Today I had a dentist appointment; I compiled Weekly Bestsellers for Locus Online; I updated sfadb.com with the World Fantasy Award winners. After lunch: my thrice-weekly cardiac therapy. Then: read another chapter of Pinker; and now compiling links collected this past weekend, as a new rainstorm settles in over the Bay Area, in the early dark.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
Summary and comments about this 2011 essay and 2013 book. With an aside about my belief in Santa Claus.
One more round of Links and Comments for today, then promise will do some different kinds of posts for a while.
The results of yesterday’s elections demonstrate several truisms about politics. My favorite take about the current elections is this:
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 3 Nov 21: American Politics Are Controlled by Voters With the Memory of a Golden Retriever
Aspirin: Why do scientists keep changing their minds? How science is like detective work. How conspiracy theorists exploit the provisional nature of science. Can history be overturned, or just refined? And KSR, aliens, the new telescope, and existential crises.
Here’s a NYT piece from almost a year ago, which I neglected to post at the time but which has stayed in my mind sufficiently that I tracked it down to finally post and comment about now. It’s about how different people observe Facebook very differently. And how this is a crucial component of the US’ current political divide.
Facebook is what you make of it.
Maybe we should all just buy less stuff. How citizenship has given way to consumerism. Why partisans deliberately confuse terms like expenses and investments. And how some rewrite history in support of ideological narratives.
L&Cs: Jill Lepore on Muskism and Science Fiction
Just one item today, after a long afternoon with a screaming baby.
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