I grew up in New York from age zero to six, when my family moved to Baltimore. Dad left Columbia University after the student riots [chronicle] and took a position at Johns Hopkins University. I still consider myself a New Yorker when it’s convenient to be.
I have added another book to my recommended reading list [stderr] Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. In the last few months, I have gone backward and forward through it, trying to make sense of how the facts it exposes fit with my historical understanding.
If you pay any attention to US history, you know that slavery and racism are one of the supporting institutions that have defined and shaped the United States. You cannot understand the United States without understanding slavery and racism. But, that understanding has always felt incomplete, to me; I knew there was more. Obviously, there are details, but what is the big picture?
[Warning: Long]
Skepticism is generally a good thing, but sometimes we run into contrarianism – a version of pseudo-skepticism characterized by motivated reasoning aimed at running against some prevailing opinion or belief.
The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel.
I don’t spend much time on youtube. Usually, I decide I am interested in something, then race around and download a bunch of the videos for later review while I’m doing something else.
The term “revisionist history” is one I don’t like. Yes, there are revisionist histories that try to – for example – argue that the holocaust didn’t happen, but those are just outright misrepresentation, rather than actually revising how we see some historical event or period. Revision may entail completely re-assessing something we thought we understood, based on new facts.
Last weekend I watched a documentary entitled Holy Hell. I think it’s a good companion-piece to Marjoe [wik] if you want to embark on a study of cultish behaviors.
[Spoilers below]
In one of the TWiV (This Week in Virology) podcasts, they briefly mentioned a book by Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes. [I guess the publishers are not Bob Dylan fans] Several of the doctors said they thought it was great, or it was on their reading list, so I added it to mine.
I’ve become fond of having an audiobook going while I work. It seems to help me focus, which doesn’t make a great deal of sense (I’d expect it to be distracting!) but it’s a great way to absorb new information. Perhaps it’s just a side-effect of how I work nowadays, but if I sit down and open a book, it usually turns into a nap pretty quickly.
Commentariat(tm) member invivoMark made a plug for this game, and I am very glad they did. [stderr] [This review/extended comment does not include spoilers.] [Read more…]