I continue to live in interesting times. here, here, here.
The first is a refinement of group selection, something that, at least to me, seems to very intuitively be part of natural selection. The second is the example of a study that, if published in the United States, would be squashed because the religious folk don't like it's implications. More on that in a sec. The third is an indicator that the balance in American politics, or at least the snapshot that gets embedded in this representative term, is not presently there. More on that in a sec too.
On squashing studies and opinions that don't fit with the party ideology, a certain surgeon general comes to mind, who commented on this same issue. What harm is the act? Well, it happens to be forbidden in a book. It doesn't appear to cause any actual harm to anyone though. It's interesting that such a passage can shape society so much today. I do wonder what society would be like if that passage, and perhaps the prudishness it embodies, were not present. Perhaps a slight twist to Genesis to remove nudity as being sinful would be interesting too. I wonder what would happen if an average literary work, let's say, for the sake of argument, Also Sprach Zarathustra*, were used as the basis for a society. Things change a lot when you take things too seriously. In a way, the 'spirit of gravity' that Nietzsche writes about is the same thing.
On the topic of politics, I do wonder how much of that kind of thing is standard fare, and how much of it is something novel. It'd be nice to know whether I should be thinking of fleeing the country to avoid a theocratic revolution, or living life as I do. The first is, of course, unlikely, but it's hard to judge these things, and as history has shown us a few times, and as Socrates suggests, it is very possible for a Democracy to devolve into something lower. Heh. A thought -- half-lives for governments.
- Dream: I was at a conference, and people were being called on to read and
know, but I had lost my book. Hmm. I was at a new university, a ways from home, and there was a lot of grass outside. I think that might've been shards of memory from by thinking about going to an event at UPitt that I didn't actually go to, and wondering what it might've been like if I had gone there for undergrad. Jason was there too, as some kind of person who was leading the way to a truth that I believed in.. Strange..
I woke up today with a headache and dehydration. I hate this kind of headache -- it means that I likely will be headache-marginal for all of today. Bleh. OTOH, I've recently been happier than I've been for weeks. On today's agenda, I'm going to probably replace the broken antenna on my cell phone. I'm not sure what else I'm going to do -- I'm still in low-spending mode. Maybe I'll take a walk in Frick park.