From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: “Gaia In The Light Of Modern Science”

Full post here. (once archived, it won’t be free)

Upon hearing “Gaia” you might be thinking mystic, earth-worshippers (green religion at its worst) but our author uses the theory put forward by James Lovelock over 40 years ago as an interesting philosophical meditation.

“Perhaps in the end, Plato had it right: We need both perspectives, Heraclitean and Parmenidean, to get the whole picture. At our peril, and at our children’s peril, we ignore the messages of those seminal Greek thinkers.”

Illumenari [ Mark Vancleave ]’s photostream here.

From The Frontal Cortex: Lotteries

A short post here.

They’ve recently been called a tax on stupidity…often the poorest people play the longest odds in a feedback loop.   

Addition:  Give a man a fish…

Allow a man to pay for a ticket with terrible odds of winning money that could buy him fish (which probably wouldn’t be the first thing he’d buy) and you can pay for your schools and roads.

See Also:  A little bit about Indian run casinos: Roger Sandall: Marveling At The Aborigines, But Not Really Helping?

George Johnson Reviews “The Drunkard’s Walk” In The NY Times

Full post here.

Well, you probably know that people rarely make rational decisions, but did you realize how easy it is to be wrong?

…the additional information skews the odds, and with Cardano’s method you can make a rational, though counterintuitive, decision.

We have all probably “trusted our intuitions” in crucial moments but haven’t had rational explanations for why we did so, or for that matter, we probably don’t have a good definition of what intuition is either.  

The Nikzor site has some good fallacies and Marilyn Vos Savant’s (of Parade and Jarvik fame) page has some as well.

*Check out Johnson’s garage band science page if you’re interested in simple experiments, especially to do with electricity.

See Also:  Marilyn Vos Savant:  The Game Show Problem

Marilyn Vos Savant: The Game Show Problem

Do you remember this problem?

You’ve really got to consider the conditions…

There are also some interesting logical fallacies on the site.   Here is link to the Nikzor Project, with a very comprehensive list of logical errors.

You’re a smart and discerning reader, which is why I’d like you to check them out.