“Due Midnight AOE”
A song about having a newborn.
Video shot by Bearded Science Guy.
I wish I had a friend on Baker Island
So when it’s late at night here I could call them
Anywhere on Earth is just a timezone
We’re up here humming Eno, the rest is ocean
We’ve got walls caked with white noise
It disappears in its way
I guess it’s fair that I missed you
but I’m sure I don’t know all the right things to say
We started taking drives that you would sleep through
We learned it just made sense to: the house was danger.
In the waiting room they called you by your first name
(Don’t know nobody says James)
You call em neighbors
It makes no sense that I’d missed you
Gets better day after day
And skin to skin breaks the pattern
And I promise that we’re gonna leave the house soon, okay?
I said there’re things I should teach you
Before the night passes by
Like how you’d never think you really have to
try so hard to tell the truth all the time
How We Think by John Dewey. 🎧
Dewey equates intelligence with the ability to suspend judgement instead of accepting dogma immediately. Thinking, then entails waiting to make a final conclusion while alternating between inducing to deducing – moving from particulars to ideas to particulars again. Here’s his example:
A commonplace illustration may enforce the points of this formula. A man who has left his rooms in order finds them upon his return in a state of confusion, articles being scattered at random. Automatically, the notion comes to his mind that burglary would account for the disorder. He has not seen the burglars; their presence is not a fact of observation, but is a thought, an idea. Moreover, the man has no special burglars in mind; it is the relation, the meaning of burglary—something general—that comes to mind. The state of his room is perceived and is particular, definite,—exactly as it is; burglars are inferred, and have a general status. The state of the room is a fact, certain and speaking for itself; the presence of burglars is a possible meaning which may explain the facts.
So far there is an inductive tendency, suggested by particular and present facts. In the same inductive way, it occurs to him that his children are mischievous, and that they may have thrown the things about. This rival hypothesis (or conditional principle of explanation) prevents him from dogmatically accepting the first suggestion. Judgment is held in suspense and a positive conclusion postponed.
Then deductive movement begins. Further observations, recollections, reasonings are conducted on the basis of a development of the ideas suggested: if burglars were responsible, such and such things would have happened; articles of value would be missing. Here the man is going from a general principle or relation to special features that accompany it, to particulars,—not back, however, merely to the original particulars (which would be fruitless or take him in a circle), but to new details, the actual discovery or nondiscovery of which will test the principle. The man turns to a box of valuables; some things are gone; some, however, are still there. Perhaps he has himself removed the missing articles, but has forgotten it. His experiment is not a decisive test. He thinks of the silver in the sideboard—the children would not have taken that nor would he absent-mindedly have changed its place. He looks; all the solid ware is gone. The conception of burglars is confirmed; examination of windows and doors shows that they have been tampered with. Belief culminates; the original isolated facts have been woven into a coherent fabric. The idea first suggested (inductively) has been employed to reason out hypothetically certain additional particulars not yet experienced, that ought to be there, if the suggestion is correct. Then new acts of observation have shown that the particulars theoretically called for are present, and by this process the hypothesis is strengthened, corroborated. This moving back and forth between the observed facts and the conditional idea is kept up till a coherent experience of an object is substituted for the experience of conflicting details—or else the whole matter is given up as a bad job.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. 🎧
You’d think that car safety ratings include testing woman-sized crash dummies in the driver’s seat, right? Nope.
Ian Bogost talks about children having to live in world not designed for them. It turns out this world was also not designed for women either.
Want to help your kids experience classical music, but don’t know what to play? These are some of my favorites:
- What’s good for bedtime/wind-down/cleanup?
- Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, 2nd Movement. (Pro-tip: The second movements are always the soft, pretty ones.)
- What’s good for morning wakeup?
- But aren’t they supposed to listen to Baroque/polyphonic music?
- What about modern/minimalist music?
This is heavy on piano music (what I know the most about). It’s missing big symphonic moments, but I’ve found that those can be a little much to have on in the house.
The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns
Enns argues that most of the Old Testament is not actually trying to get the historical events right: it is a narrative designed to help exiled Israel and doesn’t necessarily recount what happened or what God said or did. I find his arguments convincing. But, he says the Bible is still valuable for meeting God through the stories of how others met God. I’m not sure how to do that through stories that don’t always relay true things about God.