Quick Read
One of the ways in which our society has gotten to its current predicament is a combined corruption of and overreliance on science. Contrary to those who treat it as a source of existential truth, science is merely a process for answering questions. My preferred formulation is that it’s a way of coming to agreement…
A broad review of history suggests that the time to stop a dangerous social or political trend is when the changes being implemented are relatively minor and the concerns are arguably still hypothetical. At that stage, the general value of cooperation can overcome the preferences of this or that faction. As the factions disregard the…
Although the bit has probably been recycled many times, the easiest version to find is a scene from L.A. Story, with Steve Martin. A street ATM has two lines: On the right are people waiting to take out cash; on the left are people waiting for their turn to mug them. As Martin walks away with his…
Two stories in the news recently have been nagging at me in combination over the past week. The first is the Republican response to Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s State of the State address, as delivered by Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz. Here’s the part that resonates particularly oddly: Where McKee called for cutting…
Once upon a time, the common wisdom was that government work couldn’t compete with the private sector for pay but made up for it in benefits and job security. Whether that was ever true, I don’t know, but it has long been the case that government workers in Rhode Island get the best of all…
Or rather, he would be if anybody were reporting on the story. As Republican state representative Brian Newberry noted a week ago on Twitter, Jordan Goyette’s story is not one that anybody in Rhode Island’s mainstream is keen to cover: If you picture the news media as a filtering machine, Goyette falls easily through one…
Somewhere or other in my social media flow, I recently came across the outrage of a moment, wherein a director of communications for a school district jumped in to halt a Dr. Seuss reading that had prompted discussion of America’s racial past: The assistant director of communications for Olentangy Local School District abruptly stopped the…
Perhaps my favorite moment in all of music ever comes in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The music is a bouncy march, and in the libretto, the singers are proclaiming an intent to take paradise by storm, like “a victor.” The mood changes suddenly, however, and I’ve always thought it a deliberate statement…
Like it or not, we’re all tangled up with each other, so in some degree, the choices we make and the value we create or destroy affect everybody. How we structure society is a decision about how we utilize “our” resources. That doesn’t mean maximizing efficiency or economic advancement or anything else must be the…
A skeptical reader can find many things worthy of comment in David McRaney’s How Minds Change even beyond the author’s central objective of training people how to manipulate others psychologically to implement radical policies. Not wanting to write a book in response, I’ll probably just bring them up as they become relevant. One side point…
