Category: Of Random Interest

First, I find it inter­est­ing that the guy is not actu­al­ly an athe­ist, although I can under­stand why they chose the title. Sec­ond, I found this bit at the end very insight­ful:
“Q: Can’t you do a project of this scope at a top uni­ver­si­ty like Cal­tech?

Koch: No. Uni­ver­si­ties are great at pro­duc­ing indi­vid­ual sci­en­tists who are bril­liant at push­ing new ideas, but the entire sci­en­tif­ic endeav­or is con­struct­ed on the notion of being hyper-com­pet­i­tive and as dif­fer­ent as pos­si­ble from oth­er peo­ple. Oth­er­wise, you don’t get a Ph.D. You don’t get tenure. You don’t get grants. You don’t get papers in high pro­file jour­nals. So it’s very dif­fi­cult to focus an enor­mous amount of research in a dis­ci­plined way.”

On Rec­on­cil­ing Athe­ism and Mean­ing in the Uni­verse

“Roman­tic reduc­tion­ist” neu­ro­sci­en­tist Christof Koch dis­cuss­es the search for mean­ing in the world of sci­ence, and the philo­soph­i­cal influ­ence of work­ing with Fran­cis Crick.

Scott Adams is, in my esti­ma­tion, one of the most gift­ed humor writ­ers alive today.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012–08-29/

Yikes. Chi­na gonna fall down go boom.

Christo­pher Bald­ing on the real risk in Chi­na

In the past 5–8 years, and espe­cial­ly the past 3, Chi­na has built an enor­mous amount of stuff that nobody wants, needs, or uses. Fueled by a lend­ing boom that began in late 2008 and tripled total len…

The answer: around 97%.

What per­cent­age of cou­ples are hap­pi­ly mar­ried? » Lead­er­ship Net­work

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This is unsur­pris­ing, as is oth­er research I have seen sug­gest­ing that a sur­pris­ing num­ber of athe­ists pray. Dis­be­liev­ing in God goes against our nature.

Under­neath it all, do athe­ists believe things hap­pen for a rea­son? — Bark­ing up the wrong tree

Bark­ing up the wrong tree. I want to under­stand why we do what we do and use the answers to be awe­some at life. Hap­pi­ness · Exper­tise. About. Eric Bark­er; First vis­it? Start here. Bakadesuyo.com is pr…

Wow. The wages of sin is death…

Man Gets Ebo­la … From Phone He Stole

A Ugan­dan thief got a seri­ous les­son in why you should­n’t steal, par­tic­u­lar­ly from peo­ple with dead­ly dis­eases. After break­ing into a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward ear­li­er this month and steal­ing a cell… …

I find the idea that stu­dents start per­form­ing bet­ter as soon as they find out the results of the lot­tery fas­ci­nat­ing. So much of life is about per­spec­tive and expec­ta­tions.

Freako­nom­ics » Evi­dence on School Choice

We then exam­ine the impact attend­ing a cho­sen school has on stu­dent test score out­comes. We find sub­stan­tial test score gains from attend­ing a char­ter school and some evi­dence that choos­ing and attend…

I have a lot of friends from Sin­ga­pore and so I’ve heard a lot of Sin­ga­pore­an sto­ries, but this one is over-the-top even for Sin­ga­pore. Wow.

The cul­ture that is Sin­ga­pore

A Sin­ga­pore prop­er­ty devel­op­er is tar­get­ing the super rich with park­ing prob­lems by mar­ket­ing lux­u­ry apart­ments that allow own­ers to keep their cars next to their liv­ing rooms, even if they are on the…

I’ve long been a Chi­na skep­tic because of things such as the ghost cities, but I must con­fess I nev­er real­ly con­sid­ered the oppor­tu­ni­ty costs of their actions the way he high­lights them here.

From the excel­lent Yichuan (Lulu) Wang

You all should be fol­low­ing him, or so it would seem to me. Here are excerpts from his post What Chi­na Could Be Build­ing: The real risk is not that the hous­ing won’t be used, but that the crash would…

This is one thing I miss about read­ing books on a Kin­dle — I have less flex­i­bil­i­ty in how I mark them up. On the plus side, it’s eas­i­er to snag a ver­ba­tim quote.

Anno­tat­ing Texts: Some Sug­ges­tions (with Pic­tures!)

A friend of mine who is also a doc­tor­al stu­dent recent­ly asked if I had any sort of sys­tem for how I anno­tate books, par­tic­u­lar­ly pri­ma­ry texts. It was an inter­est­ing ques­tion, because anno­tat­ing book…