by Carl Howard | Aug 14, 2009 | Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
Tue night, I went to Paul Griffiths’ inaugural lecture at Sydney Uni called Reconstructing Human Nature (thanks John Wilkins for letting me know!). The talk was on conceptions of human nature and what it means for something to be “innate”. I won’t summarise it — but I...
by Carl Howard | Jul 16, 2009 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, History, Science and Skepticism
I usually try to keep posts concise. But I thought once a month I can splurge on my word count and try talk about something in a bit more detail. Here goeth my first attempt. A few days ago Takis Konstantopoulos wrote a reaction to my 2008 post about the Holodomor...
by Carl Howard | Jun 22, 2009 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Feminism and LGBT, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness
[Uni coursework is over so woo-hoo to more blogging!] Milgram’s experiment is one of the most popularly known psychology experiments. Basically, a subject was to administer electric shocks of increasing intensity to a student (who was really an actor taking fake...
by Carl Howard | Jan 9, 2009 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
’ve seen plenty of opinions that Israel’s strikes in Gaza have been excessive in terms of civilian casualties. This leads to a very natural question: how many civilian casualties would be ok? This isn’t to give an opinion on the current war, but if public debate...
by Carl Howard | Nov 21, 2008 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Ethics, Race, Society
Racism is often attributed solely to the political right. Sure, there’s a lot of right-wing racists. But there’s a lot of racism on the left too. Yes it’s usually more subtle. But I wouldn’t assume that the left has a much lower percentage of racists than the right....
by Carl Howard | Oct 10, 2008 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy, Sex
Necrophilia should be legalised because we don’t have enough organ donors. I’m serious, bear with me. Organ donation rates are abysmal in countries that require people to opt in. Most choose the default (not opting in). Not even from laziness but because people have...
