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On ‘Cat’s Cradle’ and whether or not it’s sci-fi.
The science is realistic, but, more importantly, the science doesn’t matter. The story is about people. Oh, and, the world ends. Whatever.
Cat’s Cradle, catalysis, classics, energy barriers, fate of the universe, ice-9, Kurt Vonnegut, literary fiction, mad cow disease, math analogies for non-math people, Pages to Prisoners, prions, qwerty keyboards, resistance to change, sci-fi, science fiction, science versus philosophy, speculative fiction, the big freeze, the meaning of life is protein?, the stickiness of bad ideas, thermodynamics, transition-state energy
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On citizenship.
Without citizenship — without, as per Hannah Arendt, “the right to have rights” — people are buffeted by the political whims of whatever nation they might find themselves in. Syrian refugees, for instance, might expect a certain treatment based on their status as humans, but they aren’t officially documented Europeans. Even when they safely reach…
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, buying citizenship, climate change, cost of U.S. citizenship, deportation, Henry David Thoreau, human rights, illusion of meritocracy, inequality, New York Times book review, political philosophy, privilege, property rights, purchased citizenship, refugee crisis, Richard Bellamy, Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism, Syrian refugees, The Cosmopolites, the social contract, undocumented immigrants, unequal justice for the poor, Walden
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On paranoia, virology, conspiracy theories, & lemmings: my experience reading ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.’
In which our hero stumbles across a Disney-promulgated conspiracy of lemming misinformation.
1958 Disney documentary, accidental death mistaken for suicide, Apophenia, are parents trustworthy, are politicians trustworthy, are scientists trustworthy, authority figures, being honest to your kid, being honest with my kid, bibliophile, book hunting, book review, characters trapped within the grand schemes of their creator, climate change, conspiracy, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory, disappointment at rampant misbehavior in classic literature, Disney, Disney documentary, do lemmings commit suicide, do you know how they make pepperoni?, does life have any meaning?, Easter Bunny, evil cabal, fabricated documentary footage, faked documentary footage, fatherhood, Fred Tomaselli, Genesis 41, Gravity’s Rainbow, hidden meanings, honesty, human fallacies, human population, hunting to extinction, influenza, influenza virus is one step ahead of our defenses, is life random?, is the world random?, lemming migration, lemming suicide, lemmings, lemmings don’t commit suicide, library booksales, lying to children, lying to children about Santa Claus, lying to kids about Santa Claus, mental illness, novelist as God, overbreeding, overfishing, overpredation, paranoia, parenting, pattern seeking, pop psychology, population booms and busts, population dynamics, predator prey population dynamics, predator prey relationship, psychology, randomness, randomness is scary, Rob Brotherton, santa claus, Santa Claus conspiracy, schizophrenia, should children believe in Santa Claus, Slothrop, storing food for lean years, Suspicious Minds, Thomas Pynchon, truth, unrealistic expectations, used bookstores, water usage rights, White Wilderness
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On productivity, and the risk of accidentally making the world worse when we’re trying to make it better.
If efficiency were all we were after, why bother with human consumers? Robots could grow the food, and gobble it all up, too.
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On poetry: Erin Belieu’s ‘When at a Certain Party in NYC’
You can’t always get what you want – from your local library – but you might just find, you get what you need.
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On the low-quality, highly-biased research attempting to dissuade you from wearing a bike helmet.
You should wear a helmet, no matter what the ill-conceived research papers claim.
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On Akerlof & Shiller’s ‘Phishing for Phools’ and the increasing heterogeneity of the United States.
People aren’t exactly the same everywhere, but we’re all suckers. And huckersters know.
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On paying teachers for value added.
Pay the best teachers more? Sure! But are the best teachers the ones who program their students to fill in the right bubbles?
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On medical spending.
We spend huge amounts on medical care in the U.S., but cheaper interventions would improve people’s lives more.
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On asking first.
I still frown every time I see the sidewalk chalkings / posters / coffee mugs / t-shirts that read “Consent Is Sexy.” I really thought that slogan would’ve faded away by now. Traditional sexual practices in the U.S. are bad, sure. The standard shown in movies and advice books is for both parties to act…
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Frank Brown Cloud 