Phil Mayes's Blog, page 2

Life Begins at Conception and Roe v. Wade was Correct

If I invite you to dinner and for dessert, serve you raw eggs on a bed of flour and sugar, do you you say “Oh, what a delicious cake!” or “What kind of joke is this?” It has all the …

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Why Language is a Superpower and Why That Has Created a Problem

We humans are a wildly successful species. Why is that? As life developed, it first responded to the world with reflexes, then emotions, then by thinking, but it was the human invention of language that turned thinking into a superpower. …

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Is Autocracy coming?

Chauncey Devega prophecies loudly and often about the risk of authoritarianism in the US: https://www.salon.com/2021/12/10/demo... https://www.salon.com/2021/11/15/amer... Today, Aaron Blake, senior political reporter at the Washington Post, writes that “lawmakers are disregarding private principle in their votes and often doing so …

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The Orange

It all happened because of an orange. Currency controls were a factor, too. I could also blame xenophobia, because without it, the very border might not have existed. That border separated Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in 1972, Maggie and I were trying to cross it. Traversal was an all-day event, needing paperwork before crossing the […]

What is the Limit of Knowledge?

In my London childhood, a horse-drawn wagon delivered milk each day in glass bottles with the cream risen to the top in a visible layer. Sparrows had learned to peck through the foil caps and gorge on the prize.

My first computer used magnets the shape of a doughnut and smaller than an apple pip for memory, each holding one bit of data, each with three wires threaded through it to read and change its magnetism. I say my computer, but it belonged to an international company, occupied a whole...

How the Populist Movements Compare to the Hippies

The right-wing populist movements here and in the UK are driven by anger. They justify disruption of the present system because it is seen as not working for people. They do not respect law and tradition when they stand in the way of their goals. The end justifies the means.

I never thought I would find myself on the side of tradition, convention, law and order. I feel as if I am in a mirror world where the conservatives are the rebels in the streets and I am the defender of the status quo....

How the Populist Movement Compares to the Hippies

The right-wing populist movements here and in the UK are driven by anger. They justify disruption of the present system because it is seen as not working for people. They do not respect law and tradition when they stand in the way of their goals. The end justifies the means.

I never thought I would find myself on the side of tradition, convention, law and order. I feel as if I am in a mirror world where the conservatives are the rebels in the streets and I am the defender of the status quo....

Why Do We Believe What We Believe?

© Wayne McCall 1975

[This is a major rewrite of the original 5/19/19 post.]

Why do we believe what we believe, and how is it possible that we differ so much?

The simplest kind of belief is something that we experience directly: this flower is yellow; I have ten toes; there is a corner shop at the end of the street.

Over millions of years, life in its various forms started to draw inferences from the senses, firstly using emotions, and later, using the forebrain. For example, the crack of a...

Why do we believe what we believe?

© Wayne McCall 1975

Why do we believe what we believe, and why do we differ so much? We pretty much agree on yes, that’s a sunset and this is heavier than that, and we may disagree on whether we like the taste of fennel, but beyond that, consensus is hard to find. Here are some claims for consideration.

You have ten toes. You own the car you drive. The earth is round. The earth goes around the sun. Donald Trump is POTUS. Global warming is a hoax. A free market is the best way to create and d...

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

I offer this Reddit discussion about the FOX News article Honduran man charged with raping, killing jogger in New Jersey had been deported twice as an example of how hard it is to discuss politics. I am posting as PhilAndMaude.

Person-A:
A-fucking-nother one. How many illegals have killed American citizens this year. We should compare it to mass shootings and see who has killed more.

PhilAndMaude:

The homicide conviction rate for native-born Americans was 3.1 per 100,000, 2.6 per 100,000 fo...