Global warming is my fault.

Steven Pinker on morality:

Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.

It's long, but Pinker is a good writer and the mix of biology, philosophy, and even a little game theory make it worth your time. Another excerpt:

The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.

A positive, but pretty lukewarm, take on microcredit:

Though its users avoid the kind of intimidation employed by moneylenders, microcredit could not work without similar incentives. The lender does not demand collateral, but if you can’t pay your share of the group loan, your fellow borrowers will come and take your TV.

Even after explaining, convincingly, all the ways microcredit doesn't work as advertised, Boudreaux and Cowen still come away saying it's a good thing.

Also from the making-the-world-better department, consider this profile of Norman Borlaug:

If he'd killed someone instead of saving hundreds of millions of lives, then they'd have been interested.

It's worth noting that "hundreds of millions" may not be an exaggeration here.

William Poundstone says our voting system is the worst of all possibilities. I had been a fan of the instant runoff, but this interview has persuaded me that approval voting may be better. Either one is an improvement over the current system.

And, in case you didn't already know, touch-screen voting is risky at best.

The Edge question for 2008 is up. They ask people what they've changed their mind about, which is a great question.

My favorite responses are from Stewart Brand, who says that they don't make stuff like they used to, which is a good thing, and Sherry Turkle who says - well, just read hers, it's good.

The theme I've caught this year is a certain disillusionment with science. Rebecca Goldstein argues that falsifiability is not that important, and Irene Pepperberg is against hypothesis testing. With just those two, the scientific method is crumbling. Add in two shocking realizations, one from Colin Tudge who no longer thinks science is omnipotent and the other from Ken Ford who has figured out that sometimes scientists do bad things. Also in this category is Karl Sabbagh, who doubts the value of expert opinion, and Rupert Sheldrake, who makes the broader and valuable point that skepticism is never from a neutral point of view, and is never an unqualified good thing.

I appreciate the people who make a focused point rather than a broad philosophical statement. Unfortunately, these people are relatively few. Lisa Randall talks about neutrino mixing, and Helena Cronin discusses how differences in variance rather than in mean explain the over representation of men in the sciences.

Keith Devlin argues that math is socially constructed rather than some manifestation of absolute truth; I agree, of course. Finally, we have Daniel Gilbert, who says being able to change your mind is maybe not a good thing, and makes a connection to love and romance.

Eliminate unnecessary words:

The use prepositions is hardly important. One thing, they're difficult children learn and non-native speakers have lots trouble them. As me, I'm all it. Dumping prepositions trash basket would shorten my emails and this would save paper that we use produce books.

Barbara Ehrenreich on princesses:

In Princessland, the only career ladder leads from baby-faced adolescence to a position as an evil enchantress, stepmother or witch. Snow White's wicked stepmother is consumed with envy for her stepdaughter's beauty; the sea witch Ursula covets Ariel's lovely voice; Cinderella's stepmother exploits the girl's cheap, uncomplaining, labor. No need for complicated witch-hunting techniques--pin-prickings and dunkings--in Princessland. All you have to look for is wrinkles.

Of course I knew that our culture values appearance above just about everything else, especially for women. But I hadn't thought about how Disney associates physical beauty with moral goodness.

The Colorado Nonprofit Association just released their report on individual charitable giving. Because of previous research, I was ready to make fun of hypocritical Boulder, but it's really not that bad. Boulder's rate (3.8% of income) is better than the national average (3.6%) and a lot better than Denver. The winners are Colorado Springs (4.2%) and the zip codes inside the Air Force Academy (5.7%).

Too often I'm embarrassed by the public actions of Christians. But the recent stand of John Sentamu against the thug in charge of Zimbabwe is an important act of courage. Sentamu is the Archbishop of York, second in command in the Church of England, which is my church.

Before you click on the link, form a picture in your head of what the Archbishop of York should look like. There's more background here.

Local, independent businesses failing? Don't blame Wal-Mart. Blame your city council:

Local officials who simultaneously decry big box stores and national chains while doling out burdensome regulatory structures and complicated permit processes should understand that regulatory burdens hit the smaller, independent places hardest, because they're the places that have the smallest amount of discretionary cash to hire legal aid (or, if you're really cynical, to make the appropriate campaign contributions).

The article uses Alexandria, Virginia as an example, but he could be describing the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.

Press release of the day:

Fox Entertainment Group (FEG) today announced its acquisition of Beliefnet, a Web site that enables consumers to better understand their faith and build diverse spiritual communities by providing content and tools for a broad range of religions and spiritual approaches.

"Consumers." That one word says it all.

Not every blog I read is pompous and intellectual. Today I want to point you to Kyle, who took a picture of a book mis-filed in the Windows subsection of the Poetry section of his Barnes and Noble. Kyle is a math teacher in LA, living the Stand and Deliver life.

Also take a look at the blog of frequent commenter Theo, who knows how to make the best of working in a cubicle. Or at least, to make the best of spending time in a cubicle.

It's not about talent, it's about hard work:

Attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easy problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

This has certainly been true for whatever academic success I've had. I've never felt innately good at math, just willing to put in the time to learn about it. It's fascinating, and hopeful, that this attitude might help with relationships as well:

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people’s willingness—or unwillingness—to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them, according to a 2006 study I conducted with psychologist Lara Kammrath of Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

More reflections on coffee:

From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink. Could that passage have been written on decaf?

The whole essay is like that, a little over the top. She spends several hundred words describing the process of brewing coffee with a French press in great detail as if it's some obscure medieval ritual no one has heard of. But if you have a few extra minutes, it's an entertaining read, especially the part where the advantages of caffeine over alcohol are discussed.

Good news about Rwanda and coffee.

Selling sleep:

Sleep may finally be claiming its place beside diet and exercise as both a critical health issue and a niche for profitable consumer products.

They persuade us that we're sleeping poorly and then sell us stuff to fix it. It's interesting that the new sleep drugs might work partly by causing amnesia - if you don't remember tossing and turning, then you must have slept peacefully.

This piece tells the same story about depression and anxiety drugs. All the profit incentives press toward describing new disorders; there's no incentive to say that some condition is normal.

Ronald Bailey gives an overview of ways to quench our thirst for fuel.