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Month: February 2011

Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Is a cow a silo of option value? A good argument, perhaps, against vegetarianism. 2. The Best Questions For A First Date. Dating site OK Cupid has data-mined the answers given by site users, and has come up with some interesting correlations between personal attributes and seemingly-unrelated questions. The upside is that you can use this to ask innocuous questions to possibly get some insight into a person’s personal attributes that you probably couldn’t normally ask of an acquaintance….

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More Priuses Won’t Make Much Difference (Fewer Suburbans Will)

More Priuses Won’t Make Much Difference (Fewer Suburbans Will)

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It is common to hear people say that we need more Americans to drive Priuses, hybrids, and other cars with good mileage. But measuring fuel efficiency by miles per gallon (MPG) is worse than useless: it’s misleading. It makes it almost impossible to easily compare cars and figure out how much fuel each car will really use. We Should Focus on Minimizing the Fuel We Use, Rather than on Maximizing the Distance we Can Drive We use MPG in the…

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How Can We Find Truth? Part 4

How Can We Find Truth? Part 4

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Note: This is part 4 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). 6) Feelings Feelings are also important parts of knowing truth and in…

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Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Tools never die. Almost any technology from our past still exists, and is being used today somewhere in the world — even steam powered car engine parts. 2. Study shows that genes causing religiosity will dominate society. 3. The haves and have-nots. A very interesting chart showing income inequality in the United States, Brazil, China, and India as compared to the rest of the world. The poorest five percent of Brazilians are among the poorest people in the world,…

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Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1.  The academy is liberal, deal! A discussion of the possible reasons why the academy is dominated by political liberals. 2. France’s highest court rules that there is no right to same-sex marriage in France. The European Court of Human Rights has also held that there is no such right. 3. Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together. Neurons in the brain may not just communicate by physical connections between them, but also through electrical fields. 4….

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Sensible Parenting

Sensible Parenting

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A lot of people have shared a recent article about “Chinese mothering” by Yale law professor Amy Chua. All I can say is: what a terrible way to raise your kids. These two blog posts (here and here) by economist Bryan Caplan are the best concise refutations I’ve seen of Chua’s parenting philosophy. Decades of research shows that parenting style doesn’t make much difference in how kids turn out. Beyond a minimum baseline (providing basic needs, not abusing them, etc.),…

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It’s Getting Better All the Time

It’s Getting Better All the Time

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I frequently hear people say that they think the world is getting more evil and more dangerous. But the statistics show that, in most ways, over the last few decades life has been getting better for most people, and violence and crime are decreasing in meaningful ways for most people. Let’s talk about some of the many ways in which the world is getting better. Let’s start with the most evil things in many religions: murder and abortion: Murder, violence,…

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How Can We Find Truth? Part 3

How Can We Find Truth? Part 3

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Note: This is part 3 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   This is this post in this series on truth, we continue…

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How Can We Find Truth? Part 2

How Can We Find Truth? Part 2

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Note: This is part 2 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 3, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   In this second part of the series on truth, we discuss…

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How Can We Find Truth? – Part 1

How Can We Find Truth? – Part 1

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Note: This is part 1 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   Our desire for truth is one of the most fundamental human…

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