September 2010
69 posts
think on this.: why am i an atheist? →
abbyjean:
i think it’s in large part the reason why most people hold the religious faith they do - i was raised this way. i’m not baptized. i only went to church when i slept over at a friend’s house on a saturday night and their family went to church on sunday mornings. my parents were raised vaguely…
I have to disagree with you that logic and faith can co-exist. Faith tends to co-opt...
Signs that your opinions function more to signal... →
abbyjean:
You find it hard to be enthusiastic for something until you know that others oppose it.
You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.
Realizing that a topic is important and neglected doesn’t make you much interested.
You have little interest in digging to bigger topics behind commonly argued topics.
You are less interested in a topic...
Newt Gingrich Launches Tea Party Campaign To Stop... →
kateoplis:
With the incendiary claim that the “Obama presidency is the greatest threat the American people have ever faced,” Gingrich has launched a massively funded effort to mobilize ten million conservative voters this November. In an online video promoting the “Power of 10” campaign by his American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) 527 group, Gingrich rails against the “genuinely...
I was about to link to an incredibly interesting...
But, of course, for non-academics like me it is behind a $40 paywall (none of which, I believe, goes to the author). So, instead, I link you to a Q&A .txt file that references it:
Can a tidally-locked world support an atmosphere? I heard it would all freeze out on the dark side, right?
(tl;dr: it wouldn’t, due to cool things)
pukomuko:
System Syn - Losing My Religion
from...
Don't know much about religion? You're not alone,... →
The survey is full of surprising findings.
For example, it’s not evangelicals or Catholics who did best - it’s atheists and agnostics.
It’s not Bible-belt Southerners who scored highest - they came at the bottom.
Those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God did slightly worse than average, while those who say it is not the word of God scored slightly better.
Schools not making the grade, poll shows →
infoneer-pulse:
A majority of Americans are pessimistic about the public education system with nearly six out of 10 saying schools need either major changes or a complete overhaul, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Only 5 percent of those surveyed thought the school system in the United States was working well, according to results of the telephone survey of 700 adults. The...
I Was At A Party In Bushwick
Hipster Chick: You play music! That's great! I don't play very much, but I'm always listening to something.
Me: Like what?
HC: A lot of Brahms as of late.
Me: Really?! That's fantastic! He's one of my favourite Romantic composers, what pieces have you been listening to?
HC: You mean which songs?
Me: You're not talking about Johannes Brahms, are you?
HC: Who's Johannes?
Watchbrooklynmutt:
“I think Snooki highlights the problem in public education… Watch the ‘Jersey Shore’, watch it. and tell me what teacher could have possibly reached any one of them, to get any one of their scores (school grades) up, in any subject?” - Lawrence O’Donnell
Gawker.TV
Great quote, but dude, “anyone” means something completely different than “any one.” I hate...
“I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game ‘tho, right?”
– Omar Little, The Wire (via pseudonym)
Why Does Spicy Food Taste Hot? →
It turns out that capsaicin – the active ingredient in spicy food – binds to a special class of vanilloid receptor inside our mouth called VR1 receptors. After capsaicin binds to these receptors, the sensory neuron is depolarized, and it sends along a signal indicating the presence of spicy stimuli. But here’s the strange part: VR1 receptors weren’t designed to detect capsaicin. They bind spicy...
“There is something infantile in the belief of the constitution-worshippers that...”
– Our Lexington columnist is perplexed by the tea-party movement’s fidelity to the American constitution (via theeconomist)
“When history is turned into scripture and men into deities, truth is the victim.” Brilliant.
“…But the most significant and important part of the Tea Party Movement is the...”
– Larry Lessig on The Fair Elections Now Act (via halley)
Watchtheatlantic:
Track of the Day: “Love Will Find You”
Nearly everything about British singer Findlay Brown suggests 1960 rather than 2010. His hair: a jet-black pompadour. His backstory: A former bare-knuckles boxer, he wrote his debut album, 2007’s Separated by the Sea, to win back an old girlfriend. But most of all, his music: his voice sounds like Roy Orbison’s, while his songs’...
Vaccines do NOT cause autism. →
Not that anyone who truly believes that it does would pay attention to any kind of scientific study. Not only does it not cause autism, they saw a decrease in autism among those vaccinated:
“In the covariate adjusted models, we found that an increase in ethylmercury exposure in 2 of the 4 exposure time periods evaluated was associated with decreased risk of each of the 3 ASD outcomes. We are...
3 tags
I wish JavaScript destructured assignment was more...
Example:
var a, b;
[a,b] = (function() {
return [1,2];
})();
console.log(a); // 1
console.log(b); // 2
This would go a long way to making javascript more succinct. Of course, I have a feeling it would lead to even more pitfalls. It’d still be nice. It’d also allow for some cool pattern matching (non-regex) libraries.
As of today, only Mozilla (and, to a lesser extent, Opera)...
“I’ll say this about the Teabaggers: The one thing they hate is when you call...”
– Bill Maher, on Larry King Live (via channel0)
fuck yeah computer science!: The Smartest Man in... →
fuckyeahcomputerscience:
Today, I want to talk to you to a long, but finite, sequence of random ones and zeroes. This sequence is thousands and thousands of digits long. Part of this particular sequence looks like this:
It certainly seems random, and so it is. One can almost imagine that this sequence was produced…
The Neurological Origins of Religious Belief →
danielholter:
kateoplis:
Rutgers University evolutionary biologist Lionel Tiger thinks we can pinpoint specific chemicals, genes and clusters of neurons that give rise to religiosity: “Religion is really made by the brain. It is a secretion of the brain,” says Tiger, who thinks the root of religious belief is an evolutionary drive to seek this “secretion”—namely serotonin—which provides the...
3 tags
Watchtodayonbliptv:
Remixing is a folk art but the techniques involved — collecting material, combining it, transforming it — are the same ones used at any level of creation. You could even say that… Everything is a Remix.
This is part one of a four part documentary series.
Congress to be told of [Obama's] 60-billion... →
danielholter:
In the largest US arms deal ever, the administration of US President Barack Obama is ready to notify Congress of plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to 60 billion dollars…
Dear President Obama,
You are fast losing my full support.
This reeks.
Fully and wholeheartedly concur.
“Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is...”
– Dalai Lama (via quote-book)
Don't feed the trolls.
I take a moral stance against book burning - destroying any written word is anathema. I protest it, but I protest any hand against it. It is expression, and to control expression is to acknowledge the attempt to control thought. I can think a thought is wrongheaded, and I can speak out against it. I cannot forcefully quell the thought. Nor can anyone - no matter the weapons they muster against...
“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and...”
– Robert F. Kennedy on what GNP means. (via halley)
