Cheating for America– not on it! The fact that Newt Gingrich is running for president, and actually has supporters for that position, makes my brain hurt and my heart sink. It inspires a despondence that I don’t care to dwell in, frankly. But I have to admit that the whole discussion […]
Read MoreBachmann does bioethics
Pictured: a human whose dignity is highly questionable Said Michele Bachmann to members of Personhood USA on Tuesday night: I want everyone to know that I recognize and respect the dignity of every human life from conception until natural death. This is not a check the box thing for me; […]
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Radley Balko got quite a lot of hate mail in response to an article he wrote for HuffPo on Occupy Wall Street. One letter hilariously complains I am appalled by your lack of integrity. You quoted someone from the Cato Institute but didn’t reveal that you also worked for them. […]
Read MoreBiased ! = wrong
Let me say this, right from the start: I love biases. No, I don’t love that they exist, but I think they’re endlessly fascinating. I love thinking about them, identifying them, figuring out where they come from. Studying biases is how I came to the realization that the way we generally […]
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Not allowed to be right aboutanything. After posting a clip from Bill Maher’s show in which the comedian mocks the Republican presidential candidates, Ed Brayton got some flack from readers complaining that they wouldn’t watch it because Maher has established himself as having some pseudoscientific views, specifically being anti-vaccination. When […]
Read MoreThe phenomenon of the petty tyrant
Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business decided to examine the relationship between status and power in how people treat each other. So they organized a study that involved telling participants they would be working on a business exercise with another student, and randomly assigning each participant a role […]
Read MoreSome random musings on “forever”
When I lived in Denmark, a friend told me that no one there receives a prison sentence longer than fourteen years, regardless of their crime. I’ve since learned that that’s not true, but the idea still baffles and appeals to me, and that has nothing to do with the specific […]
Read MoreWho do you admire?
At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf contemplates the results of a recent Gallup poll asking Americans which men and women they most admire. Barack Obama won out for men, whereas Hillary Clinton came out on top for women. Friedersdorf thinks the fact that politicians make up the majority of people […]
Read MoreThe trickiness of characterizing empathy in politics, part 1
So as mentioned, I’m working my way through Frans de Waal’s book The Age of Empathy. On my drive I also listened to the audiobook of Michael Shermer’s The Mind of the Market, and it was almost comical to expose myself to both at the same time and read/listen to […]
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