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Author: Mark J. Heinicke
Hijacking the Reading Circuit: Are Screens Robbing Children of Comprehension?
Too much, too fast, too fragmented. Is there more to it?
Ever since the internet began to deluge our brains with an unceasing flow of information—meaning both raw data, and raw data given structure in the act of “informing”—intellectuals have been sounding alarms over the impacts on our thinking processes. There is a consensus, even among boosters of new data-heavy technology, that we need to take a hard look at those impacts and what they portend for the future of our society.
Nicholas Carr devoted a book to the subject in 2010, entitled The Shallows. His book begins with Carr’s self-observations on how his internet information-gathering practices have infused his thinking with a shorter attention span, lack of follow-through on reading material, and a propensity to jump to shaky inferences based on short, superficial snippets of information. He makes the case that these phenomena have spread throughout internet userdom (now, most of our society), to the detriment of deep comprehension and wisdom. (I’m not sure Carr used the word “wisdom”—it might sound a little sententious, and I read the book years ago—but if he didn’t use it I doubt he’d object to my imputing the idea to him.)
Carr—and many others preaching similar messages —puts an emphasis on distraction as the main threat to deeper thinking. How can you concentrate on any one train of thought when there are so many intercommunicating trains crowding the station, tempting you to hop on board via hyperlink? And take you to yet another crowded station with yet more bright and shiny hyperlinks?
How right is he? Is Carr’s examination of The Shallows too shallow?
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Animals Get Help from Above
Eyes in the sky usher in new era for monitoring animal diversity, numbers, and movement
Drones and satellites radically change the game in forestalling the worst in animal declines and species extinctions. Key to wildlife conservation is just getting the facts—and there are a lot of facts to get when it comes to the complexity of the natural world. Without accurate and comprehensive information on what is actually happening on the ground, prioritizing and designing conservation efforts are mostly guesswork. Such is the growing enormity of human impacts on the biosphere, research methods must scale up, or fall behind the accelerating pace of change.
How best to scale up is with devices that can remotely gather vast amounts of data on both groups and individuals—seeing both the forest and the trees. The best positioning for these devices is up in the sky, and their primary data-gathering methods are electronic.*
Tribalism, Patriotism, White Supremacy, and the South
Mixed Identity Politics?
Cycling in southern Virginia recently, I noticed a large flag mounted on a 20-foot pole in someone’s front yard—with a conflicted message. The flag, as it turned out, had an identity issue: one side was the conventional Stars and Stripes U.S national flag; the other side was the “Southern Cross” of the Confederate flag (I assume it must have been two flags sewn together; I wasn’t about to stop and ask.) Homes with the two flags displayed separately are not unusual. But this two-faced flag combination captured the mixed identity of those who declare they are patriots, but who owe allegiance to something that is not quite the United States as conceived by the rest of us.
The more common two separate flags in the yard speak loudly for a tribe that has stood for white supremacy* and deep suspicion of the federal government, while also declaring their patriotism. That’s the perversely named “nativist” tribe, by which is meant, not affinity with actual native Americans, but quite the reverse: it’s rather an affinity with white people who invaded from Europe, slaughtered most of the indigenous folks and drove them off their lands. Let’s call the newly arisen nativists “neo nativists.” (Not to be confused with the same psychological term applied to cognitive development.)
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Three Guesses as to why President Trump Softened on Iran
When coincidences point to causation
(Actually, I lied about three guesses. It’s only one guess—mine—but I put its likelihood as better than 75%. Bear with me.)
On Sunday President Trump was, via Twitter, threatening IN ALL CAPS to rain down death and destruction on Iran because of . . . Iranian government rhetoric. The rhetoric was Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warning that war with his country would be “the mother of all wars.” (Rouhani has to talk tough because the clergy who really rule the country require it. I’m not sure they were entirely happy with the echo of Saddam Hussein saying that war between the U.S. and his country would be “the mother of all battles”—we all know how that turned out—but I wonder if Rouhani was chuckling inside.) Rouhani went on to fulminate, “Don’t play with fire, or you will regret [it]. Iranian people are master and they will never bow to anyone.”
WORDS. Words which are, in belligerence of tone, pretty much standard fare in Iranian bluster since the clergy toppled the U.S.-friendly Shah of Iran in 1979. And for those words, Rouhani got back the now notorious all-caps tweet from Trump: ‘NEVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER [blah blah blah to the effect that we’d squash Iran like a bug—mirroring the kind of rhetoric Rouhani used, only in the case of Trump, unlike Rouhani, it sounded as if the President was off on one of his temper tantrums, personally aggrieved by someone seeming to stand up to him].
On Tuesday, we hear a suddenly agreeable Trump saying his administration stands ready to come to the negotiating table. With Iran, that is. Followed by “shraararrasshreeshshshseesh” which was the sound of John Bolton tearing his hair out.
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Cruelty Paired with Environmental Havoc: Border Barriers Harming Wildlife
U.S. border wall – a looming crime against wildlife
Before getting to the matter of barbed wire fences in Europe, let’s address the never=ending saga of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico—which the Trump administration keeps alive despite budget-busting increases in defense spending and, not coincidentally, the cost of beefing up border security with police and ICE agents.
A wall substantial enough to keep out immigrants would also stop the comings-and-goings of animals across the U.S.-Mexico border: more environmental havoc by the Trump administration. Scientists have risen up in opposition, now having accumulated more than 2,500 signatures in support of a paper describing the damage to wildlife that the wall would entail. Read about it at: Wildlife-hostile border wall
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Trump Strong-Arms Ecuador – then Defers to Guess Who?
It’s not just asylum seekers’ children suffering from Trump policy; it’s kids in other hemispheres
Given everything we hear and see from the Trump administration, it’s evident that children’s well-being is low on their list of priorities.
Still, two headline-grabbing episodes have given extra dimensions to Trump anti-child bias.
The first, the separation of children from parents seeking asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border, made still more vile by failing to track which children belonged to which parents, vileness compounded yet again by the prospect of toddlers being ordered to appear in court alone for their own deportation proceedings.
Ugly— yet, there is still the flimsy rationale of “border security” used to justify such inhumane treatment. The border security narrative goes, who knows what Hispanic children, allowed to stay in the U.S., will go on to join an MS-13 gang and hack to death hapless white U.S. citizens on the street? Better to send them back to an early death in El Salvador, ensuring we need never fear them again. So it might be cruel, but at least it is not arbitrary.
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Gambling with Other People’s Money: Trump Trade Wars
How easy to win are trade wars?
Vainglorious boaster President Trump, having declared trade war against much of the developed world, assured us that trade wars are easy to win.
?? Maybe, and maybe not. I’m no economist, but I have noticed that the majority of mainstream economists and many business leaders have opined that trade wars are bad for everyone. They are particularly bad when they slow down the global economy as a whole, in an age where the global economy is increasingly THE economy that really matters in the long run.
On the other hand, seasoned economist Irwin Stelzer proposed that Trump’s trade war “really might be easy to win.” Stelzer on trade war
The basis of Stelzer’s conjecture is that the U.S. economy dwarfs that of any one of its economic adversaries (euphemistically called “trading partners”), excepting China, and they need the U.S. market more than the U.S. needs theirs. Secondly, if foreign tariffs really were as relatively disadvantageous to us as Trump claims (and Stelzer seems to agree), greater parity could put those foreigners on the ropes. As Stelzer points out, a German auto industry’s proposal to eliminate tariffs is a sign that some foreign businesses are seeing trouble ahead with the status quo. The status quo is that EU tariffs on U.S. automobiles have been five times that of the America’s on theirs.
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Musical Balm 2: Jazzy Flavors from Bossenbroek
Here’s another post where some music may soothe a fractious state of mind.
These two Elijah Bossenbroek pieces are different enough in mood and style from his more typical”modern classical” compositions that they may surprise you (unless you have been investigating his work following my earlier post, Pianistic Thunder [etc].*)
Both are short (3:18 and 4:28). Enjoy!
“Spinning Nowhere” has a distinctly jazzy feel; definitely not “modern classical.”
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Musical Balm 1: Where Light Still Shines
Best escape from the furor: music to lighten the soul
The last two news weeks have been saddening, maddening, frightening, sobering, and frustrating for those of a politically liberal or civil rights bent, or those simply with an inclination toward common decency.
After hearing of the Anthony Kennedy resignation from the Supreme Court, and hearing the reliably hypocritical Mitch McConnell promise to get Kennedy’s replacement installed before the November elections, I found myself bristling—all the more so to hear Democrats speaking at odds with each other.
I really needed an escape. You too?
It then occurred to me how to calm the bristling mid-brain: music of a light, sunny, or soothing sort. But I wanted to add a twist to my customary Pandora stations, and found two in particular, the first thanks to NPR and the second thanks to my recollection of the most sunny of Beethoven’s sonatas. . . .