rattus rattus’ blog

Ouroboros illustration by Good Winter

This fascinating illustration, a variation of the Ouroboros theme, I luckily found at the Good Winter Tumblr blog. (Click the picture to see the original version.)

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No example of the liar’s paradox but a good warm-up is

The Puzzle of the Masked Men (found at Fallacy Files)

During a bank robbery, one of the masked robbers shot a bank guard. The police caught all four robbers and interrogated them in an attempt to determine which was the shooter. Each was questioned while attached to a lie detector machine and … (read on at Fallacy Files)

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod

“People matter. Objects don’t,”
he wrote on an object,
with a liar’s smile
on his face.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

— George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

La peste de l’homme, c’est l’opinion de sçavoir. Voylà pourquoy l’ignorance nous est tant recommandée par nostre religion comme piece propre à la creance et à l’obeïssance.
— Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) in Apologie de Raimond Sebond

I guess I do have a somewhat weird sense of humor. Anyway, as the headline already suggests, this is serious matter. Your very health is at stake. Not just science.

You are 80% less likely to die from a meteor landing on your head if you wear a bicycle helmet all day, by Ben Goldrace, Bad Science blog, 2008-11-15

And, yes, this great posting had me laughing from the headline to the end :D
Thanks, Ben.

R: I just wonder what the meaning of our union is, especially. If there is a love, and it is what we wish it were, is this love?
E: There is no love, but if there were, and it existed as we might wish it doesn’t, then I daresay we are.

— “Human apes” by Ontological Damnation

every time i see the word “misled,” i read it to myself at first as miss-eld and wonder what that word means. and then i think, oh, that’s right. misled.

— Juliet Small Ernst, Touch Touch Publishing Blog, 2008-10-10