November, 2022 archive
Stray Thought 0
It’s the persons who don’t vote who should sport stickers.
Know Them by the Company They Keep 0
The Des Moines Register’s Rekha Basu argues that Iowa’s Senator Grassley is running with the wrong crowd.
Twits Own Twitter 0
Sam and his crew discuss the most fragile ego of them all.
Afterthought:
If Elon Musk destroys Twitter, as seems quite likely at this point, he will have quite inadvertently performed a positive public service.
Drive Carefully on the Disinformation Superhighway 0
Psychologist Mark Travers observes that “(s)ocial media can bring out the worst in people.” Follow the link for tips on how to avoid getting sucked into muck.
And, remember, “social” media isn’t.
The Good Tweets 0
It turns out that some tweets are good for us. Needless to say, that aren’t from twits on Twitter.
Psychologist Daniel Fryer reports on a recent study.
The two-week study involved participants from the UK, Europe, the U.S., Australia, and China, so it’s pretty safe to assume that birdsong is of a cross-cultural benefit.
Act quickly, though. My local rag reports that
Tipping point species are close to threatened or endangered because they have lost half or more of their populations in the past 50 years. The State of the Birds Report, by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, used five different sources of data, including the North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count.
Follow the links for the full stories.
The Climates They Are a-Changing* . . . 0
. . . and Republican Senators don’t want anyone to talk about it.
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*Just for example, I went cycling today in a tee-shirt and gym shorts in November for Pete’s sake. And we’ve been running that AC all week. In November. This is beyond being a fluke.
I fear for my grandchildren.
Words Matter 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Joe Pierre argues forcefully that violent political rhetoric leads (or, perhaps more accurately, has already led) to actual violence.
He also notes a double standard in dis coarse discourse:
Follow the link for his article.
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*I would argue that it was not a gaffe. Ill-expressed, perhaps, but not a gaffe.
Twits Own Twitter 0
People of the Book 0
At Chron.com, University of Texas at Austin Professor Eric MacDaniel examines what’s behing the emergence of “Christian nationalism” as a political force. Frankly, I do not find his findings at all surprising; it goes back to original sin–America’s original sin of chattel slavery justified by racism, that is. A snippet:
Follow the link for a detailed and thorough analysis.
Originalist Sin 0
At AL.com, Auburn University Professor Colin Gabler parses the phraseology that makes some rights seem less inalienable than others.
(Stupid writing error corrected.)
Republican Family Values 0
At The Sacramento Bee, Melinda Henneberger marvels at the outburst of Republican mean for the sake of mean following the assault and battery of Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Gordon Weil comments on persons’ willingness to believe what they want to believe, regardless of facts and evidence, and how “social” media, though it did not create this willingness, feeds into it.
No excerpt or summary can do his piece justice; I commend it to your attention.