Here is a good article that sums up my perspective on Christianity, especially the bolded paragraph. There is no question n my mind that evolution has provided a sort of boobytrap in that it causes us to impute intentionality to all sorts of things that don’t necessarily have it, but that̵...

Just in case you’re wondering, yes you can improve your intelligence! It used to be believed that people had a level of general intelligence with which they were born that was unaffected by environment and stayed the same, more or less, throughout life. But now it’s known that environmental ...

I'm an avid used book buyer. It's the only way to support my biblioholism. Some say that buying secondhand books is bad for authors because they see none of that money. Others say it gets their work in front of more readers. We posed the following question to this week's panelists: Q: There are argu...

This blog has often been silent for long periods while I’m working hard on something. This time I think it was worth it. With a few good friends, I’ve started Minds + Machines, and from now on most of my posting is happening on the Minds + Machines blog. While I was searching for a regis...

At the end of a recent discussion (in the comments to this post), Allen and I started to discuss whether quantum computing theory had something to say about the potential for simulating the human mind on a computer. I then read a couple of review articles on quantum computing he referenced. Before g...

I learned too late from Amanda at AstroPixie that Sunday was International Women’s Day. I wish I had known in time to write something for then, but I guess that’s OK. The point of the day is to raise awareness, and it made me think about a couple of issues. So let me talk to you about th...

Dan is a digital security freak. I cannot overemphasize the security measures he puts in place electronically to make sure our data is safe, backups, double, triple, quadruple backups, kept in different cities on various servers. The most amazing though are his passwords. Dan loves beautiful rock-so...

  Title: Unchanging WC: 1270 Rating: PG-13 for talk of abuse Pairing: Hotch/Morgan, sort of Prompt: runriggers - after Chicago? Notes: Spoilers for "Profiler, Profiled"; slight AU as Haley has already left Hotch in this. Thanks to aoibhe for looking this over for me.    "I told you to leave it al...

More science and politics news, and this time it’s heartening: as promised last week, Obama has signed an Executive Order today reversing the ban on federal funding of stem cells. You may recall he promised to do this during his campaign, and made a point of it in his answers for Science Debat...

The post I made last week about McCain being antiscience has made quite a splash, more than I expected (and I expected quite a bit). As usual when I post on politics I have been lauded as a voice of reason, told I am a political moron, had my arguments backed up by others with evidence, and attacked...