Here’s a great article from The Walrus about the tension between the tenets of deep ecology, where everything has value regardless of their utility, and the Enlightenment. Whether you agree with the article or not, if you have an interest in the topic, you’ll learn something along the way. The article starts with a quote [...]
Controversial title huh? Oddly enough, it’s not just an eye-catching headline, it’s actually what I want to talk about. We have difficulty empathizing with the suffering of large numbers of people. In the words of American author Annie Dillard: “There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China,” she wrote. “To get a feel for what [...]
In a post I wrote a couple weeks ago, I wrote that the camps seem to be divided regarding where genius comes from. The are the neoclassicals who say that, “genius is deliberate and that ideas come from somewhere, rather than from nowhere,” and the romantics who disagree replacing, “judgment and grace with imagination and [...]
I think these days are lame. It’s pi day today because the date is 3/14 which is the first three digits of pi. Gimme a break. It does allow me to point out something that occurred to me a while back and I have a perfect segway through this article from the Guardian. Matt Parker [...]
If you’re driving down an isolated highway and you see someone with car troubles, what’s the first thing you do? Asking, “what seems to be the problem?” comes to mind. If the problem is something you can help with then I’m sure most people would lend a hand as best they could and be on [...]
In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change [...]
I have an article somewhere from a paper in the Eastern Townships that is the worst piece of journalism I have ever seen. It was about how a polio vaccine in Nigeria had actually caused some kids to get polio and how we allegedly use vaccines indiscriminately without knowing the consequences to doing so. The [...]
I wish I had more time to write about this but here’s a little food for thought. From a post by Quinn O’Neill about how not only do people not understand science but they also don’t understand the nature of science, how science works: Many people view science as a body of rigid, unchangeable facts [...]
I wasn’t going to write about this but enough people have mentioned it to me that I wanted to set the record straight. A story that a NASA scientist has discovered life in a meteorite has been circulating around the internet including from some reputable and some not-so-reputable sources. The implication, of course, is that [...]
Here’s an excerpt of Stevie Wonder singing at the White House as part of PBS’ “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House”. You can watch the entire show here. Watch the full episode. See more In Performance at The White House.
