How to Find a Masculine Halloween Costume for Your Effeminate Son

So, Halloween is here, and you're probably excited about the chance to use your children as a great excuse to go trick-or-treating again. But this year you're kind of concerned that your son's effeminate mannerisms and his fervent desire to dress up like a ballerina are going to get people talking and give you weird looks...

Fear not, dear friend: The Onion's Today Now Show has brought in an expert to help you figure out how to overcome your son's giddiness.

And if you dare, check out Marilyn Manson's version of the Halloween Song.
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Christine O'Donnell - Ask Me Questions I Don't Like, and I'll Sue Your Ass

Don't you just love it when Tea-Partiers talk about gov't transparency? I know I do. I think that since politicians' jobs depend on the support of their constituency, they ought to be held accountable to said constituency. The principle makes perfect sense.

My problem is when the actual application of this principle is based on special pleading: 'we should hold politicians accountable for what they say and do, but if you ask me questions I don't like, I'll snap my fingers and get my lawyers/campaign managers to physically bully you and then threaten you with a big, fat lawsuit if you release the video.'

Funny thing... here is the video :)

Of course, suing the radio station would be a violation of the right to freedom of press and freedom of speech, so she subsequently had to apologize.

But it's not really her fault; after all, she herself admits her utter ignorance of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights (not to mention her ignorance of evolution and science):

Lady, they weren't laughing with you, they were laughing at you :)

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Have We Lost Sight of the Real Meaning of Halloween?

There are those who complain about the 'war on Christmas,' and others who complain that we have lost sight of the real meaning of Valentine's day, or Thanksgiving, or Columbus day (thankfully), or the Fourth of July, and so on, but could it be the case that it's the sacred holiday of Halloween, the day when families are supposed to come together and offer animal sacrifices to scare off evil spirits, that has become overcommercialized?

Well, the pundits at The Onion certainly think so...

You're feeling guilty now, aren't you?
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President Obama Visits Jon Stewart

As you may already know, next weekend in Washington D.C., there will be a Rally to Restore Sanity to the political discourse in our country. Well, it seems that last night the rally featured its opening act: President Barack Obama paid a visit to the Daily Show and did something we haven't seen politicians do in a very long time: present a coherent and reasonable set of ideas understood in the context of realistic expectations.

In the interview, President Obama argues that although we haven't seen the substantive change that many people thought would happen (magically perhaps?), it's the structural changes that have been put in place, despite strong political resistance, that will become the condition that allows such substantive changes to take place over time.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Obama Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Part two:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Obama Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Part three:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Obama Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

I wonder what 10% (of what might not sound so peachy) pundits are going to focus on and sensationalize... any bets?
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Army Ant Frenzy

Whatever ants may lack in size, they more than make up for in terms of numbers and determination, and when you add to the mix hunger or the instinct to feed their young, you might want to get as far away from these voracious little machines as possible.

Look at it this way: if you are afraid of wasps, and wasps are afraid of these ants, the logical rule of transitivity says you should also fear them; trust the logic, or not... and then let me know how it went :)

I don't know how much, if any, was CGI, but that last shot was fucking awesome!

Now, there are ways of fighting them, but you're going to need a hell of a lot of little pie canons:

Hungry for more ant awesomeness?

We have lots: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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Light Fantastic - Light, the Universe and Everything

Welcome to the final episode of Simon Schaffer's fascinating documentary series, Light Fantastic. Thanks to the incredible work of Einstein, we know today that although light travels in straight lines through space, space-time itself isn't always all that straight. This fascinating conjecture received its first empirical confirmation in 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington led an expedition to observe and record a solar eclipse, and then measured the apparent position shift of a few stars behind the sun (the picture to the right demonstrates the basic idea). Einstein became an overnight celebrity.

Before Einstein, however, all investigations concerning light worked under the simple assumption that all light does is reveal the world to us. What we didn't realize until the 18th century, however, through the work of people like Joseph Priestley, was that light has a causal influence on the world, especially the world of living organisms. In a very strange but real sense, the medium that allowed us to see the world was also producing that world...

But the story gets even more interesting. The attempt to investigate the ultimate nature of light would also illuminate (get it?) how the human mind itself works. John Dalton would be the first to discover color blindness (partly through his own unfortunate experience); Benjamin Thompson (or Count Rumford, if you like) would demonstrate the ultimate subjective nature of color through a series of fascinating and bewildering experiments (opening the door for a revolution in the world of art); and Thomas Young would be responsible for a paradigm shift that cast light as a wave, to be understood through principles analogous to those used to describe sound. In the process, he would finally be able to explain the mystery of color as the visual equivalent of musical notes.

But that's just part of the story, and as we explore further, we'll see that understanding the nature of light can actually become a matter of life and death...

If you can see the 74 in the picture above, your vision is probably okay. If you don't see it, you've just been diagnosed with color blindness by Doctor Philosophy Monkey :)
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Stephen Fry on Language

There is a long debate in the philosophy of language about the relationship between thought and language. Can the former exist without the latter? Whatever the answer, it is undeniable that at least a huge part of our thought is intricately bound up with language. As such, it is extremely useful for communication (if not downright necessary), but its utility shouldn't be taken to mean that language can't also have great aesthetic value. Words, and the sounds associated with them, can and should intensify emotion, tickle us with anticipation, delight the imagination, enrage us with passion and befuddle us with bewilderment.

Of course, its 'improper' use can also drive sticklers up the wall (and I'll count myself among them, to some extent, not out of pedantry and fastidiousness but out of love for the idea that any art is best which overcomes constraints and limitations instead of simply ignoring or being unaware of them).

In any case, the following kinetic typograhy video accompanies an excerpt from a fabulous essay, written and read by Stephen Fry, exalting language while simultaneously admonishing pedants and grammar nazis.

And if you want to listen to the entire essay, and I very much would recommend it (it's even better than the excerpt above), here it is for your listening pleasure:

That was delightful, not only in terms of the stimulating ideas (some of which I disagree with quite strongly) but in the language itself, so even though I didn't miss it, I won't get into the huge LOGICAL contradiction underlying the entire essay... sorry Mr. Fry :)
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The Simpsons Intro to End All Simpsons Intros

Ok, full disclosure first: I am totally stealing this from The Mep Report, so a simultaneous sorry and hat tip to Russ.

We've all seen multiple Simpsons introductions, like the one showing the evolution of Homer, but this next one takes the cake by providing a poignant critique of our consumerist culture in a very dramatic way:

To learn more about our consumerist culture, check out The Story of Stuff.
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Sir Ken Robinson - Changing Education Paradigms

After delivering two of the most popular TEDTalk presentations to date (here and here), the always-engaging Sir Ken Robinson is back to provide a fascinating analysis of the roots of the current educational crisis.

The educational system of the 21st century, he argues, is based on an 18th century model based on the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and the economic circumstances of the industrial revolution. As such, schools are based on a factory line model that fosters uniformity and shuns creativity and originality (I would personally blame that on the industrialist model, not on the Enlightenment, but you get the point).

Could this drive toward standardization and social conformity help to partially explain the growing incidence of children being medicated against attention deficit disorder? Are the children really the problem, or is the problem perhaps to be found in the historical and sociological filters through which we develop our expectations of them?

And as usual, I'm also including the complete talk, along with the subsequent Q&A for those of you who may be interested:

Check out more of these awesome RSA Animate presentations.
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Amazing Close-Up Macro Photographs of Bugs

I've been noticing this week that the internet seems to have become the victim of an insect photography awesomeness epidemic. Don't quite know if that's just a coincidence, or some entomological trend of which I am not aware, but who cares?

Let's add to the madness with a bunch of amazing shots:

And in case you're not sure what constitutes an insect, here is an amusing definition I found in Robert Krulwich's recent story, Linnaeus, Shlinnaeus!:

Oh, I can hear you junior-high-school science teachers out there now… shouting "Wait a minute! Spiders aren't insects! Spiders are arachnids!" That's exactly what's wrong with our junior high schools today…Of course spiders are insects. The very word "insect" is a combination of two ancient Greek words: "in," meaning "a," and "sect," meaning "repulsive little creature." Thus not only are spiders insects but so are crabs, jellyfish, the late Truman Capote, bats, clams, olives and those unfortunate little dogs, "pugs" ….

(Excerpted from "Electro-Maggots," Dave Barry's Greatest Hits)

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Jack Black - Professional Mis-Informant

You already know what happened to Donald Duck for listening to the incoherent rantings of political pundits like Glenn Beck. Imagine what would happen if innocent children, unaware of ideological corruption and psychological manipulation, were suddenly exposed to and indoctrinated by propaganda produced by the public relations machine serving corporate and extremist political interests at the expense of the interests of the people.

Well, you don't have to imagine because Jack Black is here to show you exactly what could happen...

And here is the little seedling turning into the inevitable monster:

Watch Jon Stewart also channel the spirit of Glenn Beck not once but twice!
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Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse Meet Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio

With his life in shambles as a consequence of the economic crisis, Donald Duck (like many Americans) finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As everything starts to spiral out of control, he finds solace in the seemingly friendly and sympathetic voice coming out of the radio: Glenn Beck.

This is the worrying story of how easily hard-working people who lack critical thinking skills (and find themselves frustrated, desperate and disenfranchised by life's vicissitudes) can be manipulated by paranoid, hateful, xenophobic and cognitive dissonant rhetoric, even when it's internally self-contradictory and completely inflammatory.

Of course, Glenn Beck found out about this cartoon, so he had to respond:

Protect yourself from persuasive speakers by learning how to spot some basic logical fallacies.
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Fractals - The Colors of Infinity (by Arthur C. Clarke)

Still saddened by the recent passing of Benoit Mandelbrot, I did some digging this weekend and found a treasure: a fantastic documentary about the Mandelbrot Set, and fractals in general, narrated by none other than the great Arthur C. Clarke. Can scientific/mathematical geekiness get any cooler?

I hope you enjoyed the recent mind trip through the Mandelbrot set, but you may have wondered whether the different colors of the set are representative of something, or whether they are purely artistic depictions purposely made for aesthetic purposes. The answer, as you'll find out, is that although the colors are arbitrary, they are not meaningless. I'll leave Arthur C. Clarke to explain that fascinating concept.

You may have also wondered whether fractals have any practical applications, or whether they ought to be contemplated merely for their intellectual and visual beauty. I think there's nothing wrong with the purely contemplative appreciation, but for those of you more practically minded, fractals have immense practical, intellectual and industrial applications, and that's just scratching the surface.

Prepare yourself for some amazing intellectual and visual stimulation, accompanied to the sound of some sweet electric guitar :)

Learn more about the relationship between fractals and evolution in The Secret Life of Chaos, with Jim Al-Khalili.
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Mandelbrot Fractal Set Mind Trip

It seems the world has just lost another good one. Benoir Mandelbrot, the mathematician who created fractal geometry, passed away on Thursday from pancreatic cancer.

Fractal geometry, if you don't know, is a mathematical development of theoretical and applied mathematics that can be used to understand the apparently rough and irregular patterns found in nature, from the branches of trees and broccoli to river networks, mountain ranges, crystals, the circulatory and respiratory systems, etc.

A great deal of the beauty of fractals has to do with the recursive nature of its shapes: it is driven by an iterative and self-referential process in which the output of any step in the algorithm becomes the input for the next step, creating patterns that can be explored literally to infinity. To give you an idea of what this simple equation looks like, let's try zooming in on it for just 10 minutes:

If you want to understand just how fractals explain many of the patterns found in nature, check out Jim Al-Khalili's excellent documentary The Secret Life of Chaos.
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Christine O'Donnell and Logical Transitivity

For her latest debate, Christine O'Donnell was trained by the same inimitable experts who prepared Sarah Palin for those interviews and debates that will consign her to eternal fame among rhetoricians.

In the process, O'Donnell provided an inspiring lesson on a new transitive property in propositional logic, which Stephen Colbert breaks down for the uninitiated:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Transitive Property of Christine O'Donnell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

In that case, I guess I'm really really gay... told you you are not alone :)

For more, check out Jimmy Kimmel nail Christine O'Donnell ;)
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Gay? You Are Not Alone... and It Gets Better

With the recent news of Tyler Clementi (a gay college student who jumped to his death to avoid the shame, humiliation and bullying that would ensue as a consequence of his roomate's thoughtless choice to out him to the world by posting a video on the internet documenting a sexual encounter with another male student), news about the prevalence of suicide among gay teens and children have come to shock many of us. Clementi's suicide, for instance, was one of five in the span of only three weeks.

So, for any of you, dear readers, who may have issues with your own sexuality or sexual orientation, and who may find the bullying or the pressure too overwhelming at times, know that things will get better, and that you're not alone, as I hope the following moving video clip will show.

And just to prove that it can get better, Dan Savage and his husband share their own stories and the obstacles they've overcome before finding happiness with each other:

Update: President Obama has joined the ranks supporting this important message:

Now, come on... killing yourself for being gay is... kinda gay... I'm sorry, too soon? :)
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The State Capital Rap

I know I've shown some amusing, depressing and embarrassing cases of Americans not knowing where the hell things are in the world or basic facts about our own history, but I've also tried to help things along a bit by posting an excellent Animaniacs song on world geography.

Today we have a rap song on all 50 states and their respective state capitals. Hopefully something sticks.

Learn more on the geography tag.
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God Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder

Philosophers have been pondering the problem of evil for over two thousand years. This refers to the apparent inconsistency between the existence of evil (roughly defined as unnecessary suffering) and the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent deity.

Believers have come up with some rather ingenious arguments in order to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable ideas, and skeptics have consistently shown such attempts to be both futile and laughable. What no one expected, however, is that the solution to this problem would be discovered by psychologists:

Check out more funnies from The Onion.
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Cristoph Koch - What Makes Us Conscious?

Though neither scientists nor philosophers have a fully working theory of consciousness, the study of the brain has opened a small window into this phenomenon that is simultaneously the most familiar and the most baffling of all.

Though most contemporary philosophers reject dualism, and there is fairly wide agreement that consciousness is generated by the brain, we still don't know how the brain manages to pull off such a feat. We don't even know what it takes for a brain to do this. Are dolphins, chimps or dogs conscious? What about bees? And since consciousness seems to have a physical basis, is it theoretically possible to engineer computers that are conscious?

In the following short clip, Christof Koch introduces the biological basis upon which scientists and philosophers might want to build their research into this most fascinating of all questions (and rather intriguingly, argues for a view of pan-psychism that just seems to come out of left field...).

Stay tuned for a more serious treatment of these ideas, coming up soon.
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Davis Guggenheim - Waiting for Superman

As an educator, I am painfully aware of some of the many ways in which the public educational system consistently fails our children and teenagers.

The problem, at least as far as I see it, is not simply the lack of quality education at the middle and high school levels. Sure, that's frustrating enough as it is, but it pales in comparison to what it does to students: it robs them of any intellectual ambition and makes them apathetic, at which point, even if a fantastic opportunity were to become available, they wouldn't know how to appreciate it and benefit from it, thereby perpetuating this frustrating catch-22.

Apparently, a new documentary has just been released exploring this important issue:

And Davis Guggenheim, the director of the film, just paid a visit to Stephen Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Davis Guggenheim
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Visit Waiting for "Superman" to purchase your ticket and redeem your gift code to donate to a classroom project of your choice.
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Tim Jackson - An Economic Reality Check

As you may have noticed, we are living in an increasingly consumerist world, and while certain quantifiable criteria of economic progress have become more prevalent than in any other time in history, and (as Matthew Taylor recently argued in his talk about 21st century enlightenment), the principles of individualism and novelty have come to take center stage in our lives, even to the paradoxical point of diminishing human flourishing and potential (by making us forget other important principles, such as those of social cohesion).

In the following important presentation, Tim Jackson demonstrates that the economic principles responsible for delivering the kind of world to which we have become accustomed are not indefinitely sustainable. In the process, he provides some examples of the kinds of incremental changes we might want to adopt in order to finally stop feeding the problem and start investing in our collective future.

And if you want to get an idea of how unsustainable materialist consumerism is, check out The Story of Stuff.
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Logical Fallacies

If you've paid attention to the kind of discourse that's become increasingly popular over the past few years, you may have noticed that it seems we have made the unfortunate choice to collectively sacrifice evidence and reason in favor of ideology and irrational persuasion. Instead of striving for wisdom, as good philosophers do, it seems we've become obsessed with winning arguments... at any cost, even at the cost of our own intellectual integrity. For some of us, that cost is just too high.

There is an ocean of people and institutions out there who depend on your acceptance of their ideas (politicians, advertisers, religions, corporations, etc.), and in many cases they'll manipulate you in any way they can in order to gain your support. Sometimes you may have a gut feeling that an argument advanced by some party doesn't quite make sense, but you may lack the technical expertise to fully understand why that argument doesn't really work. Or worse, you might find an argument convincing for all the wrong reasons.

Lucky for you, I've put together the following hierarchical slideshow presentation on a number of popular informal logical fallacies. These are specific kinds of reasoning mistakes that we ought to be able to identify and avoid. There are many more, and sometimes they can get quite technical, but this should be a simple introductory lesson for intelligent non-experts.

Click the play button to load (give it a minute or two... there's a lot of stuff in there), and then switch to full-screen mode for a better viewing experience.

Logical Fallacies on Prezi

And the following is a hilarious introduction to logical fallacies with great sound effects.

The audio comes from the sadly discontinued Logically Critical podcast.
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Matthew Taylor - 21st Century Enlightenment

While demonstrating and overcoming the intellectual and practical shortcomings of dogma, tradition, authority and oppression prevalent in the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment brought about a fantastic intellectual, social and political revolution, as well as the promise of individualism, freedom, human rights, justice, rationality, free trade, autonomy and progress.

And while things have gotten better in many respects, developments in various scientific and philosophical disciplines have revealed that those promising concepts, important as they are, are somewhat simplistic and out of synch with our current understanding of human nature. Worse, by focusing exclusively on threats to these principles, our modern obsession with these concepts often interferes with the ideals to which we should strive.

In the following animated presentation, Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, and how this new conception could help us meet the serious challenges confronting us today.

If that caught your attention, you might be interested in the full speech and the Q&A that followed:

Check out other thought-provoking animated speeches.
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The Sound of Science

Science is a beautiful thing, and part of its beauty, I think, is due to its self-critical nature: it constantly questions itself, it demands of itself a higher standard of evidence and theoretical sophistication than most other forms of inquiry, it democratizes its methods and discoveries, it sets upon itself the burden of proof, it invites dissent and scrutiny by the anonymity of the peer review process, it conjures up wildly imaginative experiments in order to eliminate noisy variables, and it constantly reevaluates its views when confronted with evidence that challenges previously held beliefs.

As it that weren't enough, it also happens to inspire some pretty good music. I think Simon & Garfunkel would approve, as would Darwin.

Or if you prefer, you could always sing along to Chumbawamba's song Charlie.
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