I got stuff cookin.
This Week’s Posts
Monday, People Just Want to Feel Good About War Again
War is a force that gives us meaning.
Tuesday, April 19th - For Democrats, It’s the Worst of Both Worlds
Rhetorically radical, substantively cowardly, and all wet.
Wednesday, April 20th - I Thought The Batman Was Pretty Dumb
Not bad, just dumb and way too long.
Friday, April 22nd - “Multiple Personality Disorder” Probably Doesn't Exist, And There Certainly Hasn't Been an Explosion of It Among the Youth
It may be a fictitious disorder entirely, but either way, vast swaths of kids are embracing a very rare and debilitating mental illness, and it’s hurting them.
Plus we had the latest edition of the Book Club.
From the Archives
I am a Southland Tales partisan.
Song of the Week
Book Recommendation
The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, 2002
Now long-reviled, The Blank Slate was thought to presage an era of behavioral genetics but instead was the beginning of a decades-long backlash against it. Along with Judith Rich Harris’s The Nurture Assumption, it represents a necessarily outdated but strong introduction to the simple concept that our genetic endowment must necessarily impact our cognition and behavior. That backlash is loud and wraps itself in the language of liberation, but its loudest proponents can’t answer basic questions about how our DNA could fail to produce any differences between two people’s personality, thinking, or psychological tendencies, despite influencing everything else that we are. Worth reading today, just hide it if you’re on the bus.
Comment of the Week
The problem is, trains running on time would be a pretty radical change! - Eli
That’s it. I’ll be better tomorrow.
GREAT song! I feel so cool whenever a cool person recommends a song I know about -- almost always because my coolest-ever daughter hooked me up. Isakof is a gem.
Hide your Pinker, for sure! Especially if you’re on the F train.