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  • Fiber V2.0 Science of Health Enhancing Benefits

    by José

    Fiber is so much more than “roughage!” From your heart, to your bones, to your microbiome, the list of health benefits linked to fiber keeps getting longer as nutrition science learns more about what it does for us. THE QUICK NOTES “Soluble versus insoluble” is not the only (or even the most useful) way to sort and categorize fiber. Benefits attributed to fiber include...

    June 21, 2020
    comments 0
    Science
  • skeptic society Divisions of Islamophobia

    Divisions of Islamophobia

    by Daniella

    A false dichotomy is a basic type of informal logical fallacy, consisting in framing an issue as if there were only two choices available, while in fact a range of nuanced positions may be on offer upon more careful reflection. There are nonetheless plenty of instances were they do identify truly bad reasoning.Another one is arguably represented by the never ending “debate” about Islamophobia....

    April 10, 2020
    comments 0
    Religion
  • A Short Guide to Hard Problems

    by Jenni

    How fundamentally difficult is a problem? That’s the basic task of computer scientists who hope to sort problems into what are called complexity classes. These are groups that contain all the computational problems that require less than some fixed amount of a computational resource — something like time or memory. Take a toy example featuring a large number such as 123,456,789,001. One might ask:...

    August 19, 2018
    comments 0
    Science
  • Finding links between the Standard Model of particle physics and the octonions

    Finding links between the Standard Model of particle physics and the octonions

    by Sam

    In 2014, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, Canada, named Cohl Furey rented a car and drove six hours south to Pennsylvania State University, eager to talk to a physics professor there named Murat Günaydin. Furey had figured out how to build on a finding of Günaydin’s from 40 years earlier — a largely forgotten result that supported a powerful suspicion about...

    July 26, 2018
    comments 0
    Science
  • It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty?

    It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty?

    by Daniella

    In the early days of independent India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty … of a rich country inhabited by starving people.” Would any head of state today voice this view? A 2013 poll recorded that only 36% of Americans had “a lot” of trust that the information they get from scientists is accurate...

    July 7, 2018
    comments 0
    Science, Technology
  • Your body, when stressed

    Your body, when stressed

    by skeptic

    Stress is great. It makes us faster, stronger, more agile and our brains have better recall and flexibility. That’s why people are willing to put themselves in stressful work situations or engage in extreme sports. The problem is that uncontrolled, stress can leave us frozen to the spot and unable to think – something all too familiar for people having to speak in public...

    June 27, 2018
    comments 0
    Science
  • Antidepressants Cause Weight Gain?

    by Jenni

    Antidepressant medications can be hugely helpful—even life-saving—for those who suffer from certain types of mood disorders. But they can also sometimes cause people to gain a significant amount of weight. Not so helpful. Studies indicate that about 25% of the people who take antidepressant medications report significant weight gain. This is seen more commonly in those who take these drugs for six months or...

    March 17, 2018
    comments 0
    Science
  • Wormhole Allows Information to Escape Black Holes

    by Ambrossini

    In 1985, when Carl Sagan was writing the novel Contact, he needed to quickly transport his protagonist Dr. Ellie Arroway from Earth to the star Vega. He had her enter a black hole and exit light-years away, but he didn’t know if this made any sense. The Cornell University astrophysicist and television star consulted his friend Kip Thorne, a black hole expert at the...

    March 12, 2018
    comments 0
    Science
  • How to help Vaccine Doubters

    by José

    We are in the golden age for vaccines. We have dozens of highly effective vaccines licensed for infectious disease, promising new technologies contributing to massive advancement of vaccine development, and several promising vaccines on the horizon. Unfortunately, vaccines have been a victim of their own success. With the drastic reduction of once-devastating diseases like whooping cough and measles, it seems like some parents think...

    March 11, 2018
    comments 0
    Debate, Science
  • Facts on Diet and Inflammation

    by José

    In health, as with so many things, our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness. Take our astonishingly sophisticated response to injury and infection. Our bodies unleash armies of cellular troops to slaughter invaders and clear out traitors. Their movements are marshaled by signaling chemicals, such as the interleukins, which tell cells where and when to fight and when to stand down. We experience...

    March 10, 2018
    comments 0
    Debate

Latest

June 25, 2020

Conservatives Say They Hate Moral Relativism. Why Do They Use It To Defend Statues?

Statues are once again in the news — which means, for those of us who work in philosophical ethics,...

by skeptic
comments 0
June 24, 2020

Postmodernists Against Free Speech

Those who complain about the current social and intellectual atmosphere in the academy are generally pretty sure of just...

by Jenni
comments 0
June 21, 2020

Explaining : What is the deadly 2020 India-China border dispute about?

What has happened? At least 20 people have died in clashes between Indian and Chinese troops along the disputed...

by Ambrossini
comment 1
June 21, 2020

Galwan Valley confrontation between China and India could spiral out of control as...

The forces of two nuclear weapons states have set about each other with clubs and rocks at one of...

by skeptic
comments 0

Technology

Expanding the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge in Computer Science

Published by Ambrossini

Imagine someone came along and told you that they had an oracle, and that this oracle could reveal the deep secrets of the universe. While you might be intrigued,...

June 22, 2020
comments 0
News, Technology

How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies

Published by skeptic

Ants, wasps, bees and other social insects live in highly organized “eusocial” colonies where throngs of females forgo reproduction — usually viewed as the cornerstone of evolutionary fitness —...

April 29, 2020
comments 0
Science, Technology
Discovering gravitational waves from neutron stars

Discovering gravitational waves from neutron stars

Published by Daniella

Rumours have been swirling for weeks that scientists have detected gravitational waves – tiny ripples in space and time – from a source other than colliding black holes. Now we can finally confirm...

July 19, 2018
comments 0
Technology
Trying to understand perception by understanding neurons

Trying to understand perception by understanding neurons

Published by skeptic

When he talks about where his fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology have taken a wrong turn, David Poeppel of New York University doesn’t mince words. “There’s an orgy of...

July 14, 2018
comments 0
Technology

Secular

How to Improve Your Skeptical Thinking

How to Improve Your Skeptical Thinking

Published by Ambrossini

It’s easy to say “be more skeptical” or “exercise better critical thinking,” but just how do you go about doing that? Where are you supposed to learn critical thinking?...

July 5, 2018
comments 0
Secular
A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked

A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked

Published by Ambrossini

In the early ‘90s, a New Zealand man named Neil Fleming decided to sort through something that had puzzled him during his time monitoring classrooms as a school inspector....

July 4, 2018
comments 0
Secular
Americans are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception

Americans are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception

Published by Jenni

Americans are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception. Western Europeans are deeply secular people—and Christians are no exception. These twin statements are generalizations, but they capture the essence...

July 3, 2018
comments 0
Secular
When Leaving Your Religion Means Losing Your Children

When Leaving Your Religion Means Losing Your Children

Published by Ambrossini

Chavie Weisberger was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, N.Y., and was forced to marry a man she barely knew when she was 19. The couple had...

July 3, 2018
comments 0
Secular
Religion

Religion means different things to different people

A lot of arguments about religion treat it like going to school: a religion is a set of lessons to be learned, tests to pass and rules to follow,...

June 8, 2020
comments 0
skeptic society Divisions of Islamophobia
Religion

Divisions of Islamophobia

A false dichotomy is a basic type of informal logical fallacy, consisting in framing an issue as if there were only two choices available, while in fact a range...

April 10, 2020
comments 0
Religion, Secular

The cognitive science of religion

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) is a scientific approach to the study of religion that combines methods and theory from cognitive, developmental and evolutionary psychology with the sorts...

June 30, 2018
comments 0

With all your love of truth, you force yourselves to stare so long, so constantly, so hypnotically at nature that you see it falsely, that is, stoically, and you become incapable of seeing it otherwise.

Nietzsche, Friedrich.

Categories

Abstractions Debate News Philosophy Politics Religion Review Science Secular Technology

note from the Editor

While we are in the process of getting some staff writers, we will be posting some curated posts from the interweb.

News feed

Expanding the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge in Computer ScienceImagine someone came along and told you that they had an oracle, and that...June 22, 2020

Explaining : What is the deadly 2020 India-China border dispute about?What has happened? At least 20 people have died in clashes between Indian and...June 21, 2020

Galwan Valley confrontation between China and India could spiral out of control as India and China face-offThe forces of two nuclear weapons states have set about each other with clubs...June 21, 2020

Soldiers fell to their deaths as India and China’s troops fought with rocks in Galwan ValleyThe hand-to-hand combat lasted hours, on steep, jagged terrain, with iron bars, rocks and...June 21, 2020

India accuses China of preparing attack on border troopsIndia has accused Chinese troops of meticulously preparing an attack on its soldiers on...June 21, 2020

The Biology of the Plague | Quanta MagazineOnly a few genetic changes were enough to change an ordinary stomach bug into...September 9, 2017

Abstractions

Sleep Deprivation Kills

by José

Inside a series of tubes in a bright, warm room at Harvard Medical School, hundreds of fruit flies are staying up late. It has been days since any of them have slept: The constant vibrations that shake their homes preclude rest, cling as they might to the caps of the tubes for respite. Not too far away in their own tubes live other sleepless flies, animated with the calm persistence of those consigned to eternal day. A genetic tweak to certain neurons in their brains keeps them awake for as long as they live. They do not live long. The shaken flies and the engineered flies both die swiftly — in fact, the engineered ones survive only half as long as well-rested controls. After days of sleeplessness, the flies’ numbers tumble, then crash. The tubes empty out. The lights shine on. We all know that we need sleep to be at our best. But profound sleep loss has more serious and immediate effects: Animals completely deprived of sleep die. Yet scientists have found it...

June 21, 2020
comments 0
Abstractions, Science

Review

Building a Resilient Tomorrow

Published by Jenni

This book examines ways that communities can reduce, absorb, and recover from climate change impacts. It offers behind-the-scenes stories from the authors’ experiences working at the highest levels of...

June 21, 2020
comments 0
Review

Debate

Galwan Valley confrontation between China and India could spiral out of control as India and China face-off

Published by skeptic

The forces of two nuclear weapons states have set about each other with clubs and rocks at one of the most forbidding flashpoints in the world, in a bloody...

June 21, 2020
comments 0
Debate, News, Politics

Soldiers fell to their deaths as India and China’s troops fought with rocks in Galwan Valley

Published by Ambrossini

The hand-to-hand combat lasted hours, on steep, jagged terrain, with iron bars, rocks and fists. Neither side carried guns. Most of the soldiers killed in the worst fighting between...

June 21, 2020
comments 0
Debate, News, Politics

Science

June 21, 2020

Sleep Deprivation Kills

Inside a series of tubes in a bright, warm room at Harvard Medical School, hundreds of fruit flies are...

by José
comments 0
June 21, 2020

Fiber V2.0 Science of Health Enhancing Benefits

Fiber is so much more than “roughage!” From your heart, to your bones, to your microbiome, the list of...

by José
comments 0
April 29, 2020

How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies

Ants, wasps, bees and other social insects live in highly organized “eusocial” colonies where throngs of females forgo reproduction...

by skeptic
comments 0
Genetic Engineering to Clash With Evolution
July 29, 2019

Genetic Engineering to Clash With Evolution

In a crowded auditorium at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in August, Philipp Messer, a population geneticist at...

by José
comments 0
Universe Got Its Bounce Back
August 27, 2018

Universe Got Its Bounce Back

Humans have always entertained two basic theories about the origin of the universe. “In one of them, the universe...

by Ambrossini
comments 0
August 19, 2018

A Short Guide to Hard Problems

How fundamentally difficult is a problem? That’s the basic task of computer scientists who hope to sort problems into...

by Jenni
comments 0

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