What is meant by the admonition 'Think before you speak!' ? The vast majority of the time we don't think before we speak. Else we'd never speak. So what is meant is either 1) stop and think about the right social thing to say or, 2) the factually correct thing. And oftentimes these two things…
Thoughtlets .viii.
Stand in one room while the television is on in the other. Now see if you can distinguish the voices of Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) and Tucker Carlson (Fox News). I can't. Notice that it's not just their voices that are similar, it's their style. Each sounds like a pouty prepubescent child who, in a jealous…
Thoughtlets .vii.
Here's some advice that's helped me get through life: 1) Life isn't fair and, 2) You won't like everyone and not everyone will like you. I doubt I could share this advice with people engaged in and enraged by contemporary social movements.
Thoughtlets .vi.
Another candidate for the Department of Idiotic Redundancies is the term "motivated reasoning". As David Hume famously observed reason is a slave to the passions, by which is meant reason doesn't move without a driver.
Thoughtlets .v.
The phrase "my lived experience" must be reported to the Department of Idiotic Redundancies. What other kind of experience could you have?
Thoughtlets .iv.
During the Reformation, the authority of the church was taken from the hands of priests and distributed to the general populace. During the Enlightenment the process of distributing knowledge of the sciences to the general populace through education began and continues to this day. And we've an increasingly literate population the world over, accelerated by…
Thoughtlets .iii.
I worry a little that, in this politically charged environment particularly, when someone urges you to 'be your authentic self' she means 'come out here where I can get you'.
Thoughtlets .ii.
Ever wonder why someone would reap the royalties of an end-is-nigh book if she really believes the end is nigh?
Thoughtlets .i.
Self-help books are written by people offering guidance and advice to others, so in which sense are self-help books SELF help?
What’s a Thoughtlet ?
Thoughtlets are 1-3 liners (ish) of the following nature: I wonder... , I worry... or, did you notice? .... A.k.a. stuff that rattles around in my head.
