Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 11/13/2011

Posted on November 13, 2011 by shaunmiller

Culture

  • Overpopulation is a myth.  [H/T Nathan Blackerby]  I’ll let you judge it for yourself.  (now in blogroll)  Episode 1 is below: 
  • Could this be the answer on how Stonehenge was created?  

Economics

Philosophers

  • Check out various philosophers’ “social networks”: 

Politics

Science

Sexuality


  • On PhilosTV, Simon May and Elizabeth Brake discuss marriage.  Around 4:30, they talk about same-sex marriage in which both are in favor of based on political liberalism (meaning that the state is neutral when it comes to a conception of the human good).  They consider objections to same-sex marriage and they both show that those objections don’t work.  Around 13:00, May raises a concern on whether the public should give a positive recognition to same-sex couples in the same way we give opposite-sex couples, thereby giving up political liberalism as a foundation.  Brake’s reply is that previous types of marriages have been considered wrong and it was unjust that the state did not intervene, and so the state can uphold a sense of justice while still remaining neutral.  Also, one can still embrace a sense of care to same-sex couples without endorsing a conception of the human good.  May brings up another possible objection at 17:06, why should the state remain neutral?  Why can’t the state say that an activity is a moral good and so the state should endorse it?  Brake’s reply is that everyone has different moral and religious views that if the state endorses a view, then it’s favoring one side of the human good.  If so, the state is not treating the citizens as equals.  Around 21:39, May brings up a concern that if the state should remain neutral, wouldn’t this mean that polygamy would be allowed?  But polygamy has been traditionally been a patriarchal institution which doesn’t seem to benefit anyone.  Brake replies that neutrality would hold that polygamy should be allowed.  This would include polyandory, polyamory, or simply groups.  One could visualize that they are all equal instead of one as the head of the marriage.  To be neutral is to extend marriage to all groups.  The state right now doesn’t make patriarchal marriage between two people, the same is said for group marriages as well.  There are, after all, egalitarian group marriages.  The typical argument from conservatives is, “If we allow same-sex marriage, then we must allow polygamy.”  To which Brake replies, “of course.”  This changes when it comes to children, however.  Around 34:28, May brings up the argument that if the state should remain neutral when it comes to marriage, why does the state even need to get involved in marriage in the first place?  Why does the state need to get in the marriage business?  After all, there is no public recognition for making friends, so why marriage?  Why have a law of marriage at all?  Brake admits that this is a challenge and she brings up a lot of interesting authors and philosophers that bring up the same challenge that May brought up.  However, some possible reasons why that state should still get involved in marriage is that the citizens prefer them.  It is here that Brake brings up her solution: minimal marriage: the state is required to support all sorts of relationships.  This would include all sorts of groups, no matter the number, tribes, and even non-sexual friendships where they live together.  It would give more entitlements to these type of relationships.  At 45:40, May brings up an egoist argument, why should I care about these other type of caring relationships?  And at 47:06, May asks if these other relationships are just as good as marriage?  Does care need to be expanded out?  If so, this doesn’t seem neutral.  Brake replies using Rawls suggesting that there are primary goods and one of these (controversial) primary goods is the state making sure that you can live out your life in order for you to reach your conception of the good.  One of these are caring relationships; that is, a caring relationship is a primary good.  She relates it with self-esteem where being in a caring relationship reinforces a sense of value to oneself.  The state can distribute the social bases for a caring relationship.  Around 54:50, May brings up the issue of polygamy.  Usually, polygamy is circumscribed around cultural practices which has significant meanings.  If so, then it’s implicitly suggesting that this is more valuable than other forms of relationships.  This could create an asymmetry within marriage.  Brake’s reply that this could happen within monogamous marriage, thus that faces the same challenge.  May replies that it’s not inherent within monogamy whereas it’s within polygamy because of the cultural practices.  Overall, this was a great discussion and it has inspired me to read both May’s and Brake’s works.
  • Cuba is ready to fight prostitution the Swedish way: penalizing the clients instead of the sex workers.
Posted in Culture, Marriage, Mind, Politics, Polyamory, Relationships, Science, Sexuality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s See What’s In the News Today: 11/06/2011

Posted on November 6, 2011 by shaunmiller

Abortion

Culture

  • Everyone laments that the world is overpopulated since the world has reached 7 billion people.  But what if it turns out the world is actually underpopulated?
  • 10,000 Solutions is a site that Arizona State University has launched where anyone in the world can give a solution facing the world, like sustainability or the future of education, and it offers a $10,000 prize.   More than that, participants are encouraged to collaborate and build on one another’s solutions. ASU wants to create an open solutions bank that others can use to generate new ideas, and some students at ASU have already met up in person to talk over things they shared on the site. The school is promoting 10,000 Solutions as an experiment in collaborative invention and the National Science Foundation is funding a team of ASU researchers to study the contest and see how ideas are shared and developed.
  • See what the world is projected to look like by the year 2050.
  • Wow.  Seven-year old girl forced to work as a nightclub dancer to support her disabled parents.
  • Are we living in a world with information apartheid?  Sandra Fisher-Martins makes a compelling argument that the daily, public documents have so much jargon and complexity that only a portion of the population can truly understand it.  These include insurances, tenet leases, sub-prime mortgages.  We need a culture of clarity.  So how do we do this?  One is to raise literacy levels.  Of course this needs to be done, but it’s slow and hard.  Moreover, even with having high literacy rates doesn’t get rid of the misunderstandings of complex documents.  For those who are in college or above, read your insurance claims or mortgage documents.  The other solution is to lower the complexity of the documents, to make it in simple language, so that it’s more accessible.  Indeed, Fisher-Martin argues that everyone has a right to understand: 

Economics

  • The true cost of commuting.  You could buy a house $15,900 more if you moved one mile closer to your job. [H/T Nathan Blackerby]
  • Milton Wolf, cousin of President Obama, challenges the Occupy movement and asks them to join the Tea Party.  The goals are the same, it’s just that the Occupy movement is confused on what they are against: “It’s time to end crony capitalism. The occupiers, it seems, have confused crony capitalism with capitalism. One is tyranny. The other is freedom. One is autocracy. The other is the free market. Crony capitalism is to capitalism, as blogger Diana Hsieh says, as sea horses are to horses. America gasps for a return to free-market capitalism. Americans suffer today not because of the free market but because of a lack of access to it.”

Ethics

Humor

Logic

Philosophy

  • Bertrand Russell owes his life to smoking: 

Politics

Polyamory

Religion

  • William Lane Craig and Stephen Law had a recent religious debate.  You can see the debate mapped out here.

Science

  • Theoretical physicist Brian Greene presents The Fabric of the Cosmos, a four-part look at the “mind-boggling reality beneath the surface of our everyday world.” The first segment, “What Is Space?”. Then come the remaining installments – “The Illusion of Time” (11/9), “Quantum Leap” (11/16), and “Universe or Multiverse?” (11/23). If you can’t catch the episodes on TV, they will be streamed online too at video.pbs.org.  See the preview below: 

Sexuality

  • Where gay couples can adopt: 
  • “Do you believe that women should have the right to:
    • Vote?
    • Go to college?
    • Drive a car?
    • Open bank accounts in their own names?
    • Enjoy sex?
    • Work in whatever occupation they might choose, and get paid the same as men when they do the same work?

Did you answer yes?  Then you better lie down. . . . You’ve probably caught feminism.“

Vegetarianism

Posted in Abortion, Culture, Economics, Humor, Libertarianism, Logic, News, Politics, Polyamory, Religion, Same-Sex, Science, Sexuality, Vegetarianism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/23/2011

Posted on October 23, 2011 by shaunmiller

Anti-Natalism

Culture

Economics

  • Read or listen to an interview of Wapshott, who wrote a book about Keynes and Hayek, the two economists who have transformed modern economics.
  • Occupy George gives you infographics: 
  • Do you need a loan but the bank won’t give you one?  Perhaps you should look at Starbucks as being the middleman.  “Starbucks is going to create a mechanism that will allow us citizens to do what the government and the banks won’t: lend money to small businesses. “
  • “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes…You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election”: 
  • Chris Hedges is eloquent in this interview about Occupy Wall Street, the banks, and bailouts, and the problems of the economic crisis: 
  • Attractive people make more money than their ugly counterparts.  Labor economist Daniel Hamermesh wants to make the ugly people a disabled minority.

Ethics

Food

Gender

Love

  • Sternberg’s triangle of love:

Movies

  • Need a good Halloween flick but can’t tell which genre to go for?  Go here.

Philosophy

  • The Atheist Scholar is an academic resource for those who want to have a serious study of atheism.
  • Do you need to know what the philosophers say in a strict premise-conclusion argumentative format?  Go here.

Politics

Polyamory

  • “We try to be monogamous, but we’re not very good at it.”

Psychology

Religion

  • Now you see the positive and negative sentiments in the bible.  The black is the positive, the red is the negative.  See the details here.  

Science

  • So do you remember how the scientific community was surprised at finding neutrinos faster than the speed of light?  Well, it could turn out to be false.  Why so?  The neutrinos only seemed to be going faster than the speed of light, but that’s because they forgot to add one small calculation, which is…relativity.  To be more specific, clocks closer on earth go faster because of the gravitational pull, and so traveling from France to Italy will definitely have different times based the altitude of the clock.  From the article: “If it stands up, this episode will be laden with irony. Far from breaking Einstein’s theory of relatively, the faster-than-light measurement will turn out to be another confirmation of it.”
  • Fun stuff with superconductivity: 
  • Robot solves the Rubik’s Cube in five seconds: 

Sexuality

  • Men may be more likely to find more sex partners in times of economic crisis.  Of course, there are many questions that need to be asked.  For example, sexual response does not mean sexual behavior, and the study only focuses on heterosexual men.
  • As mentioned before, the FBI was considering of changing the federal definition of rape.  Now, it has changed it.  Before, the definition was “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”  This excluded statutory rape, same-sex rape, forced anal or oral sex, rape with an object and victims who are male or transgender or have disabilities, not to mention those who have taken drugs or alcohol and therefore had their ability to consent  “diminished”.  The changed definition is now: “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
  • The more power one has, the more likely one will have infidelities.  It doesn’t even matter what the gender is.
  • Turns out that younger women are viewing porn more than men, according to one study: 
  • Speaking of porn, here is a book review of an anti-porn book.  The review basically says that the book is lacking evidence.
  • A lot of internet searches peak on Mondays searching for STI information.  Why so?  Many speculate that after a weekend of fun, they become concerned about possible infections they may have contracted.
Posted in Culture, Economics, Ethics, Gender, Love, News, Politics, Polyamory, Psychology, Religion, Science, Sexuality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/16/2011

Posted on October 16, 2011 by shaunmiller

Books

  • Nice!  Camus’ The Fall has been turned into a 5-minute animation.  Note: this will only make sense if you’ve read the book.  Otherwise, you might be lost: 

Culture

  • Alcohol does not cause violence, promiscuity, or anti-social behavior.  Rather, it’s your cultural expectation of imbibing alcohol. As the article puts it:

    The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. There are some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia) that anthropologists call “ambivalent” drinking-cultures, where drinking is associated with disinhibition, aggression, promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour.

    There are other societies (such as Latin and Mediterranean cultures in particular, but in fact the vast majority of cultures), where drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours – cultures where alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life – about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. These are known as “integrated” drinking cultures.

  • Seriously?  Wow!  Topeka, Kansas decriminalized domestic battery!  Reason: they need to cut budgets.
  • Chart of Life Expectancy of the entire world.

Economics

  • 10 Essential Fiscal Charts.  Or you can go here to see each individual chart.
  • There is a U-shaped relationship between a woman’s education and how much children she will produce: “The women having the least number of children are those that started college but did not finish (1.79 on average). The next lowest group is women who have a college degree (1.93). And among women with education greater than high school, the ones with the most children are those with advanced college degrees (1.98).”  So having more education correlates with having a larger family.  This goes against the conventional idea that the more education a woman has, the less children she will have.  However, the downfall is that the study has made the father’s work hours fixed in order to look closer at women’s work habits.

Gender

  • Ha! Ryan Gosling + Feminism = Awesome.  Below is my favorite one:

Global Warming

Logic

  • If someone doesn’t come to the rational conclusion based on argumentation, should you be dick about it?  In other words, how offensive should you be when you argue with someone?  It’s not a simple answer.

Love

Movies

  • It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film The Tree of Life, but this is a nice review claiming that it’s a way to explain troubled faith.

Philosophy

  • Oh boy.  I just found out that Schopenhauer is being offered as a class at my university.  I’m excited and to get you excited, here’s an interview with one of the biographers of Schopenhauer.  By the way, the biography is an excellent read.
  • Alvin Plantinga has an air conditioning problem: 

Politics

Science

  • Amazing.  Scientists have a skin cell gun where it replaces burned skin within days, not weeks or months like the traditional method.    Seriously, this guy doesn’t even look like he got burned.
  • If you present a study to a group of people, they won’t be impressed.  If, however, you present the study with neuroscience–even if the neuroscience is irrelevant (!)–then the group of people are wowed by it.
  • How to get something from nothing.  Book will come out on the subject as well: 

Sexuality

Posted in Culture, Economics, Gender, Global Warming, Logic, Love, News, Politics, Science, Sexuality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/09/2011

Posted on October 9, 2011 by shaunmiller

Ethics

  • A new game called SPENT puts you in the position of a person who’s going to be homeless person.  The makers of the game says that their goal is to challenge the way you think about poverty and homelessness.The goal of game is to place you in the position of having lost your job, your savings and being down to your last $1000 dollars.  Basically, you’re not homeless, but you’re on the verge of becoming homeless.  Try to last one month.  Unfortunately, this is the reality for many people in the US today.  Play it.  See if you can last. 

Gender

Health

  • You can get rid of vaccine scares by using a little logic and investigation: 

Law

  • The Supreme Court of the United States starts its new term and many issues are on the agenda including: immigration, same-sex marriage, President Obama’s healthcare overhaul, affirmative action, Medicaid, warrant searches, strip searches, expletive words in the media, free speech, and environmental issues.

Logic

  • Great videos on detecting fallacies: 

Marriage

Politics

  • Ha!  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this bit of news.  It reads like it’s from The Onion.  It’s still satire though.

Relationships

  • Wow.  Get paid to go on a first date.  The site touts that it solves the problems of hookups from other websites.  However, I think it’ll just either exacerbate it or else this site will eventually be known for hookups.  Click on “How it Works” to watch the details.

Science

Sexuality

War

Posted in Ethics, Gender, Health, Law, Logic, Marriage, News, Politics, Relationships, Science, Sexuality, War | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/02/2011

Posted on October 2, 2011 by shaunmiller

Books

Economics

Emotions

Food

Health

Middle East

Politics

Relationships

Science

Sexuality

Posted in Books, Economics, Emotions, Environment, Health, Middle East, News, Paper Topic, Politics, Relationships, Science, Sexuality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 09/24/2011

Posted on September 24, 2011 by shaunmiller

Science

  • Could this prove Einstein’s theory that light is the only absolute constant in the universe wrong?
  • Speaking of proving scientific theories wrong, this could prove that we need to rethink dark matter. [H/T Daniel Vecchio]

Sexuality

  • Modern day Lysistrata in the Dado village in the Philippines:

Singlism

  • This week was National Single and Unmarried Americans Week.  Here’s a great pieceabout how marriage equality still leaves the singles behind, where it’s forming a culture that if one is single, then there must be something wrong with you.  Less and less people are getting married, and so this may have cultural signification.  Indeed, unmarried people actually contribute more:

    [S]ingle people often contribute more to the community — because once people marry, they tend to put their energy and focus into their partners and their own families at the expense of friendships, community ties and extended families.

    In a report released this week by the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr. Gerstel notes that while 68 percent of married women offer practical or routine help to their parents, 84 percent of the never-married do. Just 38 percent of married men help their parents, compared with 67 percent of never-married men. Even singles who have children are more likely than married people to contribute outside their immediate family.

    “It’s the unmarried, with or without kids, who are more likely to take care of other people,” Dr. Gerstel said. “It’s not having children that isolates people. It’s marriage.”

    The unmarried also tend to be more connected with siblings, nieces and nephews. And while married people have high rates of volunteerism when it comes to taking part in their children’s activities, unmarried people often are more connected to the community as a whole. About 1 in 5 unmarried people take part in volunteer work like teaching, coaching other people’s children, raising money for charities and distributing or serving food.

    Unmarried people are more likely to visit with neighbors. And never-married women are more likely than married women to sign petitions and go to political gatherings, according to Dr. Gerstel.

    However, the biggest plight is single woman.  They are more often stigmatized.  Again, my heros–Bella DePaulo and Stephanie Coontz–report that these practices and laws are outdated.  Married people don’t have special status qua married people.

  • Many in the Gen X crowd are opting out of having kids.

Will

  • In a previous post, I talked about will power and the weakness of the will.  I also asked whether this was akin to a muscle where one can strengthen or weaken will power.  Well, there’s a new book coming out on just that topic.  I will definitely purchase.  [H/T Daniel Farmer]
Posted in News, Science, Sexuality, Single | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 09/18/2011

Posted on September 18, 2011 by shaunmiller

Emotions

Environment

Ethics

  • Chart on abortion per state based on number of restrictions and categories of restrictions.  I was really surprised that Indiana had the most.

Gender

Health

  • There’s some speculation that the reason why our fingers wrinkle up when they get wet is because it helps us grip things better when one is surrounded by water.
  • Re-engineering immune cells to attack cancer cells.  Simply amazing:

    “Doctors removed a billion of his T-cells — a type of white blood cell that fights viruses and tumors — and gave them new genes that would program the cells to attack his cancer. Then the altered cells were dripped back into Mr. Ludwig’s veins.  At first, nothing happened. But after 10 days, hell broke loose in his hospital room. He began shaking with chills. His temperature shot up. His blood pressure shot down. He became so ill that doctors moved him into intensive care and warned that he might die. His family gathered at the hospital, fearing the worst.  A few weeks later, the fevers were gone. And so was the leukemia.”

    The article continues by saying that Mr. Ludwig could hardly get out of bed, now a year later, he’s out playing golf and does yard work.  Again, simply amazing.

  • Bioethics professors offer $10,000 if anyone can prove Michelle Bachmann’s HPV vaccine story.

Love

  • Answer is finally found to the question, what is love: 

Middle East

  • More than 90% of Afghans have never heard of 9/11, even after a decade of US troops being there [h/t Muhammad Harris]: 

Politics

  •  and you thought he was the most interesting man in the world.  Heh, this guy has got him beat by riding a horse, driving a race car, tagging a tiger, practicing judo, diving in archeological discoveries (and finds two archeological discoveries), looking at leopards, posing on a boat with an island in the background, arm wrestling at a youth camp, attempting to bend a frying pan, riding a snowmobile, flying a fighter plane, hugging a dog, riding a motorcycle in a bike festival, talking to climate scientists, looking at bears, riding a horse in Siberia, swimming the butterfly in Siberia, autographing for kids, shooting a whale with a crossbow, tagging a whale, playing the piano in St. Petersburg, feeding a moose, talking to the leader of a biker gang, steering a boat toward a bear, walking through brush with a gun, sitting in a tank, blacksmithing, playing hockey, going on an expedition for snow leopards, diving for almost a mile in a submersible, and finally adjusting his sunglasses at an air show.

Sexuality

Vegetarianism

  • Afraid that a vegan diet gets in the way of body building?  Here’s a site where you can have your (vegan) cake and eat it too.  (now in blogroll)
Posted in Abortion, Education, Emotions, Environment, Ethics, Evolution, Gender, Health, Love, Middle East, Mormons, News, Politics, Sexuality, Vegetarianism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 09/11/2011

Posted on September 11, 2011 by shaunmiller

Anti-Natalism

Education

  • Do you need extra help?  No worries.  There are various people with virtual office hours to help you out.

Epistemology

Politics

Psychology

Religion

Science

Sexuality

Posted in Anti-Natalism, Economics, Education, Epistemology, News, Psychology, Religion, Same-Sex, Sexuality, War | Leave a comment

Awesome Arguments

Posted on September 7, 2011 by shaunmiller

This is what a great argument in economics is supposed to be like when the arguers are on both sides of the issue.  The comments are insightful too.  All arguments can be rational and respectful without resorting to rhetoric.  The best part is that both participants recognize when he is wrong and so he realizes that he must change is views.

A very colloquial take on Aquinas’ Five Ways.  I’ve mentioned this before, but this is simply funny.  I love how one of the comments says that the blogger is not “potentially full of shit, but…your shit is full of potential.”

Posted in Logic | Leave a comment