Pop culture Updated Olympics rankings 2 Mar 201018 Sep 2017 I did this before, so I’m adding in the Winter Olympics figures to see who is the most successful per head of population… the results might surprise you, again… Continue Reading
General Science Correlation does not imply causation 20 Dec 2009 One of the oldest fallacies is the “fallacy of affirming the consequent“. Basically it is the logical form of the old statistical fallacy of taking correlation to imply causation. Just because two things are true doesn’t mean there is some kind of causal relation, or even logical relation, between them…. Continue Reading
Administrative Lazy Manager Theory 18 Nov 2009 Some people have asked me how I did a PhD, and wrote and taught a subject, while I was also manager of a department of graphic artists, receptionists, and animators, and did the annual report and various other publications. The answer is: Lazy Manager Theory The principle is: if you… Continue Reading
Biology On gods and religion 14 Oct 2009 I have just had a very pleasant meeting of the minds with Justin Barrett here in Oxford, who gave me some of his time. We agreed on a lot, and this has set me thinking that I should document some of the claims I intend to make in my research,… Continue Reading
trashcan categorial I’m a bit annoyed 1 Jul 2009 … that we give massive coverage to the death of a known child abuser and pedophile, and ignore the death of someone who lived a decent life and so far as we can tell was a good mother. There are more important things than the lives of entertainers, but given… Continue Reading
History How many ways can you make a logical mistake? 31 May 2009 A while back I got interested in the various taxonomies of fallacies, such as the Fallacy Files, each giving their own set of names. It set me thinking: how many fallacies are there? From that question it hit me: there are as many fallacies as their are of unique ways… Continue Reading
Politics Various divers thingies 6 May 20094 Oct 2017 My union is calling a strike next Tuesday. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t teach, and have no administrative duties, so should I stop thinking from for 8 hours? I’m not sure the administration would notice… Rob Skipper at hpb etc. has a series of podcasts from the… Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design So many bad puns, so little time 28 Apr 2009 Wilkins is fragile and destablised Intellectual tourist attacks local inhabitants All happy bacteria are alike (or is that like each other?) Australian current affairs gets vaccination right! [That’s not a pun, it’s an act of God] The original video is here. Evolution does spreadsheets in origin of genetic code Siris… Continue Reading
Censorship Bits 27 Mar 2009 Pope rewrites medical science to suit Catholic dogma. Film at 11. Australian government censorship website hacked. I’m not laughing, really. Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity A melange 14 Jan 2009 Chris Nedin at Ediacaran has a nice discussion of the metaphor of the adaptive landscape, “Climbing Pit Improbable“. It should be noted that the genetic notion of adaptive peaks is exactly the same thing as the AI notion of gradient descent learning., which inverts the “landscape” the way Chris describes…. Continue Reading