researchers into the field no longer buy the antiquated notion of an immaterial soul.But as philosophers have recognized for thousands of years, if the...

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Romney to Travel Back in Time to Kill Liberal Version of Himself

If you are a Republican, you're probably not all that thrilled with your presidential candidate Mitt Romney, what with more flip-flopping on political issues than a patient with multiple-personality disorder on meth. It looks like this guy will say anything for votes.But if you're concerned about all the inconsistencies, fear not. The Onion reports that Conservative Romney plans to travel back in time to kill younger Liberal Romney and finally escape...

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Melinda Gates - Let's Put Birth Control Back on the Agenda

I'm really busy at the moment (grading finals and term papers), and don't have time to get into a long introduction to the fantastic TEDTalk presentation below, but suffice it to say that in a time in which the politicization of women's issues (whether they should have the right to choose or to have or not have access to medical healthcare) has clouded the real question concerning women's health and choice, Melinda Gates adeptly navigates...

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Running (Unstoppable) - Amazing Paralympic Games Ad

Sometimes life throws shit our way. Sometimes we despair, sometimes we succumb, but every now and then some rise above the ashes and make something of themselvesClick the picture for a taste of awesome :)And if you think that picture alone is awesome, just wait till you see the vid...

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Dan Savage - Standing Up to the Bible

Here in America, we loves our cognitive dissonance. If you ever watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report, you know that these are two industries based primarily on pointing out, with great humor and wit, how often we contradict ourselves on a daily basis.One of those areas in which we collectively seem to be somewhere off in self-contradictory la-la land is the widespread belief that our moral values come from scripture, but as...

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Brian Cox - Mars Loops the Loop

Thanks mainly to Aristotle's teleological metaphysics and the ancient idea that the heavens are a realm of perfection, it was believed for millennia that the celestial bodies moved along a perfect sphere around the Earth. Then some odd observations of retrograde motion were discovered among the planets, or "wandering stars" (as shown in the picture to the right), and the ancient astronomer/astrologer Ptolemy explained that this was actually better...

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Beautiful Minds - Richard Dawkins

If you've been following this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with the various documentaries, debates and lectures Richard Dawkins has delivered over the years. Sure, his fame of late has to do with the religion/atheism and creationism/evolution controversies, but he's a much more important thinker than that. Dawkins is such a prolific thinker that even when he's wrong, he manages to make you think and to reconsider your own position....

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The Burden of Proof

Why yes, obviously you should believe in and bow down to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Let yourself be touched by His noodly appendage. Feel the power of his balls! What do you mean that's nonsense? Can you prove he doesn't exist? If you can't, aren't you just being dogmatic in your atheistic a-pastafarianism?As you may already be inferring, today we're dealing with the philosophical question concerning the burden of proof. Who has the responsibility...

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Paul Ayn Rand Ryan

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."Unfortunately, some people don't grow intellectually past the age of 14, and having once read the cultish...

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George Carlin - The Illusion of Choice

Bow down to your corporate overlords! You don't know who they are? Just click on the picture below to see the few companies that own most of the products on which you rely, and then ask yourself what kind of freedom you have when so much of your choices depends on stuff going on behind the curtains inconspicuously serving the interests of corporate greed...The picture kind of reminded me of some stuff George Carlin used to argue:Boy, he threads a...

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The Higgs Boson Explained, PhD Comics Edition

You may remember that a while ago we featured a PhD Comics animation explaining Dark Matter.Today we have another episode dealing with those two or three words that you may have heard numerous times in reference to the Large Hadron Collider over the past couple of years, and which is the main reason the whole thing was built to begin with: the famous Higgs Boson mechanism.You may know that it's got something to do with explaining why particles have...

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