Obama resorts to the "if there’s even one life that can be saved" rhetoric.

"If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to t...

"Autism is related to different ways of processing information in the brain, but not in those areas related to violence..."

"Can autistic individuals get flooded emotionally and act irrationally?... Of course they can, like everyone else, but that’s not a def...

Sperm decline...

... in France. Prof Richard Sharpe, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "Something in our modern lifestyle, diet or environment lik...

"Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention..."

"... and they use different parts of the brain. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A c...

"Why are people so much smarter at making personal decisions than deciding how to vote?"

Jaltcoh points to Bryan Caplan's discussion of self-correction, which keeps us from dumb decisionmaking in our personal affairs, but: ...

"The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens."

"There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows. "

"No one pretends that better laws would prevent all tragedies, but if that were the standard, then we wouldn't pass any laws at all."

On NPR last evening, the topic was the Aurora movie-theater murders, and the NPR host, Robert Siegel, invited WaPo's E.J. Dionne to comm...

49% of likely voters want "strict legal interpretation" of the Constitution.

And only 21% think that's what we're getting. 60% think the Supreme Court is giving us the so-called "living" version of t...

Smarter people are more vulnerable to thinking errors...

... that come in the form of taking mental shortcuts in place of getting the facts and doing the math.

"So to believe in magic — as, on some deep level, we all do — does not make you stupid, ignorant or crazy."

"It makes you human."

A public school teacher told her students "Republicans are stupid."

What's the worst part of that ? The worst part about a teacher saying "Republicans are stupid" is... She should not take a par...

"I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I were as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of that kind of happiness."

"But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane."

"[A]theists have been too timid, fearing any contact with religion will leave them contaminated with unreason."

According to Alain de Botton: He writes that the form of religion, with “its dogmatic aspects burned off”, can be repurposed in the service ...

The NYT presents liberal fear-mongers as if they were intelligent, sober critics of Republican policy.

Monica Davey, reporting for the NYT from Madison, Wisconsin, looks at why "Many Workers in [the] Public Sector [Are] Retiring Sooner...

Krugman's swipe at Bloomberg's rhetoric about Occupy Wall Street.

Paul Krugman has a column about how various "plutocrats" are "panicking" about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I w...

Today's protesters "have no understanding of civil disobedience."

Says Matthew Knee: To far too many young leftists, “civil disobedience” is a get-out-of-jail-free card that should allow people to break the...

"It’s Alinsky vs. Alinsky now. Rational debate has long been a loser’s game."

Instapundit quotes commenter Pogo on this post of mine and adds "You get more of the conduct you reward, and less of the conduct you ...

Rick Perry's admirable eschewal of anecdotal argument about the HPV vaccine.

Arlette Saenz, at ABC News, reports: Months after the Texas state legislature revoked [his executive order requiring young girls receive the...

"This is the old 'bitter clingers' (or 'What's the Matter With Kansas?') argument reduced to utter incoherence."

James Taranto quotes Gov. Ed Rendell... [P]eople don't always vote on logical reasons. Emotion drives voters particularly when they have...

The way things look from a computer screen in Madison, Wisconsin.

Click image to enlarge. Do you want to replace the existing Normal?