March 2012

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute | BMJ
“Objectives To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom.”
(tags: humour science journal research teaspoons funny bmj)

What Nonbelievers Believe | Psychology Today
“Common sense, not complex philosophy, often drives religious skepticism.”
(tags: belief psychology atheism science humanism religion)
Without a pack of lies to back them up, Christian claims of persecution fall flat on their face
“So these two women, again with the help of the evangelical activists who are seeking special privilege for Christians, have gone to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the equality law is wrong and should be changed. The Government has argued that the court’s decisions were right and that the law has been correctly applied in both cases. The National Secular Society has made the same argument in an intervention in the case, the only intervener to do so.

This could hardly be more different from arguing that the Christian cross must never be seen in the workplace again, as the newspaper headlines imply.”
(tags: politics uk religion christianity)

gmancasefile: TSA: Fail
“I have dealt with TSA since its inception and FAA security prior to that. I have witnessed TSA operate since they became a separate organization in 2002 and seen their reaction to intelligence provided them. I have now watched them operate for a decade, and I have respect for their hard-working employees who are doing a thankless job. But I have come to the conclusion that TSA is one of the worst-run, ineffective and most unnecessarily intrusive agencies in the United States government.”
(tags: america 911 hijacking usa government fbi politics DHS security tsa)
Open letter to violent Muslim protestors | The Chronicle
“I really don’t understand how my fellow Muslims do not see that, with their reactions, they actually prove what has been said about them by their enemies. You call my religion evil or terrorism and, in order to “disprove” this insult, I will go kill people, burn embassies, act like a bloodthirsty crazy person…. Don’t you fellow Muslims see the ridiculousness of this logic and actions! The uncivilized images of these violent protests by these irresponsible and violent Muslims shape the image of 1.6 billion Muslims all around the world. “
(tags: violence religion terrorism quran islam)
Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities. » blog2.easydns.org – Happenings and observations
Don’t register a .com if you don’t want the US authorities to be able to take it down, apparently.
(tags: SOPA web law DNS verisign internet domains icann)
24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
“there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.” Includes good stuff about how ears work. Via andrewducker.
(tags: Nyquist sound sampling mp3 science music audio)
The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind by Eric Schwitzgebel
“Crazyism about X is the view that something that it would be crazy to believe must be among the core truths about X. In this essay, I argue that crazyism is true of the metaphysics of mind. A position is “crazy” in the intended sense if it is contrary to common sense and we are not epistemically compelled to believe it. …. Well developed metaphysical theories will inevitably violate common sense, I argue, because common sense is incoherent in matters of metaphysics. No coherent and detailed view could respect it all. Common sense is thus impaired as a ground of choice. Nor can scientific evidence or abstract theoretical virtue compellingly favor any one moderately specific metaphysical approach over all competitors. Something bizarre must be true about the mind, but which bizarre propositions are the true ones, we are in no good position to know.”
(tags: crazyism david-chalmers epistemology descartes dualism idealism materialism consciousness metaphysics philosophy)

deconversion | Black, White and Gray
Some Christian sociologists did some research into why people leave, by looking at 50 de-conversion “testimonies”. Results: intellectual problems (hell, suffering, reliability of the Bible); God’s failure to answer prayer; other Christians responding to doubt in trite or unhelpful ways. Contact with unbelievers wasn’t often cited as a cause of de-conversion.
(tags: psychology de-conversion christianity religion sociology)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave | Mother Jones
“My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.”
(tags: economics work warehouse poverty shopping shipping online amazon)
Why Richard Dawkins is still an atheist – Guest Voices – The Washington Post
Paula Kirby on the recent “Dawkins admits he’s an agnostic!” stories following his debate with Cuddly Rowan Bear. “Religious commentators have become so excited at the thought of his conversion that I almost don’t have the heart to break it to them that he said nothing in Thursday’s discussion that he hadn’t already said six years ago in “The God Delusion””
(tags: the god delusion religion agnosticism paula-kirby richard-dawkins dawkins atheism)