Logicize: to employ logic

The Media favor Obama (in case you hadn’t noticed)

logicalthinker — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:38:44 +0000

Deborah Howell – Obama’s Edge in the Coverage Race – washingtonpost.com

The hypocrisy of those who espouse big government

logicalthinker — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:41:19 +0000

Barney Frank, a liberal Democrat, recently stated that the “…vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government’s business.” Interesting. But the vast majority of your money is definitely the government’s business. They’ll take your hard-earned cash away to give it to people who haven’t worked for it. That is indeed the government’s business. But hey, government knows best, right?

iPhone Copy, Cut, and Paste: A Demo

logicalthinker — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:32:14 +0000

Throwing Self-Reliance to the Wind

logicalthinker — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:50:10 +0000

Personal responsibility? Nah. Just let the government take care of you. Let the government be in charge of your retirement savings. Sure, nothing will be there for you when you retire, but don’t let that little detail bother you. The government will take away earnings from those who have worked hard to achieve greater rewards. Then those funds will be given to you so that you can continue slacking. And are you wondering what kind of life you get without personal responsibility? Well, we have one example right here.

Black U.S. AIDS rates now rival those in some African countries. Read the details here. Do you suppose that a lack of personal responsibility might have something to do with that? Relying on the government to educate your kids about AIDS obviously isn’t sufficing. That’s where solid parenting comes in. If you’re not already doing that, now just might be a good time to look into it.

Praying for lower gas prices: An invitation to fallacious reasoning

logicalthinker — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:55:58 +0000

Yes, people are once again praying for lower gas prices.

If gas prices go down following the prayers, should the prayers be credited for the lower prices? This is Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc in action: “After this, therefore because of this.” The presence of rain after I do a rain dance does not indicate that the rain fell due to my special dance. Thus, the temporal succession of events does not necessarily establish a causal connection between them.

I went to church a two weeks ago. Then gas prices went up. Did gas prices rise due to my church attendence? Well, ok, I didn’t really go to church two weeks ago. But I think you get the point.

You never see psychics on Jeopardy!

logicalthinker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:39:02 +0000

One would think that given the wide array of professions represented on Jeopardy!, eventually a psychic would show up. I’ve never seen one. Seems like a psychic would have an advantage over the other contestants. But even if the soi-disant psychic promised he wouldn’t use his powers during the show, should there not have been a psychic or two over the many years of Jeopardy! episodes? Why is that business so statistically underrepresented on this particular game show?

My crystal ball says that psychics suck at memorizing world capitals.

Are you really getting the best price on that book?

logicalthinker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:42:00 +0000

Perhaps you thought when you bought a book via Amazon that you were beating the system. You paid no tax, no shipping (due to an order over 25 bucks), and your book was cheaper than it was at your nearby bookstore. And yes, you did save money. But could you have saved more?

An online engine called Add All compares book prices at dozens of online stores, factors in shipping, and then tells you where the best deals are. Folks, if you buy a lot of books and want to save some cash, check out Add All.

Here’s an example of the output from Add All’s the search engine:

Find out the name of any song that’s playing: Shazam (an amazing iPhone application)

logicalthinker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:52:44 +0000

One of the best iPhone applications I’ve tried so far is Shazam. This utility will listen for several seconds to a song that’s playing wherever you happen to be. Shazam uploads audio data to a server, waits for a response, and then tells you the name of the song, the album on which it’s found, the name of the group, etc. You also get a picture of the album cover. Further, a log is kept of all the songs you’ve analyzed so that you can decide later whether to buy the CDs. I tested the application with several songs in iTunes and with some background music in a movie or two. Shazam’s ability to detect which song is playing – even with distracting foreground/background noise – is amazing. The only flaws I’ve found so far involve its inability to identify jazz and classical music. Many songs from those genres appear not to be in the company’s database.

Check out Shazam in action. Then get it from the Apple app store. The application is currently free!

Sage Oil Tablets = Short Term Memory Improvement?

logicalthinker — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:36:50 +0000

In the Psychology Today article Spicing Up Your Memory, it is revealed that a 2003 study involving 44 healthy young adults – not seniors suffering from memory loss – showed sage oil improves short-term memory. While this study is intriguing, I would like to know the following:

1) Would these findings hold in a much larger experimental group? Presumably only 22 of the 44 received the sage oil. That’s a small number of people on whom to base this conclusion about sage oil’s effects.

2) Was this placebo-controlled study also double blind?

3) How many milligrams of sage oil did each member of the experimental group receive?

4) Would the desired effects last over a period of several months, or do the benefits wane with use of the supplement?

Also worth noting is the article’s statement that “… the clinical trials conducted so far have used sage oil extracted from a species different from the common garden sage.”

How to Crop Photos on the iPhone Without Any Extra Apps

logicalthinker — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:29:03 +0000

Have you ever taken a photo with your iPhone and found distracting background elements that ruined the shot? Now you can salvage some of those pictures with this simple technique. While viewing the photo you wish to crop, use your fingers on the iPhone’s screen to zoom in as much as necessary to eliminate the undesirable background item(s). Then do a screen capture by clicking the on/off button while holding down the Home button. Your new screen capture — the cropped photo you wanted — has now been saved to your photo collecton! You’re all set to email your modified photo to friends, blog it, etc. Of course, this trick can result in too much detail loss if you zoom too much, but for quick cropping without a photo editor, this approach is hard to beat.