Leah Libresco's Blog, page 25
July 17, 2015
7QT: Time-travel, Esperanto, Dinosaurs, and Other Oddly Expressed Dreams
— 1 — First things first: the song of the week — 2 — Elsewhere in science news, I really enjoyed this article about lizards who find their way home by a still unknown mechanism (especially all the weird ways scientists have tried to rule out various answers) Then the researchers created caps with pieces [Read More...]
July 16, 2015
Sophisters, Economists, and Calculators Succeed on the Last ITT Question
Keep your grain of salt handy (non-Christian responses question totaled just 36 replies), but that was enough to identify a Christian winner in the round that asked contestants “What’s a question you’re currently uncertain about, where you’d like to “flip to the back of the book” and find the answer now?” The ability of markets to provide [Read More...]
July 15, 2015
The Judges Lose The Ritual Round of the ITT
All right, take all the results with a grain of salt (non-Christian responses were low for this question — just 21 replies), but I’m hard pressed to crown a winner on this question instead of just saying that the judges lost. Technically this was the highest ranked fake-atheist response to “What role does ritual have [Read More...]
July 14, 2015
A (Narrow) Win for T.H. White in the Book Round of ITT
The first prompt in the non-Christian round of the 2015 Ideological Turing Test has a just-barely winner. The Christians mostly fell behind the real non-Christians, but our winner was practically tied with the atheist ranked just ahead, so I’m awarding the win on points. Here’s the winning fake-atheist response to “Name a book that shaped your moral [Read More...]
July 13, 2015
Read Like Me, Pray (Badly) Like Peter
Turing test results continue tomorrow, and, in the meantime, I’ve got links if you want to read like me or screw up like Peter. Ethika Politika has a summer reading recommendations feature running, and I’ve contributed the five books I’d recommend from my reading so far this year. Includes theology, data visualization, autopsies and this: Helen [Read More...]
July 10, 2015
No One Won The ‘Underappreciated’ Round of the 2015 ITT
The third prompt in the Christian round of the 2015 Ideological Turing Test is the first not to have a winner. Every non-Christian was ranked below the real Christians, when the Christian readers voted. But here’s the faux-Christian response to “What is an element of your tradition that is underappreciated by your fellow believers” that got [Read More...]
July 8, 2015
Winner on the Tradition Round of the 2015 ITT
The answers are up, and now the votes have been tallied for the first question in the Christian round of the 2015 Ideological Turing Test. Here’s the faux-Christian response to “Why, in a world of many splintered sects, should *your* tradition be trusted?” that real Christians found the most convincing: I’ve grown up in my sect (Episcopalian!) [Read More...]
July 7, 2015
Winner on the Sin Round of the 2015 ITT
The answers are up, and now the votes have been tallied for the first question in the Christian round of the 2015 Ideological Turing Test. Here’s the faux-Christian response to “What sin, if any, lies at the root of all sin” that real Christians found the most convincing: The root of all sin is man’s sinful [Read More...]
July 6, 2015
Discussing Good Ways to Pray Badly tomorrow in DC
I’ll be at the Catholic Information Center in DC on Tuesday night as part of their summer Theology on Tap series. My topic is “Making Mistakes Well in Prayer” and it’s drawn from the final chapter (“Trusting Christ As Peter Does”) of Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer. How do you [Read More...]
June 29, 2015
Answers are up for the 2015 Ideological Turing Test!
The answers are up for this year’s Ideological Turing Test, and graphs and charts of how well you did will be coming all week. This time around, we had a lot more participants, so I’ve appended each writer’s bio (rot13′d to avoid spoilers) after the answer(s) ze wrote. There are more repeat players on [Read More...]
