How to deal with the ‘Craig Con’: Part 3

In the first two posts in this series (here and here) I said William Lane Craig is a theologian who is a practiced and smooth debater and master practitioner of what I call the ‘Craig Con’, a debating tactic where one brings in all manner of arguments from a wide range of science that are associated with cutting-edge research emanating from famous and highly-regarded scientists working at elite institutions. If one is not properly prepared to counter them, one can get buried under that weight, even if the arguments themselves are flawed. One has to prepare carefully for such debates. [Read more…]

What kind of crazy plan is this?

I was stunned this morning to read that the government of Cyprus was going to immediately impose a one-time levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros and 9.9 percent of more than that on the savings deposits of all Cypriots in order to receive $13 billion in bailout money from the European Central Bank to rescue the banks in Cyprus that were threatened by default. In other words, the money that the people of Cyprus had saved in their bank accounts was going to be used to bail out … the banks. [Read more…]

Wisdom and rules

Some time ago I wrote about the tragic situation in which a school nurse would not let a student use his asthma inhaler, even though he had collapsed in front of her, because the school did not have a medical release form on file. I later discussed a study about how these kinds of situations arise when people see their roles as primarily that of rule enforcers, fearful of repercussions if they use their judgment to defy the rules. [Read more…]

Film review: The Campaign (2012)

I watched this film last evening and it was good fun. It stars Will Ferrell as the incumbent congressman of a North Carolina district who is expecting to run unopposed until a misstep by him suggests weakness and prompts two wealthy brothers (thinly disguised versions of the real life Koch brothers) to back someone who will be beholden to them and allow them to transfer their sweatshops in China back to the US so that they can save shipping costs and thus increase their profits. [Read more…]

One big bank finally being brought to account?

The way the big banks have been getting away with their crimes is truly a scandal, with the white House, the Justice Department, and other federal agencies responsible for monitoring them either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. This leaves Congress as the only possible entity that can do something and senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) has been almost single-handedly trying to bring some accountability. As we saw in the 2013 Frontline investigation The Untouchables and in the 2010 Academy Award winning documentary Inside Job, he used his powers as chair of the senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to drag out of the top executives in the big banks information about how they manipulated the housing market and investor’s money in ways that impoverished the country while enriching themselves. [Read more…]

Much ado about ‘nothing’

Some of you may have heard about the acrimonious exchange that occurred last year between David Albert and Lawrence Krauss. I did not write about it at that time but now there is an even more unfortunate sequel to that story. What follows is a brief summary of what happened earlier so that you can understand the recent development that I address at the end. [Read more…]

Funny dice and the transitive property

The transitive property says that if A beats B and B beats C, then one would expect A to beat C. This seems quite obviously true and we use it in some form all the time. It is true for the real numbers where we think of ‘beats’ as ‘is greater than’ but is this transitive property true for all meanings of ‘beats’? Via Cory Doctorow, I came across this video of something called ‘Grime Dice’ that not only violate the transitive property (which is surprising in itself) but do so in very interesting ways. [Read more…]

The problem of restricted empathy

Ohio’s Republican senator Rob Portman has written an op-ed in today’s papers announcing that he is reversing his long-standing opposition to same-sex marriage (he also opposed gay people adopting children, was a co-sponsor of DOMA, and even supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage) and now supports it. The reason for his surprising move? The fact that his own son told him in February 2011 that he was gay. [Read more…]