America’s Crackpots vs. Its Foundational Strength

Posted on Saturday 10 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Items today:

  • 12m people support violence to keep Trump in office;
  • Kari Lake threatens violence to keep Trump in office;
  • Florida wants immigrants to stay and work, despite the state’s anti-immigrant policies;
  • Families in Florida who feel unsafe are leaving the state;
  • DeSantis posts fake videos about Trump and Fauci;
  • Heather Cox Richardson quotes Chip Roy about Republican priorities that they are not actually enacting;
  • Obit of Pat Robertson, who lent a looney-tunes, deeply superstition, aspect to the religious right;
  • And in contrast with all of the above, Fareed Zakaria on how American’s foundational strength enables it to withstand such fringe loonies;
  • And concluding thoughts.

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Law vs. Science, Climate Change vs. Insurance

Posted on Friday 9 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two items about the Supreme Court’s redefinition of “wetlands,” despite the science of hydrology;
  • Two items about the effects of climate change, including how some insurance companies are refusing new homeowner policies.

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George Winston

Posted on Thursday 8 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Died today.

NY Times: George Winston, Pianist With a Popular Soothing Sound, Dies at 74, subtitled “He won a Grammy in the new age category, and his top-selling records helped define the genre. But his interests also included Hawaiian guitar and the Doors.” Continue reading →

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Household and Hospital Matters

Posted on Thursday 8 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • About Donald A. Norman and a mysterious error message on our stove the other evening;
  • About a mysterious message on our TV, another problem solved by Google;
  • About a hospital visit that didn’t go well.

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Einstein, Vigilante Justice, the Gin and Tonic Workout

Posted on Wednesday 7 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Albert Einstein and what he didn’t say;
  • More on Republican support for vigilante justice;
  • How a drink or two enables an intense workout.

NY Times, Benyamin Cohen (a specialist on Einstein), 4 Jun 2023: Einstein and a Theory of Disinformation

The essay opens:

A decade ago, Ivanka Trump offered her Twitter followers a bit of wisdom from one of the world’s favorite geniuses to impress her legions of Twitter followers. “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. — Albert Einstein.”

There was one problem: Einstein never said that.

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Transition

Posted on Tuesday 6 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

I think I am going to switch from posting here from the evenings, to the mornings. I’ll still spend the late afternoon compiling a post, but will wait until the morning, to refine and edit, before posting. Tomorrow’s post will be about Einstein, Republican support for vigilante justice, and those who drink before working out. And an item about Donald A. Norman and my problem this evening turning on my stove.

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Ted Chiang, Carl Sagan, Peter Singer

Posted on Monday 5 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Ten Chiang characterizes the current examples of “artificial intelligence” as “applied statistics”;
  • How Carl Sagan was wrong about the “reptilian brain”, in The Dragons of Eden;
  • And an interview with Peter Singer, the controversial philosopher, author of The Expanding Circle and The Most Good You Can Do

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The Holocene and Other Calendars

Posted on Sunday 4 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a concept I’ve heard of, fascinating and beneficial in ways, problematic in others.

Wikipedia: Holocene Calendar

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Climate Change, Founding Fathers, UFOs and Scientific Literacy

Posted on Saturday 3 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Topics today:

    • Insurance companies, whose business depends on understanding risks, are taking steps to acknowledge climate change and its threats, even if many ordinary people still don’t “believe” in climate change;
    • How the “founding fathers” were woke, compared to the modern-day GOP;
    • How NASA’s latest response to “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (colloquially UFOs) is significant for its discussion about scientific literacy (thus, no Oxford comma in the title above);
    • And some music: early Philip Glass.

Those who still dismiss climate change as a hoax, or real but not a problem, consider how insurance companies — who need to manage risks! — are changing their policies in reaction. (There have been similar stories about the US military taking actions to protect bases in low-lying coastal areas.) Pay attention to those have financial stakes at risk.

Vox, 2 Jun 2023: Climate change is already making parts of America uninsurable, subtitled “‘We’re steadily marching toward an uninsurable future.'”

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Last Questions and Possible Answers, 2

Posted on Friday 2 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a sequel to a post I did back in March, Last Questions and Possible Answers, 1, in which I considered 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, in that earlier post I addressed 19 contributors from the first 100 pages or so. Today I’m covering 13 more contributors from the next 70 pages. I’ve also refined and polished that earlier post. And obviously I have a couple more posts to go, to get through the whole book, even selectively.

Again, I’m quoting their questions and giving my own take on the nature of possible answers, based on my reading and thoughts over many years.

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