Assorted Thoughts #2

1. Looking at babies is a little like listening to Slayer: No, I don't have any problems recognizing that there are differences between the songs, yet it seems accurate to say that they all sound the same.

2. An atheist is an agnostic who hasn't read Popper yet.

3. There is some truth to the view that you can defuse tense situations using humour. But many people misinterpret that bit of advice to mean that you can reduce a person's anger by signaling you're not taking it seriously. Counterproductive! Not rocket science. Not even plane science.

4. Natural rights: the fancy name for high-level policy preferences.

5. There are craploads of psychology and neurology experiments that look into the differences between males and females. These are never based on representative samples. Ponder.