As another National Football League season gets underway, I’ve been thinking about the anthem protests and the angry debate they’ve triggered. It raises the question of how we think about patriotism in America – a subject about which many Americans hold strong opinions. This is an opinion piece, not a research-driven post. It includes several… Continue reading
AN EVIDENCE-BASED EXAMINATION More than 1.5 million Americans have been killed by guns in the United States over the past 50 years. That is more than died in all the wars combined going back to the Revolutionary War. This is an astonishing claim. Here’s the fact-check. The gun debate in this country has been raging… Continue reading
As part of the background for my recent post on the media, I interviewed Angie Holan, the editor of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking site. I’m posting the portion of our discussion that touched on PolitiFact’s mission and process. I’ve found PolitiFact extremely useful as an objective fact-checking source. They do an excellent job… Continue reading
“There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press.” – Samuel Adams, 1768 “There is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration. Even though we never like it, and even though we… Continue reading
In October I spoke at length with Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, the Director of Climate Science for The Union of Concerned Scientists. The entire interview is covered in three posts. The first part of the interview was posted last week and addresses claims made by climate change skeptics. The second part of the interview discusses current thoughts… Continue reading
The Inspired Rationalist launched in August with a lengthy post about climate change. Then, in October I spoke at length with Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, the Director of Climate Science for The Union of Concerned Scientists. The first part of that interview addressed claims made by climate change skeptics. What follows is the second part of the… Continue reading
As a follow-up to my August post on climate change, in October I spoke at length with Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, the Director of Climate Science for The Union of Concerned Scientists. The transcript of the interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. It will appear as part of three separate posts. This is… Continue reading
Most of the posts to The Inspired Rationalist will offer analysis of complex and often misunderstood, important topics. This post about intellectual honesty is different. It is an essay about a standard of behavior that is subtle but of great consequence. Intellectual honesty is a concept that I’ve tried to consciously apply in my life… Continue reading
This is my first blog post. Because climate change is intensely debated with many dimensions to consider, this discussion turned out quite a bit longer than I’m shooting for in my average post (it takes about 30 minutes to read). However, sometimes important topics can’t be adequately discussed in say, two to three pages. And… Continue reading