Unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true

Every summer the Handbell Musicians of America hosts a National Seminar. I have attended a few times, including when my performance group is among the featured performers. The Seminar is four days of classes in all things handbells – and there are a lot of different things about handbells. There are also concerts by many of the leading handbell soloists and ensembles. I attended in 2018 and 2019. The 2020 event was entirely virtual and I didn’t watch. This year is back to an in-person event with a strong virtual component. I didn’t pay the fee to observe the classes, but I am enjoying the concerts. I’m now watching a concert that was livestreamed from earlier today. It’s available for free, but only for a day or two. I’ll have to catch the evening concert later because of time differences the livestream happens at 11:00 tonight. I considered going this year, but decided even being vaccinated I wasn’t ready for a long distance flight. I miss seeing some of my handbell friends. However, with a family death this week I am glad I didn’t go. I explained all that because that’s taking up some of my blog writing time, though really the only consequence of that is things I want to share accumulating in my browser tabs. Rain has been falling nearly all day in the Detroit metro area and will continue into the evening. Hines Drive, near me, is closed due to flooding, though it doesn’t take much rain to cause its closure. But many other streets and freeways are closed. Again. Basements are flooding. Again. The area recently got a disaster designation because of flooding towards the end of June. There’s another aspect of all this rain. I mentioned if a few days ago when I wrote that it was suddenly mosquito season. April Bear of the Michigan Radio program Stateside had a twelve minute conversation with Bill Stanuszek, the director of the Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement Commission. He said, yes, there are a lot more mosquitoes this year, perhaps ten times to one hundred times more than usual. One reason is that there has been so much rain over the last month or so that mosquito eggs from the last several years are hatching this year. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on vaccine disinformation.

Back in 1962, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke created a “law” that has since become well known, saying “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But it wasn’t until 1999 that comic artist Florence Ambrose produced an obvious corollary: “Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.”

Sumner discussed the appearance of Dr. Sherri Tenpenny at a hearing in Ohio. She and colleagues pushed several strands of silly things that they claim the vaccine does. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has said most of the vaccine disinformation comes from only twelve people and Tenpenny is number four on their list. Because of this designation Tenpenny has been banned from Facebook. Yet the Ohio GOP invited her to speak. They want us ignorant. Or dead. Sumner quoted a tweet from Jennifer Mercieca, who quoted what Carl Sagan wrote in 1996.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s and grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few; and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. This one followed the news the Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is not retiring this summer.

Maybe Justice Breyer doesn’t want to retire because he thinks a worthy replacement isn’t out there. The good news is, I'm available! Now, I don’t have a law degree, and I'm pretty sure habeus corpus is a sex fetish, but I think I'm perfect for the high court. I'm judgmental, I've watched hundreds of hours of Law and Order…and you'll never have to replace me because I've already pre-recorded opinions for every possible case after I die. [Like,] if you don’t like Congress taxing time travel, go back in time and do something about it! —Lewis Black on The Daily Show

He sounds better qualified than some of those that made it onto the Court in the last four years.