Here’s an addendum to our previous post (which was in turn a comment upon a recent post, at Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher website, about atheism and morality).
Dr. William Vallicella, in a recent post, considers the following quote from the atheist author Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation, pp. 38-39): If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. […]
A few days ago we directed waka waka waka readers to a Wall Street Journal piece by Bernard Lewis, in which he explained the psychological boost and doctrinal validation that a US abandonment of Iraq would give to our jihadist foes. Now that article is followed by a politically brave item by the Democrat Bob […]
Say what you like about New York City, there’s always something going on. At lunchtime today I walked into Grand Central Station, which is only a hundred yards or so from my office, just as some of the world’s top “competitive eaters” were about to begin a buffalo-wing smackdown. My sense of journalistic duty awakened, […]
Today was a long day down at the kung-fu school: junior testing all morning — which means that we instructors sit and watch some very nervous beginners wobble and fidget their way through the Gung Ji Fook Fu Kuen and Fu Hok Cern Ying forms — followed at one p.m. by a five-and-a-half hour Dim […]
In the wake of the tainted-pet-food story, folks are starting to take a closer look at what sorts of filth, exactly, the Chinese have been dumping on our markets. The story isn’t pretty: in fact, it’s revolting. You can read it here.
Last Wednesday The Wall Street Journal featured an article by Bernard Lewis, perhaps America’s foremost scholar of Islamic history and society. The article is entitled Was Osama Right?, and carries the following subheading: Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view.
There was a provocative item in yesterday’s Times. It concerned one Andrew Feldmar, a psychotherapist from Vancouver, and what happened when he tried to enter the US to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport.
There’s a quirky little item in the science news today: some researchers in Germany have been studying fruit flies, and have observed that their behavior seems surprisingly flexible.
We note that Jerry Falwell, the prominent religious extremist, sanctimonious prig, and bigot, has died. This is the man who, on September 13th, 2001, said: I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, […]
As long as I’m shirking serious duties here today, I offer another amusing item, courtesy of my son Nick.
Here in Gotham, where we have the best of everything, we flatter ourselves that our great city is America’s premier culinary destination. Not so; we have been eclipsed, for the moment at least, by Elderon, Wisconsin (pop. 189), home of the Testicle Festival. Learn more here.
Making good once again on my offer of weightless froth, here, with a hat tip to Jon Mandell, is a preposterous little item, involving a police officer who confiscated some marijuana, baked it into brownies, and shared them with his wife. Hilarity ensues.
Q: Should one attempt to write a post at the end of a long and active day, when one has just got home, at 11:15 p.m., from taking one’s elderly mother-in-law to a lavish and bibulous birthday dinner at a delightful Manhattan restaurant? A: No.
One of the advantages of being a well-connected Internet sort is that people are constantly sending me interesting tidbits. From my friend Nick, who also provided yesterday’s Polka Floyd item, is one I hadn’t run across before (don’t know how I missed it, as it is right in amongst all the sorts of things I […]
Well, I promised you all some froth, and here it is. Tonight we have, courtesy of my childhood friend Nick Nicholes, who now lives in a scenic vale in remotest Montana, a polka band that does Pink Floyd covers, and pretty well too. No quadrophonic mixes, though; you’ll just have to use your imagination.
Here’s an interesting item. It seems that neuroscientists are getting around to a more detailed study of attention, a topic that, as I’ve previously mentioned, has been known to be central for inner work in meditative traditions for a long, long, time. (It is also a sort of universal human currency, as I argue here.) […]
I’ve finally had a chance to get back to considering Titus Rivas’s paper, in which he and Hein van Dongen argue that the mind-brain model known as epiphenomenalism — which says that subjective mental phenomena are indeed ontologically real, that they are “irreducible” to physical processes, and that they exert no causal influence on the […]
We are back home, and this week, with a slightly freer evening schedule, might offer some quiet time for serious study and comment, I hope. In addition to other pending items, I have just read, finally, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and ought to say a thing or two about it here. I see […]
Today was, like yesterday, a day to set aside introspection, brooding and contemplation; a day to live life rather than examine it.
We are back in Wellfleet today (having driven up from Gotham late last night), and it would be hard to imagine more clement surroundings. It is still too early in the season for there to be many people here on the outer Cape, and for those who had the good sense to be here, today […]
We’re traveling again tonight, so for now I’ll just offer readers an uplifting news item, in which we are told that South American doctors can immediately spot male patients who have been bitten by the Brazilian wandering spider. Apparently, their symptom precedes them. Learn more here. P.S. We wish to reassure you that this post’s […]
With a tip of the waka waka waka tam o’shanter to our old friend Jess Kaplan, we have further evidence of the beneficial effect of religion upon the world. Today the spotlight is on one Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who in a sermon on Friday offered an inspiring example […]
We will return to weightier matters as soon as time permits, but meanwhile: You may think you know plenty about duck phalluses, but you have nothing on one Dr. Patricia Brennan, who has made the study of the anatine willy her life’s work. Most male birds, in fact, are entirely ajohnsonal, but ducks buck this […]
April 30, 2007 – 10:34 pm
We’re back in Gotham, and will be resuming normal operations shortly. We were away on a whirlwind trip to the Midwest for the happiest of reasons: the graduation, with honors, of our daughter ChloÁ« from the University of Michigan.
April 27, 2007 – 11:56 am
With a tip of the hat to Dennis Mangan, here are some striking public-service posters from France, warning of the dangers of AIDS. Shocking, perhaps, to some, so caveat observator. As mentioned below, waka waka waka will be off the air until the weekend is over. We’ll be on the road, and I won’t have […]
April 27, 2007 – 12:39 am
It’s been a very busy week indeed, and there has been scant time for writing, or for that matter, even thinking, it seems. I’ve had not a moment to join (for which I apologize) Titus Rivas and Bob Koepp in the excellent discussion that followed this post, and I’ve also had no time to prepare […]
April 24, 2007 – 10:35 pm
There’s lots of interesting news these days from really faraway places; if you’re interested in such things, you should subscribe to two of the newsletters I get: one published by NASA, and the other from Spaceweather.com. There are three stories I’ll mention tonight.
April 23, 2007 – 11:06 pm
The noted computer scientist David Gelernter has been working on what he believes will replace the World Wide Web. He calls it the Worldbeam. Learn more here.
In remarking on a recent post, commenter Titus Rivas offered a link to a paper he and Hein van Dongen wrote in 2001, in which they launch an assault on the mind-body model known as epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism is the view that the subjective, conscious mind is a causally impotent byproduct of the physical activity of […]
Readers are encouraged to have a look at this thoughtful piece by Kevin Kim, in which he examines freedom and responsibility in the wake of the Virginia massacre.
An item in today’s Times reports a new and important result from a major European research facility. After years of painstaking investigation, the Vatican has announced that Limbo, an area where the souls of unbaptized babies and of the multitudes who lived before the time of Christ were previously understood to dwell — not in […]
April 20, 2007 – 10:43 pm
Peas as Large as Beets! Hot and Cold Air from Spigots! …I haven’t the time this evening to disgorge any of the usual tendentious bloviation, so I thought I’d share with you a breezy little item I stumbled upon this morning, when I should have been working. Man Will See Around the World! No Foods […]
April 19, 2007 – 11:55 pm
There is quite a ruction, as we might expect, over the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding a Federal law barring “partial birth” abortions, and even the justices of the Supreme Court seem quite angrily divided. This is law at its most difficult, in which separating the rights and interests of the parties involved — in fact, […]
In the wake of the horror at Virginia Tech, folks around the world, and here at home, are expressing a predictable variety of responses. The Left is calling for stricter gun control, the Right for stricter immigration, the Europeans are criticizing our violent culture, and all sorts of people are focusing on the Asian-ness, or […]
A few days ago the New York Times offered a revealing glimpse of the august body of solons by whose sage and impartial judgment New Jersey law is made.
April 16, 2007 – 11:58 pm
We’re back in Gotham, delayed for a day by the immense storm that has battered the Eastern Seaboard. We sat out the tempest in Wellfleet, Massachussetts, which is situated on a narrow spit of land twenty-five miles out to sea, and which took quite a pounding, as you might imagine.
Back in early March I called readers’ attention to Colony Collapse Disorder, which is the name given to an alarming development: bees abandoning their hives, never to be found. This ominous phenomenon, which presents a major threat to our food supply, is already a serious problem — here on the East Coast, it is estimated […]
April 13, 2007 – 12:05 pm
Today is Friday the 13th, an occasion that many folks regard with a wary eye. Not me, though: as it happens, I was born on a Friday the 13th, 51 years ago today. So whenever they pop up I always think of them as auspicious. Of course, as a man of science, I realize that’s […]
April 13, 2007 – 10:38 am
Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus, Imus. Imus Imus Imus. Imus Imus Imus, Imus, Imus Imus Imus Imus Imus!
If you’ve ever set up a wireless home network using Windows machines, you know what a vexatious task it can be. David Pogue, tech reporter for the New York Times, shares his personal adventure here. It appears there is room for improvement.
April 12, 2007 – 12:24 am
My friend Duncan Werner has just alerted me to the sad news that Kurt Vonnegut has died. Duncan’s note contained the following passage from Cat’s Cradle, which seems as apt as anything I might say: If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the […]
Today’s Wall Street Journal features an informative piece by Mideast scholar Fouad Ajami on the changing balance of power in Iraq. An excerpt:
April 10, 2007 – 11:13 pm
If you follow such things, you might be interested to read about an effort by a University of Washington researcher to demonstrate what is known as “quantum retrocausality” – in other words, backwards causation.
There is a front-page story in today’s New York Times about a radical and highly controversial proposal that, if adopted, will almost certainly shake our civilization to its very foundations: voluntary guidelines for well-mannered blogging.
In the last three posts in this series on mind-body interaction, we looked at some of the more serious objections to what is known as “interactionist ‘substance’ dualism”. After laying out a litany of difficulties with this model, I ended the previous entry by asking why anyone would defend such a view. There are several […]
From my good friend Duncan Werner, one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met (I’m sure he’d rather I hadn’t said that, but there it is), comes something brand new that I think will be a Big Deal indeed before long — and as far as I know, you waka waka waka readers are the […]
In recent years, though I still record an album or two a year, I’ve spent most of my working hours as a software engineer. Most of my code is written in the “object-oriented” language C++, and is designed to run on the Windows operating system. I took up this arcane profession just at the beginning […]
Hard upon the government’s global-warming setback at the hands of the Supreme Court, we have new evidence that the Bush administration’s environmental perfidy knows no Earthly bounds. Learn more here.
I can tell you from dolorous personal experience how difficult it can be, once you have confected a snappy little essay, blog post, or other other coruscating gem of tightly condensed prose, to come up with an apt and witty title; often it’s the hardest part of the job. So I have long admired the […]