No one who has seen me in real life will ever consider coming to me for fashion advice. But that does not stop me from giving it when I feel strongly about it. And the introduction of the ‘short suit‘ had me rolling my eyes and thinking, “Really? Men are going to wear this in public and maybe even to work?”
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Science depends on its practitioners behaving ethically. This is important for three reasons. One is because scientists depend upon each other’s work and fraud in one area can really mess up the work of those who use those results. Another is because science has acquired a hard-won credibility with the public that has to be preserved so that those who deny the scientific consensus on important questions like climate change and vaccinations are not given ammunition to claim that science cannot be trusted. And the third is because much of science depends on public funding and that can be threatened by misconduct.
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America seems to be obsessed with the issue of obesity. Hardly a week goes by without this being mentioned as a serious public health crisis and that urgent measures need to be adopted to combat it. One can hardly blame people who do not fit into the perceived body-size norm for feeling beleaguered by society’s pressures and feeling that they have to take all manner of measures, even extreme ones, to try and lose weight. But as I wrote last year, there a lot of myths surrounding weight and weight loss that work against the idea that losing weight and keeping it off is a straightforward matter.
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The recent exploits of members of the group Open Carry Texas carrying massive guns around in public places and into restaurants and other business venues, and the reaction to it, has been a good example of how rubbing your rights into other people’s faces may not always be in your best interest. The best way to support the right of free speech may not be to stand on a street corner and talk to every person who passes by. Instead of being impressed by your commitment to upholding free speech, they are more likely to think you are a crazy person.
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[UPDATE: Other computer scientists are saying that the computer actually failed the test, and badly.]
People who have interacted with Siri, the helpful guide on the iPhone, are usually impressed with her ability to carry on what seems like a normal conversation. But it is not hard to discover that you are talking to a computer. How good would ‘she’ have to be to completely fool you?
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Via reader Norm, I came across an article in The Onion that contains an exclusive interview with god where he was asked about what happens after we die. It appears that despite his omniscience, god is as mystified as the rest of us about what happens after we die, and he struggles with the same hopes and fears about it that many people have.
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Scientific detective stories are a lot of fun. So I was intrigued by this article by Tom Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a famous case in the history of psychology that is apparently well known to psychologists but was unknown to me. It has many of the elements that make for a gripping tale.
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As has been documented in books and articles by people like Neil Barofsky and Jesse Eisenger, Timothy Geithner symbolized the worst elements of government subservience to Wall Street. While ostensibly a public servant as head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and later Treasury Secretary during the turbulent period up to, during, and following the financial crisis of 2008, his main goal seemed to be to protect the interests of Wall Street banks rather than the public who paid his salary and whose interests he was supposed to be safeguarding.
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There is no question that the Occupy Wall Street movement alarmed the ruling classes because of its exposure of the class war being waged in this country by wealthy against the rest of us. The Daily Show talks about how the law enforcement and justice systems are tilted so heavily in favor of the oligarchy, a reflection of the entrenched nature of the class war being waged.
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Mark Tiborsky, an indefatigable member of the Northeast Ohio secular community who is actively involved in the Freethinkers, Center of Inquiry, and Coalition of Reason has issued a press release about my upcoming debate with Rev, Joe Puckett, where I will be affirming the proposition that god does not exist.
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