Current library stack. #BiteMeForbes
Current library stack. #BiteMeForbes
I don‘t wish to taint Litsy with political opinions, but weeks where there‘s strings of bad news seem to always bring out the skeptic in me (wonder why that is). Time to catch up on Dawkins.
What accounts for the popularity of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush--politicians who flaunt their ignorance as a virtue? You want your airline pilot to be educated in aeronautics and navigation. You want your surgeon to be learned in anatomy. Yet when you vote for a president to lead a country, you prefer somebody who is ignorant and proud of it, someone you'd enjoy having a drink with, rather than someone qualified for high office?
The theory of natural selection itself seems calculated to foster selfishness at the expense of public good; violence, callous indifference to suffering, short-term greed at the expense of long-term foresight. If scientific theories could vote, Evolution would surely vote Republican.
Can you think of something that we accept with equanimity in 2017 but future centuries will regard with the same revulsion as we, today, view the slave trade or the railway wagons bound for Belsen? I don't think it requires much imagination to think of at least one candidate. Don't the Belsen-bound railway wagons come to mind when you drive behind one of those closed-in trucks with bewildered, fearful eyes peering through the ventilation slats?
Damn right! I WISH my parents had felt the same way.
The pro-lifer screams 'Murder' at the abortion doctor and goes home to a steak dinner.
On Christopher Hitchens.
Christopher Hitchens
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theorcracy. --Christopher Hitchens
Dawkins lists a few of his favorite Christopher Hitchens quotations.
On Christopher Hitchens
Always so interesting!
This is the second such collection of Richard's essays and speeches, some of them going back a couple decades. It was narrated by Richard and ex-wife, Lalla Ward.
The sections I enjoyed the most included the following subjects: anti-religion, Galapagos Islands, animal rights, and the tributes to his father and Christopher Hitchens. The animal rights essays surprised me as I've never heard Richard talk about this subject. Overall: excellent.
Hanging at B&N over lunch so I grabbed this neat quote from the paper version. Maybe humans can survive the death of our sun, or an earlier extinction event, after all. Start burning those CDs!
New Dawkins. I‘m on it, audio style. A collection of essays, lectures, and letters.
#TBRtemptation. Another one I need to add to my list.