Haidt: end phone-centric childhood
Bioethics
by Phil
4d ago
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4vG6gzMscs/?igsh=aTNvMHM5bzkxZTE ..read more
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“deliberately exposed to radiation”
Bioethics
by Phil
2w ago
'Oppenheimer,' My Uncle and the Secrets America Still Doesn't Like to Tell …"Oppenheimer" is a movie about a singular genius, an extraordinary collaboration and a turning point in history. But it's also a lesson in applied physics: the way a lone catalyst may trigger a chain reaction whose impact cannot be predicted or controlled. J. Robert Oppenheimer's greatest triumph set into motion forces that brought about his downfall. An innovation designed to make the world safer in the long term made it manifestly more dangerous. And in subsequent atomic tests through the postwar years, many Am ..read more
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Pandemic lessons not learned
Bioethics
by Phil
2w ago
It has been four years since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In 2022 Ed Yong wrote that the U.S. "made none of the broad changes that would protect its population against future pathogens, such as better ventilation or universal paid sick leave." He predicted that America will "continue to struggle against infectious diseases in part because some of its most deeply held values are antithetical to the task of besting a virus." https://www.threads.net/@theatlantic/post/C4YzdRnRMYY/?xmt=AQGzVL8uXjPeUw92cc_xOhRNVYs1mCOg0E7vTYMC4LycRg ..read more
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Portals
Bioethics
by Phil
2M ago
But don't underrate the value of being healthy. Things did not end well for Virginia. "Virginia Woolf on being ill as a portal to self-understanding and a way of breaking through our ordinary waking-state perception" https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/05/06/virginia-woolf-on-being-ill/ https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C2GY6ohxDni ..read more
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Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older – The Marginalian
Bioethics
by Phil
2M ago
Today, and for the next few weeks, my wife is chronologically older than me. She might need to hear what Maria  Popova and Simone de Beauvoir say about time's arrow… (And happy birthday to WJ, 182 today.) …to grow old at all is a tremendous privilege — one withheld from the vast majority of humans populating the history of our young species (to say nothing of the infinite potential humans who never chanced into existing). "…There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devoti ..read more
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Stephen Hawking happy
Bioethics
by Phil
2M ago
When asked about living with [ALS, Lou Gehrig's ] disease, he told an interviewer that he was "happier now" than before he became ill. "Before, I was very bored with life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work . . .When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have." https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-monday-january-645?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post ..read more
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Thank goodness
Bioethics
by Phil
3M ago
I'm reading Daniel Dennett's memoir "I've Been Thinking", which begins with the near-death experience that generated my favorite written testimonial of natural gratitude. "ON OCTOBER 24, 2006, I WAS RUSHED BY AMBULANCE from my office at Tufts University to the emergency room at Lahey Clinic, where doctors discovered the problem: the inner and outer layers of my aorta had come apart—an aortic dissection—and I could die at any moment if the blood from my heart burst out into my chest cavity. The day before I had been in Mackerel Cove on Swan’s Island in Maine on my sailboat, Xanthippe. This was ..read more
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“My Year of Being Very Online About Dogs”
Bioethics
by Phil
3M ago
My friend Daryl's friend and former colleague at W.Carolina, on dogs and the culture wars. What a strange world, dogs' AND ours… Dogs are where we project our "fantasies about what we want — either who we want to be or what we want the world to look like," said Katharine Mershon, a professor of religion and philosophy at Western Carolina University who studies the role of dogs in American society. Dr. Mershon told me how dogs had become a focal point for tensions in her rural Appalachian town: Her local NextDoor was filled with arguments about whether leaving hunting dogs to roam about fr ..read more
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What is life?
Bioethics
by Phil
4M ago
We don't really know, Jaime Green writes.⁠ "Hold a rock next to a flower and you're probably confident you know the difference," Green writes. "But since the days of Aristotle, scientists and philosophers have struggled to draw a precise line between what is living and what is not, often returning to criteria such as self-organization, metabolism, and reproduction but never finding a definition that includes, and excludes, all the right things." https://theatln.tc/auxkhAiW https://www.threads.net/@theatlantic/post/C0fFMQlxW6Z/ Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu ?Solvitur ambulando ?Sapere aude ..read more
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Poetic ecology and the biology of wonder
Bioethics
by Phil
4M ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature." https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C0ekyxqOV_k ..read more
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