By Joel Bowman, on October 26th, 2019% The first time I encountered the expression, May you live in interesting times, it was attributed to Robert Kennedy, who had supposedly called it an “Ancient Chinese curse.” The idea is/was that the kinds of events that make times interesting are usually unpleasant: wars, famines, earthquakes, serious storms, and so on. A headline to the effect of “Neighbors fight to the death over a petunia patch” will create more interest than one stating, “Neighbors cooperate to raise petunias.” An old saying in the newspaper industry (and radio, TV and Internet news as well) is, If it bleeds, it leads.
It . . . → Read More: Living In Interesting Times
By Joel Bowman, on December 23rd, 2018% This is Reality? I am old enough to remember when the U.S. government was being run by adults. That was also true for most of the governments in the so-called civilized world—we had International differences of opinion about forms of government and territorial concerns. Most of us agreed with some of them and disagreed with others, but we were fairly certain that most countries were making decisions about government by relatively rational means, with military conflict being a last resort.
Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes an alternative universe in which nothing is what it seems. Alice had . . . → Read More: Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux)
By Joel Bowman, on April 25th, 2018% “Fouling one’s nest” is an old metaphor, originally in reference to birds that excreted in their nests, and applied by extension to humans who failed to keep their environments tidy. The thought that led me here was about helium balloons used to help promote events such as weddings and open houses, cut loose after the event to come down wherever. And they will come down, and, when they come down, they cause problems for birds and other wildlife. People think about the immediate benefit of using the balloons to highlight an event without considering the after-event consequences of disposing of . . . → Read More: Fouling Our Nest
By Joel Bowman, on February 10th, 2018% I borrow my title from one of my favorite science fiction authors, Robert Heinlein, whose books captivated me during my adolescence. A number of them have been made into movies (including The Puppet Masters, Starship Troopers, and . . . → Read More: Future History
By Joel Bowman, on July 29th, 2017% All major human conflicts are essentially what Jonathan Swift called the war between the “Big Endians” and the “Little Endians” in Gulliver’s Travels. In Swift’s novel, Lilliput and Blefuscu are island nations ruled by emperors. Those from Lilliput broke boiled eggs on the larger end, while those from Blefuscu broke their’s on the smaller end. Swift’s readers at the time would have recognized that his metaphor suggested that the British political parties at the time, the Whigs and Torys, were fighting a war based on minuscule and inconsequential differences. That appears to be a common theme in human history: Most . . . → Read More: The Faces of Humanity
By Joel Bowman, on July 15th, 2017% I haven’t posted anything new in a while. I’ve been too busy reading the political news and wringing my hands. My sense is that the world situation is getting worse. We have, of course, had “dark days” in times past. I’m not sure there has ever been a time the planet was without at least one war going on. Most recently, in the States we experienced the World Wars (I and II), the Korean War, the “conflict” in Vietnam, and whatever is currently going on in the Mid-East. We’ve also had Civil Rights challenges, and various other conflicts and difficulties . . . → Read More: Dumbfounded, Discouraged, and Dismayed
By Joel Bowman, on October 5th, 2013% According to a top Saudi cleric, driving damages women’s ovaries. Does the fact (reality) that some people believe that make it true, if only for them? What—exactly—is the relationship between reality and what we believe? You may know people who believe that their beliefs accurately reflect reality. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that one of my recurrent themes is the need for an evidence procedure that allows individuals to base their beliefs on reality to the degree that it’s possible.
It was, for example, perfectly logical for our ancient ancestors to believe that . . . → Read More: The Reality of Beliefs
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