| Time |
Event |
| 8:35a |
Apology to student punished for dancing
*Louisiana school principal forced to apologize after punishing a student for dancing* (and failing to follow the rules of his church).
|
| 8:35a |
Transparency in private firms running public services
One of many reasons we should not outsource government functions to private
companies is that they will tend to block the public's right to learn
how those functions are being administered. The outgoing information
commissioner of Scotland calls for making Freedom of Information laws
apply to those companies.
I agree with that as far as it goes, but I think that solution is
incomplete, because this is far from the only problem caused
by outsourcing. The real solution is to put an end to it.
|
| 8:35a |
Complexity of Israel and Palestine
The moral questions about Israel and Palestine are complex at many levels.
Simplistic answers are inadequate. This is a good introduction to that
complexity.
|
| 8:35a |
Chicken frogs in Dominica
20 years ago, people on Dominica ate the numerous mountain chicken
frogs as their national dish. After the chytrid fungus and a big hurricane,
hardly any remain.
|
| 8:35a |
"Fountain", "conceptual art"
Was "Fountain", considered to be pioneering "conceptual art", really
made by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven rather than Marcel Duchamp?
Perhaps we should consider it a hack
rather than art. I contend that it has little artistic value but
does have some hack value.
The article does not excuse Duchamp of plagiarizing her work; rather
it suggests she invited him to present it as his. If they didn't
think of it as real art, they would not have felt competitive over
artistic credit for it.
I do not appreciate conceptual art. I don't want to reprise the
pointless argument about whether it "really is art", I only say that
I'd usually prefer to see a concept presented in clear words.
|
| 8:35a |
|
| 8:35a |
|
| 8:35a |
GPT-4 "artificial intelligence"
One kind of use in which GPT-4 can actually qualify as "artificial
intelligence" is when it is used to figure out obscured or hard-to-read
words on a document.
If it does a certain kind of job well frequently, we can say that it
displays understanding of that limited field, which would be
intelligence.
As distinguished from the bullshit generation which ChatGPT does.
|
| 8:35a |
Bigger, heavier cars
*Trend for bigger, heavier cars means more particles get released from
breaks, tires and road surfaces.*
This is in addition to using more energy (whether fossil fuel or electricity)
and causing more damage in collisions.
It is crucial to impose sufficient taxes on SUVs and other heavy cars
to reduce their sales to a much smaller level. We should deter people
from buying them unless they really need them.
|
| 8:35a |
|
| 8:35a |
Threats to Germany's climate campaigners
*Threats to Germany’s climate campaigners fueled by politicians’ rhetoric, says [Luisa Neubauer, of Fridays for Future].*
|
| 8:35a |
|
| 8:35a |
Military base pollution
245 US military bases are polluting, or threatening to pollute, their
neighborhood with toxic PFAS.
The PFAS come from firefighting foam. I think people did not initially
realize that it was dangerous, perhaps because in the US there is no
requirement to test that before using a new substance.
The level of PFAS is not very high above the level considered acceptable.
Maybe this will not cause a much harm.
|
| 8:35a |
Safety myths of owning a gun
Most young Americans have been convinced that owning a gun makes you safer.
In fact, it is the other way around: owning a handgun makes you more likely
to be shot.
Indeed, the presence of a gun in the house makes you more likely
to be shot.
|
| 8:35a |
|
| 8:35a |
Iranian coup of 1953
*CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic.*
This coup put the repressive Shah on the throne. That later backfired
on the US when it led to the repressive (and initially murderous)
Islamic Revolution. You could say the US "got what it deserved" —
but that does not mean the outcome was just, since Iranians got what
they did not deserve and they are still stuck with it.
|
| 8:35a |
Initiatives for coexistence in Israel
In Israel, swimming against the current of inter-ethnic hatred, there are
many initiatives for coexistence and cooperation, some of them new or growing
in reaction to the hatred.
I am sad that one of them operates using the digital dis-service
WhatsApp. If I were there, I could laud the spirit of it while
declining to participate or promote that actual activity because of
that techno-ethical issue.
There is also the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said for the specific goal of bringing the two
peoples together.
|
| 2:05p |
Egyptian negotiations for certain refugees
Egypt accuses Israel of planning to push hundreds of thousands of Gazans
across the border into Egypt. Some ministers are actually
talking about it.
Egypt is stationing troops at the border
to block this. How troops would actually do that is not clear to me.
It is hard for me to grasp how the movement of Gazans into Egypt would
be importantly different from Egypt's taking over Gaza. And in either
case, I see a potential for fighting between HAMAS and Egypt — both
of which are oppressive governments, but in different ways. |
| 2:05p |
(Satire) Gaza as HAMAS
(satire) *Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using
Last Words
To Condemn Hamas.*
That page is mean as satire, but I am afraid there are Americans who
would say the same thing seriously.
|
| 2:05p |
Category error of powers-that-be and peoples
*Netanyahu told 1.1 million Palestinians they had 24 hours to evacuate. What is that if not
ethnic cleansing?*
*Israel's response to this terror must be resolute. But it must remain consistent with
international law.*
|
| 2:05p |
Run and hit in Gaza
*Israeli airstrikes hit northern Gaza
as Palestinians try
to leave* (as Israel told them to).
This does not surprise me; many Israelis are as full of
terrorist-spirited hatred as HAMAS. That attitude will tend to lead
to ever-escalating violence on both sides.
*Analysis of aerial photos and social media posts confirms
attack on
road identified as safe
by Israeli army.*
The man Israel needs now is Uri Avnery, but I don't know of anyone alive like him.
I wish I did.
|
| 2:05p |
Unknown state of Israel and Palestine
Netanyahu has silenced the soldiers' protest movement for democracy,
for the time being,
but his failure to prevent the HAMAS massacres has aroused widespread public hatred.
I hope that their justified rage against that failure does not
distract Israelis too long from
Netanyahu's deeper threat:
the authoritarianism he seeks to impose on their country.
Netanyahu speaks of wiping out HAMAS completely with a ground attack, but
that is futile.
Young people growing up in Gaza, the open-air prison, expect to be killed.
|
| 2:05p |
Colleges react to Palestinian–Jew crisis
At some US colleges,
supporters of Palestinians and supporters of Jews
are accusing each other of bloodlust.
Both HAMAS and Israel are displaying plenty of bloodlust. To diminish
that, it behooves us to criticize the bloodlust of both sides and to
mourn the civilian victims (present and past) on both sides.
|
| 2:05p |
Israeli–Hamas war from afar
*You can condemn Hamas and name its actions as evil, even as you
support the Palestinians in their quest for a life free of occupation
and oppression. And
there should still be room
in your heart for a Jewish child whose last moments were filled with
unimaginable terror — the same terror his grandparents, and
their grandparents, thought they had escaped for ever.*
|
| 2:05p |
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