Link blog: cambridge university, text, SMS, argument

[nameandnature]

The Fireplace Delusion : Sam Harris

"I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon “the fireplace delusion.”"
(tags: sam-harris wood health psychology fireplace samharris religion)

The Art of Controversy - Schopenhauer

Machiavelli for arguments, illustrated here by someone with a keen knowledge of internet memes.
(tags: trolling controversy schopenhauer philosophy argument logic fallacy)

BBC News - Swiftkey, a scientific start-up

Interesting article about the best predictive keyboard for Android: it's the product of some Cambridge PhDs who studied natural language proccessing, apparently.
(tags: cambridge university compsci language swiftkey keyboard text SMS android)

Comments

Re: The Fireplace Delusion : Sam Harris

[richard corfield (from livejournal.com)]

We do burn wood, and plan to continue. Let's hope that our "clean-burn" stove does a better job than the open fire in the example.

It would be interesting to know the facts behind the article. For example smoke inhalation is a problem in third world homes where the fire is used for cooking and heating and ventilation is poor, as opposed to a western home with an enclosed stove and a high chimney.

If wood burning is a problem then we need to address this, as there seems a huge push at least in the marketplace for wood stoves. Wood stove selling shops are popping up all over the place, and we even see wood pellet heating systems advertised as "green".

(Eeek, LiveJournal has decided I'm French. Perhaps because I'm having to do this in Firefox as Chrome doesn't work with Twitter authentication, and I've been doing localisation testing in Firefox so probably have it set to French.)