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Why do we flirt? Flirting is much more than just a bit of fun: it is a universal and essential aspect of human interaction. Anthropological research shows that flirting is to be found, in some form,…
I love illusions, and I love astronomy. So what could be better than combining the two? If you’ve ever seen the Moon rising over the horizon, looking so fat and looming that you felt like you…
The best talk I heard at the International Congress of Logic Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Beijing was, somewhat to my surprise, the Presidential Address by Adolf Grünbaum. I…
The new face of faithlessness from PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, June 2012 On a recent Sunday, Ross Harvey sat in the back pew of the North Shore Unitarian Church in North Vancouver, BC. A visiting gospel choir…
My friend Sarah Moglia has written an essay, titled Why I Don't Call Myself a Skeptic, that's been making waves in the atheist blogosphere. She's got a thought-provoking argument with which I agree…
Enlarge The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in 2005 in London.
In the next generation or so, will it be easier to become an atheist? I don’t mean socially or politically easier. I’m not wondering whether there will eventually be less anti-atheist…
Several different things (all pleasant and work-related, no disasters) have been keeping me from being a good blogger as of late. Last week, for example, we hosted a visit by Andy Albrecht from UC…
Sift through the annals of our flavored times, Our heroes and all their fatal flaws –R.E.M. Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) helped develop statistical physics and established a complex…
Choose your language:
Recently my friend and colleague in science and skepticism Neil deGrasse Tyson, issued a public statement via BigThink.com in which he stated that he dislikes labels because they carry with them all…
In my recent speech at the Reason Rally, I closed with a rather cryptic suggestion that I wanted us all to be bad without god. I couldn’t expand on it there — I was right down to the…
We meet to commemorate the period, when the inhabitants of this new world attained the power to withdraw from the control of the old world, and to form a government for themselves. This event is…
Early plants on Earth may have helped create the rivers and fertile soil which later allowed forests and farmlands to thrive. Credit: Wikimedia CommonsAccording to conventional thinking, plant life…
As NASA’s manned space efforts shrank, starships became more the stuff of science fiction. The following envision different paths to expansion into space. Voyage, by Stephen Baxter (1996): An…
EnlargeMichael MorgensternThis essay is part of Demystifying the Mind, a special report on the new science of consciousness. The next installments will appear in the February 25 and March 10 issues…
For centuries King John has been regarded as the embodiment of an evil ruler. But, says Graham E. Seel, this image is largely the creation of monastic chroniclers with an axe to grind. A close…
What existed before the big bang? What is the nature of time? Is our universe one of many? On the big questions science cannot (yet?) answer, a new crop of philosophers are trying to provide…
David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All, has sent in a phenomenal guest post. Dave is an all-around great guy and a hell of a speaker.…
You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not…
Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Scott Olson/Getty Images The 2012 presidential race officially begins today with the caucuses in…
I grew up in Sri Lanka in a family that worshipped in the Methodist Church. I was strongly influenced by my family and also by the minister in my church and the chaplain in the private Anglican (aka…
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 656 pages, $35 Writing a biography of a modern public figure is harder than writing a novel. While an artist can create or abstract a narrative…
I interviewed Louis C.K. at his apartment in Manhattan in November, 2011, for a Rolling Stone profile (you can read the story in full here). This is a condensed and edited transcript. Louis C.K. New…
As long as there has been science people have asked themselves how to identify it. Centuries of philosophers have made attempts and I don't intend to offer an answer in the confines of a blogpost.…
Playboy, January 2012On a hay-mown crest, dozens of people are crouching in the dark. The Earth has turned away from the sun, and the sky has flowed down a color chart, from light gray to orange to…
And after having said, “I don’t have anything to say about Cee Lo Green’s revision of ‘Imagine’ that my friend Rebecca didn’t already say,” I’m…
Treading Another Dark Path In an effort to get more people pointed in the direction of skeptical thinking without scaring them away by seeming too rationally challenging, The Independent…
One concept that is important to being a scientist or critical thinker is that terms need to be defined precisely and unambiguously. Words are ideas and ideas can be sharp or fuzzy – fuzzy…
Here is the simple truth about Cary Grant: he was the best and most important actor of the last hundred years. He didn’t reinvent acting like Brando, he didn’t fatten himself up like…
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