Phil Mayes's Blog, page 3

The Four Forces Driving Political Conflict

Years ago, I thought I was going to die. The streets were dark and slick with rain. I was getting a ride back from a weekend encounter group where all our emotions had been laid bare, and the driver and the other passenger entered into such a screaming match over politics I thought a car crash was inevitable.

Why are political discussions so intense? Something has to generate all that political energy and cause the two sides to differ on issue after issue.

Emotions, not logic, rule politics

I...

Why There is a Crisis of Fake News

Call it the law of unintended consequences.

The internet is a disruptive technology comparable to the Gutenberg press. Initially it was seen as a global encyclopedia, making all human knowledge available to everyone.

Then social media arose, and I saw this as revolutionary for two reasons:

It allows people around the world to see each other and recognize their common humanity rather than being portrayed as faceless enemies to be feared. Radio, TV and the press are one-way media that promote...

You Only Have Six Original Thoughts in Your Life

By an original thought, I mean putting together existing ideas and observations and coming up with a new thought or product or process that you’ve never met before.

All developments are constructed from the raw materials of our present knowledge, and new discoveries are often made independently by a number of people. There are many examples of such duplications such as the point-contact transistor, protein denaturation and calculus.

There is a huge range of creativity, from very little for so...

Welcome to the New World of Perpetual War

Spontaneous street protest at start of Iraq war

It’s a New World of Perpetual War:

US has been at war in Afghanistan for 17+ years Taliban still holds around half the country US has bombing campaigns in 8 countries US has troop presence in 177 countries (out of 193 total) Main reason given for terrorist attacks is US troop presence

All this for only $2,000 each (that’s $8,000 for a family of four) or $4,500 each when you count indirect costs.

Censorship on Conservative Sites

I have long had the experience of being censored on conservative sites, despite making a point of being meticulously respectful. On reddit, I have been blocked from the subreddits conservative, askaconservative and The_Donald, but they are famous for being hyper-sensitive. I did not anticipate censorship from a prestigious publication like the National Review.

David French wrote an article with the tongue-in-cheek title Does the Left Lose because It’s Too Civil? and most of the comments were...

Identity

The entire canon of Western thought, from Aristotelian logic to George Boole (he of boolean arithmetic) to the divide-and-conquer approach of science, invites us to view and categorize the world according to its differences, not its similarities. A table is a table and a chair is a chair.

Language is the tool we use for this dissection. It is the framework within which we place all experience. And yet this cannot be the only way to understand the world. Before language was invented, say 100,0...

BR test

This clock is an original design of an electromagnetic clock. That is to say, it uses electromagnetism to keep the pendulum swinging. It is not a quartz clock, and keeps time by the natural motion of the pendulum.

The clock is 55? tall and has a 7? dial. The case is bird’s eye maple with accents in East Indian rosewood. The rod is invar with a polished brass bob. The electronics are contained in a drawer at the bottom of the case.

The impulse mechanism is, generally speaking, in the Fedchenko...

Only Protest If It Is Invisible

Do you remember when BLM was protesting in the streets and people said “I support their right to protest, but not at the expense of inconveniencing other people?” So players avoided inconvenience by kneeling during the National Anthem, and that still upsets people. It seems that protest is only allowed when it is completely invisible and can be ignored.

The Financial Value of DACA

This graph* shows the net value to society of a person as they age. Initially, a child costs money for food, health and education. During the working years, they generate more value than they consume. In retirement, living and health costs reduce their value, but at death, there is, on average a small net value, and accumulated over many lives and millennia, these net values have accumulated to create the social assets we all share: roads, museums, libraries, scientific knowledge and technic...

Political Financing: A Modest Proposal

Here’s how to reduce the influence of money in elections: no politician should be allowed to accept contributions from outside their district.

This applies at all levels: city, county, state and nation. The Federal Election Campaign Act bans foreign contributions, and we need a Keep Elections Free Of Outside Money Act.

Senators would only be allowed to raise money from within their state, and Representatives from within their district. The same would apply to City and County officials.