Yuval Noah Harari, UNSTOPPABLE US, Vol. 2

Posted on Thursday 4 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “Why the World Isn’t Fair.” (Bright Matter Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House; March 2024. xv + 189pp. With copious illustrations by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz.)

This is the second volume in what might be called SAPIENS-FOR-KIDS, short and heavily-illustrated books that run through the themes of Harari’s SAPIENS (which I reviewed here) but for middle-grade readers. I heard once that one of the all-time Jeopardy champions honed his general knowledge of all things by reading books for kids, and indeed, a book like this helps anyone to see the crucial themes that stand out from among all the details, at a 30,000 feet level, so speak. In this book, it’s about the unfortunate consequences of the agricultural revolution, and how complex society lives by stories.

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Imagine Prioritizing Truth Over Being Right

Posted on Wednesday 3 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an amazing notion: there are some people who would rather find the truth, than be right. These are the scientists — some of them, anyway. This concerns Daniel Kahneman, whose death I noted a week ago here.

NY Times, Cass R. Sunstein, 1 Apr 2024: The Nobel Winner Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries (shared link)

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It’s Time for Another Round of… Stupid? Or Cynical?

Posted on Tuesday 2 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Stupid or Cynical: Republican/Christian conservatives respond to the coincidence of Easter and Trans Recognition Day;
  • Some MAGA claims are just delusional, example from Steve Bannon;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s 5-step fascist plan;
  • And how conservatives reject the idea of lab-grown meat.

NY Times, 1 Apr 2024: A Transgender Holiday Fell on Easter. Republicans Lashed Out at Biden., subtitled “President Biden, in acknowledging both days, drew the ire of many on the right, who attacked him as besmirching Christianity.”

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Nuclear Families and The Bible

Posted on Monday 1 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I could probably spend every day compiling six or eight or ten of the most egregious examples of MAGA/Trump craziness, but I am trying not to. Let’s try a more substantial piece today. (I was busy with a family dinner yesterday, Sunday, and didn’t have time to post here.)

So, just one item today, about nuclear families and the Bible.

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You might argue this either way. I’m going to try to consider both sides.

LA Times, Susan Goldberg, 29 Mar 2024: Opinion: Nuclear families aren’t the ‘traditional’ ones. The Bible is full of blended and chosen families

Here’s what she says:

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Mirror Realities

Posted on Saturday 30 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Can’t resist another round of political links this afternoon, about the Alice in Wonderland, mirror-universe that conservatives and Trump-supporters apparently live in. In which they, and those of us living in the real objective world, believe the other is the purveyor of crime and evil. While, to anyone with half a wit of sense, …. well, you can finish. It’s obvious. Let’s start with this objective reporting of an event.

NY Times, 28 Mar 2024: Trump, Attending Wake of Slain N.Y.P.D. Officer, Pushes Campaign Message on Crime, subtitled “Mr. Trump called the officer’s death a horrible tragedy and, as he often does on the trail, broadly called for a crackdown on violent crime without mentioning specific policies.”

As hundreds of police officers and family members stood outside a Long Island funeral home, former President Donald J. Trump attended on Thursday the wake of a New York City police officer who was killed in the line of duty days earlier.

Then, Mr. Trump, who is facing four criminal cases, including one in Manhattan that is going to trial in less than three weeks, stood in front of more than a dozen police officers and proclaimed the need for the country to “get back to law and order.”

The obvious reaction of many: let’s start with you, Donald.

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A History of Progress and Backlash

Posted on Friday 29 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two items about Fareed Zakaria and his new book;
  • Robert Reich on Roger Ailes;
  • How “DEI” is now substituting for the N-word.

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There’s a new book out this week by Fareed Zakaria, whose 2020 book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, I quite admired. (Review here.)

So I bought the new one too, which is about “progress and backlash from 1600 to the present,” a theme which fascinates me. Why are so many people so eager to abandon the progress made since the Enlightenment, both in politics (democracy) and science (the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers and…)

NY Times, David Brooks, 28 Mar 2024: The Great Struggle for Liberalism

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Case Study of the Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists?

Posted on Thursday 28 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • First, a quote about progressives and conservatives, the future and the past;
  • Then more about the conspiracy thinking about the Baltimore bridge collapse, with examples from PolitiFact, CNN, and CFI (Center for Inquiry);
  • And how the construction workers who fell from the bridge were immigrants, whom many Americans demonize, yet like the ones who have built America.

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Saw this quote on Facebook, and verified it (never trust any quote on Facebook) to the extent of finding it on one of those websites that collects quotes.

For progressive people the present is the beginning of the future. For conservative people the present is the end of the past.

— Karl Mannheim

This is consistent with the MAGA crowd yearning to return to a (mythical) lost golden age, on the one hand, and on the other, that saying “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation” — long an epigraph on Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light blog — which it turns out (Google!) was said by Alasdair Gray, Scottish author of, among other things, Poor Things, basis for the recent film. Coincidence!

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Perspectives from Reality and Fantasy

Posted on Wednesday 27 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How the first scene in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” is seen differently by conservatives and progressives;
  • Daniel Kahneman, RIP, who realized that people are not rational;
  • More right-wing conspiracy theories about the Baltimore bridge collapse;
  • And items about an earthquake, crime and drugs, and banning abortion pills.

CNN, Harmeet Kaur, 27 Mar 2024: Conservatives and liberals alike can’t stop talking about this scene in ‘3 Body Problem’

I’ve only watched the first episode of “3 Body Problem” (as Netflix stylizes the adaptation of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem — a novel I reviewed here back in 2015), but it’s been enough for me to recognize the scene at issue in this article.

That first episode

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Necessary Stories, and Most of the Others

Posted on Tuesday 26 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • About this morning’s Baltimore bridge collapse, and the right-wing conspiracy-theory accusations about it;
  • Paul Krugman on how Republicans want to bring down Obamacare to support their notion that the government can never do good things;
  • And a Doonesbury cartoon about the need to believe.

Very early this morning a container ship struck a bridge in Baltimore and knocked it down. It’s been all over the news, all day. (Here’s a current CNN summary.) And I can’t resist noting a few reactions from the right-wing/MAGA/Republican loonies, who blame anything and everything on whatever they don’t like, especially Biden and Democrats.

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Oliver Sacks, THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT

Posted on Tuesday 26 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the Pinker and Wilson volumes I’ve covered here recently, this is another classic nonfiction book, one I first read years ago without taking notes (maybe before I began taking notes on my reading). So I skimmed through it again last week to capture essential points. This won’t be a detailed summary/review, like I did for those other two.

Subtitled: “and Other Clinical Tales.” (First published 1985 by Summit Books. Edition shown is trade paperback reprint, Perennial Library, 1987. x + 243pp, including 10pp chapter-by-chapter bibliographic notes.)

Sacks, who died in 2015, was a clinical neurologist who specialized in neurological disorders. He was famous for this book, with its intriguing title, and for previous book Awakenings, which was made into a movie in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. He wrote numerous other books too, including one about music. (Also, he was a burly guy with a huge beard, a bodybuilder, and gay, though he was celibate for 40 years.)

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