Observations on the world and its inhabitants
A question landed in a WhatsApp group the other day. Simple enough. What is one divided by zero? One person answered at once. Undefined. That is the textbook answer. It is what a calculator, mathematician or the internet tells you. Clean, final, no fuss. Someone else paused. They looked at the question a different way. ...
Well, the things and people I come across, and have to deal with – I tell you. This anecdote follows on from the side-splitting: The Great Cabbage Conspiracy: Why water is useless! Let’s get into this one. “Right,” I began, trying to sound helpful, “what exactly is wrong with your knee, then? Is it, you ...
Within the area of knowledge dissemination, a concerning phenomenon has occupied my mind for many years. It is characterised by the propagation of misleading information cloaked in seemingly plausible rhetoric, often endorsed by individuals perceived as authorities. This phenomenon, is now coined by me as “sophistry-veiled untruths” (SVU). It poses a significant challenge to the ...
This article is not to say that Christopher Langan – a man supposedly with an IQ of close to 200 – is a personal hoax. His IQ between 195 to 200 as widely reported over the years, has never been properly validated. I did not know of Langan until 48 hours ago. Something popped up ...
Situations where authority trumps logic continue to weigh on my mind. As a doctor, I often find myself in situations where I need to break down complex concepts into simple, digestible pieces of information for patients and staff. Despite my best efforts to avoid medical jargon and make these explanations as clear as possible, I ...
I’m becoming more aware based on a series of observations in the last 10 years that there is a serious shift in the way people think and react to things. The main issue is that perception seems to become reality for individuals, and as a result of ease of electronic communications groups of people sharing ...
Dog-bathers are running for cover!! OMG! Like 3 hours of video? “No way!”, I hear them screaming as they zip off like The Roadrunner from Looney Tunes! ?? Or there is the other group who want everything in 5 words. GET LOST NOW! Well the shear stupidity of large systems and people in the above ...
Again this exploration is motivated by what I see on social media platforms. I often read or hear, “The fact is… (blah blah)..”. But what does that mean? What does fact mean? What do people mean when they refer to ‘fact‘? Of course I’ve not been able to directly quiz those who assert their ‘facts‘. ...
People use the word ‘mindset‘ fairly often. But what does it mean? Many will now reach for their dictionaries and Google. When I think about how others refer to mindset, I get the impression that they mean the person’s mind is set in a certain way. I think that’s partially true. People use mindset often ...
Belief and believing (etc) have been a big part of my attention for many years. Having read a lot on this, I decided to start all over. What I mean is, I’m going back to the roots of belief. There are things that determine beliefs and I will go into that as well. Why should ...
I should have been spending time on Netflix – but over the last few hours (near midnight on 22nd Jan 2022), I came across the video below (which could disappear). It is about Dawkins among a panel and a bunch of people in the audience. This triggered me to explore – again – the nature ...
Well, I’m making breakfast this morning – around 10:00 AM – and I hear the doorbell ring. No – I didn’t think that the ‘authorities’ had come for me, finally. So I step into my storm porch and see a man and a child. He’s smartly dressed in suit and tie, and of a slim ...
Captain Walker
Captain Walker
