A reoccurring meme posted by conservatives and constitutionalist types will look something like this: “In a democracy, as long as a majority decides they want something, they can take it from you. But in a republic, you have inherent rights to your property that cannot be taken away. America is a Republic, not a democracy.”…
Month: February 2016
Scientific Literacy & Optimism on the Political Spectrum
The U.S. General Social Survey is fairly substantial data trawl that looks for a variety of demographic and opinion data from US residents. Science literacy and political views–or at least proxies for these–are among the pieces of information sought out. There is a general stereotype that liberals tend to be more scientifically literate and more…
No Evidence that the Holocaust is Heritable
What makes a man? This is the perennial question of mankind. In recent years, advancements in biology and medicine have given us a thousand new ways to ponder that question. We may have stopped looking for a literal soul, but the line between nature and nurture is a fun one to skim. Our genetic code,…
Judas Iscariot the Role Model
‘That upper spirit Who hath worst punishment,’ so spake my guide ‘Is Judas, he that hath his head within And plies the feet without.’ -From Dante’s Inferno, canto 34, lines 55-59 He’s a crucial character in probably the most well-known story in the world. In Sunday school we learn that Judas betrays Jesus to the…
The Tale of Max Martin
Once upon a time (2014)… The great kings of the music industry were worried. The harvest season had come, yet no one in all the lands had gathered enough music to make a platinum record. You see, international debts at the time were paid using platinum–in high demand in the Orient–while domestic debts were paid…
The Judge is Dead. Long Live the Judge
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died yesterday. The news travels quickly, these days. Wikipedia was the first to break the story to me. “…Scalia was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court’s conservative wing” was the sitting terminus to his introductory paragraph. “Then he died”, appended a…
Order of Operations is a Lie
If you know anyone over 40 on the internet, you have probably come across some image with literally hundreds of thousands of likes/comments/tweets/whatever: What is 2 x 2 + 3 x 4 ? 99% of people won’t get this! There are only 5 actual comments, made tends of thousands of times over: 40 28 16…
The Puppet Queen Bey
The key to the Super Bowl‘s awesome power as an entity is its egalitarianism. For what is essentially a holiday that emerged from a football game, it commands the cultural gravitas it does because it manages to trap far more than just football fans into its maw. Aside from the godawful, overrated ads that attract…
Musings on the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is it’s own weird holiday. For the most part, only a few people are going to have a horse in the outcome of the football game. Not that the culmination of the NFL season isn’t worth a watch for football fans, it commanded this year an impressive 112 million viewers. This is…
Is HR Biased Against Fat People?
The Germans say “yes”, although their study leaves much to be desired. This article was brought to my attention by a friend, so let the record show I take requests. “Stigmatization of obese individuals by human resource professionals: an experimental study” You can skip the part under “Abstract”. That’s just the teaser. The paper itself…