MIT’s Look at Civilization’s Megatrends
Here are 9 top megatrends as seen by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (more…)
Bernie Will Not Improve Life for Literally Everone
The claim in the meme here is that everyone will have a better quality of life if this country shifts in the direction of democratic socialism. If that were the case, we’d already be there. The problem is that this isn’t true.
Here is a list of groups of those who will come out far behind, with a guess as to what percentage of American voters they apply to: (more…)
A Trump Victory in 2020 Will Require a TON of Ignorance
If Trump’s 2020 campaign is going to succeed, it will require a huge amount of ignorance, as the Republican rallying cry is aimed to convincing voters that there is no difference between a country whose government addresses its citizens’ needs and Stalinist communism. (more…)
Tagged with: Democratic Socialism
Time: Future and Past Exist Simultaneously
As discussed before, it hasn’t been a good last 75 years for philosophers. In the middle of the 20th Century, if you wanted to know the basic nature of the universe around us, you asked a philosopher, perhaps a metaphysician; now you ask an astrophysicist. Similarly, if you wanted to know how the human mind perceives the outside world, or the limits of human knowledge, you asked a philosopher, maybe an epistemologist; now you ask a neurologist. (more…)
Electric Air Travel
According to this, Electric 19-seater commuter-class aircraft is the next big step in electric flight.The author claims that Germany is eyeing electric drive trains for short commuter flights, say 200 kilometers. Really? That’s 130 miles, which Germans do in about 45 minutes on their autobahns. Who takes a flight when you can be at your destination in under an hour by car?
Hate in America
There is no doubt that our civilization, certainly the United States, is experiencing a rise in hate at this moment, so let’s take a look at the factors that may lie behind that phenomenon.
Russian involvement. All 17 U.S. intelligence agencies tell us that the Russians are hugely invested in campaigns, focused on both the 2016 and the upcoming 2020 elections, to polarize Americans, to pull us out of the political middle, and firmly into either the left or right. (more…)
Tagged with: destroying the environment for profit
Is Civilization Making Progress?
Below is yesterday’s “poem for the day” from Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” There’s a lot to like here, but one thing that I want to comment on is “Don’t think that progress exists. It doesn’t.”
Well, that’s a downer, and one that I would have rejected out of hand until a few years ago, with the rise of tribalism and greed, coupled with authoritarian governments popping up all around the globe. (more…)
Tagged with: and the U.S. Constitution, authoritarian governments popping up all around the globe, Magna Carta, rise of tribalism, the abolition of slavery, the Age of Reason, the civil rights movement, The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Geneva Convention, the Renaissance, the United Nations, women's suffrage
Hotter, Drier Summers Having Strange and Terrible Effects
Scientists will be discovering new effects of global warming, most of them harmful, for an indefinite period of time into the future.
My wife, devotee of Thoroughbred breeding and racing, came across this just now, pertaining to reproductive health of broodmares, and the fact that there is an increase in still births and foal deaths, always a heart-breaking phenomenon. (more…)
Providing for the Common Good
Denmark’s history of growing apples and berries in public places for all its citizens to enjoy goes back more than 500 years. Now, as shown here, Ottawa and Adelaide are joining Copenhagen in making this happen in modern times. (more…)
Dismissing Bernie Sanders
It is true that dismissing Bernie Sanders as a “communist” reveals “profound ignorance,” but just how important a mistake is that, in a land in which almost half of the electorate believes that Trump is a honest and stable genius? The United States in the year 2020 isn’t a nation that merely dabbles in ignorance; we frolic in it; we bathe in it. (more…)
Tagged with: Trump stable genius
