Monday, March 21, 2022

This blog

Dear readers, if you've been reading this blog for a long time you will have noticed that I have been writing a lot less than I used to. Despite the huge amount of potential material. In the olden days I might have made my thoughts on say, Trump, or bombing, or Canadian "truckers" the subject of a meaty discussion.

Why the change?

In the olden days the blog was aimed at my students. The blog was a handy place I could say a bit more on subjects that I had talked about in class. Students could ask questions or make comments, and some of them did. Material like this often seemed worth passing to friends who shared some interest of mine. I ran across quite a few things that didn't make the news in any news sources ("mainstream" or otherwise). In many cases I felt that the range of opinion was extremely narrow and I could contribute some small bit that might help somebody.

Things have indeed changed! First, I have been retired a good long time. No students. Second, if anything, there is a plethora of news. I don't feel that I have sources of information that can't be found through Google (etc.) if someone is interested. Third, the range of debate seems to be much wider (even though much of it is crap). The world does not need me to point out that the USA is toppling into fascism (through the undermining of the electoral system). Plenty of people have done so, and continue to do so.

But I will continue to post when the subject seems to call for it. Here are two subjects in the recent news worth thinking about:

JOYOUS, HAPPY, EXTRAORDINARY NEWS “Better than our most optimistic prediction” – first images from James Webb exceed all expectations +ret_img+to_webp/>

"James Webb" is the new research telescope in orbit around the sun. The picture is an engineering test to see if the research telescope has unfolded itself and is going to work. The title (from an article in Cosmos magazine) says not "it all" but so much more.

THE BOLD WAR CRIMINALS What do you call the deliberate targeting of shelters full of non-combatants except "war crimes?" Shall we stick with"murder?"

1 comment:

SB said...

You've got some screwed-up HTML there: the last two paragraphs are all one hot-link to a Webb telescope photo. Which is pretty awesome, I admit.