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Wednesday, March 03, 2021

Sunspots 822

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Some Gizmodo writers discuss the question of why music moves us emotionally.

Christianity: Relevant has a disturbing article on the pervasiveness of pornography, and its effects (people who watch pornography are more likely to divorce, for one). The pervasiveness seems to be as 

Education: Grammarphobia on the history of the words grid and gridiron.

Finance: (or something) Gizmodo reports on an analysis which says that Texans have paid 28 billion dollars more for power, over the last few years, than they would have if their grid had been regulated like other grids.

Politics: Gizmodo reports on congressional hearings aimed to cut down on misinformation. It's an interesting read, pointing out more than one side's misinformation, but no conclusions were found.

NPR reports that Russian diplomats and their families left North Korea by way of a manually pushed rail handcart.

Science: Gizmodo reports that there are a lot of double stars in our galaxy, meaning that, on many planets, there would often be two sun shadows of the same object, or person.

Gizmodo also reports on studies of fossil dinosaurs. There aren't many fossils of medium-sized dinosaurs, and the reason seems to be that the young of Tyrannosaurus rex and similar forms out-competed them.

Gizmodo also reports on the development of flying drones, the size of a cicada.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

Thanks for looking!

2 comments:

Weekend Fisher said...

I am uneasy with calls for more censorship (or for tolerating or normalizing the existing de facto censorship), even if that call is phrased more obliquely. While incorrect information can be a problem on almost any topic, the question of which information is accurate may not be fully settled immediately, and not without a serious research effort. That effort is itself undermined by the rush to curtail discussion, leading to worse information instead of better in the long run. Discussing the disagreement is part of the discovery process, and we do ourselves no favors by curtailing it.

For example, take the anti-malarial HCQ which was part of the treatment regimen in certain countries to fight COVID. After Trump mentioned it, there was a significant amount of effort in the U.S. directed toward publishing why HCQ-for-COVID was a bad idea. Many good-hearted people on both sides considered it their duty to advocate for or against HCQ. It's only with a certain amount of time that we see which viewpoint didn't age well. As of January 2021, HCQ is now accepted treatment in the U.S. for COVID (e.g. see https://principia-scientific.com/the-american-journal-of-medicine-now-recommends-hcq-for-covid19/). But the anti-HCQ view prevailed to the point of de facto censorship and often a ban on doctors prescribing the medicine for that use during the worst of the pandemic in 2020. With the questions surrounding HCQ, there is a case to be made that censorship and group-think cost lives, and potentially not a small number of lives.

In the political arena, censorship is an act of oppression. When powerful publications are proved to have spread information that turns out to be incorrect (and ought to have been treated with more skepticism, given how little supporting evidence), there is no call to censor them even when it is part of a recurring pattern; the targets for censorship are always the little guys. There are probably dozens of examples from the last few years of which people of good faith may disagree on things, particularly with the lack of honest media that is willing to consider both sides.

The media spends a disturbing amount of time trying to convince each side that the other isn't worth hearing. Making that a matter of power and law will only make it worse.

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid that you are right.