I have long been interested in the evolution of words as their meanings change and in his book The Scientific Revolution (1996), author Steven Shapin makes some interesting observations and speculations about two words that over time came to mean things almost directly opposite to what they had meant before. One such word is ‘revolution’.
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I am reading an excellent book titled The Infidel and the Professor that I will review in more detail once I have finished it and had time to fully digest it. The book is an intellectual biography of two Scotsmen David Hume and Adam Smith who were so influential in shaping modern western thought and were also good friends, with each of their ideas building on the other’s, though since Hume was twelve years older and a far more prolific writer, his ideas went into print before Smith’s.
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People who live in trailer parks receive a double whammy. They are looked down upon by others for being poor because they cannot afford to live in a ‘real’ house, and their homes also tend to be highly vulnerable to destruction by tornados, hurricanes, and floods. But these trailer parks enable people with low income to have their own homes. They can also be the centers of close and supportive communities, as much as or even more so than any neighborhood that has fixed homes. The close proximity of the trailers to one another and the need and easy ability of the inhabitants to spend more time outside their small homes lends itself to people getting to know their neighbors better than if they lived in city apartments or suburban lots with their enclosed yards.
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Eric Bolling, one of the most odious of the many odious people working at Fox News (and that is really saying something), has agreed to “part ways amicably” with the network, a polite way of saying that he has been shown the door. This comes after he was suspended pending allegations that he had sent photographs of his penis to co-workers. Andrew Kirell gives us a brief summary of Bolling’s sickening history, especially his habit of racist innuendo targeting Barack Obama and his incredibly sexist attitudes towards women.
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There was a news item that created a minor stir yesterday (but infuriated me) when it was reported that Max Baucus had come out in favor of a single-payer system of health care, saying ” “My personal view is we’ve got to start looking at single-payer… I think we should have hearings … We’re getting there. It’s going to happen.”
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The former Mexican president turns out to have quite the comedy chops. He has produced some memorable digs using salty language at Donald Trump and his plans to build the wall, but now he goes further and says that he is going to run for US president in 2020. He makes the announcement in this campaign video where he discusses his platform and his strategy for winning.
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Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s choice to head the EPA, is a climate change skeptic of course. After all, his boss has called it a ‘hoax’. When asked whether the back-to-back huge hurricanes Harvey and Irma with Jose in the wings should result in having serious discussions about the impact of climate change and how to mitigate it, he replied:
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The TV images we saw of the Apollo astronauts on the moon had a ghostly, grainy look. That poor quality lent support to the beliefs of some people that the moon landings were faked though the reasoning escapes me. If the video was filmed on a secret Hollywood soundstage by Stanley Kubrick, as some allege, then surely NASA could have shelled out a few extra bucks to make a better quality product? (I never quite understood why people would believe something so bizarre. Why would NASA and the top people in the US government cook up such a story?)
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Governments like to have as much surveillance as possible of the people because it gives them greater control. It is often argued by them that this information is necessary in order for them to provide better security, and the debate becomes one where the desire for security has to be balanced by the desire of ordinary people to live their lives free from government snooping. The one case where the debate has swung overwhelmingly in favor of the government is when it says it is investigating terrorists. People have become so spooked by the idea of terrorists in their midst that they seem to be willing to grant carte blanche to the government to do whatever it likes to combat any threat. But this license can result in heavy costs to the individuals who happen, for whatever reason, to fall into the government’s crosshairs.
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