Apologies to my legion of expectant fans, but this is not actually a blog posting, despite the fact that it looks much like one. It is simply a post to update the date on the blog. After all, it's been almost 3 months since I last updated this thing.

While I could blame that lapse on a number of things if I so chose, I can't say I have a good reason for not blogging. Nor do I have a reason for blogging. The resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor might be reason to blog, the to-be-hoped-for downfall of Karl Rove...but that's all been done before. I could complain about Tom Cruise. Yep, that would be a good one. I suppose you could say that's what happens when you realise that you have spent $360,000 to hear about "Xenu", the galactic tyrant who stacked hundreds of billions of his frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture for 36 days" (from the Wikipedia article). It was funny, in a sense, to realise that I had talked to that very same person, in different guises, so many times in bars. It was such a typical example of the fanatic...the person convinced that they have "hidden knowledge" ("You don't know about psychology Matt, I know about psychology"). Hidden knowledge is, of course, not available to use mere mortals. That's why you have to pay so much money to get it.

Perhaps that is why I am so attracted to the epistemology of science - because the tools for knowing are out in the open. If someone says X is the case, they have to back it up with evidence. Is science the only way of knowing? No. But it is one of the few ways of being certain (or rather, of being able to specify your uncertainty, which is much more interesting.