Random Announcements

So exams are over, although my work at the institute is not, and I’m finally doing something interesting with Google Wave: Playing RPGs. Specifically, Eclipse Phase, which is a CC-licensed RPG that deals with transhumanist themes:
Eclipse Phase is a pen & paper roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror.
An “eclipse phase” is the period between [...]

In Defence of Mini skirts

A friend of mine had commented on this post as yet another example of the “miniskirt theory of modernity”(“Afghan women not only attended Kabul University, they did so in miniskirts”). (For those not familiar with the term, it’s not considered to be a particularly valid theory.) And I thought, hey. Why not?  Knowing fully well [...]

Bias

I was reading a paper by a friend today, as well as a post/report by another friend, and had some objections to both. For the latter case I think I was able to isolate my precise objections, and for the former I did realize what basically upset me, although when I did it was (partly) [...]

The hostile web

I was just reading through a post on Marginal Revolution when I had something of an epiphany which is, in retrospect, completely obvious.
We talk of the internet as some sort of large global community, but I find it very interesting how there’s so little true interaction or assimiliation of viewpoints on the web. Ideally, when [...]

Objective Reality, Rationalism and the Nature of Belief

I was in the middle of an utterly normal conversation with a friend when it suddenly veered off into a discussion of whether beliefs are a matter of choice. I said, obviously not, and she said, “of course they are!”. And then we quickly got into a tangential discussion which ended with her comparing me [...]

RaceFail 09

I blame John Scalzi for turning me onto this(even though he did try pretty hard not to even mention what he was responding so angrily to), although I’m surprised that I’ve never even thought about the larger issue before. The larger issue being racism and diversity within the world of SFF. Obviously, I’ve thought about [...]

A Tricky Question

Two gay men are in one of those rare places where they can get married, and they do. They want children, so they decide to have 2 kids by (different) surrogate mothers using in-vitro fertilization: one kid using each father’s sperm.  They have a boy and a girl. Twenty years later, the “brother and sister” [...]

Cold Waves and Climate Change: A Bleg

I seem to be coming across this a lot recently, so this is a bleg: can anyone reading this tell me how the rather indisputable  “cold wave” that we seem to be in can be attributed to, or even reconciled with, global warming? I’ve heard that it actually follows from the prevailing theories of climate [...]

Men’s Rights?

[UPDATE: I no longer hold with most of the opinions expressed on this page, although I won't entirely disown it. So this post is still here merely to serve as a record. After all, that's what most of the posts here are for.]
Via Bryan Caplan who quotes from Tyler’s book. The article is aptly titled, [...]

Politics,Popularity and Fanaticism

This is an old post from Overcoming Bias, but it’s been a while since I’ve read something this well-written and coherent and NEW. It’s been a draft for a while now, and I was planning on putting this up before the US Election got over, but I don’t really think I have anything to add [...]