Archive for February, 2009

A Brief History Of Pop Music

[Video: 36 Pop songs, but only 4 chords..]

And a much-needed antidote:

[Music video for Tony Levin's piece "Speedbump"..]

Am I The Next Galileo?

You have a radical idea about how the world works. The stodgy scientific orthodoxy rejects your idea. At this point, you naturally ask yourself: am I the next Galileo?
Figuring out who is right and who is wrong can be difficult and complicated. I can, however, suggest a starting point. If you have to fabricate data [...]

The Consequences of Drug Use

Kellogg Drops Phelps
Would you want YOUR KIDS to become pot-smoking Olympic gold medalists?!?

Link One, Link Two, Link Three

How to fail Philosophy 310, Metaphysics
Swimmer Michael Phelps is observed smoking marijuana. He apologized, but I like Radley Balko’s response better. I think this is the most beautiful rant I’ve ever seen.
A molecular-level view of speciation. (The post title, “Why Can’t Mules Breed?” conveys the spirit of the research, but it actually examines thale cress [...]

John Turri’s Rounding Error

This post is devoted to refuting an impressively lame epistemology paper. John Turri presents a novel line of reasoning which, he claims, allows one to gain a priori knowledge of contingent facts. The relevant section begins on page 19:

Sam considers whether the most unlikely possible event is not presently occurring. By ‘the most unlikely possible [...]