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.
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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
It’s like a traffic accident; you can’t look away. Recent headlines on political matters as influenced by religion. One particular religion, whose followers apparently do not respect the Constitution (or at least the establishment clause of the First Amendment). The one religion that would rule them all.
Slate, Dahlia Litchwick, 9 Mar 2023: Which Religion Counts in America, subtitled “A brief in a case out of Indiana shows exactly how fundamentalist Christian beliefs trump everything else in the courts these days.”
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In the closing pages of Michael Shermer’s new book, he quotes Jonathan Rauch’s list, from his book The Constitution of Knowledge, about social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge. Shermer expands upon them, and for one of them provides a summary of the whole of the arc of the Enlightenment and moral progress, including ideas from Steven Pinker’s books and his own earlier book The Moral Arc (review here.) Continue reading
Michael Shermer’s latest book, a thorough account of why people believe conspiracy theories, why it might be beneficial (for evolutionary reasons) to give them the benefit of the doubt (even if they’re not true), with some deep dives into several real and false conspiracy theories. Ending with rules and heuristics for identifying which conspiracy theories might be true, and how to rebuild trust in truth. (( Review completed Wed 8 Mar. ))
