Inside Nature's Giants - Polar Bear

Continuing with their exploration of the anatomy and physiology of the giants of nature, the team travels to the North Pole in search of a polar bear: the largest land mammalian predator in the world. Because of the difficulties of finding polar bears at all, never mind fresh carcasses, this episode requires the collaboration of a local hunting community whose survival depends on using every last scrap of these animals without wasting anything. And because of the weather conditions, every move is a race against the freezing clock.

Now, the first and most obvious question is just how these bears manage to withstand the intense freezing temperatures of their natural habitat. The answer, it turns out, and this should throw you for a loop, is that a polar bear is a black animal with transparent fur that looks (but isn't) white. Yeah, I was floored too.

But that's not the whole story. We also get to understand, among other things, exactly why there are polar bears to begin with and how they manage to cope with diets that would literally kill us.

Did you see the polar bear attacking that walrus that was probably twice its size?!?

The Ice Finger of Death

So I never knew this before, but apparently when seawater freezes, it forces salt out, thereby making the water surrounding it more saline. That starts a chain reaction with which you may be more familiar: the saline water has a lower freezing point and higher density, so as this super cold water freezes, it starts to sink away from the surface ice, creating an ice stalactite, otherwise known as a brinicle. But as David Attenborough explains, this is just the beginning:

I love how scientists have managed to figure out exactly why this happens...

Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department

On its surface, the political and economic philosophy of libertarianism sounds very promising because it appeals to values we all esteem highly: individual rights, freedom, personal responsibility, merit, etc.

For all its growing popularity, however, libertarianism is deeply flawed. There are many ways to show this. One is through careful and rigorous conceptual analysis carried out by philosophers such as John Rawls.

Another is to let The Onion do the work in less than a minute:

Also, ma' house was burning :)

99% v 1% - The Data Behind the Occupy Wall St. Movement

There's been a lot of buzz, support, mocking, complaining, sympathizing, talk, etc. about the We Are the 99 Percent slogan behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The idea is quite simple, and it refers to the incredible disparities concerning political power, income, wealth, access to basic social services, and other differences that separate the vast majority of the American population from a 1 percent elite minority who basically owns the country and manages to exploit the other 99 percent to further their own interests at the expense of the majority.

But are the numbers an accurate representation of the situation? In the following animation from The Guardian, we learn that things are not quite as simple as they seem:

Yeah, it's worse...

Police Brutality at UC Davis

Agree or disagree with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, there are a few things that no one can really dispute. For one thing, this is a non-violent grass roots movement intent on raising consciousness about corporate greed and corruption. There may be no unified set of goals or specific demands at the time, and that's fine, it is to be expected from a population that, while unsure about how to proceed, realizes that business as usual is no longer an option.

Second, these protesters are engaging in public, non-violent civil disobedience. As such, while they are sometimes publicly breaking the law (without creating any violence), they are fully prepared to live with the consequences of their actions, and when they get arrested, they offer no violent opposition. In all of this, they are to be commended for living up to the principles of non-violent civil disobedience set down, among others, by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

As you may have heard, a shocking pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis last week has gone viral. Defending the thoughtless and heartless actions taken by two police officers who doused a peaceful crowd with pepper spray, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza argued that the protesters posed an imminent threat to police officers because

"there was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

Well, as you can see in the picture above, a bunch of students sitting down and locking arms in solidarity is not exactly what you would call a "volatile situation," but if you need further context to understand what happened, check it out for yourself:

I think the only plausible solution is to force these assholes to inhale a whole canister of pepper spray and then be dragged in handcuffs to jail...

Cosmos - The Lives of Stars

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, Carl Sagan famously argued, you must first invent the universe, and for that, you're going to need stuff. But where does the matter that make up the cosmos come from? How is it created? If all matter is composed of three tiny particles (protons, neutrons and electrons), how do we explain the diversity of matter all around us?

In this installment of the widely celebrated documentary series Cosmos, Carl Sagan explores the origin of the chemical elements, how these relate to the birth, growth and death of stars, and even a little general relativity for good measure.

For more on the nature and origin of the elements of the periodic table, check out Jim Al-Khalili's wonderful documentary series Atoms (parts 1, 2 and 3), or his history of chemistry (parts 1, 2 and 3).

GOP Derp

Apart from Mitt Romney (whose success seems predicated on his opponents predictably putting their foots in their own mouths), one Republican who must be thrilled about the lack of intelligence and eloquence among the current GOP candidates is George W. Bush :)

By comparison, these idiots make him seem like an articulate, nuanced, moderate and intelligent scholar...

Let's start with Rick Derp Perry:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Then we have Herman Cain being a douche, followed by Rick Perry drunk off his ass...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Then some more of Cain's dickishness, and Perry tripping over his own thoughts:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

But Herman Cain isn't just a douchebag.... he's also an idiot... and a douchebag:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Of course, the only semi-reasonable candidate, John Huntsman, will never win the nomination... that would just make too much sense for these folks...

Time Travel and the Grandfather Paradox

Nothing beats boredom quite like philosophy. You start with almost any seemingly simple question, you do some heavy thinking, and before you know it, like when we were first introduced to Zeno of Elea (or even his mentor, Parmenides), it turns out motion may just be an optical illusion.

Now we get to explore the grandfather paradox. It's pretty obvious that if you wanted to kill your grandpa, a simple piece of technology like a pillow could get the job done. But what if you've suffered a lifetime of bad jokes, anachronistic war references, patronizing judgments for being 'metrosexual', and countless stories about how easy you have it now compared to a hundred years ago, when he had to walk five miles naked and barefoot through the snow so they could make it to school?

How could you get rid of the old geezer? Could you be so annoyed that you just get into your time machine and travel back to a time before he even met grandma and kill him right there and then? That would solve all the future annoying moments you've suffered for years... but wait, if you kill him before he meets your grandma, he can't knock her up with your dad, and if your dad is never born, then he obviously could not get your mom preggers with you, but then you would not be born, and if you're not born, how could you possibly travel back in time to kill gramps? Oy vay!

Ask the right questions, and a universe of fascinating opportunities opens up to you, or at least you get to kill boredom for a while. Either way it's a win-win.

Vodka Tampons

Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives, and hide yo' husbands because according to some high school security guard who obviously has easy access to demographic private data concerning teens, housewives, teachers, corporate lawyers, top politicians, celebrities, federal judges, scientists and homeland security classified information, there is a menacing and ubiquitous trend threatening the innocence of everyone you know and love: they are literally getting drunk off their asses. Stephen Colbert reports.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Of course, chances are the security guard was hammered during that interview :)

Michigan's Children Speak Out Against Republican Pro-Bullying Legislation

As we learned recently from Stephen Colbert, an anti-bullying bill in Michigan is sparking controversy. The bill was originally inspired by the tragic story of Matt Epling, a teen who committed suicide in 2002 after falling victim to anti-gay bullying. The fact he wasn't gay doesn't change anything.

The controversy surrounding the bill arose because Republican Senator Rick Jones introduced a clause that made an exception for bullying perpetrated due to "a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction."

The problem, of course, is that instead of protecting the victims of hate and bigotry, this nominally "anti-bullying" bill actually provides license to promote bullying, and a blueprint to teach bullies exactly what excuses to use to get away with their hatred.

Luckily, many have seen through the smokescreen, including children, and they are writing their representatives to let their voices be heard:

And here is Senator Gretchen Whitmer responding to this pro-bullying legislation:

Obviously, this is the wrong time to say this, but she's kind of cute, huh? :)

Bill O'Reilly's Logical Blunders

It's difficult to overstate the importance of the skills associated with critical thinking. Obviously, you want to have the ability and the know-how to recognize and evaluate the quality of arguments and the evidence provided to support them fairly, and to develop defensible arguments of your own whenever you want to persuade others that your point of view is worth endorsing.

But critical thinking is not just about mental skill. It also requires the adoption of certain moral values without which those skills we talked about before might be put to bad or unfair use. Some of these values include integrity, honesty, humility, and the ability to recognize when you've made some terrible logical blunder. Of course, when you simply re-affirm bad arguments, even though they have been shown to be fallacious, defending them is only going to require that you produce even worse arguments, rife with fallacy and dishonesty, so even if you don't believe in the values above, it would still be better to cut your losses and quit while you're ahead.

Anyway, in my critical thinking classes I usually assign a project that requires students to identify instances of certain informal logical fallacies as they occur in the real world, and the following is a two-minute sample based on the now infamous episode in which Bill O'Reilly thought he could "prove" the existence of God based on his own ignorance (just go to the second slide to see the logical analysis).

If he had just said "my bad, I made a mistake, that really was a bad argument" he probably would not have lost the respect of so many people...

The Word - Bully Pulpit

Everyone agrees that bullying is a problem (ok, maybe bullies don't agree... ah, fuck'em), but it's hard to blame children and teens for engaging in that kind of reprehensible behavior when they're just following in the example set by bigoted adults and institutions who hide behind the sorry excuse of 'morality' set by their stone-age homophobic religious beliefs.

So, Stephen Colbert reports, when the state of Michigan tried to pass an anti-bullying bill, it should come as no surprise that fundamentalists agreed to pass the bill on condition that kids still be allowed to behave like total assholes only if they could use religious conviction as their lame excuse.

In other words, bullying is wrong, unless our backward religion says it's all right...

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Of course, my first reaction would be to say that the upside of this bill is that it would now give smart kids license to freely bully religious idiots on perfectly moral grounds (for being douchebags), but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to solve the problem of bullying by allowing more bullying, tempting as it might be...

Psychic Helps Police Waste Valuable Time

Ok, now I'm confused... I thought The Onion was supposed to be fake news...

This just in: The Psychic Headquarters have been closed due to unforeseen reasons :)

Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature

Having just published a voluminous book whose title was inspired by the immortal words of a guy who met his tragic end by having his brains blown out in public :), Steven Pinker argues that despite some obvious fluctuation, violence has seen an overall historical decline over the past few thousand years, and that we are living today in the least violent era our species has ever seen.

That may sound ridiculous to you, what with the world wars of the 20th century and our increasing technological capabilities to wreak havoc in scales our predecessors couldn't have dreamed of, but Pinker is no dummy who argues in lazy generalizations, and he's got plenty of corroborating evidence to make his point.

More interestingly, perhaps, is why violence has declined over time, and if you're already familiar with Pinker's work, you know things are about to get interesting when he starts invoking philosophy, history, evolutionary psychology, economics, cognitive psychology, rational-decision theory and other fascinating disciplines. And as if that weren't stimulating enough, the lecture is followed by a discussion with Matt Ridley and some Q&A.

For more, check out the Steven Pinker tag.

GOP Race Heats Up as Comatose Candidate Steals Thunder

While many of the current GOP presidential hopefuls have recently found themselves in the middle of embarrassing controversies (like spending countless weekends hunting on camp "Niggerhead," or facing accusations of sexual harassment, or denying the validity of scientific research, or finding themselves in the middle of multi-billion dollar corruption schemes, or being responsible for the execution of innocent people, or just for being either boring as hell or bat-shit insane), The Onion reports that Congressman John Clarkson has kept himself away from controversies for the past eight years by being in a coma.

But as one should have expected, it wouldn't take long for Clarkson to be involved in a sex scandal of his own...

Sources confirm that GOP candidate Herman Cain is thrilled that Clarkson has diverted the pervert spotlight off him, even if only temporarily :)

Philosophy Monkey on Google +

With all the social media around, one can't help but try to keep up with these trends, so for those of you hip to the changes, I'm officially announcing the creation of the Google+ page for the Philosophy Monkey blog. Be sure to follow us and share with everyone you know!

Of course, you can still always subscribe to our rss feeds, you can like our facebook page, you can follow us on twitter, and you can... I'm sure I'm forgetting something else, but you know what to do to get your daily dose of mental awesomeness :)

Daniel Wolpert - The Real Reason for Brains

I know what you're thinking, but no, it's not for feeding zombies... but it's also not "for" thinking either because brains evolved long before any organism developed the ability to think and reason. So, while thinking is a great adaptation of the brain, it's not exactly its original raison d'être.

In the following fascinating and amusing TEDTalk presentation, Daniel Wolpert argues that brains evolved to control movement. Don't believe me? Well, is it just coincidence that the only animal in the world who eats its own brain, the sea squirt, does it only after it's found a permanent abode? Probably not...

Anyway, the most interesting part of the presentation is when Wolpert provides a nice introduction to Bayesian probability theory, and then makes a convincing argument that this is how brains learn how to produce behavior and beliefs. As you may already be able to imagine, this provides a great starting point for those working on artificial intelligence and robotics.

Now, if you want to investigate the evolution of the thinking mind (beyond the sea squirt), you could start by reading this fascinating primer on evolutionary psychology by Leda Cosmedis and John Tooby.

Duelity - Scientific Creationism and Religious Darwinism

According to the records of the General Organization of Development labs (GOD),
it took a mere six days to manufacture a fully-operational universe,
complete with day, night, flora and fauna,
and installing Adam as its manager to oversee daily functions on Earth.

That's one story.

If thou shalt believe the Book of Darwin,
t'is five billion years later after The Big Bang
that we behold what the cosmos hath begat:
the magma, the terra firma, the creeping beasts, and mankind,
whose dolorous and chaotic evolution begat the gift of consciousness.

Duelity is a split-screen animation that tells both sides of the story of Earth's origins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the history and language that marks human thought.

And for another account of creation full of pseudo-scientific jargon (and great music), check out Michael Shermer's Genesis 2.0

Stephen Colbert Occupies Occupy Wall Street

Inspired by Dick Armey and how he co-opted the Tea Party and gave their fringe beliefs a national platform, Comrade Che Colbert wants his Super PAC to capitalize on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement.

So, he met with two young idealists whose democratic, political and social awareness, while admittedly quirky, demonstrate a level of intellectual sophistication you just don't see among tea-baggers.

In the process, Colbert managed to produce a hilarious interview showing his off-the-cuff comedic genius:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

And here's the dramatic conclusion

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Hilarious :)

Phil Plait - An Asteroid Impact Can Ruin Your Day

The dinosaurs say: No shit, Sherlock!

Still, while the title is sort of obvious (and almost question-begging), Bad Astronomer Phil Plait (who apparently hosts some TV show? I'm disconnected from the world since I have no TV) delves into some interesting details about what scientists have discovered about celestial bodies whose paths sometimes cross the path of our own little world, and even some of the ways in which we might be able to avoid such a collision in the future.

For more, check out our TEDTalks tag.