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On non-violence (part 2): empowering kids to act for equality.
Even second-graders can make consumer choices that contribute less toward climate destabilization.
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Links to my writing elsewhere: Line of Sight
This piece was published at Toasted Cheese. I was drawn to this journal by virtue of its being edited by a team of female writers — although 2% of my chromosomes are diminutive, curtailed fragments, I’m a feminist and like to stand with my people. Plus, I really enjoyed Emily Pifer’s piece “A Field Guide…
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On Gerry Alanguilan’s “ELMER,” his author bio, and animal cognition.
In ELMER by Gary Alanguilan, chickens suddenly gain intelligence and have to fight against murder, oppression, and prejudice.
abortion rights, Andy Hartzell, animal cognition, chicken, David Duchovny, ELMER, empathy, ethics, evolution, Fox Bunny Funny, Frans de Waal, Gerry Alanguilan, graphic novel, Holy Cow, Homo naledi, live your ethics, Peter Singer, speciest, suffering, teleological misconception, teleology, vegan, vegetarian
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On military drones.
Sleep Dealer is a lovely film. Flawed, sure — the romantic bits are corny, the characters’ sudden shifts of heart are abrupt — but the ideas behind the film and they way they’re depicted are great. If you like mildly-speculative science fiction that conveys powerful social commentary, you should definitely look for it. But you should…
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On David Lancy’s The Anthropology of Childhood, and violence against women (again!), and proscriptive parenting advice.
The anthropology of what childhood looks like in different cultures does not, in fact, suggest that all children “turn out fine.”
aborting female fetuses, Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory, Andrew Solomon, Anthropology of Childhood, attachment parenting, autism, autism acceptance, Changelings, Chattel, Cherubs, child-rearing, childhood education, childhood nutrition, children, children all turn out fine, cultural relativism, cultural relativity, David Lancy, education spending, Far from the Tree, health spending, Hillary Clinton, India, infant mortality, It Takes a Village, Jean Dreze, medical ethics, medical spending on rare diseases, Michael Erand, misogyny, New York Times, New York Times recommendations, parenting, proscriptive parenting advice, sex-selection, spending on childhood education, stay-at-home father, The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need, Uncertain Glory
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Links to my writing elsewhere: Magnification
This piece was published at Bartleby Snopes. I first learned about the journal after trying to cut the above piece down to a thousand words so that it would qualify as “flash fiction,” giving up, then learning that the editors here graciously offer a bonus two hundred words. Success! Plus, they have popular-vote writing contests:…
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On attempts to see the world through other eyes.
Recoloring an image is cool … but is it enough to imagine how other animals view a certain scene?
A Different Form of Color Vision in Mantis Shrimp, animal cognition, animal vision, animal vision tool, attention, brain plasticity, color vision, colorblind glasses, cone cells, crotalomorphism, dichromat, distinguishing between similar colors, eyes, facial recognition, frequency shifting, fusiform gyrus, gene therapy, glasses to let colorblind people see color, human facial recognition, image processing, mantis shrimp, mantis shrimp research, mantis shrimp vision, neurological processing, New York Times, peacock vision, perception, photoreceptors, retrovirus, species, starling vision, summer of science, tetrachromat, Thoen study, trichromat, vision, visual spectrum, what do bees see, what do dogs see, what does the world look like to other animals, what does the world look like to other creatures
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On free-market economics & the actual meaning of words.
Despite being rather politically liberal, I consider myself a free market economist. (Maybe it’s unfair to self-describe as an economist, though? I did the coursework for a master’s degree in economics… but couldn’t get a degree because I didn’t complete the residency requirement. I was enrolled as an undergraduate at the time, and apparently would’ve…
basic research, beekeeping, CAFOs, cap and trade versus carbon tax, capital gains tax, carbon tax, Collapse, definition of fortuitous, definition of peruse, do taxes make people work less, Easter Island, economics, education spending, fortuitous, free market, free market distortions, free market economist, free-market fundamentalist, government subsidies, health spending, infrastructure, infrastructure spending, James Surowiecki, Jared Diamond, Joseph Stiglitz, market solutions, market solutions versus government solutions, mis-used words, misused words, New York Review of Books, patent protections, peruse, politicians misusing words, politics, pollution, positive externalities, pro-life, progressive taxation, right-wing economist, Stiglitz, subsidies, tax on high earners, taxation, taxing negative externalities, Thomas Friedman, tragedy of the commons, why does Easter Island have no trees, Why I Am Pro-Life, Why the Rich Are So Much Richer
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On watchful gods, trust, and how academic scientists undermined their own credibility.
Despite my disagreements with a lot of its details, I thoroughly enjoyed Ara Norenzayan’s Big Gods. The book posits an explanation for the current global dominance of the big three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Instead of the “quirks of history & dumb luck” explanation offered in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Norenzayan suggests…
Abrahamic faiths, Abrahamic religions, animal cognition, Ara Norenzayan, atheism, Automaticity of Social Behavior, Bargh, Big Gods, climate change, credibility, Daniel Dennett, experimental psychology, false positive, False-Positive Psychology, Freedom Evolves, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, John Bargh, Joseph Simmons, Jurgen Osterhammel, Kanesh, Leonard Wantchekon, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Nathan Nunn, priming, religion, replication, scientific method, scientific publishing, social psychology, statistical significance, statistically significant, survivor bias, The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, The Transformation of the World, trust, truth, unethical research
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On the worst I have ever smelled.
A recent graduate from our local track & cross country teams is an artist, just now begun his freshman year studying photography in Vermont. Despite being the fifth fastest 800-meter runner in our moderately-sized state, Peter often did his recovery runs with me. A very biphasic runner: extremely fast on his workout days, slower than…
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Frank Brown Cloud 