I may think that this blog is great, but apparently you don't have to take my word for it. The most interesting man in the world seems to agree :)Hat tip to To...
Friday, 29 June 2012
A few days ago we saw that Joe the Plumber (representing the view of thousands or millions of Americans) prefers the Bible to science books because science books go through constant revisions while the Bible contains eternal, unchanging truth.Of course, Joe the Plumber and company probably don't realize that, over the last few thousands of years, the Bible has gone through countless revisions, additions, omissions, translations, translations of translations,...
Thursday, 28 June 2012
"The world needs you, badly." That's how celebrated evolutionary biologist and entomologist E.O. Wilson (also known as Darwin's heir, or the Lord of the Ants) begins this fascinating, amusing and inspirational TEDTalk presentation encouraging you, yes, you, to pursue a career in science and scientific research.You may be apprehensive. You may think you're not smart enough, you may be uncomfortable with your own level of mathematical literacy,...
Monday, 25 June 2012
On their own right, the semi-autonomic rovers that explore the surface of Mars for us are great feats of engineering. The fact that they do what they do (from such a long distance away it's virtually impossible for us to really wrap our heads around) ought to be enough to impress anyone, but have you wondered how it is that they get there in the first place?As you may recall from memory or a little history, landing on Mars is no easy feat. Its gravity...
Sunday, 24 June 2012
I have no problem with Joe the Plumber as a person. Even though I disagree with virtually his entire ideology, I'm sure he's a decent fellow who means well. The problem is he's not smart enough to realize he's not very smart. So, when he decides to open up his mouth and pontificate on matters about which he knows virtually nothing (and about which he's most likely dead-wrong), I sort of feel bad for him because he doesn't realize he's making a fool...
Friday, 22 June 2012
Computers don't grow on trees, and even though they are ubiquitous today, that wasn't always the case. In fact, they've only been around for less than a hundred years, and although there are certain folks to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude for laying down the conceptual foundations (the philosopher Leibniz for inventing the binary language system upon which programming depends, for instance, or the enchantress of numbers Ada Lovelace's...
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Penises... they're great. In my case, we're best friends. I never leave home without mine. Do you?It may seem pretty obvious what they're for (what, with their relentless one-mind track), but there are still many mysteries surrounding these anatomical masterpieces. For instance, how come lots of species sport a bone in theirs while humans (and a few other mammalian species) do not? How come felines have barbed phalluses and ducks have... well, you...
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
If you've been following this blog for a while, then you probably already know the answer (and the explanation) to the following question: if you hold on to one end of a slinky and let the other side hang down until it stops moving, what would happen to the bottom end exactly when you let go of the top? Does it move up because the spring is no longer being stretched? Does it stay still? Does it fall because gravity is pulling down on it and there's...
Friday, 15 June 2012
I know I sometimes tend to rant against religious dogmatism and bigotry, but credit has to be given where it's due, and the following sermon by Pastor Frederick Haynes III absolutely deserves props, so kudos!Why? Well, consider this... he's a black man and a Christian Baptist minister. So if he's talking about homosexuality, you'd think he'd go the double-whammy homophobic route and preach to the intolerant choir (sorry, but come on, you know that's...
Thursday, 14 June 2012
The first time I read Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, I could not get over the chapter on Pythagoras. As Russell claims, "Pythagoras... was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with him." This is probably the aspect of Pythagoras that's well known. The unwise part comes from his weird and wacky...
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
This little one-man operation usually gets about a thousand hits a day. I can't tell you how pleased that makes me, especially considering that we're not associated with any cool, popular or powerful organization at all. Hell, I don't even have ads here!This is exclusively a product of love. Think of it as my little contribution to the world, trying to enrich those curious enough to want to explore new ideas.About a year ago, the readership was around...
Apparently they get a different satisfaction from reading Plato:Of course, that might either mean that they are intellectually superior to us, or that maybe they're semi-autistic engineers. Oh snap! :)To be fair, at least two humans, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, got the joke, except Nietzsche didn't find it very funny...Via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cer...
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
When scholars refer to you as "the philosopher" for about two thousand years, and everyone understands what that means, you're kind of a big deal. That's exactly what happened to Aristotle because, let's face it, the man's depth and breath of intellectual sophistication simply blew everyone out of the water for two millennia.If you want a nice introduction to his thought, you could go the comedic route with Mark Steel. For the more ambitious...
Monday, 11 June 2012
As you probably know, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is known as the moral argument. There are variations on the theme, but one of the general ideas is that the human moral sense cannot be successfully explained by mindless naturalistic principles, partly because human morality seems to be an altogether unique phenomenon in the biological world, without any antecedents in our ancestors or parallels in our living cousins....
Friday, 8 June 2012
If you read/watched our recent entry on the majesty, beauty and scientific importance behind the Transit of Venus, you may have come to realize that scientists are a clever bunch: give them two or three things, and they'll give you a whole world full of goodies. How's that for a return on your investment? Suck it, Wall Street!Right, so the scientific importance behind the transit has to do with the question of how we manage to measure things in space...
Thursday, 7 June 2012
One of the interesting aspects of social interactions is that our interests are not always aligned with those of other agents, and when the result of an interaction is a function of your choice and that of someone else whose motives may be different from your own, you face a dilemma... what to do?Well, you kind of know what you'd like to do, but you also know what he'd like to do, and you know that he knows what you'd like to do, and so you think...
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
The Transit of Venus has been all over the news recently, mainly because this is the last opportunity to see it for virtually everyone who is alive today. The next one will not occur until 2117.But do you know its historical and scientific importance? That's right, this isn't just a pretty light show. Over the last four hundred years, this rare occurrence held the key to determine the size of our solar system, and as the following primer shows, the...
Monday, 4 June 2012
When Mayor Bloomberg announced that he wanted to ban the sale of oversized 16-ounce sugary drinks in NYC, everyone went ape shit. Sure, while the idea to try to force people to become more conscious about choices affecting their own health is well-intentioned, it's not exactly the sort of thing you can set as a legal precedent, enforceable by law, without it blowing up in your face.But it strikes me as telling that the idea received such vociferous...
One of the ways in which religions have managed to control their followers is by controlling their sexuality, telling them what's allowed, what's forbidden, what they can be punished for eternally, what the purpose of sex is, and so on. And for a very long time, religions managed to do this quite well, primarily because they also controlled the means of indoctrination and communication, but then modernity and education happened...Few events have...
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