330,000,000 Americans live under clear blue skies, but about 2/3s are overweight or obese. Perhaps the color blue actually stimulates appetite to an u...
Time moving at faster and slower speeds presents complex time-management problems in sex-servicing industries. What effect do the lightbulbs have on t...
Over the decades we have seen a revolving door which roughly alternates Democratic and Republican administrations. Same for control of congress, state...
Thanks for highlighting Milwaukee! Milwaukee's history is most interesting; The Making of Milwaukee is a 5 part series which is available as a disc se...
One can reasonably blame Twitter, and several other social media sites, for animosity towards the left and for polarization. The algorithms encourage ...
The National Health Care System in Britain is suffering under austerity budgets, apparently. Why? Brexit, for one; austerity-preferring conservative g...
We are prone to sinning (whatever the list of sins may contain). Many nice people--decent, honest, cooperative, civiic minded--have people "chained to...
Thank you for pointing out my error. Oh, God forbid! I confused St. Anne and St. Elizabeth. Mea culpa maxima culpa!!! The shame. Being ambivalent at b...
Trump & Biden: I voted for Biden, but I said in 2020 that he was too old. Biden should not have needed armtwisting to forego his run for a second term...
Many Christians probably believe that the resurrection was a corporeal, cellular regeneration of Jesus' body. He was literally dead; then he was liter...
I confused Mark & Mindy with the Coneheads. YouTube to the rescue. Both stupid shows, but the very young Robin Williams displays actual talent. I don'...
@"Vera Mont" One of the points Snyder made in a recent NPR appearance was that a number of incumbent governments have been voted out since Covid, the ...
So am I. One of Timothy Snyder's latest books is The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America 2019, with an updated preface. Snyder has studied fasc...
Thanks for that! You probably have read of "fatbergs" forming in the sewers of London and New York, et al composed of feces, fat, non-dissolving wipes...
I don't think I've read a sci fi story that dealt with alien excreta. It might be horrible; or delightful; or very dangerous; or amusing; or... One th...
As an old American, I'm plenty disturbed about the politics of this country. I loathe Trump but, the majority of Americans (working class) are sufferi...
A great relief to find that it's merely some sort of residue from oil production. I was afraid it would it turn out to be the feces of an alien life f...
I did know that, and a fine cocktail a Bloody Mary is. Her boy Jimmy had some odd habits; a history prof stated that, when he had killed a stag in the...
Ah ha! That's where the phrase comes from. George Stewart wrote a great sci fi novel in 1949, Earth Abides, about a virus that kills 99.999% of the po...
Speaking of the Will and the power of boredom, one is reminded of Pascal's summary, "All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly...
Not sure about 'enlightenment', but a sound moral education can do much to alleviate the harms inherent in human nature. It isn't that we are 'evil', ...
Speaking of grim topics, the facts of life about human nature are pretty dark, revealing their... Isn't there a button that just stops this Bambi disc...
It's been a VERY LONG TIME since I saw Bambi, if I ever did. I did have a little picture book about Bambi. My impression of Bambi is that it is a cloy...
No, I don't think this is the best of all possible worlds -- we live in one of the rest of all possible worlds. Best? Not so much, I felt compelled to...
An actual "personal God" may well not exist, but the CONCEPT of a creator and personal God can not be denied. How believable and/or compelling is Scho...
It's all about justice and balance in this best of all possible worlds. Bambi must burn in order for the spiritual balance of the forest to be maintai...
First, glad you were not washed away in the great flood. Floods cause such great loss. "Come hell (heat) or high water" as the saying goes. There are ...
Thanks, Jgill. If the damn rats don't cooperate, what's a biochemist to do? Not in STEM, but certainly the humanities have an oversupply of candidates...
A few education commentators have asked "just why are a significant number of people spending at least the first third of their lives in school?" And ...
Personal identity is, of course, personal but it is significantly shaped by all the different kinds of interactions we have with others. Contrasting i...
I have spent a lot of time thinking about identity. Class, sexuality, religion, politics, education, etc. all figure into this. It seems like I have b...
I didn't find Wittgenstein's quote helpful. Perhaps review some psychology? There are 4+ kinds of memory: working memory, sensory memory, short-term m...
I take a tolerant approach to sites being down. When sites are down, I presume that somebody, somewhere is working on the problem--not out of the good...
This just in... The term "Art Deco" wasn't coined until the 1960s, by which time "art deco" had been over for 25 years. In its heyday people talked ab...
It might mean that. There are other possibilities: a) practical problems like work, child care, bad weather, etc. may impede their participation b) po...
Right. My wishy-washy statement about good and bad law by referendum is hereby retracted. A deliberative body (city council, county commissioners, leg...
It's much more direct than your town electing representatives to meet and make decisions. Somewhere, though, is a limit on how many people can practic...
No, we don't have a 'democracy' like the town meetings of New England. The devised a 'representational' system. Many of the founders were wealthy, and...
Being a global superpower gives one a deserved voice on the global stage, for better or for worse. As it happens, this global superpower (USA) doesn't...
@"Schopenhauer1" There is a very long article in the New York Times today (no link because it's behind a paywall) about the University of Michigan's D...
Sovereign states have the right -- and the responsibility -- to control their borders on behalf of its citizens. There are rules and regulations for a...
Glorification of martyrdom (achieved in cultural indoctrination) seems like it has to tap into the motivational power of the limbic system--which is p...
There are several aspects of the Nobel award that dissuade me from rushing to Amazon, a) Historical trauma; suffering!!! historical and current trauma...
Gavel down! Got it. 100 lashes with a wet noodle. There's a song by Tom Paxton (old folk singer), "Home is anywhere you are" which speaks in a very wa...
Portable, computer-enhanced electronic gadgets (phones, pagers, tablets, etc.) are a decidedly mixed blessing--not because of the hardware--after all,...
Comments