Walk accomplished.

The campus isn’t as ugly as I remembered.

……

……

IT’S UGLIER.

It’s like an act or revenge on the students.

I’m serious. You just walk around saying “what were they thinking?”

But – I hadn’t done any sustained walking (apart from the walk from the Ks to the Gs at O’Hare) since I left home, so this was good.

Dang it’s muggy though. Seattle doesn’t do muggy – once the temperature goes up the humidity drops.

I saw five ground hogs on the side of a little hill.

I got slightly lost coming back from the central part of the campus, and there is NO ONE around – I felt mild panic for a minute (not wanting … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’m not sure what to think about this.

There’s this C J Werleman guy, who has been accused of plagiarism. I’ve been seeing mutterings about it in passing for a few days, without following them up, because he’s not someone I’ve been aware of. But PZ has a post about the subject today and I read that, so then I read his source, which is Godless Spellchecker.

PZ:

But he has done the unforgivable: serial plagiarism, and when caught out, has apologized, but simultaneously belittled the seriousness of the offense and blamed it on a campaign by our little neo-conservative atheist cabal of Harris and Boghossian.

I agree that they are wrong about so much else, but

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another item for the annals of “people take football way too seriously.”

A town that found encouragement in its winning high school football team after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy was left to absorb another blow Tuesday after school officials canceled the season over allegations of bullying, intimidation and harassment among players.

The rest of the story is about how sad and upset everyone is…about the cancellation, not about the bullying, intimidation and harassment. They want their football and they don’t care about bullying, intimidation and harassment. That’s fucked up.

“There was enough evidence that there were incidents of harassment, of intimidation and bullying that took place on a pervasive level, on a wide-scale level and at a level at

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Here’s an explanation for the hard of thinking.

There’s a difference between taking a claim seriously and asserting that it’s true.

There’s a difference between not expressing incredulity about a claim and asserting that it’s true.

There’s a difference between finding claims credible and asserting that they’re true.

There’s a difference between doubting the denials of claims and asserting that the claims are true.

There’s a difference between finding it more likely that a claim is true than it is that a denial of the claim is true, and asserting that the claim is true.

In short there are many possible views about a particular claim that are well short of 1. assuming that they’re true, let alone 2. asserting … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by Brony on Vulcans can’t argue.

@ brianpansky

Accepting that our primary motives are not rational (and not even conscious) is not , however, the same as saying – as Hume did – that reason should be the slave of emotions. Indeed, if that were the case, we should abandon any hope of progress in ethics and general well-being. Fortunately we do, in fact, use reason all the time to shape our emotions. What else is psychotherapy, if not a (mostly) rational attempt to modify our emotions? What are penalties for, if not to curb some desires?

Reason is in fact the slave of the emotions because reason is software carved into existence through the emotions. … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)