I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people--Newton
Chris had an active day.
And the chicks for free: The General Medical Council in England found Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study in the Lancet claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism to be fraudulent. Yet Wakefield is now a celebrity anti-vaccine activist in the United States and has left his long-suffering wife for the supermodel Elle Macpherson. Anti-vax campaigning is a lucrative business. (Ridley)
An unchallenged theme has emerged on some reflective writings: The decline of the liberal world order. They note a shift to the East as China and India grow, a shift to militarism as Russia and China expand their influence and the U.S. compensates for its declining economic influence with increasing military presence, although many are claiming that the Americans are becoming dangerously disinterested. They point to a growing discontent among people of the West (populism, nationalism, nativism) as the average Western guy's influence (and economic stability) declines. Uniformly these articles blame the increased globalism as the underlying cause of this discontent and seem to suggest that its solution is more globalism. Not all of that can be right.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a proposal to ban foreigners from buying U.S. farmland. Warren says foreigners threaten "food security," hence "national security," too. Food security.
The British Labour Party, whose charter had once propounded a complete end to capitalism, branded itself in the 1990s as the “party of business.”
There is a weird debate going on over the participation of women in hard science. Some academics are beginning to fear the institutionalization of anti-science thinking and affirmative action imposition on science to compensate for the lower numbers of women in the field. This is from an article by Alessandro Strumia, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pisa and a "former guest professor at CERN:"
"...the Higher Male Variability (HMV) hypothesis was first put forward by Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871), along with several other ideas now deemed “offensive.” Psychometric tests indicate that men and women perform, on average, equally well when it comes to different cognitive skills, but men are more common at both the low and the high ends of the distributions. So there’s greater variability among men when it comes to these traits than women. The relevance of HMV for physics and STEM has been discussed by, among others, the former Harvard theorist Lubos Motl, the former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, and by the former Google engineer James Damore. They were all attacked on political grounds, not primarily on scientific grounds. Indeed, in the polemics that followed most experts confirmed the HMV hypothesis, with different groups of scientists reaching the following conclusions: “Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes”; “Substantial evidence suggests that the male advantage in mathematics is largest at the upper end of the ability distribution”; “On average, male variability is greater than female variability on a variety of measures of cognitive ability, personality traits, and interests. This means men are more likely to be found at both the low and high end of these distributions”..."
$20 trillion dollars--$20 Trillion-- has been spent on poverty programs since 1965.
Break the box and shed the nard;
Stop not now to count the cost;
Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;
Reck not what the poor have lost;
Upon Christ throw all away:
Know ye, this is Easter Day. (Hopkins)
Happy Easter!
Easter is the essential Christian event. Every aspect of the Christian church hinges on Christ's resurrection.
The gospel is extremely well written, filled with little particulars (the woman hesitant to enter the tomb, Peter being outrun to the tomb, the meticulous arrangement of the burial cloths, the assumption that the body was stolen--after the assumption by the Pharisees that the apostles would steal it)--all giving misdirection and specificity to what becomes the philosophical earthquake of all time.
Yet how does this all hinge? Hearsay? The interpretation of a sacred book? Amulets and magic rites? No. Amazingly it hinges on us.
By the time Christ rises, we know all the players. We even have some insights about them. They are not revolutionaries, not mystics and, while seemingly sincere, they are not special. They are relatively normal working folks with responsibilities and, probably, annoyed families. As seen by their behavior during the Passion, they are not fully aware of what is happening. Nor are they particularly brave. Yet, after this crisis where their leader is tortured and killed, they somehow emerge as philosophers and martyrs. They all, to a man, experience a mind-changing, life-changing event. Scattered and leaderless they raise a religious movement that challenges everything in its time and, eventually, forces mighty Rome to adapt.
Christ performed the great, unarguable miracle. It was the behavior of men, people, who confirmed and developed it. No leap of faith was necessary. They were convinced and changed. Then they convinced and changed the world.
Chris had an active day.
And the chicks for free: The General Medical Council in England found Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study in the Lancet claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism to be fraudulent. Yet Wakefield is now a celebrity anti-vaccine activist in the United States and has left his long-suffering wife for the supermodel Elle Macpherson. Anti-vax campaigning is a lucrative business. (Ridley)
An unchallenged theme has emerged on some reflective writings: The decline of the liberal world order. They note a shift to the East as China and India grow, a shift to militarism as Russia and China expand their influence and the U.S. compensates for its declining economic influence with increasing military presence, although many are claiming that the Americans are becoming dangerously disinterested. They point to a growing discontent among people of the West (populism, nationalism, nativism) as the average Western guy's influence (and economic stability) declines. Uniformly these articles blame the increased globalism as the underlying cause of this discontent and seem to suggest that its solution is more globalism. Not all of that can be right.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a proposal to ban foreigners from buying U.S. farmland. Warren says foreigners threaten "food security," hence "national security," too. Food security.
The British Labour Party, whose charter had once propounded a complete end to capitalism, branded itself in the 1990s as the “party of business.”
There is a weird debate going on over the participation of women in hard science. Some academics are beginning to fear the institutionalization of anti-science thinking and affirmative action imposition on science to compensate for the lower numbers of women in the field. This is from an article by Alessandro Strumia, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pisa and a "former guest professor at CERN:"
"...the Higher Male Variability (HMV) hypothesis was first put forward by Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871), along with several other ideas now deemed “offensive.” Psychometric tests indicate that men and women perform, on average, equally well when it comes to different cognitive skills, but men are more common at both the low and the high ends of the distributions. So there’s greater variability among men when it comes to these traits than women. The relevance of HMV for physics and STEM has been discussed by, among others, the former Harvard theorist Lubos Motl, the former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, and by the former Google engineer James Damore. They were all attacked on political grounds, not primarily on scientific grounds. Indeed, in the polemics that followed most experts confirmed the HMV hypothesis, with different groups of scientists reaching the following conclusions: “Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes”; “Substantial evidence suggests that the male advantage in mathematics is largest at the upper end of the ability distribution”; “On average, male variability is greater than female variability on a variety of measures of cognitive ability, personality traits, and interests. This means men are more likely to be found at both the low and high end of these distributions”..."
$20 trillion dollars--$20 Trillion-- has been spent on poverty programs since 1965.
Break the box and shed the nard;
Stop not now to count the cost;
Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;
Reck not what the poor have lost;
Upon Christ throw all away:
Know ye, this is Easter Day. (Hopkins)
Happy Easter!
Easter is the essential Christian event. Every aspect of the Christian church hinges on Christ's resurrection.
The gospel is extremely well written, filled with little particulars (the woman hesitant to enter the tomb, Peter being outrun to the tomb, the meticulous arrangement of the burial cloths, the assumption that the body was stolen--after the assumption by the Pharisees that the apostles would steal it)--all giving misdirection and specificity to what becomes the philosophical earthquake of all time.
Yet how does this all hinge? Hearsay? The interpretation of a sacred book? Amulets and magic rites? No. Amazingly it hinges on us.
By the time Christ rises, we know all the players. We even have some insights about them. They are not revolutionaries, not mystics and, while seemingly sincere, they are not special. They are relatively normal working folks with responsibilities and, probably, annoyed families. As seen by their behavior during the Passion, they are not fully aware of what is happening. Nor are they particularly brave. Yet, after this crisis where their leader is tortured and killed, they somehow emerge as philosophers and martyrs. They all, to a man, experience a mind-changing, life-changing event. Scattered and leaderless they raise a religious movement that challenges everything in its time and, eventually, forces mighty Rome to adapt.
Christ performed the great, unarguable miracle. It was the behavior of men, people, who confirmed and developed it. No leap of faith was necessary. They were convinced and changed. Then they convinced and changed the world.
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