06 NOV 2016 by ideonexus
The Media Mediates
There is definitely the sense that the media can mediate (!) the experience of viewers after the thing has happened. I might be sitting at home in North Carolina, watching the program and think one thing, and then the guy with a tie and “expertise” might come on right after it’s over and say with great gusto that one person or another has done something radical and race-changing that I never even considered. I often think of a great art museum in Boston when I think of these debates re:... 1 
notes
notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Greg Epstein Secular Invocation
Mayor-Elect Walsh, and distinguished and honored guests of all backgrounds and beliefs: it is my great honor, on behalf of the Humanist, secular, and nontheistic community, to share this poem, “To Be of Use,” by contemporary Massachusetts poet Marge Piercy, in honor of the important work you and all of us will soon be called to do.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become ...Folksonomies: secularism
Folksonomies: secularism
1 notes
notesGreg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, was invited to give at the Interfaith Inaugural Celebration for new Boston Mayor Martin Walsh on January 5, 2014, at Old South Church in Boston.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Benjamin Franklin Thwarts the Will of God
When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is hel... 1 notes
notesHis lightning rod is condemned by the religious.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Tracking the Trails of Ancient Glaciers
On an outcrop of volcanic bedrock near the paath sit half a dozen erratic boulders, some weighining as much as twenty tons, of a coarse-grainned pink granite. Once, I chipped off a sample of)f the rock and followed the bedrock scratches northth, looking for the source. Like an Indian trail of bent twigs. le scratches led me several miles out of Easton into the town of Stoughton, where I found what I was looking for, a south-facing ledge of bedrock that under the hand magnifier was identical t... 1 notes
notesBy tracing the scratches on boulders, it is possible to trace the direction a glacier carried them from, and find their source.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Ponzi-Scheme Meme
Profit-motivated designer viruses, many of which are completely legal and aboveboard today, have their shady origins in the crooked Ponzi scheme.* Charles Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who opened a business in Boston in 1919 called the Securities Exchange Company. He offered to repay people's investments in 90 days with 50 percent interest: an investment of $10 would bring $15 in three months.
His story was that he bought international postal reply coupons in Europe and, due to currency flu... 1 notes
notesHow it works and how it spread.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Three Categories for Memes
What kinds of memes are there? I've divided memes into three classes: distinctions, knives used to slice up reality; strategies, beliefs about which causes will produce which effects; and associations, attitudes about everything in life. Each class of meme works to program you in a different way.
[...]
Distinction-memes
The universe is full of stuff. However, anything we say about that stuff is purely a concept-a set of memes-invented by human beings. All concepts are composed of memes. Fo... 1 notes
notesDistinction, Strategy, and Association
23 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
1933 Humanist Manifesto
The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience. In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism....
1 Original humanist manifesto, defining humanism's 15 affirmations.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
The First Charting of the Gulf Stream
The first chart of the Gulf Stream was prepared about 1769 under the direction of Benjamin Franklin while he was Deputy Postmaster General of the Colonies. The Board of Customs in Boston had complained that the mail packets coming from England took two weeks longer to make the westward crossing that did the Rhode Island merchant ships. Franklin, perplexed, took the problem to a Nantucket sea captain, Timothy Folger, who told him this might very well be true because the Rhode Island captains w... 1 notes
notesMade by postmaster general Benjamin Franklin.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Benjamin Franklin's Reasons for Reforming the Alphabet
Franklin's own impulse in creating the alphabet was quite different. He was a man who looked closely and with curiosity at the world around him, seeking ways to improve it wherever he saw the opportunity. His alphabet was conceived in the same spirit as his less smoky, more fuel-efficient house-heating stove, or his more easily cleaned and repaired street lamp. The alphabet, for Franklin, was not unlike a household tool, something to repair, rewire, and update. Improving the writing system wo...Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
1 Franklin was not interested in forging a national identity for America, but was more focused on cleaning up the inefficiencies in our spelling. He came from humble beginnings to greatness through his habit of voracious reading, and he wanted to share the gift of literacy with others. Simplifying spelling was a means to that end.
