Reprinted from Science News, Vol. 326 2009-10-02 without permission. By Gary J. Nabel The scientific method has driven conceptual inquiry for centuries and still forms the basis of scientific investigation. Yet, the hypothesis-based research paradigm itself has received scant attention recently. Here, I propose an alternative model for this paradigm, based on decision, information and [...]
Ok, there’s a saying: “Quitters never win and winners never quit”. There’s a second part to that saying, “Those who never win and never quit are idiots.” There’s a third part even, that you might have to think a bit on for it to make sense in this context: “Give a million monkeys typewriters and [...]
Items as innocuous as your zip code and date of birth can potentially be enough to identify you. Read this article for more information. We need to fight to keep our lives private not only from corporations but from the government.
“The Simple Truth” By EliezerYudkowsky Last edited 12/14/05 “I remember this paper I wrote on existentialism. My teacher gave it back with an F. She’d underlined true and truth wherever it appeared in the essay, probably about twenty times, with a question mark beside each. She wanted to know what I meant by truth.” — [...]
Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman (Adapted from a Caltech commencement address given in 1974; HTML’ed from the book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”) During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas [...]
They can delete whatever they want off it without your permission.
FINRA = Financial Industry Regulatory Authority These screeching morons have been using taxpayer money to advertise on the radio about how they have “put away” so many brokers last year (presumably for deceptive lending practices). What about this whole housing market debacle? Where were you then? Where are you now??? What about these (yes, plural) [...]
As a precursor to a series of posts I am planning, I present to you a long standing pet rant of mine: cereal and candy commercials. The majority of commercials for candy and children’s cereals shares a single common basis: they could be seamlessly adapted to be commercials for recreational drugs. These commercials explicitly state [...]
A few days ago, a closet liberal friend of mine was trying to convince me that it was immoral to drive a SUV. He stated (incorrectly) that more people get killed by SUVs in auto accidents every year than every other vehicle. Even knowing that this fact was false, I still wanted to know how, [...]
We were asked to blog about an article entitled “New Details About Michael Jackson’s Death Emerge”. Haven’t read it, and I won’t, but I know what to say. There are four broad reasons a person can die: you did it to yourself, somebody else did it to you, bad luck, or it was about that [...]