Monthly Archives: January 2022

John Allen Paulos, ONCE UPON A NUMBER: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories (1998)

Here’s another John Allen Paulos book, one from 1998, and one that I had not previously read. When I noticed it on the shelf a few weeks ago I realized this was now of particular interest, since in recent years … Continue reading

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L&Cs: More Misleading Maps; Piedmont Park

More interesting juxtapositions showing how flat maps, especially Mercator projections, give misleading impressions of the relative sizes of areas on Earth. Plus, an endpiece, about Piedmont Park.

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Ls&Cs: Facebook quotes; More about book banning; The crazies

Jesse Bering; Adam Grant; Rod Serling; Dr. Seuss and cancel culture; crazies Sherri T and Candace O.

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LQCs: Covid, human sacrifice, religious faith

Kurt Andersen on human sacrifice; Matthew Rozsa on Covid-19 and religious faith; headlines.

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Ls&Cs: Breyer, Maus, Panic and Alarm

A bunch of links, several of which I think make their points by their headlines. Concerning conservative hypocrisy about Supreme Court nominees, banning books, and other matters.

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Ls&Cs: Harari on Climate Change

Yuval Noah Harari has an essay in the current issue of Time Magazine about the cost of tackling climate change.

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Ls&Cs: Threats and Exaggerations

First, because the general subject fascinates me, here’s a response, by Samuel Goldman in The Week, to the Rauch/Wehner essay in NYT I posted about two days ago about what it is about the left that makes conservatives tolerate Trump.

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Ls&Cs: Engagement with the Universe

Two contrasting perspectives, today, both passages I just happened to read during my morning web browsing. Rival worldviews. One characterizing religious myths, the other about Kim Stanley Robinson.

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Ls&Cs: Balancing the Left and Right

NYT, Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner, posted 20 Jan 2022: What’s Happening on the Left Is No Excuse for What’s Happening on the Right

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Ls&Cs: Misleading Maps

Here’s one of my favorite counter-intuitive facts: how our impressions of the sizes of countries and continents that we get from (flat) maps are wildly inaccurate.

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