by Carl Howard | Dec 12, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Race, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
A follow-up from the last post, I’ve recently had a change of mind about the idea of “first world problems”. For those not familiar, this is a hash tag on Twitter and a general internet trope that you add on to a complaint you make. It’s meant to show that you...
by Carl Howard | Dec 11, 2012 | Blog Topics, Medicine, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
There’s a pretty common view that as a society we’re inappropriately overmedicalising ourselves in terms of psychological and psychiatric disorders. Some of the reasons given include: We’re self-centred and whiny first worlders who all have comfortable lives and...
by Carl Howard | Nov 27, 2012 | Blog Topics, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
“Do you believe in evolution?” This has to be one of the most annoying questions about evolution out there. To see why, have a look at this 1hr talk by Josh Roseneau about what Miss USA can teach us about evolution. For the meaty part, see below where he plays a...
by Carl Howard | Nov 22, 2012 | Blog Topics, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Philosophy, Sex
On Dan Savage’s podcast and advice column about sex, he sometimes get questions about particular turn-ons that ask about their origin. Three fake examples I made up since it’s a bit hard to go through the thousands of archived questions: “My partner has a rape fantasy...
by Carl Howard | Nov 15, 2012 | Blog Topics, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
Often modern debates between religious and non-religious people end up hinging on the meaning and use of why questions. Consider a fake dialogue between A and B: A: Science may be able to say tell us how things are but it will never explain why things are. B: Like...
by Carl Howard | Nov 1, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Poems, Society, Travel
[The Central Asia wrapup post prompted me to attempt to say the same thing in verse.] I hate the ramblings of Those trendy travelling wankers At home their life’s a bore They’re lawyers, tradies, bankers Yet get them overseas Especially to places That they think are...
