November Links

Posted on Thursday 23 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on unused links from the past three weeks. A couple of these I’ll return to in detail.

Salon, Nicole Karlis, 23 Nov 2023: The case for bringing a dish of gossip to Thanksgiving this year

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Authorities, Mythology, and Doing Your Own Research

Posted on Wednesday 22 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Thomas Bulfinch on mythology vs. Scripture;
  • How PragerU dismisses climate change;
  • My advice: do note “do your own research”; find an authority to trust that does not lie about reality.

I own books that I’ve had for decades and have never read. Any book collector, or serious reader, does. The other day I picked one of those up, an edition of The Age of Fable, subtitled “Bulfinch’s Mythology”, after author Thomas Bulfinch, who lived in the 19th century, when this book was published after his death in 1867. It was the standard work on classical mythology, says Wikipedia, for nearly a century, until Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, the book taught to my 8th grade class.

I’m only going to mention one thing about the book, a passage from page 13 of this edition. Continue reading →

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About UFOs and other perplexing matters

Posted on Tuesday 21 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a provisional thesis (not even a provisional conclusion). The mysteries that most perplex us scientifically — like, say, the nature of consciousness, or what happened “before” the Big Bang — or that attract the most wild, often conspiracy-driven, thinking — like UFOs — are perplexing because either 1, we’re asking the wrong question, or 2, we’re driven by evolutionary derived biases to detect “causes” where none actually exist. We see things that aren’t there; we project our familiar experiences onto things that exist independently of human reality.

Quick example: what happened before the Big Bang? This may be like asking what’s north of the North Pole. We’re asking a nonsensical question, because we perceive the passage of time, based on our immediate experience, in a way that doesn’t apply to the entire cosmos. (Stephen Hawking IIRC, way back in A Brief History of Time in 1988 [which I read!], proposed the idea that time is a dimension that curves back upon itself, as a sphere does. OTOH he’d apparently updated some of his theories by the end of his life, and I’ve not kept up.)

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Another Clear, Crisp Day in the Bay Area

Posted on Monday 20 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

A companion to yesterday’s post about politics. Because I’m sure people are as interested in my religious takes as they are in my political takes. (What is the reason religion and politics are never discussed around the dinner table? Because both are based on convictions without evidence. Whereas, I really do try to discuss these matters in the context of actual evidence about human psychology and the real world.)

An easy one:

Joe.My.God, 18 Nov 2023: “Left Behind” Author: “The Rapture Could Be Today”

Don’t bother to read it. My perennial answer to all such prophecies:

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Last Questions and Possible Answers, 3

Posted on Monday 20 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

This is my third post, following this one in March and this one in June, in which I consider the John Brockman book The Last Unknowns, in which he gathers deep unanswered questions about “the universe, the mind, the future of civilization, and the meaning of life” from numerous scientists and philosophers and other of the “smartest people on the planet.”

Out of the perhaps 250 contributors to this 325 page book, I’ve covered 32 in the earlier posts. This post covers 15 more, and I have 15-20 more to do, based on my notes.

Again, I’m quoting their questions and giving my own takes on the nature of possible answers, based on my reading and thoughts over many years. (It’s worth mentioning that I’m sure the contributors to this book all have good ideas about the answers to their questions. It’s just that those answers may not be universally accepted. But it’s not as if I claim to have some special insight beyond their expertise.)

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A Clear, Crisp Day in the Bay Area

Posted on Sunday 19 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Going through today’s links, and earlier backlogged links, and today focusing on political matters. Are there better things to do with an hour or two of my life, a couple times a week, than to pay attention to the crazies? Maybe. Except that the crazies might take over and destroy the world. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I’ve noticed it happening.

  • Tom Nichols on being adults in a time of juvenile politics; and on Trump’s crossing a crucial line (with the “vermin” speech);
  • E.J. Dionne Jr. on Republicans’ allergy to actual ideas;
  • Salon’s Amanda Marcotte on Republicans’ abandonment of “small government” in preference to fighting culture wars;
  • WaPo’s Dana Milbank on the competence of congressional Republicans;
  • AlterNet and The Economist on Trump as the #1 “biggest danger” in the world;
  • And how even some Republicans, like Chip Roy, are aware of how his party hasn’t accomplished anything he can campaign on.

*

Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 17 Nov 2023: The Daily Responsibility of Democracy, subtitled “Being adults in a time of juvenile politics is hard but necessary.”

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A Rainy, Foggy Day in the Bay Area

Posted on Saturday 18 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

We got our walk in today during a break in the rain; when it started again, it turned to fog. (Meanwhile, making significant progress on the next expansion of sfadb.com today. Real soon now.)

Various items for today; catching up on collected links.

  • Dahlia Lithwick on the threats from Trump and his team, and wondering why people, and the mainstream media, aren’t more alarmed;
  • A new study that shows it really does take a village to raise a child;
  • Michael Shermer, responding to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, explains why he is not a Christian;
  • Why people are drawn to horror movies and haunted houses — a first item about narrative;
  • How to be the hero of your own life — a second item about narrative;
  • Michael Johnson and whether homosexuality is a ‘choice’;
  • RFK Jr. wants to stop research on infectious diseases, and how he’s making millions.

Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, 16 Nov 2023: Suppose They Threw a Cage Match Between Fascism and Democracy and Nobody Cared

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Liberals vs. Progressives; What’s the Difference?

Posted on Friday 17 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Pamela Paul in NYT distinguishes progressive from liberals; the answer is, the former are driving cancel culture from the left;
  • How I’ve changed my mind about threats from the right, vs. those from the left;
  • Jerry Coyne, who follows university politics and their various policy statements emphasizing inclusion over empirical merit, seems to agree.

Today I’m fascinated by the topic of threats from the left. In the big picture, as civilization progresses, it’s usually the right that protests; being conservative, they want to preserve what they think of as the best of the past, and reject change; they presume that their traditions, especially the religious ones, are the only true way to live in the world. Meanwhile, through the discoveries about the reality of the enormous universe we live in, and the clear genetic evidence that humanity did not arise from a single couple a mere 6000 years ago, those religious myths have been discredited. And so the conservatives tend to reject the centuries of advancement in science and technology, preferring their myths, all the while taking advantage of those centuries of progress when it suits them.

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Decency, Bias, and Superstition

Posted on Thursday 16 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Over and over, Trump and his team, unable to win arguments on the facts, resort to ad hominem — character assassination;
  • The contrast between conservative insistence on women taking a child to term, rather than abortion, with the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask during a deadly pandemic;
  • Anti-gay legislation in Murfreesboro TN, and other posts about an outed mayor who committed suicide, concerns about contraception and a diminishing population, and Mike Johnson’s take on a “depraved” America in which young people are queer.

Robert Reich, 13 Nov 2023: Have they no sense of decency?, subtitled “Trump and his lackeys are trying to smear Judge Engoron’s law clerk”

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Real Conspiracy Theories and Fake Crises

Posted on Wednesday 15 November 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Benjamin Bradford at CFI about how conspiracy theorists shrug about real conspiracy theories;
  • Big Think on conspiracy theories about places claimed not to exist;
  • Robert Reich on the fake crises Republicans use to distract from real problems.

CFI, Benjamin Bradford, 10 Nov 2023: When Real Conspiracies Are Revealed, Conspiracists Shrug

There *are* some real conspiracy theories — examples in recent years include certain auto makers rigging software so their cars would pass emissions tests, and of course corporate conspiracies over the decades to hide evidence of the deleterious effects of burning fossil fuels and smoking cigarettes — but oddly, these are of little interest to conspiracy theorists. That tells you a lot. (Also, these conspiracies were exposed through the efforts of journalists, i.e. the MSM, mainstream media.) Bradford begins:

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