This is probably the most concisely skeptical webpage exposing the some of the hateful and fact-bending propaganda from hardline feminists.

I can hardly believe that we were taught the "1 in 4 college women are raped" figure in high school. We accepted it without question, and the males were made to feel sorry for a society we had no control over. Authorities need to be more careful what they teach young students, for falsities can instill in even high schoolers an unneccesarily fearful view of reality.  ¶ 12:55 PM

  Updates have been slow lately, as finals and moving approach. I plan to write more after June 12, when I get to move out of my apartment.  ¶ 2:07 PM

  On the Types of Scientific Research

[In progress]

The limits of science, some would say, are boundless, but the true scientist knows that the perfection of knowledge is unattainable. It is this very ernormity of the task that a scientist desires to challenge; it is the proverbial Everest that is there for us to climb.  ¶ 11:26 PM

  On Nostradamus and Responsible Schooling:

[Note: this is a rewrite in progress]

What of nature versus nurture? The dependence may change one upon the other, a reciprocity of varying nuances, but the clarity of retrospection may afford a deeper understanding of either. I believe that nurture has been understated, for we often underestimate how impressionable children can be. It is not so much a question of what a child is exposed to, than of the trust the child puts behind that experience. A personal experience may serve to illustrate this point.

In eighth grade, our teachers held movie sessions every few months. We were favorably exposed to such classics as Spartacus, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, and It's a Wonderful Life.  ¶ 12:36 AM

  I have referenced my reading list several times, so here is a full list of books I have read recently, am reading, or plan to read:

Gardner, Martin. The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry, from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings. Currently reading.

Gardner, Martin. The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. Currently reading.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life. Currently reading.

Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. Plan to read.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. Godel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid. Plan to finish.

Randi, James. Flim Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions. Finished.

Rousseau, Jean Jacque. The Social Contract: On Principles of Political Right. Plan to Read.

Sagan, Carl. The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Finished.

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things. Finished.

Watterson, Bill. The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes. Finished many times over, currently reading, and plan to read some more. Humor is golden.  ¶ 2:14 AM

  On primary literature:

It is one thing to speak of a subject, armed with an intimate knowledge of its original language and ideas, and another thing entirely to bring to bear only your acquaintance with a summary of its concepts. I am loathe, for example, to invoke the philosophies of David Hume or Immanuel Kant on matters of import. For it is not that I am unfamiliar with Hume's philosophical empiricism or with Kant's categorical imperative; it is that I have only studied their works through the analysis of other scholars, not through the original text of the authors.

Thus I find myself influenced more by secondary interpretation than by my own ruminations upon those texts. I find that using their philosophies in such a manner is not unlike a parrot repeating the syllables of a phrase. I have read several and conflicting analyses, but I still lack the vital perspective from the self. Worse still is my habit of relying upon the internet for information rather than the library or scholars: the temptations of ease, quickness, and comfort are often too great. While it is a useful source of both primary and secondary information, the internet is also unreliable, even at respectable sites such as universities. The degrees of quality vary greatly, and even care and caution cannot always accurately separate the wheat from the chaff.

Reading the insights of such a veritable genius as Martin Gardner (whose book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener" is on my current reading list) makes it clear how vital primary reading is. Gardner can cast around the names, theories, and quotes of such esoteric philosophers as William James and Willard Van Orman Quine as if they were his close associates. It is clear from the depth of his analysis that Gardner has not merely skimmed encylopedia entries of these people, nor simply heard of them at a lecture. He has read and digested the primary material and dissected and integrated them into his own perspectives. I find it remarkable the sheer amount of time he must have devoted to perusing these works; his book is filled with such allusions.  ¶ 3:52 PM

  On Fly "Lungs," Part 1 of a Series on the Beauty of Science:

Strangely enough, flies never breath heavy sighs of relief. It's no that they won't; they can't. They don't have lungs in the same sense that we do, or even anything that looks like it. But what they do have is a tracheal system that consists of branches that extend outward from a central tube in the body. This is how they perform efficient gas exchanges with all the various parts of their anatomy. It's sort of like a lung/blood vessel combination, and not just in an abstract sense. Tracheal branch formation (a general process called "tubulogenesis," literally, the growth of anything tube-like) is a lot like that of blood vessels.

So what's so beautiful about fly tracheas? It's how they develop in an embryo to an adult. Of course, the branches have to get longer and wider as the fly grows. Biology classes teach us that cells divide over and over, creating more copies of themselves to fill out a growing organism. But that's not what happens here. In flies, the four cells that make up each branch actually grow into larger cells instead of dividing. What's more impressive is that the cells grow into the eventual shape of the branch, as if they were being poured into a mold. But that's not all. The branches (and cells) are always the same number and shape in every normal fly, meaning that the mold isn't on a by-fly basis, but is encoded the same way in the genes of all flies.

What we see here is the incredible mode of conservation in nature. The same four cells of a branch stay the same from birth to death, and this is true for the entire species (in this case, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly). It also deviates from the commonly understood process of cell division, illustrating the many modes that nature takes to arrive at the same result. It is this blend of specific conservation and general flexibility that makes science so beautiful.

For more information, you can contact Dr. Greg Beitel, who discovered this process at Northwestern University.  ¶ 1:11 PM

  On Weblogs:

[Ridiculous remarks deleted, will repost with a different essay later.]  ¶ 12:15 PM

  On Morality as a Function of Practicality:

I do not believe in Natural Law nor the notion of "rights." A quick study of philosophers across the past few centuries yields such luminaries as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, each espousing his own take on the concept of laws deriving from nature and governing human interaction. But do such a priori laws exist? I hold that morality is a gradual process of refinement deriving from practicality, not from nature, spirits, or God. For the purposes of clarity, I will focus on what is generally held to be the most basic of rights: the right to life.

To understand this view, one ought first to consider the State of Nature. I find myself ever more attracted to Hobbes' infamous description of it as "nasty, brutish, and short," yet with reservations on its tenacity. Such Hobbesian life must have existed only at the outset -- a mere blink on the human timescale -- and found dimunition as evolution and cognition began to settle in.

It is unlikely that early man knew that "thou shalt not kill." However, he would eventually have to reason that were he to kill indiscriminately, perhaps he would suddenly be without companion or fellow hunter. Cooperation at certain times and situations became favored over competition, and these moments proliferated as time continued. Moral concepts arose as the ramifications of particular actions yielded either fortunate or unfortunate consequences. Certainly, this did not happen overnight. Rather, the cumulative observations of an increasingly logical human race discovered basic and generally applicable laws which yielded maximal survival benefits to a community.

Yet one may argue at this point that natural selection would favor the strongest and most ruthless, not the most moral. But this assumes that intelligence and morality cannot coexist with strength and ruthlessness. Early humans possessing all four of these qualities would have an advantage over those who possessed merely physical power. For I do not mean to suggest that morality makes a group of humans peaceful and pacifistic. Rather, it is a process of learning that grows alongside and modifies instinct, not replaces it. Thus, the inception of some form of "thou shalt not kill" did not extend to war (and, in fact, still does not today).

As the process of civilization set in, morality became less a product of ongoing deduction than an accepted -- though growing -- body of thought. This was a necessity, for it is not feasible to ask of an entire society to grasp the basis of all moral codes. What began as elders passing their teaching and knowledge to the young spread to the burgeoning institution of government. As society grew in complexity, it became more reliant on establishing foundations to allow room for further progress.

We thus see governments and authorities throughout history laying aside morality's practical roots in favor of dogmatizing them. The hope was that their enforcement alone may still engender their practical results, and success was found to some extent. But it came at the price of free thought; monarchy and totalitarianism were favored for their ability to force what was believed to be right upon the citizenry. What was forgotten was that actions alone are hollow without reason. Still, efficiency was valued greatly, and it may be argued that totalitarianism was an inevitability and was not wholly without merit.

Nevertheless, a man cannot endure life knowing, for example, that he "shalt not kill" unless he understands why. He is frustrated in his search, for the answers are always that life is precious, that everyone has a right to life, or simply that the Bible tells us so. These answers may or may not be correct, but they are nonetheless superficial, devoid of the motivations which allow them to exist. A dissatisfaction with even the most noblest of dogma cannot end happily.

Thus, the practical approach to morality relies upon the fundamental concept of discourse. By keeping alive the evolutionary and practical reasons for the concept of a right to life, we have the means to satisfy otherwise potentially destructive curiosities. When this fails us, and dogma almost fully replaces discourse, we find ourselves in moments of rebellion and disregard for morality. For moral laws become meaningless when one cannot see the benefits that they provide and why. Such was the time of the Dark Ages.

Again, I maintain that the "right to life" is not a basic truth nor an inalienable right. It is an edict whose existence rests upon the encompassing concepts of civility and morality. We protect life and save it because we deem it to be the fabric of our nation. Life is thus a privelege granted us by our society, and, because it is so easily taken for granted, it is often mistaken to be a right. This applies as much to life as to any other widely-held right such as property, family, and fairness.

Not that I despair about the future. Within the sundry circles of human interest, there must flourish people who understand at least one particular aspect of the moral code. It is these people, seeded around the world, that keep alive the reasons for the moral's being. I do not claim to be one of these people, nor to know who they are. But those that do must accept the responsibilty to continue to challenge the complacency which religious, political, and social dogma perpetuates upon the public. We must be freed of the concept of "rights" before we can objectively and thoroughly address the nation's social ills.

Thus, I ask now: have we come to a time where we can expect discourse to flourish significantly? In the past, the rugged steps of early social progress could not harbor such grand notions, but we are now a supposedly more enlightened society. We are not quite so barbaric as the Dark Ages, and we ostensibly have information and education at our fingertips. The advent of the internet and mass information conductivity has provided a wonderful avenue for logic and reason, but they must reach the right audience.

Certainly, it is not as if we can convert a murderer by lecturing him on the history of morality. The process must be a gradual one, seen only through successive generations of education. This will not happen on its own: it takes action to sustain the discourse on morality, and acknowledging the necessity of that discourse is key. We have now the means and the society to do so more efficiently than ever before. Let us make good use of them.  ¶ 11:46 PM