When do ideas get easier to find?
Kind of person that always succeeded to attract me
Anatomy of a controversy: Inside the drama at The Washington Post
Homeland Security Solicited Twitter To ‘Become Involved’ in Disinfo Board.
Long COVID: Why people are getting their blood ‘washed’ (video) Deutsche. Worked for Keith Richards.
Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemicNature. From the Abstract: “Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded.” Data source: “Serendipitously, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, over the period May 2017–Nov 2019, we were conducting unrelated routine monthly surveys of all 17 wet market shops selling live wild animals for food and pets across Wuhan City.”
- A missing color — cognitive scientist and artist Allen Tager tries to figure out what explains why violet was largely missing for much of human history
- Philosophy at the movies — some highlights from the film & philosophy podcast of Justin Khoo (MIT), “Cows in the Field”
- “The objection to violence has its limit at the point when fundamental freedoms are at stake” — understanding Habermas’ view on Germany’s role in helping Ukraine (via Darrel Moellendorf)
- “Raz’s legacy is a body of work united by dense and detailed tissues of understanding, spun between jurisprudence, political philosophy, ethics, and practical reasoning” — Jeremy Waldron (NYU) on the significance of Joseph Raz’s work
- If we conceive of time as a kind of veil of ignorance, perhaps the governance of space is a good subject for a Rawlsian approach—but not for long — more cynical headline: “Rawls’s Theory Finally Finds Suitable Application in Lifeless Void, according to Social Scientists”
- More on the metaphysics of farts, and the mysterious author of the article smelt round the world — by Elizabeth Picciuto in Slate
- “How much should we dress up for an event when the topic of the talk was body modification?” — a journalist reports on an event with philosopher Clare Chambers (Cambridge) about bodies, beauty, and shame
Conductors use arms, hands, and other body language to communicate with their musicians. How much is communicated by their eyes? conductors
1. Dan Werb, The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronavirus and the Search for a Cure. An excellent book on the history of coronaviruses more generally, with much of the strongest material coming on how earlier coronavirus investigations fed into the progress we have made on Covid-19. Recommended, not just what all the other Covid books are telling you.
2. James Poskett, Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science. A useful account of what the title promises, with a look at contributions from pre-conquest Mexico, China, and other non-Western locales. Maybe the book pushes the non-Western theme a little too much at points, but this is basically a sane and readable account, and most of the cross-cultural connections are valid rather than strained.
3. Evan Lieberman, Until We Have Won Our Liberty: South Africa After Apartheid. An interesting book, and one which contains a lot of useful information. Yet the author works too hard to avoid recognizing just how badly matters have gone. Overall, incomes are down and the racial wealth gap has not improved…and that is after getting rid of one of the most inefficient economic systems of all time, namely apartheid. For sources try this and this, among others. The income gains you can find are focused in a super-small group.
4. Paul Mango, Warp Speed: Inside the Operation that Beat Covid, the Critics, and the Odds. Written by an HHS insider and participant, this is kind of cheesy and fanboyish. But probably it should be! For one thing, the book gives you a sense of just how much talent was involved in OWS, an under-discussed lesson. On p.69, you can learn that they repeatedly considered human challenge trials and learn their question-begging reasons for refusing to do them.
5. David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals. An extended history of U.S. slavery, focusing on regional differences, for instance Carolina Gullahs vs. New Orleans vs. Mississippi. As you might expect, the broader story is integrated with that of the particular African origins of the slaves as well. A strong book, recommended.
Michael Magoon’s From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement is a very good introduction to the importance of progress and material wealth in history.
