Applied Epistemology

...or, the key to all optical illusions.

An unknown variable is afoot.

They appear to be real. My favorite is "chickens prefer beautiful humans". Yeah, well, humans prefer chickens in a deboned nugget form, so there!

A few weeks ago, I picked up the third and final volume of Joy Hakim's Story of Science. It's a nicely detailed and handsomely illustrated history of science for 10-12 year olds. Like Hakim's earlier, acclaimed multi-volume history of the U.S., it's intended to be used as a textbook, especially for homeschoolers.

A substantial number of people will ignore empirical evidence -- even when it's right in front of them -- in favor of baseless rumor. Good news for "Rate My Professors", I suppose.

Following up on a discussion here in August, there is a paper defending the likelihood that underreporting of prostitution explains the perennial discrepancy between male and female numbers of sex partners.

As a native of a city once described in its local newspaper as "hoo

The earth's most famous mass extinction is the end of the Cretaceous, during which the dinosaurs went bye-bye. But some species flourished in this period.

I genuinely thought this was a Comedy Central piece until I found Chuck Missler's online ministry. Wow.

One of my favorite philosophers alive today -- Ian Hacking -- has reviewed several books relating to the anti-Darwin crank-factory. Hacking notes that "creation science" reverses Edison's dictum: it is "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration".

Among the web letters, aside from

Here's the link to Gary Taubes' article on how so much epidemiology flunks basic reasoning.