The fourth of July makes me ashamed. I’m ashamed of myself because I can’t seem to match the patriotism that surrounds me. In the USA, people get almost spiritual about their fireworks, hot dogs, and freedom worship. Behind all of this, for me, is a whole lot of weirdness. The whole Independence thing is fine. We fled a plutocratic government to have the ‘freedom’ to worship any god we wanted only to find ourselves in…
I used to own a brewery. In our rural location and with our small customer pool, we struggled to be profitable. My partners and I disagreed about how to best approach profitability. One had an MBA and swore by the neo-capitalist, Econ 101 approach to maximizing revenues. Following this popular approach, we were unable to generate returns on the money we threw at advertising, marketing, and solicitation. Though I was the introverted partner, I eventually mustered…
This episode is inspired by the idea that the USA has the world’s most expensive yet least h care. At least this has been the type of conclusion drawn from many analyses that compare things like GDP, cost of health care, and individual health. The idea is that we have come a long way, but we don’t necessarily have a lot to show for it. Or, maybe it’s about making all of this so-called ‘progress’,…
If I’ve said it once by now, I’ve said it a thousand times: It blows my mind that any two people can have a conversation and walk away feeling understood AND having understood the other person with any degree of accuracy. In other words, our communication sucks. We often hear something other than the other person’s intent. And how often have you had a conversation and then have to have the same one AGAIN because…
Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom Episode 128 If you listened to (or watched) KEW Episode 15 about the Rat Race, you’ll know my feelings on jobs. And consumerism. And keeping up with the Joneses. I think most human problems stem from our relationship with money. And possessions. And ownership. Many smart people will say that this mess all started when the first (fat, white, male) humans decided they could own land. Prior to that, it…
This is really the third in a series about the evolutionary significance of sex. I recorded this Episode first, then forgot about it and recorded the previous two episodes (117 and 118). Funny that this was all on my mind to the point where I forgot talking about it. But that’s how important this is. I can’t stress it enough and so give it three Episodes. The evolution of sexual selection as the way to…
Who Am I? Why Are We Here? What is My Purpose? Are We Living ‘Right’? Questions like this – the ‘big questions’ have been around since antiquity. It’s fun to think about when our brains reached a point in evolution where we started having luxury time. Because it’s a luxury to think. To ask these kinds of questions means we’ve already met our basic needs. At some point, we could sit down and take a…
Before embarking on an investigation any researcher worth their salt will state their assumptions. This lays the groundwork for what is to come and allows the reader to contextualize the investigation. In regular science, this is often ignored. It’s a shame we seem to be losing this important piece of the discourse puzzle. Anyway, when it comes to the Acid Tests, most of my assumptions are ‘what we already know’ kinds of things. -DNA is…
What is the question!!!???? Say you are studying the effectiveness of a vaccine against some pathogen. What is the question? Too many times we get wrapped up in the specifics. The details. The minutia. We forget WHY we are doing this in the first place. In this case, I would say the question is, does this vaccine help reduce the problems associated with said pathogen? Maybe you’re interested in climate change. So you gather a…
As we conduct the great KEW acid tests I have to establish a baseline. In this episode I want to touch on a few elements of the ‘human personality’ and our ‘global value system’ that I think we can improve on. I think humans are great, but there are a few key items I want to mention: One of the big issues is that we think linearly. We tend to look at things as either…