NYT, Michelle Goldberg, 14 Aug 2023: At a College Targeted by DeSantis, Gender Studies Is Out, Jocks Are In
I’ve enjoyed the current season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds well enough. (Though I’m extremely irritated by its not displaying the episode titles.) But it’s always bothered me about this franchise, extending from 1966 to the present day, that the producers and production designers keep re-imagining and changing everything when there’s no particular reason for doing so. (Never mind the early movies’ penchant for destroying the Enterprise again and again, so they kept having to get new ones.) The ship of course, and also the uniforms.
If I were making a Star Trek series set on the same Enterprise that James Kirk captained, but a decade or two before when Captain Pike commanded it, this is what I would do.
Some sciency bits today. I’ve always been fascinated by timelines and by scales of time and space. Here are a couple new ones.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 14 Aug 2023: The 13 scales that define our physical Universe, subtitled “The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we’ve probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.”
Why I don’t like attending concerts. Of pop singers, I should say; I’m fine with classical concerts.
Salon, D. Watkins, 13 Aug 2023: You don’t love live shows: I have questions for concertgoers who record everything, subtitled “I used to think I was the only one who detested attending concerts, but your actions show I’m not alone”
This has been a long time coming.
LA Times, Editorial Board, 13 Aug 2023: Editorial: Say goodbye to grass that’s only there for looks. California can’t afford to waste water
The most alarming thing I’ve learned in the past decade is how so many ordinary people are not smart, not well-educated, are susceptible to political ideology and religious zealotry, and are driven by ideology and zealotry to try to take down those who are smart and well-educated.
I have to assume this has always been true — no reason to think otherwise — but with the advent of social media it’s become increasingly evident. Everyone can spout off their views, no matter how nonsensical, and make them plain to the world. For 30 years (from my 20s to my 50s) I lived in what would now be called a bubble at work and socially among other smart, well-informed people, and did not realize the true situation. It was probably better in the old days (!) when you conversed politely with family and friends and never discussed, or knew about, their private opinions (about politics or religion, as the advice went).
At the same time, that social media has brought birds of a feather closer together is doing disastrous things to our (in the US at least) politics.
Heather Cox Richardson, August 10, 2023
Noted for this one particular topic: Continue reading
Here’s another coincidence about reading a book that turns out to so closely reflecting current events. (Recall this 4 Aug post.)
Today’s major item is an opinion essay by David Brooks in NYT. The coincidence is that I’m part-way through reading one of those books I’ve been meaning to get around to for the not-quite-five-years since it was published, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure, published in 2018. And Brooks cites the book in this essay, though his points aren’t precisely those of the book.
NY Times, David Wallace-Wells (subscriber-only newsletter), 9 Aug 2023: Why Is America Such a Deadly Place?
On the continuing theme of how the US is not the greatest nation on Earth, as the MAGA folks believe, on most measures of societal health.
NY Times, guest essay by Steven Brill, 5 Aug 2023: Americans Will Believe the Trump Verdict Only if They Can See It
Paul Krugman on climate change as culture war. Is this really new? Haven’t conservatives always had a knee-jerk rejection of science and expertise?
Paul Krugman, NY Times, 7 Aug 2023: Climate Is Now a Culture War Issue
