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I've written before about Christopher Hitchens and his penchant for overblown rhetoric. Well, he's at it again, this time with a scathing attack on none other than Prince Charles. As a longtime advocate of the dismantling of the monarchy, you might think this would be music to my ears. Well, it's not. Hitchens' diatribe is mean-spirited and intellectually flawed. The mean-spirited aspects are easily catalogued and of lesser significance. Hitchens calls Prince Charles "a very silly man", "a moral and intellectual weakling", "a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts" whose "empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant". What is of more interest to me than all this name calling is the substance of Hitchens' piece, which concerns a speech the prince gave recently at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. It turns o...

I just launched a new blog devoted entirely to pacifism, defined as a commitment to peace and opposition to violence and war. It's called JustPacifism.com and it's meant to be a place to discuss pacifism from the broadest standpoint, without focusing on any single tradition or framework. Here's part of my introductory post: I see pacifism as a direction of thought and action rather than a fixed point, as I have illustrated below: At the far right-hand side is what some have termed "absolute pacifism". In its strongest form such a commitment would prohibit violence even in self defense, and perhaps violence against non-human living things. At the other extreme is a total lack of concern about violence. Someone holding this view might oppose a given war, but not because it involves violence . For example such a person might object that this particular war is not cost effective. I suspect that not many people hold to one of the views at either end of my diagram. In...

The links between Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama are hard to miss. Obama's historic election as the first African American President of the United States seemed to echo the stirring words of King's 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Obama's inauguration took place on Tuesday, January 20th 2009, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This Monday—one year later—Martin Luther King Jr. Day will again be celebrated, and with the one-year mark of Obama's presidency imminent, connections between the two men will again be drawn—including the fact that both were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But an examination of Obama's December-10th acceptance speech suggests some striking differences. The Nobel committee's selection of Obama so early in his presidency was controversial. Fue...

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 ...