Donald's Blog

  This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there.

«Mar 2015»
SMTWTFS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031    
  

In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever, and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc. to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.

 

March 31, 2015

We are all sinking into premature senility

Dogs wanted to be fed early this morning, and the newspaper wasn't here yet, so I caught up on some of the Times Literary Supplement. I adore the TLS; I read about fiction, history books, science books, biography, music and the other arts, and so on. Philosophy, not so much. My eyes glase over.
      In the February 27 issue (I am several weeks behind in my reading) there is a review of a book about mentalism versus animalism, that is, whether we are fundamentally psychological beings, and only incidentally humans, or most fundamentally a human animal and only accidentally a psychological being. Aren't we lucky to be higher animals, capable of squabbling about nothing? Talk about your big-enders and your little-enders: Jonathan Swift, thou shouldst be alive at this hour.

Then there's the new law in Indiana, simliar to laws in 19 other states, ostensibly about religious freedom, except that only Indiana's law explicitly enables discrimination against gays or anybody else a merchant doesn't approve of. Odd that in a nation founded on the principal of religious freedom we are using religion as an excuse to curb our freedoms; never mind, too many of our laws are unnecessary and even foolish. But when I go to Facebook to check on what my grandchildren are up to, I have to click through 50 or 60 posts from complete strangers about the Indiana law! So I go to the mothership and try to tighten up my privacy settings. I have enough friends.

And finally, tonight we watch the evening news. At five on PBS there's the BBC World News, then later the PBS NewsHour. On the BBC World News a considerable segment was taken up with a young woman plugging her self-help book about the importance of good habits. And on the PBS NewsHour there was an item about a journalist wrapping a gizmo around his head and getting an electronic jolt that (he said) had the effect of caffeine without the coffee. (What do they have against coffee?)
      Is public television going the way of network news? Are we all regressing into further retreat from the real world?