We have had interesting discussions in the past on this blog about the use of language. This New Yorker article by Adrienne Raphel titled A History of Punctuation for the Internet Age discusses the evolution of punctuation over time and the strong feelings that it generates between purists and those who are more tolerant of contemporary modifications.
[Read more…]
Every four years the media salivates at the possibility of a political party’s nominee not being decided by the primary process, with a multiplicity of candidates going to the convention with sufficient delegates to have a shot at winning the nomination. The media drools at the possibility of public and backroom wheeling and dealing until one of the candidates or, even better, a rank outsider becomes the nominee.
[Read more…]
One of the features of science is that most of the time the community of scientists in any particular sub-specialty will agree on the basic paradigms that govern that field. While there will always be some scientists who refuse to accept the paradigm, most work within the consensus. This changes when the paradigm begins breaks down due to the fact that anomalies start to proliferate and no progress is made on major problems. Then more and more scientists start to look for new paradigms that promise to radically change the way they view the world. Those periods of scientific revolutions are exciting but rare.
[Read more…]
I wrote a few days ago about the parade of Republican presidential hopefuls auditioning for Sheldon Adelson’s money by appearing before his group called the Republican Jewish Coalition. The Daily Show‘s newest correspondent Adam Lowitt had a pretty funny segment dissecting their appearance.
[Read more…]
Encryption has been in the news ever since Edward Snowden revealed to the world the massive spying operation that the US and its allies in English speaking countries (UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) perpetrates on the communications of people all over the world. The backlash has resulted in some curbs to the US government’s spying powers but the greater impact has been on the increased use of end-to-end encryption on the internet.
[Read more…]
In his latest attempts to try and derail the Donald Trump juggernaut that is trampling all over his own candidacy, Jeb Bush accuses Trump of using “dog whistle politics” to gain popularity with his call to ban all Muslims from entering the country, saying:
[Read more…]
It is always interesting when conventional wisdom is challenged. A new study provides a classic example of the danger of inferring causation from correlation. There have been studies that show that people who are unhappy have higher mortality rates and thus shorter life spans. It has become conventional to think that being unhappy is bad for you. But a new large ten-year study says that rather than unhappiness leading to increased mortality, it is poor health that leads people to be unhappy and that is the reason for the correlation.
[Read more…]
Trevor Noah of The Daily Show points out how, because he is the leading candidate of one of the two major political parties, Donald Trump has given permission for people to say things that they may have formerly felt obliged to either suppress or only share with those they were sure shared their views. Now, pretty much anything goes.
When speaking to reporters at the recent global conference in Paris on climate change, president Obama responded to a reporter’s question about Russian involvement in Syria with the following statement.
[Read more…]
I am a big fan of the children’s TV show Sesame Street. I don’t watch it anymore but I used to watch it every day with my children when they were young and I got very fond of the characters on the show, particularly the Muppets, because the program was clever and funny. My children are all grown up now but I still watch some of the clips online where they parody popular culture
[Read more…]
