onegoodmove

Posted by Norm at 1:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Norm at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On TV: The Genius of Charles Darwin: Presented by Richard Dawkins
note: I've added Part 3
Richard Dawkins examines the legacy of Charles Darwin. The three part programme will be broadcast on Channel Four at 8 pm on Monday 4th, Monday 11th and Monday 18th August.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Posted by Norm at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

• Americans choose God over doctors for saving lives

  More than half of randomly surveyed adults - 57% - said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.

• TPM CAFE BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION ON JAMES GALBRAITH'S THE PREDATOR STATE


• Think Progress » McCain Jokes About His Definition Of The Rich: ‘How About $5 Million?’


• See Jane Compute : Reading is fundamental

  I have had two experiences in quick succession that have made me seriously wonder what kind of reading education kids these days are getting.

  (Jeez, did I just go over into old geezer territory? I think that's the first time I've used the phrase "kids these days" in a blog post. Next I'll be telling people to get off my lawn...)



• The Satirical Political Report - An Offbeat Look at the Hot-Button Issues of the Day » McCain Explains to Rick Warren HIS ‘Purpose-Driven Life’


• Bad Science » My Placebo programme on BBC Radio 4

  I’ve been so busy I completely failed to spot that this show went out earlier this evening. It’s a smashing programme I made with Matt Silver from the BBC Radio 4 Science Unit on the placebo effect.

  We charge through some of the most fun experiments in the field, and in part two we get all philosophical about what it means for mankind.
  I’m an enormous fan of BBC Radio 4 science, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about why they’re so great. As well as resisting the drive to dumb down, there’s also one very important structural factor: around 70-80% of a radio science documentary - by necessity, for auditory colour - is made up of words spoken by the people who have done the science themselves.

  (tip to pedantsareus)


• Adult Christianity TM |(tip to pedantsareus)

Posted by Norm at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

note: If you still don't think John McCain is unfit to be the president of all the people; here is one from the archives that will remind you what an arrogant prick he really is.

Posted by Norm at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

I love lists like the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, it is a list I've perused before and one on which includes many titles I've read. I stumbled across it again a few days ago and decided I'd make it a goal to read everything on the list I haven't already read. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I've only read 37 of the 100 books. I plan on reading the remaining 63 over the next three years, one does not live by classic literature alone.

I usually get through 40 or 50 books a year. I'm doing a little better this year, and will probably finish with 70 or 80. The nice thing about starting this project now is the Kindle I recently received as a gift. Many of the books are in the public domain and available for free from sites like Feedbooks, Manybooks, and Project Gutenburg

Think of the money I'll save, and maybe it is good for the environment as well. No trees are cut down to produce the books, no fuel is burned transporting them across the country on airplanes and in trucks. I may be overlooking something here, but it seems on balance to be a good thing. I could just check them out of the library of course, but even there it means a trip in the car and more fuel used.

And talk about instant gratification, I can decide on a book and in less than a minute it is available to read. My Kindle is already filling up with books I intend to read, but unlike the many books I've purchased intending to read they are not sitting on bookshelves, sometimes double stacked, on the Kindle the books don't require any more physical space. I was concerned when I got the Kindle that I wouldn't like reading on it but I do.

There are rumors about that the Kindle is really starting to take off sales predicted by some to be 180,000 this year may according to the same prognosticators reach 360,000. The current estimate of Kindles in the wild is 240,000. I've been amused by some of the naysaying I've been reading. One fellow doesn't believe there are that many because, although he lives in a city of six million, has never seen one in the wild, another, a literary blogger points to the lack of Kindle sales through her Amazon link. It seems to me that they simply are having trouble understanding what a small number a couple of hundred thousand is in a nation of over 300 million.

Posted by Norm at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Posted by Norm at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've read it. I enjoyed it. Would you like it. The book is Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) (Paperback) by Alexis de Tocqueville. If you think I would give away my only copy you'd be mistaken. In an attempt to organize my books a little better I discovered that I had the LOA copy of this and so the Penguin edition can go.

I'll take all requests for the book left in the comments during the next 24 hours, or so, and then use a random number generator to determine the winner. I'll then ship the book at my expense to the winner. The offer is limited to residents of the U.S. and Canada. My apologies to my good friends in other countries but the cost of shipments to other destinations is simply too high.

Posted by Norm at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

And this week's winner is?

Posted by Norm at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

• Science News / Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will?

  “If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?”—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC.

  Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

  The finding won’t give many physicists a moment’s worry, because traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics embrace unpredictability already. The best anyone can hope to do, quantum theory says, is predict the probability that a particle will behave in a certain way.



• Black Sun Journal » Pastor Acknowledges Arguments of New Atheism


• The Corpus Callosum : A Cunning Disregard For Security

  This seems very odd. The Internet -- including web sites and email -- has been found to have a very serious security flaw. Civilized places such as Sweden and Puerto Rico are already fixing the problem. There are plans to improve security for US .gov and .mil sites (government and military , respectively). Yet, the most important fix for the rest of us, which is under the control of the US government, is being delayed.



• John McCain Hits the Streets with Questionable Anti-Obama Campaign - NYsportSpace


• Joho the Blog » Best. Explanation of sub-prime mortgage crisis. Ever


• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results

  Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Posted by Norm at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

How sad, that he was not reelected. Instead we got Reagan, and Republicans, and the problems we face today.

Posted by Norm at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

• CCC Events Weblog » Blog Archive » 25C3: Nothing to hide

  Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on her back. Their race to the Berlin Congress Center, where the 25th Chaos Communication Congress was about to take place, had come to an end.

  “So you’ve gotten to the end of our race-course?” said the Tortoise. “Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proven that the thing couldn’t be done?”

  Achilles looked at the Tortoise with a mildly deprecatory look and sighed. “Oh bother, dear Tortoise, not again. . .

  (tip to
  Frank Paynter



• YouTube - Just When You Think the War is Over

  Go Ralph



• Alan Colmes Booms His Dynamite All Over Sean Hannity | Indecision2008 | Comedy Central


• Woody Allen: Still Working, Still Terrified | Newsweek Entertainment: Movies | Newsweek.com

  But go to meet the director in hopes of a "Tuesdays With Woody"-style affirmation of late-life contentment, and you will be quickly disabused of that illusion. At 72, he says he still lies awake at night, terrified of the void. He cannot reconcile his strident atheism with his superstition about the banana, but he knows why he makes movies: not because he has any grand statement to offer, but simply to take his mind off the existential horror of being alive. Movies are a great diversion, he says, "because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine."



• Paul Krugman - Can It Happen Here? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

  The draft Democratic Party platform that was sent out last week puts health care reform front and center. “If one thing came through in the platform hearings,” says the document, “it was that Democrats are united around a commitment to provide every American access to affordable, comprehensive health care.”

• Wondermark by David Malki ! - An Illustrated Jocularity.


• Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind: Scientific American

  The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics—such as relative or absolute size—that might account for humans’ superior intellect.

  Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer.

  Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition.



• “May Christ Send You Sorrow and a Serious Illness”—By Wyatt Mason (Harper's Magazine)


• Why Must Barack Obama and John McCain Use Religion to Try to Control People’s Minds? | Indecision2008 | Comedy Central

Posted by Norm at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by Norm at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

• Eight Strikes and You’re Out - by Thomas L. Friedman

  John McCain recently tried to underscore his seriousness about pushing through a new energy policy, with a strong focus on more drilling for oil, by telling a motorcycle convention that Congress needed to come back from vacation immediately and do something about America’s energy crisis. “Tell them to come back and get to work!” McCain bellowed. Sorry, but I can’t let that one go by. McCain knows why.

  It was only five days earlier, on July 30, that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill — S. 3335 — that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.

  Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits — which expire in December — to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America’s energy profile.

  Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.



• Johann Hari: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

  Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges – pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion's stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. They asked questions. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? How can a man survive inside a whale?

  Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor – where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims, and the atheists who support them, are being prevented from following this path. They cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohamed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? You don't have to murder many Theo Van Goghs or pulp many Sherry Joneses to intimidate the rest. The greatest censorship is internal: it is in all the books that will never be written and all the films that will never be shot, because we are afraid.



• Rushmore or Less - Timothy Egan - Op-Extra Columnist - Opinion - New York Times Blog


• Republican Enjoys Paying Huge Health Insurance Premiums | The Onion - America's Finest News Source


• McCain’s Bellicose Tune (Song Parody) » Mad Kane's Political Madness


• Joe Lieberman Going For the World Record in 400m Freestyle Douchebaggery | Indecision2008 | Comedy Central


• Why An Exciting Book Is Just As Thrilling As A Hair-raising Movie


• Science-Based Medicine » Amanda Peet is My Hero(1)


• Ignorance as a basis for policy


• Camera traps hidden in the woods are making animals angry. - By Etienne Benson - Slate Magazine

Posted by Norm at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've read it; I enjoyed it; would you like it? The book is

I'll take all requests for the book left in the comments during the next 24 hours, or so, and then use a random number generator to determine the winner. I'll then ship the book at my expense to the winner. The offer is limited to residents of the U.S. and Canada. My apologies to my good friends in other countries but the cost of shipments to other destinations is simply too high.

Posted by Norm at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)