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Only After Human Beings Vanish Can the Problem of Consciousness Be Solved Tom McBride 1 Connection If you follow popular science at all, you know that two common themes are when the sun will run out of fuel, and how we can solve the problem of consciousness. The two are rarely if ever connected. It is time that they were. Scientists know that in a billion years the sun will transition to a red giant and life on earth will be uninhabitable. Multiply a billion times 365 days and watch your calculator explode. You and I have nothing to fret about. Scientists are much less sure about consciousness. Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-founded the theory of evolution by natural selection with Darwin, once Read on »
The Selfish: KEY : A New Theory of Music Genes are selfish. But so are piano keys. In 1976, Richard Dawkins transformed the popular conception of biology and of Darwin by proclaiming that genes are selfish but that nature honors them and nothing else. The bumper sticker version might read, “Nature likes selfishness.” This is a misconception of what Dawkins actually said. But in his still best-selling book, The Selfish Gene, he did say that genes, if personified, would be like people who care about being selected and honored and nothing else. They don’t even “care” about other genes unless they see an opportunity to combine them in a body. As for you and me, we are just on loan to our genes. We are gene-carriers Read on »
5 Quick Reasons to Believe in God–and 1 Reason Not To We know that God, so defined, knows all and can do all. But God has a way of not showing up the way someone does to teach a class or keep an appointment. Still, there are five reasons to believe God exists. 1. Insurance. This is an old idea from the philosopher Pascal. If God doesn’t exist and you believe in God, you’ve lost nothing. If God does exist and you believe God does, you get to Heaven. Insurance with a free premium payment. 2. Regularity. Sure, the sun and moon and stars don’t move with total regularity, but…close enough. Most things are predictable. If you plan to go to the Read on »
WAS SHAKESPEARE PRO-DEMOCRACY? By Tom McBride In exit polls after the 2024 election, many people said they’d voted for Trump though they don’t like him; but someone has to get prices down. Trump may be a corrupt liar, but there’s the price of bacon to worry about. Can Shakespeare help us understand what’s going on? Shakespeare had no idea of today’s mass democracy with political parties, rhetoric, debates, lobbies, and advertisements. Lucky him! He missed the 2024 election in the United States. But he did display a sense of the issues entailed by democracy–in his great play Julius Caesar. Caesar himself doesn’t appear that often, but he is the title subject and, in the end, the historical winner. A number of Roman Read on »
WOULD SHAKESPEARE VOTE FOR TRUMP & VANCE? In a scene from Shakespeare’s first smash hit, Richard III, two professional killers are sent to murder Richard’s brother George, the Duke of Clarence. One of them says to the other that he is starting to have pangs of conscience about his work, while the other says that is a very bad idea if you are in the assasination line of work. They kill the Duke of Clarence anyhow. It’s not an important scene, but it does illustrate that Shakespeare can’t pass up the chance to illustrate the messiness and self-division of human life. We must make a living, but we also have a conscience. Both make demands of us, and there are no easy solutions. Trump and. Read on »
A Mindset List® for the Class of 1999 They were born in 1977 and entered college in 1995. Elvis Presley, Joan Crawford, and Bing Crosby have always been dead. Ye and Tom Brady have always been alive. The president’s younger brother has always had his very own Billy beer. The Force has always been with someone, somewhere, sometime. Spain has always been a democracy. The murderous Son of Sam has always inhabited the body of a black Lab in Yonkers, New York. Egyptian presidents have always been visiting Israel. There has always been a Department of Energy. Sarah Barasch has never confused Tom McBride with John Cougar Mellencamp. The Panama Canal has always been controlled by……..Panama. Shawn Gillen has always been a prcocious teen-ager in Chicago. Uranus has always had rings. An Read on »
How Donald Trump Became Bill Belichick on Steroids Golf is Trump’s game, and presumably those bone spurs that got him out of going to Vietnam would have prevented him from playing football. But the key to his political success with males has been…. the great all-male sport of football. Football is about ardent loyalty and fierce hatred. Bear faans loathe all things Packers, and of course vice-versa. You aren’t really a Bears fan unless you hate all things Green Bay. Trump males are receptive to the idea that it is not enough to love Trump. You must also despise everyone who gets in his way, from Hillary Clinton to George Cloney to the cast of HAMILTON. Football is about winning. The late Packers coach Vince Lombardi Read on »
THE OLD-COLLEGE-TRY LIST for the Class of 2028 The college and university class of 2028 will enter classrooms this fall. They were born in 2006. They have never shared the planet with Betty Freidan, Shelley Winters, Kirby Puckett, Abu al-Zarqawi, or Peter Benchley. “Friend” has always been a verb, and “tweet” always a click. Barack Obama was elected …to the Senate. Terrorists thrived from India to Iraq. You could watch a video on your wrist. People were still going to Blockbuster stores. People made lists and put them in buckets. Tony Blair was becoming the incredible shrinking prime minister. A meal in the college dining room that cost five dollars the year they were born now costs about $7.79 today. 1 They Read on »