“Social psychologist and author Carol Tavris on “Who’s Lying? Who’s Self-Justifying?: Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap in Sexual Communications”. Discusses sexual assault but is mainly about discussions of sexual assault and dissonance. (tags: sexsexismpsychologyscepticismcognitive-biasevidence)
Chris Hallquist’s debunking of the stories of the resurrection of Jesus is now online. It’s a good read. It’s mostly a response to popular apologetics on the subject (Habermas, Craig, McDowell and so on) and an argument that the evidence is worse than that for more modern paranormal events which we justly reject (the ghosts and UFOs of the title). (tags: historywilliam-lane-craigchristianityjesusresurrectionapologeticsscepticismufoparanormalchris-hallquist)
"Our #FiftyShadesofRed campaign is designed to remind people we should be attending fires, not tambourines on heads or yet another handcuff incident." (tags: fire-brigadebdsmsexfunny)
"The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you’re thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again." (tags: nsagooglexkeyscorecloudedward-snowdensecurityinternetchina)
1. Argument From My Opponent Believes Something, Which Is Kinda Like Believing It On Faith, Which Is Kinda Like Them Being A Religion: “The high priests of the economic orthodoxy take it on faith that anyone who doubts the market is a heretic who must be punished.” (tags: argumentbeliefdebateepistemology)
"The great pity about the legal battle between the Daily Mail and ‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan was that somebody had to win." You’re not a sceptic if you call someone a fraud without evidence (tags: libellawsally-morganevidencescepticismdaily-mailpsychicfraud)
30 minutes of video (hand drawn pictures in time to the narration) and music on finding patterns and 12 tone music. Worth a watch/listen. Via AB on Google+. (tags: musicpatternstravinskychromaticartvi-hartvideo)
"Here’s a transcript of a panel discussion about NSA surveillance. There’s a lot worth reading here, but I want to quote Bob Litt’s opening remarks. He’s the General Counsel for ODNI, and he has a lot to say about the programs revealed so far in the Snowden documents." (tags: terrorismnsaspyingleaksprivacysecurityprism)