This is a very interesting article from Julie Sedivy at Nautilus that riffs on another article from Nautilus, by Elizabeth Svoboda, The Family That Couldn’t Say Hippopotamus. The latter article presents recent genetic research that weakens (at best) or refutes (at worst) Noam Chomsky’s universal grammar hypothesis (which, aside from Geoffrey Sampson, George Lakoff, and … Read more
I don’t like “trigger warnings” in general, but this feels like an exception. This documentary is likely to be triggering to anyone who has been through childhood sexual abuse. Please be aware of your own feelings and avoid this if necessary. This documentary is based in Phoenix, AZ, a couple of hours north of Tucson. … Read more
I may not be able to blog this week, since I’m going to be spending some quality time with my family, so I’m leaving you dear readers with a fascinating documentary. We’ve seen in multiple cases before the intricacies of various animals. What’s different about today’s documentary is that it showcases the interesting and intricate … Read more
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’re probably familiar with the various documentaries, debates and lectures Richard Dawkins has delivered over the years. Sure, his fame of late has to do with the religion/atheism and creationism/evolution controversies, but he’s a much more important thinker than that. Dawkins is such a prolific thinker … Read more
Apparently the title of this documentary also has something to do with Toy Story? Well, I haven’t seen that movie, but I can tell you what this documentary is about… Infinity. The most obvious way to start thinking about infinity is through numbers: take any number, and you’ll soon realize that there is no such thing … Read more
Whenever new technologies arise, such as the ability to genetically engineer biological organisms, one of the classic luddite objections is that such novelty represents human hubris as we attempt to “play God” and do something “unnatural.” I’ve never quite understood such objections, since we run the risk of “creating life” whenever we have a few … Read more
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we’re at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? … Read more
An award-winning documentary film conceived and created by Kurt Kuenne in 2008. His close friend Andrew Bagby was murdered in 2001 and Kuenne decided to interview numerous relatives, friends, and associates of Bagby and incorporate their loving remembrances into a film that would serve as a cinematic scrapbook for the son who never knew him, … Read more
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection provides a wonderful scientific explanation of biological adaptation and diversity. The theory is wonderful. The process of evolution itself is torturous, blind, indifferent, and cruel. And when you take a ruthless process, and mix it up with some extreme political and social ideology, what you get is … Read more