Tag: General nonsense

The New York Times had a fascinating article about a study of herd instinct. It turns out that people prefer whatever they think other people like. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5124&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ex=1334203200 Meanwhile, another study showed that the U.S. program of telling kids to stop having sex has been a dismal failure so far. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070416/us_nm/sex_abstinence_dc…

I saw in the news that Andre Agassi “inadvertently” whacked his wife, Steffi Graf, in the face with his racket during a fundraiser. http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/news?slug=ap-grafinjured&prov=ap&type=lgns [no longer available] The fundraiser was part of a new reality show produced by Oprah. The doctor who bid $70,000 to play tennis with Agassi and…

I’ve noticed that a lot of people, if not most, have sharp disagreements with what they hallucinate to be my opinions. There are several skeptic-oriented websites that talk about my belief in magic and ESP. The skeptics leave brutal comments ripping me apart for my irrational beliefs. The only problem…

I removed today’s post so that my governor would not have a car accident.

Let’s say you’re the butler to a billionaire who lives alone. The billionaire dies in his sleep. You know he owns a large piece of jewelry that no one else has seen, and you have access to it. If you steal the piece of jewelry, sell it, and give the…

It’s time to check one of my predictions from over a year ago. Hamas had just won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council. I likened their victory to a dog catching a car and saying, “Now what?” My prediction was this: “I have to think it will be difficult…

There are things in this world that shouldn’t make me happy, but they do. For example, when I see two dogs humping in the park, it shouldn’t make me happy. But it does. Today I will experience a new thing that shouldn’t make me happy, but it will. I picked…

Being an optimist has its drawbacks. For example, if I’m watching a TV show where someone knocks on a fictional door, I get up and answer my actual door, fully expecting some good news. This happens to me more often than I should admit. I even check my door when…

Wow. When I wrote my post about copyright violations I was expecting to produce some good cognitive dissonance in the comments but I got more than I could have hoped for. If you’ve read anything about experiments to produce cognitive dissonance, you know this was the perfect setup. You can…

I keep seeing an argument on the Internet, including in the comments here, that goes like this: “Copyright violation is not stealing. If I steal something physical, the original owner no longer has it. But if I violate a copyright, the original owner has lost nothing tangible. So while copyright…

I’m so jealous of countries that have governments. How cool would that be? Many years ago, the United States had a government that did impressive things such as winning wars, spreading democracy, and solving huge social issues. In time, it turned into a government that was good at getting blown…

Evolution is a scientific fact. Science sets the standard for what qualifies as a fact, and the theory of evolution satisfies that standard with plenty of room to spare. Scientific facts are useful because they are both consistent and predictable in the realm of other scientific facts. It’s good to…

I have a good imagination. Even when I disagree with a point of view, I can usually imagine how I might be wrong. For example, I don’t believe that alien spaceships have visited earth, but I can imagine it. And I don’t believe that Dick Cheney is the love child…

When I worked for the phone company, one of my jobs was testing other vendors’ equipment. The purpose was to help our customers decide what equipment was most compatible with our ISDN service. Unfortunately, vendors were upgrading their ISDN products so rapidly that the equipment I was testing was literally…

A group called the X Foundation is planning to award $10 million to anyone who can design a commercially viable car that can get 100 miles per gallon. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/business/02xprize.html I don’t know exactly what “commercially viable” means in this context. I haven’t seen the rules. But something tells me that…