Booker T. Washington was the first black man to dine with the president in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt had a moment of hesitation when before he invited Washington, the country’s most prominent African-American of the era and founder of the NAACP, because of the color of his skin. As soon as he realized how […]
On February 14th, 1884, Teddy Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother. They both died in the same house in New York just hours apart. This double tragedy plunged the future president into such a deep state of work. He was silent about the incidents, preferring to ignore the pain long enough so that […]
Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1904 for his work to end the war between The Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan. The more I listen to this audiobook (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris) the more I am impressed with America’s 26thpresident.
An Egyptian author named Sayyid Qutb was a source of inspiration for radical Islamist groups such as Al-Qaeda. Their first leader, Osama Bin Laden, was exposed to the author’s body of work from both his mentor, who was a student of Qutb's, and from public lectures given by Qutb's brother. Qutb was anti-American; he detested the violence […]
There is a way of thinking known as Bayesian Inference that allows for a hypothesis to be updated for correctness as more data surfaces. Steven Pinker, in his book Enlightment Now, provides a good example of how this works when he describes the thinking of people known as “superforecasters.” When one of these people are […]
There are some people who believe that Japan surrendered in the Second World War because of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and not because of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.
There was a quote by Nasa in 1965 that talked about the benefits of human labor. "Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labour." Talk about some impersonal logic!
Read Resumé, a poem about suicide by Dorothy Parker, twice and see the thought process of how some people come to the decision NOT to commit suicide just because it's too much of a hassle. Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells […]
Biochar is a product that can store large amounts of carbon for centuries, a concept scientists are looking into in order to reduce the carbon footprint of humanity. It is made from “burning” biomass in the absence of oxygen and can be added to soil to increase agricultural productivity. There is evidence that Pre-Colombian Amazons […]
There was a movie called The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda, that came out in 1979. It describes the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown and how parts of the reactor melted through the earth and all the way to China. What’s crazy about this, and what I never knew until I listened to Enlightment Now by […]
