Michelle Obama: I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. Bill O’Reilly: Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. If he used a weasel word like “some” to say slaves had relatively decent treatment, then I…
My introversion is strong, so I feel the need to spend time alone to recharge my batteries. That does not mean I hate people. That is my elitism and narcissism. I do recognize the benefits of meeting new people, especially the complete stranger phenomenon described in Crossing Paths: Sometimes a complete stranger can answer our questions…
Motivated Reasoning aka soldier mindset: This phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations (our desires and fears) shape the way we interpret information. So some information and ideas feel like our allies and we want them to win. We want to defend them. And other information and ideas are the enemy. We want to shoot them…
Crash Go The Chariots: An Alternative To “Chariots Of The Gods”? by Clifford A. Wilson My rating: 2 of 5 stars Wilson challenges the evidence presented in Chariots of The Gods. As scary as Chariots was, Crash seems to fall on its face in similar ways. Ad hominems and non-sequiturs abound. At the end, it…
Chariots of The Gods by Erich von Däniken My rating: 1 of 5 stars Däniken makes the case that what humanity thought of as gods in the past are actually aliens. We are the result of their breeding programs. Ancient monuments too sophisticated for the peoples of their times were built using the technology of…
Twenty years ago I was able to watch some soccer Olympic events in person. We watched the first women’s tournament where the US played Sweden. And Nigeria (who eventually won) play Japan. These were all at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando. It made me happy two teams we watched went on to win both the…
Saw a probably clickbait title “Mishaps overshadow message at the Republican National Convention.” It got me thinking that this is probably another case of media attention hyperbole. The media fixation story I recall was several years ago about child kidnappings. Every week it made national headlines about a child who disappeared or was taken by…
Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley My rating: 5 of 5 stars This historical fiction novel covers this history of the a black family. How their ancestor started in Africa, was brought to America as a slave, and how the family fared under that despicable institution. Alex Haley learned the stories…
Daniel H. Cohen makes an interesting case that: We equate arguing to war; such that there are winners and losers. The loser is the one who makes a cognitive improvement, so losing gains the most. So, we should strive to lose. “It takes practice to be a become a good arguer from the perspective of benefitting…