The news from Afghanistan tends to be uniformly depressing and so I perked up when I read that Afghanistan has taken up the sport of cricket and currently has a national team playing against the Netherlands in Sharjah. It is true that neither team is an international powerhouse in the sport, but it is surely a welcome sign of a possible return to normalcy for a country to indulge in such a leisurely activity like cricket. [Read more…]
The pressure to be the first with a new discovery is resulting in an increasing number of authors rushing to print with results that later turn out to be not true. In most cases, this is due to cutting corners, sloppiness, or not exercising sufficient skepticism about one’s own work. In a few cases, it is because of outright fraud. [Read more…]
Andy Borowitz reveals the solution to a puzzle that has baffled everyone.
Today is April Fools day. I am not a fan of practical jokes on any day including this one. I especially do not understand why news organizations that depend upon their credibility for their very existence, would carry them out. But having said that, I will give a pass to the following prank pulled by the BBC in 2008, because it is so beautifully done and leaves you smiling even after you realize that you have had your leg pulled. [Read more…]
Via The Digital Cuttlefish I found a video that Bill O’Reilly’s show shot of the Reason Rally. It is a bit disjointed with some weird cross-cutting but not too bad. The people they interviewed were pretty articulate and gave a good account of themselves. This means that either O’Reilly’s team did not go too far out of its way to selectively edit the footage to make the rallyers look bad or that they simply were not able to get video to allow them to portray atheists as crazy people.
One of the tenets of science is that the results be reproducible. One consequence of this maxim is that any paper that is published should have sufficient information that would enable anyone who wishes to do so to replicate the results. But there is no real incentive for people to try and replicate the work of others. It takes a lot of time and effort and one cannot publish a confirmation of someone else’s result unless the original result was so revolutionary that supportive evidence is called for. The cold fusion and the faster-than-light neutrino stories were examples of such high-profile cases. [Read more…]
In a previous post, I mentioned how one needs to be very cautious in how one responds to police requests for information, unless it is clear that you are being called upon as a mere witness, say of an accident. If there is the slightest chance that you may be a possible target, then you should invoke the Fifth Amendment and get a lawyer. It is not that you should never cooperate because after all the police need the assistance of law-abiding people to solve crimes. But you usually have plenty of time to do so. There is nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost by being in a hurry to be helpful. [Read more…]
Charles Murray is the co-author of the infamous Bell Curve that aroused a lot of controversy because of its implications that genetics largely explained social and racial inequalities. He has a new book out that focuses on the divisions amongst white people only. [Read more…]