climate change
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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 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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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 undeserved forgiveness and global warming.
I wish there were more essays focused on philosophy in Freeman Dyson’s collection Dreams of Earth and Sky. I thought all his remarks on morals and philosophy were nuanced and compelling. His essay “Rocket Man,” for instance, is very powerful. This essay discusses Wernher von Braun, a German scientist who helped develop Nazi weaponry during…
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