Brexit, liberals, and learning about people
I have made my last blog post into a video. It incorporates some extra information and utilizes the video format. See it below:
Learning the truth about people
I never really liked Nigel Farage. He seemed like a guy I’d dislike if I met him in person. But as leader of UKIP, I believed that he believed what he said about sovereignty and about democracy. I didn’t see this evil being that the political left portrayed him as – instead I saw this man who was standing up to politicians who were obviously not listening to their voters because of a first-past-the-post system that doesn’t reflect the people’s…
Have you tried everything?
There are two perspectives on life and after-life. “Only two?” you might reasonably wonder. I would argue that there are only two of all binary choices. You only have the choice between standing up and not standing up. If you choose to do anything other than standing up, you are choosing the other thing. There is subtlety here – you can do millions of things that aren’t standing up – but if the sets that you are working within are…
How fundamentalist Christians could get it right
I spent the last weekend with some evangelical Christians who I like on a personal level. They all believe that they are called to “spread the word”. Despite a genuine intellectual interest from me for most of my life, they have all singularly failed to communicate a positive image of Jesus and, especially, his followers. This article explains how fundamentalist Christians could get it right, but instead get it wrong when it comes to sharing their world view. First, everyone…
Being Green in 2022
I recognize that most of the impacts from climate change can only be mitigated by governments making regulation changes. Without those regulations, landfill might continue to be cheaper than recycling, single-use plastics will remain cheaper than more sustainable alternatives, and gasoline (UK: petroleum) vehicles and machinery will continue to be easier to use than alternatives. A few companies are responsible for most of the world’s carbon emissions, and Americans are by far the largest polluters per head. This article is…
A little of being a foreigner
I am an American Citizen, but aside from the legal documentation, I am culturally a foreigner. Because of this I have some experiences that I suspect others never have, or have less often. Before I tell this story, I think you need to know about a difference between British and American homes that is really obvious to a visitor from one to the other: British homes are made of different materials than American ones. In England, homes are almost all…
Why you know less than you think
Everything I know is learned. It’s an important thing to remember – it’s easy to forget and believe that everything you know is true in some fundamental and foundational way. Everything you know is learned too. Let’s unpack that. What do you know to be true? I know that I am writing this at the moment. Well, I think I am. Some dreams are pretty vivid, and hallucinations can be so vivid that people genuinely don’t know what’s going on….
Measuring GDP is the wrong measure
I wrote recently about how the USA is a third world country by a lot of measures, and that it ranks low in most other comparisons with developed, healthy countries. You can read more about that here: Is the US a third world country? I feel commended now that Andrew Yang’s new Forward Party has said something similar. Here’s what they say on their “American Scorecard” page: You can’t fix something if you’re not measuring the right things. Right now,…
Incongruous thinking about the EU
Some people believe, not inaccurately, that the people of the US are guilty of ignoring the rest of the world. As I discussed in an earlier post, if Americans knew how good the Scandinavians have it, they would not be voting the way they vote, or stomping around about the superiority of their country. The same is true of Britons. They vote against their best interests all the time, but the voting system there also reduces the need for compromise…
Vaccine mandates
The US used a vaccine mandate to survive the war of independence. This from today’s New York Times (the full article, though behind a paywall, is worth a read): The rationale for workplace mandates revolves around those large benefits: Even in a country that prioritizes individual freedom as much as the U.S. does, citizens do not have the right to harm their colleagues or their colleagues’ families, friends and communities. One person’s right to a healthy life is greater than…