BUMPED UP just for fun. [NOTE: I came across this old post of mine today, and thought it might be fun to repeat it.] I’ve always had an excellent recollection for early events in my life, with the peculiarity that … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.] Later on in his interview, the philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu has much to say about what humans can do on the biological level to help make the world better, in the general … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Part II here.] As soon as I saw the headline for this article, I thought it might be about Peter Singer. I’ve written at great length about Singer before (see this, this, and this), and the title of the … Continue reading →
I’ve had many occasions over the years to quote this line from “Hamlet,” and I’m going to do it again: There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It was true … Continue reading →
David Solway writes: The idea of merit has fallen on evil times, as has its corollary concept, objectivity… In the interests of creating a society based on the axioms of “social justice”—which is really socialist justice—the principles of professional merit … Continue reading →
It’s almost a cliche now that unhappiness has been rising among young people. Surveys indicate that it’s a real phenomenon, and the suicide rate has increased sharply. Social media is often blamed, but as this article describes, the research on … Continue reading →
Hope you never need this information: how to survive solitary confinement. It seems to come down to the ability to focus imagination on positives, what is called intentional imagination rather than uncontrolled imagination: Mental imagery can supplement perceptual input—but it … Continue reading →
The movie “Unplanned” is about many things, but one thing it’s about is a person changing her mind on an important issue. In this case, the issue is abortion, and the change was from being head of a Planned Parenthood … Continue reading →
These are filmed interviews with the elderly. Not the present-day elderly, but the elderly from almost a century ago. Most of these clips were made around 1930, which means that a lot of the interviewees were born in the 1840s. … Continue reading →
This experience must be enthralling: After the groundbreaking test flight, we caught up with Moses to learn about what it was like to see the curvature of the Earth and experience weightlessness in actual space. We also wanted to know … Continue reading →
I’m not entirely sure that I understand this, but I’m entirely sure that it’s interesting: Taking quantum mechanics seriously predicts a unique, single quantum reality underlying the multiverse. The homogeneity and the tiny temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background, … Continue reading →
There were some comments recently that were so insightful I thought I’d repost them here, to draw attention to them. The first was in the knitting post. In case you haven’t read that post, it was about a big dust-up … Continue reading →