Everyone offended by this statement is a fool

To the best of my knowledge, there exists absolutely no scientific evidence today in favor of any statistically significant genetic difference in mental abilities across races. Yet, I do not think we understand genetics well enough to absolutely rule out such a possibility. So I do not rule out the possibility that African Americans, are, on [...]

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Another small victory for the terrorists

No, the terrorists didn’t blow up a plane or kill people. They don’t need to do that. For, their essential tactic is to make us feel threatened and destroy our normal way of life. And we are making sure they get what they want. In the latest exhibit of caution gone berserk, a Hawaii bound [...]

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The Google Book Settlement: A non-analysis

States are being negligent with their cultural heritage when they turn it over to a monopolist and thereby run tax-funded projects like the European digital library Europeana into the ground. Not having had the time — till today — to go through the details of the controversial Google Books settlement, I wasn’t entirely sure where [...]

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Amazon apologizes for Kindle episode

I have always been a fan of Amazon.com which is why I was particularly saddened and outraged by the recent incident where Amazon remotely deleted books from users’ Kindles. (Volokh had a series of posts on the matter) Well it appears they have apologized(see below). The apology is remarkably humble, and while it does not erase [...]

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Blogger’s fatigue?

29  last month. Just 14 posts in 24 March days. Really? And for much of last year I used to average 50 posts a month…

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I am a militia member

Or at least I could be, if this report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (a government agency that researches terrorism) is to be taken seriously. If you’re an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very [...]

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Chetan Kunte and NDTV

(See updates below) (This post, for legal reasons that will be obvious, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.) Gaurav Sabnis writes about the unfortunate case of blogger Chetan Kunte, whose views about Barkha Dutt’s “unethical reporting” apparently caused NDTV to browbeat him into deleting the post and replacing it with an apology. [...]

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Off to Switzerland

I will be in Zurich for the next three days to give a talk and take part in an interview. Blogging may or may not happen during that period; it would depend on time and internet connectivity.

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Newness

Eliezer has an unusual suggestion on how to spend New Year’s Day. Sometime in the next week – January 1st if you have that available, or maybe January 3rd or 4th if the weekend is more convenient – I suggest you hold a New Day, where you don’t do anything old. Don’t read any book [...]

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Away for the next five days

I will be off on a camping trip to Death Valley National Park for the next five days. We leave tomorrow morning. There is no internet there, so this is going to be the last post till the 31st. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Come back next week.

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Another policy change

I have changed the Creative Commons license that governs the content of this blog. In plain English, the change amounts to the following — now you can quote, republish, adapt or otherwise use any part of this blog for non-commercial purposes, provided you attribute me  as the original source. This is more restrictive than my [...]

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Comment policy

Here’s a simple question — who owns the comment you post on someone else’s blog? One view is that the blog is the blog owner’s property and he owns all the content on it — including the comments — and has the right to do whatever he wants with them. Thus he may choose to [...]

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Why Muse Free?

A reader asks me why I call my blog “Muse Free”. I generally think that names should speak for themselves but in this case I don’t mind giving a bit of an explanation. First off, thought and freedom are two concepts that are very dear to me; and who doesn’t want a name to consist [...]

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A query for my readers

Do you find that this website is much slower over the past few days? If so, is your problem limited to my site or are you experiencing it on other wordpress blogs as well? As for me, everything from viewing my own blog, posting, accessing my dashboard etc has been really slow for the past [...]

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Blogging without obligation

I could give many (true) reasons for the lack of substantial posts over the last eight days or so: I have been travelling, I have been applying for postdoc jobs, I have been very busy otherwise. But why bother explaining myself when I can point to blogging without obligation? (Hat Tip: A commenter in QI’s [...]

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