I have been moved. Lee Billings at Aeon writes about the decent chance for life on Europa, relative to Mars at least, and makes a strong case for making it a much bigger exploratory focus than our dead, red neighbor. But even more fascinating is his speculation about how the discovery of life on Europa could indicate the possibility for life on any other enclosed and water-rich world: [I]f water and life could exist [on Europa], why not in the hearts of... Read more
Maybe this will help you understand. Christine Skoutelas at A Morning Grouch enlightens those without children as to why she and other people with kids seem to socially disappear. (Now, I’m inclined to socially disappear anyway, but having kids only turns it from a predeliction to a kind of existential necessity.) Here’s two parts to her post that really stood out to me, first, on why we don’t want to “bring the kids along,” even if it’s totally cool with you: We just can’t focus on... Read more
The old trope has it that while bullies make your life hell during your years in school, once you’re all grown up and in the world, the bullies’ targets all become successful and self-assured while the bullies themselves wind up in crappy, dead-end jobs, miserable and full of regret and self-loathing. No. Researchers at Duke say, “Enhanced social status seems to have a biological advantage.” You don’t say. Apparently it has something to do with inflammation: In adults, a high... Read more
Jared Sinclair (who I find by way of Alan Jacobs), in a well-reasoned post, comes to an “uncomfortable conclusion” about the iPad: In order for the iPad to fulfill its supposed Post-PC destiny, it has to either become more like an iPhone or more like a Mac. But it can’t do either without losing its raison d’être. I’m not at all convinced that this is true. First, though, I agree with him on some key points, such as: Although both the iPhone... Read more
Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria counters the eulogy for Twitter, which I responded to here, with thoughts about what makes Twitter valuable: Twitter is a portal into public discourse, a tool that allows a glimpse into groupthink, and provides a platform to build your own public persona. I have used the hell out of it for this specific purpose. When I began as a skepto-atheist blogger in earnest in 2008, still early for Twitter, I made a point of arbitrarily following almost anyone who had “atheist”... Read more
The enemy of Twitter? It’s us. Well, not me. But possibly you. Here’s Adrienne LaFrance and Robinson Meyer with a eulogy for Twitter: Twitter used to be a sort of surrogate newsroom/barroom where you could organize around ideas with people whose opinions you wanted to assess. Maybe you wouldn’t agree with everybody, but that was part of the fun. But at some point Twitter narratives started to look the same. The crowd became predictable, and not in a good way. Too... Read more
I miss my iPhone, but there’s a few small things and one big thing keeping me from going back. To recap, I had traded in my iPhone to T-Mobile to get out of my AT&T contract and lower my monthly payments substantially, and switched to a cheaper, unsubsidized Android device, which is now a Moto X. (I’m actually back on AT&T now because they offered far better coverage, an even lower rate thanks to a new discount, and I’m still... Read more
Far too much of my experience of the Web is now dominated by folks pointing out with snideness or outrage just how horrible some person or persons are, in a kind of Niagara Falls of finger-wags and how-dare-yous. There is no room for human error, no space for discussion, no benefit of doubt. Sometimes these people are right about someone else’s awfulness, sometimes they’re not, but that’s not the point. It used to be (uh-oh, already sounding like an old... Read more
Freddie de Boer on some of the pseudoscience found in the writing and evangelism about artificial intelligence: … there’s the notion of intelligence as an “emergent phenomenon.” That is, we don’t really need to understand the computational system of the brain because intelligence/consciousness/whatever is an “emergent phenomenon” that somehow arises from the process of thinking. I promise: anyone telling you something is an emergent property is trying to distract you. Calling intelligence an emergent property is a way of saying... Read more
Let me begin by acknowledging that I have something of a problem when it comes to electronic devices. Well, that’s just it, though – “problem” is too pejorative. More to the point, is that I feel a greater-than-normal enthusiasm for gadgets (meaning of course smartphones, tablets, PCs and the like), and have made something of a hobby out of playing with, thinking about, reading about, writing about, evaluating, and acquiring them. The problem, really, is that we’re talking about relatively... Read more
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