Academe Rant: Old people 13 Mar 201413 Mar 2014 The Australian government is looking at extending the pension age to 70, so that older Australians, especially those in the Baby Boom demographic, will be free of the public purse for another 5 years over the present age of 65. Except that it is not the case that older Australians… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Degrees of religion 8 Feb 201420 Feb 2014 Larry Moran quotes Jason Rosenhouse disputing Phil Plait: So, after all, that, let us return to Plait’s argument. He tells us that the problem is too many people perceiving evolution as a threat to their religious beliefs. Indeed, but why do they perceive it that way? Is it a failure of… Continue Reading
Australian stuff The discrimination of the age 23 Jan 201418 Sep 2017 There are many kinds of undue and harmful discrimination in modern society, all of which collectively tend to privilege a few. Women are treated with less respect and given fewer opportunities than men; heterosexuality is privileged over “deviant” forms of sexual identity and the alphabet community (currently LGBT and variants)… Continue Reading
Freedom The problem with logic 19 Jan 201420 Jan 2014 When teaching students critical reasoning it is an article of faith that we should teach them logic. Of course, we ameliorate any benefit this might have by teaching it incomprehensibly and in artificial cases. But still, we believe logic is what is most important in philosophy and in culture generally…. Continue Reading
Biology Humans are the only animals that… 11 Jul 201311 Jul 2013 Psychologist Daniel Gilbert once wrote on the unwritten vow taken by psychologists: Few people realise that psychologists also take a vow, promising that at some point in their professional lives they will publish a book, a chapter or at least an article that contains the sentence: ‘The human being is… Continue Reading
Education Education, Journalism and Science 21 Feb 2013 My last rant was perhaps somewhat intemperate. Carl Zimmer, who along with Ed Yong I really respect as a science journalist, tweeted it with the line: @carlzimmer: Man, @john_s_wilkins does not like newspapers. This is not quite true. I like some newspapers. I do not like the newspaper industry. I… Continue Reading
Education Drama, journalism and science 17 Feb 201317 Feb 2013 Recently the Jonah Lehrer scandal was raised again when he was paid $20,000 to speak on his journalistic dishonesty by the Knight Foundation. I cynically noted on Twitter that being honest and as accurate as I could be netted me exactly nothing in the way of honoraria (I think I… Continue Reading
Biology More on reductionism 26 Jan 201326 Jan 2013 I am presently teaching in a history subject dealing with ideas of nature, and I notice that the historians we are using often refer to a distinction between reductionism and holism. The former is the Bad Old Science (“we murder to dissect”) and the latter is the New Improved Science. This… Continue Reading
Pop culture Thoughts on gun control 15 Dec 2012 There had been the Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons *had* to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed… Continue Reading
Cognition Eww, I stepped in some evolutionary psychology and other crap 4 Dec 201218 Sep 2017 *Sigh* I try and try to stay out of the muck, but they keep pulling me back in! I saw what I thought was a careful and rather overly-documented critique by Edward Clint of a talk by Rebecca Watson against evolutionary psychology (EP). It was full of references and arguments, devoid… Continue Reading