Not too long ago, I picked up a book that I’d had, not exactly in my childhood, but in my earlier adulthood (which may yet be my childhood, at least if you ask some people, including me.) Tortured sentences aside, I’m finding it quite interesting to note how differently I react to the content now, two decades after my first read-through.
The book is called Mysteries of the Unexplained,
Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has posted a new rule regarding anonymity and pseudonyms – specifically, that he no longer allows someone to link to his site from another when critiquing his posts, unless they’re using their real name. I will stress that as a policy,
This is a revisit of a subject that I first broached in this post, which I felt needed more examination. So let’s return to that radical concept of Phi.
Phi is a mathematical ratio that, curiously enough, has more than a few close representations in nature. It is an irrational number, one of those decimals that go on forever, but usually shortened to 1.618. If you create a rectangle
I have very mixed feelings about emotions [now, there’s a sentence of remarkable profundity.] As manifestations of internal functions to provoke behavior that benefits our species, they are distinctly important, but too often, they’re not specific enough, or they’re too easy to fool, producing behaviors that don’t really benefit us and are sometimes quite detrimental. I hate
Sometimes, we humans get a cultural belief or concept stuck in our collective heads, something typically called a meme, and therefore think that this has importance solely because it’s repeated. Some sociologists have expressed the idea that this is exactly what culture is, and there’s an interesting theory that memes actually go through a process of natural selection.
I apologize for being away so long, to all of those who noticed – to the rest of you, yeah, love you too. I’ve been busy with two online courses, a few different projects, and a minor illness. This is partially why I’m glad I’m not on any kind of posting schedule, even a self-imposed one: I’d be obligated to produce something that, more likely than
Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 9
So, once again we depart a little from the typical structure of the ‘But How?’ series of posts. Most of the others examined how various aspects of life work without religious influence, but this one is going to delve
I pushed through this book to try and get a review up before it went off sale this month, and this was more than I bargained for – it is a work of great detail and no small amount of illustrated points. One would think that images in books would make the reading go faster, but this does not hold true if you’re examining them for the details illustrated within.
Previously, in regards to the talk by Sean Carroll, I mentioned revisiting the comment about the universe being made of stories, and so I return. This is little more than stream of consciousness, I admit, so don’t expect anything major.
First off, what does “the universe is made of stories” even mean? Is this metaphorical, poetic, or what? Well, as Carroll says, it means that we
So, here’s a thought I had the other day about the nature of good and evil, which theologians and philosophers call theodicy I’m pretty sure philosophers have a name for those little lint balls that you get in your navel. And theologians have some kind of explanation that they’re god’s plan – just not how or why.
Anyway, genesis tells us that everything was hunky-dory