My bible the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I’m not a racist. But am I an anti-racist?
I believe I am. I hope I am.
Here’s the checklist:
If you watch FOX National News, you are a racist. You enable racists like racist President Trump.
Category: ethics
2020 USA – What’s Going On?
I was offline cycling for 6 days of the protests and riots, folks angered about American police brutality against African Americans.
Happy to miss so much of that pain and anger. Actually.
It’s not easy to see any way the USA will be less divided anytime soon. If 40% of Americans still support Trump after his gross incompetence, they’ll go to the grave believing he was some kind of genius.
Marvin Gaye:
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today, yeahFather, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Thanks Jane.
Contagion (2011 film)
Contagion is a 2011 American thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, …
Jude Law is the conspiracy theorist flogging a fake cure.
… The film has received renewed popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are many parallels between the fictitious MEV-1 and COVID-19.
But MEV-1 is much more severe. More like the 1918 Flu.
In a flashback, a bulldozer razes palm trees while clearing a rainforest in China that disturbs the natural habitat of some bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops an infected piece of banana, which is eaten by a pig. The pig is slaughtered and prepared by a chef in a Macau casino, who transmits the virus to Beth (Paltrow) in a handshake.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
U.S. Federal minimum wage SHOULD be $20
One huge and unsustainable dynamic of the U.S. economic system is the growing gap between rich and poor.
That’s going to reverse direction. One way or another.
BEST would be the Democrats taking power. And effecting a small part of the changes they’ve claimed to want.
Worst would be another 4 years of Trump stupid, incompetent and wasteful corruption.
Read No Mercy / No Malice – What We Leave Behind
Economic STIMULUS makes the RICH RICHER
Professor Scott Galloway’s rant about the American Payment Protection Plan.
Government could have given most families, $30,000 — instead most is going to the rich.
He blames both Parties.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I’m a Humanist
Author Yuval Noah Harari would say my religion is Humanism.
My bible the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933.
Signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers (chiefly Unitarian) and theologians.
They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice, and they called for science to replace dogma and the supernatural as the basis of morality and decision-making.
So far, so good.
In 1941, the American Humanist Association was organised. Noted members of The AHA included Isaac Asimov, who was the president from 1985 until his death in 1992, and writer Kurt Vonnegut, who followed as honorary president until his death in 2007.
They advocate in Washington, D.C., for separation of church and state.
There is a sub-set called secular humanism that consciously rejects supernatural and religiosity.
I wouldn’t go that far, myself.
But I do believe strongly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The End of October by Lawrence Wright
The Kongoli virus in the book is much more deadly than COVID-19.
Kongoli kills hundreds of millions. Leads to world wars.
But, for the most part, readers are shocked at the many parallels between this fiction and COVID-19.
It’s a cautionary tale. And an excellent book.
The central figure is an American microbiologist named Henry Parsons. His personal story is engaging.
Henry tries to discover whether Kongoli arrived naturally like past viruses, or if humans (Putin) had been experimenting with bioweapons.
Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.
In 2007 he won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A book about Islamic terrorism.
The End of October is fiction.
Wright’s fictional tale is about a mysterious virus that starts in Asia, sweeps across continents, cripples the health care system, wrecks the economy, and kills people worldwide.
“I knew from talking to all these medical experts that something like this was going to happen,” Wright says. “They all knew it. They just didn’t know when.”
Wright began writing the novel in 2017 and turned in his final draft in the summer of 2019.
This Is ‘Creepy’: Lawrence Wright Wishes His Pandemic Novel Had Gotten It Wrong
Wright had started thinking about this plot line after Ridley Scott asked him what kind of disaster could cause what happened in the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road.
Netflix is among the studios considering making The End of October a film.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
I really enjoyed these 3 books by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014)
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016)
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
Like Bill Bryson, he can make academic subjects interesting and lively.
Critics call it sensationalist infotainment.
He is a simplifier. I like his frequent analogies to well known references.
There are endless interesting factoids.
Critics complain he gets some facts wrong by over-simplifying.
In Sapiens he postulates that humans now rule the earth because of our ability to organize and coordinate in large numbers.
Bees, ants and other species cooperates even better, but they are too inflexible to evolve. And have comparatively small numbers.
We are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our imagination, such as gods, states, money, human rights, corporations and other fictions, and we have developed a unique ability to use these stories to unify and organize groups and ensure cooperation.
He feels humans will continue to evolve, likely into some computer / human hybrid.
Click PLAY or watch his TED Talk on the topic on YouTube. (17min)
Canadian Artists sing LEAN ON ME.
Fantastic. A fundraiser for The Canadian Red Cross for COVID-19 Related Expenses.
#CanadaStrong
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 