The Galeotti: rowing out of the Barbary Coast
Readers of The Baroque Cycle will recall that Jack Shaftoe was captured and forced into galley slavery by the Barbary Pirates.
Ben-Hur to the contrary, galley slaves were almost unknown in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Back then rowers were free men. Galley slavery was an innovation of the late middle ages. See, for example, The Ancient Engineers, p. 352-354.
From The New Objectivity
Great post yesterday by fellow Discover denizen Ed Yong, asking “Should science journalists take sides?” Honestly, it shouldn’t be a hard question, although the answer depends on how you visualize the sides. If you have in mind
He said vs. She said,
then the job of a journalist is not to take sides. But there’s another possible dichotomy that is much more crucial:
Truth vs. Falsity.
In this case, it’s equally clear that journalists should take sides: they should be in favor of the truth. Not just passively, by trying not to make things up, but actively, by trying to figure out whether something is false before reporting it, even if it’s been said by someone.
This should be a no-brainer, but apparently there are some “science” journalists who will report every story about a scientific dispute as if the sides have equal merit. See also my notes here.
Irish Class, September 20, 2010
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From Despair, Inc. via Monastic Musings
At 80beats
Why Liberals Are More Intelligent Than Conservatives: Liberals think they’re more intelligent than conservatives because they are reported on a study that claims precisely this.
Shawn Smith, the “Iron Shrink”, responded with Are Liberals More Intelligent than Conservatives? Another Broken Study Says It Is So
Skepchick Stacey summarized Smith’s arguments, concluding:
The point isn’t that liberals aren’t more intelligent than conservatives – maybe they are, maybe they aren’t – but this study hasn’t proven it. The point is that if the evidence is bad, I have to ignore it – even when it tells me what I want to hear.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 