This is an issue I see a lot in apologetics and in arguments about theism vs. atheism. Certain theists (who I will just refer to as “theists,” even though I’m not referring to all theists) want to be able to put forward the existence of god as a hypothesis that can be argued for or…
Author: Kenneth
Cat owner, educator, learner
A casual intro to topics in relativity
Special relativity is a theory of motion developed primarily by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century. Its precursor was Galilean relativity, which basically states that velocities are relative. One of the key features special relativity is the speed of light c being a constant. This means its speed is not relative, and this has…
Stories in ludology & narratology (part 2)
In Part 1, we discussed the origin of play, the relationship between game mechanics and interactive narrative, and the specific examples of Tetris and Monopoly. In this post, we’ll take a look at what happens when gameplay and narrative clash, what can be done to avoid it, and how it can be used to the…
Video share: The Red Pill Lie
The Red Pill (TRP) incorporates the trappings of religious conservatism in a way that YouTuber DarkMatter2525 says is disingenuous. As opposed to Christian fundamentalists who may have sincerely held beliefs, TRPers are motivated by a desire for power and control in their relationships. … they don’t want women to be able to make a living…
Stop viewing animals as good or bad
I recently learned that opossums can carry a parasite that can cause serious injury to horses. When looking into it, I also discovered opossums might not eat nearly as many ticks as previously thought. My heart sank reading all this. I previously viewed opossums as a kind of superhero animal, cleaning up the bad stuff…
Creationism and conspiracy
YEC is a massive conspiracy theory Young earth creationism (YEC) seems at first like a straightforward denial of science. One might say that young earth creationists believe scientists are wrong about the age of the universe, the age of the earth, biological evolution, and so on. Here’s the thing: if they are so wrong, what…
What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one of the most misunderstood scientific laws. Stated briefly, the law says that entropy increases over time in an isolated system. The misunderstanding can come partly from not knowing what an isolated system is, but mostly comes from not knowing what entropy is. What is entropy? First, entropy is…
Don’t be a ruminant
The suborder Ruminantia includes nearly 200 extant species in six families (Tragulidae, Giraffidae, Antilocapridae, Moschidae, Cervidae, and Bovidae), and is the most important group of large terrestrial herbivorous mammals. Hernández Fernández and Vrba 2005, p. 270 Ruminants are a cosmopolitan group of even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls). They are often distinguished from other large herbivorous mammals by…
The language of balanced parentheses
Grammatically, parentheses must be balanced, meaning every open parenthesis ‘(‘ must eventually be followed by a close parenthesis ‘)’. Parentheses can be nested, meaning there can be parentheses inside parentheses. If we were to take a piece of writing and remove all letters and punctuation except parentheses, we might end up with something like: ()()()(())()(),…
thoughts on mind 