Winter’s Haven

The Economist has a fascinating series of articles (one, two, and three) on biochemists’ newfound recognition of the importance of RNA in the life of the cell. Scientists are already using this new understanding of RNA to develop drugs which can disrupt the production of harmful proteins, and, more generally, manipulate cellular processes in a [...]

Marc Andreessen points out a most enlightening interview in Der Spiegel of a Kenyan economist on the topic of development aid.
One might look at this as just a very bad case of unintended consequences, but I’d like to suggest that there is a deeper moral here: we need to stop assuming that altruistically motivated actions [...]

In my opinion, most poetry is, well, rather annoying. Poets write in obtuse metaphorical language which obscures the meaning of their poems. The reader is then expected to reflect on the poem and ponder its meaning. Of course, the reader usually has no basis for judging the soundness of their guesses. One often wonders [...]

…the question arises: When should you deflower each virgin so as to maximize your utility? Glen Whitman of Agoraphilia provides a detailed analysis of this important issue.

Juan Comesaña of Certain Doubts points out a very short paper which purports to prove that every rational being should believe they are omniscient and infallible (i.e. they have the epistemic powers of a god). The proof is based on the Ramsey test for conditionals (”If p then q” is acceptable to a subject S [...]

As reported by the New York Times, a federal appeals court handed down a ruling which flatly rejects the Bush administration’s assumed right to designate people as “enemy combatants” and imprison them on that basis. It’s about time.
I’m very happy that the courts have finally condemned this flagrant violation of the rule of law. I [...]

I had been using Akismet to filter out spam comments, but it seems to produce too many false positives. My apologies if you posted a comment which got thrown out by the spam filter.
I’ve now moved to using a CAPTCHA system to prevent comment spam. Also, comments no longer need require my approval before appearing; [...]

Rachel Carson was born a hundred years and a few days ago. The New York Times science column has an excellent overview of how Silent Spring’s claims regarding the dangers of pesticides compare to state of scientific knowledge.
The short version: in light of the best scientific knowledge available at the time the book [...]

Phil Zuckerman (of Pitzer College) & Gregory Paul wrote an article entitled “Why The Gods Are Not Winning”, which documents the long-term decline of religion in advanced, prosperous nations. For an atheist living in the West’s most religious state, their article is a fresh breath of optimism.
The exceptional piety of America among Western states certainly [...]

Ordinarily, small things must expend a lot of energy to swim. At small length scales, the the ratio of inertial to viscous forces (the Reynolds number) decreases, and friction becomes a big problem for small swimmers. If you were the size of a bacterium, moving through a fluid would feel more like burrowing than swimming. [...]