In his early career, I was enthralled by the works of Orson Scott Card. He had the ability to create vivid phantasmagorical worlds with protagonists in agonizing situations that you couldn't have anything but sympathy for. In college, I was in a science fiction book club, and accidentally received one of his books, 'Wryms'. I … Continue reading Movie review: Ender’s Game
Religion is natural, science is hard
Conner Wood takes a look at Robert McCauley's book, 'Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not'. Robert McCauley, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Emory University, thinks that religion is natural, but science isn’t. Such a claim could easily inspire all manner of outrage and uproar from both offended believers and irked scientists alike. But what … Continue reading Religion is natural, science is hard
PHD Comics: Cosmic Inflation Explained
So, even though I already linked to two sources about cosmic inflation this week, this is good enough that I'm also going to throw it in. It's fascinating to me that the large scale structure of our universe is ultimately caused by quantum fluctuations in the earliest moments of the big bang. Click through for … Continue reading PHD Comics: Cosmic Inflation Explained
Scientia Salon: a manifesto for 21st century intellectualism
Primers on detecting primordial gravity waves and cosmic inflation
First, Minute Physics takes a shot at explaining what the BICEP2 team actually found and how it relates to gravitational waves. I think I'm going to have to watch this a second time to pick up everything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlBNJbCzfk And Ethan Siegel has an in-depth discussion of cosmic inflation at his Starts With A Bang site.
How do you separate the objective from the subjective?
So, I'm a skeptic, and I've had my share of debates on comment threads with people about purported phenomena without scientific evidence. One of the claims often asserted is that so many people have experienced it, there must be something there. It's not unusual for these debates to get mired in epistemological fights about how … Continue reading How do you separate the objective from the subjective?
The difference between life and machine
Addy Pross has an interesting post up at HuffPost looking at what actually makes life...life. Most of us recognize that there is a fundamental difference between mechanical objects designed and created by man, no matter how sophisticated, and the naturally derived complexity of living things. In fact, my granddaughter, when she was just 2, already … Continue reading The difference between life and machine
Who’s afraid of math? Study finds some genetic factors
As someone who's never been good at math, I found this particularly interesting. It's strange that I've always been in the top tier of programmers on any team I worked on, easily gotten As in any programming class I took, and that programmers as a general breed tend to be good at math, but I've … Continue reading Who’s afraid of math? Study finds some genetic factors
The long reach of reason
A cool TED cartoon video of Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker discussing reason and its effects on history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk7gKixqVNU I've said it before, but just because reason is a means to an end, as they note Hume observed, doesn't take away its value. Acknowledging it only gives us a healthy, and reasonable, awareness of its … Continue reading The long reach of reason
Is consciousness in control? Does it matter?
A new scientific paper claims to describe an experiment that shows that consciousness controls our actions. From the paper: These results indicate that conscious intentions govern motor function… until today, it was unclear whether conscious motor intention exists prior to movement, or whether the brain constructs such an intention after movement initiation. The Neuroskeptic takes … Continue reading Is consciousness in control? Does it matter?
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