Note to self

If I ever go to prison, make sure it's in Kentucky.

--JAN DEPAUW

New blog template

So I am building a new blog template, since the old one ate all my comments. Given that this is the busy season for me professionally, it will be a few weeks before everything is back to normal. Just thought my imaginary readers would like to know.

--HOUSE O.

The delicious taste of cognitive dissonance

From Scott Adams, commenting on a recent article in Time about Einstein and religion:

There aren’t many ideas that have the potential to change the world. But the idea that we have no free will has to be on the short list.

At the risk of ruining the joke by explaining what's funny, let me elaborate. If a racist bigot has no free will, to borrow one of Scott's examples, then his prejudices are beyond his control, are they not? So how do we change this one person's behavior, much less "change the world," by telling everyone that they are merely "moist robots," instead of moral agents?

Mmm.... That's good cognitive dissonance!

--PROF. S. P. DAVIDSON