Thirty Three Things (v. 33)

The penalty philosophers wield is, after all, rather weak. If the other person is willing to bear the label of “irrational” or “having the worse arguments”, he can skip away happily maintaining his previous belief. He will be trailed, of course, by the philosopher furiously hurling philosophical imprecations: “What do you mean, you’re willing to be irrational? You shouldn’t be irrational because . . . ” And although the philosopher is embarrassed by his inability to complete this sentence in a noncircular fashion–he can only produce reasons for accepting reasons–still, he is unwilling to let his adversary go.

Wouldn’t it be better if philosophical arguments left the person no possible answer at all, reducing him to impotent silence? Even then, he might sit there silently, smiling, Buddha-like. Perhaps philosophers need arguments so powerful they set up reverberations in the brain: if the person refuses to accept the conclusion, he dies. How’s that for a powerful argument? Yet, as with other physical threats (”your money or your life”), he can choose defiance. A “perfect” philosophical argument would leave no choice.

(HT: orgtheory.net)

11. Website Grader, a free tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors.

12. Jimmy Carter says that the atrocities in Darfur shouldn’t be called "genocide":

There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don't think it qualifies to be called genocide.

Can it really be true that this clown was once our President? (HT: RedState)

13. Megan of From the Archives on governments and choice:

This is the other thing I don't get about small government types. You protest so vociferously that government takes choices away from you. But a whole lot of choices are BORING. If I never once think about car bumper safety standards for 25mph crashes, I will never miss it. I do not want to carefully match my car safety standards to my most likely driving patterns and save two grand in the process. I would not enjoy that process. (Perhaps you would, and you would rather have the money.) I've never been a comparison shopper or a meticulous consumer. Maybe my model of the individual is too biased by my experience. But I don't want to figure out how much coliform bacteria I can tolerate on my spinach, given my health…

…*I can hear you already: "But you are FORCING me to take that deal too.". Yes. But right now our system FORCES me to comparison shop. Either way, someone gets FORCED to do something, and I don't see a justice interest on one side or the other. Absent a justice interest, we might as well just go with the system that creates the most utility overall.

(HT: Marginal Revolution)

14. God Don't Make No Junk: Scientists may have found appendix’s purpose

15. Steve Wasserman on the decline of book reviewing in America:

[W]ithout books, indeed, without the news of such books—without literacy—the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs. I shall never forget overhearing some years ago, on the morning of the first day of the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a woman asking a UCLA police officer if he expected trouble. He looked at her with surprise and said, "Ma'am, books are like Kryptonite to gangs." There was more wisdom in that cop's remark than in a thousand academic monographs on reforming the criminal justice system. What he knew, of course, is what all societies since time immemorial have known: If you want to reduce crime, teach your children to read. Civilization is built on a foundation of books.

(HT: The Buck Stops Here)

16. Shades of Anti-Semitism? -- Richard Dawkins on the power of the Jews:

When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.

(HT: Vox Popoli)

17. Picture of the Week: The World is the name of a group pf about 300 manmade islands off the coast of Dubai designed for luxury living. There are planned communities, full utillities, and beachfronts for everyone. Seen from the sky, the groups of islands look like a map of the world

(HT: Neatorama)

18. How to reboot your brain with a "caffeine nap":

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.

2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you'll get what's known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.

3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain's prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

(HT: Lifehacker)

19. How to Read a Painting

20. Paramount Pictures has released the trailer for one of the most anticipated movies (at least anticipated by me) of 2008: Iron Man.

21. Spouses often mirror each other's health habits -- If one spouse exercises, quits smoking, stops drinking alcohol, receives a flu shot, or undergoes a cholesterol screening, the other spouse is more likely to do the same, according to a new study in Health Services Research.

22. From the opening paragraph of Justise Clarence Thomas's book "My Grandfather's Son":

I was nine years old when I met my father. His name was M.C. Thomas, and my birth certificate describes him as a "laborer." My mother divorced him in 1950 and he moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his family behind in Pinpoint, the tiny Georgia community where I was born. I saw him only twice when I was young. The first time was when my mother called her parents, with whom my brother Myers and I then lived, and told them that someone at her place wanted to see us. They called a cab and sent us to her housing-project apartment, where my father was waiting. "I am your daddy," he told us in a firm, shameless voice that carried no hint of remorse for his inexplicable absence from our lives. He said nothing about loving or missing us, and we didn't say much in return -- it was as though we were meeting a total stranger -- but he treated us politely enough, and even promised to send us a pair of Elgin watches with flexible bands, which were popular at the time. Though we watched the mail every day, the watches never came, and when a year or so had gone by, my grandparents bought them for us instead. My father had broken the only promise he ever made to us. After that we heard nothing more from him, not even a Christmas or birthday card. For years my brother and I would ask ourselves how a man could show no interest in his own children. I still wonder.

(HT: CrunchyCon)

23. How To Explore Internet Memes (HT: The Presurfer)

24. Even without math, ancients engineered sophisticated machines -- A researcher at Harvard University is finding that ancient Greek craftsmen were able to engineer sophisticated machines without necessarily understanding the mathematical theory behind their construction. Recent analysis of technical treatises and literary sources dating back to the fifth century B.C. reveals that technology flourished among practitioners with limited theoretical knowledge.

5. LOLCat of the Week

26. Obama the monarchist (Part I) -- Speaking at an evangelical church on Sunday, Barack Obama said,

I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God….We're going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.

27. Obama the monarchist (Part II) -- Jared Bridges responds,

Like his predecessor Howard Dean before him, Sen. Obama must have been reading from the DNC’s pamphlet “How to Speak Like an Evangelical.” Trouble is, whoever wrote the Democrats’ book on evangelicaspeak probably did their research by watching Hollywood movies or bad TBN reruns (it’s hard to say!). It’s waaay off.

Obama has apparently come under the same delusion that befell some of Jesus’ disciples. The thought that “the Kingdom” was something that could be ushered along through political means left them dumfounded at the cross.

28. The #1 Song On This Date In History (HT: The Presurfer)

29. Lesser of two evils: When do we prefer to get rid of things? -- The theory of loss aversion is used in many contexts to explain why potential loss has a greater mitigating influence on behavior than potential gain. In trading situations, consumers will most likely opt to keep what they have, tending to place a larger value on the items already in their possession (also known as the 'endowment effect'). However, these theories generally assume that consumers like what they have enough to want to keep it. What happens when we're in possession of something we hate"

30. Secret Recipes (HT: The Presurfer)

31. Why Emotionally Charged Events Are So Memorable -- The parts of the brain where memories are stored need to distinguish between significant experiences and those that carry less importance, giving priority to the transformation of the former into long-term memory, the researchers explained. One factor that scientists believe to be critical in that process is the emotional load of an event. Indeed, studies have shown that heightened states of emotion can facilitate learning and memory.

32. Negativity Is Contagious, Study Finds -- An new study in the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that negative opinions cause the greatest attitude shifts, not just from good to bad, but also from bad to worse.

33. Dove Onslaught