"Now that we can use DNA to tell whether the babies were male or female, we're starting to revise the commonly held assumptions about infanticide in the Roman world," said Kristina Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist at the University of West Florida, who was not involved in the research. As horrifying as the killing of newborns seems … Continue reading Ancient Rome Infanticide Practices Did Not Favor Boys After All, DNA Study Suggests
Category: Zeitgeist
Of Physical Laws and Fictional Characters
Daniel Dennett on free will
Daniel Dennett has written a long paper on free will, specifically taking on Sam Harris' book on the subject. Dennett is a compatiblist and uses arguments similar to the ones I used in describing this position and in the limitations of determinism. Harris is aware of Dennett's paper... https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/427472770025283585 ...so I'd think we'll see a … Continue reading Daniel Dennett on free will
Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade — ScienceDaily
Although infants use their memories to learn new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened prior to the age of three. Psychologists have now documented that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as "childhood amnesia." The study is the first empirical demonstration … Continue reading Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade — ScienceDaily
Comment moderation
So, getting more experience with this blogging thing, I've had to delete a couple of very nasty comments in the last day or so, one of which my moderation filter caught, but the other was out there for a bit before I caught it. Gratefully, it was on an old post that no one else … Continue reading Comment moderation
xkcd: Cold
via xkcd: Cold As I indicated in a previous post, we seem doomed to repeat this conversation every winter. Now at least we'll have an xkcd cartoon to point to. (Well, assuming there wasn't one already.)
Rationally Speaking: Is information physical? And what does that mean?
I’ve been reading for a while now Jim Baggott’s Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth, a fascinating tour through cutting edge theoretical physics, led by someone with a physics background and a healthy (I think) dose of skepticism about the latest declarations from string theorists and the like. … Continue reading Rationally Speaking: Is information physical? And what does that mean?
SMBC:Revolution: A Guide
SMBC has been on a roll lately with insightful posts. Anyone struggling against the establishment should ponder this one. Click through to get the full size version. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. ...and the cycle continues.
Proof that the external world exists?
Eric Schwitzgebel is reading Stannis Lem's novel 'Solaris' and discovers in the novel a test of the existence of the external world: I instructed the satellite to give me the figure of the galactic meridians it was traversing at 22-second intervals while orbiting Solaris, and I specified an answer to five decimal points. Then I sat … Continue reading Proof that the external world exists?
The physics of the multiverse
Fellow blogger agrudzinsky shared this video in a comment, but I thought it was good enough to warrant a full post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywn2Lz5zmYg I like the fact that he repeatedly states that these ideas have not been experimentally confirmed, and the wrap-up where he points out that physics is not philosophy (or at least it's not supposed to … Continue reading The physics of the multiverse
