I’ve heard that the average number of sexual partners that men have is 8 while the average number of sexual partners that women have is 6. But if you stop and think about these numbers, they don’t make sense.
It’s easier to think of these numbers as frequencies, because humans have a frequentist number sense. Suppose [...]
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Men and women lie on sex surveys
Posted in Culture on 28 October 2008 | 1 Comment »
Putting things in perspective
Posted in Culture, Environment, Science, Technology on 8 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“If climate change is a hoax, it’s the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, because everything we do to respond will make us more efficient, more productive, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, [and] more respected [in the world].”
– David Friedman, author of The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded.
Privacy in the Transparent Society Redux: a major social networking fiasco
Posted in Culture, Current Events, Internet on 11 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Jodie Hudson is a student in the United Kingdom whose family owns an $8 million home in Spain. Her mother allowed her to have a 16th-birthday party at their Marbella getaway, I suppose in a vainglorious attempt to recreate the elaborate soires of MTV’s My Super Sweet 16. The party itself was not enough, though, [...]
The culture war heats up!
Posted in Culture, Religion, Science on 10 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Catholic League is trying to get PZ Myers fired from his job at UMM. His blog post on the matter has received almost over 400 comments in the first three hours after being published. Myers, as always, responds in his witty, acerbic, and articulate style. This is going to be interesting to watch.
On the mystery of human consciousness
Posted in Culture, Philosophy, Psychology on 4 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
To this day many people believe that consciousness is something special. It doesn’t fit within the natural world. It’s mysterious to us, therefore it must have a mysterious source. It seems that everything is magical to ignorant people.
Our forebears believed that an elan vital, a vital force, distinguished living things from nonliving things. It infused [...]
Assange on Wikileaks
Posted in Culture, Internet, Technology on 3 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“In every negotiation, in every planning meeting and in every workplace dispute, a perception is slowly forming that the public interest may have a silent advocate in the room.” — Julian Assange, co-founder of Wikileaks, as quoted in Wired.
Business Newspeak
Posted in Culture on 30 June 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’m glad that I’m in science. I don’t think I could survive corporate culture. It’s just too nauseating. I/O psychology has eviscerated the landscape. There are no employees anymore. Everybody is an “associate” or an “engineer.” Everything is about “enterprise” and “innovation.”
The list of newspeak terminology in corporate culture is endless: 360-degree thinking, strategic thinking, [...]
