Sep 22 2025
Academic Pursuits, Guy R. McPherson – a delightful/intelligent read/expose
“‘Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities’ in which an eighties yuppie is denied books; he does not object, or even notice.” p5
“‘Night of the Living Dead Poets Society’: A mid-career professor in the humanities continuously re-lives the same poor performance in the classroom, as much to his own chagrin as that of his students.” p5
The book has several of these throughout.
“He is a dedicated and thoughtful teacher, which nearly cost him a promotions to full professor last year.” p13
” … but ego and idiocy don’t count against the faculty we hire in the medical school. They may be required attributes.” p119
“Hurricanes? Each one is declared a natural disaster, which forces the government—that’s you and me, folks—to pay for the beach houses that get washed away. I guess they can’t figure out why the insurance companies refuse to sell insurance on those homes, so they just keep encouraging people to put ’em back up.” p133-4
“Administrators appreciate quantitative measures. That’s a nice way of saying ‘our dean can count, but he can’t read.'” p151
The bit about the timesheet is hilarious, p175-6. It reminds me of one of my past administrators telling me that no more than 40% of my students could fail. But no, I’m not asking you to lie about their grades. (Or the fact that they didn’t turn in half their assignments or even write the final exam.)
“If, since there is a divine plan for everything, students shouldn’t try to affect change. They should just sit back and let life happen to them?” p193
“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” p224-5
“The Pope, who … still calls for unbridled population growth, thereby ensuring that millions will suffer while he prospers.” p269
“I am strongly encouraged to be tolerant of the religious views of my students. But if they knew my views [atheist], they wouldn’t be tolerant. … only two ways to get fired from my tenured faculty position, one of which is to demonstrate the slightest intolerance for their views, which are themselves based on intolerance …” p269-70
“and so it goes, people reproducing without any clue what it takes to raise another human being in a civilized manner, driving exponential population growth while quality of life for most inhabitants of the planet spirals downward, ever-faster, toward hell on earth.” p271
Yeah.
“And all those people want their children to have a better life than they had, so they give them more stuff, with the end result that per capita consumption in the United States is increasing even faster … ” p271
Yeah.
“Meanwhile, Republicans and neo-classical economists beseech us to breed faster and buy more. Especially if we’re buying American, whatever that means in this age of globalization. A sustainable civilization? I fear it’s well beyond our grasp.” p271
Yeah.
“We haven’t managed to build a sustainable society on a spaceship the size of the planet, so it’s difficult to imagine we could develop one that would endure for several generations on a self-contained spacecraft.” p273
Let alone on another planet. That doesn’t have, already, oxygen and water and soil.
Sep 18 2025
…with Alberta’s help
I once said that Trump was going to single-handedly destroy Earth.
I was wrong.
Alberta’s going to help.
(I guess Danielle Smith hasn’t read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything.)
Sep 17 2025
The Thing Itself, Adam Roberts – a fascinating read
The Thing Itself, by Adam Roberts is a fascinating read.
Especially section 5 of chapter 5 and chapter 9. I was sitting on my dockraft reading, needing to sop often, look up across the water, and just … think about what was just said.
(It occurs to me that anyone seeing an old-ish woman sitting on a dock, book in hand, would not imagine that she is reading a novel that is a Kant-inspired analysis of human perception/consciousness.)
(And I point that out for any readers who may in future see an old-ish woman, book in hand …)
Sep 07 2025
“… getting exponentially worse …
from Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, Donella Meadows et al. 2004
“Scientists do know that there have been temperature upheavals on earth in the past …
“But the most important message … is that current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are far higher than they have been for 160,000 years. … There is a significant disequilibrium in the global atmosphere, and it is getting exponentially worse.” p119
Sep 05 2025
your brain on psychedelics
How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan – an interesting read, especially, for me, the chapter on the neuroscience of psychedelics
“It could be that in order to judge an insight as merely subjective, one person’s opinion, you must first have a sense of subjectivity. Which is precisely what the mystic on psychedelics has lost.” p305-6 Which is why they feel their experiences to be “revealed truths rather than plain old insights”. p305 per Robin Carhartt-Harris
“If it were possible to temporarily experience another person’s mental state, my guess is that it would feel more like a psychedelic state than a ‘normal’ state because of its massive disparity with whatever mental state is habitual with you.” Robin Carhartt-Harris
Sep 04 2025
from The Yearbook, Holly Bourne
“The group chat should essentially just have been titled Adam breathed—applaud.” p29
Was anyone else out there the invisible little sister?
“The end of childhood — realizing adults don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” p55
“My future wasn’t something the family ever really discussed. I guess I was supposed to just figure that out for myself, apply for a loan myself, take myself on open days. Then maybe mention my life-changing decision one night when there wasn’t anything too good on the television.” p135-6
“Like, we only get one life. One. One opportunity at every moment we are given …” p189
“… life is just a bunch of decisions that make you who you are.” p189
“You don’t realize how toxic it is [your ‘home’ life] until you get out. … We think it’s normal, because it is to us.” p229
Yes. YES. It’s not. Normal. Get out and make your own normal. As soon as you can.
“… if you’re told the same story over and over about who you are … it starts to feel true, and therefore it starts to become true …” p404
“… they’d rather feel important than feel happy. … And they don’t mind ruining other people’s happiness in their quest to be important …” p405
Sep 03 2025
People Skills: assuming dishonesty
Apparently, I have poor people skills.
I’m literal-minded and I take people ‘at face value’, which means that I assume that people mean exactly what they say.
Which is to say that having people skills means assuming that people do not mean what they say—i.e., that they are dishonest (or, less likely, linguistically inept).
Which means that having people skills means assuming dishonesty.
Interesting.
Aug 28 2025
An applicable-to-so-many-things exchange
“Matthew, how do you know these things?”
“How do you not?”
(from one of Jodi Taylor’s Time Police novels, but sooooo applicable to so many conversations)
Aug 28 2025
from The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner (1972)
“‘You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl.'” p112
“‘The rich countries have ruined what they own, so they’re out to steal from the people who have a little left. They want the copper, the zinc, the tin, the oil. And of course there’s the timber, which is getting scarce.'” p137
“‘… one of the latest deep-trawling fish factories designed to bring up squid from the relatively safe bottom water. Surface fish nowadays were either so rare as to be prohibitively expensive, like cod and herring, or hopelessly high in dangerous substances such as organic mercury. …'” p142
“‘ You can’t tell me that when they dumped [those barrels, now bursting] they didn’t know people would want to fish the ocean, bathe in it, build houses fronting on the beach! You can’t tell me the bastards didn’t know what they were doing—they just relied on not being around when the trouble started!'” p165
“‘ … they shit in the water until it’s dangerous to drink, then make a fucking fofrtune out of selling us gadgets to purify it again. Why can’t they be made to strain out their own shit?'” p187
“…growing daily angrier about the dirt that drifted to them on the wind, spoiling crops, causing chest diseases, and soiling laundry hung out to dry.” p195
“and every day senators and congressmen … pleaded that if such-and-such a firm, which had been run into the ground by its incompetent directors, wasn’t helped, the unemployment index would rise another point.” p197
“… Austin Train’s famous source-books that had taken one, two, even three years apiece to compile, soberly documenting the course of organochlorides in the biosphere, factory-smoke on the wind, pinning down … places where dangerous substances had been dumped … … [B]ut of the the total of 1130 other books cited in the various bibliographies, 16 were withdrawn or restricted. … One book in particular he remembered, a text on accidents with nuclear weapons, which was duly brought to him by a smilig librarian. But when he opened the front cover he found a hole had been carefully cut from first page to last.” p206
“‘The most awful warnings are staring us in the face—the stagnant Mediterranean above all, dead like the Great Lakes—yet we’re so proud of being the richest, the most powerful, the whatever, that we won’t fact facts. We won’t admit that we’re short of water, we’re short of timer, we’re short of—'” p207 (1972, remember)
“‘Who’s going to be sane in this country when you know every breath you draw, every glass you fill with water, every swim you take in the river, every meal you eat, is killing you? And you know why, and you know who’s doing it to you, and you can’t get back at the mothers.'” p217
“‘For example, there’s an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons. One need only look at the last presidential election for proof of that. The public obviously wanted a figurehead, who’d look good and make comforting noises—'” p278 (1972!)
“‘Stop, you’re killing me!'” p273
“‘Yes, for most people nowadays television is their only contact with the world beyond teir daily work.'” p287
“‘Still, men who refuse to train in defense of their country—’ / ‘No, that’s not what an army trains men to do.'” p287
“‘It’s natural for a man to defend what’s dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles—in short, to defend not himself but people whom he’s never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him—you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake.'” p287
“‘It’s easier to wreck a man than to repair him. … take a look at the crime figures among veterans.'” p287
“‘Doctor, you watch your tongue!’ / ‘… all I’m saying is that my job would be a sight easier if they told us the whole truth. I’m working in the dark half the time …’ / ‘Well, doc, when it’s a case of thousands … all of a sudden …’ / ‘All of a sudden!’ ” p333
Right. Anyone with their head NOT up their ass has seen this coming. for eyars. decades, actually.
“‘When did you last bask in the sun, friends? When did you last dare drink from a creek? When did you last risk picking fruit and eating it straight from the tree? What were your doctor’s bills last year? Which of you live in cities where you don’t wear a filtermask? Which of you spent this year’s vacation in the mountains because the sea is fringed with garbage? Which of you right now is not suffering from a nagging minor complaint—bowel upset, headache, catarrh, … ” p354
fiction
