This is the accompanying tesx, and we even get a mention!
In Part 1, Cortes discusses record turnout in places like Wisconsin, which had 90% voter turnout. Not only was this equivalent to Australia, where voting is mandatory, but such turnout only happened in key areas Biden needed to win to flip states. One example was Milwaukee, which had 84% turnout compared to another Midwestern city like Cleveland (51%), despite similar demographics.
This is a footnote from Jeffrey Masson’s Against Therapy (1988), a profoundly interesting book that reminds us just how corrupt the entire psychiatric establishment is. Check out Google Scholar on Masson to see just part of the debate he stoked up. But here I am quoting a passage from a letter written by Freud in 1883 in which Freud discusses John Stuart Mill’s views on feminism and its possibilities. In light of how the world has unfolded since those times, there is no question who had the more realistic understanding of the possibilities that were then inherent.
“Freud’s views on feminism were not positive. This is clear from a letter to his fiancée, Martha Bernays, written on November 15 1883, in which he tells her that he has been translating John Stuart Mill: ‘He lacked the sense of the absurd, on several points, for instance in the emancipation of women and the question of women altogether. I remember a main argument in the pamphlet I translated that the married woman can earn as much as the husband. I dare say we agree that housekeeping and the care and education of children claim the whole person and practically rule out any profession … It seems a completely unrealistic notion to send women into the struggle for existence in the same way as men. Am I to think of my delicate sweet girl as a competitor? … I believe that all the reforming activity, legislation and education will founder on the fact that long before the age at which a profession can be established in our society, Nature will have appointed woman by her beauty, charm and goodness, to do something else.” Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939, by Ernst L. Freud, trans. by Tania and James Stern (London: The Hogarth Press, 1961), 90″ [The ellipses are found in the original footnote as transcribed by Masson.] (Masson 1988: 91)
Masson, Jeffrey, 1988. Against Therapy. London: Fontana Paperbacks.
Most people believe that science arose as a natural end-product of our innate intelligence and curiosity, as an inevitable stage in human intellectual development. But physicist and educator Alan Cromer disputes this belief.
Cromer argues that science is not the natural unfolding of human potential, but the invention of a particular culture, Greece, in a particular historical period. Indeed, far from being natural, scientific thinking goes so far against the grain of conventional human thought that if it hadn’t been discovered in Greece, it might not have been discovered at all.
In Uncommon Sense, Alan Cromer develops the argument that science represents a radically new and different way of thinking. Using Piaget’s stages of intellectual development, he shows that conventional thinking remains mired in subjective, “egocentric” ways of looking at the world–most people even today still believe in astrology, ESP, UFOs, ghosts and other paranormal phenomena–a mode of thought that science has outgrown.
He provides a fascinating explanation of why science began in Greece, contrasting the Greek practice of debate to the Judaic reliance on prophets for acquiring knowledge. Other factors, such as a maritime economy and wandering scholars (both of which prevented parochialism) and an essentially literary religion not dominated by priests, also promoted in Greece an objective, analytical way of thinking not found elsewhere in the ancient world. He examines India and China and explains why science could not develop in either country.
In China, for instance, astronomy served only the state, and the private study of astronomy was forbidden. Cromer also provides a perceptive account of science in Renaissance Europe and of figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Along the way, Cromer touches on many intriguing topics, arguing, for instance, that much of science is essential complete; there are no new elements yet to be discovered. He debunks the vaunted SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, which costs taxpayers millions each year, showing that physical limits–such as the melting point of metal–put an absolute limit on the speed of space travel, making trips to even the nearest star all but impossible.
Finally, Cromer discusses the deplorable state of science education in America and suggests several provocative innovations to improve high school education, including a radical proposal to give all students an intensive eighth and ninth year program, eliminating the last two years of high school.
Uncommon Sense is an illuminating look at science, filled with provocative observations. Whether challenging Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, or extolling the virtues of Euclid’s Elements, Alan Cromer is always insightful, outspoken, and refreshingly original.
Once at the dinner table, my late mother-in-law (OBM), opined that Adlai Stevenson was divorced and, therefore, had not been fit to lead. Her husband (OBM) sharply replied, “Madam, you recently flew to Israel. Did you ascertain whether or not your pilot was divorced?” She got it right away and laughed uproariously at herself. She was a pip.
Donald J. Trump is piloting us out of the Swamp, away from the existential threat of socialism. He will win next Tuesday. Put your champagne on ice. He will win because Americans will see to it. All the celebrities in Hollywood could scarcely populate a small town in Texas. The NBA and NFL, likewise. Americans value liberty; we will see to our own safety.
There are, unfortunately, all kinds of people who prefer safety to freedom. This I well know since my country of origin took them in as “United Empire Loyalists”. I just hope the descendants of those who stayed behind are numerous enough and resolute enough to maintain the freedoms they fought for then and have defended ever since.
I might add that Adlai Stevenson, Democrat though he was, was to the right of Donald Trump as he is today, not that it matters in the least.
….For her part, vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is, when on the trail, giddy. She’s dancing with drum lines and beginning rallies with “Wassup, Florida!” She’s throwing her head back and laughing a loud laugh, especially when nobody said anything funny. She’s the younger candidate going for the younger vote, and she’s going for a Happy Warrior vibe, but she’s coming across as insubstantial, frivolous. When she started to dance in the rain onstage, in Jacksonville, Fla., to Mary J. Blige’s “Work That,” it was embarrassing.
Apparently you’re not allowed to say these things because she’s a woman, and she’s doubling down on giddy because you’re not allowed to say them. I, however, take Ms. Blige’s advice to heart: I will not sweat it, I will be myself. Kamala Harris is running for vice president of the United States in an era of heightened and unending crisis. The world, which doubts our strength, our character and our class, is watching. If you can’t imitate gravity, could you at least try for seriousness?….
Good morning to all you ‘rons, ‘ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules), ghoulis, zombies, banshees, mummies, and the rest of you out there doing the ‘monster mash’. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it’s these pants, worn by this guy I hired as a babysitter after I saw his advertisement on Craigslist. Says he loves kids. Seems OK.
The State Library Victoria is the main library of the Australian state of Victoria. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia’s oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It is also Australia’s busiest library and, as of 2018, the fourth most-visited library in the world.
The library’s vast collection includes over two million books and 350,000 photographs, manuscripts, maps and newspapers, with a special focus on material from Victoria, including the diaries of the city’s founders, John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, the folios of Captain James Cook, and the armour of Ned Kelly.
So it’s kind of like a museum, then.
This Ned Kelly fellow sounds interesting. Not only was he played by Mick Jagger in an eponymous 1970 movie, but a number of books have been written about him and his gang, including Ned Kelly by [name redacted]:
Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs.
Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka?
…From Kelly’s early days in Beveridge, Victoria, in the mid-1800s, to the Felons’ Apprehension Act, which made it possible for anyone to shoot the Kelly gang, to Ned’s appearance in his now-famous armour, prompting the shocked and bewildered police to exclaim ‘He is the devil!’ and ‘He is the bunyip!’, FitzSimons brings the history of Ned Kelly and his gang exuberantly to life, weighing in on all of the myths, legends and controversies generated by this compelling and divisive Irish-Australian rebel.
This book is almost 900(!) pages long, so for the $12.99 asking price, you’re getting a lot of reading.
Let me [LoM] just add in this. The picture above is the Library as it now is with no one around and the pic below is from the time before Insanity descended.
It would be a mistake to attribute this year’s gender gap entirely to Trump’s personal attributes. After all, women have been trending left, as men trend right, for decades now. And this development is not unique to the United States — rather, it is present across nearly all advanced democracies. Viewed in this context, Trump looks as much like a product of the gender gap as he does like a cause: It’s quite plausible that Trump would not have won the 2016 GOP nomination if the Republican coalition hadn’t already grown heavily male (in multiple state primaries, Trump performed significantly better among men than women).
The most astonishing moment of the debate was over the 550 missing children at the border. Anyone who would make that even the faintest criterion for selecting president should be denied the vote.
Law of Markets 