Are Buddhists Theists?

Razib on whether Buddhists believe in God. The main form of Buddhism I’ve been exposed to is Zen so I’m anything but an expert. But this lines up more with my understanding. I’m not sure I buy his claim though that “to generalize about a religion one must look at the true [...]

Academics and Religion

Academics and Religion at Cosmic Variance. They talk about Mormons a lot. It’s in reference to a Volokh Conspiracy post. Kind of interesting since in physics in some places like LANL there’s an abundance of Mormons. Sean unfortunately promotes a wildly wrong characterization of Mormon views of academics.

Remote Controlled Pill Cameras

Remote controlled pill cameras. Great for checking out the digestive system.

Sean Carroll and David Albert

Sean Carroll and David Albert on Blogginheads.tv. (I usually just download it as an MP3 for my iPod) Not Even Wrong unsurprisingly goes after them for their defense of string theory. (I’ve no horse in that race since I don’t know enough of the math to for an informed opinion - although [...]

Why are Religious Happier?

Drezner on why are the the religious happier? The primary driver isn’t religious belief. It’s church attendance. Friends at church appear to have more of an effect than non-church friends in determining happiness.

Best of the Week 3: Academic LDS

OK, I missed last week due to being ridiculously busy. But here’s my “best of the web” on more academic oriented LDS blog posts. As ever, if I forgot something you think others would be interested please let us know in the comments.

Meta-Coherence

Richard over at Philosophy, et cetera, had an interesting post on suspecting wishful thinking. That is the accusation we often make that someone believes a proposition because they want it to be true. I suggested that for many beliefs (including typically philosophical beliefs) that we have weak justification for the belief. Therefore [...]

Brains of Gays

Brains of gay people resemble those of straight people of opposite sex. I kind of suspected something like this would turn up.

The role of glia in the brain

The role of glia in the brain. The ugly and forgotten brother of the neuron. Real fascinating summary of a cell type I didn’t know was that important.

Ice on Mars

Ice on Mars. Yeah lots have discussed this finding of the recent lander. But how many have this obnoxious of a flashing illustration?

Edible Lego

Lego Fun Snacks: Bad Idea. “I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you’re telling him they taste like f—–g strawberries.”

More Cancer Breakthrough

An other major cancer breakthrough. This one for skin cancer. They inject cloned immune cells back into the body. The patient was free from tumours within eight weeks.

An Unethical Ethicist?

An unethical ethicist? No, not Eric Schwitzgebel’s on ethics and ethicists. Rather about bioethicists McGee.

500 Year Floods

Why you can get ‘500 year floods’ two years in a row. Obvious, I suspect, to most familiar with statistics. But still worth reading. And of course reporters often get it wrong.

Does Music Help One Learn Language?

Does music help us learn language? Or, how do you discover word-breaks. I remember learning Russian (which I’ve now forgotten) and this was a big problem between what one spoke in class and what one heard from Russians.

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