Trust and Digital Trust
In the concise and excellent 2018 article What Is Trust, by Paul Thagard Ph.D., he identifies five candidate definitions for trust: Trust is a set of behaviors, such as acting in ways that depend on another.Trust is a belief in a probability that a person will behave...
When Mathematics And Physics Meet
I just finished reading The Universe Speaks in Numbers, by the physicist Graham Farmelo. It’s a great week’s read for those people interested in the relationship between math and science, and it borders on a must-read for those younger people interested in STEM,...
My Spot
Everyone should have a spot, especially writers. Somewhere away from the home. A place to walk to, a place to think, a place to read or a place to write. Here's one of my favorite spots. (Photo above). Meydenbauer Bay Park on Lake Washington, 2 blocks from my home. It...
First Person Blogging
Should I blog more often—or even exclusively—in the first person? The author of the classic writing guide Writing Well would say yes: “Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person. Writing is an intimate transaction between two...
Emotional Attachement to BMI?
I have no emotional attachment to the number known as BMI—the Body Mass Index. When I see it in print I feel neither pleasure nor anger, joy nor despair, hope nor fear. It is an index—a mathematical trick that lives in the same part of my brain as other indexes: the...
Photography (and Writing): De gustibus non est disputandum
De gustibus non est disputandum: “About tastes, it should not be disputed/discussed.” People may or may not like my photo above. I happen to like it. I love its softness and the dew on the drops, the texture of the blueberries, and overall I think it is a pretty good...
The Definition of “Story”
At a recent online event at the Burke Museum, I attended a wonderful talk, The Lifeways and Stories reflected in Guests from the Great River, by the Native American artist Tony A. (naschio) Johnson (Chinook). Apart from describing his work, prominently installed at...
Writing Daily: My 100th Consecutive Blog Post
Today is my 100th consecutive day of blogging and posting! Here are some thoughts on this experience. It hasn’t been all that difficult to blog and write daily. Most of my posts are small and light. The two key disciplines I have needed to blog daily are to have a...
A Brief Dictionary Timeline of the Word “Culture”
Per the Oxford English Dictionary, here’s some ways—with their dates—the word culture has been used in the past: 1483 Whan they departe fro the culture and honour of theyr god. (Worship; reverential homage.) 1450 In places there thou wilt have the culture. ( The...
Are There Paradigm Shifts In Philosophy?
After re-reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I am more convinced than ever that there have been at least two true paradigm shifts in physics: The Copernican Revolution and Quantum Mechanics ( I am still on the fence about Relativity). But is...