It has always been about people’s perceived position in the racial/socioeconomic hierarchy that they helped to create. Here is a quote from a person involved in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021: “This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM [note:… Read more »
Simultaneously refusing to extend financial aid to the teetering economic bottom of the U.S. populace, the Senate voted a New Year’s Eve bi-partisan override of President Trump’s veto of the $741 billion defense authorization bill. This bill always sets me off for its size, its over-extended purpose and its embedded corruption, but this year I have decided to take a… Read more »
Note: This is an update and expansion of a New Year’s post two years ago. Happy Janus Day 1, in the New Year of 2021 AD or CE as you prefer. It was not until I moved to England at the turn of the century that I learned of their far superior method of keeping professional sports teams from getting… Read more »
Perhaps there are two kinds of normal people…There are those who don’t believe in free will and thereby don’t have free will, and there are those who do believe in free will and thereby actually have free will. ” Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves. I will be upfront about my definition of “bad theology” here: Bad theology is a belief system… Read more »
I am not known to be a great sentimentalist about Christmas. There is one “carol” that I do like to play this time every year, however, which is a based on a poem by John Pole about a homeless newborn child, called “Anti-Carol.” The best-known version of this was recorded acapella in a strong Cockney accent by British folksinger Frankie… Read more »
It did not take long for the difficult moral questions around who gets the Covid-19 vaccination first to get ugly. At Stanford University an algorithm for distributing the vaccine prioritized older doctors working remotely over young interns and residents who are in daily contact with Covid patients, resulting in a public shaming demonstration. After the bad public attention, the university… Read more »
The very bad polling outcomes from the 2020 U.S presidential election pointed out the key differences between two often-confused topics. Pre-election polls are measured in percentages and look like probabilities, but they are really trying to quantify uncertainty, and there is a very big difference between the two that the public largely does not understand. The same confusion has bled… Read more »
I recently came across an introductory environmental science book that I had once owned, and it was a pleasant trip back in time. One continuing topic in this blog has been about how our individual and collective minds change on important topics over time. This has especially been true with conservative Republicans and their views on the environment and climate… Read more »
Ever since a data update arrived in my email from the Actuaries Climate Index in August I have been wanting to revisit one of my most re-tweeted posts from two years ago, called “Listen to the actuaries if not the scientists.” The short read here is that the climate continues to change in a dangerous direction, as determined not by… Read more »
“Life is just one damn thing after another!” – Anonymous [1] With the U.S. presidential election basically over and the coronavirus crisis response stuck in political denial (despite a new surge), I am overdue for a science-geeky post on a neglected recurring topic here, that of human volition (i.e., “choice” or “free will”). [2] The impetus for this post is… Read more »