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I do think ‘woke culture,’ which, it seems to me, is just a new word for being PC, has gone a bit too far. On the other hand, I get skeptical when I see somebody say, loudly and publicly (well, I guess loud is a metaphor when we’re typing, but you know what I mean) that they are ‘fed up with all this woke bullshit.’ Often as not, they are just a frustrated bigot whose not allowed to use their favorite pejorative terms any more.
That said, the comment that really irritated me today was under a nice science article about some rock drawings, something like 12,000 years old, which were recently discovered in Colombia and may shed a great deal of light on ancient American cultures and, by extension, the development of mankind. Well, one woman was right out of the gate with how this belonged to the native tribes of the area and western archeologists should just shove off, which led to a spirited and quite unproductive debate, as I’m sure no minds were changed.
It’s not a new thing, really, just a new term. I remember reading 30, probably more like 40 years ago in something by Robert Anton Wilson. He called it ‘reality tunnels,’ if I recall correctly. Some people are in the racial reality tunnel, and see everything in those terms. For others, it’s women’s issues, or gender issues, or indigenous culture issues, or vegetarianism, or various economic ideologies. I’ve got one friend who will tie about any subject up with legalization of cannabis.
The world is complex, and it’s important that we be able to see more than one thing at a time, to consider more than one thing at a time.

There is a lovely (well, maybe lovely is the wrong word), interesting, gnarled, ancient tree that grows through the middle of the sidewalk near our flat, on the path leading out of the housing project, in the direction of Invalidovna, the historical hospital, now mostly derelict, where some scenes from Hellboy were filmed. Last year they trimmed it down to nearly nothing and quite a few people objected, yet, this summer it was greener and bushier than ever. About a week ago they trimmed it again. I hope it survives, I truly do. It is a thing that marks the neighborhood’s character, in a neighborhood that is quickly losing its character, as ultra-modern office blocks are sprouting up all around us like mushrooms after a rain.
A few days ago, as I looked out from my balcony, I saw men with chainsaws and long ladders going after a very tall tree, the tallest one around. At first, I thought maybe they were just taking a bit off the top, to keep it from topping the 8 story building it was next to, even though in my mind that would be a good thing. But no, they cut the whole thing down. As well as one that was right next to our own building. In a world in which we must plant trillions of new trees to absorb the carbon and save our planet, they are cutting down magnificent old specimens right in my neighborhood. I am not happy.
As I was walking past the freshly slaughtered tree, I saw a woman pushing reach down and pick out a couple of branches, obviously for Christmas decorations, and put them in the basket under her stroller with a smile on her face. I am still outraged, but I suppose hers was the healthier reaction.

The War on Christmas is once again prefaced by the battle over Thanksgiving. Today, I am seeing many posts about how Thanksgiving is a celebration of genocide and some of them suggesting that we mark it with fasting instead of feasting, in solidarity with our native American brethren, but that is not going to happen.
Thanksgiving is about tryptophan saturated turkey with delicious stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce (never my favorite, but it is an integral part of the meal and adds a bit of color, a green bean casserole, corn on the cob, and pumpkin pie or maybe a gooey chococlate cake for dessert, before everybody retires to the living room to doze off in front of the television.
Rather in the same way that Christmas, in my humble atheistic opinion, is all about Santa Claus and presents, and a tree covered with tinsel, and snowy, nostalgic scenes. If you want it to be about Jesus, go ahead and go to your midnight mass and put up a nativity scene on your lawn, absolutely nobody is trying to stop you and nobody ever was. The whole war on Christmas thing was made up by Bill O’Reilly, who nobody takes seriously any more (I haven’t even heard about him for years), and nobody ever should have.
Living here in Prague, I’d totally forgotten it was Thanksgiving, but I took my wife out to a nice lunch anyway, sans kids, just because we hadn’t done that for a while. I had fried cheese and french fries, a Czech classic, and she had pork, cabbage and dumplings. So, I consider the holiday celebrated, and I’m feeling very full and thankful.

I put that title into quotes because about half the things we call paradoxes aren’t paradoxes at all. Sort of like most of what we call conspiracy theories aren’t truly conspiracy theories. The chicken and the egg paradox, for example, isn’t a paradox because the answer is obviously the egg. Those who like to debate theology have the old “If God created the universe, then who created God” which, despite my complete lack of belief in a deity, I see as a real paradox because if you change the terms to the scientific, i.e. if the Big Bang created the universe, what created the Big Bang?, you still have a paradox. Whatever creation story you use, there still has to be a back story beyond that.
The one that I was thinking about today, however, is Fermi’s paradox, which isn’t really a paradox at all. Fermi’s paradox: If there are trillions of stars in our galaxy alone, and most of those stars have planets, as we now know they do, and lots of those planets have water, as we now know is likely, and that’s about all it takes for life to evolve, why is it that we haven’t ever been visited by space faring aliens? It’s not a paradox because there are several possible resolutions, we just don’t know what the right one is yet.
Resolution A: the flying saucer people are right, and we’ve been visited tons of times, the powers that be just don’t want us to know about that. I don’t know what the motive for secrecy might be, maybe the aliens have threatened them, or maybe they feel that knowledge would be a threat to their power, but it’s definitely one possibility. Resolution B: There’s nobody out there, at least nobody technologically evolved. There might be billions of planets with some equivalent of dinosaurs where no meteor ever struck. If true, that would be kind of amazing, too. The whole galaxy, just waiting for us to fill it up. Resolution C: There’s lots of intelligent life, but the speed of light is a natural, unbreakable, physical speed limit. In that case, there might be somewhere, in a densely populated star cluster, where different species on different planets have communicated with each other, but living out here in a nebulous outer arm of the galaxy, we would be the space faring equivalent of a Pacific Atoll which has primitive people, but nobody from the modern world has discovered us yet. Resolution D may be the most disturbing: They’re out there, they know we’re here, and they want nothing to do with us. Maybe they’ve noticed that we only have one technological species, from which they can easily infer (if they have invented space travel, they probably had some equivalent of a Darwin along the way) that we killed off all the other intelligent species, and that’s just a level of violence they don’t want to deal with. Or maybe they’ve been watching our TV programs, such as Star Trek, and realized (if they have invented Space Travel, they no doubt had some equivalent of Joseph Campbell along the way) that the Klingons, and Cardassians, and the Borg are all manifestations of humanity, as they were written by human writers, and they want nothing to do with us for that.
I don’t know if it’s one of these reasons or some other, but there’s a reason, and therefore it’s not a paradox.

O.K., I need to start off with a bit of a conditional apology. Yesterday, I called a few people right wing liars for saying that Rittenhouse’s victims had criminal records. This morning I checked Snopes (which had nothing – they are often useless when you need them) and then checked Google. It turns out that two of the three (the ones who were killed) did, indeed, have criminal records.
It doesn’t matter. They had both served their time, they were not fugitives from the law, and Rittenhouse was not a bounty hunter. Also, Rittenhouse could not possibly have know this at the time he murdered them.
So, I apologize for calling you right wing liars. I was mistaken. However, you are all still, by defending Rittenhouse, portraying yourselves as right wing, violence loving racists, and I strongly urge you to reconsider the side you are on.

Another thing I’d like to comment on is a proposed law in Iran which would virtually ban pet ownership. It would forbid property owners from renting to anybody with dogs or cats, it would make it illegal to walk a dog (heavy fine) or transport a dog in a car (vehicle confiscated for 3 months) This isn’t law yet, but the religious party wants it, and they are the ones in control.
Which shows the dangers of taking religion too literally. I am not suggesting war, or sanctions, or any of that counter-productive bullshit. This is strictly an internal Iranian issue. However, I think a good bout of international mockery is in order. If we can stop talking about the stupid, racist, murderer Kyle Rittenhouse long enough.