As The Daily Show reports, the government goes vigorously after breakers of the law who are small fry while letting the big-moneyed violators go free.
(This clip aired on May 23, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
The most harmful aspects of religion are those that arise from a holy book of some kind, because those books are the sources of rules and dogmas and create insider-outsider conflicts. When people lose their commitment to a text, then they are more likely to be accepting of diverse views. [Read more…]
All of us know the rule of thumb that says that one calendar year for a dog corresponds to seven years for a human, though the origins of the formula are unknown. But this is a very rough approximation because small dogs age more quickly early on (for the first two years it is 12.5 years per human year for small dogs, 10.5 for medium-sized dogs, and 9 for large dogs) and then age more slowly later. In other words, smaller dogs have a truncated childhood and extended adulthood when compared with bigger dogs. There is a calculator that enables you to calculate more accurately the equivalent age of your dog for a certain number of breeds.
There are two things about dogs that immediately strike an observer and those are the huge diversities in size and lifetimes within this single species. Dogs range from the tiny Chihuahua (2-6 lbs) to the massive Spanish Mastiff (121-154 lbs). Such diversity gives us a unique window to study how size affects aging. [Read more…]
The actor seems to be deeply interested in science.
(This clip aired on May 30, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
The website Amusing Planet has a fascinating article about the annual migration of 50 million red crabs from the forest to the coast on Christmas Island. [Read more…]
Carmen Reinhart has written yet another defense of the discredited study that she and fellow Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff wrote. This one takes the form of an open letter to Paul Krugman, one of her harshest critics in academia. She says that it was not their fault if policymakers misread their statements about the impact of debt reaching 90% of GDP and arrived at an alarming conclusion that resulted in them pursuing the debt-reduction austerity programs that have caused such hardship around the world. [Read more…]
It is hard for people to get their minds around small probabilities, very long times, the very small, and the very large, which is why people have a hard time accepting the theories of evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, which depend crucially on them. [Read more…]
The Onion shows how to manufacture news (language advisory).
I stopped listening to the speeches of George W. Bush because I hated listening to their huge helpings of arrogance and braggadocio. I long ago stopped listening to president Obama’s speeches but for different reasons, because his speeches seemed to be an exercise in preening self-aggrandizement masked as humility and thoughtfulness. It seemed like a waste of time to listen to them unless you enjoy listening to good speeches for their own sake, to see how to deliver a well-crafted speech effectively, while ignoring the content. He undoubtedly has good speechwriters and does justice to their efforts so I would recommend listening to him for anyone seeking to become a good public speaker. [Read more…]
This map shows the results of a survey of 40 countries that measures the percentage of atheists in each. [Read more…]