Hi there! Jane the Actuary asked some of us to fill in for her during a much-needed vacation, so I volunteered myself as tribute to write on a social issue. For anonymity purposes, I’m going by “Jane the Foster,” a reference to Marvel Comics’ lady version of Thor. I am neither a lady nor a Thor in real life—I just thought it would be apt to keep the “Jane” tradition going around here. My daughter is a fan of the... Read more
Hey, everyone! I’m on vacation this week and have invited a few people to contribute blog posts. Here’s the first, by “Jane the Librarian”: It seems to be pretty widely agreed that part of the explanation for Donald Trump’s election is the perception that globalization and automation have left large percentages of Americans without any realistic prospect of a good job. Economic dislocation, of course, is nothing new. A lot of history grows from that seed. Once upon a time—in... Read more
Back in college, I was acquainted with a Star Trek fan and computer science major who combined both of those interests by running a BBS from his dorm room. I remember this only vaguely, but it seems to me that he lived in a single room, so had no roommate to complain, and would, every night, connect the phone to the modem so that BBS users could dial in to his computer to access the BBS itself. It was, so... Read more
From Slate: “A New Theory on Why We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet.” Now, before I share this theory with you, I should tell you that it doesn’t trouble me in the least that “we haven’t found aliens yet,” despite the so-called Fermi’s Paradox that posits that we ought to have, in terms of probabilities, so that the lack of alien contact requires explaining. I personally tend to believe that God created the world, using evolution as a tool to do... Read more
(The “again” is because I had previously posted on a similar article, and, yes, I’m heistant to put “sex” right up their in the blog title.) From Ann Althouse, a link to a New York Times article about sex robots. It’s the usual genre, of seeming to treat robots as sentient, and capable of being harmed (“But it is also illegal to have sex with an adult woman who does not consent, and consenting is not something these robots are... Read more
In today’s paper, an AP article on the devastation in Mosul: “In freed Mosul, little but rubble left” (link goes to the article as it appeared in the Observer, to avoid a potential paywall). This caused me to dig up an old blog post on Germany, in which I summarized the chief arguments of Germany 1945 by Richard Besse, which in addition to general expository text on the end of World War II and the beginning of postwar rebuilding, also addressed... Read more
I’d deliberated about an Instant Pot for a while now, and, in fact, a couple years ago bought an electric pressure cooker from Aldi. I read through the instructions and concluded that the time savings wasn’t really that impressive, considering that the cooking time may be minimal but the time required to pre-heat and to de-pressurize afterwards can be substantial. “For as long as it takes, I might as well just keep using my crockpot,” I said, and returned it.... Read more
AAAAAAAAAAARGH! That’s my first reaction to the “child care calculator” put out by the Center for American Progress, as reported by NBC. The calculator, whose fuller background is here, purports to show that astonishingly large sums of money are left on the table by someone making the decision to leave work for a period of time to care for children. The objective of this calculator, as reported by NBC, would appear to be to make it clear how needed extra... Read more
From The Guardian: “Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children“, which reports that having one less child reduces one’s annual carbon emissions by 58.6 tons per year, which far outpaces any other actions one can take, such as taking mass transit or not flying anywhere. This article cites a report, “The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions,” which, oddly enough, has a rather different focus: how frequently are the top “carbon-reducing” (non)actions mentioned... Read more
In this case, the question mark doesn’t denote whether it’ll happen or not – the news reports yesterday are that this is a definitive yes, most likely in 2028, after an unusual Olympic Committee decision in which they awarded the 2024 and the 2028 games to LA and Paris with the instruction to work it out between themselves which goes when. As the Los Angeles Times reports, Los Angeles is all but guaranteed to host the Summer Games for a... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In