Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Ibn Khaldun

The father of information theory and one of the founders of the philosophy of history and sociology (died in 1406 and his writings sound shockingly modern, actually). Facebook summary and the man's actual book, or part of it.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

The science of how conversations are ended politely

Cool article about verbal interaction.

Trouble at the Koolaid point

Thoughtful blog post by Kathy Sierra.

Professional victimizers

Here's a thoughtful article about the notion of "professional victimizers" - people literally making money off slut-shaming of innocent women.

Rebuttal points

I almost want to keep a database of rebuttal points to common memes. But that would be work.

Foreign aid comes up a lot. Here are four things you didn't know about it.

IPs used by "North Korea" against Sony

Interesting technical rundown on the IPs the FBI claims indicate North Korean backing for the Sony hack - they're open proxies, used by everybody and his brother.

And speaking of cyberwar (ha), here's a pretty interesting article about sabotage of a Turkish oil pipeline in 2008.

Newsweek on the Bible

That's not what it says. Excellent rundown of the history of how the Bible came to be, and why literalists are misguided.

As long as we're talking about the Bible, the subversive peace of Christmas from the Sojourners, and how Jesus became more magical over time as the New Testament was written. (Bible Study Tools gives us a list in chronological order.) Here are five ways fundamentalists refuse to follow the Bible.

The Houston Unitarians have the full text of the Jefferson Bible for our perusal (PDF), speaking of rationality.

Dysrationality

Here's a pretty cool article from SciAm about the lack of correlation between rational thought and IQ. Part of the problem is cognitive bias; part is a lack of "mindware", the skills needed to think rationally.

Good article.

Schönwert's newly discovered archive of fairy tails from Oberpfalz

The Grimm tales seem to have been a little selective - but there are lots and lots of other collections. One compiled by Schönwert has been in the news lately, but a response to its appearance by Jack Zipes lists many others. I wonder what kind of indexing has been done of these in terms of tropes and story structure? I'm getting more interested in this kind of thing.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Judaism 101

Interesting: the Ten Commandments are just headings, mnemonics for grouping the actual list of 613 laws.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Where did the angels come from?

Another interview at Salon (sadly doesn't actually appear to name the person interviewed, oddly enough (oops, never mind, it's been fixed)) - the Elohim were the ancient Jewish gods; Yahweh was their chief god. It's why the Elohim say "Man and woman created we them."

The whole thing is chock full of fascinating things like that. Makes me want to start drawing charts.

American apocalpyticism

Fascinating interview over at Salon.

Christian pseudoscience

The science curricula for fundamentalists - which are accepted for college entrance by some schools - are truly mindboggling. Not just evolution denial, either.

Here's an example, lifted straight from the article:
Scientists have known for years that snowflakes are shaped in six-sided, or hexagonal, patterns. But why is this? Some scientists have theorised that the electrons within a water molecule follow three orbital paths that are positioned at 60° angles to one another. Since a circle contains 360°, this electronic relationship causes the water molecule to have six ‘spokes’ radiating from a hub (the nucleus). When water vapour freezes in the air, many water molecules link up to form the distinctive six-sided snowflakes and the hexagonal pattern is quite evident. 
Snowflakes also contain small air pockets between their spokes. These air pockets have a higher oxygen content than does normal air. Magnetism has a stronger attraction for oxygen than for other gases. Consequently, some scientists have concluded that a relationship exists between a snowflake’s attraction to oxygen and magnetism’s attraction to oxygen. 
Job 38:22, 23 states, ‘Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?’ Considering this scripture, some scientists believe that a tremendous power resides untapped within the water molecules from which snowflakes and hailstones are made. 
How can this scripture, along with these observations about snowflakes, show us a physical truth? Scientists at Virginia Tech have produced electricity more efficiently from permanent magnets, which have their lines of force related to each other at sixty-degree angles, than from previous methods of extracting electricity from magnetism. Other research along this line may reveal a way to tap electric current directly from snow, eliminating the need for costly, heavy, and complex equipment now needed to generate electricity.

They take for granted that the Bible (the literal word of God) is literally true, and come up with truly wild-ass statements about the physical world that sound like they're taken straight from The Name of the Rose. Trouble being that it's not 1345 out there any more, and we actually do have science now, and this ain't it.

Pretty fascinating, though. Not least because the state of education in the Western world is so poor overall - still! - that most people can't tell the difference between this stuff and reality.

Note also the spelling of "vapour". This is from the UK, not America. That's scarier than anything else I've seen. Europeans are supposed to have an educational system...