If you watched The Trouble with Experts yesterday, you caught a couple glimpses of Ben Goldacre talking about his dead cat. If you read this blog, you know Goldacre does a lot more than that. He is very critical of much of epidemiology and so when I watched his recent talk at TedGlobal, I felt [...]
Black or White–Michael Jackson It’s easier to keep track of your personal convictions when they’re simple, black and white, propositions: huge corporations are bad, any product with the word natural or organic on it is good and if the Canadiens would have won game 7 last season against the Bruins they would have won [...]
I know there’s an answer–The Beach Boys I never know quite what to think about experts. In one sense believing an expert is putting your faith in their knowledge or expertise, but how are you supposed to judge an expert from a non-expert? Based on someone else’s word? Based on how many books they’ve [...]
Unfair–Pavement Leave it to a conservative paper to talk about inequality the way I think it we should talk about it and the way, I think, this issue would resonate best with Canadians. Inequality is at its most debilitating, not when we’re talking about material inequalities–although we shouldn’t ignore the negative impacts of material [...]
As you may already know, Paul Farmer is a personal hero of mine–and he’ll be in Montreal tomorrow. At noon, he’ll be speaking with Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne at UQAM and at 5:30pm they’ll be speaking at Concordia. Here’s a taste of the kind of thing those going to see him will be in for [...]
Race for the Prize–The Flaming Lips Ira Glass is a great radio producer. If you’ve never heard This American Life, stop lying to me. And that’s why listening to him pick up on what makes Radiolab such a great show means so much. He first points out that Radiolab does all the right things [...]
Waiting for the end of the world–Elvis Costello Here’s what Noam Chomsky has to say about the Republican leadership debates: “[W]hat’s going on there is just off the international spectrum of sane behavior.” You may have heard about how the frontrunners for the leadership of the Republican party are massacring science. Michelle Bachmann (left) [...]
Well, I can’t get you in. But here’s the next best thing: you can attend Professor Michael Sandel’s class about justice on Youtube or via his website. In the first episode he brings up some philosophical puzzles like the trolley problem that I’ve discussed here on RadarLake and, through the 12 episodes he moves on [...]
Changing gears from yesterday, NASA is set to announce a new finding from Kepler its plant-hunting satellite tomorrow at 2pmEDT. That in itself isn’t what’s peaking people’s attention. The press conference includes its usual assembly of astronomers (including someone from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute), but, oddly also includes someone from Industrial Light & [...]
Lucky 1′s–Shad I came across this Facebook note a couple weeks ago from Ian Brodie, a former Chief of Staff to Stephen Harper. You’ll notice it says a bunch of stuff at the end about not quoting this or re-printing it or whatnot so I’ll just summarize what he says. His main point is about [...]
