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Category Archives: Superstition
You Know the Rules
Years ago my sister had both a cat and a dog. Although she was always kind with the animals, when the dog farted she would put the cat outside as well. As she did, she would say, “You know the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Self-reliance, Superstition
Tagged arbitrary rules, Murphy's Law, powerlessness
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Why People Believe in Gods: Coincidence and the Workings of Chance
When I was driving east with my friend this summer, we began to have car problems. Such problems, as you know if you have experienced them, nearly always occur late in the evening and on a Saturday evening. As if … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Religion, Superstition
Tagged breakdowns, car maintenance, logic and coincidence, prayer
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Halfway Across the Country
I have driven across Canada over fifty times, although that measurement is contested by my friend. Everyone gets cranky when they are overtired or have had a bad day, or just when someone is annoying, but when some of my … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Superstition
Tagged alternative facts, arguing, google is your friend, intellectual honesty, measurement, physics
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The Dunning–Kruger Effect
He didn’t mean to laugh, but he was easily overcome by the mangled sentences coming out of the man’s mouth. It was a kind of disorder, that he couldn’t control himself once someone was mangling their words so much as … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Internet, Media, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged conspiracy, Dunning-Kruger, invisible man
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The Cryptic Nature of Ghosts
Although sceptics around the world reject the existence of ghosts, there are also many millions of people for whom ghosts are either an uncomfortable and constant presence or a remote and threatening possibility. Those who claim to have seen a … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged Ghosts, human soul, spirit world, Supernatural, Superstition
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Tolerance, Ethics and Conjoined Twins
On CBC radio’s The Current this morning, Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed a doctor who was responsible for the multiple surgeries that separated conjoined twins at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston. The story was mostly concerned with the ethical implications … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, News of the World, Superstition
Tagged conjoined twins, intolerance, Religion, Superstition
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A Use of Old Cannonballs
Galileo was alone on the top of the tower. He’d asked his friends to stay away from his experiment. He’d experienced enough failure in the past to worry that his latest venture might prove to be embarrassing and he was … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged cannonballs, experimentation, Galileo, inquisition, pisa, scientific
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Partridge in the Fall
When I was in my teens and traveling on the school bus in the mornings, I would often sit across from my friend Bruce. We were both farm children and thus had lots of chores to finish every night, but … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Environmentalism, Superstition
Tagged anti-vaccine, anti-vaxxer, global climate change denier, pacific garbage patch, partridge, ruffed grouse, sixth extinction
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Checking Your Delusions
The method for checking our many delusions—that the Harry Potter letter is going to arrive for us any moment, that god is carefully listening to my prayers about the cancer He gave my mother, that the earth is flat, the … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Culture, Internet, News of the World, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged climate change denial, Council of Nicaea, delusions, Eratosthenes, existence of god, flat earth, flouride in the water, Harry Potter, moon landing hoax, scientific discovery, Watchmaker's Analogy, William Paley
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Ancient Science at the Planetarium
Whenever we think about our ancestors we are inclined to imagine them as moronic, backward troglodytes, dragging their knuckles through lives as brutal and stunted as themselves. In our rather short-sighted and ungrateful vision, they do not hope to compare … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Art, Astronomy, Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged ancient Greek mythology, Australian Aborigines, Constellations, Cro-Magnon, Freud, giant kangaroo, Glooscap, homo habilis, Lascaux Caves, megafauna, Neanderthal, Piltdown Man, planetarium, Pythagoras, Sunstones, The Dreaming, Theory of Relativity, Thylacoleo, Ursa Major
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