Michael Shermer's Blog, page 24

My Dinner with Bill (Gates that is)

left to right: Jared Cohen, Dave Morin, John Cusack, Dean Kamen, Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Michael Shermer. (All photos in this post were taken by John Brockman.)

No, it wasn't exactly My Dinner with Andre—the classic 1981 filmed conversation between Wallace Shaun and Andre Gregory (directed by Louis Malle) that ranged across a diversity of existential topics—but listening to Bill Gates hold forth on matters of business, economics, finance, world health, education, and nutrition and...

One one-thousand … two one-thousand … 3.8 trillion one-thousand

President Barack Obama has unveiled his new budget for fiscal year 2011 at $3.8 trillion dollars. Staggeringly huge. Brobdingnagianly big. Almost inconceivable. Just how much is a trillion dollars? Here are some comparisons.

The brain consists of about a hundred billion neurons, which is about the same as the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. A hundred billion is 1011, or a 1 following by 11 zeros: 100,000,000,000. That's about what Obama plans to spend on Veterans Affairs ($57...

Cultivate Your Garden

How a lack of control leads to superstition
and what can be done about it

Imagine a time in your life when you felt out of control—anything from getting lost to losing a job. Now look at the Figure 1 on this page. What do you see? Such a scenario was presented to subjects in a 2008 experiment by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleague Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University . Their study, entitled "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception," was...

Charles Darwin … the Movie

A review of Creation: The True Story of Charles Darwin. Starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. Jon Amiel Director, Jeremy Thomas Producer, John Collee writer. Recorded Picture Company with BBC Films and Ocean Pictures. Based on Randal Keynes's book Annie's Box. In general release January 22, 2010.

Creation is one of the most beautifully produced, artfully directed, factually accurate, and powerfully acted biopic films ever made. Full stop. It stars Paul Bettany as the Charles Darwin...

The Tarot Card Reading

Michael Shermer fakes a psychic/tarot/astrology reading in this episode of Bill Nye's show The Eyes of Nye.

In the Name of God: The Neuron Bomb of Terrorism

Nothing fuels religious extremism more than the belief that one has found the absolute moral truth. Islamic terrorism, for example, has gradually shifted from secular motives in the 1960s to religious motives today. A 2000 study by the state department that resulted in the publication Patterns of Global Terrorism, found that in 1980 there were only two out of sixty-four militant Islamic groups whose mission was religiously based. In 1995 that figure had climbed to nearly half. The figure is u...

Kool-Aid Psychology

How optimism trumped realism in the positive-psychology movement

I am, by nature, an optimist. I almost always think things will turn out well, and even when they break I am confident that I can fix them. My optimism, however, has not always served me well. Twice I have been hit by cars while cycling— full-on, through-the-windshield impacts that were entirely the result of my blissful attitude that the street corners I had successfully negotiated hundreds of times before would not suddenly...

9/11 Truthers Foiled Again

Hey 9/11 Truthers, CNN is reporting that al Qaeda just took credit for the Northwest Airlines terrorist attack:

Be prepared to suffer because the killing is coming and we prepared you men who love death just as you love life and by God's permission, we will come to you with more things that you have never seen before. Because, as you kill, you will be killed and tomorrow is coming soon. The martyrdom brother was able to reach his objective with the grace of God but due to a technical fault...

Design Inference, or the Difference Between DNA and a PDA

Intelligent Design creationist Stephen Meyer and his online followers are upset that in our big debate I did not specifically address his claims about inferring design in complex structures such as DNA. I will do so now. By way of background, they note:

Intelligent design scientists like Meyer argue in favor of design theory based on the recognition of things like the digital information in DNA and the complex molecular machines found in cells. As Meyer patiently explained to Shermer in the...

From Faitheist to Fundagnostical

Last week, while I was giving thanks for an abundance of family, friends, and food, a brouhaha was brewing over an invited opinion editorial I wrote for CNN celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (on Tuesday, November 24).

The title, "Religion, Evolution can Live Side by Side," was written by the CNN editors, but it does capture the thrust of the piece which I concluded by noting that if you are a believer in an eternal god, what...