I recently attended an international Skeptics Society conference. One of the highlights was an interactive demonstration and experience of “Street Epistemology” by philosophy professor Peter Boghossian. Our current times are famously tense, with people choosing sides on a wide range of issues and digging in to defend their side. In many cases, the actual issues […]
In ancient Greek tragedy, exile was considered a worse punishment than death. In modern times, woke cancel culture applies exile with little regard to its devastating impact on the target and on society. “Woke” originally meant a person was awake to actual racial and social injustice. Leftist Susan Neiman wrote a book Left is Not […]
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I usually consider myself to be a secular Humanist. But events like the brutal October 7 Hamas attack on Israel make me feel very Jewish. Everyone wants peace. The question is on what terms and how to get there. The Humanist Society of Santa Barbara (HSSB) hosted a refreshingly innovative talk in 2018 offering a way […]
I recently was delighted to reconnect with one of my favorite high school teachers, Wesley Walker, over 45 years since graduating from high school in the D.C. area. He was my English teacher, but he was much more. He was a gifted musician and a great philosophical thinker. He and I would have heated arguments in […]
Trump claimed that he was going to go after “bad hombres” who were illegally in the U.S. But then he went after people like Juana Flores, right here in Goleta. She had been in the U.S. since 1988. Her husband and her many children and grandchildren were all legal U.S. citizens. She probably would have […]
“Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Alarmed by What They’ve Seen” was the title of a recent New York Times article. I grew up in an era of real conspiracies. Senator Frank Church of Idaho conducted hearings after Watergate investigating the horrific abuses by the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Perhaps most shocking for U.S. citizens: Operation MKULTRA, […]
Three and a half years ago (April 2020), I wrote an article “What is Normal?” It was the start of the COVID pandemic and people were asking for a return to “normal.” I asked: “Is that what we really want?” Is it “normal” that tens of millions of Americans have no access to health care? […]
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This line from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2 is a widely spread meme on t-shirts and more. Those spreading the meme see lawyers as the enemy. But the original meaning was probably the opposite. The line is stated by “Dick the Butcher” who is […]
Our Humanist Society of Santa Barbara followed other organizations in moving to Zoom meetings during Covid. But we do now have occasional social gatherings. At one such gathering recently I talked to a member who said she “hates Zoom” and will only attend in-person events. I realized that she did not understand the concept of […]
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We hairless apes are notoriously bad at estimating probabilities. I plan to write more about other such “cognitive biases.” For example, if you see several coin tosses coming up heads, do you think that the odds go up for the next toss to be tails? Assuming a fair coin, the odds for each toss are […]
Do you roll your eyes or get angry when you hear the words “thoughts and prayers”? This is an expression increasingly associated with the gun lobby trying to force us to accept endless mass shootings. But it is also an example of magical thinking. Does anyone think that their thoughts or prayers have any actual […]
“Government shouldn’t pick winners” is the constant refrain from the “free market” crowd. Except when they want government to pick their chosen winners. “President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ‘prepare immediate steps’ to stop the closing of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country” was the lede of a June 1, […]
“Don’t Drink and Drive: You might hit a bump and spill your beer.” This bumper sticker is a perfect microcosm of our ape brain absurdity. The same absurdity of using phones while driving. When a friend first told me about a new law banning texting while driving, I thought it was a joke. “Are they […]
As I write this, the Republican Party is holding the entire world hostage. The immediate issue is the “debt ceiling.” The threat is very real. If the debt ceiling is not raised, the U.S. government could default on its loans. This has never happened before. The debt ceiling is about repaying money that has already […]
