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Religion as spandrel, the book June 27, 2008

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Via Mind Hacks, a link to a review at The Immanent Frame of a book written by Pascal Boyer which takes a cognitive science-based approach to religion, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought.

The review seems mostly dismissive, but it’s description of the author’s explanation is one to which I am sympathetic:

“…we should understand religious ideas… and related practices… not as more-or-less functional (or dysfunctional) human responses to recurrent human conditions and experiences but, rather, as the effects of the automatic operation of a number of specific, highly specialized, innate and universal mental mechanisms.”

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weekly photo #85: On The Run June 25, 2008

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On The Run
Not much to say about this one, except perhaps to note that those are my kids in the right foreground, running away from me as fast as they can.

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George Carlin June 24, 2008

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This is, I think, the first time the death of a celebrity has actually felt like a loss for me — in the past, it’s always been more of a “that’s a shame” experience. But to hear the news that George Carlin passed away… well, like I said, I feel loss, as, I should think, just about every American who appreciates free thought, free speech, and the hypocrisies and foibles of being human, to say nothing of the fun-house that is American culture feels.

Here’s DrugMonkey explaining why we shouldn’t be too melodramatic in our recognition of Carlin’s passing.

Here’s the Washington Post indicating that the Kennedy Center is going ahead with awarding Carlin the Mark Twain Prize, a video of a 1997 interview with Carlin is on the page.

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listing politics June 23, 2008

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Just about everything here seems good to me… the second item does seem a bit circular, but I really shouldn’t nit-pick, especially as I can’t seem to come up with something even as succinct as that. I think, in fact, that the best I can do is…

*everything in society is political

*political positions are subjective

…which may seem great, except that it’s so vague as to be pretty much useless.

addendum: one important thing I think a lot of us (including myself) need re-iterated is that politicians are people, too — that is, someone doesn’t undergo some sort of magical transformation when they start working for the government or take up a public office: people respond to the same kind of incentives, think the same way, have the same biases and beliefs, regardless of whether they’re a businessman or a congressman.

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outside the mind June 23, 2008

Posted by ocmpoma in : language , add a comment

I read this post at Babel’s Dawn expecting to see the word “emergent” — it never came up, but I think the idea’s there. Another good read on non-guided complex systems; that is, more evo-lingo.

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weekly quote #31: Megan McArdle June 23, 2008

Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 1 comment so far

She notes at the end of a post about the ridiculous prevalence of outrage on the net:

“It’s hard to generate intellectual respect for someone who believes that life is an exam composed entirely of multiple choice questions.”

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weekly photo #84: Kirche June 20, 2008

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Kirche (edited)
Another Frankfurt photo, from the same bridge (and taken at the same time) as this one and digitally edited to remove the same boom. I believe that’s the Dreikönigskirche off on the right.

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feel the words June 19, 2008

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How is it that music has such a huge impact on us? Why is it that the insensitivity towards or inability to experience music are categorized as neurological conditions? Music, it would seem on its face, is very central to the experience of being human.

Cognitive Daily discusses some peer reviewed research about how musicality helps us parse sounds into words, so that we can make sense of speech. Music, perhaps, is tied into us in the same way that our capability to communicate via sound is — which is the main point of Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neandertals, a book which I found quite intriguing (reviewed here).

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seeing numbers June 19, 2008

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Art, at its best, helps us see ourselves in ways which we would not otherwise be able to. Great art is self-awareness and fresh perspective combined and made concrete.

Via The World’s Fair, I am reminded of the work of Chris Jordan (no close relation*), whose work “Running the numbers” makes it much more simple — and much more dramatic — to visualize the magnitude of the statistics that we encounter all the time.

You can see Chris talking about his work at TED and also on a Pop!Cast.

(* the phrase “no relation” being pretty much pointless — we’re all related, after all…)

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