IMAGINATION BEYOND KNOWLEDGE
Albert Einstein:
I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
RAMESSES II, ASSAD, AND ELON MUSK
This photograph of a fallen statue of Hafex al-Assad, father of the recently deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, brought to mind Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias.
Read moreFACTORY FARMING: A LIFE WORTH LIVING?
In his book Living on Earth, Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a thought experiment to aid one interested in thinking carefully about the morality of what’s somewhat euphemistically called “factory farming.
Read moreWRITING AND CONTROL
Peter Godfrey-Smith:
The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his wry, moody memoir Tristes Tropiques …, discussed this aspect of writing: ‘Writing is a strange invention.
ON LEAVING FACEBOOK
I stopped posting on Facebook in November 2016. I’ve long thought that I should delete my account, but I’ve kept it open, primarily because I appreciated what I learned there about the lives of people in my life — people I didn’t encounter much anymore, both because of my introverted approach to the world and also because I’ve moved around so much in my life.
Read moreCONSCIOUSNESS, CONSPIRACIES, AND THE VANISHING RESEARCHER
I’m just not willing to go down this rabbit hole, but I can’t resist describing it, however briefly.
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