Philosophy Monkey

Colbert and Maurice Sendak on Children's Books

2012-01-30T10:44:00.003-05:00

If you have kids, I hope you've been smart enough to realize that most children's books are written by idiots and celebrities (a distinction usually without a difference) who most likely write for children because they certainly would not be able to read for intelligent and literate adults without getting laughed at. Same goes for plenty of elementary and middle school teachers who diminish from the quality and impact of those teachers who are passionate and dedicated to education.

Of course, I don't know too much about children books myself, especially since I tend to prefer books like Go the F**k to Sleep or lullabies a-la Tim Minchin, but it seems, from the following Stephen Colbert interview below, that Maurice Sendak, author of such classics as Where the Wild Things Are, agrees wholeheartedly:

The Colbert Report
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"And now, the dramatic.... more of it:"

The Colbert Report
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Don't forget to check out the literature tag.

This Is a Galaxy

2012-01-27T12:56:00.003-05:00

Ideally, science works by the testing of hypotheses. In the real world, however, hypotheses can't always be tested directly, so scientists have to get creative and figure out indirect ways to see whether hypotheses are at least consistent with our empirical observations. Consistency alone is not sufficient for thinking that a scientific hypothesis is 'correct,' but inconsistency is usually a safe red flag that the hypothesis in question either needs modification or ought to be rejected.

One such attempt to test scientific hypotheses indirectly is to create computer models and simulations based on the very best current knowledge available: you let the simulations run and then see how close a match they make to what we know about the world.

There are many benefits to such an approach, such as the reduced time it takes to run a simulation (as opposed to waiting for the universe to run on its own slow pace). Another is the fact that when you produce visual representations of a computer simulation, you can end up with a beautiful piece of art, as the following short clip demonstrates:

And for more, check out the space tag.

Sex: An Unnatural History - The Revolution

2012-01-26T13:05:00.000-05:00

When you think about the sexual revolution, your mind probably focuses on the last half a century, starting with the fact that the development of the contraceptive pill gave couples all over the world, and especially women, unprecedented freedom regarding their own bodies and sexual choices. Ever since then, and with other revolutions in mind (like the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism, etc.), sex has been more about gratification than procreation? Or has it? And did it only start fifty years ago, or does a larger sexual revolution go back for millions of years?

In the first episode of this six-part series, and accompanied by cool historical footage, some clever animation, and some provocative dramatizations, Julia Zemiro sits down and discusses the nature and history of human sex with anthropologists, feminists, nudists, philosophers, biologists, historians, linguists, journalists and others.

Oh, and this may count as NSFW, but that might just mean your job sucks and you need to do something better with your life... think about it.

Stay tuned for more episodes soon!

Doodling in Math - Spirals, Fibonacci and Plants

2012-01-25T13:07:00.000-05:00

This girl is so cool I may soon have to create a tag on this blog just for her awesomeness. Last time we saw her, she gave us a nice introduction to how the Fibonacci sequence can give rise to the kinds and numbers of spirals we find in many plants.

Now, talking about plants, and considering the question of the most efficient leave arrangement for them to maximize sunlight for photosynthesis (aka, plant nom-noms), we stumble upon something incredible (that we've also seen before in this stunning animation): an irrational number, but not just any irrational number: the golden ratio!

Over the past two millenia, there's been speculation as to why one of the crazy commands in Pythagoras' nutty religion was to stay away from beans (and the fact that Pythagoras was willing to let himself get killed rather than cross through a field full of these plants).

You see where I'm going, right? I'm going to have to look up their leave distribution, but is it just possible the father of rational mathematics realized bean leaves follow this "irrational" formation and hence refused, as a matter of mathematical principle, to have anything to do with them???

"Dear Professor Hawking"

2012-01-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

I had some surgery yesterday, nothing major, but my present inability to move around as much as I'd like may result in fewer blog entries in the near future... or more than usual; we'll see. In any case, as today's entry shows, when you're bed-ridden, there are few better ways to spend your time than listening to an homage to Stephen Hawking :)

Defying medical expectations for an early death by decades, Professor Hawking, perhaps the most famous and popular of all scientists alive, recently celebrated his 70th birthday.

In light of his genius, the obstacles he's had to overcome, his scientific contributions, his celebrity status, his passion for popularizing his love of science in books and documentaries, his correspondence with children and adults throughout the world, and his appearances on The Simpsons, the BBC recently put together a series of audio programs dedicated to celebrating this remarkable man.

He's sold more books than Madonna has had sex... Classic!

But I'm not sure I can let that "philosophy is dead" comment go by without protest :(

Apple Revolutionizes Education?

2012-01-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not know, Apple announced last week three initiatives designed to revolutionize education: fully interactive and affordable digital iBook textbooks for the iPad, iBooks Author (for those of you interested in creating your own interactive textbooks) and their new iTunesU app.

Obviously, one would have to purchase an iPad, which is exactly what Apple is banking on, but whatever their economic scheme, it's hard to argue that the educational value one gets in return isn't worth the investment

Now, I'm not usually one to blog about technology and gadgets, but the following presentation is about education, a topic quite dear to my heart, and it will blow your mind:

If you can be kind enough to get my poor ass an iPad, I'll be your bff! :)

Alain de Botton - Atheism 2.0

2012-01-19T15:32:00.001-05:00

Traditionally, religion has been associated with a number of different concepts: explanation, revelation, salvation and consolation. The so-called New Atheists have made a strong case that when it comes to explanation, religion is no better than child fantasies. Revelation, as a corollary of explanation turns out to be another silly concept, as is salvation... whatever that might mean.

One of the few areas in which religion does seem to thrive (regardless of whether its premises are true or not), that current secularism doesn't quite know how to deal with yet is consolation in its various forms: community, identity, tradition, reverence.

In the following fascinating TEDTalk presentation, atheist philosopher Alain de Botton (narrator of the documentary series Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness) argues that there is much in this area that a more advanced and nuanced and less reactionary atheism can actually learn, and steal, from the lessons developed by religions for thousands of years.

And for more, there is a short Q&A in the TED Blog.

Hitler reacts to SOPA

2012-01-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

I'm having a hard time concentrating on work today, so instead of simply procrastinating, I've decided to raise some awareness about SOPA and PIPA without getting too technical or boring... and so I present to you Hitler!

You know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the above-mentioned legislation when the voice of reason comes from one of the worst and most brutally violent and despotic tyrants of all time... Say hello to major cognitive dissonance :)

"Don't cry. Disney owns the rights to that emotion" :)

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T11:23:00.000-05:00

Via The Oatmeal

Should copyrighted material be protected? Definitely.

But SOPA and PIPA are not the way to do it. Learn more about it, and then do something about it...

Fear Factory

2012-01-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

Economists use the concept of externalities (or external costs) to refer to those costs that that are paid (usually against their will) by parties other than those who engage directly in a purchasing contract.

You know how you love a good bargain? Well, those low prices are not something borne out of the generosity and kindness of corporations. The costs are transferred, and ultimately paid by the horrible working conditions of workers in some remote corner of the world, by the low wages such workers receive, by their deteriorating health, by their inability to form unions who might protect them, by the depletion of their natural resources, you get the picture.

The money you don't pay a corporation is the same money that corporation takes away from some kid in a dark and damp factory who doesn't have a choice, a voice or a say. So, as Jon Stewart shows in the following clip, you might want to think about all those unnecessary gadgets you carry around, and the real costs that producing them and giving you a lower price ultimately represent.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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And when it comes to food, external costs are also paid by the poor animals who must endure nightmarish living conditions on a daily basis until they are cruelly slaughtered... all so you can enjoy some steak or a hamburger that will eventually give you diabetes...

Dangerous Knowledge

2012-01-17T10:30:00.001-05:00

Beneath the surface of the world are the rules of science, but beneath them there is a far deeper set of rules, a matrix of pure mathematics, which explains the nature of the rules of science...

So begins this David Malone tour-de-force tribute to four geniuses who dared to confront the nature of the rules underlying all mathematics, logic and science, and saw in their various ways that the certainty with which we had become so familiar and comfortable was but an illusion.

Their stories are both inspiring and tragic. These men, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, were all destined for intellectual fame and greatness, if only posthumously, but because of the nature of their research, because of the intense dedication that their academic problems demanded of them, because of the great resistance they had to overcome from detractors, and because of the major threat they posed to our most foundational beliefs, they came to the brink of madness, and their ends were all tragic, lonely and regrettable. For all of that, however, and however briefly, they each got a glimpse of a reality few, if any of us, will ever get to experience.

This is, quite possibly, the best thing you may do for your brain this week...

And for another masterpiece on Alan Turing's intellectual contributions, check out Jim Al-Khalili's The Secret Life of Chaos.

Circular Tip of the Hat / Wag of the Finger

2012-01-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

One of the mantras underlying conservatism is the idea of radical freedom and personal responsibility: in America, you have the freedom to become anything you want. So, when you succeed, you should be able to keep your earnings (this is one reason they hate taxes). But when you fail, don't come crying and asking for handouts: it's your own damn fault.

Never mind that the system is rigged to perpetuate social and class differences: it's always easier to point fingers and blame those we trample instead of getting our feet off their heads.

Freedom and responsibility are important values to uphold, but the world is full of complexity and nuance. Simplistic false dilemmas and sound bites may sound good to unsophisticated ears, but they do a disservice to the kind of discourse that's necessary for our nation to move forward.

Unfortunately, things are getting so bad that, as Stephen Colbert shows, presidential hopefuls like Rick Santorum are blaming sick, poor, unemployed people who can't afford health insurance for being sick, poor and unemployed...

The Colbert Report
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Rick Santorum is a douchebag because Rick Santorum is a douchebag :)

William Lane Craig vs Peter Millican - Does God Exist?

2012-01-10T10:27:00.003-05:00

I find William Lane Craig fascinating... and disturbing. He's an interesting case study of a very intelligent and learned man who will use the most state-of-the-art scientific and philosophical scholarship to support the bat-shit-insane and mutually contradictory beliefs that are the legacy of the virtually illiterate goat-herders who gave us Christianity: the ultimate cult of child sacrifice.

I also like to periodically showcase him on this blog because, insane as his ideas are, he does manage to provide some of the most 'sophisticated' articulations in favor of the Christian faith. Why use idiots and straw men when you can use 'scholars' like Craig or Plantinga to show the insanity of these beliefs?

Anyway, in the following debate with Professor Peter Millican (from whom I hope you've already learned your introduction to modern philosophy), Craig engages (as he always does) in a fascinating exercise of trying to shift the burden of evidence from himself, the believer, to the skeptic... as if...

What I do like about the debate, on the other hand, is the courtesy between the two philosophers (a lesson for us all, whatever our stand on the issue) and the fact that they do take each other seriously enough to try to counter each other's actual positions. Agree or disagree with one or the other, you are sure to be stimulated by the exchange.

If it were up to me, I'd change the names of Craig's arguments to the following:

The Kalam "I-can't-understand-infinities" argument
The fine-tuning argument for stupid life
The "I'm-color-blind-with-respect-to-morality-and-therefore-can't-see-anything-other-than-my-own-already-assumed-presuppositions-and-false-dilemmas" argument.
I could also call 3 the "I-don't-like-the-implication-of-the-Euthyphro-dilemma-so-I'm-going-to-call-it-a-false-dilemma-and-pretend-like-my-third-alternative-doesn't-just-rehash-exactly-the-same-original-dilemma" argument
The "the-so-called-problem-of-evil-does-not-disprove-God-because-without-God-evil-couldn't-exist" argument
The "naturalistic-and-psychological-explanations-for-the-'resurrection'-of-Jesus-threaten-my-belief-in-the-infallibility-of-human-experience-given-to-us-by-God" argument
The argument from personal placebo.
I could also call 7 the "I've-had-the-subjective-experience-of-being-touched-by-the-Flying-Spathetti-Monster's-noodly-appendage-therefore-God-exists" argument.

I'm sure you can come up with more catchy names. Feel free to leave those in the comments

What Is U.S. Debt?

2012-01-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows that we ought to live within our means. It's just common sense, isn't it?

And yet, consider your own situation: chances are that you are in debt, either because of some sort of loan or because you have a line of credit (or multiple) to pay for your house, your car, your drug addiction, your ipad, your medical expenses, etc.

Now, consider that just like you are in debt, so is virtually everyone, including your own country, and up to a point, that's not too much of a problem. But before we start pontificating, let's first understand the basics of debt first with the following animation:

Now the question is: how much debt is too much debt? As it turns out, there is some empirical evidence to provide a tentative suggestion:

Me? I'm too cautious (and poor) to succumb to the temptation of credit, so although sometimes it's hard to make ends meet, I have absolutely no debt.

I'm poor, but I'm free, bitches! :)

God's Message to Pat Robertson

2012-01-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

I've never been able to figure out whether Pat Robertson believes the crazy things that come out of his mouth, or if he's purely a manipulative sociopath trying to advance his political and economic agenda by any means necessary.

Well, apparently, God speaks directly to him now, telling him the outcome of the next presidential election. One has to wonder why God didn't start this line of communication earlier... say, when Pat Robertson was running for president himself. Maybe God is a bit of a jerk...

In any case, Stephen Colbert wants to emulate his role model, but discovers in the process the logical futility of petitionary prayer... rAmen :)

The Colbert Report
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And the lady thought it's a better idea that Robertson does not divulge the information God allegedly shared with him? How does that make any sense at all???

Evolution through hands

2012-01-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

As someone with an incredibly short attention span, I've been thinking of lots of things lately, from the classics to history, biology, existentialism, love, to math, fractals and infinity.

And the ideas of fractals and evolution reminded me of the weird video below, portraying the history of the evolution of life on earth, so I thought I'd share with you.

And just in case that proves a little too disturbing for you, you can always watch a beautiful 5-minute animation of how evolution really does seem to have played out (based on the fossil record), accompanied by the awesome sound of some Nine Inch Nails.

Creeped out?

Hilbert's Infinite Hotel

2012-01-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

If you study subjects like philosophy, cosmology or mathematics, it won't be long until you find yourself deep in the contemplation of the nasty little business of infinity.

Zeno's paradoxes of motion represent some of the earliest attempts to confront this beast, and although modern tools like calculus or the idea of an infinite sum seems to resolve the problem, I can't say that we've really solved it. It's more like we've brushed it aside and agreed to pretend it's been dealt with. Although I find myself on a small minority here, I still sympathize with Zeno.

One thought-experiment I've never been able to swallow, however, is Hilbert's Infinite Hotel. From the very beginning, it seems to want to assume premises that I would not want to grant... but this is not about me. It's about you, dear reader, and it's about exposing you to interesting ideas that will be worth your while to think about, so here's a short introduction:

And if you want more, check out the Grandfather paradox or the Chinese Room thought experiment.

Doodling in Math - Spirals, Fibonacci and Plants

2012-01-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

Time for some math. No, don't run away! I guarantee even the greatest of mathophobes among you are going to love this, not only because it's a new episode of the Doodling in Math Class series (narrated by the future mother of my children, although she doesn't know this yet), but because it's related to golden spirals and the Fibonacci sequence.

The mathematical properties of this sequence are easy enough to understand. The marvel comes from the fact that it is instantiated all over the place. You've seen a stunning animation of this phenomenon before, but why don't we put the idea to the test with some real-world examples:

As she said, there's nothing really mystical about the appearance of this number in these plants. If you consider this to be an engineering problem requiring the most efficient packaging solution, then it shouldn't be that surprising that the blind process of evolution should have eventually stumbled upon this pattern. For more, take a listen to this great discussion of the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio from In Our Time.

And if you're still hungry for more, learn more about fractals from none other than Arthur C. Clarke, or how simplicity can give rise to complexity in The Secret Life of Chaos, with Jim Al-Khalili.

Louie Schwartzberg - The Hidden Beauty of Pollination

2012-01-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

As a new year begins and we do what we can to leave the past in the past, however unsuccessfully, it seems rather appropriate to think about new beginnings, not only as they apply to our own individual lives but as they relate to life in general, and to the fact that life is only possible because of new beginnings.

The following captivating short film by Louie Schwartzberg captures in exquisitely fine and beautiful time lapse detail some of the intricacies that take place among the many insect, avian and mammalian animals that are responsible for helping plants perpetuate their legacy. You may think you've seen it all, but trust me, some of this footage, like the hummingbird doing acrobatics with a bee, will blow your mind.

Don't forget to check out more TEDTalks.

The Universe in One Year

2011-12-31T15:14:00.001-05:00

When you get a little perspective, you may feel insignificant, but that very improbability makes your life all the more significant. Have a happy new year!

via Starts with a Bang

Seven Wonders of the Microbe World

2011-12-29T10:22:00.001-05:00

Bacteria, and the fact that we have to use antibiotics against them every now and then to combat powerful diseases, may conjure up nasty and scary feelings for many people, but let's not be too quick to come up with sweeping generalizations, since you yourself are more bacteria than human :)

The following video, from The Open University, illustrates some of the awesome ways bacteria have exerted an incredible influence in the world for as long as we have historical records.

You like your beer, for instance? Next time have a toast for our fellow unicellular organisms because without them, your beer would just be some nasty, bitter juice that tastes like piss :)

Oh, did I mention they also write some awesome romantic poetry? :)

And for more, check out how viruses invade your body. It's scary, but a testament to the blind ingenuity of evolution.

Meet the Lampyridae (or firefly)

2011-12-28T10:22:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite aspects about science is that since it's an attempt to discover how the world works, we can't assume that our a prioris and preconceived notions and expectations will be confirmed by new discoveries, or even that we could easily foresee whether and how some discoveries might turn out to be relevant to us.

Take a pretty basic and interesting question: what's up with fireflies? Why do they glow? Well, it turns out that when scientists try to answer that seemingly simple question, they end up coming up with applications that could literally save your life one day, as the following animation shows:

I totally want a glowing hamster now :)

Still kicking, sorry about the confusion

2011-12-27T10:10:00.003-05:00

For those of you who noticed and were concerned with a very personal post a few days ago, thank you for your posthumous words of kindness, but everything is all right. That was an entry I created a while ago to be automatically posted on Christmas, should something happen to me before that date (you never know when you might get run over by a car, when the bridge that you drive to work on might collapse, when your heart might decide to call it quits, or when Jesus decides to rapture your ass). It seemed like a nice way of getting to say a little something to my family without their expecting it.

With the hectic nature of the end of the semester and the then-approaching holiday season, it slipped my mind to reset the automated post for another year, and I didn't realize it got posted until about two days after the fact, by which point a number of you were worried. I am very grateful for the kind messages and concern I received, though.

The good thing about this mishap? This blog is just not popular enough to create a major frenzy :)

Friction - A Christmas Party Trick

2011-12-23T14:48:00.000-05:00

If you need to entertain your holiday guests, especially those with a competitive streak, and you have a couple of old phone books laying around, Stephen Fry and his QI guests are here to teach you a simple and inexpensive party trick you can use on them while simultaneously teaching them a simple lesson on the physics of friction.

I cannot be held responsible for any objects that get broken in the process :)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2011-12-22T10:58:00.002-05:00

There are many things to like about this Oscar Wilde classic (adapted and animated below), what with the witty aphorisms and one-liners, but if there's something that can only be described as haunting about this tale, it's not the supernatural nature of the portrait nor the exchange of one's soul for the promise of everlasting physical beauty, but the question of whether one can bear to see one's reflection.

Can you look fairly at the choices you've made, including those that have affected and hurt others, and still like and respect the person that looks back at you?

Find other classics and thought-provoking stories in the literature tag.

The Richard Feynman Series - Beauty

2011-12-20T10:18:00.000-05:00

Beauty is one of those tricky concepts to define because although most of us have an intuitive sense of instances of beauty, and can usually recognize it when we see it, we can't come up with an overarching theory about why all the things we consider to be beautiful are considered beautiful while other things are not.

Still, one thing about which many people agree is that science and philosophy strip the world of beauty by reducing it to a bunch of cold, abstract theories and equations. But as the late Richard Feynman makes clear in the following stunning video (which is itself an excerpt from the documentary The Pleasure of Finding Things Out), that prejudice is based on a embarrassing mischaracterization of the nature and the motivation behind serious investigation.

I know exactly what you're thinking... tell me I'm wrong :)

Christopher Hitchens - We'd Be Better Off Without Religion

2011-12-16T13:59:00.001-05:00

I've just learned that the prolific essayist and inimitable public intellectual and agitator Christopher Hitchens has succumbed to the cancer he's been battling over the past year.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Hitchens was a force to be reckoned with. Whatever the subject, at the very least he always had something interesting and thought-provoking to say.

In the following excerpt, Hitchens argues for the motion that "We'd be better off without religion." Now that he's gone, we can think of these ideas and realize that while he was with us, the world was a better place because of his eloquence, his courage, and his wit.

And because it would be totally appropriate on this occasion, I'm stealing the following picture from The Friendly Atheist to make a humble toast to Hitch:

Tempest Milky Way Time Lapse

2011-12-16T10:52:00.000-05:00

With the semester coming to an end, I'm buried neck-deep in student term papers, final exams and class projects, so I won't have time to go into some rant today... and probably next week too. I need to save all my mental energy to accurately assess my students' work

Instead, I thought I'd try to invoke the aesthetic of the sublime and stimulate the senses with the following spectacular time lapse video of the Milky Way on some stormy nights

And if you want more, you can always visit the time lapse tag, but be careful, it can be addicting :)

Death to Pennies!

2011-12-15T10:17:00.000-05:00

Far more often than we would normally like to admit, our beliefs and behavior are driven by forces that are completely irrational and that, if we just gave them a moment's thought, we'd realize we ought to stop, like, yesterday.

Whatever the subject matter, these beliefs and behavior are usually based on an unquestioning acceptance of traditions passed down through the generations. The problem, of course, is that tradition by itself is no criterion of reasonableness.

When I was in high school, two of the things that could get me going on a rant were the uselessness and irrationality of pennies and the fact that we don't include sales taxes in our prices. Apparently, others are starting to speak out too:

And if you're worried that this would be "unpatriotic," suck it, it's been done before:

Now, before you go rid the world of pennies, be careful where you try to dispose of them:

The Chinese Room Thought Experiment

2011-12-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

The rise of computers in the 20th century, and especially their exponentially increasing computational capacity and speed, has gotten many curious minds to speculate as to whether it is possible at some point to create computers that can think. Those who believe in things like the computational singularity, such as David Chalmers, think it's just a matter of time before we have to bow down to our new mechanized overlords.

Here is a Philosophy Bites interview with Chalmers on just such a question:

Others, like philosopher John Searle, however, think that, given everything we know about computation, it is impossible, even in principle, for computers ever to think, no matter their computational capacity. To prove this point, Searle came up with what has come to be regarded, by supporters and detractors alike, as a classic thought experiment: the Chinese room, which you get to learn about in the following 60 seconds.

For more on questions of mind, consciousness, personal identity, etc., visit the Brainspotting tag.

Inside Nature's Giants - The Big Cats

2011-12-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

Their loud and guttural roars can send chills up and down your spine, even from great distances. If they're running for you, and you're not protected by some sort of fence, you're dinner. If giraffes, crocodiles, zebras, wildebeests and elephants all succumb to these cats' strong jaws and sharp teeth and claws, you don't stand a chance.

Lions and tigers are the largest felines in the world, and becoming top predators has required the development of some impressive adaptations.

Continuing with the Inside Nature's Giants series, the team dissects a lion and a tiger to understand the details of the anatomy and physiology of the hunt, starting with a dissection of the larynx (which produces those frightening roars), and making their way to understand their retractable claws, their muscular bodies and their powerful jaws and sharp teeth.

And while dissecting a tiger is basically enough to get a decent understanding of their evolutionary success, lions are a different story, particularly because their survival depends upon social cohesion and cooperation, since it is not unusual for them to have to take down some massive pray that no single lion could do on his/her own. But their strict social hierarchies also have some disturbing consequences...

Watching these documentaries helps me realize that I would not survive in the wild...

Rick Perry - Swrong

2011-12-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

You may have seen, and been shocked by, the recent Rick Perry ad in which he came out (get it?) and made his religious lunacy and homophobia explicit on national television. Many people originally thought this had to be some sort of joke: no sane person would ever be dumb enough to publicly announce the basis of his candidacy on the outright intolerant bigotry inherited from a bunch of barely literate goat herders. Then again, Perry is not sane, or smart (here's proof of his idiocy).

Of course, his latent and repressed homosexuality was betrayed by his fashion statement, as he was wearing--and you just can't make shit up like this: a jacket almost identical to one of the gay characters from Brokeback Mountain, which was just fabulous :)

Anyway, here's the now infamous ad that became a meme machine:

Those statements about faith are just what you would expect from the same idiot who decided, when his state was confronted with a massive drought, to pray for rain. That's what he did. I kid you not, and how well did that work out? Oh, right...

Anyway, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. Here he is engaging in a little thoughtful introspection and self-reflection:

And yes, while the message seems to be all backwards, maybe you missed the more subtle points. Pay attention again and see if you can find the subliminal message this time:

Regardless of his real position, pretending to represent Christianity kind of doesn't work when Jesus can speak for himself:

And if we really want to generalize as to who's responsible for the real problems, well, you're probably not going to like the truth, you god-fearing vagina penetrators...

And talking about disenfranchised groups, who's standing up for dinosaurs? This guy:

There may be a lot of stupidity on the internet, but thankfully there's also great opportunity for individuals to stand up and make fun of the retarded ideas of a guy who wants access to 21st century state-of-the-art weaponry while having backward stone-age beliefs...

Miniatur Wunderland

2011-12-09T09:53:00.000-05:00

If for some reason you ever get to visit Hamburg, you'll definitely want to reserve some time to visit Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest model railway in the world. You've probably seen the traditional model railway before, but you've never seen one quite like this. Sure, there are moving trains and nice landscapes, but it also includes computerized action sequences that take place in the miniature equivalent of various actual cities and tourist attractions around the world. Just check out the video, I guarantee you'll be impressed.

Any of you, dear readers, live close to the Hamburg area and have an extra couch I could crash in if I ever manage to make my way over there? :)

The "War on Christmas" Begins Again...

2011-12-07T13:30:00.001-05:00

When Thanksgiving rolls around, there are a few things I don't want to look forward to, even though deep down inside I know are inevitable: bad Christmas music (virtually all of it), the commercialization of yet another holiday, and the self-victimization of Conservatives who refuse to acknowledge that we live in a pluralistic society. This is the so-called War on Christmas (about which we've reported before with the comedic genius of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert respectively).

The latest set of lame arguments tries to go the patriotic route by claiming that Christmas has been, even before the inception of this nation, an American tradition.

Well, these idiots are about to get schooled :)

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Of course, the worst part of it all is that it's all just a big distraction from the real problems we fail to acknowledge and confront. Makes me mad :(

Bach Visualized Through Math

2011-12-06T09:18:00.001-05:00

You've no doubt heard the claim that some of the greatest musicians of all time had an intuitive sense for mathematical proportion and harmony. It's no coincidence, for instance, that the musical scale was invented by that most eccentric of mathematicians, Pythagoras.

And if you're familiar with your Leibniz, you might remember that he once claimed that "music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."

Well, the following animation beautifully illustrates this abstract claim in as concrete a way as it is possible to do...

And if you need the sound of a more familiar rendition, we aim to please:

And why stop at music? Take a look at the the fibonacci sequence throughout nature.

May your day be blessed with beauty... and math :)

Shelly Kagan vs William Lane Craig - Is God Necessary for Morality?

2011-12-05T07:29:00.000-05:00

It's been well understood by philosophers for the past 2,500 years, thanks to Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, that there is ultimately no real connection between God or religion and an objectively binding morality: the latter can exist without the former, and the former only gets to be considered good in virtue of the independence of the latter (otherwise we just have a viciously circular argument).

Nevertheless, the idea that morality depends on God is still just as popular as ever, and it is even held by some otherwise intelligent people, one of whom is William Lane Craig, who, in the following debate against philosopher Shelly Kagan, articulates better than most this seemingly obvious but ultimately self-defeating position.

The interesting thing to notice in this debate is how easily Kagan sweeps the floor with Craig's black and white thinking, appeals to consequences, arguments from personal incredulity, and other fallacious presuppositions. It's an intellectual bloodbath well worth watching...

For a different take on this issue, you can also watch William Lane Craig debate philosopher Louise Antony. Craig's arguments are, if I remember correctly, exactly the same, but Antony's take is different from Kagan's, and brings in a different way to counter Craig's wild assertions.

Can Ants Count?

2011-12-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

Ants typically rely on chemical trails to orient themselves and their sisters to and from their colony. In the desert, however, chemical trails are too costly and inefficient, so how do ants forage and make it back home, especially when it's virtually impossible to rely on landmarks that may or may not be there later?

Well, scientists have known for a long time that ants have a good sense of direction and can use celestial markers to orient themselves, but that still leaves open the question of distance, so how do they measure that? Robert Krulwich decided to talk to someone who may have figured it out:

Awesome, but I'm not fully convinced yet. They'd have to eliminate the possibility that the ants can measure the amount of time it takes them to get from one place to another (instead of the number of steps they take) in order to say that the pedometer hypothesis is the correct one. Still, those experiments are really interesting, if somewhat cruel :(

Check out The Lord of the Ants (that would be E.O. Wilson), a hilarious conversation between Wilson and Krulwich about what you can learn about ants by messing with their tiny minds, or the jaw-dropping civilizations these impressive insects can build for themselves.
.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tysoon

2011-12-02T09:51:00.001-05:00

So what do you get when you mix up a smart comedian (like Stephen Colbert) and a fun and eloquent popularizer of science (like Neil deGrasse Tyson)?

Answer: one and a half hour of thought-provoking and funny awesomeness.

Enjoy your weekend.

I would have still included a philosopher to help Tyson through some of those tough Colbert questions regarding the value of knowledge, but that's just me.

Damon Horowitz - Philosophy in Prison

2011-12-01T10:22:00.000-05:00

As you probably already know from this blog, TEDTalks are awesome: bring in some of the greatest minds in the world, working on the greatest and most interesting questions, with the best and most creative ideas, give them 18 minutes, and they will awe and wow you.

Well, when they brought in philosopher Damon Horowitz, he only needed about three minutes to inspire a standing ovation and blow everyone out of the water in what can only be described as one of the best TEDTalks of all time...

But you don't have to be in prison to study philosophy and be free. There are plenty of other practical reasons for deciding to study this mother of all intellectual disciplines.

Inside Nature's Giants - Polar Bear

2011-11-30T10:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-29T09:49:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-23T10:26:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-21T20:55:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-21T09:49:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

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:

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

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

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

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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

2011-11-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-15T19:55:00.001-05:00

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.

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

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

2011-11-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-14T09:08:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-10T21:06:00.000-05:00

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...

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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

2011-11-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-08T11:34:00.000-05:00

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 +

2011-11-07T21:52:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-07T08:59:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

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

2011-11-03T09:46:00.000-04:00

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:

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And here's the dramatic conclusion

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Hilarious :)

Phil Plait - An Asteroid Impact Can Ruin Your Day

2011-11-02T10:22:00.000-04:00

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.

Awkward Halloween Moments

2011-10-31T14:53:00.000-04:00

Reposted from ReverendFun.com

When Pat Robertson Is the Moderate Among Conservatives

2011-10-31T10:51:00.000-04:00

It would be no exaggeration to claim that the Republican Party is full of extremist ideologues. One clear example would be the fact that there have been times when people like former President-of-the-National-Rifle-Association-you'll-only-take-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-hands-Charles-Heston have been the voice of reason among conservatives.

But just to prove how bat-shit insane the GOP is becoming, the person now urging them to tone down the crazy is none other than Pat "gays cause hurricanes" Robertson...

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The 180 Club... love it :)

Science - What's It Up To?

2011-10-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

Science claims to be looking for cures for diseases, save the planet from the multiple dangers that threaten it, and to want to solve and understand the mysteries of the universe, but Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, sat down with a conservative conspiracy theorist bimbo to try to uncover what science is really up to... and discovers instead that you can't underestimate how bat-shit-insane and idiotic you can be when you let your retarded ideology determine the shit that comes out of your mouth...

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Wow... and I thought Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann were idiots...

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

2011-10-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

"Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet, just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the idea. They fear that a biological understanding of the mind will be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, dissolve personal responsibility and strip life of meaning and purpose.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker (bestselling author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, and The Better Angels of Our Nature) explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings.

He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmatic myths: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has an immaterial soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from scientific discoveries about human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hard-headed analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts."

Since this lecture is so freaking good, it may be the only blog entry for this week, so I hope you enjoy and make the best of it.

Michael Winslow - Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin

2011-10-21T10:35:00.000-04:00

In the animal kingdom, there is no sound imitator quite like the lyre bird. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've got to check this out.

But if there is anyone who might be able to outperform the lyre bird, it would have to be Michael Winslow (Sgt. Larvell Jones from Police Academy, in case you don't remember).

In the following clip, which starts as some ordinary beatboxing, Winslow manages to invoke the spirit of some of the most radical electric guitar you have ever heard, and he's just getting started...

I never realized just how talented this dude is... I always assumed that the sound effects in Police Academy were exactly that, just sound effects. I stand humbly corrected.

Herman Cain's Nine Nine Nein Nein Plan

2011-10-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

I don't know why it is that (with the possible exception of John Huntsman) virtually every Republican candidate does better with their base whenever they make irresponsible, racist, bigoted and divisive remarks, or when they dismiss the value of education, critical thinking and/or scientific research.

In Herman Cain's bizarro pizza world, difficult and complex economic, social and political problems ought to be solved by appealing to solutions based on empty soundbites (after all, the man is proud of his disdain for reading, erudition and having complex thoughts), and whenever that doesn't work, he thinks we ought to just fry a couple of Mexicans...

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If he were to build that fence, I wouldn't be surprised if he made sure the signs were written in English...

But why stop with Mexicans when you can discriminate against Americans too?

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The Impossibility of Motion - Achilles and the Tortoise

2011-10-19T10:39:00.000-04:00

There are many things most of us just take for granted as obvious or just plain common sense, and therefore as not worth wasting our time on. Philosophers, however, nit-picking bunch that we are, are insatiably curious, and in our search for some coherent grand theory of everything, usually mange to find trouble instead, of the conceptual kind, although there is also a respectable history of weird philosophers' deaths, which you may find interesting.

When you question what others take as self-evident, you may come to realize that what we take to be real may be anything but. If you can spare 60 seconds, the following animation demonstrates one of Zeno's famous paradoxes of motion proposed to support his mentor Parmenides' thesis that "all is one" and that change is impossible.

According to this paradox,if you think that it is possible for something to move from point A to point B, you've got to be kidding... and you haven't actually "thought" anything...

And for a more comprehensive introduction to, and analysis of, Zeno's paradoxes, check out the article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Think God Out of Existence

2011-10-18T10:24:00.000-04:00

Based on the video excerpt from Bad Boy Bubby below (a movie I've never actually seen myself), it looks as though movie director Rolf de Heer has been reading some interesting combination of Democritian, Epicurian and Lucretian atomic materialism and hedonism mixed in with some 20th century existentialist philosophy and informed by the philosophical problem of evil to produce a thought-provoking call to arms for atheism...

Or maybe I'm reading too much into this scene...

Of course, if you think there is no God, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be angry at it...

Anyway, here's the script:

"You see, no one's going to help you Bubby, because there isn't anybody out there to do it. No one. We're all just complicated arrangements of atoms and subatomic particles - we don't live. But our atoms do move about in such a way as to give us identity and consciousness. We don't die; our atoms just rearrange themselves. There is no God. There can be no God; it's ridiculous to think in terms of a superior being. An inferior being, maybe, because we, we who don't even exist, we arrange our lives with more order and harmony than God ever arranged the earth. We measure; we plot; we create wonderful new things. We are the architects of our own existence. What a lunatic concept to bow down before a God who slaughters millions of innocent children, slowly and agonizingly starves them to death, beats them, tortures them, rejects them. What folly to even think that we should not insult such a God, damn him, think him out of existence. It is our duty to think God out of existence. It is our duty to insult him. Fuck you, God! Strike me down if you dare, you tyrant, you non-existent fraud! It is the duty of all human beings to think God out of existence. Then we have a future. Because then - and only then - do we take full responsibility for who we are. And that's what you must do, Bubby: think God out of existence; take responsibility for who you are."

Jae Rhim Lee - My Mushroom Burial Suit

2011-10-17T10:10:00.000-04:00

Death is not exactly one of the most pleasant topics of discussion, but it is an inescapable and universal aspect of life that we cannot avoid indefinitely. In the West, we tend to think that the appropriate thing to do with the bodies of the dead is to either cremate them or bury them in a coffin that's virtually hermetically sealed. Herodotus tells us that the Callatians used to make a meal out of their dead begetters.

Of the three choices, and despite its apparent gruesomeness, I think the Callatians have the best argument in their favor (assuming their relatives did not die of disease). Cremation is not environmentally friendly (to say the least, since it requires massive amounts of fuel to burn, and ends up releasing all the nasty chemicals that have accumulated in your body over the years into the air that the rest of us have to breathe), and burying the dead in sealed coffins guarantees that our bodies will benefit a bunch of maggots that will not themselves contribute to further the cycle of life (since they're also stuck inside the stupid box), and that's no way to live... err... die... end... whatever...

I personally favor donating one's body for organ transplants, or to science for research. Jae Rhim Lee thinks that if you want to do your part to be environmentally friendly, even after you die, you might be interested in her mushroom burial suit, which contains toxic-gobbling mushrooms and other interesting goodies.

Oh, and did I forget to mention you'd go out making a fashion statement? :)

George Carlin - Pro-Life, Abortion & the Sanctity of Life

2011-10-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

In my cursory and anecdotal study of human nature, I've noticed that those most loud and sure about their own opinions tend to love to vilify the views of others instead of fairly assessing and evaluating alternative points of view. Aristotle once said that it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain various points of view on the same subject without necessarily accepting them, and I tend to think he was right about that.

Needless to say, many of these self-righteous and close-minded ideologues love to preach and to pontificate, and they tend to never wonder whether keeping an open mind and being critically curious might not be a better alternative to having made up one's mind before having sufficient evidence to draw a conclusion one way or the other.

And because these folks rarely question whether their strongly-held views are consistent with each other, people like comedian George Carlin (doing the modern comedic equivalent of Socrates' job as a gadfly) get to put them on the spot and make an awesome mockery of the incoherence and inconsistency of their views, as he does on this skit about abortion, animal rights, religion, and the sanctity of life... You've been warned :)

One could lead a few lectures on Nietzsche's hermeneutic circle; Hobbes' psychological egoism, contractarianism and his theory of rights; Peter Singer's views on abortion, utilitarianism, animal rights, and much more just off these 12 minutes... Thanks, George Carlin!

For more on our inevitably biased point of view, check out Douglas Adams meditate on where the concept of God comes from.

And remember, chickens are decent people, so please be kinder to them and other animals.

Farm to Fridge - The Truth Behind Meat Production

2011-10-11T10:07:00.000-04:00

We all like to think we're good people, but sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between an accurate description of ourselves and wishful thinking. When you think of yourself as a good person, you're probably thinking that the fact that you've never killed anyone ought to count in your favor... except that there is a very good chance that you are a direct contributor to a system in which innocent beings are treated under cruel and debilitating conditions before they are slaughtered in ways that you would not wish upon your worst enemy. And the justification for these barbaric practices? It's not a question of survival, it's just a question of taste.

I'm not one to stand for cheap appeals to emotion instead of good reasoning. Feelings are unreliable guides to philosophical and empirical questions, and unless you have a decent understanding of when they're reliable and when they're not, feelings have no chance of standing as the criteria of moral judgments. That being said, and as David Hume argued in his ethical theory, reason cannot aspire to have the same motivating impact as sentiments do, so when reasons will not do by themselves what's necessary for us to behave in more ethical and humane ways, maybe it's time to accompany them with some visceral reality.

The following clip illustrates some of the ways in which countless animals are treated by our factory-farming practices (and be warned: there is some seriously disturbing imagery). Terms like cruel and unusual do not apply here, since the usual is the problem.

If you don't have the will-power to become a vegetarian or vegan overnight (and count me in that camp), maybe you can take some gradual steps to lessen your unethical footprint: eat less meat than you do now, consume free-range instead of factory-farmed meat, buy locally grown organic food, etc. This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing either/or kind of situation. There's always room for ethical improvement, and every little bit counts.

And before you start rationalizing your own meat-eating behavior in the kind of disingenuous ways that Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as bad-faith, just read this classic piece by philosopher Peter Singer carefully first, be honest with yourself, and then we'll talk...

And for more fascinating and important readings, check out the Animal Rights Library.

Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters to Support Palin

2011-10-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

I know she's not running now... my hopes for a 2012 Palin/Bachmann dream team ticket have now been ruined, but I wouldn't be surprised if we somehow managed to vote her in just out of a morbid sense of curiosity to see just how bad things could actually get if this bimbo were in office.

The Onion reports that, in fact, this is exactly what the American electorate would probably do:

iSad

2011-10-07T09:25:00.000-04:00

Sad news for the world of technology and design. Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple, has passed away at age 56. He's credited with having revolutionized multiple industries multiple times, and with inspiring an entire generation of innovators and designers to let their creativity take them to new frontiers.

I've personally never made the switch over to Apple products (can't afford those cool expensive gadgets on my meager adjunct salary), other than the ipod, but I seriously can't imagine my life without it. Over the years, through podcasts, audio-books and iTunes U, it's become an extension of my mind and body that goes with me everywhere I go, keeps me educated and prevents me from going insane. Thanks, Steve Jobs.

Sarah Palin & Michelle Bachmann - Fillin' In

2011-10-06T09:34:00.002-04:00

Well, after recently claiming that being the President of the United States would only diminish her need for absolute power, it should come as no surprise to anyone that mavericky grizzly momma bear from bizarro world, Sarah Palin, has announced she will not be seeking the presidential nomination for the Republican Party. One-toothed tea-baggers must be heartbroken :)

In any case, the following hilarious animations shows us what a Palin-Bachmann ticket might have looked like:

De-regulatin' :)

The Kalam Cosmological Argument 2.0

2011-10-05T08:51:00.000-04:00

Religious apologists are like magicians: they trick you into believing they're accomplished something philosophically profound and real (like 'proving' that some stone-age God exists), and then they pull a rabbit out of their magical hat (telling you exactly what that God does and doesn't want you to do, what kind of sexual activities it's okay for you to engage on, who you have to discriminate against, etc.). Jesus and Mo capture this lunacy hilariously:

Geoffrey Warnock on Kant

2011-10-04T10:21:00.000-04:00

Imagine if the conceptual basis of just about every single belief you ever had, not just as a layman but as a professional and conscientious intellectual, were suddenly shattered by the writings of a single man? That's exactly what happened to Immanuel Kant when he read the work of David Hume.

To his credit, and despite the tremendous existential angst he must have experienced as a result of reading the skeptical arguments proposed by the Scotsman, Kant recognized that Hume had to be taken seriously, and subsequently spent the rest of his mature career trying to overcome the problems posed by Hume. Whether or to what extent Kant succeeded in refuting Hume is still a matter of debate, but no one can deny that in his attempt, Kant would become the one of the most important and influential philosophers of all time, perhaps second only to Aristotle.

Here to discuss the history, importance, breadth and influence of this German thinker are philosophers Bryan Magee and Geoffrey Warnock:

And for more on these fascinating discussions, check out the Bryan Magee tag.

Sarah Palin: Being President Would Diminish My Power

2011-10-03T09:17:00.000-04:00

I don't know too much about what Sarah Palin was like before she became known outside of Alaska, but I do know that she's become one of the biggest attention whores of our time, all while curiously decrying how the 'lame-stream media' is always trying to silence her. This, by the way, is the very same media that follows her around constantly, tries to interview her every time a fly drops, and pays her obscene amounts of cash so that she can spew her incoherent nonsense all over the American airwaves.

So, it should come as no surprise that as soon as Republicans start wondering about possible new candidates (because they realize the current ones all suck), Sarah Palin needs to bring the spotlight back to herself, in literally less than a minute! But that's not enough: her twisted self-victimization mentality actually has her convinced that being President of the United Freaking States would just be another way that others would use to shut her up. Poor baby...

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Holy shit! She's out there trying to get people to THINK??????

And she thinks she is a maverick and a rogue. I wonder what she thinks those words mean...

Ben Goldacre - Battling Bad Science

2011-09-30T12:48:00.002-04:00

It's hard to understate the number of misleading health reports and health advice out there. First there's the problem of alternative-medicine quacks (visit the Enemies of Reason tag to learn more about them); then there are also problems with misleading journalistic reports that confuse some shallow correlation with a causal connection; then we have pharmaceutical companies who publish only results favorable to their products while keeping those that aren't as confidential under legal technicalities like trade secrets; then we have scientists who don't always conduct sufficiently rigorous studies and experiments; etc.

Thankfully, there are people like Ben Goldacre, who in this TEDTalk presentation exposes some of the ways in which industries and journalists can distort evidence and statistics to get you to buy their products, or to scare you from buying products from their competitors, or just to sell more copies of their journals and keep their ratings going, etc.

And you can't miss Ben Goldacre's awesome rant on the placebo and nocebo effects.

Wanna Live Forever? Become a Noun

2011-09-29T22:52:00.000-04:00

Woody Allen once quipped that while most people want to achieve immortality through their work, he'd rather achieve it through not dying. I think I'm with him on that one, but while we wait for people like Aubrey De Grey to figure out how to achieve radical life extension, your best next bet might be to do something remarkable so that your name is forever associated with your contribution.

So, try to do it right because, as Robert Krulwich and Adam Cole show in the following song, if you don't, you'll achieve infamy and no one will like you... forever!

If you want the fuller version, you'll want to listen to this:

And for a sample of people who achieved immortality by becoming nouns, check out the following photo essay

And for more info on these folks, visit Life.

Elizabeth Warren Is Awesome

2011-09-29T09:24:00.000-04:00

Part of my growing opposition to libertarianism and political conservatism is due to the fact that they are shallow and myopic philosophies based on the unrealistic illusion of self-sufficiency and individual isolationism, and I don't think that these approaches to political philosophy are worthy of people whose brains are fully functional.

And I don't know if the picture above is an indication that Elizabeth Warren has been reading John Rawls lately or not, but it beautifully and concisely captures part of the essence of what's wrong with the childish dreams of libertarianism and fiscal conservatism.

Anyway, if you don't know who she is, she's that rare combination of a compassionate heart that bleeds for the little people, while also armed with an acute corruption radar that's not afraid to call it as she sees it without losing her cool. Here are a few clips with Jon Stewart, who wants to make out with her :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Here's another interview:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The interview continues:

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And here she is talking with Colbert:

The Colbert Report
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If you're interested in a philosophical approach that takes seriously the rights of individuals, check out a lecture on Robert Nozick, or this lecture on how Nozick and Rawls duked it out philosophically.

Back in Black - Threats to America's Children

2011-09-28T09:49:00.000-04:00

So, "Dr." Oz, quack-alternative-medicine peddler, started a fear mongering campaign about a week ago scaring parents all over the country with the idea that apple juice is loaded with 'lethal' amounts of arsenic. As it turns out, Oz didn't distinguish between inorganic arsenic, which really is toxic, and organic arsenic, which isn't toxic.

Now, you might think "innocent mistake, anyone could have failed to make the distinction," and that would be right. The problem, however, is that Oz was made aware of this fact by the FDA almost a whole week before he aired his show, so we're not dealing with ignorance and incompetence here (well, we are...) but also with deceitful manipulation and corruption. Lewis Black has some choice words for this and other fear-mongering assholes:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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By the way, if you ever find yourself competing in Dancing with the Stars, that's a pretty good indication that you're not a star... you're a has-been... or a never-was :)

Anyway, talking about possible threats to children's fragile psyches, guess what happened in Dancing with the Stars:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Wow... those Fox & Friends people are uptight :)

Slinky Physics

2011-09-27T09:49:00.000-04:00

In the past, we've learned a few awesome things about pendulum waves and about the physics and philosophical questions raised by Foucault's pendulum, but there are plenty of other simple objects and experiments that can teach us fascinating and thought-provoking lessons about physics and physical principles, many of which can be done from the comfort of your own home.

Today we have a curious question about what would happen to the bottom of a slinky if you extended it from the top and then dropped it.

Before we move on to the answer, care to guess and explain your guess?

Care to guess again?

Now go show all your friends!

Via Bad Astronomy

Lecture 8 - Personal Identity

2011-09-26T10:15:00.000-04:00

Science is great when it comes to discoveries and studies about the physical world. It requires lots of work and dedication, analytic skills to test various hypotheses, and a wealth of creativity to figure out how to conduct experiments to tell the merits of one explanation from those of another. For all of that, however, and without implying any denigration, it's also somewhat easy because you have the physical world itself to check your results against. If you think dropping heavy objects will float, the universe itself will let you know you're wrong...

Philosophical research, on the other hand, is more difficult because the object of our studies is concepts, and concepts will not smack you upside the head when you're wrong. Take one simple example for comparison: in science, you might study how something changes, and you can easily imagine the set of tools you might need to do the job. In philosophy, you'd study the nature of change itself. How on earth do you do that???

And the investigation of change is one of the philosophical questions par excellence, tracing its history all the way back to Heraclitus and Parmenides. In this final lecture, Professor Millican explores the question of personal identity: assuming that you do exist, what does it mean to say that your past self and your present self are the same person? How can it be the case that something that changes is still the same thing? That sounds like a logical contradiction, and yet pre-reflectively at least, this is what we all assume to be true.

Click here to see the course slides

And more awesome stuff on this and related questions, check out the Brainspotting tag.

West Bank Story - Challahfax vs. Halalifax

2011-09-24T10:45:00.000-04:00

I seriously don't understand how Israel has managed to get away with human rights violations of Palestinians for as long as it has, or why everyone (other than the US) turns a blind eye to the shit they pull on a regular basis. I get, and agree, that the Jews have a right to have their own state, but by that very same token, shouldn't they be able to recognize that the same rights should be extended to the people that previously inhabited they land they now possess?

Lots of people have tried to find solutions to the bloodshed. Jon Stewart thinks that the conflict could be averted if maybe Palestine changed its name to Palestein, which is kind of brilliant, but John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi are not so optimistic...

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By the way, has anyone else noticed that Netanyahu's wife looks like Fiona from Shrek? :)

A Few Gay Men - The Gayest Penetration

2011-09-23T15:24:00.001-04:00

I just don't get people sometimes. Religious conservatives base their opposition to homosexuality primarily on the Old Testament, where you can easily find injunctions and orders to kill the gays. So, you would think that if gays wanted to serve in the military (and run the risk of possibly getting killed in action protecting the same country that denies them many rights most of us take for granted) conservatives would be happy to let them run that risk...

Instead, for the last two decades we've decided to discriminate against them. Fortunately, the dark history of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is finally over, and Jon Stewart has a few things to share:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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And so does Colbert:

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Inside Nature's Giants - Giant Squid

2011-09-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

It wasn't uncommon just a few centuries ago for sailors to tell tales of gigantic sea monsters whose tentacles would crush entire ships. Jules Verne's version of this monster as it attacked Captain Nemo's Nautilus is probably a good example of the kind of thing many people used to believe. Now, while it might be possible for giant squids to really be as large as those old accounts, the largest documented case, as far as I know, puts these creatures at 18 meters in length (59 feet) with a 5 meter mantle (16.4 feet). It may not compare to the tales of old, but I'm certainly impressed.

In today's installment of the fascinating documentary series Inside Nature's Giants, our intrepid scientists get their hands on a beautiful deep-water specimen and attempt to understand its anatomy, physiology and evolutionary history. The secrets hidden inside the body of this and other related creatures are a testament to the ingenuity of the evolutionary process. Forget the aliens of science fiction... reality kicks their ass.

Check out a battle to the death between a shark and an octopus

Religious Fundamentalists Are the Ultimate Nerds

2011-09-20T09:41:00.000-04:00

When you think of a nerd, you probably have a very specific image in your mind of someone who wears thick glasses and lacks physical and social grace, but if you were to think about the general qualities that characterize a nerd, you'd find things like borderline-insane obsession with very narrow pursuits, a general inability to relate to folks who don't share their passions, a megalomaniacal sense of self-importance because they happen to hold what they mistakenly believe to be some ultimate and transcendent truth, virtually zero athletic prowess, a tendency to interpret fiction as facts... and probably not much in the way of pre-marital sex.

And if you think about other groups to which these features apply, you'd realize that religious fundamentalists are the ultimate nerds...

But that's not all true... Catholic priests have plenty of sex :)

David Sloan Wilson - Religion and Other Meaning Systems

2011-09-16T09:38:00.001-04:00

Even though I'm not as vociferous about my antagonism toward religious belief as people like Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne or Bill Maher, my feelings on the subject are probably not all that different from theirs. Arguing about supernatural nonsense on ethical terms is easy, and it's only in cases of forced special pleading and unjustifiable double standards that we are willing to let religiosity get away with things that we would not grant to any other kind of ideology or belief system.

But here is a possible risk that we secularists ought to be careful about: if we want to be able to explain why religions exist and thrive, we can't let our opposition to religion be the guide. It's easy to want to argue, a la Richard Dawkins, that religion is probably just a by-product of a natural instinct to want to trust parental figures because overall that tends to work out better than the alternative. It's also easy to argue, a la Daniel Dennett, that maybe religion is the cultural and memetic equivalent of a virus that seeks to further its own interests without regard for those of its host.

Such maybes are interesting, but without more than anecdotal evidence, they are fun speculation but not very scientific. Enter David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist from Binghamton University, who has been working on the scientific study of the evolution of religion (among a plethora of other cultural phenomena) for at least a decade.

In the following fascinating and thought-provoking lecture, he clarifies a lot of important evolutionary concepts, such as the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations, neatly organizes the different kinds of hypotheses offered to explain the evolution of religion (and other meaning systems), explains how they can be framed scientifically so as to be testable, and continues to discuss some of the evidence supporting a few of these hypotheses. The man doesn't know how not to be interesting :)

And just in case the youtube version disappears at some point, here's the original:

In the interests of full disclosure, I studied evolutionary theory under Dr. Wilson, who is objectively awesome, so no bias here :)

You Are Not So Smart - PRO-CRAS-TI-NATION

2011-09-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite blogs out there is You Are Not So Smart. Based on scientific developments in fields like cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, it's a fun and accessible exploration of the many ways in which our minds predictably fail us because of the many cognitive biases to which we are naturally prone and the logical fallacies we commit without even realizing it.

If you consistently manage to make the same wrong choice, for instance, the problem might have more to do with the fact that you don't understand the problem and/or yourself (and how your animal mind works) well enough to figure out what approach to take than with things like will power, self-control or even luck. One of the ways out of these mental traps is to engage in some metacognition: thinking about the process of thinking itself, but you need some background knowledge, and that's exactly what you can find in the blog, or soon, in its upcoming book.

Anyway, here's a taste of the awesomeness, explaining why we procrastinate, and how we might be able to go about avoiding this fun but ultimately self-defeating habit.

I won't be mad if anyone wants to get me a copy of the book when it comes out :)

Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide" (previously featured here) is also a great read.

Remembering 9/11 - Imagine No Religion

2011-09-11T13:18:00.001-04:00

Today marks the 10th anniversary of that surreal and catastrophic day that will be forever marked in our collective and individual memories. Needless to say, my heart and thoughts are with everyone affected by that tragedy.

But I think this day also presents an opportunity to meditate and reflect on what philosophers refer to sometimes as the ethics of belief, and the question of our moral responsibility for holding the beliefs we hold.

Beliefs don't just exist in some mental vacuum separate from the physical world. They express themselves all the time in our behavior, our actions and our choices. Those planes crashed into the Towers because some people had certain ideas in their minds, and since our actions almost always have the potential to affect others, then a pretty good case could be made that we have a certain set of moral obligations for making sure that our beliefs are well justified by strong standards of evidence and reason, and NOT by whether they simply make us feel good, by whether they give us hope or comfort in our time of spiritual need, by whether they are dictated by some presumed authority figure, or by whether they conform to tradition.

And when you think about it, you may come to realize that the massacre that took place ten years ago would not have taken place if it weren't for the mental and psychological poison of religion. Whatever hope for redemption or salvation it may provide, religion offers the empty promise of an after-life at the real cost of your intellectual maturity and even at the cost of your real ethical values and your own moral compass. Steven Weinberg has often said that good people will do good things, and that evil people will do evil things, but that for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. And I would add that if it weren't for religion, 9/11 would not have happened. Think about it.

Honor all those whose lives were destroyed on 9/11 by start thinking for yourself and by taking responsibility for your own actions. Let's stop hiding behind the veil of excuses we call religion and faith.

The Republican Debate in 45 Seconds

2011-09-09T11:01:00.004-04:00

In case you missed the GOP debate the other night as I did, here are the highlights:

I don't think my small brain can handle the intricacy and complexity of these ideas...

Peter Singer vs John Lennox - Is There a God?

2011-09-08T10:37:00.000-04:00

Most public academic debates concerning the existence of God tend to feature religious apologists who propose sophisticated philosophical arguments for the existence of a supernatural or transcendent Being. Here is where we're exposed to things like the ontological argument, the argument from necessity and contingency, the kalam cosmological argument, the moral argument, Pascal's wager, the argument from design or its fine-tuning cousin, etc.

There is something disingenuous about such approaches, however, because the Gods these apologists believe in go way beyond the scope of their own philosophical arguments. Finding a necessary being (or a first uncaused cause or a fine-tuner or a transcendent, immaterial mind or whatever they want to claim) in no way tells us that therefore Mary got knocked up immaculately, that Joseph Smith wasn't just a charlatan and a fraud, that Mohammed wasn't really a pedophile, that Jesus resurrected and ascended to heaven, or that evolution is just an illusion perpetrated by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Even if these arguments could establish the existence of some sort of supernatural transcendence (and you can be the judge of that yourself), these arguments utterly fail to tell us anything substantial about the nature of said transcendence: whether it's one being or many, whether it's personal or merely abstract, whether it's concerned with human affairs, whether it interacts with the physical universe, or whether it's interested in having a personal relationship with you.

So, it is kind of ironically refreshing in a way to see in the following debate with philosopher Peter Singer, that Oxford mathematician John Lennox tries to argue quite explicitly (and without much mental prestidigitation) for the existence of the Christian God specifically and not just the so-called philosopher's God (a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent being), as other apologists tend to do in their dishonest attempt to seem intellectually sophisticated while defending utterly primitive and irrational beliefs inherited from illiterate goat herders. Whether he succeeds, of course, is another story, but the exchange between the two thinkers is cordial and amiable, and quite interesting as well.

I'll post the debate between Lennox and Richard Dawkins in a few weeks, so stay tuned.

Jonathan Drori - The Beautiful Tricks of Flowers

2011-09-07T10:46:00.000-04:00

In the game of evolution, the winners are those who successfully manage to survive and reproduce, and one of the best ways to do the latter is sexually. If you simply made perfect copies of yourself, there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity in your offspring to be protected against newly evolving pressures. Sexual reproduction provides some of the shuffling necessary for the evolution of successful adaptations by providing some genetic diversity. Of course, if you're human, you kind of have the gist of how sexual reproduction takes place.

But how would you manage to have sex if you were a plant and were consigned for life to remain in the same place? Well, Jonathan Drori is here in this fascinating TEDTalk Presentation to explain and show some of the incredible adaptations that plants have evolved in order to make sure that their seeds pay their evolutionary dividends. As you'll see, many of their strategies involve getting other species (insects, birds and even humans) to unwittingly behave in ways that benefit the genetic interests of the plants.

And the plants, of course, don't care whether they achieve their ends through voluntary cooperation, bribery, force, deceit or brainwashing...

And if you want to see Darwin's moth, check it out

Crop Circles

2011-09-06T09:30:00.000-04:00

One of the most prevalent and insidious informal logical fallacies is the argument from personal incredulity: I personally can't explain x, therefore the explanation must be y (and y usually takes the form of God or aliens or ghosts, or some other arbitrarily chosen being). You should never take your own epistemic, cognitive and imaginative limitations as evidence of anything other than your own epistemic, cognitive and imaginative limitations...

When people can't imagine how ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids, for instance, their minds almost immediately go to aliens. It's worth remembering, however, that monuments like Stonehenge could be built by a single person with some primitive tools and lots of ingenuity, so when you have thousands of slaves, pyramids are a piece of cake.

So, when during the 70's, crop circles started appearing in rural England (and subsequently in other parts of the world), it should come as no surprise that many people took them to be proof of extraterrestrial intelligence visiting us (because when civilizations advanced enough to travel through the vastness of time-space need to communicate important messages to us, they do in wheat while no one can see them).

Tellingly, no messages actually appeared (other than a few vague passages about world peace and nuclear disarmament). When people thought that aliens would use the language of mathematics to communicate with us, the mathematical symbols drawn never superseded any mathematical knowledge that wasn't already available to human mathematicians, and only after mathematicians made new discoveries would such discoveries 'magically' start appearing. In the following clip, Stephen Fry gets into the silliness of this phenomenon.

What people don't get is that it wasn't aliens... it was the chupacabra :)

Richard Dawkins - So Who Was the First Person Really?

2011-09-02T06:08:00.000-04:00

Richard Dawkins is coming out with a great new illustrated book about how scientists come to have the knowledge they do, and it'll be released here in the US on my little niece's birthday, so guess what she'll be getting from her favorite uncle? :)

The following excerpt from the audio version of the book (read, as usual, by Dawkins himself and Lalla Ward) explores the kind of question that a young inquiring mind might ask her parents: who was the first person really?

Dawkins provides a wonderfully clear explanation not only of the answer but of the thought process required to try to come to grips with the significance of such a question. The greatest accomplishment, I think, is that the very same excerpt can be understood by children and it can stimulate adults to think about some of the philosophical implications of the answer, such as the sorites problem of what a species really is if no one's parents are ever members of a different species... and yet most of our ancestors do belong to different species.

Maybe I'll have to end up getting a copy for myself too :)

Update: Here's Dawkins briefly explaining what the book is about

Islam was created by Muhammad, for Muhammad?

2011-09-01T07:21:00.000-04:00

Have you ever noticed that one thing most religions and cults have in common, apart from all the supernatural and unfalsifiable claims they make, is that they tend to be so coincidentally convenient for the sake and benefit of their leaders?

What are the odds?!? Some dude claims to have knowledge of things the rest of us have no direct access to (and can't therefore refute through evidence), and this knowledge just happens to tell us that we must redistribute our wealth to him, or that he gets to have multiple wives while those schmucks not in power usually don't, or that we must go plunder someone else's land... and pass a substantial percentage of the booty and the virgins to the religious leaders, or that we must not covet our 'neighbor's' property (including his women) and all because that's what God wants us to do.

Must be magic... Yep, sounds totally believable. Sign me up!

The real miracle is that people fall for these cheap tricks...

The Story of Cap & Trade

2011-08-31T10:23:00.000-04:00

Here in the United States, a large percentage of our population seems to be increasingly obsessed with the 'invisible hand' of capitalism and the 'wisdom' of the free market. Interestingly, many of these folks are also the very same people who are highly skeptical (to say the least) of the 'wisdom' of the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. And of course, they'll try to rationalize away the cognitive dissonance with the kind of twisted logic one should expect in these scenarios.

But that's the point: while natural selection and the free market are incredibly good at eventually producing innovation, they do it at the cost of great losses for the majority of those fed into the grinder. There is no long-term foresight nor moral concern for anyone's welfare in these mechanisms. For everyone who survives and thrives in these systems, hundreds or thousands must perish, by necessity.

So, when large corporations (already involved in a tradition of corruption schemes) try to engineer 'environmental solutions' to the world's problems, we should be extremely cautious, not only that there might be corruption purposely or inadvertently built into the system somewhere along the line, but that the very nature of our understanding of the phenomenon in question becomes tarnished.

The main problem with so-called solutions like Cap & Trade, in my opinion, is not even the possibility of large-scale corruption: it's the fact that it filters our perception of the environment and natural resources so that we start to see them as commodities to be used, abused and manipulated for purely financial purposes. The value of people, animals and the environment is then understood in terms of how they contribute to the accumulation of wealth. If they don't contribute or feed into the system, they are then perceived to have no value, and if they have no value, they're not worth saving or fighting for.

Anyway, the following animation with Annie Leonard beautifully captures some of the devilish details built into the proposal of Cap & Trade and gives us some food for thought.

For more, check out The Story of Stuff or The Story of Bottled Water.

Hand Shadows

2011-08-26T10:47:00.024-04:00

I've been spending a fair amount of time preparing for a new class I'll be teaching this semester on Environmental Ethics, so I haven't had much time to prepare an intellectually stimulating entry for everyone today.

I do have, however, some aesthetically pleasing videos showing both the creativity of hand shadow artists and the ease with which our minds can create three-dimensional mental representations based on black & white, 2-dimensional surfaces...

And why don't we get a bit environmental too?

World of Class Warfare

2011-08-25T10:25:00.001-04:00

I have all kinds of philosophical problems with conservatism and the corruption of the GOP (and I'm increasingly finding it difficult to defend libertarianism with a straight face too, or anyone whose "philosophy" has been basically dictated by children's fiction writer Ayn Rand), but here is one thing I have to admire about Republicans:

Their uncanny ability to build the wealth of billionaires by screwing the poor, then to pull out the victim card and blame the poor for all of our economic problems, to get Congress to approve massive spending cuts in social programs for the needy while adamantly refusing to tax the super rich at even the same rate as the poor, and then to get the poor to elect them to office so they can get screwed all over again. Jon Stewart has more to say:

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives
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The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
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Lecture 7 - Free Will, Determinism, Choice and Moral Responsibility

2011-08-24T10:11:00.000-04:00

Ordinarily, we tend to think of our actions as freely chosen: we believe in free will. But if we get philosophical for a second, we have to start asking obvious questions, like what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be a choice? What does it mean for an action to be free? If all of nature is determined by physical law, and we are a part of nature, doesn't it follow that maybe our actions are just as determined, even though we may not always be aware of the causes antecedent to our actions? Hey, if we are indeed determined, how can the concept of moral responsibility make sense? Why praise or condemn someone for actions over which he has no real control? Can we make the choice to believe in free will?

In today's lecture, Professor Millican delves into these and other related questions, starting with the classic demarcation between libertarianism (not the political kind), determinism and compatibilism. As you'll see, the debate is just as alive, interesting and perplexing as ever...

Click here to see the course slides

My own leaning is toward the deterministic side of things (at least compatibilism and libertarianism make no sense to me at all), and even though that seems to rob us of our ability to make free choices, I think the upshot is that it also stops us from jumping to the all-quick conclusion that someone is to blame whenever things don't work out in the fashion we might have anticipated.

I find that as a determinist, I am more forgiving and empathetic than I would be if I just assumed that bad actions are always the result of someone's fault. Before pointing fingers, I think it's usually a good and healthy idea (to wonder at least) to what extent circumstances, and not a person, are to blame...

Unintelligent Design - The Giraffe's Laryngeal Nerve

2011-08-23T09:16:00.001-04:00

The complexity and intricacy of the bodies of living organisms seems like the epitome of science and art coming together in an explosion of perfection. But that appearance is deceiving, and it has given rise to the popular but erroneous belief that such delicacy must be the inevitable result of design and foresight on the part of some intelligent designer.

When you look at the details a bit more closely, however, what you start to notice is that what these bodies actually show is the accumulation of historical antecedents that have gradually evolved over eons of time, and that no intelligent designer would design such systems... unless he were inept.

As you'll see in the following example of the giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve (which can be traced back to our fishy ancestors), and as Richard Dawkins explains in this clip from the Inside Nature's Giants documentary series, evolution is not so much a designer (who can always go back to the drawing board and start from scratch) as a tinkerer (who only gets to slightly modify what's already there).

But of course, even the giraffe would not have had the longest recurrent laryngeal nerve...

That would be what, 30 feet to connect two spots that are only inches apart?