I wish WordPress let you automatically delete comments containing more than a fixed number of links–say five. There’s a system for holding in moderation any comment with too many links, but after a certain number of links the chance that a comment isn’t spam drops to approximately zero. I just had to go through and [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Breathtaking historical ignorance watch
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 25, 2009
3 comments
From a recent Newsweek column, via Jerry Coyne: But this version of the conversation [the version represented by Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens--ed.] has gone on too long. We have allowed three people to frame it; its terms—submitting God to rational proofs and watching God fail—are theirs. But this approach to discussing religion far pre-dates Harris. [...]
What is physicalism?
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 19, 2009
2 comments
The importance of in-principle predictability in modern science The more I read discussions of things like reductionism, emergence, and the nature of the mind, the more I’m bugged by how confused these debates are, both in terms of different writers not connecting with each other and different writers not connecting with the major scientific developments [...]
Oh, so I am doing something good for the environment
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 19, 2009
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In general, animal products are a less efficient way of getting calories than plant products. Energy transfer betweentrophic levels and all that. This means that, in theory, going vegetarian is good for the environment, because less farm land will be needed to support your diet. Unless, maybe, you’re eating lots of milk and dairy, which [...]