The Complete History of the Universe: A Personal Journey

I have four important issues to touch on today, listed quite obviously in the title.

First up is coincidence. YouTuber QualiaSoup has a great demonstration of how and why a seemingly miraculous event could just be coincidence. I have little to add, other than to reassert his main thesis: an understanding of the mathematics of probability does reveal that astonishingly unlikely events can indeed be coincidence, and even expected.

Next is metaphysics, which can be used to justify banning gay marriage. Mike, of The A-Unicornist, has a take-down of one person with such a view that I think is just beautiful.

Then, I’m sharing this list of 7 strange beliefs of libertarians. I have said that I am at least sympathetic to the libertarian view, but I think I just did not know anything about it. I thought it mostly meant “mostly liberal, but disapproves of gun control”. This is apparently not the case.

Finally and possibly most importantly, here’s a list of “11 Ways to Solve Rape Better than Nail Polish”. The first among them is perhaps the one where we have failed hardest as a culture, and is a theme that runs through the list as a whole: teach men not to rape.

Oh, and I might as well announce that I’m going to do my best to make quality posts during the week and lists of links or collections of pictures on the weekends, if I have some to share. This allowance should help me to improve content the rest of the time, by giving me more of the weekend to write my own stuff.