by Carl Howard | Sep 12, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
Before I mention the chart, a quick little reader experiment: Commit to an estimate of how many people in the UK die each year from falling off ladders. Try to avoid calculations, just go with your gut. Check your answer Commit to an estimate of how many children...
by Carl Howard | Sep 3, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Feminism and LGBT, Society
Via Amanda Marcotte a few weeks ago I came across a viral video meant to show that Republican women are superhot and Democrat women are monsters. Here’s the link but it keeps being taken down so I’ve pasted an image version below (from here) just so you can get a feel...
by Carl Howard | Sep 1, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Feminism and LGBT, Resources, Food and Environment
’m still busily thesising so posting will continue at a homeopathic rate over the next 2-3 weeks. In the meantime, here is another exercise, this time taking about half an hour. The first part is to watch this talk (which is interesting enough regardless of my post)...
by Carl Howard | Aug 10, 2010 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Philosophy, Society
Picture me this: a maths graduate student comes up with an amazing proof for one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics. He/she submits this to a supervisor, who checks it thoroughly and points out an error. On page 137, an extra minus sign popped into the...
by Carl Howard | Aug 2, 2010 | Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, History, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
I’ve blogged before about the dark side of population control. Over the years though I’ve come to take a still-dimmer view of most attempts at population control. One thing that’s gotten to me is the supposed tension between aid/development and population control....
by Carl Howard | Jun 16, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Science and Skepticism
About 8 months ago I did a post about World Food Day where I mentioned microfinance (especially Kiva.org) as a great way of doing more useful things with donor funds. Skeptical fail: I applied an abysmal level of critical thinking to the area of charities/development....
