Jonah Lehrer at The Boston Globe describes recent experiments into the nature of expectation, looking at research into people’s experiences of wine, medication, motor cars and a host of other products. Fascinating studies.
The human brain, research suggests, isn’t built for objectivity. The brain doesn’t passively take in perceptions. Rather, brain regions involved in developing expectations [...]
Republican Presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, believes that Jesus would support capital punishment because he didn’t ask for clemency on the cross.
We should be getting used to having madmen running our countries by now. At a Republican Governors Association Dinner, Huckabee took to the stage and almost immediately his cell phone rang. He took the phone [...]
The Guardian Science Experiment at the Hay Literature Festival put together Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Martin Rees.
Dawkins kicked off by reminding us that although we live in a global village, we should not forget the presence of global village idiots. He said that the main question behind the assembly of the panel was to [...]
Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages:
That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the U.S., and not in the Islamic world. We’re seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don’t subscribe to that worldview are caught in the middle.
Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional “next world” is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
Table of contents for Lest We Forget
- Lipstick
- Google - the evil empire?
- Presque vu XXXXI
- Himmler - Speaking To His Own
- Evil? I Don’t Think So.
- Can the President Pardon Himself?
- Bush Acting Strangely? - I Don’t Believe It
- Paul Wolfowitz and Accountability
- Presque vu XXXX
- Presque vu XII
- Subversive Vanity Fair
- Bush Lied
- Science and Reason
- The Dixie Chicks
- Egyptian blogger sentenced to four years
- Women at Work
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