PicoBlog

We’ve all heard the terminology. An extreme event happens — a flood or heat wave — and soon after it is characterized as a “1,000-year event” (or it doesn’t have to be 1,000, it could be any number). This week I watched one of the world’s most visible climate scientists, Michael E. Mann, go on national TV and in process show that he had no idea what the concept actually means.

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts each Wednesday. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading. According to Statista, Americans are projected to eat around 204 million bagels this year. I’m doing my best to push that number up but, clearly, I don’t need to try that hard to sell people on the idea that bagels are great.

Hamiltonianism is derived from the political philosophy of Federalists in early American history. The purpose of this branding is to use a narrative derived directly from the founding of America to interrogate other political narratives which have claims to the same source. Hamiltonianism offers a way to directly confront any pretense that somebody is speaking authoritatively on behalf of the Founding Fathers. Hamiltonian analysis works because politicians, pundits, professors, and journalists who tout themselves as representatives of our founding values tend to have never bothered to study the source material.

If you asked people to name the five ranks of the British peerage, I’d guess that most would stumble over “marquess”. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to mind, and it is not a common title: there are only extant 33 marquesses who do not also hold a higher title. Yet it is a very senior rank, second only to the dukes, and hardly an innovation. The first marquessate was created in 1385, and the premier marquess in the UK, the Marquess of Winchester, holds a title which dates from 1551.

What is a mixtape? A mixtape was a circa 1980s / 1990s peer to peer sharing practice of curated music on a cassette tape. It was the precursor to the contemporary playlist but better because it was more infused with the creator’s personality in subtle ways.  It was first and foremost a collection of curated songs, usually created by other singers and bands as opposed to simply copying a musician’s album (called pirating).

After a recent Blog, I had a conversation with one of my readers who made some interesting points and concluded that: …the term "naturist" no longer has a universally accepted definition or ideology. For many people, it simply means non-sexual social nudity, with little if any connection with the natural world other than sunbathing on a beach. For others, it's not even that - preferring to be naked alone within their own homes.

This past Friday, the Board of Trustees at Marymount University, a Catholic university in Arlington, Virginia founded by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, voted unanimously to cut several liberal arts programs, including theology. This means that these subjects will no longer be offered as majors, although some of them remain part of the university’s liberal arts core curriculum. Even so, the cuts come on the heels of a re-structuring of that core in the previous academic year that saw significant reductions in requirements in the humanities.

Several times this week I brought up the subject of Tiger Bass with other anglers. Several times I heard a similar response. “What the heck is a Tiger Bass?” There are anglers, and then there are bass anglers. If you are a bass angler you probably have heard of tiger bass over a beer, or possibly even read something about them. If you’re a fly-fisher, a noodler, or a crappie nut, Tiger Bass likely is not in your vocabulary.

It might seem whimsical to say that the future is not what it used to be, but it’s true. Uncertainty about our personal futures is the perennial human condition, but social futures can no longer be premised on the intergenerational transmission of culture. Today, private interests drive technological change in ways that militate against the formation of collective wisdom in the public realm, while developments in artificial intelligence and synthetic biology heighten catastrophic risks.