Aeon this weekend highlighted a 2017 article by Joel Mokyr looking at how Europe became the richest part of the world (or at least one of the richest). Historically, there have been many theories, ranging from racist rationals, cultural ones, to it merely being Europe and the overall west's turn to be on top. That … Continue reading The rise of the west and the changing sociopolitical landscape
Category: Society
Don’t teach Congress about science and technology; teach the voters
M. Anthony Mills has a short piece at Politico advocating the return of the OTA (Office of Technology Assessment), which was defunded in the 1990s as a budget cutting measure. The argument is that congress needs to know more about science and technology, that maybe if they knew more, they'd make better decisions. Except, politics … Continue reading Don’t teach Congress about science and technology; teach the voters
Politics is about self interest
I've read a lot of history, including American history of the 18th and 19th centuries. It's interesting to read about the politics of these periods. From a distance across generations and centuries, you can see the distinction between the self interested stances people took and the rhetoric that was used to justify those stances. An … Continue reading Politics is about self interest
Having productive internet conversations
Anyone who's frequented this blog knows I love having discussions, and can pontificate all day on subjects I'm interested in. I've actually been participating in online discussions, on and off, for decades. My earliest conversations were on dial up bulletin boards. Those were usually tightly focused discussions about technology and gaming. With the rise of … Continue reading Having productive internet conversations
Why the US two party system is so entrenched
The other day, I came across this Big Think explanation by historian Sean Wilentz on why the US always seems to gravitate to a two party system. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnju7zOH_Zs Unfortunately, while I think Wilentz touches on the main points, his explanation doesn't seem as clear as it could be. To start off, he refers to the … Continue reading Why the US two party system is so entrenched
The relentless rain
It was a forecast that was all too common for south Louisiana. We would have several days of rain. It would start Thursday evening and continue through the weekend. There was a possibility of flooding. The people in flood zones, who lived near rivers and bayous, should prepare. I don't live in a flood zone … Continue reading The relentless rain
The reliability hierarchy of expert opinion
There's been a mild amount of angst on the internet in recent days over a couple of well known science communicators espousing nonsense on matters outside of their field. The first was Bill Nye, who made comments about philosophy that most charitably could be described as uninformed. The second was Neil deGrasse Tyson's tweets about biology expressing … Continue reading The reliability hierarchy of expert opinion
The odd animosity toward ebooks
Someone called my attention to an Aeon article by Craig Mod describing his abandonment of digital books, returning to the traditional paper variety. From 2009 to 2013, every book I read, I read on a screen. And then I stopped. You could call my four years of devout screen‑reading an experiment. I felt a duty … Continue reading The odd animosity toward ebooks
On ad blocking
Nilay Patel has a piece at the Verge on the availability of ad blocking plugins for the web browser in the new version of iOS. She has an interesting theory of what motivated Apple to allow ad blocking, that it was essentially to attack Google's revenue model. But the overall piece seems to take the … Continue reading On ad blocking
Sex laws over the millenia
Last week I listened to an episode of Fresh Air on NPR, where Terry Gross interviewed Eric Berkowitz on his new book, 'The Boundaries of Desire', about sex laws over the last century. But what interested me more in the interview was the brief introductory discussion of sex laws in ancient societies, which led me to read … Continue reading Sex laws over the millenia
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