Commenter “Ariel” addresses these remarks by another commenter in this way: …”but [Trump’s] policies are overall working pretty well” How the hell can you know that? I say this from watching George Bush blamed for the housing crash when it … Continue reading →
Food for cosmic thought [hat tip: commenter “Mrs Whatsit”). I don’t really buy the application of the multiple personality template to the universe as a whole. I have, however, read a number of fascinating articles recently on the idea of … Continue reading →
Here’s an excellent article by Coleman Hughes. I’d not heard of Hughes before today, but I plan to follow his work with interest, because this article shows much common sense (of the type that has become more and more uncommon) … Continue reading →
That’s the subtitle of an article in Foreign Policy. It describes traditional but still-existent customs of many Amazon tribes in Brazil that dictate killing handicapped children and even those one might define as transgendered, and a controversy in Brazil over … Continue reading →
This article about how head injuries sometimes (although very very rarely) lead to savant powers made me think (once again) of the Jorge Luis Borges story “Funes, the Memorious.” Fortunately, the work appears in its entirety online, so if you … Continue reading →
It doesn’t surprise me. I never wanted to live in New York, although I grew up there and most of the people I knew wanted to stay there the rest of their lives—and have done so. Not me. I always … Continue reading →
…than are dreamt of in your philosophy: The individual galaxies in galaxy clusters are held together by dark matter, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. During the universe’s first few million years, dark matter (and normal matter) began to … Continue reading →
Like Charlie Gard before him, British toddler Alfie Evan’s situation highlights not just questions of medical ethics, but the power of the state over the individual. I wrote about Charlie here. Alfie Evans’ situation differs in some details, but it’s … Continue reading →
Google has a new director of AI: The new AI boss at Google is Jeff Dean. The lean 50-year-old computer scientist joined the company in 1999, when it was a startup less than one year old. He earned a reputation … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Today’s news is so depressing and appalling that I wanted a respite from it by going big. This is about as big as it gets.] Maria Popova writes: In our recent On Being conversation, NASA astrophysicist and exoplanet researcher … Continue reading →
In particular, they are making it less likely we will pay close attention in the first place. Huh? What’s that you said? Simply put, it’s the idea that we’re literally outsourcing our mental capabilities to computers. In 2011, the journal … Continue reading →
This comment from “The Other Chuck” was so good I decided to highlight it [emphasis mine]: [Postmodernism is] the destruction of human reason, using reason, and the destruction of everything flowing from reason. If this sounds like nihilism, yes, but … Continue reading →