The Tao of Zen Nihilism
A great article by Michael Shermer. I highly recommend it to everyone.
My favorite line:
“The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool.”
When they showed up for The Colbert Report, the show producers asked Rush to play their signature song, Tom Sawyer, on Rock Band.
Hilarity ensued.
You were my first TV crush and you’ll always be my favorite. And although I always scoff when other people say similar things, it’s true when I say that, in my world, nobody will ever be a better Wonder Woman than you.
So, here’s a little tribute to Lynda Carter on her birthday as sung by the King Hisself.
Planned Parenthood is running a TV ad showing John McCain painfully groping for an answer to a reporter’s question: “It’s unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?”
McCain had good reason to be flustered. The premise of the reporter’s question is a myth. We couldn’t find any data that show a disparity between health insurance companies that cover Viagra and those that cover birth control. The full range of contraceptives, in fact, are covered by more than 86 percent of private insurance plans written for employers.
Read the entire article here.
In 1979, James S. McDonnell donated $500,000 to Washington University in Missouri for the establishment of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research.
When James Randi heard about the project, he offered his services to the project to help avoid the problems Uri Gellar caused at the Stanford Research Institute. Randi’s offer of help was disregarded; the researchers insisted they didn’t need a magician to assist them in determining the validity of psychic claims.
Two years later, the institute’s two chief researchers found what they believed to be two young men who demonstrated–under lab conditions–what the researchers called “psychic abilities.”
Around the same time, Randi held his own press conference with the psychics. He asked them, “Do you cheat?”
And the two men looked at each other and said, “Yes, we do.”
The two men were amateur magicians sent by Randi to demonstrate how scientists can be duped by simple slight of hand. They were told, “If anyone asks you ‘Are you cheating?’ you must say ‘Yes.'”
They were never asked.
Nearly thirty years later, both scientists and laymen are still being fooled by charlatains with claims of “psychic” or “divine” powers. Whenever I see books like The Secret or see Benny Hinn on TV, I think of Randi, thirty years ago, proving how easily we can all be fooled… because deep down, we all want to believe.
An intriguing interview with Randi on the subject.
The wikipedia article.
Who all is going to Strategicon at the end of August?
(I will be running Houses of the Blooded and I will have books. There may be a Houses LARP. If you’re lucky.)
The night before presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) left for Afghanistan, Iraq and Western Europe for a tour of US bases overseas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a cable to US missions forbidding them from holding events for presidential candidates or arrange meetings for them.
Rice issued no such cable prior to foreign excursions by presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
“Nature’s way of tricking us into having babies.”
A brilliant discussion of the biology of love. What it does to our brians, how it changes our thinking, etc.