The murder of so many innocents at a mosque in New Zealand, as expected, has brought forth the words of many who try to explain why. Like so many similar instances of wanton killing, there is no single answer. An abused child. A rejected adult. A radicalized follower of a hate-filled group. And so on. In this case, one finds the Internet implicated as the means by which the killer found a community that agreed with and promoted his twisted ideas. Reinforcement of the rightness of your intentions can open the doors of action. Ironically, that same technology that can… Read More
Continue ReadingLeonardo’s Brain
Those who have followed by blog for a while know that I have written quite a bit about the divided-brain model of Iain McGilchrist. I mentioned the book, Leonardo’s Brain, a few posts ago as providing confirmatory evidence for that model. I thought it worth while to go beyond that mere mention. The author, Leonard Shlain, a doctor, basically echoes McGilchrist. Early in his book he writes, “…one fact remains without doubt: Natural Selection [his avatar for evolution] designed each cortical hemisphere in the human brain to process dramatically different functions.” A few pages later, he writes,”The left brain,… Read More
Continue ReadingFirst Things First
You should know by now, after 10 years of blogging, that I am a pretty liberal Democrat, but also a democrat. The lower-case version is more important that the party affiliation, especially at the present time. All the ideologies and left-right tilts will not protect our basic freedom and the rights that constitute it. Now that the Democrats have recovered control of the House, the headlines have shifted a bit from concern over democracy to intra-party battles about how far to the left the Democratic party should be if they are to win the 2020 Presidential election. This is the… Read More
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