I was lucky enough to see Richard Dawkins when he came to McGill a couple years ago. He gave a talk called: Stranger Than We Can Suppose. The title refers to a quote from biologist J.B.S. Haldane who famously said: “Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, [...]
Guest post by Colin Throness When I first met Linda Besner, one of Canada’s most promising young poets, at a house party laden with writers in Toronto couple years ago, I made a fool of myself. Not in front of everyone, just in a conversation I had with her. It’s not all that surprising. I [...]
I know. It took me a while to adjust my eyes to see a photo instead of a painting. Go to National Geographic to see this photo along with the entire series or check out the interview with the photographer Frans Lanting.
I was passed an article called Playing Fair: Fairness Beliefs and Health Policy Preferences in the United States. It’s a pretty interesting monograph but there was one table that stood out to me. The participants in the study were asked which definition of fair best fit theirs: This is way off topic with the actual [...]
Starts With a Bang is the most readable science blog out there. There. I said it. And he has a great post up called, “Where is everybody?” about why we haven’t made contact with another civilization yet. It’s tempting to think that with all the exoplanets–planets orbiting stars other than our own–being discovered these days [...]
Since the rapture was such a popular topic over the weekend, an obvious came that came up quite a bit was, “what will these people believe when May 21 comes and goes raptureless?” My answer to this–and many other people’s answer–was that it will somehow be rationalized with my personal favourite rationalization being of the [...]
I’ve emphasized before how important making mistakes is to being creative, learning and progress. Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk, which I’m sure most people have seen by now, is probably the most convincing argument for why that is. The Current, on CBC radio one, had a great segment with two people who have recently written [...]
But it’s the t-shirts that are doing the tourism. Not you. People love donating stuff they don’t use anymore to people who might be able to use them and it makes sense on a certain level (and sometimes can just flat out make sense). The problem is that when people take, say, one million t-shirts [...]
Over at Desmogblog, Chris Mooney has a piece up with a couple references to studies that ask people questions about well known events or issues and see how people do. Turns out that on at least five different issues, global warming, the Iraq war, healthcare, the Ground Zero Mosque and the 2010 election, people who [...]
I have a scenario I present to people with more conservative political opinions to see if I can ever get them to say, “yes, that person deserves government assistance.” I begin by describing a teenager from a poof family who would like to go to university. The initial reaction is always, “that person should work [...]
