Commentary on the film, “Planet of the Humans”
April 28, 2020 My wife, Barbara Beitch, a biologist, was instrumental in reviewing what I wrote and making useful recommendations and clarifications, some of which I’ve quoted in footnotes. Any…
Avoiding the Vietnam draft
Originally posted November 22, 2008 [I doubt the composition had anything to do with JFK] During the Vietnam War I was a draft dodger--that is, I determined to avoid getting…
Right-wing tail wagging the American dog
My extended comments follow this PDF copy of a long e-mail I received today from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/…/american-public-re…/). As you'll see, they're devoting some time…
Long-term Trumpian effects (Feb., 2020)
February 4, 2020 Since the 2016 election, I have worked so hard to minimize belief in long-term effects of the Trump administration—to view these four(!) years as an agonizing hiatus…
To Biden or not to Biden
As a graying radical who often voted for a 3rd-party candidate (Nader in 2000 was the last) and is still sympathetic to that principle, for the current election I must…
What can we trust that we read about failures of the CDC and the World Health Organization?
This commentary is in relation to a troubling web posting of: https://medium.com/@CynicalXennial/unmasking-the-truth-cdc-and-hospital-administrators-are-endangering-us-all-b601012f81be. Like many others, I have sometimes been hornswoggled by outraged claims on the web or in e-mails. Of…
(Long) “The Atlantic” recap with lots of added information about where we stand with COVID-19
This is (for me) a highly informative article from March 25, 2020, the content of which seems based on solid, very recent information: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/ I have noticed that occasionally, smart…
Class discrimination during a national and international crisis? Say it isn’t so!
Context of this post (April 3, 2020): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR1KXL2jvw0fCIAZSRc9PP41Z0y_Y0ErH-N4w4bQm9Kww3CSHGIzErqjhPA Why am I not surprised at the overall disparities illustrated in this NY Times article? (I’m assuming that on the whole, it’s…
Modest excurses, religious and biological, on the advent of COVID-19
1. Metaphysical explanations As far back and as widely distributed around the globe as we have found written records, divine wrath has been just around the community corner for peoples…
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Language and its discontents This chapter is an introduction to a study of Tudor attitudes towards language, and especially about disputes over its proper use. Shaped by Renaissance humanism and…