People who are asked to rate the importance of various traits for romantic relationships, a good sense of humor is consistently at or near the top of their lists. Geoffrey Miller has concluded additonal work on the importance of a sense of humor to attract mates, resulting in a paper…
I've often read about split brain patient demostrations, but I've never before seen them. This video also includes explanations by Michael Gazzaniga, a pioneer in this field. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo[/youtube]
I have a friend who wrote a song to me. (Free mp3 download courtesy of Anderson Productions, Ltd.) “Dear Friend” appeared on Russ Anderson’s 2003 album, “Arsenal Street”. All his CD’s are Available here. I recommend listening to the song before proceeding.
This nice, eerie, and sometimes psychedelic song is a heartfelt plea for me to discard my narrow, science-informed view of the world and just try to accept the ultimate truth of his favorite, ancient, re-translated book.
When my very Christian 11 year old nephew heard the song, he worried that it would anger me. He is fond of both Russ and myself, and the song conveys a basic disconnect. Conversations I’ve had with other Absolute Biblically Literal Truth Christians indicate that these are common misperceptions of atheist ideology.
Let’s examine some of the contentions in the song:…
“If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.” Mario Andretti
Like most people I know, I try to keep quite a few balls in the air. Those balls represent things such as prosecuting lawsuits against large unscrupulous businesses.
Today, for instance, the two lawyers who constitute my firm’s consumer class action practice area (I’m one of the two) sued a large corporate dairy that has been distributing “organic milk” to large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target. The problem is that the milk was not organic. A federal investigation recently determined that the dairy engaged in willful violations of organic dairy farm standards. Our plaintiffs are asking that the customers who paid big premiums for the “organic” milk should be refunded their money, at least the difference in cost between the price of the organic milk and the plain milk. The plaintiffs in our suit are both mothers of small children. They both reached deep to pay the extra money so that their children would not be exposed to the hormones and antibiotics of conventional cow milk. One of the women is a chemist and the other is a biologist. They had detailed reasons for paying the extra money for the organic milk. Another reason is that they didn’t want cows to be mistreated in order to provide milk. These women (and the thousands or millions of other customers in this potential class) were cheated out of substantial sums of money. Just add up the cost of several gallons of …
You can now attend lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, for free. Here's the site to visit to attend the courses. "UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life: academics, events and athletics," said vice provost for undergraduate education Christina Maslach. The University plans to continually add…