Trope-ing review (lerner or learner) -download -pdf

Books by Edward M Lerner. Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. To create our Read more Trivia About Trope-Ing the Lig No trivia or quizzes yet.

Add some now ». Welcome back. Brownian's accolade was moved and numerously seconded by our peers, and I'm sure none of the motion was random. Posted by Zeno at PM 5 comments:. Atheism on the air. I don't believe it! These feisty nonbelievers engage in such provocative activities as writing bestsellers or appearing in videos.

Their behavior has been terribly distressing some devout religionists—especially those who have unsuccessfully prayed to their gods to strike down the obstreperous heathens. This past week the NPR program On the Media broadcast an installment devoted to the rising tide of disbelief in public life and entertainment: God No!

August 17, No longer content to silently disavow religion, the so-called New Atheists are on the offensive. Borrowing tactics from the faithful, nonbelievers have taken to proselytizing in books and in the media. It appears that atheists may be regarded so negatively because so few people are aware of knowing an atheist. Professor Penny Edgell of the University of Minnesota did a survey of American attitudes toward different groups.

Atheists did not fare well. Some of them are probably atheists, too, but Jews seem to be more open about being Jews than most atheists are about being nonbelievers. That's another word for ignorance, isn't it? But they want the holes.

They want to live in the holes. And they go nuts when someone else pours dirt in their holes. Climb out of your holes, people! They like him. They don't care that he's an atheist. We aren't all lurking in the dark, waiting to perpetrate atrocities on the faithful. We've just been more successful in outgrowing the imaginary friends of our childhood.

Posted by Zeno at AM 4 comments:. Labels: atheism , media , religion. Saturday, August 18, What on earth? Impossible things before breakfast The American Association for the Advancement of Science usually does a good job of living up to its name. No institution is perfect, of course, which is why Margaret Mead was able during her presidency of the organization to talk her colleagues into trying to take parapsychology seriously.

Attempts by skeptical scientists to persuade the AAAS to dissolve the link have so far been unsuccessful. NY: Bantam, ISBN Index; C. In succinct prose, she describes her long-standing investigation of these puzzling phenomena that grew from a personal experience with an inexplicable and deeply troubling psychic's finding of a lost harp.

She highlights the considerable history of meticulous, peer-reviewed, thoroughly replicated studies that demonstrate these talents, to a greater or lesser extent, in many persons. She notes the intractability of these subjects to standard scientific investigation and discusses how that shows the limitations of this widely cherished methodology.

She includes quotations from numerous eminent scientists who have been convinced of the reality of these abilities, but who, for fear of the ability itself or rejection by the broader scientific community, have remained largely silent. Mayer skillfully weaves this web of mysterious phenomena into current studies ranging from Eastern religious philosophies to quantum theory. In the process, she hints at how one might discover and develop such anomalous mental capacities.

I submit that we vote in favor of this association's work. Mead was right that the history of science is replete with examples of stubborn scientists balking at accepting exciting new theories. Galileo rejected Kepler's theory of elliptical orbits. Agassiz didn't accept evolution. Lord Kelvin resisted the idea that the earth was very old.

It does not follow, however, that everything that is mocked eventually turns out to be right. Parapsychology has been unable to broaden its acceptance among rank and file scientists because its results are so paltry. The better the experimental controls, the less striking the outcomes.

This has led to the lame excuse that there is a problem with the scientific method and that double-blind studies kill the psychic phenomena they are intended to study, but the parsimonious conclusion is that there's nothing there.

Physicists have been able to persuade people during the past century of the existence of protons, electrons, neutrinos, and an entire zoo of subatomic particles. You probably haven't seen one of them, but no one seriously doubts them because physicists have experimentally and theoretically demonstrated their effects.

Parapsychologists should be able to establish the existence of telekinesis just as conclusively by demonstrating, for example, the ability of psychics to tweak a torsion balance in a sealed vacuum chamber.

Sorry, no. The results are too small. The evidence dances on the edge of statistical significance before it vanishes in randomness. Oh, come on. Just embrace the null hypothesis and stop chasing after fairies. I know it's unkind of me to dismiss the work of the late Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer without bothering to read it, but Ethan Allen 's soppy review does not stimulate my interest or give me any reason to give parapsychology a new hearing.

It hasn't happened, has it? Not even after decades in which the hidebound curmudgeons of science could pass away and be replaced by unbiased youngsters eager and ready to look at the evidence with open minds. What happens instead is that psychic research labs shut down and newer researchers fail to take up the cause.

There must not be much evidence. Mayer was a UC Berkeley psychology professor who was fascinated by coincidence. She saw significance in it, but the problem lies in determining what the appropriate level of coincidence is.

How do you know when you have too much coincidence? The answer is not at all obvious. Once you're on the prowl for significance in random occurrences, your filters can supply the significance for you.

Although I'm not a betting man, I can see which side is favored by the odds in the argument over the existence of psychic phenomena. Posted by Zeno at PM No comments:. Labels: science , skepticism. What in heaven? Altared states I was innocently working away on a blog post—a kind of memoir —when I needed to recall the names for an altar boy's vestments. I remembered the cassock , the long button-front robe invariably black in my home parish, but sometimes red in others.

I could not, however, remember what the lace-trimmed white top was called. There is so much out there! It was still pretty surprising. One of the hits was on the website of the Southern Africa affiliate of the Society of St. Pius X. You don't know the Society? It's a group of schismatic Catholics associated with the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre , excommunicated by John Paul II for his intransigent insistence that only the old Tridentine rite of the mass was valid.

The members of the Society, by the way, who have prided themselves for decades as being more Catholic than the pope, would strenuously deny being in schism. They're merely guilty of being old-fashioned and faithful to tradition.

Well, they're retro, all right. The Southern Africa affiliate of the Society of St. Pius X provides on-line access to blocks of text from the book by G. Davy, The Christian Gentleman. Here is what Davy has to say about altar boys in Chapter 12 : Altar-Boys Those lace-clad angels that wriggle and bounce around our altars are privileged beings—more privileged than most of them seem to realise. An altar-boy has an important and necessary part to play in the liturgy of the Church.

Was it possible to write that unselfconsciously even back in ? Yeah, they probably all need a good spanking. And would a sensible religious organization keep such text posted on its website?

I know my answer to that question. Posted by Zeno at AM 1 comment:. Labels: bizarre , Catholicism , religion. Friday, August 17, The unpartnered. Odd man out Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

Of all the sexual aberrations, the worst is chastity. His son was buying a home. I did not understand. Your uncle thinks it means that your cousin will never settle down in a respectable marriage. In our family, the only proper reason for moving out of your parents' home was to set up housekeeping with your new spouse. My cousin had just disgraced us all. By that token, the thirty-year-old cousin who was still living with his parents was worthy of the highest praise. It was food for thought.

Junk food, probably. There was, fortunately, a loophole in the rule about humiliating one's family by moving out in a state of bachelorhood. It involved school.

Spending summers at home was probably a key component in preserving my family's reputation for decency. By the time graduate school rolled around, however, it was clear that I had made my escape from the family nest in pristine bachelorhood.

When I finally traded in my apartment for a house and a mortgage , it was several years later and the erosion of family standards prevented any undue wailing and gnashing of teeth.

My uncle had helped immensely, of course, when he abandoned his wife of thirty-plus years and shacked up with the woman who eventually became wife 2. And his son with the house had settled into a relationship with another man that has now endured over twenty years, outlasting most straight partnerships.

The purchase of my own home had, however, given me a shock to the psyche. That was, at best, but a minor improvement. In brief, however, the real-estate documents had rubbed my nose in my single state, and I realized at last that it was no passing phase. I was a bachelor and, even in my thirties, already a sure bet to stay that way. I don't think I had fully grasped that fact until then. Human sacrifice Perhaps my grandmother recognized early stages of bachelorhood in me.

If so, it was not immediate. I particularly remember showing her my first-grade class portrait, the one containing pictures of all my classmates, and pointing out to her the girls I thought were the cutest.

She shook her head and said, quite firmly, that God would provide my ideal mate at the perfect time what world was she living in? Later, however, she began to prompt me to declare an interest in a priestly vocation. I was not cooperative, but Grandma was persistent and did not give up until I made my escape to college.

I think she had taken inventory of her grandsons and sized me up as both a expendable i. There may have also been an element of c : this boy is bookish and not developing socially. I don't know, but it's possible. While I always thought I was sweet and charming, family members may well have regarded me as standoffish and sullen.

It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? The priest thing didn't appeal to me, but you couldn't blame Grandma for trying. As you may know, Catholics who sacrifice a male child to seminary life go to the head of the line at the Pearly Gates.

Yes, that's a myth, not really part of Church doctrine, but it didn't stop many Catholic families from suspecting it was really true. I went through the altar boy training and learned all the responses and routines of assisting at mass, but black cassocks and lace-trimmed surplices didn't do a lot for me. A big chunk of the Latin stuck I can still recite the Pater Noster , but the religion itself did not.

Unregenerate singularity It was probably in high school that I realized the the degree to which I was alienated from my ostensible peer group. It mattered not a whit to me what everyone else my age was doing. The best way to escape peer pressure is to acknowledge no peers. If I wanted to carry a briefcase to school, I carried a briefcase. When my classmates flocked to enroll in the driver education course whose successful completion entitled you to a driver's license at the age of fifteen and a half, I waited till my senior year, when turning 18 made it merely credit toward graduation and not an advance ticket to the joys of the open road.

Heck, I did enough driving of vehicles on the family dairy farm. Who needed more of that? Not me! Was the spring prom the ne plus ultra of a student's existence? I missed all of them and scarcely noticed. Clearly I had become an antisocial grind, someone for whom the word nerd would soon be popularized.

Even the other guy the only other guy who carried a briefcase on campus seemed to be better integrated into the teenage society than I was. I was a cohort of one. Starfaring aliens? Super-intelligent computers? Those, surely, are mere fodder for storytelling. Or wild extrapolations. Just so many "sci fi" tropes. Sometimes, yes. Starfaring aliens? Super-intelligent computers? Those, surely, are mere fodder for storytelling.

Or wild extrapolations. Just so many "sci fi" tropes. Buy New Learn more about this copy. Other Popular Editions of the Same Title. Search for all books with this author and title. Customers who bought this item also bought. Seller Image. Published by Arc Manor New Softcover Quantity: 5. Seller Rating:. Stock Image. Published by Phoenix Rider, United States New Paperback Quantity: Published by Phoenix Rider New PAP Quantity: New PF Quantity: 1.

Chiron Media Wallingford, United Kingdom. New Paperback Quantity: 2. There are more copies of this book View all search results for this book.