cheapesthostings2

These days everyone seems to be in favour of people taking responsibility. But in the self-help world, an unusual spin on this idea has become popular: "You are responsible for your feelings." (Sometimes the word "emotions" is used instead of "feelings", and here I'll treat the two terms synonymously.) Now it makes sense to talk about taking responsibility for your behaviour—although it's easier said than done—but what would it mean for a person to take responsibility for their internal state of being? The question hinges on what we mean by the word "responsibility". Consider the following scenario: suppose you're helping to organize a party and you take responsibility for the drinks. In this case, taking responsibility means looking after, taking care of. Applying this to our feelings makes a good deal of sense. Ultimately, each of us needs to look after and take care of our feelings. Other people's behaviour can of course have a...

As anyone who has watched the original Star Trek series knows, Mr Spock was big on logic. He was also big on labeling the behaviour of humans "illogical". For example, consider this quote: May I say that I have not enjoyed serving under Humans. I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant. Season 3, episode 7 ("Day of the Dove") Now it's true that humans do make logical errors from time to time. For example suppose Tom is considering hiring a contractor. A friend recommends asking for references because "Good contractors provide references." Sure enough, the contractor provides references and Tom hires them. Unfortunately the work is poor, and Tom complains, "I thought good contractors provide references!?" But it's not just in the case of formal errors of logic that people's arguments and behaviour are termed "illogical"—or more commonly "irrational". For example, purchasing and selling decisions ...

MSNBC recently reported that a new study suggests "U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth". (I learned of this on Rationally Speaking .) The study itself is Open Access, so all the details are freely available . The scatterplot illustrates the strong association the authors found. Now, the authors were reasonably cautious in how they interpreted their findings. The trouble is, the general public may not be. A common error is to conclude the study shows that religiosity causes higher teen birth rates. But correlation does not imply causation . It could be that higher teen birth rates cause religiosity. Or perhaps a third, unidentified factor causes both. But isn't the strength of association still impressive? It is. But what if, as I just suggested, there are other variables involved? Such confounding variables (or confounders, as they are commonly known) can wreak havoc on this...

U.S. health care spending per capita is the highest in the world. Yet, as The Economist notes , "America lags behind other wealthy countries in the overall performance of its medical system". It might seem ironic then, that the same magazine has stated that the U.S. "offers the best health care in the world." But keep reading: If you are lucky enough to have proper insurance and be admitted to the Mayo Clinic, the UCLA Medical Centre or Johns Hopkins, you will enjoy outstanding treatment. Unfortunately, as the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured have discovered, America offers some of the most unreliable, costliest and least equitable health care in the world too. The U.S. spends around 17% of its GDP on health care. This compares to Canada where we have a publicly-funded system, and spend around 9% . Now there are lots of complexities here and I don't mean to oversimplify. The Canadian health care system is far from perfect, although I think most ...

I first wrote about the mysteries of consciousness on this blog back in February 2006 . This prompted me to do some reading on the philosophy of mind, and in March 2006 I wrote more about consciousness. Though I didn't mention it directly in that post, a very compelling argument concerns what are called philosophical zombies . I would put the argument like this. First, ask yourself: Is it conceivable that there could be a thing that appears to be human but in fact has no conscious experience? In other words, a biological machine, identical to a human in every way, except that it has no free will, feels nothing, experiences nothing. To put it bluntly, a zombie . If your answer is no, then I would ask this: How can you know that some of the "humans" around you are not in fact zombies? Is there a device available that will measure consciousness? Granted we have tools that can measure aspects of the complex electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But complex electric...

Today was a wet day in the Ottawa area, but the Gatineau Park was beautiful, as always!

In Canadian print journalism, probably the single most important real estate is the front page of the Saturday Globe and Mail. Today's lead article was about the plight of Pakistani women fleeing the Swat valley. In the print issue, the headline was "Between Fear and Freedom", with a secondary headline stating that "The Taliban have driven almost a million women and children out of their homes in the Swat valley." The article itself , by Stephanie Nolen, describes it differently: "Nearly a million Pakistani women have had to flee ... as the government intensifies a military operation against Islamist militants." No doubt the agonizing decision to leave behind one's home is made for various reasons. Nolen writes: "The women arrive here with their families, running from Taliban aggression or aerial and ground attacks from the Pakistani military – or both." So why does the headline mention only the Taliban? In a journal article titled How Bi...