Howard Zinn - War and Social Justice

Historian Howard Zinn, civil rights activist and author of revolutionary and influential books such as A People's History of the United States and You Can't Be Neutral On a Moving Train, unfortunately passed away yesterday at the age of 87.

As you can see in the powerful, engaging and amusing lecture below, given at my own Alma Matter, Professor Zinn was a great speaker: casual, quick-witted, funny and thoughtful. An iconoclast to the end, he never lost sight of the social and moral imperative to question power and challenge the prevailing attitudes and false dilemmas of our culture.

He will be greatly missed.

Click here for more lessons from this inspiring intellectual.

Thanks to Chris for sharing the sad news :(
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Ben Goldacre - The Placebo and Nocebo Effects

You're probably familiar with the concept of the placebo effect: you pretend to provide some sort of treatment to a patient (sugar pill, saline shot, shaman chicken dance, homeopathic elixir, etc.), and because there is no actual medicine or treatment, there should be no improvement in the patient's physical condition... except there is, and there's the rub and the mystery...

Scientists have been studying the placebo effect systematically since at least the time when illustrious men of science like Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier (check out more of his amazing work here and here) investigated the claims surrounding Franz Anton Mezmer's ability to harness "animal magnetism." The magnetism part turned out to be a sham, but it revealed the power of the placebo effect, as well as just how suggestible the human brain can be.

The more we look into the mystery of this phenomenon, the more interesting it gets, and here is Ben Goldacre with a hilarious and enlightening account of just how powerful this effect is, as well as the cruel, but hilarious uses to which it can be put :)

I'm going to have to see in how many of my friends I can induce asthma attacks...

Click here for the 'full treatment' on homeopathy, and here for the 'diluted' but hilarious version :)
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Rev. Tom Honey - How Could God Allow Natural Disasters?

The devastation recently experienced by the unfortunate inhabitants of Port-au-Prince in Haiti certainly deserves our attention, our compassion, and our help. Other natural disasters, like the 2004 Tsunami, for instance, raise important and challenging questions to the religious and the faithful, which should be confronted head-on, like the problem of evil: how could a loving and powerful God allow such massive destruction of life?

Attempts to reconcile God's benevolence and omnipotence with unnecessary suffering are known generally as theodicy. Theodicy, unfortunately, has a bad reputation for historically failing to satisfy the intellectual question, as well as the more visceral one, since redeeming God (even when remotely successfully) is normally accomplished at the expense of genuine sympathy and compassion for those who needlessly suffer.

In this powerful and gripping TEDTalk presentation, and probably the best and most honest sermon I've ever heard, Reverend Tom Honey grapples with the problem of evil and does what few believers ever muster up the courage to do: face the question directly, identify the existential problems and logical inconsistencies found in most proposed solutions, reflect on the alternatives left, and demonstrate through example that any faith worth having can only be grounded in existential doubt, and that it can only be experienced through fear and trembling.

The following is an interesting and short analysis of the historical understanding of the relationship between God and natural disasters (from ABC Radio National weekly show Ockham's Razor):

For another powerful analysis of the problem of evil, watch God on Trial.
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Man Had Sex with Wife Thousands of Times Before Killing Her

Let this be a warning to all the ladies out there, especially those considering tying the knot one day. Not only might your future husband one day brutally murder you... he will first make you his sex slave (complete with strange rituals involving dead plants and fire), parade you around in front of all his friends, teasing you with the false and cruel hope of freedom, demand that you cook him daily meals, and even impregnate you with his evil spawn...

Good thing the media never hypes anything out of proportion or out of context :)
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All Things Bright and Beautiful

It is undeniable, probably even for grouches, that the world is full of beautiful and wonderful things, from the cuteness of kitties and bunnies to the majesty of the Grand Canyon or the sun turning red as it sets over the horizon. And who hasn't felt the simultaneous chills of terror, humility and awe while lying on one's back on a clear night, contemplating the incomprehensible vastness of time and space?

There are those for whom all this beauty, and countless experiences of the sublime, count as proof positive for the existence of a transcendent and benevolent deity. Here is one such example:

Of course, the song could have equally been written based on other natural facts :)

Amen... :)
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Are Science and Religion Compatible?

The question of whether science and religion are compatible is a difficult one to answer. I myself tend to think they are as compatible as a shark trying to have sex with a goat in the openness of outer space, but I'm open to the possibility that a clever and profound articulation of religion might persuade me to change my mind.

What I refuse to accept, however, is the facile argument, endorsed not only by fundamentalists but by august scientific institutions, that the simple fact that some scientists are also religious somehow counts as evidence for the philosophical compatibility of science and religion.

But why waste time on technicalities when the brilliant humorist(s?) at Jesus and Mo can refute the argument with a beautiful reductio ad absurdum? :)

Ha ha ha ha ha!
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Susan Blackmore - Memes and 'Temes'

Think about the amount of corn produced in the world. From our point of view, we might think that there is so much of it because it serves our needs. From the point of view of corn, however, it might think that it only helps us because we are a convenient way for it to make multiple copies of itself. Who is master and who is slave?

Similarly, you might think that when you want to have babies, you are doing it for yourself, out of love for your partner, because they'll help you in old age, or whatever. There may be something to that, but it may also be the case that you want to have babies because your genes find it convenient for them to make copies of themselves if they can fool you into thinking children are a good idea :)

Taken to its deliciously fascinating logical conclusion, the idea of vehicles and replicators is ripe with philosophical implications about personhood, free will, personal identity and other concepts: your genes are the replicators for the sake of whom you are simply a temporary vessel, factory or vehicle, which can be discarded when it is no longer useful. Yes, this is why you would more readily give up your life for your children or your siblings than for more genetically distant relatives or friends: individual self-sacrifice can benefit one's genes, provided the same genes are housed in other bodies.

But evolution doesn't simply have to be genetic. As long as there is variation, heredity and selection, evolution will take place. At the most basic level, the unit of selection doesn't even have to be the gene: it can just be information.

In this fascinating presentation, Susan Blackmore provides a concise introduction to biological (genetic) and cultural (memetic) evolution, and meditates on the implications and potential dangers of a third kind: temetic evolution.

And wouldn't you know it? As smart as we may consider ourselves, we've already managed to be taken over by memes and temes (think religion and twitter), and, despite our shiny personalities, have become vehicles and machines designed for their replication... we just can't help ourselves, can we? :)

Check out more amazing TEDTalks.
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Justice - What Is the Right Thing to Do?

Episode 11. The moral battle between Aristotle and Kant can be traced back to the question of community welfare versus individual rights. Aristotle believes that justice requires that we establish a satisfactory conception of the good and create political and social institutions geared toward the attainment of such conception. Needless to say, this approach requires that individuals be assigned appropriate roles to promote social welfare. Kant, on the other hand, believes that individuals are autonomous beings who ought to choose their own individual conception of the good. No one, on his view, should ever be forced to act against her own will, even for the good of the community.

Communitarians argue that radical individualism is predicated upon the false belief that people are individuals. Our real identity, communitarians point out, is not based on consent but on our historical, social, cultural and geographic situation, and try as we might, we cannot truly separate ourselves from these conditions. This being so, the argument continues, we all have certain social obligations of solidarity and loyalty to particular groups that go above and beyond our universal obligations for humanity as a whole.

This conceptual tension gives rise to an interesting and thought-provoking discussion about the morality of patriotism and loyalty. Should we put the interests of our compatriots ahead of the interests of people who belong to different social groups? What should we do when our obligations to one of our communities are in conflict with our obligations to other communities to which we also belong? Is there some intrinsic virtue by which your own group, whoever you happen to be, is entitled to moral obligations that automatically override your obligations to others who don't happen to be members of the same group? Is patriotism a moral virtue or merely a prejudice for our own group?

More controversially still, is the hottie above desecrating the American flag? I say she takes it off, just to be safe :)

Episode list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
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Final Season of 'Lost' Promises to Make Fans More Annoying than Ever

I hate Lost with a passion. I just have to say it. Every time something doesn't make sense in that show, it moves on to an even less plausible scenario. Possible dinosaurs living in an isolated island in the 20th century? Nope, it's a smoke monster with an attitude... How did everyone get in the island? They were individually chosen by some dude who has magical powers and doesn't age... Everyone is about to get killed? The island can magically disappear and relocate itself... How is that explained? Superficial interpretations of time travel, 'quantum physics' and parallel worlds... And naming the characters after famous philosophers and scientists while butchering their ideas only makes the show seem pretentious, not profound... argh!

Will I be sucked into watching the last season of this stupid show? Yes... and that's my main reason for hating it :(
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James Carville on National Security

This dude cracks me up :)

Check out more Saturday Night Live hilariousness.
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How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

The last few centuries have given rise to a world in which child mortality has ceased to be the expected norm and one in which the age at which we consider ourselves old has doubled. Although there is plenty of work left to be done to improve living conditions, primarily in developing countries, no other generation has seen the kind of global prosperity that we get to experience today. Food, clean water and medicine are more abundant now than ever before. We are right to celebrate these achievements.

For all our scientific and technological ingenuity, however, our planet's natural resources are finite, and there is a physical limit beyond which our way of life simply cannot be sustained any longer. Whether we have hit this physical limit already is debatable, but the principle is a sound one and certainly worth our attention, for the implications are dire.

In this sobering documentary, Sir David Attenborough explores the question of our planet's carrying capacity. How many of us can our environment sustain? What can we do to help? Have we reached the point of no return?

And if you are worried about your own future, and want to contribute to the efforts to reduce overpopulation, here is one fun(ny) solution :)

And if that's not your cup of tea, maybe boys can wait :)

Even Hugs Are Controversial Now?

Fundamentalist Christians are pretty loony. Now they're worried that front hugs are sexual gateways to promiscuity, and they're here to warn you of these dangers with their latest 'hip' song... You'd think that after Vanilla Ice, white people would realize they can't rap...

They have no idea what rough rider means, do they? Oh, the irony :)

Anyway, here's a response that sounds much better... and funny...

If you want real rap, only Dawkins & posse can deliver :)
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Unchopping a Tree

We humans have a bad tendency to concern ourselves with the immediate (both in terms of time and space), and also to discount the distant and the future. As an intelligent person, I'm sure you can probably already see how that volatile combination is a sure recipe for incoming trouble...

We become outraged about the massive loss of life at Ground Zero on 9/11, and mobilize the entire world to take action, but fail to acknowledge (or do anything about) the equivalent number of children worldwide who die every single day of hunger, dehydration and other easily preventable causes.

We protest for fair wages and acceptable working conditions, invoke the high rhetoric of self-evident human rights... and then run to stores whose low prices are the direct result of international child labor and exploitation. We want landfields, as long as they're not in our own backyard. We proclaim 'God bless America,' and forget about the rest of the world. We worry about the remote possibility of an asteroid wiping us off the face of the Earth, and don't change our behavior to ameliorate deforestation, pollution or global warming...

We only acknowledge and take action, it seems, when we find ourselves directly affected, so here is some food for thought in terms that should be easy to understand and internalize.

Check out The Story of Stuff to learn more about your own environmental footprint.
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Is Anything Real Anymore?

This may come as a shock to you, but it turns out not everything you see on tv is real... I am flabbergasted... :)

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The Mark Steel Lectures - Aristotle

Perhaps no other philosopher has been as influential or original as the ancient philosopher Aristotle, and only the greatest have been as productive and consistent in their entire world view. It's one thing to have opinions about particular subjects (we all do that), but it takes true genius to come to make sense of the totality of our experience of the world (moral reasoning, critical thinking, political discourse, taxonomic categorization, aesthetic judgment, scientific inquiry, etc.) in terms of a single all-encompassing metaphysical theory, and Aristotle did that with enough philosophical elegance and coherence to become the unquestioned authority in virtually every discipline of human inquiry for more than two thousand years.

It would take other great geniuses like Galileo, Descartes, Linnaeus, Darwin, Boole and Frege to question and ultimately replace the pervading Aristotelian framework with more modern conceptions and approaches to questions of knowledge and logical analysis. In this amusing lecture, Mark Steel provides a nice introduction to the importance of this great thinker.

Click here if you want the more serious treatment of Aristotle's genius and philosophical importance, with Martha Nussbaum.

Or click here and here for an analysis of Aristotle's thoughts on justice and the good society.
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How Viruses Invade Our Bodies

We may hate viruses for all the nasty things they can do to our bodies--I certainly do. For all their virulence, however, viruses are brilliant pieces of machinery if we think about them from a molecular and genetic point of view. First of all, viruses are too small for their behavior to be driven by anything like instinct and drives. Instead, they seem to be driven purely by chemistry, but their genetic composition makes them master this chemical environment as if they meant business. Scientists are not quite sure how viruses originated yet, but what we do know is fascinating... and frightening.

Unlike bacteria and other larger organisms, viruses don't even have the ability to replicate themselves (and they can still kick our butts!). They solve this major replication problem by becoming the ultimate parasites: they hijack the cells in our bodies and turn the machinery and metabolism of their host cells (you and me) into factories that churn out and assemble multiple copies of the virus in question... That's right, we are their bitches :)

If that caught your attention, you might also be interested in how tumors grow.
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Space Is Rico-Suave... I Mean Smooth :)

Before you get the wrong idea, the picture to the right shows an artist's rendition of two photons flying through space... not a sperm race :)

For the past century, scientists have been hard at work trying to articulate a 'final theory' capable of unifying all the fundamental forces of the universe. Although quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity are individually successful to an unprecedented degree, these two theories seem to be incompatible with each other, and that tends to upset everyone.

After mapping the extreme sky with incredible resolution, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope recently found itself in a position to scientifically test some predictions about the nature of gravity and the space-time continuum. Its findings had two major consequences: they confirmed that Einstein is as strong a competitor as ever, and they eliminated a number of theories from the race. Here is how the logic works:

Curious about the final theory? Check out The Elegant Universe (parts 1, 2 & 3), or Einstein's Unfinished Symphony.
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Malcolm Gladwell - Can We Believe What People Tell Us?

Perhaps the most famous line of Plato's Apology is the one in which Socrates makes the bold claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living." This is also where we get the exhortation "know thyself." The problem is that, quite often, the more we learn about human beings as a group, the more obvious it becomes that we know far less about our individual selves than we might have originally suspected, and worse, that the more we try to introspect and discover, the less we end up knowing ourselves. It's not just like walking toward the horizon and expecting to reach it; it's more like walking toward the horizon and somehow ending up farther away from it than before but still believing we've made some progress...

Marketers, politicians, broadcasters and many others rely on polls and participants' assessment of their own preferences, beliefs, attitudes, etc. in order to push some product or endorse a political trend. After all, who would know better about your own preferences than yourself? Funny thing is that when you are asked to evaluate your own preferences and justify them, the preferences you end up defending are either not your own, and you don't even know it, or you end up defending them in some really pathetic way that should not convince a retarded dodo.

In the following presentation, pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell discusses some of these findings and meditates on some of the ways we might be able to overcome these natural and subconscious proclivities and, as is his interesting style, he begins with a seemingly trivial example, this time: office chairs :)

Sometimes the solution to some of our problems is much simpler than we normally imagine.
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If Doctors Only Used Alternative Medicine

Like I always say, if you break a bone or get a serious and threatening disease, there's nothing like rubbing some natural herb oil on your skin or contemplate the psychic state of your chakras to delude yourself into thinking that's going to accomplish anything.

Sure, alternative medicine is wacky as all hell, but what would happen if real hospitals were run by these charlatans? These two comedic geniuses give us a hilarious taste of that frightening possibility:

Click here if you want to learn how homeopathy "works" :)
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To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die

You've heard about the interesting and funny deaths of philosophers before. Today, you get to listen to Simon Critchley's entire lecture on the topic, starting with De Quincey's hilarious philosophical account, if fictional, of the aesthetic value of murder :)

The idea that philosophy is a kind of training and preparation for death can be traced back at least to Socrates in Plato's famous dialogue Phaedo, and there is a tradition of well-respected philosophers who have embraced such a view. Professor Critchley helps to recontextualize this motto in such a way that this preparation is not understood as a morbid means of welcoming death (and besmirching this life in the process) but as a way of confronting this inescapable reality that we all have to face eventually.

What should be our attitude toward death? How can we confront it honorably and honestly? Here is some food for thought...

If you are so kind as to wish to consign me to philosophical fame and posterity by murdering me, please do so no earlier than 2100 :)
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Substance Dualism

If you believe that, in the ultimate analysis, you are a combination of a physical body and a non-physical soul, then you would be a substance dualist. This tradition has been around for thousands of years, and has been espoused by thinkers as prominent as Plato and Aquinas, as well as by most religious believers (for obvious reasons). In the 17th century, Rene Descartes articulated a philosophical defense of dualism that seemed to clinch the argument once and for all: matter is extended in space, is infinitely divisible and is unable to think; mind and thoughts, on the other hand, do not occupy space, cannot be divided and are all about thought and cognition. Case closed!

Well, not quite. Even if a non-physical world of minds and thought existed, Descartes failed to explain (as have all his followers) how it is possible for a non-physical mind to causally interact with the body and the rest of the physical world without violating everything we know about the laws of physics. Descartes said the pinneal gland, but that points to where the mechanism would take place without explaining what the mechanism is. Nevertheless, the view seemed so sensible that it was accepted by virtually everyone, with a few notable and famous exceptions.

Four hundred years of philosophic and scientific research, however, have been slowly chipping away at Descartes' seemingly clean idea, to the point that most scientists and philosophers have now come to reject dualism altogether. The following animation concisely articulates some of the major weaknesses associated with dualism, so it's worth considering it if you want your beliefs to be consistent and intellectually defensible.

To be fair, the concept of substance is much more complex and subtle than shown in the animation, so if you're curious about it, you can check it out here.

And I do have to say I find his analysis of diachronic personal identity rather simplistic and wanting. If personal identity over time were preserved simply by maintaining structure and function, then twins and clones could be said to be the same person, which is clearly not the case... it is this deficiency in the physicalist conception, perhaps, that drives people toward dualism (a wrong inference, for sure, but at least understandable).

Anyway, if you don't think minds can be split, check out the curious case of split-brain patients or the weirdness of brainspotting.
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VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes Causing Major Slut Spill

There are all kinds of reasons to be concerned for the environment. Global warming is a serious enough problem, but more local events can also cause their fair share of havoc, and The Onion reports on the latest environmental catastrophe: a slut spill following a bus crash in California.

You might think this is no big deal, but slut spills are particularly damaging because they naturally bond to other pernicious chemicals, like beer, cheap perfume, tequila and various bodily fluids that have a funny way of making their way to the local water supply, the soil, carpets, mattresses and the back seat of your car :)

And if you're wondering why skanks are getting skankier, this is why :)
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The VLT - A Space Opera

Why don't we start the new year with an uplifting video? The good folks from the European Southern Observatory's Paranal site in Chile's Very Large Telescope (that's what it's called) are constantly churning out magnificent discoveries and delicious images (check out the beauties already coming out of their VISTA survey telescope).

The VLT consists of an arrangement of four main telescopes and four auxiliaries telescopes, all of which can be combined into the equivalent of a massive telescope (200 meters in diameter!) multiple times more powerful than the sum of its parts. The results are simply astonishing...

And if you're wondering about the lasers, they are used to measure the distortions of the Earth's atmosphere so that we can assess the quality of our observations... either that, or it's a secret prototype for a death ray :)

If you're curious about black holes, you can watch this documentary (with Sam Neill), and if you want to 'see' the one in the middle of our galaxy, you can do that here.
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