Category Archives: uncategorized

Kenan Malik has posted some thoughts about “blasphemy” that he addresses at the recent CFI conference. In my opinion, the concept of blasphemy should rightly include ANY statement attributing any characteristic, act, or opinion to any god or gods. But what offends … Continue reading →

 Clay Shirky says it pretty well. (And in Canada, Michael Geist and Howard Knopf give good coverage of the legal issues for us). These proposed laws reverse the burden of proof with regard to alleged copyright violation. This both takes … Continue reading →

This article at NYTimes.com makes some interesting claims which may raise questions about how we should measure national economic success. But I don’t know how to either judge its validity or figure out what are the lessons we should take from … Continue reading →

 Kenneth Rogoff (formerly chief economist at the IMF and now at Harvard) has found the sense to ask: “does it really make sense to take growth as the main social objective in perpetuity, as economics textbooks implicitly assume?” And he correctly … Continue reading →

When certain Muslims voiced their offense, various others took offense in turn. Hmmm. Actually I agree with all but the last line of the following excerpt from the  Ahmadiyya Muslim Students Association: “Once a particular act is deemed to be … Continue reading →

Michael Geist calls on us to ‘ Speak Out on the Trans Pacific Partnership Negotiations‘. My brief letter to the provided response address (consultations@ international.gc.ca) was as follows: Re COPYRIGHT ISSUES Please take note of my very strong opposition to … Continue reading →

Michael Ruse is someone whose name is often mentioned and he presents this ‘Darwinian Approach to Moral Philosophy’ at the ‘ Talking Philosophy’ blog as a summary of his apparently sometimes controversial views. So I think I’ll read it fairly … Continue reading →

 Stephen Downes led me to this interesting dust up. Apparently Clark Glymour, a philosopher at Carnegie Mellon who can actually be “taken seriously” by computer (and other) scientists was offended that his dep’t got a low ranking in a recent academic ratings … Continue reading →

This review in American Scientist claims that, despite its subtitle, Patricia Churchland’s book doesn’t tell us much about morality. And in a sense, if the description is true (and I’ll find out soon), then I am inclined to agree since I … Continue reading →

What Are The Goals of the Atheist Movement? | Greta Christina’s Blog. Or more to the point for me. What are my goals in wasting time on all this nonsense? There must be some, so perhaps I’ll add more here … Continue reading →

Afghanistan: Imprisoned Rape Victim Freed. – where in this context, apparently “freed” means transferred into the permanent custody of her rapist.

According to this ( Taxing the 1%: Why the top tax rate could be over 80% | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists), lowering the top tax rate just meant that the top 1%  had more reason … Continue reading →

This annotated Flight-Data Recorder Transcript from Air France 447  (from Popular Mechanics) makes it clear that the real problem was an egregious control system design flaw which seems to defeat the main purpose of dual controls and prevented the more senior pilots … Continue reading →

How could this be real? Obviously, anything carrying such valuable secrets would have to have a 100% reliable built in self-destruct mechanism set to go off whenever it fell below a certain altitude anywhere away from its home base.

It may have been completely predictable that I would decide to write this  response to the latest round of  blog posts from Sean Carroll and others, but that does not diminish the significance (or validity) of the thought processes and intentionality behind … Continue reading →

In the course of proposing a kind of religion that is free from superstition, Julian Baggini, in a post at the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ blog, says: if you cannot say you agree that “Religious belief does not, and should not, require … Continue reading →

Often it seems that much of my time scanning feeds on Google Reader is spent quickly marking a bunch of uninteresting titles as read. But today (ironically when I should be packing for a return flight to Vancouver) there seem to be … Continue reading →

Triumph’s Byron Jennings at Quantum Diaries overstates the case for experiment as the only source of truth. What on earth does he mean by saying that Euclidean Geometry “turned out not to be true”? And for that matter doesn’t all of … Continue reading →

Joel Marks ‘Confessions of an Ex-Moralist’ came to me via Jean Kazez. Another attempt to “derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’ ” is provided by CamelsWithHammers who identifies “goodness” with “effectiveness” at enhancing the “function” of a being. But his use of … Continue reading →

Steve Jobs is one example of the general principle that learning and problem solving occurs most efficiently via a process of successive approximation or error-and-correction. I know that, for me, the solution of a math problem generally proceeds this way, … Continue reading →