About the notion of liberalism; the panic among White Christian nationalists; a book about the John Birch society, which anticipated the modern MAGA movement; and examples of conservatives’ opposition to liberty and freedom.
Let’s start with this short video by Yuval Noah Harari, about the idea of being “liberal.” The Facebook clip I saw (pic here) is an excerpt from this very long YouTube video.
(These are photos from a late 1980s trip to Vandenberg to see a rocket launch.)
First of all, I spent another hour polishing and expanding yesterday’s post, about 6 short literary novels I read in 5 days last week while having a cold and not having much energy to do much but lie on the sofa and read.
Second of all, I’ve had all these projects I’ve worked on for years, which I’ve discussed many times before. I actually feel lately that I’m making progress toward completing them in the next few weeks. I know I’ve said this before.
As evidence, I’ve posted two new “pages” on this site of photos taken during my Rocketdyne years. The pages are linked in the drop-down menus from About/Personal History/Working at the Rocket Factory for 30 Years.
Here are direct links. Continue reading
Read last week: six short literary novels in five days. Three by Steinbeck; one each by Henry James and James Joyce and Leo Tolstoy. A break from my routine of reading science fiction and current nonfiction.
So my take on wokeness, a couple weeks ago, as a “perhaps exaggerated respect for the sensitivities of others,” is not what most others mean by “woke.” To some conservatives, it means anything they don’t like or want to acknowledge, even climate change.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 16 Mar 2023: Why the GOP is obsessed with “woke” — but can’t define it, subtitled “MAGA can’t explain what ‘woke’ is, but that’s the point — it’s a ‘choose your own bigotry’ term for Republicans”
A writer named Alissa Quart has a new book out, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, that challenges the American myth that one can “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” to succeed all on your own. It’s a fantasy of course; look closely at all the supposedly self-made billionaires and you will find that they had advantages that the vast majority of people have never had.
My takes on the films released in 2022 that we saw, including 8 of the 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees.
Lots of items in the news media today about the Oscars, of course. Here’s a typical article about them, followed by some of my reactions, to the awards, and (tomorrow) to some of the individual films.
Salon, Melanie McFarland, 13 Mar 2023: How the Academy Awards managed to be both uplifting and disappointing – everything, all at once, subtitled “Historic wins for Michelle Yeoh and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ are balanced by dismay at who was left out”
Items about Daylight Saving Time, Tucker Carlson, Biblical Errancy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins
Salon, Nicole Karlis, 12 Mar 2023: Why sleep scientists think Standard Time is best, subtitled “People love the extra hour of sunlight at night, but there’s a cost to that”
and Human Nature and Its Biases and Rationality and The Two Cultures and Consilience.
Gregory Feeley, in a friends-only post on Facebook three days ago, linked the two items below and and made some generalizing comments about them.
Continue reading
About that mask study; about the lab leak theory; and the volume of social media; and about the length of nonfiction books.
NY Times, Zeynep Tufekci, 10 Mar 2023: Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work
