Proofiness, slightly different than Stephen Colbert's truthiness, is basically finding statistics you want to believe to enhance your confirmation bias.  It was coined by Charles Seife, a…

The quality of TED talks is in free fall and has gotten only worse since the last time I mentioned this. So it is worth to point to a rare good presentation whenever one comes along. Geoffrey West’s…

Some stereotypes are self-reinforcing.   If someone tells you over and over that you are oppressed, if you hit an obstacle and fail, like all of us do at some point in our lives, a convenient…

Freethoughtblogs.com has now been announced. PZ Myers’ “Pharyngula” and Ed Brayton’s “Dispatches from the Culture Wars” together with three other blogs start a new network. The scienceblogs “science…

Is This A Fishing Expedition ? In legal circles, a 'fishing expedition' is an illegal attempt to discover unspecified information which may, perhaps, be prejudicial to one party in a legal case.…

We've all heard that that the population of whites in the U.S. will be surpassed by non-white minorities in the not-so-distant future.1 Advertisers have adjusted to the demographic growth and…

There's a giant ceramic squid in a New York art gallery. Walking into the gallery, you encounter the 16-foot-long, beached creature, its opalescent, slick-looking flesh seeming to putrefy, lying in a…

Life's Fall How many years can a mountain exist,before it is washed to the sea? As a rock tumbles from its perchatop a cliff into the water below,impelled by gravitational acceleration, it is…

‘Tut! I have the best armour in the world. Would it were day!(W. Shakespeare, Henry V, 1599)  In Medieval Europe, soldiers wore steel plate armor for protection during warfare. Heavier armor…

(I guess this goes in the "Science&Society" Field, or maybe just "Random Thoughts.") Anyway, there's a short film coming out this summer, a promotional thing for the World Wildlife Fund,…