• Midstream Musings – we scale ourselves and return Sisyphus …
- My personal word of the year is demonize. But … A commentary on how “we are using our free time” … an ongoing “cultural conversation about humanity and technology.” • AP News > “How to sum up 2024? The Oxford University Press word of the year is ‘brain rot’” (December […]
- Pondering the big picture, what has changed in the last 100 years or so … This article (republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license) is a useful recap of our understanding of human evolution, and an excellent visualization of that story, including salient talking points. The millions-of-years history […]
- [Draft 11-7-2024] We supposedly live in a secular society. And yet, sacred speech dominates our polarized politics. The righteous mind is alive and well. Private & public piety pervades our identities, our virtues and values. Dogma still divides. History has lessons which remain unheeded. Social media (and money) amplify an […]
- This blog’s Health & Exercise page has been reorganized. There now are separate sections (headings) for articles:
- Fables were part of the moral fabric when I was growing up. Perhaps yours as well. Especially some of Aesop’s Fables. (Yet, I was suprised that this was not the case for many of my middle school students, when a public school teacher.) There’s one fable, in particular, which social […]
- Speaking of our brain, let us explore the ways … • Caltech > The Caltech > Neuroscience > "Neuroscience: Studying the Brain" (12-5-2024) How does a wrinkled, 3-pound mass of cells use chemical reactions and electrical signals to give a person intelligence, motor skills, and conscious experience? Technical advances in […]
- The human brain's size did not evolve like the jumps in capacity of modern computer processors. • Neuroscience News > "Human Brains Evolved Gradually, Not in Sudden Leaps" by Ollie Sirrell (November 29, 2024) – "Our study instead shows a steady, incremental 'software update' happening within each species over millions […]
- The "greed is good" of the 1980's is characterized also as the "Glengarry Glen Ross" culture: Glengarry Glen Ross (play) 1984 Glengarry Glen Ross (film) 1992 [what a cast!] AI Overview Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet is a play that critiques the culture of capitalism and the American Dream: […]
- I'm still pondering the interplay of individual and collective ethics. How that aligns identities (or not). Conformity and compliance. Confluence and contention. Social merit and meaning. Faith and finance. Interdependency and incentive – "the gods help those who help themselves." [1] Plutarch's heroes, like Bunyan's Christian, are honorable men who […]
- Pondering the question "How to live a meaningful life" … does this ask even arise for those dealing with "How to have a life?" – a life at all, to survive. Whatever view one takes, it is useful to engage anew with Franklin, for in doing so we are grappling […]