Monthly Archives: August 2010

More Defense of Links

Posted on 2010-08-31 by alan

Scott Rosenberg (who I was led to by Crawford Killian) shares my skepticism re the “studies” cited by Nick Carr. And what is more, he actually took the trouble to read them carefully and point out some of the nonsense … Continue reading →

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Back From the Future

Posted on 2010-08-29 by alan

An article in DISCOVER Magazine discusses an apparent influence of the decision to make later measurements on the results of earlier ones. But then it turns out that the effect persists even when the later measurement is not recorded. Such … Continue reading →

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Who’s a Dick?

Posted on 2010-08-24 by alan

In his writings[1] Dick Feynman was never a dick (except perhaps in the eyes of those responsible for security during the Manhattan Project), and Dick Dawkins is not usually a dick but sometimes he comes close. I suspect that I … Continue reading →

Posted in religion, science, social issues | Tagged | 2 Comments

Data Sharing Speeds Research

Posted on 2010-08-16 by alan

An article in the NYTimes (coming to me via Michael Geist) reports progress in Alzheimer’s research coming as a result of researchers adopting the principle of open data.

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The Rigor of Love and The Love of Rigour

Posted on 2010-08-14 by alan

Even — and indeed especially — those who are denominationally faithless can have an experience of faith. The above quote comes from Simon Critchley’s recent article about Kierkegaard, The Rigor of Love, that appeared in the NYTimes’  Opinionator Blog on … Continue reading →

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Memetic Allergies and Mutations

Posted on 2010-08-14 by alan

Ruth Howard asks Is Critical Thinking a Meme to Counter Memes? (in a post which came to my attention via #CritLit2010). And then she goes on to suggest that some skeptics become inflamed and hyper-sensitive when exposed to allergenic stimuli … Continue reading →

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The Top Five Lies (about AGW)

Posted on 2010-08-13 by alan

Discover Magazine is asking for readers to suggest their candidates for the Top Five Lies About Global Warming. Here are my suggestions: 1. It has recently been proved (False – it was “proved” in the 19th century by Svante Arrhenius. … Continue reading →

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‘Tea Party North’ fires an EMP

Posted on 2010-08-13 by alan

Tyee gets it. What Harper is doing to StatsCan and the census is classic military strategy. First blind the enemy. Cut off his communication lines, fill the air with smoke, or in modern times, knock out his systems with a … Continue reading →

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CRTC consultation on Obligation to Serve

Posted on 2010-08-10 by alan

For what it’s worth, here is the main point I made in my submission today: with regard to the question about ensuring access for all Canadians, I said: CRTC should set national rate caps for broadband access via both telephone … Continue reading →

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@maferarenas on microblogging and learning

Posted on 2010-08-10 by alan

My linking to this is evidence for @Downes of more real interesting learning from #CritLit2010. But it’s not just the shape of the network that’s important here; it’s also the semantic content of what we are linking about. (If we … Continue reading →

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Pascal’s Wager and the Value of Truth

Posted on 2010-08-10 by alan

Pascal’s Wager has been cited, and the value of ‘truth’ has been questioned, in a rather curious Guardian article by Harriet Baber who has been trashed by PZMeyers who has been called out by ‘Siris’ (with John S Wilkins agreeing … Continue reading →

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Is Google Evil?

Posted on 2010-08-09 by alan

No this isn’t about the Verizon thing; it’s something completely different. I was looking at both Feedblitz and Google’s Feedburner as tools for offering email subscription service, but despite claims in the help files on both sites that Google is … Continue reading →

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Google and Verizon

Posted on 2010-08-09 by alan

Stephen Downes and Jay Hathaway are upbeat about this, but I share the doubts expressed by ‘saltrix’ and ‘Alain’ on Jay’s posting, and by the critics quoted in the NYT’s more recent article. Namely “protecting the internet” won’t mean a … Continue reading →

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New Web Host

Posted on 2010-08-08 by alan

For some time I have been looking forward to the arrival of WordPress v3 which, among other things, enables easily setting up a separate blog for the CMR website. But to install it I needed my host to run a … Continue reading →

Posted in technical issues, uncategorized, web | Leave a comment

Retiring on Sept1!

Posted on 2010-08-07 by alan

So, at the end of this month I will be  retiring from Langara, where I have been teaching for many years. I will miss the daily interaction with colleagues and students, but am looking forward to having more time for … Continue reading →

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