Ben Goldacre - Battling Bad Science

It's hard to understate the number of misleading health reports and health advice out there. First there's the problem of alternative-medicine quacks (visit the Enemies of Reason tag to learn more about them); then there are also problems with misleading journalistic reports that confuse some shallow correlation with a causal connection; then we have pharmaceutical companies who publish only results favorable to their products while keeping those that aren't as confidential under legal technicalities like trade secrets; then we have scientists who don't always conduct sufficiently rigorous studies and experiments; etc.

Thankfully, there are people like Ben Goldacre, who in this TEDTalk presentation exposes some of the ways in which industries and journalists can distort evidence and statistics to get you to buy their products, or to scare you from buying products from their competitors, or just to sell more copies of their journals and keep their ratings going, etc.

And you can't miss Ben Goldacre's awesome rant on the placebo and nocebo effects.

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Wanna Live Forever? Become a Noun

Woody Allen once quipped that while most people want to achieve immortality through their work, he'd rather achieve it through not dying. I think I'm with him on that one, but while we wait for people like Aubrey De Grey to figure out how to achieve radical life extension, your best next bet might be to do something remarkable so that your name is forever associated with your contribution.

So, try to do it right because, as Robert Krulwich and Adam Cole show in the following song, if you don't, you'll achieve infamy and no one will like you... forever!

If you want the fuller version, you'll want to listen to this:

And for a sample of people who achieved immortality by becoming nouns, check out the following photo essay

And for more info on these folks, visit Life.

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Elizabeth Warren Is Awesome

Part of my growing opposition to libertarianism and political conservatism is due to the fact that they are shallow and myopic philosophies based on the unrealistic illusion of self-sufficiency and individual isolationism, and I don't think that these approaches to political philosophy are worthy of people whose brains are fully functional.

And I don't know if the picture above is an indication that Elizabeth Warren has been reading John Rawls lately or not, but it beautifully and concisely captures part of the essence of what's wrong with the childish dreams of libertarianism and fiscal conservatism.

Anyway, if you don't know who she is, she's that rare combination of a compassionate heart that bleeds for the little people, while also armed with an acute corruption radar that's not afraid to call it as she sees it without losing her cool. Here are a few clips with Jon Stewart, who wants to make out with her :)

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Here's another interview:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The interview continues:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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And here she is talking with Colbert:

The Colbert Report
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If you're interested in a philosophical approach that takes seriously the rights of individuals, check out a lecture on Robert Nozick, or this lecture on how Nozick and Rawls duked it out philosophically.

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Back in Black - Threats to America's Children

So, "Dr." Oz, quack-alternative-medicine peddler, started a fear mongering campaign about a week ago scaring parents all over the country with the idea that apple juice is loaded with 'lethal' amounts of arsenic. As it turns out, Oz didn't distinguish between inorganic arsenic, which really is toxic, and organic arsenic, which isn't toxic.

Now, you might think "innocent mistake, anyone could have failed to make the distinction," and that would be right. The problem, however, is that Oz was made aware of this fact by the FDA almost a whole week before he aired his show, so we're not dealing with ignorance and incompetence here (well, we are...) but also with deceitful manipulation and corruption. Lewis Black has some choice words for this and other fear-mongering assholes:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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By the way, if you ever find yourself competing in Dancing with the Stars, that's a pretty good indication that you're not a star... you're a has-been... or a never-was :)

Anyway, talking about possible threats to children's fragile psyches, guess what happened in Dancing with the Stars:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Wow... those Fox & Friends people are uptight :)

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Slinky Physics

In the past, we've learned a few awesome things about pendulum waves and about the physics and philosophical questions raised by Foucault's pendulum, but there are plenty of other simple objects and experiments that can teach us fascinating and thought-provoking lessons about physics and physical principles, many of which can be done from the comfort of your own home.

Today we have a curious question about what would happen to the bottom of a slinky if you extended it from the top and then dropped it.

Before we move on to the answer, care to guess and explain your guess?

Care to guess again?

Now go show all your friends!

Via Bad Astronomy

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Lecture 8 - Personal Identity

Science is great when it comes to discoveries and studies about the physical world. It requires lots of work and dedication, analytic skills to test various hypotheses, and a wealth of creativity to figure out how to conduct experiments to tell the merits of one explanation from those of another. For all of that, however, and without implying any denigration, it's also somewhat easy because you have the physical world itself to check your results against. If you think dropping heavy objects will float, the universe itself will let you know you're wrong...

Philosophical research, on the other hand, is more difficult because the object of our studies is concepts, and concepts will not smack you upside the head when you're wrong. Take one simple example for comparison: in science, you might study how something changes, and you can easily imagine the set of tools you might need to do the job. In philosophy, you'd study the nature of change itself. How on earth do you do that???

And the investigation of change is one of the philosophical questions par excellence, tracing its history all the way back to Heraclitus and Parmenides. In this final lecture, Professor Millican explores the question of personal identity: assuming that you do exist, what does it mean to say that your past self and your present self are the same person? How can it be the case that something that changes is still the same thing? That sounds like a logical contradiction, and yet pre-reflectively at least, this is what we all assume to be true.

Click here to see the course slides

And more awesome stuff on this and related questions, check out the Brainspotting tag.

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West Bank Story - Challahfax vs. Halalifax

I seriously don't understand how Israel has managed to get away with human rights violations of Palestinians for as long as it has, or why everyone (other than the US) turns a blind eye to the shit they pull on a regular basis. I get, and agree, that the Jews have a right to have their own state, but by that very same token, shouldn't they be able to recognize that the same rights should be extended to the people that previously inhabited they land they now possess?

Lots of people have tried to find solutions to the bloodshed. Jon Stewart thinks that the conflict could be averted if maybe Palestine changed its name to Palestein, which is kind of brilliant, but John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi are not so optimistic...

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By the way, has anyone else noticed that Netanyahu's wife looks like Fiona from Shrek? :)

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