First Post

This is the first post to kick off this blog. I am creating this blog to be a place for me to express my opinions - hopefully based on objective observation and analysis - about the state of civilization in the early part of the 21st century.

There is a lot to comment on and I am not sure how I will go about selecting what to write about. I have a list of ideas to start with which have mostly come from conversations that I have had with many of the very intelligent people that I know. Many of the subjects on this list have to do with common misconceptions people have and what actually counts as knowledge. I am also interested in our understanding of the physical universe and the politics surround science and technology.

I intend to keep the posts short but I can already tell that I am going to have a problem doing so - hopefully this will improve as I become a better writer. I do not know how often I will be adding posts but I hope to add something as least once every couple of weeks.

Comment Policy
Comments are welcome but because I'd like to maintain a high signal to noise ratio, I've decided to moderate comments for the time being. I encourage comments from researchers in any field relevant to the post in question and particularly from those who's research adheres to the scientific method.

When moderating I will be using the following policy (which is the policy that I try to hold myself to when writing a post):

1. Comments containing advertisements will be rejected out of hand.

2. Trivial comments such as "Nice post" or "You're an idiot" will be rejected.

3. Comments should make at least one point, if a comment boils down to pure opinion along the lines of "I think you are right/wrong" then I'm not likely to accept it.

4. Comments need to be pertinent to the post and should be concise and to the point -- rambling comments will not be accepted.

5. Any claim of fact will need to be supported by one or more research backed references and opinions should be phrased as such. If you catch this in one of my posts then please let me know and I'll either include a reference or rephrase the statement.

6. Comments should be respectful and comments that contain personal attacks against anyone will be rejected.

7. Comments should be written in reasonably good English -- if it's hard to understand what you are trying to say because of your writing than the comment won't be accepted.

That's it. Thanks. ... Continue