In an article entitled "The Crowd Within," The Economist has commented on some recent work that has expanded on the earlier and well-publicized counter-intuitive findings of James Surowiecki, author of "The Wisdom of Crowds" (2005). Surowiecki found that the aggregated guesses of non-experts were often startlingly accurate. The averaged guesses…
Today we biked over to see the 2½ hour long gay pride parade. "You're here, you're queer, we're used to it." About 40,000 other people came to see the parade along the edge of my neighborhood today. You can see the crowds looking down Grand Boulevard. Many people were festively…
I'm aware that McCain is different than Bush on a few issues. But these are areas in which McCain has stumbled over a very low bar, indeed. For instance, McCain has the intellectual brilliance to admit that we are terribly screwing up our environment and that energy is an issue…
Under a bill to be introduced soon in Utah, sex education teachers would be criminally liable if they "deviate from state law governing sex education, which requires that it focus on physical and emotional development of adolescents, healthy relationships and the threat and prevention of diseases." The bill is being…
It’s difficult to watch hecklers, even when you agree with them. On a superficial level they are rude. By interrupting formal speeches they are preventing the officially designated speaker from delivering his or her message. But what alternatives do we have when modern-day powerful politicians carefully exclude people who disagree…