by Carl Howard | Aug 22, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Interesting Stuff, Science and Skepticism
You’re probably familiar with the original Sokal’s Hoax. If not here’s a brief summary otherwise skip down to the Sokal 2 heading. The Sokal hoax was perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a professor of physics+mathematics dismayed at the excesses of postmodernism in academia....
by Carl Howard | Aug 15, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Resources, Food and Environment, Science and Skepticism
In 2009 I set up a recurring (monthly) donation to the World Food Program. In mid 2010, I decided that I’d be quitting my job in early 2011 and taking a year off. As part of that I began to wind down some expenses to save up a bit more. One of the things to go was...
by Carl Howard | Jul 18, 2011 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Science and Skepticism
I reckon most people aren’t too comfortable with the idea of punishing children for the actions of their forefathers. At least when the idea is stated explicitly. Consider Exodus 20:5-6. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God...
by Carl Howard | Jul 8, 2011 | Blog Topics, Interesting Stuff, Language, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
I’ve recently realised that not everyone is aware of this wonderful sentence. Having unrestricted access to a blog, I might as well introduce it. But first, a bit about garden path sentences. These are a lot of fun. They’re sentences which while grammatical have...
by Carl Howard | Jun 1, 2011 | Blog Topics, Resources, Food and Environment, Science and Skepticism
Every year, Edge.org asks the same question to about 100-150 scientists, philosophers, public intellectuals (and alas in a few cases, cranks) and publishes them. It makes the rounds on the interwebs every year and with good reason: often it’s fascinating reading. I’ve...
by Carl Howard | May 19, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, History, Language, Society
Luke Muehlhauser has a very interesting page up where he’s run every inaugural speech from every US president through an automatic reading level analyser. Here is the page for the full graph and stats. For the lazy, it basically starts off very high from George...
