Do atheists secretly believe in a god?

Thanks to reader Tim, I learned of this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that highlights research done in Finland that used skin conductance measurements that tell you how much you sweat and thus is believed to be a measure of emotional arousal, to compare the reactions of atheists and religious people to having to utter pairs of statements of the form “I wish my parents were paralyzed” and “I dare God to paralyze my parents.” [Read more…]

Comparing the US and Norwegian prison systems

The way we treat prisoners in the US has never made any sense to me. This country is easily the world’s leader in the total number of prisoners and in the per capita number. The US prison system is an exceedingly cruel and inhumane (and expensive) system, with some prisoners (especially those in so-called supermax facilities) spending almost their entire time in solitary confinement in their cells. [Read more…]

Netball

Netball is a game played the world over (including Sri Lanka) but as far as I am aware, only by women. It is superficially similar to basketball in that the goal is to throw the ball though an elevated hoop. The main difference is that you cannot move while you have possession of the ball and must pass it to another player within three seconds. This means no dribbling but actually results in a fast-moving game with plenty of passing since the non-ball carriers have to move rapidly around the court to try to get free to accept a pass from a team mate or block an opponent from passing or receiving. [Read more…]

The menace of blasphemy laws

I have been railing about the menace of blasphemy laws and once again Pakistan’s infamous laws have revealed that, in addition to being an outrageous infringement of people’s rights of free speech and discriminatory against religious minorities, they also serve as a way for people to settle private grudges and advance their own agendas at the expense of others. The charges can carry the death penalty. [Read more…]

The manned voyage to Mars

I was both intrigued and disturbed by the recent report of a plan called Inspiration Mars to send a human couple on a flyby of Mars in the year 2018, approaching the planet within 100 miles. The venture will be an entirely private one backed by a group known as the Inspiration Mars Foundation whose chair is Dennis Tito, who in 2001 became the first private person to go into space. They will of course draw on the vast expertise of NASA. Interestingly the only permission one needs to get is from the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates all spacecraft launches and returns. [Read more…]

Income inequality and hunger in Venezuela and the US

Once in while, a news item comes along that inadvertently gives us a telling insight into our media mindset. NPR featured this obituary by the Associated Press’s business reporters Pamela Sampson and Pablo Gorondi on the legacy of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez that had this quite extraordinary passage that tells you all that you need to know about what the oligarchy and its media lackeys consider development and progress. Sampson says: [Read more…]

Baseball as a road to god?

The president of New York University John Sexton has published a book on how baseball can be used to come to an understanding of god. This practice of seeing some everyday activity as a window to god seems to be expanding and one can expect more such books because the possibilities are endless: “Cooking as a road to god”, “Cleaning the basement as a road to god”, “Cutting the grass as a road to god”, etc. The hackneyed idea behind this is that if you look deeply enough into anything, there you will find god. [Read more…]

Political language today

George Orwell’s classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language makes the case that politics degrades language because when politicians want to look truthful while telling lies they do so by making their language convoluted and using big words so that the listener is not aware of what the speaker is actually saying. Orwell says that users of such language should be viewed warily and recommends that people who want to communicate truthfully and accurately would do well to adopt a straightforward style using simple and common words and vivid and accurate metaphors. [Read more…]

The pope race heats up

The conclave to select the new pope begins next week, perhaps as early as Monday. Apparently the pre-conclave meetings currently in progress are where the real politicking goes on, where informal chats take place and information and gossip is exchanged regarding the various possible candidates for the job, with subtle lobbying being part of the process. [Read more…]