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eve_primeToday's bits to share are from magazine articles I've read yesterday and today. The August issue of Scientific American describes the use of virtual reality programs to help burn victims cope with the pain of treatment and therapy; they're learning that having a 3-D sensory experience of being in an icy world not only distracts from pain, it also causes the brain to register less pain. On their website this month there's an interview with 100-year-old scientist Ernst Mayr, whose latest book (he has two more still in the works!) explains the philosophical underpinnings of biology and how it's a valid science despite not being based on natural "laws" like physics. And then in the August Harper's there's an important essay by Marilynne Robinson, "The Tyranny of Petty Coercion," on the nature of courage and the huge consequences for our society when we allow words like "liberal" and "Christian" to be ridiculed and relegated to the extremist fringe. I would have to add "feminist" to that list -- who could seriously argue against women being entitled to the same legal protections as men?
Also in Harper's... I was reading to R. from their Index about how some Missouri police station got a grant to "battle Goth culture" and spent $141,000 of the grant setting up the program before they concluded that "no Goth-influenced youth could be found to aid." R: "They couldn't see them. They weren't Visi-Goths." Oooo.
Arnold at Harvard, winter of 1947-48, age 29:
Also in Harper's... I was reading to R. from their Index about how some Missouri police station got a grant to "battle Goth culture" and spent $141,000 of the grant setting up the program before they concluded that "no Goth-influenced youth could be found to aid." R: "They couldn't see them. They weren't Visi-Goths." Oooo.
Arnold at Harvard, winter of 1947-48, age 29: