Glenn Beck: Outrageous Hockey Stick Inflation

Doing his impression of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, journalist Glenn Beck illustrates the looming danger of hyperinflation due to the ongoing government bailouts:

Read Full Post »

Avoiding The God Question

Remember how we discussed how the God vs. Science debate seems to be simply a question of convenience (albeit psychological) rather than a question of truth? Well, recently blogger Star Larvae had an interesting email exchange that highlighted this:
People I encounter who have an interest in speculative cosmology, or whatever we might call our endeavor, [...]

Read Full Post »

Gordon Brown Says “New Global Order”: Conspiracy Flag Or Paranoia?

Conspiracy literature is rife with the phrase  “New World Order.” The early root of this interesting slogan is a speech given by George H. W. Bush:

Since that time, conspiracy theory has burgeoned with speculations of a secretive international insider elite plotting to control the world and instigating global crises to further [...]

Read Full Post »

Happiness And Intelligence: Rare Combination?

Ernest Hemingway had an interesting statement:
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
This was quoted in an interesting article that described an inverse relationship between intellect and happiness. Accordingly to the article, the culprit is largely education:
Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over [...]

Read Full Post »

Feelings And Faith

In a controversial story that broke in Time in 2007, Mother Teresa’s secret letters confess an emptiness that troubled her in her last years:
The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life [...]

Read Full Post »

Badly Needed: A Spiritual and Ethical View Of Economics

Satish Kumar’s article on the guardian “Worshipping The Wrong God” is an interesting take on the present financial crisis, with a refreshing ethical and spiritual approach:
It amazes me to see that the great economists, industrialists, business leaders and politicians have even forgotten the true meaning of economy. They only think in terms of profit maximisation, [...]

Read Full Post »

History Is A Naive Philosopher

Taleb has taught us that history can lead to probabilistic fallacies since it is only one possible path events could have taken, which necessitates a practical skepticism on our part on the appreciation of historical events. Although this can be enough to make us critical of historical assumptions, I think it is only a partial [...]

Read Full Post »

To Bailout Or Not To Bailout

This idea of government intervention has capitalists divided over the soundness of government bailout. Those against the bailouts argue that it has been government intervention of free markets that has caused the crisis and the problems won’t be solved by more of the same. Those arguing for the bailouts contend that in the absence of [...]

Read Full Post »

Why Education Destroys Critical Thinking

Educator Sir Ken Robinson delivers an entertaining talk about how the school system undermines creative thought inherent in the human mind. Schools discourage children from commiting mistakes, prioritizes static knowledge (i.e. stock knowledge, memorization) and de-prioritizes dynamic knowledge (i.e. experiential, artistic).
Robinson cites the history of the public education system as partly to blame for this [...]

Read Full Post »

The Morality Of Critical Thinking

Those who need a good grasp of what we mean by Critical Thinking are strongly encouraged to checkout our special Critical Thinking Resources page  (click the link or the one of the tabs above). Two characteristics associated with Critical Thinking mentioned on our page are:
Self-awareness
We are thinking critically when we weigh the influences of motives [...]

Read Full Post »