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I would not have guessed the gap was so large. Part of it is easy to under­stand — every­one needs health care but edu­ca­tion tends to be lim­it­ed to cer­tain stages of life. But that only gets you to a 20–1 or so ratio. 

Ques­tions that are rarely asked

It is esti­mat­ed that less than $1B is spent in the U.S. each year on edu­ca­tion research, with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment spend­ing about $700M and uni­ver­si­ties, foun­da­tions and the pri­vate sec­tor spend­ing …

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The last few sen­tences are pure gold.

Para­dox of Hoax­es: How Errors Per­sist, Even When Cor­rect­ed | Wired Sci­ence | Wired.com

Not only were peo­ple spread­ing incor­rect infor­ma­tion with recent hoax­es, the col­lec­tive inter­net con­scious­ness didn’t even rec­og­nize the return of the same error. And even when we do rec­og­nize such er…

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Some­how this nev­er occurred to me. Wow. I knew 3D print­ers were going to give plen­ty of peo­ple headaches, but it nev­er occurred to me that they might also be respon­si­ble for exit wounds.

Guns don’t kill peo­ple, print­ers do!

Imag­ine an Amer­i­ca in which any­one can down­load and print a gun in their own home. They wouldn’t need a license, a back­ground check, or much tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, just a 3D print­er. That’s the vision a…

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I con­sid­er myself fair­ly well-informed about this issue, but some of these cita­tions were new to me. 

Abor­tion and the Ear­ly Church

In this post, I’m going to address two mis­con­cep­tions that peo­ple often hold con­cern­ing abor­tion. First, many peo­ple assume that elec­tive abor­tions are a fair­ly recent phenomenon—something made pos­sib…

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Heh. I love it when some­one uses sim­ple num­bers to explode a ridicu­lous claim (or in this case, a pur­port­ed­ly unan­swer­able ques­tion). 

Sand in the Gears » Blog Archive » Aban­don­ing chil­dren

What hap­pened in Nebras­ka does­n’t raise the ques­tion, it answers it. Using U.S. Cen­sus Bureau data, we can deter­mine that when Nebras­ka par­ents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to give up their chil­dren with no c…

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What a clever exper­i­ment. The human brain is fas­ci­nat­ing…

How to con­fuse a moral com­pass

Sur­vey ‘mag­ic trick’ caus­es atti­tude rever­sal.

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I was skep­ti­cal, but it is a plau­si­ble con­tender.

The best word ever

Over the past two months, Ted McCagg has been run­ning a con­test on his blog to find the best word ever. A win­ner was recent­ly anno

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This is a life-sav­ing chart and should be post­ed promi­nent­ly wher­ev­er men and women cross paths.

When Is It Okay to Ask a Woman If She’s Preg­nant?

It’s a tricky ques­tion, but this chart pro­vides a good rule of thumb. HT: The CornerIt’s a tricky ques­tion, but this chart pro­vides a good rule of thumb. HT: The Cor­ner

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I have always thought this is the dumb­est pos­si­ble crit­i­cism of the Catholic Church. It’s like say­ing that Bat­man does­n’t fight crime because Bruce Wayne goes to par­ties. It miss­es the way the nar­ra­tive fits togeth­er.

Out of Ur: Do Megachurch­es Hurt the Poor?

Con­ver­sa­tions for Min­istry Lead­ers

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File this under “ter­ri­fy­ing anec­dotes”

Seth’s Blog » Blog Archive » Unac­count­able by Mar­ty Makary

The author, Mar­ty Makary, asked the same ques­tion at his talks and got the same response. Both of them — Leape and Makary — should have start­ed ask­ing “What frac­tion of the sur­geons you work with are …