Posts Tagged ‘ Miscellaneous and Meta ’

One foot in front of the other

Jun 14th, 2015 5:50 am | By

Walk accomplished.

The campus isn’t as ugly as I remembered.

……

……

IT’S UGLIER.

It’s like an act or revenge on the students.

I’m serious. You just walk around saying “what were they thinking?”

But – I hadn’t done any sustained walking (apart from the walk from the Ks to the Gs at O’Hare) since I left home, so this was good.

Dang it’s muggy though. Seattle doesn’t do muggy – once the temperature goes up the humidity drops.

I saw five ground hogs on the side of a little hill.

I got slightly lost coming back from the central part of the campus, and there is NO ONE around – I felt mild panic for a minute (not wanting … Read the rest

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What counts as plagiarism?

Oct 20th, 2014 10:20 am | By

I’m not sure what to think about this.

There’s this C J Werleman guy, who has been accused of plagiarism. I’ve been seeing mutterings about it in passing for a few days, without following them up, because he’s not someone I’ve been aware of. But PZ has a post about the subject today and I read that, so then I read his source, which is Godless Spellchecker.

PZ:

But he has done the unforgivable: serial plagiarism, and when caught out, has apologized, but simultaneously belittled the seriousness of the offense and blamed it on a campaign by our little neo-conservative atheist cabal of Harris and Boghossian.

I agree that they are wrong about so much else, but

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But football is a necessity of life

Oct 11th, 2014 11:36 am | By

Another item for the annals of “people take football way too seriously.”

A town that found encouragement in its winning high school football team after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy was left to absorb another blow Tuesday after school officials canceled the season over allegations of bullying, intimidation and harassment among players.

The rest of the story is about how sad and upset everyone is…about the cancellation, not about the bullying, intimidation and harassment. They want their football and they don’t care about bullying, intimidation and harassment. That’s fucked up.

“There was enough evidence that there were incidents of harassment, of intimidation and bullying that took place on a pervasive level, on a wide-scale level and at a level at

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Provoking outrage

Sep 16th, 2014 12:44 pm | By

I made another attempt to talk reason. I’m absurdly optimistic, aren’t I.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 13h
Can it be true, some bloggers are paid by the click, and consequently fake outrage, or play the bully, in order to attract clicks? Hope not.

2h
Answer to my question seems to be yes, and on-line newspapers may be worst offenders – deliberately touting for clicks by provoking outrage.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson
.@RichardDawkins What about you, Richard? 2 million TGD sold, yes? Outrages many, yes? So…what is your point? You good we bad? That’s it?

@RichardDawkins Haven’t you been – often laudably – provoking outrage for years now? Why rebuke other provokers? Are you being consistent?

@RichardDawkins I heard you provoking outrage on

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Epistemology 101

Sep 13th, 2014 5:35 pm | By

Here’s an explanation for the hard of thinking.

There’s a difference between taking a claim seriously and asserting that it’s true.

There’s a difference between not expressing incredulity about a claim and asserting that it’s true.

There’s a difference between finding claims credible and asserting that they’re true.

There’s a difference between doubting the denials of claims and asserting that the claims are true.

There’s a difference between finding it more likely that a claim is true than it is that a denial of the claim is true, and asserting that the claim is true.

In short there are many possible views about a particular claim that are well short of 1. assuming that they’re true, let alone 2. asserting … Read the rest

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Guest post: You teach reason, not emotions

Aug 2nd, 2014 3:20 pm | By

Originally a comment by Brony on Vulcans can’t argue.

@ brianpansky

Accepting that our primary motives are not rational (and not even conscious) is not , however, the same as saying – as Hume did – that reason should be the slave of emotions. Indeed, if that were the case, we should abandon any hope of progress in ethics and general well-being. Fortunately we do, in fact, use reason all the time to shape our emotions. What else is psychotherapy, if not a (mostly) rational attempt to modify our emotions? What are penalties for, if not to curb some desires?

Reason is in fact the slave of the emotions because reason is software carved into existence through the emotions. … Read the rest

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Guest post: If you want to have that conversation, go have it

Aug 2nd, 2014 1:10 pm | By

Originally a comment by Nathaniel Frein on Public property.

@sonof: I think what Ophelia is saying in response to your #16 could be paraphrased as ‘bothering men that way is bad but doing it to women is WORSE so shut up and go away’, so apparently she is learning a lot from her new friend (Richard).

Oh do fuck off. Seriously.

You have the wide wide internet to make your point that “People in general should not have their emotions audited by others”, and instead you choose to come here and criticize one blogger for choosing to focus on a behavior that by far happens to women much more than men.

Lets have an anecdote off: I have neverRead the rest

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