That god damn Monty Hall problem. God damn that thing. God damn it straight to Hell! I hadn’t never heard of the Monty Hall problem until I saw a Sam Harris lecture in DC a few years ago (got my copy of The Moral Landscape signed, what-what!), and he used it to illustrate how our intuitions can be faulty. I did not at all understand what he was talking about, but I mostly let it go. But as the years... Read more
Anil Dash has coffee with an asshole: [Disgraced misogynist Pax Dickinson] offered up a pretty boringly conventional defense of male privilege, and when I described the role of actual satire and comedy in punching up instead of punching down, he revealed that he sees attacking feminists and equality activists as punching up. . . . I’ve met guys like this before and I didn’t have any illusion that I was going to dissuade him from a perspective which his social... Read more
I’ve been casting-pod like a crazy person. Just as a quick update, yesterday I posted a brand new episode with my former iPad-slinging colleague Chris Sawyer, and we get all geeky and commiserate about the awful real world and the worlds we’ve created for ourselves online. Not too long before that, I posted a truly enlightening episode with the Clergy Project’s Catherine Dunphy. It turned out to be a pretty deep exploration of not just losing one’s faith, but the... Read more
Read your writing out loud, advises Alan Jacobs, particularly in the case of opinion or argument. Hear how your words might affect an audience by passing them up through your vocal chords and out your mouth, feeding back into your own brain via your ears. How would you then evaluate your rhythm, the strength of your position, and perhaps most importantly, your generosity of spirit? Jacobs quotes a prayer: “O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the... Read more
I have a problem with this headline from the National Post, which says, “Triceratops never actually existed, scientists say.” Oh no! But it’s not what the scientists say. According to that very article. They actually say: After studying 29 triceratops skulls, the scientists discovered the bone was thinning in the same area where the torosaurus’s holes were. Evidence began mounting as they counted the growth rings in the bones and discovered all the triceratops skulls were from young dinosaurs. What’s... Read more
Stephen Cave talks to Susie Nielson about ways of coping with the reality one’s inevitable demise, something with which I cannot deal. Cave’s prescription? In order to be okay with letting go of yourself, you have to be okay with letting go of your Self: Care more about other things, and less about yourself, and your own death will seem less important. There are ways to combine a meaningful life without being afraid of it ending. . . . The... Read more
Michael Graziano explains his theory of consciousness, and I swear, it’s the first such explanation I’ve ever felt like I could grasp. This isn’t to say it’s correct (Graziano himself isn’t even asserting that), but it’s the only time I’ve heard consciousness explained and I actually (perceived that I) understood it. The gist (I think) is that consciousness is an evolutionary outgrowth of “attention,” in other words, a creature’s ability to say, “hey look at that instead of all those... Read more
Matt Licata discovers (happens upon? stumbles into? wakes up in?) a real-live Windows mini-store in a Best Buy, and shakes his head: Wood floors and bright signs aren’t the important features of Apple Stores. If anything, they’re superficial details that probably shouldn’t be copied. The Windows Store Only at Best Buy is big, and it is full of undifferentiated Windows laptops. . . . Even the Surface is set up like a laptop. No compromises. And then, the kicker: The... Read more
Hemant Mehta, empresario of Friendly Atheist, is getting married this weekend, and he’s leaving me with the responsibility of maintaining his blog while he gets his nuptials on. I’m honored, truly, and thrilled to be doing it. But man oh man, it’s a lot of work! I have always been amazed at how prolific Hemant is with the sheer quantity of content he generates, all while keeping up a truly impressive level of quality. On top of that, he manages... Read more
Sleep robs me of my life. I don’t mean to be overly hyperbolic (just appropriately hyperbolic). But I really do feel this way. It is a plague to me, a horrific affliction from which I suffer that renders me unconscious for about one-third of my life. I cannot create, I cannot be productive, I cannot educate or enrich myself, I cannot even nourish myself. For a block of hours every single freaking day, I am, essentially, a corpse. For most... Read more
iMortal
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In