Found Reads

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/05/jonathan-wolff-footnotes

good stuff. good blogger.

UPDATE:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/bryan_caplan/
Found listen. I don't usually go for some of the arguments that Caplan makes in his blog but I found this to be a fresh look at the way he argues. Regardless of my altered perspective I found this conversation insightful.

Coffee and Calculus and everything else

I went to Luck Bros today for a dose of the good bean and studied some calc. Andy's knowledge of his product is why I keep going back, atmosphere be damned. I bought some Mexican Zaragoza and I'm eagerly anticipating the first cup since the last pound was far darker roasted than this and unenjoyable. The last pound was Kenyan I believe but the roast was too smokey and I didn't enjoy the grapefruit notes in combination (strange because the IPA tasting during the OSU game I really enjoyed the grapefruit notes in a few of the beers). I'm beginning to get a really good sense of my coffee tastes. I like a lighter roast: fruitier and more acidity. I got a pound of Itzamna, Guatemala: Finca La Soledad from the LA Intelligentsia and I loved it.

What have I been musing lately?
Well, Marchese alerted me to a study from March by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics in the journal of Social Psychology Quarterly. The study broadly claims that intelligent people are more likely to adopt evolutionarily novel behavior and beliefs. That's what Satoshi is warranted to say - or at least, he may at best be warranted to say that. Reasons for denying him are hopefully obvious given the quoted semi-explicit assumptions in the article: his definitions seem 'mad sloppy'.

More Kanazawanian inferences here, and an excellent response here. If you're not outraged, you don't have the genetic coding for liberal ideas of proper scientific study, or your mother was muslim(?).

I've been reading a lot of philosophy of science stuffs in tandem with the eye-opening dive into the baby pool of serious non-discrete mathematics. I need to finish reading Kuhn's work and do a work-up of it. I want to be able to talk intelligently about the specifics, and not just make general comments about what it meant for the discipline. This will hopefully integrate into economics and philosophy. LSE here I come?!

Also, I've been reading a good bit on epistemology and religion. I feel like the metaphysics of religion are interesting insofar as they are data for questions of religious disagreement as defeaters More to come? This was supposed to be my topic for the Vox blog. I need to start working on my skillz again. I'm coming back.