fear

January 17, 2022

Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Plague-Spreader.

When the Bubonic Plague rekindled in 16th and 17th century Europe, some thought the illness was spread by diabolic agents who captured its essence in an ointment and then smeared the greasy substance on walls, people, and all kinds of things. Some of those accused of being plague-spreaders were burned at the stake. What’s interesting Continue reading

Pam-Toons

bubonic, cartoon, essence, Europe, fear, foto, ointment, pencil, photo, plague, sketch, sorcery, stake, uncertainty, unguent
September 18, 2021

Saturday Morning Pam-toons. There’s a Reason It’s Called a Fairy Tale.

What REALLY happened to the boy who cried, The Emperor has no clothes! The Emperor’s New Clothes Continue reading

Pam-Toons

academic freedom, ad baculum, Andersen, art, censorship, drawing, fear, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, pencil, photo, reality, rhetoric, silence, sketch, story, The Emperor's New Clothes, threat, vain-glory
January 26, 2021

Thoughtlets. xxxii.

A scapegoat is (usually) a person or group of people unjustly blamed for some set of circumstances arising from the actions of others. Scapegoats bear the brunt of crowd hostility and, once identified by an angry mob, find themselves in no-win, dangerous — even lethal — situations. Scapegoating is as old as humankind. In The Annals, Continue reading

Thoughtlets

anger, behaviour, blame, crowd, fear, madness, mentality, mob, scapegoat, Tacitus, tension
December 5, 2020

Saturday Morning Pam-toons. “Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words?” Thomas Hobbes.

It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference, made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider Continue reading

Pam-Toons

camera, cartoon, cctv, drawing, fear, graphic, Hobbes, internal, key, Leviathan, lock, nature, Philosophy, photo, political, safety, security, sketch, social, spy, surveillance, trust, war
November 20, 2020

Of Flocks and Wings

Lurking somewhere in the back of our adult brains is every mother’s admonition If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you? Don’t blindly follow your friends. Sometimes this warning is made explicit. When I went to university in my 40s, my seventy-five-year-old Dad worried that I would cease to think for myself. And so he gave Continue reading

Catch-All

children, fear, growing up, love, parent, parenting, peer pressure, think for yourself, worry
November 5, 2020

Understanding Political Rhetoric and How It Works With Our Mental states to Persuade or Dissuade

Rhetoric is, broadly put, the art of persuasion. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re all persuaded by rhetorical tactics and use them ourselves to persuade others. Some people find this notion unconscionable, as if there is some cognitive and/or character defect involved in persuading or being persuaded. There isn’t. Others think they’re immune Continue reading

Political Rhetoric, Social and Political Commentary

anxiety, assumptions, cognition, emotion, examine, fallacies, fear, hope, humility, rhetoric, speeches, Thinking, unexamined
September 18, 2020

Thoughtlets .ii.

Ever wonder why someone would reap the royalties of an end-is-nigh book if she really believes the end is nigh? Continue reading

Thoughtlets

apocalypse, author, belief, book, capitalize, consumer, disaster porn, fear, greed, market, money, sales
June 27, 2020

Fist Pumping.

I’ve here in mind the fist-pumping variety of politically vocal people, those certain that one side is leading us to another dark ages and the other to a totalitarian state. It appears that for some “left and right” thinking is characterized by black and white thinking. Nuance is lost. And with this loss, so too Continue reading

Political Rhetoric

anger, cartoon, cartoons, fear, narrative, perception, perspective, Philosophy, polarization, political, politics, social, social epistemology, trust, truth, vitriol
May 14, 2019

The day the Russians nuked my sawmill camp. A survivor’s memoir.

Prelude: After 44 years, my memory of this late cold-war-era event is not perfect. But it left an impression that planted seeds for my future interest in social epistemology, the social dimension of knowledge. Perhaps as something like Y2K will do for others. ‘Epistemic’ means pertaining to what we know, how we know, and so Continue reading

Catch-All

atomic, belief, bomb, child, children, cold war, epistemology, fear, film, memoir, memory, propaganda, remote, rural, school, social, sociology, testimony, trust