Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?

What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.

Sage on the Stage

lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique now that information is everywhere

great article on lecturing and its ineffectiveness in the classroom. I for one agree with the article, with information at our fingertips it makes it unnecessary for a teacher to lecture and instead should allow for more open and flexible forms of teaching. Technology should be leveraged to maximize the opportunities to educate. With digital media ubiquitous it should be no problem to record the lectures for the students viewing out of class which then frees the teacher to provide opportunities to apply knowledge or if needed provide further instruction to those who need it. Salaman Khan of khanacademy.org I think has a great model and approach to teaching that I think would not be a huge obstacle to implement.

I have noticed in many of my science classes which are lecture based that pure memorization over reasoning tends to be emphasized. It is all too often in my science classes that I get the feeling that I am learning the "Story of Science" instead of gaining the firsthand experience gaining the knowledge through an experiment or teaching someone.

Carl Zimmer Profiles Neil deGrasse Tyson

The voice is deep and loud--not loud from shouting, but from some strange acoustic property that gives it a conversational boom. It comes from a man who looms in the dark at the edge of the crowd.

awesome read done by Carl Zimmer on Neil deGrasse Tyson. It is inspiring to read such a well written piece on such an accomplished and recognized voice in science. Just as Carl Sagan inspired a generation so too has Neil.

Romney’s top contributor: Goldman Sachs, Ron Paul’s: US Army

Democrats are shocked to see President Obama treat Wall Street's top banks with respect and kindness. In order to predict his kindness (Obama's justice department has failed to prosecute the crimes that helped lead to the financial crisis of 2008) towards the top financial institutions it didn't take a crystal ball, all it took was a list of his top donors which included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup. Applying this same logic to the GOP primary election Romney is the candidate that will likely be buddy-buddy with Wall Street. Mitt Romney's top ten is made up of Goldman Sachs, followed by Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Morgan Stanley, Barclays (UK), Bank of America and JP Morgan. In contrast Romney's co-frontrunner in Iowa, Ron Paul, has a top three donor list made up of the US Army, US Navy and US Airforce.

 Obviously Goldman Sachs and company donate heavily to Romney not because they like his stance on the social issues but because he will continue the rigged game of crony capitalism. The revolving door from Wall Street (particularly from Goldman Sachs) to the White House will remain open and Goldman and company will maintain not only their rigged game but their influence.

while I don't necessarily agree with Ron Paul on a majority of his positions I think this article makes it clear that Romney is hardly the candidate to alter the dynamic between Wall Street and Washington*.
source

*this does not mean that Obama has any better of a track record.

False Dichotomy

If there is one thing American media has taught us, it's that there are two sides to every coin. And only two. Every directly opposing view is valid, no matter how absurd or deplorable. It's the foundation of the willful ignorance and insidious false balance that is now rotting away our capacity to have meaningful discussions. The wider public, which has no reason to be familiar with questions of either climate science or the finer points of the Holocaust, assumes that if there are arguments, there must be reasons for those arguments. Along with a right-wing anti-elitism, an unthinking left- wing open-mindedness and relativism have also given lunatic ideas soil to grow in. Our politeness has actually led us to believe that everybody deserves a say. The problem is that not everybody does deserve a say. Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. -Stephen Marche*

Some ideas are just plain bad. Whether they be ill/misinformed, wrong, or unsubstantiated thee need to differentiate between them is vital to becoming informed. However differentiating between valid/strong ideas and wrong ones is harder than it seems. However what needs to be understood is that there is more to an argument than pitting it as some sort of false dichotomy, the need to make an argument an either or situation.

*quote adopted from this article , the concluding paragraphs talk more about this issue

war and peace

Are human beings essentially good or bad? Has the past century witnessed moral progress or a moral collapse? Do we have grounds for being optimistic about the future?

Steven Pinker tries to answer these questions in his latest book (looks like a lengthy, but interesting read)
here is a video that breaks down his postition
it looks like he presents a compelling argument yet contrarian argument especially considering certain affairs of the world.
here is his full length talk

Anonymous e-mail

MailNesia - Anonymous e-mail in seconds:

ever need to send an email anonymously like when signing up for websites that you don't want knowing your email?

claims there is no registration or password necessary.

I have not used it but I can see the appeal it would have. check it out and tell me what you think

Writing tips

Writing is something that I feel like I am not very good at, and I have a lot of anxiety whenever I have an assignment or paper that I have to write is due so I spend a huge amount of time procrastinating and not getting any work done. I stumbled across these tips and thought they were a good idea.
here were a few bullet points from the link

• Write before you feel ready — because you might never feel ready. It's amazing how people magically feel ready when there is an imminent deadline.
• Don't wait to have a clear picture of the paper. As you start putting down your ideas, you may actually clarify them.
• Snack write — work in short, frequent bursts instead of waiting to sit down for big blocks of time. Those blocks hardly ever come, and when they do, they don't usually get used very productively.
• Set specific times in your schedule for writing — don't leave it to chance, because chances are it won't happen.
• Writing means putting new words on the page or substantially rewriting old words. It does not mean editing, reading, referencing or formatting — and it definitely does not mean composing e-mails.
• If you refrain from writing because you worry that what you write won't be good enough, try noting the adage that to write well, you first have to write.
• To really increase the quality and quantity of your writing, get feedback from mentors and colleagues — it can be painful, but it works. 

I think points 1 and 2 are the most helpful for me to remember next time I have an important paper to write. But I also think blogging more would help with my anxiety with writing because I think with blogging as a platform it is much less formal, leading me to worry less about formatting or word selection as much as writing a paper would

the name Caesar, pronounced see-zer in English, was pronounced kai-sahr in Classical Latin, think of German with their kaiser.
This title was adopted to invoke the glory of classical Rome and in fact was not even a title till after Julius Ceasers reign ended

Pirate Radio: Micropower broadcasting

Moving onto the Airwaves Micropower Broadcasting Primer

.3 watts per search

Google is massive. With huge data centers keeping data safe and serving up each query to inquisitive visitors. Maintaining these servers requires quite a bit of energy but amazingly Google has kept energy consumption low.
Google has shown how to do more with less, and commentators have noticed that being green is not only good sense for the environment but good business sense

The Chance for Peace

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
 - Dwight D. Eisenhower

taken from a speech delivered April 16, 1953

Stanley Kubrick on Existensialism

Stanley Kubrick on Existentialism 

"if life is so purposeless, do you feel that it is worth living?"

 KUBRICK: “Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their Idealism—and their assumption of Immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong—and lucky—he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death—however mutable man may be able to make them—our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

taken from an interview, you can read a part of it here

Limits of Free Trade

"US tariffs are on average only 4%, “low by historic standards.” But a closer look shows that this openness to foreign goods is selective, and allied to a form of protectionism-by-subsidy.

Internet Repression

it is widely known of the power that technology played in the arab spring but here the NYT weighs in on the more repressive and sinister side of technology.

Amid the cheerleading over recent events in the Middle East, it's easy to forget the more repressive uses of technology. In addition to the rosy narrative celebrating how Facebook and Twitter have enabled freedom movements around the world, we need to confront a more sinister tale: how greedy companies, fostered by Western governments for domestic surveillance needs, have helped suppress them.

how old are you really

want to know how old you really are( well, at least half of you)? take the date of your mothers birth and subtract 20 weeks, this will give the approximate date of the creation of the egg that you came from that became you once your fathers sperm fertilized it. this is due to the fact that on the day of your mothers birth she was born with the only supply of eggs (this is in contrast with males who constantly regenerate sperm)

pretty cool huh?

note: while this actually wont give you your real age because you were not you until just after fertilization, in other words this just shows that half of you genetic material was already formed. But it is cool to think about how half of who you are is much older than what you think

"Un-American"

you want to know what is "Un-American" this kind of talk. 

America and the freedom we enjoy was not labeled for one type of person. America is supposed to be the land of the free, established by we the people. 

Economic Divisions and Political Polarization in Red and Blue America

polarization is strongest among political activists (duh!), and that much of the observed partisan disagreement reflects a deep divide not so much among voters as between Democratic and Republican politicians .On individual issues or clusters of issues, Americans are not much more polarized now than 30 years ago. But issue attitudes are much more closely tied to party identification and self-declared liberal–conservative ideology. As a nation, we have become much more polarized in our views of the major political parties, without there being much of a move to the extremes on the issues themselves. Voters—especially those with higher levels of education and political involvement—have sorted themselves into parties based on political ideology.

The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others.

The illusion of asymmetric insight—creates a lot of problems. For instance, it allows you to completely reject what others believe because you think you understand it, and remain convinced that they'd agree with you if only they understood your point of view. Basically, you think you can understand everyone else and nobody can understand you. It gets even worse in groups. If you need an example, take a look at politics.
In reality, nobody's really right or wrong. We're never going to be able to paint a full picture of ourselves even if we're completely honest. Because much of who we are is internalized, we'll always project an incomplete version of who we are. When we look at other people, however, we have to remember that they're doing the same thing. It's easy to argue and disagree with what we see, hear, and observe, but the full truth is often often beyond our reach. Next time you disagree with another person or group, remember that you probably don't truly know and understand their point of view. You may agree on more than you're able to perceive.

Who you are alone is not who you are with a lover or a friend. You quick-change like Superman in a phone booth when you bump into old friends from high school at the grocery store, or the ex in line for the movie. When you part, you quick-change back and tell the person you are with why you appeared so strange for a moment. They understand, after all, they are also in disguise. It’s not a new or novel concept, the idea of multiple identities for multiple occasions, but it’s also not something you talk about often. The idea is old enough that the word person derives from persona – a Latin word for the masks Greek actors sometimes wore so people in the back rows of a performance could see who was on stage.

researchers asked people to describe a time when they feel most like themselves. Most subjects, 78 percent, described something internal and unobservable like the feeling of seeing their child excel or the rush of applause after playing for an audience. When asked to describe when they believed friends or relatives were most illustrative of their personalities, they described internal feelings only 28 percent of the time. Instead, they tended to describe actions. Tom is most like Tom when he is telling a dirty joke. Jill is most like Jill when she is rock climbing. You can’t see internal states of others, so you generally don’t use those states to describe their personalities.

The illusion of asymmetric insight makes it seem as though you know everyone else far better than they know you, and not only that, but you know them better than they know themselves. You believe the same thing about groups of which you are a member. As a whole, your group understands outsiders better than outsiders understand your group, and you understand the group better than its members know the group to which they belong.

The researchers explained this is how one eventually arrives at the illusion of naive realism, or believing your thoughts and perceptions are true, accurate and correct, therefore if someone sees things differently than you or disagrees with you in some way it is the result of a bias or an influence or a shortcoming. You feel like the other person must have been tainted in some way, otherwise they would see the world the way you do – the right way. The illusion of asymmetrical insight clouds your ability to see the people you disagree with as nuanced and complex. You tend to see your self and the groups you belong to in shades of gray, but others and their groups as solid and defined primary colors lacking nuance or complexity.

This and many other studies show you believe you see more of other people’s icebergs (personality) than they see of yours; meanwhile, they think the same thing about you.

excerpts collected from links posted above. First link is more in depth and longer, while the second one is much shorter and gives a brief overview

New York - Empire of Evolution - NYTimes.com

New York - Empire of Evolution - NYTimes.com: "To study evolution, Jason Munshi-South has tracked elephants in central Africa and proboscis monkeys in the wilds of Borneo. But for his most recent expedition, he took the A train."