About the changing identities of Democrats and Republicans, over the past century and a half; about the logic of abortion, from a philosopher; about the dismal history of infrastructure (and how this relates to conspiracy theories); and two items about car design. And an endpiece.
Thought for the day: All the Christmas carols, all the movies about Santa, and so on, are *fan fiction*.
Another thought for the day: I haven’t seen anyone point out that the reason Covid variants keep appearing, and then spreading so rapidly around the world, is that people these days — compared to a century ago — travel far more widely and quickly across the globe. This is the same reason humans are causing the mass extinctions of Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction (review; summary on this page.) What is the solution? People will never stop traveling, any more than all of them will wear masks. These consequences of human activity will settle out, even if over the next centuries rapidly spreading viruses will kill significant portions of the human population. And deplete the wildlife population. And reduce, through climate change, half of the occupied planet unlivable. The warnings have been there for 50 years.
I (re)read this a year and a half ago, and took notes, now condensed a bit here. And I’ll add it to the Reviews/SF directory page.
Le Guin is best known for THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS in 1969, but this later novel is nearly as well known; both books won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Here’s the edition I read this time (and to which the page references refer to).
The Wikipedia entry for the book has the first edition cover; I own a book club edition of that.
The most significant item I have today, which I saw a couple days ago, was via a Facebook post by Moshe Feder, who helpfully copied it in its entirety: an article on New Scientist, by Annalee Newitz, which is not available to non-subscribers.
Americans mostly resist considering what other countries in the world are doing that objectively makes their economies better, or their health and prosperity higher, than the US’s, because Americans are “exceptional,” and, like, the greatest country ever. I suspect most Americans simply *assume* the US is the greatest ever, and the greatest in the world right now.
Despite the data that show along most criteria (excepting perhaps only gun ownership and size of military), this is not true. (One example: life expectancy.) (Another: quality of life.)
Here’s the second SF link of the three I mentioned several days ago. I don’t have an opinion about this piece yet, since I haven’t read it; I noted it as the fairly uncommon item in the general media that discusses various science fiction works, in this case H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and others, albeit with a political spin.
Today six and a half of us took five hours to buy two Christmas trees.
The piece here was in the New York Times today, posted online four days ago. It’s relevant not just because I went through the transplant selection process some 6 months ago, but because we had a conversation about this very topic at yesterday’s party, with one of the cousins who’s a general and endocrine surgeon in Denver, and so familiar with hospital and transplant procedures.
Today the Bay Area cousins had a mid-afternoon “pie party” at one of their places in Foster City along the canal. An occasion to bring left-over pies from Thanksgiving? No; everyone brought fresh, even home-made pies, and other food as well, like dim sum. And there are currently about six infants and toddlers, from age 1 to 6, running about at such events.
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Today’s link is new since I mentioned three SF-related links yesterday; I just saw it this morning. It’s about book suppression, and it recalls for me works by Ray Bradbury and Orson Scott Card.
I should be more conscientious about posting about science fiction on this blog, which the subtitle at the top at least *implies* is a central theme. So I have three SF topics lined up, posting one today.
Ls&Cs: Resistance to Learning; and Learning
Articles about William F. Buckley, the Republicans’ war on education, and fire management.
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