Chinese Universities

Most Chinese Universities now have IDNs. The following is a selection of Universities, Institutes, Colleges and Academies idn addresses. I have not listed any that redirect to an ASCII address. Addresses that end in 中国 are Simplified Chinese and those that end in 中國 are Traditional Chinese. Both 中国 and 中國 mean China. Some of the Universities I have listed below do not have the 中國 form because they have not yet configured their DNS for 中國

1. Anhui Xinhua University 安徽新华学院.中国
2. Beihua University 北华大学.中国
3. Běijīng Film Academy 北京电影学院.中国 & 北京電影學院.中國
4. Běijīng Forestry University 北京林业大学.中国 & 北京林業大學.中國
5. Beijing University of Chemical Technology 北京化工大学.中国
6. China Women's University 中华女子学院.中国
7. Communication University of China 中国传媒大学.中国
8. Dalian University of Technology 大连理工大学.中国
9. Fujian Medical University 福建医科大学.中国
10. Fujian Medical University 福建醫科大學.中國
11. Fuzhou University 福州大学.中国
12. Fuzhou University 福州大學.中國
13. Gānsù Coal Technical School 甘肃煤炭工业学校.中国
14. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies 广东外语外贸大学.中国
15. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies 廣東外語外貿大學.中國
16. Guangxi Normal University 广西师范大学.中国
17. Guangzhou University 广州大学.中国
18. Guilin University of Technology 桂林工学院.中国
19. Guilin University of Technology 桂林工學院.中國
20. Harbin Institute of Technology 哈尔滨工业大学.中国
21. Harbin Institute of Technology 哈爾濱工業大學.中國
22. Hebei University 河北大学.中国
23. Hebei University 河北大學.中國
24. Heilongjiang University 黑龙江大学.中国
25. Heilongjiang University 黑龍江大學.中國
26. Henan University 河南大学.中国
27. Henan University 河南大學.中國
28. Hong Kong University of Science & Technology 香港科技大学.中国
29. Inner Mongolia University 内蒙古大学.中国
30. Jimei University 集美大学.中国
31. Jimei University 集美大學.中國
32. Lanzhou University of Finance & Economics 兰州商学院.中国
33. Lanzhou University of Finance & Economics 蘭州商學院.中國
34. Liaoning University 辽宁大学.中国
35. Nanchang University 南昌大学.中国
36. Nanchang University 南昌大學.中國
37. Nanjing University 南京大学.中国
38. Nanjing University 南京大學.中國
39. Ningxia University 宁夏大学.中国
40. Peking (Beijing) University 北京大学.中国
41. Peking (Beijing) University 北京大學.中國
42. Qinghai Normal University 青海师范大学.中国
43. Qufu Normal University 曲阜师范大学.中国
44. Shaanxi Normal University 陕西师范大学.中国
45. Shandong University 山东大学.中国
46. Shandong University 山東大學.中國
47. Shandong Xinhua Computer College 新华教育.中国 & 山东新华电脑学院.中国
48. Shandong Xinglin Vocational College of Science & Technology 山东杏林科技职业学院.中国
49. Shanghai Jiao Tong University 上海交通大学.中国
50. Shanghai Jiao Tong University 上海交通大學.中國
51. Shànghǎi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine 上海中医药大学.中国 & 上海中醫藥大學.中國
52. Shantou University 汕头大学.中国
53. Shantou University 汕頭大學.中國
54. Shenyang University 沈阳大学.中国
55. Shenzhen University 深圳大学.中国
56. Shenzhen University 深圳大學.中國
57. Sichuan Agricultural University 四川农业大学.中国
58. Sichuan Agricultural University 四川農業大學.中國
59. Sichuan University 四川大学.中国
60. Sichuan University 四川大學.中國
61. Southeast University 东南大学.中国
62. Southeast University 東南大學.中國
63. Tianjin University 天津大学.中国
64. Tianjin University 天津大學.中國
65. Wuyi University 五邑大学.中国
66. Wuyi University 五邑大學.中國
67. Xī'ān Jiāotōng University 西安交通大学.中国 & 西安交通大學.中國
68. Xī'ān Jiāotōng-Liverpool University 西交利物浦大学.中国 & 西交利物浦大學.中國
69. Xihua University 西华大学.中国
70. Xuzhou Normal University 徐州师范大学.中国
71. Yanbian University 延边大学.中国
72. Yanbian University 延邊大學.中國
73. Yangzhou University 扬州大学.中国
74. Yangzhou University 揚州大學.中國
75. Yanshan University 燕山大学.中国
76. Yunnan University 云南大学.中国

I have discovered three more fascinating Chinese Characters that are being used as Given Names. Each character 汉字 is constructed from three occurrences of a single radical.

晶 jīng ≅ crystal/bright/radiant. The radical is 日 which means Sun.

磊 lěi ≅ Sincere/Great/Massive/Pile of Stones. The radical is 石 which means Stone.

鑫 xīn ≅ Symbolises Prosperity. The radical is 金 which means Gold.

When choosing an English Given Name there are considerations, such as, meaning and sound. There are extra dimensions when choosing a Chinese Given Name. I was recently introduced to a Chinese female Given Name: 淼 (miǎo). This has various meanings, including: Infinity / A Flood / A wide expanse of water. In the context of a Given Name I will take the meaning to be Infinity.

淼 is a fascinating character because it consists of the radical 水 repeated three times. 水, as a standalone character, means water. One can easily appreciate the connection between 水, 淼, flood and hence Infinity.

On Wednesday I gave a presentation on IDNs to UCISA-NG (Universities & Colleges Information Systems Association - Networking Group) Committee. The following is a short article I have written for the UCISA Newsletter.

Internationalisation (i18n) is on the Agenda

André 小山 Schappo - Loughborough University

Internationalisation is on the agenda and now is a golden opportunity to turn aspirations into reality in the IT domain. There are many aspects of IT that can be internationalised. This brief article will focus primarily on Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs).

Loughborough has a set of fully functioning IDNs in several languages/scripts. These include:

① http://ラフバラ大学.com/ - Loughborough University Japanese IDN

② http://拉夫堡学生会.cn/ - Loughborough Student Union Simplified Chinese IDN

The complete list of Loughborough IDNs can be viewed at http://yep.it/idns

I term these PIDNs, that is, Partial Internationalised Domain Names because the TLD is still ASCII. During 2010 there will be some ccTLD FIDNs, Fully Internationalised Domain Names. 拉夫堡学生会.cn will become 拉夫堡学生会.中国 where 中国 means China. In actuality, 拉夫堡学生会.中国 already works but not when using the ICANN Root Servers.

The implementation of internationalised gTLDs is longer term but we will probably see them in 2011. My considered prediction is that .com will be .公司 in Chinese and .コム in Japanese.

Registering IDNs is straight forward and inexpensive. At Loughborough ラフバラ we use dynadot.com as our Registrar for IDNs. Currently, not all Registrars are IDN aware or capable.

Along with Loughborough Students, one of my current activities is the development of AI (Adaptive Internationalised) websites. These websites adapt content according to: language of the IDN used to access the website, browser preferred display language, Region and Date. So, for example, one of the adaptations is display of prices in the currency of the Region of the visiting browser.

With commitment and imagination the opportunities for internationalisation of IT are limitless and boundless.

TLD ⇄ Top Level Domain
ccTLD ⇄ country code TLD eg jp, uk, cn
gTLD ⇄ generic TLD eg com, net, org

Today 今日 Carolyn キャロリン Moses of BBC East Midlands filmed me writing Japanese 日本語 on Loughborough ラフバラ Market. I was writing the names of the fruit and veg in Japanese on the tickets of Joe ジョー Newsome's Stall. This film will be a part of a BBC special feature on how the region is benefiting from the Olympic Games.

More when I know more ☺

The Japanese writing is part of an initiative to Internationalise Loughborough ラフバラ Market. To learn more about this initiative see yep.it/lborom

It is an interesting challenge to transliterate English Names to Chinese. The technique I use is to try and get as close as possible to the sound of the English Name in pinyin and then find good/interesting Chinese Characters to match the pinyin. I mainly use the MDBG dictionary to lookup the Chinese Characters.

Elaine I transliterated as 爱兰 which I translate literally as Loves Orchids. The pinyin form of 爱兰 is àilán.

Deacon I transliterated as 螮空 which I translate literally as Rainbow Sky. The pinyin form of 螮空 is dìkōng.

Roger I transliterated as 柔杰 which I translate literally as Gentle Hero. The pinyin form of 柔杰 is róujié.

You are responsible for your feelings. Or are you?

These days everyone seems to be in favour of people taking responsibility. But in the self-help world, an unusual spin on this idea has become popular: "You are responsible for your feelings." (Sometimes the word "emotions" is used instead of "feelings", and here I'll treat the two terms synonymously.) Now it makes sense to talk about taking responsibility for your behaviour—although it's easier said than done—but what would it mean for a person to take responsibility for their internal state of being? The question hinges on what we mean by the word "responsibility".

Consider the following scenario: suppose you're helping to organize a party and you take responsibility for the drinks. In this case, taking responsibility means looking after, taking care of. Applying this to our feelings makes a good deal of sense. Ultimately, each of us needs to look after and take care of our feelings. Other people's behaviour can of course have a great impact on our lives, but each of us is the only one with direct access to our own feelings. Given this unique position, a passive approach doesn't make much sense. Part of what it means to "take responsibility for your feelings" is embodied in the familiar term from the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "the pursuit of happiness".

But there's another sense to the word "responsibility". The sense of causation—and blame. For example, "Who's responsible for this mess?" and "The Taliban took responsibility for the attack." In what way can you be the cause of your feelings? Well, it turns out there's a very popular model in psychotherapy that suggests just that.


It's called the A-B-C model and it was introduced by Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavioral therapy, a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. The A-B-C model counters the common notion that people and events make us feel certain ways. Ellis argued that between the activating event (A) and the emotional consequences (C) lie our beliefs (B). Changing our "irrational" beliefs can change how we feel about the events in our lives. While this approach seems reasonable—and indeed studies have shown that it can be very helpful for some people—the A-B-C model has its limitations.

For example suppose you're taking a pleasant walk in the woods when a bear jumps out at you. Your response may have little to do with your beliefs and a lot to do with thousands of years of evolution telling you that you're in mortal danger! Another limitation of the A-B-C model is that while thoughts can influence emotions, emotions can also influence thoughts. The work of neuroscientists such as António Damásio has revealed the intricacy of how thoughts and emotions are intertwined in the brain. The A-B-C model strikes me as a drastic oversimplification. And that's ok; it's only a model after all. An imperfect theory can still be useful.

But the limitations of the A-B-C model often seem to be overlooked in pop psychology. If people's emotions are caused by their beliefs, then can't it be said that they "choose" their emotions? It's not hard to see how this can lead to "blaming the victim". For example, people who have suffered traumatic life events often experience serious emotional consequences. It would be callous in the extreme to suggest that their suffering is "caused" by their own beliefs.

In the end, compassion is essential, both towards others and towards ourselves. I find it hard to see how simplistic notions of emotional causation will engender such a response.

You're being irrational!

As anyone who has watched the original Star Trek series knows, Mr Spock was big on logic. He was also big on labeling the behaviour of humans "illogical". For example, consider this quote:

May I say that I have not enjoyed serving under Humans. I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.
Season 3, episode 7 ("Day of the Dove")

Now it's true that humans do make logical errors from time to time. For example suppose Tom is considering hiring a contractor. A friend recommends asking for references because "Good contractors provide references." Sure enough, the contractor provides references and Tom hires them. Unfortunately the work is poor, and Tom complains, "I thought good contractors provide references!?"

But it's not just in the case of formal errors of logic that people's arguments and behaviour are termed "illogical"—or more commonly "irrational". For example, purchasing and selling decisions are sometimes called irrational simply because the commenter doesn't understand or agree with them. Why doesn't Grandma sell her home to make way for the skyscraper? She's been offered a very generous price! Why's she being so irrational? But Grandma has lived in that neighborhood for years and simply doesn't want a fancy new home with new neighbours.

People whose political views differ from ours are often slurred as being irrational. But what we really mean is that taken within our political framework their arguments make no sense. What really doesn't make sense is the idea that someone else's argument has to fit with our premises.

Logic proceeds from premises to conclusions. Without the premises, there can be no reasoning. Premises can be facts ("It is raining.") but they can also be desires ("I'd like to stay dry."). When Mr Spock complains about human emotions, he's suggesting that we should behave like computers. But who will program the computers?

Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" sounds a bit as if it privileges thinking above other human capacities. Descartes was in fact questioning everything he believed until he reached the point of questioning whether he himself existed. Of course this is nonsense: if he was thinking this, then he must exist. Problem solved! Sort of. What about everything else in the world, including his senses?

Thinking is only part of what human existence entails. Feeling and emotions are perhaps more fundamental. And much of what purports to be reasoning may in fact be post hoc rationalizations. Simple exercises in reasoning—"It's raining and I'd like to stay dry, so I'll bring an umbrella"—depend on desires born of feelings (it's not pleasant to be cold and wet). When it comes to more complex motivations and behaviours, the roles of thinking and feeling get hopelessly entangled.

Of course Mr Spock is just a character on a TV show. The writers repeatedly emphasize that emotion is indeed central to human existence. What bothers me is the false dichotomy they set up between thinking and feeling. In general, our emotions don't cause us to act irrationally, and the notion that we should act more "logically" misses the point. This is illustrated in Season 1, Episode 12 ("The Menagerie: Part II"):

Captain Kirk: Eh, Mr. Spock, when you're finished, please come back and see me, I want to talk to you. This regrettable tendency you've been showing lately towards flagrant emotionalism...

Mr. Spock: I see no reason to insult me, sir. I believe I've been completely logical about the whole affair.

Why do we overinterpret study findings?

MSNBC recently reported that a new study suggests "U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth". (I learned of this on Rationally Speaking.) The study itself is Open Access, so all the details are freely available. The scatterplot illustrates the strong association the authors found. Now, the authors were reasonably cautious in how they interpreted their findings. The trouble is, the general public may not be.

A common error is to conclude the study shows that religiosity causes higher teen birth rates. But correlation does not imply causation. It could be that higher teen birth rates cause religiosity. Or perhaps a third, unidentified factor causes both.

But isn't the strength of association still impressive? It is. But what if, as I just suggested, there are other variables involved? Such confounding variables (or confounders, as they are commonly known) can wreak havoc on this sort of analysis. Indeed, the authors of the study did adjust for median household income and abortion rate (both at the state level). But it is possible that other confounders are lurking. And unfortunately, we tend to forget entirely about the possibility of confounders when we hear about study findings.

Another error is to conclude that the findings directly apply to individuals. Here I will quote the authors directly:

We would like to emphasize that we are not attempting to use associations between teen birth rate and religiosity, using data aggregated at the state level, to make inferences at the individual level. It would be a statistical and logical error to infer from our results, “Religious teens get pregnant more often.” Such an inference would be an example of the ecological fallacy ... The associations we report could still be obtained if, hypothetically, religiosity in communities had an effect of discouraging contraceptive use in the whole community, including the nonreligious teens there, and only the nonreligious teens became pregnant. Or, to create a different imaginary scenario, the results could be obtained if religious parents discouraged contraceptive use in their children, but only nonreligious offspring of such religious parents got pregnant. We create these scenarios simply to illustrate that our ecological correlations do not permit statements about individuals.

To err is human ...

My goal here has not been to criticize the authors of this study, nor the media. Rather, what I find remarkable is how such a simple statement—"states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth"—can be so easily misinterpreted, and in so many different ways! Does anyone know of any research about our tendency to overinterpret scientific findings? Of course, we'd probably overinterpet it.

War is bad for your health

U.S. health care spending per capita is the highest in the world. Yet, as The Economist notes, "America lags behind other wealthy countries in the overall performance of its medical system". It might seem ironic then, that the same magazine has stated that the U.S. "offers the best health care in the world." But keep reading:

If you are lucky enough to have proper insurance and be admitted to the Mayo Clinic, the UCLA Medical Centre or Johns Hopkins, you will enjoy outstanding treatment. Unfortunately, as the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured have discovered, America offers some of the most unreliable, costliest and least equitable health care in the world too.

The U.S. spends around 17% of its GDP on health care. This compares to Canada where we have a publicly-funded system, and spend around 9%.

Now there are lots of complexities here and I don't mean to oversimplify. The Canadian health care system is far from perfect, although I think most Canadians are bemused by the outlandish depictions some American demagogues present. In any case, the fact is health care costs have been spiralling here just like in the U.S. As President Obama struggles to enact health care reform, people wonder, "Where will we get the money?" Canadians are asking the same question.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Asia ...

... we have some nasty little wars going on. According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the U.S. spends $771 a second on Afghanistan and $3973 a second on Iraq. Oh, that's $2 billion/month and $10.3 billion/month respectively. Canada isn't involved in Iraq, but the total projected costs of the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan are "up to" $18.1 billion. (Those quotes express a certain skepticism on my part.)

And how are things going in Afghanistan?

Overall security conditions throughout much of Afghanistan continued to deteriorate during the quarter. In May and June, the frequency of insurgency attacks nationally was higher than in any month since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

The CBC reports that, to date,

Since 2002, 131 Canadian soldiers have been killed serving in the Afghanistan mission. One diplomat and two aid workers have also been killed.

There is no mention of Afghans. Nor—and this raises another point—is there any mention of soldiers who were wounded. Soldiers who may well require ongoing medical care. And how do you measure the costs of post-traumatic stress disorder?

Diagnosis

We are pouring money down the drain on unnecessary, unwinnable wars, all the while wringing our hands about where we'll get the money to pay for decent health care.

Why philosophical zombies matter

I first wrote about the mysteries of consciousness on this blog back in February 2006. This prompted me to do some reading on the philosophy of mind, and in March 2006 I wrote more about consciousness.

Though I didn't mention it directly in that post, a very compelling argument concerns what are called philosophical zombies. I would put the argument like this. First, ask yourself: Is it conceivable that there could be a thing that appears to be human but in fact has no conscious experience? In other words, a biological machine, identical to a human in every way, except that it has no free will, feels nothing, experiences nothing. To put it bluntly, a zombie.

If your answer is no, then I would ask this: How can you know that some of the "humans" around you are not in fact zombies? Is there a device available that will measure consciousness? Granted we have tools that can measure aspects of the complex electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But complex electrical and chemical activity is not consciousness. Consciousness has to be experienced. And there's the rub. We can be sure of only one person's consciousness: our own. As Descartes famously noted, "I think therefore I am". Continuing to follow this line of reasoning can lead to solipsism, but that's not my point at all. Rather, I believe that the philosophical zombie argument provides one indication that there is more to the world than the material.

In response to this argument, people will sometimes steadfastly maintain that consciousness is nothing more than complex neurological activity. When I point out that there's no reason to believe that such activity has to be accompanied by consciousness, the response has sometimes been to deny consciousness itself! Which brings me back to the cartoon at the start of this post. Someone who denies their own consciousness could only be a zombie!

Photos from Gatineau Park

Today was a wet day in the Ottawa area, but the Gatineau Park was beautiful, as always!

The headline effect

In Canadian print journalism, probably the single most important real estate is the front page of the Saturday Globe and Mail. Today's lead article was about the plight of Pakistani women fleeing the Swat valley. In the print issue, the headline was "Between Fear and Freedom", with a secondary headline stating that "The Taliban have driven almost a million women and children out of their homes in the Swat valley." The article itself, by Stephanie Nolen, describes it differently: "Nearly a million Pakistani women have had to flee ... as the government intensifies a military operation against Islamist militants."

No doubt the agonizing decision to leave behind one's home is made for various reasons. Nolen writes: "The women arrive here with their families, running from Taliban aggression or aerial and ground attacks from the Pakistani military – or both." So why does the headline mention only the Taliban?

In a journal article titled How Bias Shapes the News [pdf], Barbie Zelizer and co-authors noted that "Headlines highlight the main point of the coverage, privileging certain interpretations of an event over others." The importance of headlines has been studied empirically. In a study by Percy Tannenbaum published in 1953 ("The Effects of Headlines on the Interpretation of News Stories", Journalism Quarterly, vol 30: 189-97), students were given a fictitious newspaper story about a homicide trial with different headlines. The slant of the headline was significantly associated with whether students believed the accused to be guilty or not. F. T. Marquez argued (The Journal of Communication, 1980, vol 30: 30-36.) that "Many newspaper readers may read only headlines and thus may form their opinions of the day’s events based on those headlines alone."

As I understand it, newspaper headlines are typically not written by the journalists who write the articles. Jazzed-up headlines may serve to excite interest and sell more newspapers. But they may distort the content of the articles, and—whether consciously or unconsciously—inject ideological bias.

Photos from Banff

Just got back from a trip to Banff, Alberta. Foolishly, I didn't pack a camera! Well, except for my cell phone. So here, in glorious low resolution, are some snaps:

Is everything that can be imagined real?

A couple of days ago, I went to see the Mythic Beasts special exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. It's a fascinating collection of artifacts and stories from around the world.

Now, I have previously written about beasts like unicorns that (probably) don't exist. What about the unicorn's cousin, Pegasus?

How can we talk about Pegasus? To what does the word 'Pegasus' refer? If our answer is, 'Something,' then we seem to believe in mystical entities; if our answer is, 'nothing', then we seem to talk about nothing and what sense can be made of this? Certainly when we said that Pegasus was a mythological winged horse we make sense, and moreover we speak the truth! If we speak the truth, this must be truth about something. So we cannot be speaking of nothing.

The quote—or perhaps it's a paraphrase—is from the Wikipedia entry for philosopher W.V. Quine. In the philosophy of language, this is known as the problem of empty names, and I stumbled on it yesterday by chance. But it reminded me of a curious quote I'd seen at the entrance to the exhibition:

Open-mindedness

Following from my previous post on supernatural explanations for unexplained events, I was delighted to find this entertaining video on the topic of open-mindedness. Seems it's been making the rounds, but if you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth checking out. (For a précis, see the blog mental indigestion.)

Not only is it visually clever, the content is quite good. What's more, the author, who goes by the intriguing moniker Qualia Soup, has produced a bunch of other good videos.

Think it's unthinkable to explain the unexplainable?

Recent years have seen a remarkable rise in the popularity of atheism in the English-speaking world. For example, the proportion of respondents to the U.S. General Social Survey who indicate "no religion" as their religious preference (the green line in the figure to the left) has been steadily climbing for about 15 years.

Along with this rise has come a spate of Does-God-Exist debates. These debates raise plenty of interesting questions, but I wonder if there is more heat than light. Taking an adversarial approach to an omnibus question is a good way to bring up issues, but perhaps a poor way to clarify them.

One thing that does come up in most of these debates is the issue of divine intervention. In a 1995 debate with William Lane Craig, Massimo Pigliucci mentions the kind of God

... that doesn't interfere with the regular everyday life of the world. He may have created the world, but then after that he retired. That kind of God is completely unfalsifiable; science doesn't have anything to do with it, and rationalism doesn't have anything to do with it. There is no way to deny that kind of God.

But, he continues,

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that not many people here actually believe in that kind of God because it's not particularly satisfying. It doesn't do anything for us.

And he moves on to the idea of a God who does intervene in the world.

Early religions provided explanations of mysterious natural phenomena. While those explanations provided meaning as part of a mythic framework, they lacked predictive power. As science gradually developed, the older religious explanations were displaced. As Pigliucci put it,

The more we understand, the less room there seems to be for God to exist. Now if you extrapolate just a little bit, you'll see that you have no reason for God.

William Lane Craig responded:

... even if it were true that God doesn't often intervene in the universe in miraculous ways, that's not incompatible with Christianity. After all, miracles by their nature are relatively rare, and I don't think that God does frequently go around intervening in the universe in miraculous ways.

Which got me wondering about miracles (from the Latin mirari, to wonder) ...

Mirabile dictu!


Glass painting by Faroese artist, Tróndur Patursson, from The Catholic Church, Tórshavn, Føroyar.

It turns out that it's not so easy to define a miracle. According to an article by Jakub Pawlikowski on The history of thinking about miracles in the West,

... the most general characterization of a miracle is an event that causes wonder. As such, it must also be in some way unusual, extraordinary, or contrary to our expectations.

That seems to fit with the "casual usage" referred to by Wikipedia:

... any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, (such as the survival of a natural disaster) or even which regarded as "wonderful" regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds.'

But Pigliucci and Craig were talking about physical miracles, or as Wikipedia puts it, "a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be explained by divine intervention".

Now, as I previously discussed, I'm not too keen on the term "the laws of nature". For one thing, I think it obscures the distinction between the way the physical universe really is and the way we model it scientifically. Our models (sometimes called "laws") are just approximations. But suppose the physical universe really is as depicted below:

The vertical axis represents the three spatial dimensions and the horizontal axis represents time. The light colour filling the box represents the way the universe ordinarily works. The bright coloured areas represent miracles, wherein the universe works differently. The blue miracle is quick and localized (Jesus turning water into wine?). The green miracle takes more time and is also localized. The yellow miracle is fairly spread out in both time and space. Finally, the red miracle is quick but has a wide spatial extent (The parting of the Red Sea?).

For the purposes of illustration, I have depicted several miracles, and together they occupy a substantial part of the diagram. But miracles are generally seen as quite exceptional. For example, in the debate, William Lane Craig stated that

... miracles by their nature are relatively rare, and I don't think that God does frequently go around intervening in the universe in miraculous ways.

Note also that I have shown each miracle in a different colour to represent their uniqueness. As far back as Aristotle, it has been recognized that

there is no science of the individual as such (hê d' epistêmê tôn katholou)
History of Philosophy by William Turner.

where (the Wikipedia page on reproducibility notes):

... the word used for individual in Greek had the connotation of the idiosyncratic, or wholly isolated occurrence.

So if a miracle were to repeat, there could be a pattern, rendering it subject to scientific investigation, i.e. not a miracle at all. Bearing this in mind, the definition I shall use is:

A miracle is a physical event that cannot ever be explained in terms of physical patterns.

Scientists generally assume that the universe has certain uniformity properties. Indeed the validity of inductive inference depends on such properties. A universe with miracles is not credible—as Einstein put it, "the Lord is subtle but not malicious". Furthermore, simplicity is prized in science, and affirmed in the principle of Occam's razor. Many scientists see beauty in the simplicity of scientific models, but as I've noted, these models are just approximations. It is conceivable that the universe does feature intractable complexity—such as miracles would entail—and it's just our models that are simple.

Now in a universe like the one in the diagram, people would report miraculous events from time to time. Many of them would simply be unexplained observations from the light-coloured part of the diagram, i.e. where the universe is working as it ordinarily does, but we don't understand it. (As Goethe put it, "Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.") But a very few of them would be observations from the bright-coloured parts of the diagram, i.e. the true miracles. Science would likely progress as in our world, with developing scientific knowledge of the ordinary functioning of the universe. Scientists would treat reports of miraculous events as unexplained anecdotal observations, as they do in our world. The faithful would treat some of the reports of miraculous events as true miracles. Of course they might fail to identify some miracles and falsely identify some ordinary events as miracles.

Consider, however, a case of apparent divine intervention: solar eclipses. The book of Amos (8:9) apparently refers to one:

And on that day,' says the Lord God, `I will make the Sun go down at noon, and darken the Earth in broad daylight.'

This is suspected to be the near-total Assyrian eclipse, dated to 763 BCE. But between 600 and 200 BCE, Babylonian astronomers discovered that these mysterious events could be predicted. Eclipses began to move from the realm of miracles to that of natural patterns.

So the eclipse of Amos may have been a misidentified miracle. But is there a good way to identify miracles? William Lane Craig provides a method for retrospectively identifying a miracle:

You should believe in a miracle, I think, when (1) No naturalistic explanation of the facts is available that plausibly explains the facts, and (2) There is a supernatural explanation suggested in the religio-historical context in which the event occurred.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that by Craig's criteria the eclipse of Amos was not a genuine miracle. However, with reference to the miraculous event at the heart of Christianity, Craig states:

... I certainly think a Christian is within his rights to say, "You know, it looks to me like those men were telling the truth," that the best explanation is that Jesus did rise from the dead. So you can remain agnostic if you want to, but it seems to me that as a historian I'm certainly within my rational rights to say the best explanation is that Jesus rose from the dead.

Reasons to believe in miracles

It seems to me that there are two main reasons to believe in physical miracles. The first is that one's religious faith leads one to do so. The second is that one believes that the evidence is overwhelming that a given event is not just unexplained but unexplainable. Here one would need to have complete trust in any eyewitness reports, and be sure that the eyewitnesses were not deluding themselves, or halucinating.

Reasons not to believe in miracles

I think that there are also two main reasons to not believe in miracles. The first is that science has been tremendously successful. Ancient peoples were surrounded by mysterious natural phenomena whose patterns were difficult to discern. It is not surprising that divine intervention seemed ubiquitous. Today we understand and have learned to manipulate many aspects of our world. Paraphrasing Pigliucci, "The more we understand, the less room there seems to be for miracles."

The second reason to not believe in miracles is the belief that the universe is fundamentally simple. Einstein wrote that "Nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas." Indeed the successes of science—based as it is on inductive inference and principles like Occam's razor—seem to support this. Miracles seem neither simple nor elegant, but more like a kludge.

Regardless of those reasons not to believe in miracles, I believe that we're evolutionarily programmed to look for patterns. In a world full of physical patterns, the capacity for sophisticated pattern recognition is highly adaptive. It's a no-brainer (as it were).

More meaningful miracles?

While the idea of physical miracles poses some challenges to a scientific view of the world, I think that in the end there may be more meaningful miracles to consider. English writer Margaret Storm Jameson wrote that

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

I'd be very interested in other thoughts on the subject of miracles.

The urge to infer

A news item on cbc.ca this week had the following headline: "Need 8 hours of shuteye? Even 6 can cut diabetes danger, study suggests". The first line of the article informs us that:

People who sleep less than six hours a night are nearly five times more likely than longer sleepers to develop a blood-sugar condition that could lead to diabetes, new U.S. research suggests.

A longer Reuters article fills in some details:

Using data from a large, six-year study, they identified 91 people whose blood sugar rose during the study period and compared them to 273 people whose glucose levels remained in the normal range.

They found the short sleepers were far more likely to develop impaired fasting glucose -- a condition that can lead to type 2 diabetes -- during the study period than those who slept six to eight hours.

One might ask any number of questions—for example, how did they measure the number of hours slept—but I want to focus on the interpretation.

The Reuters article accurately stated what was observed:

people in [the] study who slept less than six hours were 4.5 times more likely to develop abnormal blood sugar readings in six years compared with those who slept longer.

This is an example of descriptive statistics: it simply describes what happened.

In contrast, the CBC article refers not to what did happen, but to what will happen (at least as "new U.S. research suggests"). This is a jump from the sample to the population, and into the realm of inferential statistics. Presumably the authors applied valid statistical methodology in making their inferences. Unfortunately, we can't check because their results are not yet published. They were presented this past Wednesday at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference in Florida. I will not comment here on whether it is appropriate for the media to report on results that have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

There is, however, a second inferential leap here. The CBC article suggested that inadequate sleep is "a culprit" in diabetes. Causal inferences like this are notoriously slippery. Could it not be that the development of diabetes can lead to sleep difficulties? Or perhaps there is some unidentified factor that causes both impaired glucose function and sleep difficulties? Reuters reports that the authors adjusted for age, obesity, heart rate, high blood pressure, family history of diabetes and symptoms of depression. But one can imagine any number of other possible factors. Causal inferences are extremely difficult, and at the very least they deserve cautious interpretation.

I believe that inference comes naturally to human beings; indeed this is perhaps our most distinctive evolutionary adaptation. We are programmed to infer. But like other aspects of our evolutionary inheritance, this can sometimes be maladaptive in the modern world. Consider for example the drive to consume calorie-laden goodies, which for most of human history was highly adaptive. Today, the causal chain between such behaviour, obesity, and diabetes is all too evident.

Reason is not enough

I just finished reading Chris Hedges' 2008 book, I Don't Believe in Atheists. The image on the left is from a YouTube video of an interview Hedges gave on CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos, which gives a pretty good overview his argument. One side point: while the book is a great read, its title is oddly misleading, so pay that no heed.

Hedges argues that both poles of the debate about reason and religion are occupied by fundamentalists, but at one end they are religious while at the other they are atheist. He argues persuasively, but I have some doubts ...

Thesis

Hedges, a distinguished foreign correspondent for various newspapers including the New York Times, wrote the book after debates he had in May 2007 with Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith) and Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great). Hedges terms these two writers "New Atheists" along with Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. But what particularly distinguishes Harris and Hitchens is that their political views with respect to the Islamic world are curiously compatible with those of the Christian right. Harris: "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death." (The End of Faith). Hitchens: "But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for 'respect.'" (Slate)

Hedges' thesis is that the new atheists and religious fundamentalists make the same mistake. They have a utopian belief in the perfectibility of humanity. The difference between them is that atheists hitch their wagons to reason and science while religious fundamentalists rely on faith. But Hedges argues the key point is that they both externalize evil:

Evil, for the Christian fundamentalists and the atheists, is not something within them but an external force to be vanquished. It must be conquered and defeated. This may take violence, even massive acts of violence, but if it leads to a better world, this violence is justified. They have been anointed by reason or God to do battle with this terrible evil. But once evil is seen as being only external, once some human beings are proclaimed more moral than others, repression and murder becomes a regrettable necessity to improve the world. Those infected with the "vice" of evil have to be controlled or exterminated.

On the contrary, asserts Hedges, inside each of us lies what Joseph Conrad called the "heart of darkness":

Human beings are frequently irrational. They are governed by unconscious forces, many of them self-destructive. ... We are bound by our animal natures.

Finally, Hedges argues that "We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril.":

This understanding of innate human corruptibility and human limitations, whether explained by the theologian Augustine or the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, has been humankind's most potent check on utopian visions. It has forced human beings to accept their own myopia and irrationality, to acknowledge that no act, even one defined as moral or virtuous, is free from the taint of self-interest and corruption.

Hence, "We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin."

Now, I'm well disposed towards a lot of what Hedges says. I find the islamophobia of Hitchens and Harris to be repugnant. The same goes for Hitchens' promotion of the Iraq war and Harris' equivocation on the legitimacy of torture. They have both helped to prop up the Orwellian "war on terror". I dislike their combative, insulting, condescending styles of debate. And they both seem to lack insight into the meaning of religious belief.

Hedges' thesis has a lot going for it, and for the most part he presents his argument in a cogent way. Above all, I agree with him that absolute certainty is extremely dangerous. But some of his arguments don't sit right with me.

Antithesis

Hedges writes that many atheists believe that

... reason and science, rather than religion, will regulate human conflicts and bring about a paradise. This vision draws its inspiration from the Enlightenment, the European intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that taught that reason and scientific method could be applied to all aspects of human life. This application would lead to progress, human enlightenment and a better world.

Indeed,

The human species, elevated above animals because it possessed the capacity to reason, could break free of its animal nature and, through reason, understand itself and the world. It could make wise and informed decisions for the betterment of humanity.

Hedges seems to agree with Enlightenment thinkers that our "animal nature" is a threat, but does not believe we can "break free" of it. We are "bound by our animal natures", "frequently irrational", and "governed by unconscious forces, many of them self-destructive". He sides with Freud who "warned that our instinctual lusts were stronger than our reasonable interests." Thus reason can be overwhelmed by our animal urges.

Is instinct really so unreasonable?

Like fear, for example? Is it unreasonable to flee from danger? Is it irrational to go out of your way to pursue a romantic possibility? Our basic needs, many of which we share with animals, are not irrational per se, but are instead the starting point of reasoning. Given that I'd like to go on a date with this man or woman, what's my best strategy? If I smell a gas leak, what should I do? Sometimes our instincts lead us to do things which might be labeled irrational, like running into a burning building to save a child. But that hardly seems contemptible.

Reason can lead to many different conclusions, depending on where you start. Deep-seated psychological factors can colour a person's reasoning. For example, strong biases can blind one to contradictory evidence. Perhaps more problematically, even when the evidence one uses has not been selected in a biased fashion, one's moral premises may be distorted. In particular, most of us are constrained (to put it mildly) by personal history and cultural assumptions.

What most worries Hedges, is our aggressive instinct and its connection with war and barbarism. We can understand aggression in the animal world. For example, when a mother Bear feels her cub is threatened, her aggressive response makes sense to us. Human aggression is another matter. Hedges, who has seen the brutality of war first hand—in Central America, Palestine, Bosnia, and elsewhere—is not optimistic. He is again swayed by Freud's argument that, as Hedges understands it,

The lusts for death and destruction are not external. They lurk in all human beings. They cannot be eradicated.

This dark view leads Hedges to some remarkable conclusions:

Pacifists, although they do not fuel the lust for violence, keep alive the myth that the human species can attain a state of moral perfection. This myth feeds the aggressiveness and cruelty of those who demand the use of violence to cleanse the world, to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, of "the evildoers." The danger is not pacifism or militarism. It is the poisonous belief in human perfectibility, and the failure to accept our own sinfulness, our own limitations and moral corruption. This belief in our innate goodness becomes dangerous in a crisis, a moment when human beings feel threatened. It enlarges our capacity for aggression, violence and mass slaughter.

So pacifists do not "fuel the lust for violence", but they indirectly "feed the aggressiveness and cruelty" of others. Huh? And militarism isn't dangerous?

What I think this reveals is that Hedges is extremely pessimistic about attempts to address structural causes of the world's problems. I do not disagree with him that each of us is morally imperfect. And I share his distrust for utopian projects—though I would strongly argue that pacifism need not be construed as utopian. But I think he's been reading a bit too much Ecclesiastes.

Knowledge about wisdom / wisdom about knowledge

Hedges writes that "We drift toward disaster with the comforting thought that the god of science will intervene on our behalf." I agree that this naive faith in science is misplaced. Indeed I fully agree when Hedges writes:

Knowledge is not wisdom. Knowledge is the domain of scientific and intellectual inquiry. Wisdom goes beyond self-awareness. It permits us to interpret the rational and the nonrational. It is both intellectual and intuitive.

The equation of knowledge and virtue goes back at least to Socrates. And though I have long recognized it as an error, I have trouble shaking it—much to my chagrin. Perhaps it is because I think knowledge and virtue ought to be united. And perhaps it is just this sort of utopian thinking that Hedges is warning us about.

Colour commentary

I've just reworked the design of this blog (well, it's really the culmination of lots of tinkering). While the form has changed, the content remains the same. Perhaps I should follow Ray Deonandan's suggestion and rename my blog Log base 2.0.

Colour me ignorant

In the redesign, I wanted more colour. But colour is trickier than I thought. There's the physics of light, the physiology of the eye, and the way the brain interprets colour information from the eye. On this last point, the Wikipedia page on colour says:

A dominant theory of color vision proposes that color information is transmitted out of the eye by three opponent processes, or opponent channels, each constructed from the raw output of the cones: a red-green channel, a blue-yellow channel and a black-white "luminance" channel. This theory has been supported by neurobiology, and accounts for the structure of our subjective color experience. Specifically, it explains why we cannot perceive a "reddish green" or "yellowish blue," and it predicts the color wheel ...

A guy I know purportedly (though my memory may have embellished a little) once argued that there are "really" only 7 colours. (Oops. It has been estimated that humans are capable of distinguishing several million colors.) I think he was engaged in some kind of battle of the sexes with his girlfriend, who was distinguishing between colours such as coral, salmon, and tomato. In our culture, women seem to be much more attuned to colour than men.

No doubt some would argue that this is due to underlying physiological differences between the sexes. I certainly wouldn't rule out biological factors, but I think culture is a more likely culprit.

Which brings me to another fascinating aspect of colour: its symbolism, associations, and preferences. For example in the west, blue often represents business (think of a dark blue suit), red means passion, purple is the colour of royalty. Green symbolizes environmentalism, but it also traditionally represented envy. But it's not that simple. In Canada blue is the colour of the Conservative party, whereas in the U.S., blue is the colour of the Democrats whereas red is the colour of the more conservative Republicans. Speaking of red, what about "red" China? Well in China, red is the colour brides wear, not the white that is conventional in the west. White, after all, is the colour of funerals in the east. Then there's the whole question of what colours are seen as masculine or feminine, and whether this varies between cultures, and over time.

Multivariate analyses: interactions galore

When more than one colour is involved, things get even more interesting. Consider two instantly recognizable colour pairs—at least in the West: (1) black and orange; (2) red and green. Colour schemes are a staple of graphic design. I think this is because the meanings conveyed by colours, individually and as part of multi-colour schemes, is very powerful and subtle. Visitors to a website often make snap judgments based in part on colour schemes. Gaudy clashing colours may be a clue that the website isn't worth spending time on. Or perhaps it's an avant-garde artsy site? And of course, the word "gaudy" is dripping with cultural assumptions.

Effective colour schemes aren't easy to conjure up. Instead we often rely on default choices, such as those provided by blog templates. In my exploration, I did find one fabulous colour-scheme tool: Adobe's free online site kuler. It lets you create colour schemes (automatically generating complementary colours, analogous colours, etc.) and explore other people's, with entertaining names like "Old Shell Station", "Ugly Accusations", and "Sushi Maki" (one of my favorites).

They certainly weren't going to pick blue!

And finally, in case you were wondering, the 2009 colour of the year, according to Pantone, is
Mimosa. "Mimosa embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change." Drat! Now I have to redesign my website again.

The Fort Chipewyan cancer cluster

Fort Chipewyan (often called Fort Chip) is a town of 1200 in northern Alberta. In 2006, a local physician reported 6 suspected cases of a rare form of cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, as well as elevated rates of other cancers. What made this particularly alarming is that Fort Chipewyan is located downstream from the huge Athabasca oil sands development and there is also uranium mining and pulp and paper industry in the area. Yesterday, Alberta Health Services released a report on Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta 1995-2006 [pdf].

It turns out that only two of the six suspected cases were in fact cholangiocarcinoma. However overall cancer rates do seem to be elevated. The report concludes that:

In particular, increases of observed over expected were found for biliary tract cancers as a group and cancers of the blood and lymphatic system. These increases were based on a small number of cases and could be due to chance or increased detection. The possibility that the increased rate is due to increased risk in the community, however, cannot be ruled out.

To be precise, during the period 1995-2006 there were 51 cases of cancer, where 38.9 were expected based on the population and age-distribution of the town. Thus the incidence is 31% higher than expected, which can be expressed as an "indirect standardized incidence ratio" (ISIR) of 1.31. A 95% confidence interval for the ISIR goes from 0.98 to 1.72. Because this confidence interval (barely) includes 1, we cannot reject the hypothesis that this is simply a chance finding. The report, however, notes that this:

... is a two-sided equal tail test that does not discriminate whether the aim was to examine an ISIR that is greater than 1 (Observed>Expected), or an ISIR that is less than 1 (Observed<Expected)

As an alternative, the report presents the results of simulations. The red bar below shows where the observed 51 cases lie relative to a Poisson distribution with mean 38.9. (The Poisson distribution is the simplest assumption for event counts. Note that its mean and variance are equal.)


The caption notes that the "percentage of the simulated counts greater or equal to the observed count is 3.5%". This is equivalent to a one-sided test, which rejects (at the 5% level) the hypothesis that this is a chance finding. (Generally speaking, two-sided tests are preferred because they are more conservative and do not presuppose a direction of deviation.)

As noted above, two specific types of cancer are of particular concern. Eight cases of cancer of the blood or lymphatic system were observed compared to the expected 3.4, an ISIR of 2.37 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.02 to 4.68. Three cases of cancer of the biliary tract (cholangiocarcinoma is part of this category) were observed compared to the expected 0.7, an ISIR of 4.48 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.92 to 13.08.

There are always limitations

The report notes that:

• The small population size of Fort Chipewyan limits the ability to interpret results. In larger populations, one additional case does not have the same impact.
  
• The increased rates observed were all based on a small number of cases.
  
• The First Nations in Fort Chipewyan may have unique characteristics that are different from other First Nations communities in Alberta; this cannot be accounted for in the current analysis.
  
• This study was not able to account for the effect of migration on the cancer rate calculation.
  
• The study was not designed to determine whether living in Fort Chipewyan elevated cancer risk.
  
• The study was not designed to determine the cause of any of the cancers experienced in Fort Chipewyan.
  

Cluster distruster?

In Cancer as an Environmental Disease, edited by Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati et al., A. Novogradec and S. Harris Ali note (p.25) that:

The value of studying cancer clusters has been questioned by those who contend that little has been gained in terms of acquiring etiological understanding ... Such critiques commonly cite the issue of 'pre-selection bias' or the 'bulls-eye problem'.

But they go on to say that:

... clusters at the very least should signal the possibility that there may be a common source or mechanism for carcinogenesis amongst members of the cluster.

There is a lot more that could be said about the particular situation at Fort Chipewyan (including evidence of environmental contamination and its sources), about the strengths and weaknesses [pdf] of the study, about epidemiological methodology for investigating cancer clusters, and about the history of other cancer clusters around the world. My sense is that the answers may not be straightforward.

Update 09Feb2009: Here are two interesting blog posts on the subject, one from Ken Chapman and the other from Metis Bare Facts. Also note that the U.S. National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both have good pages on cancer clusters.

And philosophy

I was at the bookstore the other night and wandered over to the philosophy section. Or should I say, the "and philosophy" section. You see, it was dominated by books with titles like The Simpsons and Philosophy, Metallica and Philosophy, Monty Python and Philosophy, The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy (subtitle: "I Link Therefore I Am")—the list goes on and on, as do the witty subtitles.

These are all part of the Popular Culture and Philosophy series. Editor George Reisch writes:

Since its inception in 2000, Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy® series has brought high-quality philosophy to general readers. The volumes present essays by academic philosophers exploring the meanings, concepts, and puzzles within television shows, movies, music and other icons of popular culture.

The first in the series was Seinfeld and Philosophy, edited by William Irwin:

How is Jerry like Socrates? Is it rational for George to "do the opposite?" Would Simone de Beauvoir say that Elaine is a feminist? Is Kramer stuck in Kierkegaard's aesthetic stage?

How about Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy?

Who counts as human? Is killing an intelligent non-human murder or garbage disposal? Can we really know who we are until we know what we are?

Or James Bond and Philosophy?

Is Bond a Nietzschean hero who graduates "beyond good and evil"? Does Bond paradoxically break the law in order, ultimately, to uphold it like any "stupid policeman"? What can Bond’s razor-sharp reasoning powers tell us about the scientific pursuit of truth? Does 007’s license to kill help us understand the ethics of counterterrorism? What motivates all those despicable Bond villains—could it be a Hegelian quest for recognition?

Maybe Star Wars and Philosophy?

If the Force must have a Dark Side, how can the Dark Side be evil? Why and how did the tyrannical Empire emerge from the free Republic? Are droids persons, entitled to civil rights? Is Yoda a Stoic or a Zen master?

And yet ...

My first reaction upon seeing this plethora of pop-culture on the philosophy shelves was disapproval. Try to find a book by C. S. Peirce and you're out of luck. But no problem if you're looking for The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless!

But the truth is I haven't read any of these books, so I can't comment on their quality. Still the reader reviews on Amazon.com are generally quite positive. For example, here's some of what reader Angela Allen has to say about Harry Potter and Philosophy:

As one who reads the Potter books mostly for the escapism, it was interesting to have professional philosophers help me delve into the deeper meanings contained in the books. [...] My favorite essays were "Feminism and Equal Opportunity: Herminone and the Women of Hogwarts", "Heaven, Hell and Harry Potter" "Magic, Muggles and Moral Imagination" and "The Prophecy-Driven Life: Foreknowledge and Freedom at Hogwarts". [...] This book is probably not for the expert philosopher as these concepts will be basics but for someone of my experience (almost none) studying philosophy, it was a great read.

If anyone has read one of these books, I'd be interested in your evaluation. Are they well written? Do they trivialize philosophy or simply introduce it to ordinary people in terms they can relate to?

The truth is, I'm looking forward to reading one of these books! But which to choose? Perhaps Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant!