Recently, a debate was held in London between theist philosopher Rabbi Daniel Rowe and atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling. The subject under dispute, unsurprisingly, was God’s existence. It’s a very interesting debate to watch. I’d never heard of Rowe before, but I was familiar with Grayling, who is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Horseman of Read More…
General interest
BREXIT! — initial concerns and impacts
. . . including, regarding major trends of our civilisation vis a vis the IslamISTS, also as a civilisation, we face “seven mountains of influence” issues. Drudge headline: The initial fall of the Pound off the cliff on the announcement from Sunderland that was the first clear indicator of which way the referendum would go: Read More…
Science: The Victim of Ideology ‘Uber Alles’
Here’s a link to an article from American Thinker that details how, in Ohio, the Univ. of Cincinnati did a three year study on the effects of oil-well “fracking,” the results of which demonstrate no contamination of ground water had occurred because of “fracking.” And then the study was quashed.
Krauss vs Meyer: Debate opponents disagree not only on Origins but on the intellectual capacity of their audience
Quite expectedly, the Krauss vs Meyer debate got off to a poor start. Krauss has a few go-to moves during a debate and most of them were on full display in his opening remarks (one can hardly call them arguments). He opened with an ill-informed and misrepresentative attack on the Discovery Institute and on the Read More…
New at MercatorNet
O’Leary for News’ other blog Defamation law must catch up with internet age. Any blogger who linked to a website held to contain defamatory material—whether the blogger knew the fact or not—could be at risk. Android apps to control your teen’s brain? This’ll never beat the bicycle Ban the cell phone monster from normal conversation Read More…
From Darwinism to Global Warming and Back
I was reading an exchange of emails that took place between noted physcist (and skeptical warmer) Freeman Dyson and his interlocutor, Steve Conner, of the Independent of London. To my eye, Dyson is spot on in his critical thinking. But what most caught my eye was his analysis between the ‘experts’ and the general public Read More…
Quick Survey – Deletion of Single Email Messages
I know this may be a bit unusual for the typical fare, but since we have a number of engineers and other tech-savvy readers, I thought I would solicit your help with a quick tech-related survey. Recently I have been in discussion with a Google engineer about gmail. The discussion began when he asked me Read More…
A Merry Christ-mas to all, even as Plato’s ghost has a laugh . . .
Here’s the old, old story in animated form: [youtube LPe5T_-I5kE] (Never mind one or two odd points, quite good enough for family sharing — and note, dubbed from a version prepared in India. This, is a more traditional short acted movie. And if you want stuff on the “backative” side (as in, it’s not just Read More…
How Keith’s “Bomb” Turned Into A Suicide Mission
Keith brought in an argument he claimed to be a “bomb” for ID. It turned out to be a failed suicide mission where the only person that got blown up was Keith. (Please note: I am assuming that life patterns exists in an ONH, as Keith claims, for the sake of this argument only. Also, Read More…
Counting Dogs
Recently, Mark Frank and I had a brief dialogue in the OP,“Didn’t everyone already know this about dogs?” I’ve decided to clean it up a bit and re-post it because after my last question, I received no responses. At the outset, I would like to say that I place no blame about lack of responses Read More…
News & Views: Jerry Pournelle has interesting thoughts on Ebola . . .
Here — a useful FYI. Readers may wish to add more, this is a potentially global, grave issue. END
Let us remember Sept 11, 2001
Today is the thirteenth anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Let us remember, with the aid of some live video from CNN: [youtube rsIWPPw-JzU] Let us pause for a moment of silent reflection, and let us remember. END
On, the fallacy of worshiping the “short” and the “simple” . . . or, why good long copy outsells short copy
As UD regulars will know, it’s silly season here in Montserrat. As a result, I am facing the long vs short copy debate and the issue of the demand for excessive simplicity. Which, opens us up to be naive and easily misled — including when we indulge the fallacy of selective hyperskepticism. (As in: if Read More…