Full disclosure: Adam Lee is a longtime online friend and one of my favorite bloggers. We have read and critiqued each other’s writings for years. This review emerged from one of those exchanges. I have never read Ayn Rand’s famous novel, Atlas Shrugged. What I know of it I learned through reading several installments of Read More …
Category: Ideas
The Great Disappointment
I’ve written much about the cultishness of president Trump’s followers, and I’m not alone in seeing them that way, but the election of 2020 will bring a new wrinkle to this story – new, at least, for Trumpists. For certain other cultists, however, it’s an old story. On October 22, 1844, thousands of American Christians, Read More …
Donald Trump, Covid-19, and the Narcissist’s Lust for Sacrifice
The conventional wisdom is that Trump cares only about pumping up the stock market as his path to re-election. That may be true, but I suspect something else is going on here. Trump craves the fawning admiration of his followers, but he would love it even more if they were risking their lives to show it.
Sea Turtles and Intelligent Design
Biology is full of examples of stupid design: ugly kluges that no self-respecting engineer would ever use. They exist in biology because the illusion of design in living things comes entirely from a mindless, brute-force-dumb algorithm: mutation, recombination, and natural selection.
Apollo Was Once a God
– OR – Why this Atheist Loves the Christmas Eve Message from Apollo 8 We know of many religions which have ceased to be active… like extinct volcanoes. The Greek myths of today were originally the Greek religion and had temples and priests and inquisitions no doubt… The world is full of dead religions, and Read More …
Coming of Age in the Space Age
The first of two posts commemorating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
Electoral Reform Redux
As we approach the 2020 primary and general elections, I thought I should collect in one place a summary of my thoughts on electoral reform, along with links to previous posts on the subject.
It’s Time to Ditch the Primaries
The single biggest flaw in our democracy is the primary system. We lament Russian hacking, political dysfunction, and toxic tribalism among voters, yet we ignore the obvious cause and an elegant fix.
Dogs, Eclipses, and How to See Reality
Reflections on a summer of both wonder and discontent.
How to Fix the NBA’s Tanking Problem
This is a guest post written by Danny Kleinman, a friend whom I met through our mutual interest in the problems with America’s electoral system. Here he applies his sharp mind and mathematical prowess to a smaller but vexing problem in the world of professional basketball: the perverse incentive to lose games, inadvertently created by the Read More …