In the distant past (for the internet), I thought through and modified my worldview by blogging. Since I stopped blogging about politics and philosophy my views have changed some more. Now I would like to review some of those views and open them up to challenge by others on the internet. It seems to me that, to paraphrase a famous passage, there are some things all humans should be able to agree upon: All people, regardless of gender, race, education,…
There are some concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines. Some of these concerns are legitimate (myocarditis in young men) and some are based on conspiracy theories that are demonstrably nonsense (tracking chips in the vaccine, or its supposed links to Satan). The myocarditis one is particularly interesting and, unfortunately, provides fuel to the blanket anti-vaxxers who are responsible for recent outbreaks of the previously-controlled, measles, and the current continuation of the global pandemic which has cost 1/500 Americans their lives. As…
I am reading The Selfish Gene at the moment. It’s a very good book, and beautifully written, as you would expect from Dawkins. This pair of sentences, though, stood out for their disappointing relevance to anti-vaccination, anti-mask, and otherwise anti-scientific individuals’ behavior. In the next paragraph, “ESS” means “evolutionary stable strategy”. In (too simple a summary), ESS means the strategy that evolution ‘settles upon’ which is most effective at reproducing the genes that regulate that strategy. “It is possible for…
Manky It means: adjective; dirty, filthy or bad and can be used like this: It is manky weather today
Countries are often compared. Comparisons are made about wealth, about happiness, about healthcare outcomes, and about education outcomes (literacy, for example). Many people rank the United States as a developed country, because it has high rates of wealth and is “industrialized”, but in this article we will look at how the USA ranks in a lot of different areas and let you decide whether it warrants being considered a first world country: Firearm-related death rate US ranks ninth in terms…
I have to admit, I did not know about the filibuster’s history, nor its actual timing in the bill approval process. This video makes it very clear, and makes it very clear why it has to go:
If you are of the belief that men and women have achieved equality, or if you are a man who believes in equality, but does not know how to make it a reality when men continue to earn more than women on average, there is an online webinar which might interest you: Josh Levs “Removing the ‘man-can’t’ myth”.
If you believe in the Christian God, it would be evil of you not to evangelize. The alternative is to allow someone you know (and should love) to go to the hell you believe in. But what should you avoid? This article lists some of the things Christians often do, which will always fail to reach the hearts of unbelievers. Trivializing Avoid saying the following: “All you have to do is…” Those of us who do not believe there is…
Everyone knows about the differences in British and American English like the spelling of “color” versus “colour”, and the differences between word choices like “closet” versus “wardrobe” even where both the words exist in both languages. But less appreciated are the pronunciation differences of individual words. I thought it would be fun (nerdy fun) to look at the differences phonetically between English English and American English pronunciations, at least in northern New England: Tuna In the UK this is pronounced…