First Blog

Ah, yes.   Causality.   We love it and hate it.   We seek it for resolution, but sometimes we don’t want to find it. ·         Advertising causes sales. ·         Fear causes flight or fight. ·         She dumped me because I flirt. ·         Vaccinations prevent disease. To my understanding, causality is fundamentally difficult or impossible to prove. It is a truth. Causality seems to be a consensus of experts, claimed by countless experiments and observations - sometimes by an authority. In centuries past, causality was the domain of religion, philosophy, and God. Permanent. Yet, today’s cause may become tomorrow’s fantasy. Now, causality is mostly an aspect of science. Rushing to causality is a modern consequence of ubiquitous models, each establishing, in part, a correlation or correspondence. Personal causality is always a risk, always subject to emotion. Think of causality as a working solution to a problem, a pathway to finding a cure, or leading to deeper unde

The wise Captain of life always sails with a trusted crew of six, What, Why, When, and How, Where, Who.*    The ship has a sturdy mast constructed of proof, sails of logic, with a rigging woven of axioms, evidence, and findings.    His mates are Skepticus and Optimus to steady the travel, while deep in the hold kept chained are the Negatives, who multiply  prodigiously  especially in darkness. The four-ever cousins are rejected. You know them well: Whatever, Whomever, Wherever, Whenever.  They embody sailing with equivocation and belong in the hold with the Negatives . Credit the idea here to Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child.

The Halo Effect There is in psychology a phenomenon called the halo effect . For the teacher it essentially comes to this: if a student does well on the first few exam problems graded, the teacher will normally grade higher the remainder of the problems.  The counter to this is to grade the first question of all exams, then the second, and so on.  It takes more time. But it erases the effect.  Of course, it is important to not know student names, to try not to remember handwriting, and other clues to whose paper is being graded.  But the halo effect applies to many other phenomena. Now suppose I was going to talk about science, like to tell you things that are generally new and mostly unknown.  How would you receive it?  If you knew me and trusted my words are carefully measure, you would look more favorably toward what I say, and vise-versa. Again, the halo effect.  On the other hand, if you didn't know me, you would read the words with a more questioning outlook and decide well i

The Academy - here in Texas. What is the Academy?  This translates to Universities and the like.  Lately, in Texas, there is a legislative push to hire creationists in some fair and proportional numbers. The TX HB 25 states, "An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms."  Roughly speaking, this means creationists should have a representation on the faculty, or at least not be denied representation.   The outrage of my colleagues is without limit.  In this short note we omit details about the definitions of who are the creationists and their latest reinvention as advocates of intelligent design.  Mostly, they give a secular argument that we, this world