Charisma in politics, charisma in life
I think I may have first heard the word “charisma” in connection with JFK. He had it. I could tell. I recognized it and I even felt it. But of course back then I was a kid. Have I ever … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Getting philosophical: life, love, the universe
Yuval Noah Harari predicts the future—sort of
The name of Yuval Noah Harari came up recently in a conversation I had over the holidays. He seems to have become some sort of guru to a lot of people, and yet I know practically nothing about him or … Continue reading →
The lengthy history of the liberalism of urban dwellers
Commenter “CatoRenasci” writes: Consider that urban areas have been more ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ (pick an adjective) since time immemorial – at least as far as we have any sort of reliable history: classical writers, both Greek and (especially) … Continue reading →
The 5 worst things about getting older
John Hawkins has a piece at PJ Media entitled “The 5 Worst Things About Getting Older.” It caught my eye for obvious reasons, but as with many such articles I started chuckling right at the start on learning that Hawkins … Continue reading →
Like explaining colors to a blind man
A color-blind one, that is. And one picture is worth 1,000 words: Here’s the website for the glasses. Most of the color-blind people in the videos who put on the glasses are overwhelmed. At first they usually pause (it often … Continue reading →
Gentleman Lindsey
This sort of thing is why Lindsey Graham felt so betrayed at the Kavanaugh attacks. It’s Graham’s statement in 2010, explaining his vote for Elana Kagan: We lost. President Obama won. I’ve got a lot of opportunity to disagree, but … Continue reading →
And how odd that Democrats didn’t think this disqualified Obama
But the real question is—did he throw ice in anybody’s face as an “excuse to brawl”? By the way, Obama graduated from high school four years before Kavanaugh, so he’s roughly the same age although a bit older. A similar … Continue reading →
And why should anyone on earth care?
Here’s my question: why should anyone on earth care if college student Brett Kavanaugh once got into a bar fight that resulted in no charges—or once precipitated a bar fight by reacting to an insult by throwing the contents of … Continue reading →
What motives drive false accusers?
The answer might seem obvious, but I think it’s more complicated than most people might think. Let’s leave out accusers who are telling the truth. I’m interested in the ones who are not. They can have multiple motives, too. This … Continue reading →
The face of justice: accuser and accused
This post isn’t really about Kavanaugh and Ford, although obviously that’s the jumping-off spot. It’s about the larger issues that the controversy reflects, which have to do with the nature of justice. Robert Frost (yes, that Robert Frost) had this … Continue reading →
On algorithms and their glitches
This is starting to sound like a Philip K. Dick novel: “People say, ‘Well, what about Facebook – they create and use algorithms and they can change them.’ But that’s not how it works. They set the algorithms off and … Continue reading →
Free-climbers [Part I]
[NOTE: It might help to have read this previous post of mine, about free-climbing El Capitan, before reading the present post.] This article is about Dean Potter, a free-climbing star who died in a base-jumping accident in 2015. It was … Continue reading →