(Jesus and Mo) – Mo: “They used to sacrifice a lot of goats in Old-Testament times, didn’t they?” …
jesusandmo.net/2014/04/30/goats
Archive for April, 2014
Goats
2014-04-30No QUALY
2014-04-29(FTB::Mano Singham) – Taxpayer-funded government-run single-payer systems cannot provide every possible treatment to everybody because that would bankrupt the system and so they must decide what is reasonable to provide. If services are not determined by the ability to pay, on what basis are they allocated? In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the body that determines it and they use an internationally recognized standard called the “quality-adjusted life years” measurement or QALY.
Phillip Longman explains how and why in the US, Congress inserted language into the ACA specifically banning QALY-like considerations in determining what treatments could or could not be covered which is why we often see highly expensive treatments being provided that do not improve the quality of life by much. It seems like we apply cost-benefit analysis to almost everything except health care, which is why we have the most expensive system in the world and yet on most major the health outcome measures, the US ranks somewhere in in the mid-30s among all nations. …
Banana Pi
2014-04-28(ZDNet::Hardware) – Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
The maker community loves the Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer (SBC). But, the $35 Raspberry Pi, which was introduced in 2012, with its 700MHz ARM11 processor and 512MBs of RAM, is looking a little dowdy these days. So, Lemaker.org has introduced the faster Banana Pi. …
Bible Contradictions
2014-04-27(Κέλσος) – Matthew W. Ferguson:
The main message to take away from biblical contradictions is that the Bible is a very human book. Different human authors had different opinions, different narrative goals, and disagreements about their view of Jesus. Accordingly, we find exactly what we would except: the different authors provide different versions of the story. This is strong evidence that Bible is not a divinely inspired, inerrant work, but a compilation of multiple texts, often in disharmony with each other.
Ironically, by not attempting to harmonize or rearrange the material, the Gospels are far more beautiful literary works. Mark’s Suffering Servant motif is far more poignant when it is not smashed clumsily together with the very different Noble Martyr motif in Luke. John’s Lamb of God is a far more powerful symbol, when the author changes some of the details from the previous Gospels. By appreciating each work as its own, one gets a far more powerful set of different messages from each Gospel, rather than missing the point of each Gospel, by attempting to awkwardly harmonize them, due only to an unwarranted presupposition about inerrancy. …
adversusapologetica…2013/05/01/bible-contradictions
The Toll Collector and the First Gospel
2014-04-26(Κέλσος) – Matthew W. Ferguson:
A toll collector working a booth at an obscure village in Galilee is an unlikely candidate to have authored the first gospel of the New Testament. …
adversusapologetica…2014/04/15/matthew
Old Files
2014-04-25
The Evolution of P.G. Wodehouse
2014-04-24(FTB::Mano Singham) – I am a huge fan of author P.G. Wodehouse and have read and re-read a large fraction of his oeuvre, a not insignificant feat considering how prolific he was. I am particularly partial to his Blandings Castle series and his Jeeves and Wooster series. While the books are self-contained, they do contain recurring characters so the author provides enough explanatory details from other books to fill in the reader of the state of affairs so that one does not necessarily need to read them in order to follow the plots.
But I realized that I had not read them all and so recently have decided to read each series again in chronological order. I checked out from the library the first book in the Blandings series, which was Something Fresh, written in 1915. It was the first book for which Wodehouse made serious money, having sold it to be serialized in the Saturday Evening Post magazine. …
singham/2014/04/21/the-evolution
Phantom Internet
2014-04-23
Reading is Rude
2014-04-22(Non Sequitur) – Wiley Miller:
Danae: “You’re sitting there, completely engrossed in a book, oblivious to my presence!” …
Quantum Secrets
2014-04-21(Abstruse Goose) – “Holy cow! When I think about it that way, Quantum mechanics is actually easy.” …
Magic Chocolate Eggs
2014-04-20(Jesus and Mo) – Mo: “You have to admit Easter is rather confusing.” …
jesusandmo.net/2014/04/16/eggs
New Physics
2014-04-19(Starts With A Bang!) – Ethan Siegel:
The Standard Model can’t be all there is. Here are five compelling reasons why. …
starts-with-a-bang/10ae25fe5011
Crucifixion
2014-04-18
Respekt
2014-04-17(ScienceBlogs::blooDNAcid) – Cornelius Courts:
Jedesmal, wenn ich gezwungen werde, mir zu vergewärtigen, wie weit wir noch von der dringend nötigen Privatisierung der Religion entfernt sind und daß ich in einer Welt leben muß, in der die Religionen noch immer eine solche Rolle spielen und einer solchen Duldung begegnen, frage ich mich: woher kommt nur der Respekt vor diesem Irrsinn? Wieso wird Glaube und Religiosität, also das mutwillige, hartleibige Ignorieren von Evidenz, das unhinterfragte Sichunterordnen unter oft menschenfeindliche Dogmen, das unbegründete Fürwahrhalten absurdester Ideen noch immer als Tugend mißverstanden?! …
The Astro Alphabet
2014-04-17(Starts With A Bang!) – Ethan Siegel:
Every letter holds a special story for those who marvel at the Universe. …
starts-with-a-bang/e3adb0f29317
Superheros are Anti-Science
2014-04-16(ScienceBlogs::Uncertain Principles) – Chad Orzel:
I’m not a comic-book guy. I’m just not invested enough in the idea of a movie about these characters to get past the staggering logical inconsistencies in most of the movies. They’re great spectacle, but as soon as I start to think about them at all, they just fall apart.
By itself, that wouldn’t be worth a post– Tastes Vary, end of story. But I was thinking about this while walking the dog this morning, and there’s a sense in which my dissatisfaction with the genre touches on a deeper issue connected to my current obsessions: in a very deep way, superhero stories are anti-scientific. …
principles/2014/04/15/superheros
jf 