Like many pursuits and interests, critical thinking involves a subset of information, discussions, and approaches, many of which don’t capture the attention of those who aren’t interested in critical thinking. I’m well aware of this, so often you’ll see me break the blog posts up with the “Continue Reading” tag, so that no one is forced to read a topic that doesn’t
Category: Rants
Do you want to know why?
In the same discussion I mentioned a few posts back, a particular quote from Christopher Hitchens came up, which was basically, “Religion poisons everything.” This kind of statement is fairly hard for many people to accept, and it is often treated as hyperbole, senseless exaggeration to make the case seem stronger. But I maintain
Heavy sigh
So not long back I talked about lightning photography in two separate posts, and presented some of my examples therein. A friend of mine named Jim Kramer,
What is he talking about?
As I warned you about below, this is a continuation of the controversial “Don’t be a Dick” opera brought to us by Phil Plait, which I started from my perspective in this post. Phil has now posted
Hitting the fan
Let me throw a hypothetical situation at you. Suppose you have a blogger and journalist, who has a mission to eradicate childish attacks and disrespectful behavior from public figures. All well and good, except that this blogger is having a bit of difficulty finding the behavior he insists is rampant. Among his targets are two prominent and outspoken public figures who, despite accusations, deal
What does it mean?!
Anyone who has ever spent time in a discussion about religion and lack thereof, or even about the value of the scientific approach, has come up against the argument of “meaning.” “But if we live in a random, uncaused universe,” comes the plaintive cry, “then life has no meaning.”
This is a curious statement. After all, the search for the meaning of life has been
Proverbial thinking
All right, I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while now, and since it’s come up again in my personal life, I think it’s about time.
Very frequently, when I’ve been present on blogs and forums debating about the existence of one thing or another, a common proverb is set forth: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” On the face of
All the world’s a stage…
A month ago I made a post asking some questions about wildlife photography ethics, most especially the how, when, and why of staging shots using captive animals or controlled conditions. Audubon Magazine decided to one-up me on this topic and posted their own article, naturally going into a little more detail than I did (but I brought mine in under a much tighter budget, so there!)
To their credit,
Let me give you an example – followup
There was probably a few things missing from my previous post on the Perimeter article from Wired, so this is part two. If you haven’t read the first, you either should, or skip this one too ;-)
Let me give you an example
Since I’m sure you’ve read everything on this blog by now (snerk!), you already know I’m in favor of critical thinking. But, you may ask yourself (you have my permission), what does this look like? How is it applied? Directly to the forehead? Under a full moon? Far be it from me to let unasked questions go unanswered, so let’s do an exercise with a recent article from Wired