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Re: Books

By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Sun, 23 Apr 23 4:33 AM | 43 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 41994 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 41459 by Decomposed)
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My next book should arrive in a few days. It's Ray Kurzweil's 2005 classic, "The Singularity Is Near."

I was originally looking for a good book on how Quantum Computing works. I didn't find anything that struck my fancy and diverted toward artificial intelligence. I was hoping for a NY Times Bestseller on the subject. Its #1 pick was a novel and I didn't want that. Kurzweil's book came in at #2 despite its age.

Curiously, Kurzweil wrote a sequel, "The Singularity Is Nearer," in 2021. But I can't find it anywhere, new or used - except electronically for the Kindle. I also can't find any explanation for its total unavailability. You'd think it was yanked from the market for breaching national security or something. Weird.




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: In Search of Schrödinger's cat
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Thu, 30 Mar 23 10:02 PM 		Msg. 41459 of 60008

Re: "My next book has already been decided upon and ordered: First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country - by Thomas E. Ricks. This is a recent Pulitzer Prize winning book so it should be good."

That's from my earlier post, and I was wrong. While Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, he didn't win it for this book. I think I'm happy about that. My thoughts on this book are not yet formed, but I am disgusted by its Prologue. It begins:


On a grey Wednesday morning after the presidential election of 2016, I woke up with a series of questions: what just happened? What kind of nation do we now have? Is this what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders?” … “Before that Tuesday night in November 2016, I had thought I understood my country. But the result of that election shocked me. Clearly, many of my fellow citizens had an understanding of our nation profoundly different from mine. ”

…

“I embarked on an intellectual quest to try to find my way toward answering a question: ‘What is America supposed to be, anyway?’”

…

“The fact is these men did not study Locke as much as they did the writings of the ancient world, Greek and Roman philosophy and literature.

My reaction:


The shock that is described reveals both the author’s political bent and his confidence in poll results which persuaded so many that Donald Trump couldn’t possibly win. As the election showed, polls are fundamentally flawed tools that are sometimes biased in favor of the organizations sponsoring them. Journalists can be biased as well, as can the media organizations that employ them – organization that are, today, often owned by billionaires who made their money by working intimately with government. In 2016, the nation’s political powerhouses were aligned against Trump. They didn’t want him to win and, almost as one, marshaled extraordinary resources to conceal the possibility that he could.

The author’s obvious political leanings matter – because a person who so clearly wears his politics on his sleeve may have a difficult time conveying truths that he wishes were otherwise. My interest is in learning the truth about the Founders, not half-truths that support the author’s agenda, and I am concerned that that is what the book may be. Aside from this, the author’s political stance matters to me not one whit.

That is my thinking, and concern, as I begin the book.

Continuing with the Prologue, the author says something outrageous:


We are a nation fundamentally dedicated to equal standing before the law, yet also have developed a political system in which one of the two major parties always seems to have offered a home to white supremacists, up to the present day.

My reply:


Interesting. I was curious which party Ricks means. He despises Donald Trump, so I’d assume he means the Republicans. I looked into the matter:

Democrats founded the KKK. Democrats were the chief supporters of the Jim Crow laws which enforced racial segregation from the end of the civil war until the 1960s. Lincoln, who freed the slaves, was a Republican. Joe Biden, a Democrat, delivered the eulogy for his close friend and compadre, Senator Robert Byrd (WV Democrat) – former “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK.

Per Wikipedia: “The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1918 ) (intended to establish lynching as a federal crime) was first introduced in the 65th United States Congress by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican.” … “its passage was halted in the United States Senate by a filibuster by Southern Democrats”

On that basis, I looked to the internet and was surprised to find a Tweet by Thomas Ricks in which he said “No question that the Democratic Party provided a home to white supremacists in the 1960s.” Okay. He’s being honest – but why didn’t he say so in his book? NOWHERE in that prologue does he say that it's the Democratic Party that has been the home to white supremacists. And, even in the tweet where he tells the truth, he only references “the 1960s” when he should have said the Democrats were the party supporting white supremacists “from before the Civil war through (at least) the 1960s”…

Ricks really shouldn’t have raised the subject at all since it has next to nothing to do with America’s Founders. (The Democratic Party wasn’t formed until 1827. The Republican Party was founded in 1854.) But some find it impossible to keep their political biases to themselves. In his statement, the author walks what can be a very fine line between literal truth and a bald-faced lie.

I just hope the rest of the book improves upon this extremely rocky start.

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