If you can't beat 'em, rig 'em!

A few months ago I just shook my head as I read about the scheme to apportion electoral votes by heavily-gerrymandered districts. Obviously, Republicans can't win the popular vote in states where the majority of voters don't vote Republican. So instead they want to cut out the majority of voters (living in large cities) entirely. Lol.

...except it's true. Luckily the plan failed in Virginia.

So hey, guys, if you really want an amazing idea, here's one: do away with the Electoral College completely. Scrap it. It is a ridiculous waste of time and money to vote in our modern democracy the way we do and focus ONLY on "swing states". I know I have little incentive to vote, living in a deep red state like I do.

But of course Republicans would never support a measure to elect Executive officials based on popular vote. Since they'd lose even more than they already do now.

Procrustean Bed

I like Taleb. He was a lot like Roubini back in the day (07-08). And his collected sayings are definitely worth consideration:

1. “Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.” 
2. “Social media are severely antisocial, health foods are empirically unhealthy, knowledge workers are very ignorant, and social sciences aren’t scientific at all.” 
3. “In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.” 
4. “Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.” 
5. “In nature we never repeat the same motion; in captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive-stress injury. No randomness.” 
6. “Economics cannot digest the idea that the collective (and the aggregate) are disproportionately less predictable than individuals.” 
7. “Catholic countries had more serial monogamy than today, but without the need for divorce—life expectancy was short; marriage duration was much, much shorter. “ 
8. “You never win an argument until they attack your person.” 
9. “The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality—without exploiting them for fun and profit.” 
10. “To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.” 
11. “People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels—people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up.” 
12. “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary. My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.” 
13. “Some books cannot be summarized (real literature, poetry); some can be compressed to about ten pages; the majority to zero pages.” 
14. “They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).” 
15. “The best way to spot a charlatan: someone (like a consultant or a stockbroker) who tells you what to do instead of what not to do.” 
16. “The main difference between government bailouts and smoking is that in some rare cases the statement ‘this is my last cigarette’ holds true.”

Sceptic's Guide to Atheism

I've expressed dismay towards the New Atheists a few times on this blog before (here, here). The major criticism I have is the employment of straw men and acerbic wit in place of careful reasoned arguments and scholarship. This is found in misrepresentations of classic theistic arguments and also in trying to make a case against religion generally as harmful/evil.

I wandered upon what looks to be a very good book -- Sceptic's Guide to Atheism -- that provides a summary and review of the arguments of the New Atheists, with counterarguments. I found it by finding another video involving Arif Ahmed, an atheist philosopher at  Cambridge whose debate style I find quite strong and appealing. The first speaker in the new video I happened upon is the author of this new book, Peter Williams. I've embedded the video below:

Really cool Science videos

Title says it all. I wanted to embed them but they seem to have that function disabled. Check out these fantastic videos from Science:

• Fertilization (human)

I'd seen videos of human fertilization depictions before, but this one is breathtaking. AMAZING

• Inventory of the cell

They use a pancreatic cell from a mouse to show you the relative 3D scale of the organelles, then switch to a graphical depiction. Really informative and neat.

Flush out the atheists

Thought this was funny:

 

Maybe as the red hats vote in Rome they ought to pretend to be interested in supporting gay marriage. Or just marriage for priests. Or just equal rights for women (nuns). Good way to flush the crap out of the system...