Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Thursday, April 12. 2018Independent workers
For people who value independence and being their own boss, the price paid in uncertainty, lack of external structure, and anxiety, is worth it. There is nothing new about this. If you are a plumber with a truck you are a gig worker. So is a guy with a barbershop.
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
13:11
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Wednesday, April 11. 2018You say your heart is in the right place..."Funny, I can't see your halo from here."
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
16:57
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Tuesday, April 10. 2018Social constructionLast week I posted on Does Language Shape Our Thoughts? The subject provoked some discussion. It is true that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turns out to have little empirical support, but I'll stand by my experience that a new word or phrase, and the concept in them, certainly effect the ways I think and can even give me a new tool to think in a new way. Heck, that is called "education." (a quote on the topic below the fold) I think one problem might be taking the implications of a theory too far, too globally. This brings me to the notion of "social construction," popularized by Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality. After I read it, I asked my professor whether social constructionism might be a social construct. Berger and Luckmann's claims were stimulating and I am certain that they have limited application despite being unreinforced by data. (I don't know how one gets data on such types of epistemologic theorizing.) However they were welcomed by radicals and deconstruction postmodernists who took them to extremes, sometimes to psychotic levels of subjectivity, because they appeared to support the ideas of the infinite malleability of the human mind and heart, and the impossibility of objectivity. At Quillette, Lost Down Social Constructionism’s Epistemic Rabbit-Hole. There is a lot of hot air in Sociology. Continue reading "Social construction"
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
14:28
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Sunday, April 8. 2018Renoir, the manFriday, April 6. 2018Does language shape our thinking?
There is some Goethe quote that we can only see what we know. If you see a "fighter jet" and I see an F-16, our mental representations of the thing are entirely different. Similarly, if you see "woods" and I see an Oak-Beech climax forest. Knowledge embedded in language shapes our perceptions and thus our thought. My favorite question is "Who was the genius who invented numbers?" Are numbers "real"? . Remarkably, not all cultures have/had numbers. Numbers make a huge difference in how we perceive the world. And colors are just handy bunching of slices of the humanly visible electromagnetic spectrum. Scientists Probe an Enduring Question: Can Language Shape Perception? The idea that language shapes our ability to think fell out of favor in the 1960s, but new tools have some researchers revisiting the concept. Bonus: collection of Goethe quotes Ed: Fun addendum:
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
14:33
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Thursday, April 5. 2018Fix "society" or fix yourself?In Search of Utopia for Lobsters Like Us I suggest that we get our own act together instead of waiting for utopia. There is no utopia, and heaven, I am told, is like a boring vacation. A harp is a fine instrument, but all day long? Not to say that meeting God would not be an exciting moment.
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
13:43
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Sunday, April 1. 2018Artificial IntelligenceIf you are (or are not) high on Resurrection Sunday, and have a half-hour to spare, here's a good intro to AI and "Deep Learning" : Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning For the Extremely Confused The math is elementary.
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
16:24
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MertonFrom a piece on Thomas Merton at Crosscurrents:
Posted by Bird Dog
in Religion, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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15:34
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Saturday, March 31. 2018Charles Murray talks about his life
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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12:10
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JudasFrom Vanderleun: Judas: A Saint for Our Season
Posted by Bird Dog
in Religion, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
09:58
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Friday, March 30. 2018The title on this Peterson interview is misleading"Sorting yourself out is harder than you think." It's just a good chat about foolish youth who want to save the world. Peterson is right. It's adolescent narcissism.
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
17:42
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The Washington BubbleWednesday, March 28. 2018Robotic parking garage in BrooklynThere goes a job. I had never encountered a robotic parking garage until last weekend in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. (By the way, Fort Greene was once a scary place. Not anymore. Very pleasant, with a perfect cozy neighborhood Italian joint, Belli on Fulton St.) The garage had rack parking 3 floors underground. You park the car on the elevator, get out, and down it goes. When it's time to go, you watch the robot lift your car off the rack on the video camera. Robot places your car on the elevator, and up it comes.
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
22:45
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Smart Lefty guy surprised to find Peterson's book "good" - even helpful to him
His only quibble is with the foundations of Peterson's idea of the good life: "Reduce suffering." If there is a better idea outside of religion, I either haven't heard it or cannot understand it.
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
15:31
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Monday, March 26. 2018A book Donald Trump didn't need to readSeveral gals I know read this book to understand how (many) men function. They want to be man-savvy and particularly predator-savvy. It seems like a how-to book for guys who have been disappointed in their romantic or simply sexual pursuits. Some guys are luckier than others. Some guys are chick magnets, and they are not all tall, dark (or orange), and handsome. It's not just rich and powerful guys who decide to give their instincts free rein. It's not just guys, either. Interesting to me that nobody needs to write books for women about how to get appealing males into bed. It just comes naturally to them.
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
15:23
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Sunday, March 25. 2018Good magic
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
17:26
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Women have it better than men in the West
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
14:16
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The rapid creation of time, space, and matter
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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13:21
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Saturday, March 24. 2018Help in seeing beautyFriday, March 23. 2018Happy Birthday, Mr. Lumbergh
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
18:02
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Billionaire hipsters
VDH on Elite Camouflage: It is true for sure. However, I think his observation applies more to guys than to gals. Most guys prefer to dress in as relaxed a manner as they can except when they need to "dress for success" for meetings. Billionaires do not need to dress for meetings.
Posted by The News Junkie
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
17:29
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Thursday, March 22. 2018Fatherless families in the USFamilies without good father role models do not work well, statistically. Where are the good men? And why do women go along with this program if it works poorly for their kids?
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
14:49
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Wednesday, March 21. 2018Fun with EmergenceEmergent Properties refer to outcomes that one cannot predict in advance in complex systems. Things to which reductionism does not apply. Life is considered an emergent property of chemistry and physics. Consciousness is often considered an emergent property of biology. If I provided anyone with a group of DNA molecules from any life form, could that person look at the sequence of nucleotides and accurately predict the outcome such genes? So is God an emergent property of Homo Sapiens or vice versa? Emergence, at Wikipedia.
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
11:57
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Sunday, March 18. 2018A brilliant (semi-secular) sermonOnce you get past his bit about his (14-minute) anger with the Linfield College administration's dismal treatment of him, he delivers a stimulating sermon on life, including topics of the "impartial brutality of reality"; the need to make life more difficult; the necessity of hitting walls in order to grow; that the meaning of life is in reducing suffering; the necessity of self-doubt and humility for spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth; the dangers of isolation/insulation; the idea that to learn and develop, an old part of you has to die; and "black truths." And more. It's a sermon with too many themes, but is there anything "controversial" enough to be banned here? "How do you radically justify your miserable existence? Start with yourself."
Posted by The Barrister
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
12:20
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Friday, March 16. 2018Things everybody (including Amy Wax, Ted Dalrymple, and Charles Murray) understands about functioning
Everybody knows what ingredients can result in unfortunate lives regardless of money: bad luck, bad genes, low IQ (half of the population is below average), addiction, maladaptive, annoying, (or intolerable, eg sociopathic or impulsive) character traits, poor judgement, unappealing appearance, mental illness, poor social awareness, low-functioning parents, poor child-rearing and lack of a father, etc. etc. As we reiterate here, a stable bourgeois life is tough enough for most, even if lacking in those obstacles. Everybody is insufficient, and everybody stumbles. I know people with beautiful fulfilling lives, but have never known anybody who has not endured grievous troubles or terrible years. Peterson keeps saying "Life is suffering." No, but it has its share of it. You can count on that. Tragedy is unavoidable.
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
at
14:45
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