A Curious Little Blog

Thomas Kuhn objected to Popper's positivist approach to science. Although Popper set a high bar for what he regarded as "scientific," he nevertheless believed that humans can and do make steady progress in learning more about the world. Kuhn was more sceptical; he thought that the best we could do is come up with more and more sophisticated models of reality, without, however, approaching "truth" (knowledge of the Ding-an-sich , or what really lies behind our models). Kuhn's inspiration was what he called "the Copernican revolution." Prior to Copernicus, Western astronomers since Ptolemy had worked out a very detailed model of how the planets, sun, and stars revolve around the earth. To make their model match observations, they had to add layers of complexity: celestial bodies not only moved in great circular orbits, but also sometimes in smaller orbits around a point in their major orbit (see the explanation and diagram at Wikipedia ). Somet...

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l...

Christmas carols: love them or hate them, it's hard to avoid them this time of year. I like carols, but I tend to prefer the older ones. Not that I have anything against adding to the canon, but there is something a little...I don't know, empty...about songs like "Winter Wonderland" and "There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays." I don't apply that to "Frosty the Snowman" or "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer," which strike just the right note for me. My son is in his school's chorus, which means I've gotten to hear every Christmas song at each of his performances. One of the classics, a song I actually like, is "Up On the Rooftop." I like it, but I admit that I am puzzled by the refrain: "Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn't go?" Who wouldn't go where? Up on the rooftop? If that's what it means, it seems a weird question to ask. I think the composer just needed a rhyme there. I found this cut...

When I began this blog about 6 months ago, I did not expect it would attract a large audience. My expectations have been fully met. The only exception came when Linkiest decided (at my request) to link to my blog post on liberal denial of media bias . That created a viewership spike that screwed up the graph on Google analytics, because it was totally off the scale. In case some of those new viewers from Linkiest are still around, I figured the hundreth post would be a good time to highlight some of the most interesting previous blog entries. Here are my completely subjective choices: Etiology of a Medical Crisis The Nuclear Threat The Awful Truth Gates, Boxer, and Race Dumb Political Slogans Acorn Cracked Obama's Citizenship Peace of Westphalia Day Self-interest Environmental Pathos

No wonder people don't trust economists. When people tell you that cap-and-trade will lead to job growth , it doesn't fit common sense. Of course, a new government program on this magnitude will certainly create jobs, exactly as claimed: "research and development in new technologies, new factories to produce solar panels and wind turbines, and energy-efficiency retrofits of commercial and residential real estate." But the question is, will it be a net increase in jobs? Because even the authors of this article admit that "some businesses that rely on dirty energy will be hurt." (Why not all of them? Are some of them getting permits for free?) Things get the most confusing when they involve money, because money is a very slippery subject. According to the article cited above, "almost all of the revenue from the permit auction is returned to the American public." Therefore, even though the authors admit that energy prices will rise, they ass...

When I was in graduate school, I served as a teaching assistant for the lowest-ranking professor in the history department. He had never published anything, so his salary was unbelievably small -- under $30,000 in 1991. I heard him pronounce a few words strangely during his lectures, and I mistakenly jumped from his lowly position in the department to the belief that he must be wrong. I had to eat humble pie when I looked those words up in the dictionary and found out that he was right, contrary to almost everyone else I have heard say those words. Here they are, along with some others that I have been surprised to learn: schism: ignore the "ch" in this word; it is pronounced "sism." eschew: unlike schism, pronounce the "ch" firmly in this word; ess-chew. long-lived: most people say this with a short "i" sound, like the verb, "to live." It should be a long "i." Think of it as "long-lifed," with the "f...

Thanksgiving started when pilgrims and Indians had a meal together in peace, so it seems like a good time to think about those who want to make Indians and white people hate each other. I am referring, of course, to the small but loud-mouthed minority who object to sports nicknames based on Indians. (I know, I should say "Native Americans," but I think that is offensive since the name "American" comes from an Italian, so it's not really any better than Indian, is it? We should call them some Indian name, but since Indians spoke over 1000 languages, we could hardly hope to come up with one name that identified them all. So I will stick with Indian, because it is a lot less typing than Native American.) The issue of Indian team names also comes up this time of year because the NCAA ruled in 2006 that no college can host a bowl game or an NCAA tournament game if they have an Indian team name or mascot that the NCAA deems "hostile or offensive." Ap...

You may not think that psychology is likely to be of much use to conservatism as a movement, given that psychology is a soft science, and academics outside of the hard sciences are likely to espouse feel-good, politically correct ideas. I would have thought so myself, except that I accidentally stumbled upon the blogs at the Psychology Today site. I forget how I ended up there, but one of the first blogs I read was The Scientific Fundamentalist by Satoshi Kanazawa. I'm not a religious fundamentalist, but I can't help taking a title like "The Scientific Fundamentalist" as though the author had slapped me across the face with his gloves and dared me to a duel. Naturally, I couldn't resist reading some -- and I couldn't have been more surprised. In a blog post provocatively entitled " How to Be Happy ," Mr. Kanazawa offers this advice: "The best thing to do is to kill all the feminists and hippies and liberals." Why would this aid our ...

I was 15 years old in 1984, and an avid follower of politics and the news. When Reagan was making his decision whether to run for re-election, I was opposed to it. It wasn't that I didn't like Reagan; I loved him. But I was convinced that he wouldn't stand a chance in the election, and I didn't want to see him lose. Of course, he went on to win one of the most lopsided elections in history. Why was I so wrong? Because I had been watching network news (the only kind, back then) and the coverage was overwhelmingly negative. Since that time, I have watched with disbelief as liberals have criticized Fox News as unbalanced, culminating in the amazing spectacle of the president himself declaring that Fox is not a legitimate source of journalism. Meanwhile, these same liberals refuse to acknowledge that ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc. (ad nauseum) have any bias of their own. What makes this all the more incredible is that a number of studies have been produced demonstr...

I wrote on Friday that I had not realized how oblivious many liberals were to the Islamic war -- their war against us, not ours against them -- until their reactions to the Fort Hood massacre came in. I have learned something that surprised me even more: that even senior Army commanders are oblivious to the war. I read a quotation from one that Fort Hood was a tragedy, but it would be an even greater tragedy if the army's diversity were lost as a result. I'm all for diversity in the army. I've known several devout Muslims, and I would trust them with my life. But would their exclusion from the military be a greater tragedy than 13 dead and 40 wounded? And how many other people who have died in the cause of diversity already, and will yet die in years to come? What is your definition of "tragedy," general? In any case, I'm not arguing for the exclusion of all Muslims from the military. What I want, and what most Americans want, is some common sense on ...

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the crucial events in German history. Most people don't realize that November 9th was already an important day in German history prior to 1989. On this day in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and the German republic was proclaimed. On this day in 1923, Hitler attempted a coup in Munich and was decisively defeated, the failed "Beer Hall Putsch." And on this day in 1938, Germans looted and burned Jewish stores and synagogues in what became known as Kristallnacht. Except for Kristallnacht, a pretty good day for Germany and Germans. Of course, the significance of November 9th is coincidental. Many other major events in 20th century German history -- the outbreak of both world wars, Hitler's election, the Reichstag fire, the Berlin blockade, and the erection of the Berlin Wall -- happened on other days, and only Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication and the fall of the Berlin Wall would come up in importanc...

Obama was in the news for two things toward the end of last week: his reaction to the shootings at Fort Hood, and skipping Germany's celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some people are outraged about his non-appearance in Berlin. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it certainly does seem strange to me. Of course, the president can't go everywhere he is invited, but this does seem like a particularly strong case: Germany is a very powerful country, and one of our close allies; the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the seminal moments in German history in the past 50 years; and America was closely involved in the story of the Berlin Wall, both its erection and its destruction. I don't know why he would choose to miss a chance to celebrate the occasion. I'm sure the Cold War is not one of Obama's strong points; as someone pointed out, Obama was hobnobbing with Marxist professors at the time the Berlin Wall fell. Still, this was a no-cost opportun...

I have written before about churches with strange names that seem to conceal their religion rather than reveal it. Today I received a flyer in the mail from another one, the Harmony Community Church. In the fine print, it says it is Southern Baptist, but nothing much else on the flyer would give you that idea. I'm also not too sure about the motto on the back of the flyer, "Family is everything...come be a part of ours." If you're a Southern Baptist, or any sort of Christian, it's pretty clear that family isn't everything. No doubt they are exaggerating in order to attract visitors, but it grates on me to see it expressed in such terms. Couldn't they have said, "Family is important," or even "Family is vital"? "Family is everything" sends the wrong message, in my opinion. This reminds me of one of the first churches I attended after getting married, a Lutheran church in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. They gave us a refri...

I know that the big news of the day is yesterday's election. As a conservative, obviously I am happy at how things turned out. As a Virginian, I am excited that Virginia has elected a Republican for a change -- only the third since I began following politics in 1980. As an analyst, however, I have nothing new to add, so I will write about something else: environmentalism as a support system for the depressed. I was excited recently to find a link to the following video, which I had seen back in May, but had been unable to locate a link since then (thanks to Linkiest ): Everyone ought to see this video to see what some environmentalists are like. As their name indicates, " Earth First! " is about "biocentrism," or "spiritual and visceral recognition of the intrinsic, sacred value of every living thing" -- plants on the same level as humans. Actually, as you can see in the video, "Earth First!" also values decidedly non-living things such...

President Obama's Senior Advisor recently announced that the administration was going to "speak truth to power." This is, of course, ridiculous, since the administration is power (although I recommend you read the linked article anyway, as it is amusing). I'm not going to focus on the obvious logic lapse in this incident, but rather the assumptions implicit in the idea of "speaking truth to power," because they underlie a great deal of liberal reasoning. It might seem contradictory that liberals support freedom for all manner of violent, abusive, and perverted speech while, at the same time, promoting speech codes on college campuses; but I will give them this much credit, that some liberals, at least, are aware of the paradox, and have an answer for it: the rules are different depending on whether you are in power or not. The poor and downtrodden are allowed to do almost anything because they are poor and downtrodden, and therefore don't have a f...

I like to report on people doing the right thing, so I was happy to discover Megan Carpentier at Air America calling out Keith Olbermann for his pointless ad hominem attack on Michelle Malkin. One can say a lot of things about Michelle Malkin's politics, her tactics, her strained relationship with reality and her commenters' propensity to embody the worst of the Internet. Or you could do what Keith Olbermann did...A liberal, progressive critique of Malkin need not and should not resort to an attack on her looks or her gender or rely on silly stereotypes or imagery that brings to mind victims of domestic violence. If people on both sides would be more honest about criticizing each other for doing the wrong thing, the debate would be entirely more civil. Unfortunately, they are usually too busy circling the wagons to be willing to point out faults among others inside the defenses, and the ever-escalating rhetoric contributes to this sense of beleaguerment and us-against-them m...

I'm excited about writing this blog entry because I get to spread the word that today is Peace of Westphalia Day. 361 years ago today, representatives gathered in the town of Münster signed two documents, the Treaty of Onsabrück and the Treaty of Münster, that ended the Thirty Years' War. Not many people celebrate this holiday in the way it deserves, with a full day off from work, lots of decadent food, and reading my books on the subject, but I think that will change once I get the word out and people start to realize what they are missing. Okay, I might be a little biased on the subject. Hardly anyone knows what the Peace of Westphalia is or even what century it occurred in, which means I probably could have picked a better subject to pour my heart and soul into writing a book about. Heck, hardly anyone knows that October 24th is United Nations Day -- the U.N. charter was signed on this day in 1945 -- so I can hardly expect its predecessor by 300 years to catch on. Someo...

If you use Firefox, you should definitely get this Halloween theme . It is beautifully well-done, and gets me in the spirit for a holiday that I don't even particularly care much about. I look forward to this time of the year just so I can use this theme for a few weeks. There is also an excellent Christmas theme available. I should probably be more upset by the White House's attempt to discredit Fox as a news agency, but in fact I find myself just shaking my head. No presidency has attempted to take on an entire news station, and I doubt if any attempted to take on a particular newspaper, either. And for good reason. First, in a country devoted to free speech, it is dangerous for a government institution to try to decide who is and who isn't authorized to deliver the news. Second, it seems unlikely to work, and may very well backfire. Third, it is pointless. News agencies are not sworn to neutrality. We went through a period of history when journalists claimed t...

Yellow has never seemed like much of a colour to me. It's more like off-white than a separate colour. I want to describe it as a dark white, but at the same time as a bright white. Are dark and bright opposites? I don't think so, because light blue is not bright; but I'm not really sure what bright means, unless it's perhaps "reflective." This brings me to the question of what distinguishes yellow from gold (and grey from silver). I remembering wondering about this when I was a kid, because Crayola's 64-pack had separate colours for yellow and gold, but I couldn't figure out what mixture of paints would reproduce gold. The trick, I realized, was that gold-coloured crayons had a sparkly element in them that clearly distinguished them from yellow; ditto for silver vs. grey. In practice, gold seems to be a little darker than pure yellow, but that doesn't stop people from describing blond hair as "golden." Yellow is one of the three pr...

You have probably seen the following on a bumper sticker: "It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber." (For information on the origins of this sentence, see here .) I don't see it as much as I once did; I'd like to think it's less common because it is such a fatuous sentiment that people see through it, but it is probably just the fact that it is too long to be really catchy, like "Make love, not war" or "Yes, We Can" (which are equally fatuous, but far more popular). But I don't want to focus on the military side of the slogan; instead, I want to ask about the school side. Because the fact is that I am inundated with school fundraisers, and I'm really tired of them. My question is, just how much money does my children's school need, and why can't they get adequate funding through taxes? I realize that there is always a tension between gove...

Are red, yellow, and orange really "warm" colours? I remember learning about warm vs. cold colours in 1st grade, and I had absolutely no idea what the concept meant. The first thing that came to my mind was that blue must be a warm colour, since blue was my favourite colour. You can argue that yellow is warm because it is the colour of the sun and red because things turn "red-hot," but there are serious limitations to this claim. Fire is yellow, but it is also blue; items that get hotter than red-hot turn white-hot. Water and ice are commonly associated with blue and green, but they are really clear, and only appear in colour in certain circumstances. Maybe red, yellow, and orange share some common characteristic that we have arbitrarily designated "warmth," but I don't think it has anything to do with temperature. Green is generally seen as a cool colour, even though it is a mixture of a warm and cool pigments. What is purple? I'm not su...

Today is National Bosses' Day. That sounds like a great idea. Bosses make more than anyone else in the office, and spend all day telling people what to do. They need a special day for themselves. I'm not that crazy about Secretaries' Day, but at least it makes sense: secretaries do the menial work in an office every other day of the year, so having one day in which they get special treatment seems appropriate. I'm fortunate that my boss is very nice. I've heard that your relationship with your boss is the most important factor in job satisfaction, and I've been lucky that all but two of my bosses have been very easy to get along with. The other two weren't bad; they just weren't as good. About hating: Liberals love the subject of hating. They accuse their opponents of it all the time. One of their biggest insults is to call someone a "hater." Of course, they are immune from hating -- or rather, anytime they hate it is justifiable, b...

I heard on the radio today that President Obama was in New Orleans, which has still not recovered from Hurricane Katrina. (CNN article here .) I wouldn't expect it to be 100% recovered, but apparently a lot of it is still a disaster area. One of the questions that Obama fielded was, naturally, "Why hasn't the government done more?" Obama's responded by saying that he was working on improving things: "My expectation is that by the time that my term is over, you guys are going to look back and you're going to say, 'This was a responsive administration on health care, on housing, on education, that actually made sure the money flowed and that things got done the way they were supposed to get done." I doubt whether any president can introduce drastic changes into any organization as large as FEMA. Because of the civil service system, 99% of its employees cannot be changed by the new administration. (I don't like to toss around percentages ...

I maintain a list of vocabulary words that I would like to learn. Among the hardest are words for colours, which are almost impossible to define in words. Sure, you can write "a dark grayish-brown," but will someone really be able to picture it in his mind? Among my words are three shades of brown: fuscous, taupe (rhymes with "rope") and filemot (fill-mott). Fuscous and taupe both mean "brownish-grey," which gives them the distinction of combining the two most boring colours. If it came down to it, I think I would choose brown as even more boring than grey. It's the colour of dirt, after all, not to mention other natural substances like wood and, frequently, fur. It's also the colour you get when you mix all the other colours together. According to wikipedia , it's actually a mixture of red, orange, or yellow with black, but that's not the way I remember it when I played with fingerpaints, and it's not the colour my kids get when th...