Quillette, Steven Pinker and Harvey Silverglate, 1 Jul 2022: Science and Civil Liberties: The Lost ACLU Lecture of Carl Sagan, subtitled “Around 1987, Sagan gave an uncannily prescient lecture to the Illinois state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.”
Today my partner and I finished setting up my chic new curved widescreen monitor (a Christmas present), replacing the two standard-sized monitors I was using before. This new monitor (technically a “gaming” monitor) shows roughly the equivalent of three of the standard-sized monitors. It took several tries to hook up, using various cables ending in various kinds of ports; one of the two cables that came with the monitor simply didn’t work, and the other used plugs I didn’t have ports for on my relatively new laptop. Finally we found a suitable HDMI cable that works. Everything is working I think I still need to raise the monitor a bit, so top of screen is eye-level. It’s *heavy*.
Back to assorted posts on current events and politics.
Whose side are Republicans on? Not that of ordinary Americans; apparently only themselves.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 11 Jan 2024: Trump Dreams of Economic Disaster
I do have another batch of links about current events, but I’ll save them for this weekend and instead spend tonight’s blog post jotting down thoughts about philosophy. I mentioned back on Jan 6th that one of my resolutions for this year is to systematically read a history of philosophy, after having only dipped into many of its subtopics over the years.
I wondered in that post what the bridge might have been between humanity’s earliest, intuitive, “Savannah morality” thinking, as I’ve described many times, and the first things that might be called philosophy. And then floated the idea that many individual wise men have surely been present throughout history, some of whose thoughts are lost to time, others of which we venerate, even if they were never systematized into any kind of “philosophy,” in the sense of their being principles of explanation or instruction meant to apply beyond the writer’s own experience.
Let’s try to drill through accumulated links, if only briefly, and then move on to other things. Among many items, these themes:
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 11 Jan 2024: Experts on why so many Republicans accept that “God gave us Trump”, subtitled “How Donald Trump has evolved into a Messianic figure among the white religious right”
Still enamored by R.E.M., which is why I’ve chosen another of their lyrics for today’s post title.
Today: more items about trying to understand the modern world.
OnlySky, M L Clark, 10 Jan 2024: Is false information our top global risk in 2024?
Overview:
If we can’t manage our mis- and disinformation crisis better, how can we ever hope to tackle our environmental, political, and economic issues well?
To begin, three items today that suggest an underlying theme.
Media Matters, 8 Jan 2024: Laura Ingraham demands Republicans reject deal for government funding to deny Joe Biden “a victory lap”
I have a bunch of links from the past couple weeks and even before that I can post quickly, but in looking for something more substantial that I can quote from to begin the post…. Let’s try this.
I’ve posted a couple items recently about the stark difference between how conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats would run the government. (I’ll insert links here shortly.) Here’s another, a link collected back on 3 Dec, which I’ve not seemed to have used yet. It’s about the “debate” between Newsom and DeSantis, back at the end of November.
The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein, 3 Dec 2023: What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Really Revealed, subtitled “The space between red and blue states”
Two items today.
First, I added a few paragraphs to my philosophical speculations at the end of yesterday’s post.
Second, another life hack post (following the one yesterday about phone call etiquette).
Slate, Fortesa Latifi, 7 Jan 2024: Wear the Same Thing Most Days, subtitled “Am I ‘well dressed’? Maybe not. Am I comfortable? You bet!”
Still under the weather; perhaps by Monday I’ll have the energy to get back to ‘work’, i.e. currently the database project. This past week I’ve spent an hour or two a day at the computer, checking my usual sites and doing a blog post, and otherwise lying on the sofa, napping, and reading Tintin books. Two or three a day. I have the complete set, most of them read back in the ’90s, but not in order. I have three left.
Washington Post, Heather Kelly, 25 Sep 2023: The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voice mail, subtitled “When is it okay to leave voice mails, call multiple times in a row or take a call in public?”
Three items today.
There’s a commonly understood explanation for the long-time strategies of the Republican Party that even some current Republicans seem unaware of, according to Paul Krugman. It’s an explanation we’ve seen many times.
Paul Krugman, NY Times, 4 Jan 2024: Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Politically Obtuse Plutocrats
