Almost two decades ago, the Sokal affair occurred. A physicist tired of philosophical pseudoscientific gibberish and set out to write a paper of barely comprehensible jargon and get it in a peer-reviewed journal. It dutifully espoused philosophy as superior to science and then used science terminology for legitimacy. It was, in short, the perfect example of what was wrong.Paul Feyerabend is dead...
read moreI can be lazy. I was famous for it as a child. I didn't bother to walk, I didn't bother to talk. When I got older, if I had to do a chore, I found a way to be a screw-up and break something. I had unlimited time for D&D and art and sports, though, and I did well enough in school to get a scholarship to college. Because those things weren't work.If only I had Alicia Silverstone as a mom, who...
read moreWhat was the line between being a Buccaneer and a Pirate?It was fuzzy, but it mostly seemed to involve having a royal charter from some seafaring nation or other, and an agreement not to sack their ships - everyone else was fair game.But just like modern online video technology was spurred by porn and our efforts to improve online privacy have been spurred by the Obama administration, in order to...
read moreIn American politics there is a comfortable détente about which science craziness to allow under the big tents - Republicans are okay if their members won't accept evidence of climate science or evolution while Democrats are fine if their voters don't accept the science behind food, energy and medicine. read...
read moreSmoking cigarettes is bad because of, you know, smoke. Right?So why are e-cigarettes, which are not smoking, facing the kind of social authoritarian ban hammer usually reserved for Happy Meals and golf and Big Gulps while those same people are gushing all over marijuana, which is smoking?After all, it's not third-hand cigarettes epidemiological woo that is the latest front in the health war, it...
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