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By Ron Brown, on January 25, 2013, at 2:15 am Atheists. Agnostics. Freethinkers. Nonbelievers. Nontheists. Humanists.Whatever you want to call them and whatever they
Famous atheists, including many career academics.
want to call themselves. People who do not believe in God. I describe myself as an agnostic atheist and a secular humanist. For the sake of this article, I will use the term “atheist” (i.e., one who lacks a belief in God(s) or definitely rejects the existence of God(s)) to refer to the collective non-believing community.
It is no secret that atheists enjoy greater numbers in university communities than in the population at large. Their/our numbers aren’t
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: Why many professors are atheists: Academe as a secular religious community
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 4:49 pm The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
In this, the fourth, installment of The Grad School Gospels, I speak to how I – a person who had long prided himself on his advanced critical thinking
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 4: On Grad School Goggles and the Cult-Like Nature of Grad School
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 12:43 am The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
As with Part 2 – Passion, Fear and Indifference – the present installment was inspired by a set of quotes from Hayhurst. After a few disappointing seasons Dirk
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 3: Academe Can’t Be Your Everything
By Edward Hollett, on August 2, 2012, at 9:30 am Anyone who attended Wade Locke’s presentation on Muskrat Falls got a tiny glimpse of the vicious world that is modern academics. it came in the unusually large bit where Locke sliced into his colleague Jim Feehan. Locke even made a strawman and set fire to it – figuratively of course – just to make sure he had a really persuasive argument. (<— sarcasm)
Well, it turns out that the field of economics is just seething with this sort of stuff. Statistics and political science prof Andrew Gelman writes:
Some attitudes surprise me. For example, on his blog,
. . . → Read More: The Sir Robert Bond Papers: The cut-throat world of economics #nlpoli
By Brendan DeMelle, on May 14, 2012, at 2:47 pm shutterstock_49157602.jpg
At an industry public relations conference last year, Michael Kehs of Chesapeake Energy described a Wall Street Journal op-ed to gathered oil and gas officials, saying it pointed out the industry's "credibility problem."
“And I’m sure some of it relates to defensiveness,” Kehs added. (MP3 Audio)
Small wonder.
For years, the oil and gas industry has adopted a war-like mentality towards its critics. When confronted with problems caused by drilling and fracking, instead of acknowledging them and working to prevent more, their approach has too often been to cover up the issues while attacking any critics
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Oil and Gas Industry Moves to Silence Critics
By vsp, on May 1, 2012, at 12:43 am The left in the province of Alberta will never merge. There are four core reasons for this to be the case. Firstly, the NDP is directly tied, through its organization, its employees (many of whom who work for the federal NDP as well), and other means, cannot get the nod for merger from Ottawa. This [...]
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