“Rational Atheism” at Scientific American

Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine writes an open letter to Messrs Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens in the Skeptic column of Scientific American. He argues that we should avoid defining ourselves as anti-religion, instead outlining what we support (presumably rationality and having the strength of character to see the world as it truly is). Quoting [...]

Could alien life be dna dust?

A recent amazing series of computer simulations performed by a team of physicists from Russia, Germany and Australia reveals that dust clouds in space can harbour spiral structures capable of reproducing - and being selected - in the same way as terrestrial DNA. Read an Institute of Physics news article here, and read another brief [...]

Guiding the Godless

I really should have mentioned this before, but so slowly am I reading the thought-provoking free ebook “A Guide for the Godless” by the philosopher Andrew Kernohan that I would like to bring your attention to it now, and perhaps we can get some discussion going. The table of contents reads as follows.
Preface

Meaning
Purpose
Death
Self-Realization
Pleasure
Desires
Reasons
Emotions
Judgements
Holism
Beliefs
Truth
Meaninglessness
Justice
Choice
Commitment
Culture
Happiness
References
Index

Comment posted by [...]

Hoping we are alone in the universe

The ever-wonderful Nick Bostrom, who to my knowledge was the first to argue scientifically that we are overwhelmingly more likely to be living in a computer simulation than otherwise, has a short essay on his hope that we are alone in the universe. The hinge of his argument is the existence of a “Great Filter”, [...]

Future Histories - a short story

While sorting through my oh-too-many pdfs with the brilliant Yep, I came across the following story I wrote about a year ago, imagining a realistic dystopian future. Comments are welcome!
-_-_-_-_-
“To your right. No, your other right.”
Folks, we’ve all been there. We give a simple direction to a friend or futurefriend, only to see them turn [...]

Alien awareness

Are we too parochial in our search for alien life? Can we define life, can we set limits on where it can or cannot exist, on what chemicals and in what environments it can and cannot persist? I’m put in mind of the engineers who believed train travel would be impossible for human passengers because [...]

Toddlers’ Vocabulary Explosion

Here is an article from Scientific American which struck a chord with me for two reasons. Firstly, it explains the rapid increase in the vocabulary of toddlers, a breathtaking phase my son is currently blossoming through. Secondly, it does so without any fancy hypothetical linguistic white elephants, but merely with a common statistical entity: the [...]