My FRIDAY 11/10 Good News Roundup: Remember There are More of Us
Not only are there millions more of us, but we are gaining voters while the other side loses them steadily, by mostly normal death among their elderly, and quite unusual loss of a third of their Gen Z...
View ArticleJohn Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
The great theme of Keynesian economics is the “business cycle” of boom and bust. Before him, many economists thought that this was a law of Nature, and applied technical economics in support of the...
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Koan: The Ways and Means of Food
At each monastic meal in Soto Zen Buddhism, we recite the Mealtime Verse: “We must think deeply of the ways and means by which this food has come; We must consider our merit when accepting it; We must...
View ArticleRenewable Tuesday 11/14: Racing against Doom to Peak Carbon
Not news: We are in a race between more carbon and higher temperatures on one side, and unprecedented growth in renewables and decarbonizing industry on the other. Doom&Gloom is also on the...
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Bariatric Waffle Cushion for Diabetic Non-Healing Sores
Some years ago I had a bed sore, and then I went into the hospital for something else. They put me on a waffle cushion, which was wonderful. I got to take it home, since they couldn’t use it again. So...
View ArticleThursday 11/16 Good News Roundup: Ho, Hum, No Govt Shutdown
Shutting down the government is off the table. But for a while there it was just the kind of boneheaded move that will add to our chances in next Roevember’s elections, and in special elections between...
View ArticleTruth Sandwiches: Mind? What's that For?
The Indivisible Truth Brigade has put out new campaigns with new banners and new Truth Sandwiches every two weeks for more than a year. This one is a doozy. We don’t want to attach it directly to...
View ArticleThe Risk of Being Woke
“A 21st century call to embrace racial justice action, live in beloved community, and seek refreshing mystic moments as we emerge from a health pandemic and engage in a racial reckoning.”Curtiss Paul...
View ArticleKoan: My Religion is Kindness
Buddhism is selflessness, thus unselfishness, thus compassion for all sentient beings, thus universal kindness, thus a direct attack on all of the suffering in the world. The world doesn’t get all of...
View ArticleRenewable Tuesday: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”—Samuel Johnson. Although a third of us pretend not to know about Anthropogenic Global...
View ArticleScience Daily Diabetes News
When I started writing the diabetes Diaries, we didn’t know whether I could keep it up every week. Ha! Check out these stories, from just one source. And there are plenty of others. Help for whatever...
View ArticleThursday 11/23 Happy Thanksgiving GNR
No Bad News today, not even Bad for Them. And I won’t make you read tweets today. We will enjoy the day with the Good and the Goofy. It’s not like there is a shortage of real Good News to share around...
View ArticleThe Koan of Saint Thomas Aquinas
It is more correct to say that Thomas Aquinas is not impressed with his own theology. (Nor am I, as a Zen Buddhist, for other reasons.) How did this happen to one of the Doctors of the Church, known as...
View ArticleRenewable Tuesday 11/28: Peak Carbon Now!
The funny thing about tipping points, I always say, is that nothing seems to happen until you reach one, and then everything seems to happen all at once. This is an illusion, of course. The world has...
View ArticleDiabetes: Artificial Pancreas
Adults and older children with Type 1 Diabetes can manage their insulin injections and test equipment themselves. Very young children need a lot of help from their parents. It turns out that a bit of...
View Article11/30 Good News Roundup: The Shadows of Our Futures
Politics at home and abroad is a series of iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas, in which the Authoritarians refuse to cooperate with the rest of us, and only cooperate with each other an a purely...
View ArticleWhen the Church Woke
John Wesley, founder of Methodism, fiercely denounced slavery and required Methodists to fight against it. But many American Methodists came to approve of slavery, then Jim Crow, then continued...
View ArticleThe Simplest Koan
“Where does the path to awakening begin?”—“Right here.” In different versions of this koan, the master draws a line on the ground or in the air. Never mind that. It is obviously right where you are...
View ArticleTruth Sandwiches: New Lies for Old
Thanksgiving is a day for gratitude, and Christmas is a day for redemption. The ungrateful wretches who scorn redemption, who indeed glory in fear, rage, hate, and lies, are louder than ever, but ever...
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Renewable Tuesday: COP28
We have, as always, good and bad carbon news from the latest Conference of the Parties, COP28. There is getting to be more good news, and the bad news is now getting serious pushback. We have been at...
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