- Blog
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Our Big, Crowded Moral Circle
As you might already know, as horrible as we humans are to each other, we used to be much, much worse. In the Boston Review, Claude S. Fischer takes a quick trip into the history, not of callousness, but of sympathy; primarily, why are we getting nicer to each other? Before roughly the 1800s, sympathy…
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There’s a One-in-Three Chance I Understand the Monty Hall Problem
That god damn Monty Hall problem. God damn that thing. God damn it straight to Hell! I hadn’t never heard of the Monty Hall problem until I saw a Sam Harris lecture in DC a few years ago (got my copy of The Moral Landscape signed, what-what!), and he used it to illustrate how our…
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Why I’m Not Watching the Best TV Shows in the Universe
Can I tell you how happy I am Alan Jacobs’ Text Patterns is back? When he retired it a ways back, I paid tribute. Happily, he couldn’t hold back his bloggery any longer. Anyway, he’s in a similar position to me when it comes to a certain aspect of upper-middle-brow culture: He’s not seen any…
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Pax Horribilis
Anil Dash has coffee with an asshole: [Disgraced misogynist Pax Dickinson] offered up a pretty boringly conventional defense of male privilege, and when I described the role of actual satire and comedy in punching up instead of punching down, he revealed that he sees attacking feminists and equality activists as punching up. . . .…
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If You Could Only Hear Yourself
Read your writing out loud, advises Alan Jacobs, particularly in the case of opinion or argument. Hear how your words might affect an audience by passing them up through your vocal chords and out your mouth, feeding back into your own brain via your ears. How would you then evaluate your rhythm, the strength of…
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Triceratops Never Existed. Wait, Yes it Did.
I have a problem with this headline from the National Post, which says, “Triceratops never actually existed, scientists say.” Oh no! But it’s not what the scientists say. According to that very article. They actually say: After studying 29 triceratops skulls, the scientists discovered the bone was thinning in the same area where the torosaurus’s…
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You’re Going to Lose Your Life, So Go Ahead and Lose Your Self
Stephen Cave talks to Susie Nielson about ways of coping with the reality one’s inevitable demise, something with which I cannot deal. Cave’s prescription? In order to be okay with letting go of yourself, you have to be okay with letting go of your Self: Care more about other things, and less about yourself, and…
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Embedded in a Matrix of Perceived Consciousness
Michael Graziano explains his theory of consciousness, and I swear, it’s the first such explanation I’ve ever felt like I could grasp. This isn’t to say it’s correct (Graziano himself isn’t even asserting that), but it’s the only time I’ve heard consciousness explained and I actually (perceived that I) understood it. The gist (I think)…
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Introverts: We’re *Genuine*, Not Jerks (Or, Genuinely Jerks)
Is there some kind of “introversion is the new black” thing going on? It’s probably due more to confirmation bias on my own part, but it sure seems like the more interested I am in the subject of introversion as perfectly valid way-of-being, as opposed to some kind of affliction or condition to be fought…
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Maybe the Clipboards Have a Start Button
Matt Licata discovers (happens upon? stumbles into? wakes up in?) a real-live Windows mini-store in a Best Buy, and shakes his head: Wood floors and bright signs aren’t the important features of Apple Stores. If anything, they’re superficial details that probably shouldn’t be copied. The Windows Store Only at Best Buy is big, and it…
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The Keys to Hemant’s Ferrari
Hemant Mehta, empresario of Friendly Atheist, is getting married this weekend, and he’s leaving me with the responsibility of maintaining his blog while he gets his nuptials on. I’m honored, truly, and thrilled to be doing it. But man oh man, it’s a lot of work! I have always been amazed at how prolific Hemant…
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A Losing Battle with Nothingness
Sleep robs me of my life. I don’t mean to be overly hyperbolic (just appropriately hyperbolic). But I really do feel this way. It is a plague to me, a horrific affliction from which I suffer that renders me unconscious for about one-third of my life. I cannot create, I cannot be productive, I cannot…
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How My Boy Sees Me
This is not definitive, of course. His three-year-old’s brain is always finding new ways to classify and assign value and meaning to things. But around the time of Father’s Day this year, this is how my own kid represented me for his daycare class. All of it is true. And I love him because I…
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The Fortitude to Try Again
Luke Eplin notes with disappointment what is obvious to any perceptive parent: Kids’ entertainment is rife with unrealistic portrayals of inevitable success (citing here specifically Turbo and Planes, neither of which I’ve seen): In addition to disparaging routine labor, these films discount the hard work that enables individuals to reach the top of their professions.…
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We Will Be More Space-Dwellers than Planet-Dwellers
Ian O’Neill covers a high-minded conference discussion about the best protocols for potential encounters with alien species once our own ventures out into the stars. One idea that was new to me was that, though we may cross paths with other life forms, we may not need anything from them, or they from us. For…
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