Missed A Motivator

I saw Dan Pink’s TED talk a while ago, and just recently finished reading his book Drive. They’re both about the “science of motivation” – research into what tends to influence our behaviour, what makes us more or less driven to be creative or productive, that kind of thing. It’s fascinating stuff, but I’m trying [...]

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Skimfast – 31/05/11

– Brain Gym is some pretty kooky nonsense, and kids should be allowed to call out the bullshit their schools are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on. Some of them are pretty good at it. – I haven’t written a whole lot about the “genderless child” story, but I’m not crazy about the idea. [...]

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Out of Autism

Jamie Bernstein has a two-part report of her recent experience at an AutismOne conference, over at Skepchick and Friendly Atheist. Both parts are really worth a read. The first part is mostly a write-up of the rather unsettling package of speakers and other happenings lined up for the event, including a speech from fraudulent non-doctor [...]

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Skimfast – 30/05/11

Yeah, let’s go with that. It doesn’t seem to mean all that much. – It’s not like men shouldn’t be interested in trying to address sexism if it was only women that ever suffered for it, but it’s really not. (via Feministing) – Another Christian nutcase admits intent to massacre people, on the grounds that [...]

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You gotta have faith

That’s how they always put it. You just have to have faith. You gotta. All you need to do is believe. It’s usually an imperative, an instruction. But it’s not generally meant in a pushy fashion. There are some people out there who really will command that you have faith in God, and will consider [...]

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I don’t *see* homeopathy

I should warn you up front that if you don’t agree with everything I’m about to say then I’m going to call you a racist. Why yes, it is quite unusual to have planned in advance to deflect any criticism against me by ignoring the facts and bringing up irrelevancies in the hope of turning [...]

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I love being a priest

This article from TIME begins with the phrase “The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church”. After checking the date and seeing that it was posted just over a week ago, I still wasn’t sure if this was going to be actual news, or just yet another in a long list of old stories [...]

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Newsical notes – 27/05/11

This still needs a new name. I’ll keep trying until I find one that fits. Here’s some stuff I saw that was worth a glance. – Americans don’t go to church as often as they say they do. Reported attendance beats actual attendance everywhere, but most sizeably in the US – and, oddly, Canada. (via [...]

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The kids’ll be alright

I don’t have kids, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I did. I suppose it could happen someday, in the distant future, when I’m actually a grown-up. I can’t really imagine it now. I could vaguely muse on all the wonderful ways I’d be sure to raise my offspring to be [...]

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Linkblat – 26/05/11

In addition to the (currently) regular evening posts appearing here, I’m going to try starting an afternoonly habit of providing some very quick links to things that interested me in passing, and which I can’t be bothered writing about properly. As you can probably tell, I gave it the first name I could think of. [...]

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