Enjoy.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Archive for the ‘Awesomeness’ Category
Moral Action and Reason
April 17, 2010The Templeton Foundation has a really interesting set of essays up interrogating the question, “Does Moral Action depend on Reasoning?” Included are essays — really short essays — from philosophers Alfred Mele and Christine Korsgaard.
Reason’s Watchdog
April 16, 2010Two more fantastic clips from Jon Stewart, illustrating once again that the Daily Show is one of the best places to go for exposure of the logical failings of the news corps. See below as they address the hasty generalization, the straw man, special pleading, the genetic fallacy, among other fallacies, all without saying as much.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
I leave you with this. Ack!
Picking on Bobo
April 13, 2010It’s a pretty busy day for me, so I’ll outsource my Bobo picking. Here’s this brilliant gem from Matt Taibi:
Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door.
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
Gotta agree with that.
Simply the Best, Statistically Speaking
April 12, 2010Nate Silver, political analyst and emergent numbers nerd from the 2008 election, puts his fancy math skills to work ranking and sorting 50 neighborhoods in the five boroughs. Check out this phenomenal and comprehensive explanation of the bests and worsts of each neighborhood.
As he notes, the best part isn’t the article, but the killer applet that they’ve designed that allows a reader to personalize the rankings according to areas of interest. As it happens, I plugged in my faves and, presto!, my old neighborhood (the East Village) popped up as the best place for me to live. Hard to say, of course, what the direction of causality is here, as I effectively just lucked into my apartment. Some of my tastes were certainly shaped by my environment. Even still, I’d like to think that the place I lived was really the best for me. Ah, New York, much as I love me my new digs in Colorado, I do miss thee.
Greenest University in America
April 10, 2010One of the kids interviewed in this video was a student of mine last semester. Props to Dave Newport for his hard work at the CU Environmental Center.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Cruel Mistress 