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I used to blog so much. These days I'm far more likely to read something off the Internet than I am to write something and add it to the collective babble. Here are some links I've found interesting.
The Economics Behind Grandma’s Tuna Casseroles (Bloomberg, 31 October 2015). I learned to cook by downloading recipes, mostly from the US, and this article explains a lot about them. Campbell's soup makes a simple casserole sauce. Add pineapple to whatever and it's called "whatever aloha"; add chili powder and it's "whatever olé". The 50s and 60s in the United States are always fascinating -- I think perhaps because the SF I read growing up dates from that exotic era of the atom, martinis, and advertising. (ETA: Q sent a link which expands on this: Creamed, Canned And Frozen: How The Great Depression Revamped U.S. Diets (NPR, 15 August 2016).)
There are no marching morons (Pharyngula, 8 May 2007). Those people! The ones who aren't as good as us! They breed like cockroaches! (See also: Examination Day by Henry Slesar, which traumatised me as a child - here's the 90s Twilight Zone adaptation, which adds a few extra terrible seconds to the ending. You can't breed intelligence out; you can only snip off individual flowers.)
The Cult of the Fantasy Pedestrian (Strong Towns, n.d.). The Fantasy Pedestrian always does the correct thing -- never crosses in the middle of the road, for example -- so there's no need to allow for human fallibility, or human vulnerability. Cf the reason there are ash trays in aeroplane bathrooms; better that a lawbreaker or idiot put their smoke out somewhere safe than that the whole plane burned.
Here's what happens when you try to replicate climate contrarian papers (The Guardian, 25 August 2015). Since climate denial is propaganda, it's not surprising that scientific papers which contradict the consensus are guilty of deceptive methods like cherry picking and ignoring inconvenient physics. But perhaps the biggest giveaway that they're full of it is that every "contrarian" has a different explanation. (The Queen Katryca bullshit detector, you might say.)
If you're a sort of Lefty progressivy femo pinko something or other like me, you're used to people on "your side" swallowing plenty of factoids, dubious reasoning, and general bullshit. Apparently those to the right of that invisible central line are even more susceptible, as Why Are Conservatives More Susceptible to Believing Lies? (Slate, 9 November 2017) argues -- not because conservative folks are stupid or uneducated, but because they have a different style of thinking: for example, they trust authority more and are more resistant to new information. The article also talks about that crucial factor on and offline -- the way our beliefs make us part of a group. (Am I wrong in thinking that the propaganda with which we are constantly deluged mostly comes from the right?)
The Economics Behind Grandma’s Tuna Casseroles (Bloomberg, 31 October 2015). I learned to cook by downloading recipes, mostly from the US, and this article explains a lot about them. Campbell's soup makes a simple casserole sauce. Add pineapple to whatever and it's called "whatever aloha"; add chili powder and it's "whatever olé". The 50s and 60s in the United States are always fascinating -- I think perhaps because the SF I read growing up dates from that exotic era of the atom, martinis, and advertising. (ETA: Q sent a link which expands on this: Creamed, Canned And Frozen: How The Great Depression Revamped U.S. Diets (NPR, 15 August 2016).)
There are no marching morons (Pharyngula, 8 May 2007). Those people! The ones who aren't as good as us! They breed like cockroaches! (See also: Examination Day by Henry Slesar, which traumatised me as a child - here's the 90s Twilight Zone adaptation, which adds a few extra terrible seconds to the ending. You can't breed intelligence out; you can only snip off individual flowers.)
The Cult of the Fantasy Pedestrian (Strong Towns, n.d.). The Fantasy Pedestrian always does the correct thing -- never crosses in the middle of the road, for example -- so there's no need to allow for human fallibility, or human vulnerability. Cf the reason there are ash trays in aeroplane bathrooms; better that a lawbreaker or idiot put their smoke out somewhere safe than that the whole plane burned.
Here's what happens when you try to replicate climate contrarian papers (The Guardian, 25 August 2015). Since climate denial is propaganda, it's not surprising that scientific papers which contradict the consensus are guilty of deceptive methods like cherry picking and ignoring inconvenient physics. But perhaps the biggest giveaway that they're full of it is that every "contrarian" has a different explanation. (The Queen Katryca bullshit detector, you might say.)
If you're a sort of Lefty progressivy femo pinko something or other like me, you're used to people on "your side" swallowing plenty of factoids, dubious reasoning, and general bullshit. Apparently those to the right of that invisible central line are even more susceptible, as Why Are Conservatives More Susceptible to Believing Lies? (Slate, 9 November 2017) argues -- not because conservative folks are stupid or uneducated, but because they have a different style of thinking: for example, they trust authority more and are more resistant to new information. The article also talks about that crucial factor on and offline -- the way our beliefs make us part of a group. (Am I wrong in thinking that the propaganda with which we are constantly deluged mostly comes from the right?)
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