Don't call me surely

When you’re reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by philosophers, here is a quick trick that may save you much time and effort, especially in this age of simple searching by computer: look for “surely” in the document, and check each occurrence. Not always, not even most of the time, but often the word “surely” is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument. Why? Because it marks the very edge of what the author is actually sure about and hopes readers will also be sure about. (If the author were really sure all the readers would agree, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning.) Being at the edge, the author has had to make a judgment call about whether or not to attempt to demonstrate the point at issue, or provide evidence for it, and—because life is short—has decided in favor of bald assertion, with the presumably well-grounded anticipation of agreement. Just the sort of place to find an ill-examined “truism” that isn’t true!

An excerpt from Daniel Dennett's book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.

Jonathan Rauch's Denial

I am always bitterly amused when I hear people say that homosexuality is a choice. Even many otherwise thoughtful people maintain that the homosexual is a heterosexual who perversely ignores, or at least somehow represses, his natural cravings. I say "otherwise thoughtful" because I know of no position which collapses more quickly, under even a moment's examination, than this one.

Never mind the obvious question of why anyone would choose homosexuality, with all the inconveniences and confusions and difficulties it poses.

Let us suppose, for argument's sake, that there are people who declare: "Actually, I would prefer to be (probably) childless, to face a hundred kinds of social difficulties, to disappoint and maybe horrify my parents, to risk alienating myself from some of my friends and many of my peers, to be an object of disgust and scorn to many millions of people. Sure. Sounds fun."

​From an excerpt of Jonathan Rauch's Denial, an Amazon Kindle Single.

Timely if you've read any representative portion of the comment section on the Sports Illustrated article in which Jason Collins announced he was gay. I can't find the comment section for that piece anymore, perhaps Sports Illustrated took them down, but many argued the article proved Collins had chosen to be gay.

Comments sections, for the most part, are sobering reminders of what people will write when they can hide behind the cloak of anonymity, but Rauch, who is gay himself, provides a very powerful argument against the idea that being gay is a conscious choice.  From an incentive standpoint, it's not a choice anyone would opt for in a rational actor model.

Caesar

For instance, at the age of 22, [Caesar] was captured by pirates while crossing the Aegean. He heard the pirates were asking for 20 silver talents for him and he insisted they take no less than 50. He’s Caesar, damn it, he deserves 50. So the pirates got their ransom and released him. Caesar raised a fleet, chased down the pirates, and had them all crucified.

From a few questions for David Benioff, co-creator of Game of Thrones on HBO.​

Capturing power from your cycling

Kickstarter page for The Siva Cycle Atom, a rechargeable battery and generator that collects energy from your bike to use to power your gadgets via USB.

What I really need is a gadget I can plug into myself to generate power from any excess body fat. Weight loss and an extra hour of texting on my iPhone? Biggest Kickstarter project ever, no contest!

I mean honestly, the Matrix painted a terrifying scenario of the future in which we were all batteries for this race of alien overlords, but I can't be the only one who thought Neo looked pleasantly thin.​