For culture warriors, transgenders in sports have been a hot-button issue. 180 schoolgirls murdered in Iran? Yawn! Child-rapist President? Bo-ring! But a transgender in women’s sports makes their blood boil. They have a point. Do you want your girls’ basketball team playing against a 110 kg (240 lb.) hulk like Luka Doncic, if he somehow […]
I just had the following experience: lying in bed, I thought of a cold beer I had in the fridge, and also that I had some muesli and milk. I thought, “Wow! A cold beer would taste mighty good about now.” But then I thought, “The muesli and milk would be a lot better for […]
Every morning I walk over to the local pagoda. After some Qi Gong meditation, I just sit on the swing, drinking in the beauty of the place. Not just the visual beauty, but the sounds, especially some 20 identifiable surround-sound bird songs. My swing at Wat Kandal This right-brained experience leads my left brain to […]
I’m not hearing the word ‘schizophrenia’ in the media. The media are full of descriptions of Trump’s ‘cognitive decline’. I think this term misses the mark. He is not just slowing down in his mental processes; he is actually insane, psychotic. In fact, his schizophrenia is becoming more and more pronounced and serious. That’s quite […]
We almost always boil the questions of human behavior down to “Is it in the genes, or is it conditioned by society?” This is the common ‘nature-nurture’ debate. We seldom pause to think that there is a third way that human behavior can be explained: what happens in the womb between conception and birth. Here’s […]
I recently attended an academic conference on English teaching in Phnom Penh. It was the stereotype of academic conferences: plenary sessions by imported invited experts, parallel session by local presenters, panel discussions, etc. Participants know exactly what to expect. I’m not knocking it – there were some interesting and thought-provoking sessions, and I came away […]
Another birthday passes. (Actually, as I write, it’s still my birthday in the US, as the US is 12 hours behind us.) Time to reminisce on my life and evaluate where I went right or wrong. One tends to ask oneself, “What was my greatest achievement?” My thoughts turned to being a ‘team player’, and […]
You don’t hear the word ‘spite’ much in the media these days. But I think it might be the most important descriptor of the mood of the MAGA cultists. I’m taking a lot of this material from Neurolink.com. Spiteful Behavior: Causes, Consequences, and Coping Strategies It’s a unique beast that sets itself apart from other […]
One study, reported by the European Medicines Agency, found that the Covid vaccines caused 8.2 deaths per million vaccines. That is .0008% Another study in https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2837831, showed that Covid vaccines saved 2.5 million lives. Are those 8.2 deaths a reasonable sacrifice for saving a million lives? This is an extreme version of the ‘Trolleycar Problem’, […]
This guy doesn’t look very simple to me. I’ve recently been doing battle with the U.S. Government, trying to use a service online, but being stifled at every turn by the complex technology. I feel that millions of Americans, with far less computer savvy than mine, are being frustrated by passwords, regulations, authentications, etc. They […]