Quick Update before Work:

[oneirophrenia]

Here're just a few neat links I scraped out of the blogosphere's fecund womb this morning:

Richard Dawkins' hysterical article treating religion as an addictive drug. Don't look at me, folks--when it comes to the snake oil, I'm straight-edge. XXX.

Speaking of which, religious socieites scientifically "proven" to be worse off than secular ones. Unless it's Buddhism. Which, really, is more of a philosophy than a religion....

Harvey Danger, one of my favorite old alt-rock bands of the '90s, is releasing their complete new album as a torrent! To paraphrase them: "Fuck this DRM record-label shit. You want it? Here you go. If you really like it, buy it...otherwise, share it with all your friends. Music's there to be enjoyed by all!"

Ray Kurzweil's new book The Singularity is Coming has finally come. GET IT. Don't fuck around on this one, people: you need to be prepared for the future or it will bulldoze your ass into the ground. Get ready to kiss up to the AI 0v3rl0rd5.

OK, now I have to go to campus and grade 75 papers. I realized the other day...all I really have time to do anymore is grade papers and sleep. I don't even remember the last time I had a moment to work on Malpractice or the two or three Hallamoween stories I've been writing. Blech.

Comments

[theantidj.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, religious socieites scientifically "proven" to be worse off than secular ones. Unless it's Buddhism. Which, really, is more of a philosophy than a religion....

Wow.. talk about flawed assumptions. From what I can tell the 'study' just compares the rates of bad things in countries that tend to be more secular and and to the rates of those things in the U.S.

Thats lightyears away from proving that religion is bad for society.

Re: As for the second article

[rapier1.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much astounded by the obvious flaws in his argument and I can only think that either its being reported badly or the 'journal' its been published in isn't peer reviewed and is a vanity imprint. Ahh lets go with vanity - its an electronic only publication sponsored by Creighton University in Nebraska. The subimssion guidelines do not mention the details of the peer review process so that seems dicey.

There are just so many better social factors that explain this sort of thing. I woudl also like to see a breakdown on a regional basis. Comparing the US to say... Sweden is kind of unfair to both in any number of ways.

Re: As for the second article

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

That's just what I thought, as well: I can't believe this was even announced as a "study." Now, it may be that the data behind this "study" was surprisingly accurate and it's just being badly reported--always a possibility--but I would suspect the data behind this to be fairly suspect from the get-go.