exposure to absurdity may improve the mind

I found this article interesting – new research suggests that exposure to the absurd or irrational may provoke higher levels of thinking – for example, pattern recognition – in humans.  The theory appears to be that when confronted…

politician tells truth

Shock, horror.

Kudos to Kelvin Thompson, federal Labor MP, for having the courage to stand up to the “eternal growth” fools who currently dictate economic and development policies in the western world and point out that excessive population…

steve keen on australian house prices

Anyone interested in housing affordability in Australia (as I currently am) could do worse than to read this fascinating piece by economist Steve Keen, who I have sadly only just discovered.

In short: housing is extremely expensive in…

collaborating in another holocaust

Epic win:

rationality vs political expediency – australia’s problem with water

You might recall this post from a couple of years back about water use in Australia – basically, the point was that as a matter of measurable, objective fact urban water use is utterly dwarfed by agricultural use,…

perspective refresher

Pictures like these seem like a good enough reason to continue exploring space – it’s an excellent tool for reflecting the utter triviality of the apparently significant matters with which we fill our days.

Now if only we could find…

religious fundamentalists reach new low with bushfire comments

I really wanted to believe that this was fake when it was first emailed to me – but no, there it is on the Catch the Fire Ministries website: Pastor Danny Nalliah, leader of that esteemed fundamentalist Christian…

hey, my shoes are talking

Uh oh: three+ cups of coffee a day increases the risk of hallucinations. Also:

In moderation, caffeine can increase the capacity for mental or physical labor, but when used in excess, it also can be intoxicating, causing nervousness, irritability,

…

i’ve made a huge mistake

This is just awesome – we may not be all that far off being able to clone an actual wooly mammoth. Occasionally, despite our major effort to annihilate ourselves and the planet, humans do…

there’s probably no god

This is fantastic: ads on London buses advocating atheism.

I wonder how hard this would be to fund in Australia, and whether it would somehow offend our anti-discrimination/hate speech laws, which (like our constitution, according to the High Court) seem…

what do you mean ‘the bank is out of money’?

This article highlights something which seems pretty obvious to me: it is a bad idea to leave an economic system at the mercy of frequently irrational human perception and emotion, and the current crisis is more a product…

unscientific superstition quietly gaining influence in australian schools

The Age reports on the pressing issue of the growth of independent schools teaching from a faith-based curriculum in Australia.  Presenting religious indoctrination in the Howard era clothing of “choice”, some such schools are teaching creationism in science…

no ape in 08: i !heart huckabee

FYI, Mike Huckabee, potential Republican presidential candidate and by extension potential President of the United States, has this to say about creationism (and the fact that he believes in it):

If you want to believe that you and

…

abnormal is the new normal

This is an excellent piece by Barry Jones in The Australian in which he highlights the extraordinarily dangerous attitude currently being promoted as the “new normal” by politicians and their lackeys in the western world, in which objectivity, rationality and…

govt still meeting with extremist Christian group, rabid anti-Islamic ‘thinker’

Repeating the mantra that members of parliament meet with Australian citizens “all the time”, it has emerged that the Government’s links to the extremist Christian sect the Exclusive Brethren remain as strong as ever. As mentioned previously (