I’m splitting this post into two parts. Hope you read both. No, I’m not talking about that BDS, I’m talking about Trump Derangement Syndrome vs Biden Derangement Syndrome. I have a serious case of TDS and a mild case of … Continue reading
My Primary Dilemma
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Do I enjoy too much freedom? Perhaps. I could vote for either a Republican candidate in our March 12 primary or a Democratic candidate. In Washington, we do not have to declare a party when we register to vote. But … Continue reading
Why Do I Love Sabine Hossenfelder?
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I’m taking a break from the depressing state of the world to offer up some fun science videos for your entertainment. I don’t have an actual YouTube account, even though I spend a lot of time on YouTube. My guess is that if I sign up for an account, YouTube will double down on its attempts to track everything I watch, so no account for me. That means that my time on YouTube is much more random than it needs to be.
The great thing about random offerings is that I find surprises in their suggestions that might not show up if I were directing YT to send me in the direction of “my personal silo.” One of the best surprises recently was videos by Sabine Hossenfelder. She has degrees in physics, but now spends a lot of her time as a “science communicator.” That wasn’t an option when I was wondering what to do with my life many decades ago, but I think I would have enjoyed being a science communicator.
In any event, Sabine has a YT channel with programs on a wide array of topics. A recent one was a about climate change in which she wondered why her videos about climate change get the most thumbs down votes of all the work she does. Watch it and see what you think.
Oh, and by the way, I just learned today that we can minimize the tracking that YouTube does on us by viewing everything through “Duck Player” from DuckDuckGo. Clever, no? Yes, DDG started out as a search engine that minimized tracking, but now it’s its own browser and video player. Give it a try.
For more free science, try Knowable Magazine. Lots of articles on a wide variety of topics, and did I say it’s free? Yes, they’d love your donations, but they’re not required.
In any event, it’s all a pleasant relief from fretting about Congress, about the 2024 elections, about Ukraine, about Israel. And about all the other troubles in the world that get very little press.
MLK, BLM, Glenn Loury, Donald Trump
Flawed human beings can do good.
This morning, I read a moving article by Angel Eduardo on the FAIR website. It made the case that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a saint, but he was the right man at the right time to bring our attention to injustices that we needed to address. King was a powerful orator who made masterful use of non-violent tactics to bring attention to Jim Crow laws in the south and Jim Crow sentiments in the north. Yet he wouldn’t pass muster today with people who expect leaders of both the past and present to have no earthly flaws.
BLM employs powerful rhetoric and surely has a winning slogan, “Black Lives Matter.” Yet it clamors for justice for individuals who have somehow gotten the message that only “the system” is wrong, that their own actions cannot be scrutinized, that no one needs to obey a cop, that admitting mistakes will fail the cause. Rosa Parks was primed for her role in the fight against racism. A less sympathetic woman was passed over. Yes, the system was unfair to both, but we benefitted from the decision to use Rosa Parks to advance the cause. When individuals can readily be discredited, advancing the cause is more difficult. Knowing this, MLK hid his flaws. And he made sure to focus on people who were undeserving of the ill treatment they received.
Glenn Loury: Flawed. Intelligent. Honest about his struggles. And barely getting the attention he deserves. I look forward to the release of his memoir this spring, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. Glenn posts on Substack, and every other week, he and John McWhorter do a podcast on race issues in which they speak heresy and challenge each other to clarify and justify their thinking. Thomas Sowell might be more famous, but Loury is absolutely the real deal in terms of a flawed person who has overcome many struggles (drugs and infidelity in addition to poverty) accomplished a great deal, and is now sharing his insights and wisdom. Admitting his flaws elevates Loury’s message that individual responsibility is still a vital element in individual achievement.
And then there’s Donald Trump. One thing I learned when I began reaching out to Trump voters is that his supporters are able to overlook his flaws because they like his message. Or they like some of his policies. Or they like the way he stands up to elites. This lesson is why I think it’s vital that we not vilify his supporters if we feel that Trump is dangerous or is too flawed to be President. If someone tells me that MLK was a womanizer, I’m not going to let that fact drown out his important message.
No. I do not think Trump is of the same stature as Martin Luther King, Jr. No, I do not equate Trump and King in any way. I’m not even sure that Trump has a message for America. To me, he’s all about Trump, and he’s latched onto victim status in a way that true victims can only watch with amazement.
Here, I am just addressing the fact that people who support Trump are able to overlook his character flaws, so we might do better to address issues rather than character flaws when discussing Trump. There are some, you know: No plan for health care; no follow-through on infrastructure; no understanding of America’s role in global trade and global affairs; appointment of cronies to important agencies; insistence on gutting government rather than right-sizing it.
And lest you think you’re right about everything, here’s a nifty (short) commercial that challenges that idea. From the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: FIRE commercial
The Blizzards of My Childhood
We are spending today at home, mostly inside the house which, at this moment, is comfortably warm and cozy. The “warm and cozy” could change at any moment as we are under a high wind warning in an area which has a reputation for wind events that knock out the power at least once each winter.
The terrain outside our windows is white. We had a bit of snow night before last. Not deep, but there’s a layer of ice under it which makes it a bit treacherous for walking. My first experiences of that little layer of ice were humbling. I grew up in Wyoming and prided myself on my ability to get around in the snow, both on foot and by car. But I soon discovered that there’s a reason Northwest drivers are chicken when it comes to driving in the snow: what looks beautiful covers that layer of ice which changes everything. Caution is, in fact, advisable here.
Blizzards are uncommon here, but they were an annual event when I was young. They were exciting (for us kids, not necessarily our parents). No school, for one. For my sister and me, it also meant that we were home with mom while dad was working. He was a railroad engineer and seemed always to be trying to get his passengers from one station to another following behind the snowplow. (My sister and I would not exist were it not for a blizzard in the ‘30s. Dad met mom in the hospital where she was his favorite nurse treating his frostbite from a blizzard misadventure.)
If we couldn’t go out to play, we invented adventures inside the house. We rearranged the furniture, draping blankets over chairs and tables to create tunnels to crawl through. We got out every single board and floor game in the house and played them all. (Tiddly Winks was my personal favorite.) We got to dine on cocoa and toast, still a go-to meal at times of despair. And we fought. Angels we were not. We cannot today figure out how mom survived it all.
Once the winds died down, we could bundle up and work our way out of the house. Often, either the front door or the back was blocked by snowdrifts. But the drifts created a unique opportunity for adventure. I remember a year when we could climb a drift all the way to the roof of our house. In ordinary blizzards, the drifts provided instant forts for snowball fights.
We were blessed in many ways. Power outages were rare for us, even during the worst storms. Dad always survived the storms, even when the train got stuck, though more than once he had to leave the engine and walk to the nearest town to fetch milk for the tiny tots in his care. Mom might even have enjoyed the chaos we created at home. As kids, we were oblivious to the impact of the storms on the world around us. And such breaks from routine, when they end well, are a valuable part of childhood. These anomalies expand our sense of what’s possible and rev up our problem solving abilities. All good – when they end well.
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