The National Temper Tantrum

Following Trump winning the election, Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere exploded with adults becoming children and throwing a nationwide temper tantrum. And true to expectations, few seem to be learning anything thing from what happened. Adults threatened to unfriend Facebook friends because they hold a different viewpoint.1 A rare few …

The Straw Man Fallacy

The straw man fallacy is simple: instead of arguing against someone’s (or for your own1) established opinion, you argue a weakened form of it. This makes it easier to ignore the difficult parts of the argument while convincing yourself (and others) that you are correct. While it is intellectual dishonesty …

Are We Smarter Than Our Predecessors?

It is extremely improbable that we have suddenly become better and smarter than our predecessors. In fact, what has happened is that we have lost the ability to understand functional social patterns other than markets and bureaucracies. The result is that the past appears irrational, our society is plagued by …

A Problem of Culture

A recent study on police use of force by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found no evidence of racism in police shootings. This was lauded by those who wish to deny the existence of an anti-black bias. But lethal use-of-force incidents make up a tiny fraction of police interactions. The study found widespread systemic racism in …

What Evil Conspiracy?

In the last 60 years the Supreme Court of the United States has had exhibited two trends: the number of both unanimous decisions and 5-4 split decisions has grown to historical highs. All the stuff in between is in decline. It is in those split decisions where the problem lies. …

Sarah’s Journey: A Tribute

This post is a tribute to Sarah Barr, who at the age of 19, lost her seven year battle with Ewing’s sarcoma, a childhood cancer. She now resides in the hands of God. In 2013, Sarah Barr made an oil painting based on one of my monarch butterfly photos. As the …

False Pumpkins: A Thanksgiving Deception

I, like most Americans, grew up eating pumpkin pie made from canned pumpkin. Every Thanksgiving my mother would make such a pumpkin pie, adventurously changing the recipe to use either sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk. I lived in ignorant bliss until I owned a home and had a garden …

Believing Whatever You Want To Believe

In trying to sort out fact from fiction, there are confusing moments when faced with two competing views. Take reincarnation. There is the traditional viewpoint which rejects it and alternate viewpoints that accept it as fact. In the latter case, I was stunned by the following: And finally, the verse below is often used …