All Thoughts Being Equal

The New Yorker piece on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, provocatively titled "The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle," sent tremors through the Internet recently. (Oh yes, I will make all the quake puns I want, thank you very much.) It also happens to be a pile of hot street trash doing irresponsible things with some actual facts, but this is the New Yorker and they spell cooperation as "coöperation" so they're obviously untrustworthy. Who does the New Yorker talk to? Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at OSU Kenneth Murphy, director of FEMA for the Oregon-Washington-Idaho-Alaska region Jay Wilson, chair of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission Ian Madin, director of Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries  Kevin Cupples, city planner for Seaside, OR  Doug Dougherty, superintendent of schools for Seaside That's six sources, two of whom are people whose freaking jobs involve planning for the absolute worst, one...

Chesterton : In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Sun Tzu , The Art of War : It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every...

I'm only a few pages into Daniel Loxton's Why Is There a Skeptical Movement? (available in PDF here ) and it's already fascinating. I think I had heard a bit about how Harry Houdini leveraged his experience as a stage magician to combat the "spirit mediums" so common (and so fraudulent) in his day. What blew me away, though, was how far back these skeptical roots went. P. T. Barnum offered cash prizes to any psychic who could "pertinently" answer questions he had sealed in envelopes and stored somewhere else. Okay, you know your game's crooked when P. T. Barnum thinks your "humbug" has gone too far! Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, and M. Guillotin served on a special commission to the French monarchy to investigate "animal magnetism" healing touch quackery. Sort of like an 18th c. Justice League, but for science! and mostly French.   This stuff goes back yet another century, to the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of Sir Tho...