Category: Science and Technology

Religions, Genes, Jokes, and other Replicators

God is Watching You, by Dominic Johnson

I just read The Economist’s book review of Dominic Johnson‘s God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human. The review suggests “Belief in divine punishment may be inherent and a useful evolutionary adaptation, helping humans overcome selfishness.” But correctly assessing causation…

The Cluetrain Listicle: New Clues

This is good: The Cluetrain Listicle. Very good. It’s true. The Cluetrain Listicle sets out a sequence of 121 new ideas–clues–about the Web. And about us. And how the two are related. The new clues remind us of the incredible, world changing power of…

Response to 22 Creationists

Last Tuesday, Bill Nye (the science guy) debated Ken Ham (founder and CEO of Kentucky’s Creation Museum) on the question of whether a young-earth creation model is compatible with the theory of evolution.  NPR posted a nice summary of the debate,…

The Global Warming Consensus Gap

The media tends to present every story as having two sides.  It makes for good TV—or  radio, press, blogs, etc.—to present arguments from “both sides” of the issue.  It creates ready-made conflict and absolves the host journalists from actually following…

Welcome to the World Wide Web

It was twenty years ago today Tim Berners-Lee taught the world to play (online)… Technically, it was April 30, 1993 when CERN released the World Wide Web into the public domain.  And to commemorate the anniversary, they have resurrected the…