-
About
- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
- NAME AND PRONOUNS:
- "Paul" / "he–him–his"
- FIND ME ON:
- The Fediverse:
- and pretty much everywhere else via [About.me]...
- PHOTO BLOG:
- LASTLY:
- But not leastly, [Fuck Facebook!]
- And Royally [Fuck Twitter!]
-
News Gathering vs. Confirmation Bias
- Remember, if you do not have at least one source of news that you turn to regularly, with which you routinely disagree, then you are not practicing news gathering! You are practicing [confirmation bias].
-
Search
-
Science
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) at p.32.
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
-
Subscribe
-
Top Tags
-
Most Recent Entries
- 📌 Mastodon
- 📌 Science is more than a body of knowledge
- Why Prince May Have Been the Greatest Guitarist Since Jimi Hendrix
- Smokin’! Gary Clark Jr. Performs “The House Is Rockin”
- Fox News Settles with Dominion for $787 Million, Averting Defamation Trial Over its 2020 Election Lies
- How Tennessee Became the Poster State for Political Meltdown
- Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
- Trump’s Arrest and Republican Outrage
- Nashville School Shooting and the Metro Nashville Police Department
- Nashville School Shooting
- All right, what’s next?
- Elon Musk puts $20 billion value on Twitter
-
More Recent Entries
- Nashville School Shooting
- All right, what’s next?
- Elon Musk puts $20 billion value on Twitter
- The One Thing Every Influential Guitar Tone Has In Common
- Extreme are Back, Baby!
- It’s Time to Ban “Right Turn on Red”
- Tucker Carlson texts reveal he hates Trump “Passionately”
- End Daylight Saving Time and switch to Standard Time all year
- Trump Visits East Palestine, Conveniently Forgets Own Record
- The Q-Dropped Podcast: Stories of Families Ripped Apart by Qanon
- My votes for best Super Bowl LVII commercials
- Billy Gibbons Tells the B.B. King Story
- The Day the Music Died +62 years
- Wake Up, Parents! Christian Nationalists Are Trying To Take Away Your Child’s Right To Read At School
- Why we all need subtitles now
- Vox: The fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, explained
- Nearly Half of All Sheriffs in Louisiana Are Violating Public Records Laws
- Anti-cancer drug shows promise in human clinical trials
-
Etc.
- Gunga Galunga. Gunga—Gunga Lagunga.
- For another grand, I'll let you take me out to dinner.
- Sippin' on booze in the House of Blues.
- Dude! Stop saying that—it was just a party!
- It's not exactly rocket surgery.
- Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
- Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock!
- iPhone, Bitch!
- 6EQUJ5
-
Meta
Tag Archives: rational thought / critical thinking
The Q-Dropped Podcast: Stories of Families Ripped Apart by Qanon
I’ve only recently discovered this podcast, and it is excellent! Hosted by the Godless Mom Courtney Heard (Follow her on Mastodon), the show is touching, and at times poignant. The Q-Dropped podcast is a show dedicated to telling the stories of families that have been torn apart by the Qanon cult and Qanon-adjacent ideas. Most […]
Also tagged commentary, entertainment, politics, reason, religion
Comments Off on The Q-Dropped Podcast: Stories of Families Ripped Apart by Qanon
People who skipped their COVID vaccine are at higher risk of traffic accidents
Erin Prater reporting for Fortune: If you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash. Seems logical. Irrational thinkers are bound to be worse drivers. They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which […]
Election Deniers Were Among the Biggest Losers of the 2022 Midterms
Halle–fucking–lujah. Charlotte Alter, reporting for Time: The stakes could not have been higher. Across the country, Republican candidates who falsely say Donald Trump won the 2020 race ran for offices this year that would have put them in position to oversee elections in 2024. If an election-denier won an election-oversight job in a battleground state, […]
Also tagged government, politics, reason
Comments Off on Election Deniers Were Among the Biggest Losers of the 2022 Midterms
God Damn It !!!
Jumpin’ Jesus! It’s International Blasphemy Day!
Also tagged constitution, education, freedom, freethought, law/legal, religion
Comments Off on God Damn It !!!
Reason Roundup: Kansans Reject Anti-Abortion Ballot Measure—and It’s Not Even Close
Elizabeth Nolan Brown reporting for Reason.com: Voters overwhelmingly voted against a measure that would have allowed abortion to be banned in Kansas in the first post-Roe test of abortion’s legality put directly to the people. Yeah, that’s the kind of crazy thing about the Dobbs decision — the people of our fair nation are overwhelmingly […]
Also tagged commentary, education, family, freedom, government, health, law/legal, politics, reason
Comments Off on Reason Roundup: Kansans Reject Anti-Abortion Ballot Measure—and It’s Not Even Close
Those today who believe whatever nonsense they see on Facebook
John Gruber at Daring Fireball, nailing it as usual: Those today who believe whatever nonsense they see on Facebook are like the people who, a generation ago, believed the nonsense printed in supermarket tabloids like “The Weekly World News”. The difference is that instead of being crackpots who write letters to elected officials, a bunch […]
Also tagged commentary, skepticism
Comments Off on Those today who believe whatever nonsense they see on Facebook
New study indicates populist attitudes are associated with gullibility.
Populism exists throughout the political spectrum as a political ideology that defines society as conflict between ordinary people and the elites. Many conspiracy theories fit populist ideals in how they hinge on the elites as responsible for ordinary people’s societal issues. New research, published in Political Psychology, found that populist attitudes are associated with conspiracy […]
Also tagged science
Comments Off on New study indicates populist attitudes are associated with gullibility.
New York Times Opinion: It’s Quitting Season
Excellent video opinion piece by Lindsay Crouse and Kirby Ferguson (of Everything is a Remix fame). Winners never quit, and quitters never win. We Americans are told some version of this again and again. Our country wasn’t built on quitters. As Bible-loving Americans, we were taught that perserverance is virtuous, and this message finds us […]
Also tagged opinion
Comments Off on New York Times Opinion: It’s Quitting Season
Oh My Fucking God, Get The Fucking Vaccine Already, You Fucking Fucks
Wendy Molyneux, writing at McSweeney’s: Hi, if you are reading this essay then congratulations, you are still alive. And if you are alive, then you have either gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, or you still have the opportunity to get the vaccine against COVID-19. And holy fuck, if you aren’t fucking vaccinated against COVID-19, then you […]
Also tagged commentary, covid-19
Comments Off on Oh My Fucking God, Get The Fucking Vaccine Already, You Fucking Fucks
It’s Time to Ban “Right Turn on Red”
The dangerous maneuver is allowed thanks to a flawed idea about emissions from the 1970s. We don’t need it. Abigail Weinberg reporting at Mother Jones: It’s an obsolete relic of the 1970s oil crisis. It’s dangerous to pedestrians. And, if you drive a car in the United States, you likely do it every day. It’s […]
Share this: