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.
Today’s thought: It occurs to me that “cancel culture” exists on both the left and right. The left is more apt to target individuals (Jerry Coyne responds to an attempt by the Imperial College London to rename anything named after Thomas H. Huxley, and others), the right vast swaths of history they find uncomfortable (“critical race theory,” which the conservative critics do not actually understand). The problem with this, aside from the immediate ethical issues, is that eventually it will happen to all of us. Future generations, with different cultural and ethical standards, might well decide all of our lives are irrelevant and are not fit to be remembered.
Here are photos of the first of two big architectural/engineering projects my father was involved with over the course of his career, during the late 1960s into the 1980s, though his career went on from there.
These are iPhone photographs of large glossy prints, 8 1/2 by 11, most of them black and white, that I came across recently in a box of family artifacts.
This first is the Batavia Accelerator Project, now known as Fermilab.
I haven’t seen the new Dune movie and am not sure I will, in part because my partner just doesn’t care about that kind of movie (and I could never do anything like going to see a movie by myself), and in part because I have to be careful going out given my current immuno-compromised condition.
I have seen the first two episodes of the Foundation TV series, and found it OK. Some of Asimov’s content is detectable. But reviews of the third episode make it sound like it’s become Star Wars, complete with a Death Star surrogate, so I don’t think I’ll continue.
Reactions to Foundation are increasingly negative. Reactions to Dune are mostly positive, but some quite negative, among my Facebook friends, and in the reviews. I’ll collect a few links here for, perhaps, future reference.
Kant’s take on happiness; Arthur C. Brooks’ three bite-sized dimensions to the meaning of life; Thomas B. Edsall on whether conservatives are happier than liberals.
Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules
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.
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