Another way to come around to new views on gay marriage... (2012/06/22)
David Blankenhorn now supports the legal right to gay marriage.
[read more...]I am, apparently, no longer an Amiga owner. (2012/06/20)
So, back when I got the first computer that was personally mine, not just a computer I used, it was an Amiga 3000. Back when PC users were dealing with a hilariously awful mess of IRQ allocations and jumpers, 640k limits, and the like Commodore shipped stuff with a clean 32-bit OS, SCSI disk access (instead of the elaborate mess of MFM and other drives), and so on.
[read more...]Glossy displays, and why they suck (2012/06/13)
So the new MacBook Pro line is out, and they added a “Retina” model, meaning one with really high pixel resolution; it’s 2880x1800, which is to say, it’s a pixel-doubled 1440x900 display. VERY impressive. The color fidelity is gorgeous. The pixels are tiny, which is a good thing.
[read more...]Junk science (2012/06/10)
So, it’s pretty well established that there is a market for bad science – that is to say, “science” which is really carefully-crafted to produce a particular set of results for which there is a market demand.
[read more...]The role of investors and investment (2012/05/29)
One of the standard talking points of the political “right” is that scattering the wealth of very wealthy people prevents them from “creating jobs”.
[read more...]The Pinkie Pie case for gay marriage (2012/05/24)
Marriages mean weddings. Weddings mean parties, with cake! More marriages mean more weddings. More weddings mean more parties, with more cake! Allowing gay marriage means MORE CAKE and MORE PARTIES.
[read more...]The conservative case for gay marriage (2012/05/24)
It is at this point pretty obvious that, for the most part, gay marriage advocates are not particularly persuasive to the most vehement objectors. There’s some interesting differences in how people view the question. What’s most interesting is to observe that, fundamentally, people are making different categories of arguments. It’s not that the conservatives dispute the equality argument, it’s that they aren’t considering it to be particularly relevant.
[read more...]Followup: Why you can't rely on logical disclaimers (2012/05/21)
It has been pointed out that my previous article about the famous “the talk: non-black version” seemed to imply that I do not understand the full weight of the “only when you have no better information” qualifier.
[read more...]Intelligence, logic, statistics, and one's own petard (2012/05/16)
A while back, Eric Raymond blogged what he called an intelligence test. It’s based on the much-commented on “the talk: non-black edition” piece that was making the rounds a while back. Raymond continues with some questions, then says:
[read more...]Cognitive dissonance and how people manage it. (2012/05/13)
The human brain is a complicated thing, and people have a lot of ego invested in thinking they are smart and correct.
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