Category: science

Attention! Um….attention?

Posted on October 6, 2024October 6, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

This weekend past I attended our local science fiction convention, Archon. I was on a number of panels and something of a theme started to emerge. More than one, actually. A couple of times the discussion came around to our lack of attention. And I coined a phrase.

We live in a Fractured Attention Ecology.

I’m keeping that. It was off-the-cuff, but the more I think about it, I think it’s something worth exploring. I’m not equipped to do that, not clinically. I’m a writer. But I realized that we keep trying to label the chronic short attention span that seems to plague contemporary life, to fit it into a manageable file to be dealt with by the appropriate expert.…

Status Whatever

Posted on October 2, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

In a little over a week, I will be 70. The mind, as they say, boggles. How did this happen?

All in all, though, I have little to complain about. Physically, I seem to be in fairly good condition, I just got my COVID and flu shots, the minor inconveniences that dance around me like gnats are largely insignificant and can be ignored.

I have a lot on my plate, though, and I have noticed a marked decrease in…

I don’t know if it’s energy or just give-a-damns. There are things I think it would be a good idea to do and then I just sort of fade when it comes time.…

Tomorrow Denied

Posted on August 24, 2024August 26, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

In retrospect, the situation we face in the country today is born of factors that have been present all along, but were buried under a common optimism about the future which used to define us, at least in our public discourse. Looking to the future has defined this country in one way or another since its inception, but very aggressively since the mid-20th Century. Once we had the technological capacity to build a common infrastructure, the Future became a destination for more people than ever before.

So what happened?

Because that is what we find ourselves on the verge of losing.…

Just To Be Clear…

Posted on August 11, 2024September 7, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

Just to be clear…

I will be voting for Kamala Harris in November. Nothing radical or shocking in that, I intended to vote for anyone who had a chance of winning who is not Donald J. Trump. It helps this time that the candidate I’m voting for has some policy positions I can support unreservedly.

We like to dismiss political ignorance in this country by attempting a blasé pose that “really, there’s not much difference between the two parties.” There may actually have been a time when that was largely true, but we have been watching a divergence of positions of tectonic proportions for the last 40 years.…

I Do Not Believe

Posted on February 23, 2024March 25, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

It was a toss-up what this post would be. Something about upcoming books or…this.

It is said that we are more polarized than we have ever been. I do not believe that. What I think is that in the last 40 years the band-aid has been ripped off and because of the emergence of social media we are now seeing just how polarized we have always been. Look at any period of our history and ask a simple question: were people more tolerant then or was it that anything that might challenge them in their complacency was simply kept buried and they didn’t have to deal with it?…

Belief and Other Matters

Posted on August 4, 2023August 7, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

By now it should be obvious to everyone that the so-called Pro-Life movement is not interested in confining itself to abortion. They have a definition of it so flexible that some designate birth control as a form of it. The line is not clear. Not to mention that in individual cases there is an evident record of hypocrisy. It’s all right for me, but no one else. It should not be legal.

It makesÂ me uncomfortable.

I do not wish to get into the gears of the matter. I have a couple of observations about the framing issues.

Firstly, the division is largely (though not wholly) a consequence of Belief.…

School Prayer

Posted on July 1, 2022July 1, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

Over the years, I have modified my opinion on this many times. For a long time I believed it was a non-issue—how do you prevent it? If a student is intent on praying, what would prevent it?

Nothing. Which leads to the next realization that the people complaining about, demanding it, leading the charge against a prohibition that does not, in fact, exist are not interested in prayer in school: they’re interest in School Prayer, which requires public demonstration. What they want is openly-led prayer, as a group, with full participation.

This is not prayer, this is indoctrination. This is taking a position and directing the students to attend to what is being advocated.…

Trekness

Posted on May 15, 2022June 24, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

I sometimes marvel at my own inability to apprehend the cluelessness of my fellow beings. Some positions come out of theÂ zeitgeist that leave me gobsmacked at the utter feckless density of people.

And then I recover and reconsider and realize, no, I’ve been hearing this kind of nonsense my entire life. One just never expects it from those one considers allies. It calls into question all assumptions, then, about what one considers an ally, and the realization (which has always been there, really) clarifies that it’s all surface.

There are fans ofÂ Star Trek who have apparently only ever cared about the ship, the uniforms, the phasers, and the astronomy (such as it is).…

Is Scrooge Merely A misunderstood Businessman?

Posted on December 18, 2021December 24, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

It was a tradition in our family for many years that at Christmastime we get together, eat, drink, make jokes, and endure the Yule Season with a skeptical resolve to give unto Santa what is Santaâ€™s. We appreciate the spirit but the actual mechanism leaves us a bit chilly. In rejecting the corporate gloss of Xmas, though, weâ€™ve sort of recovered some of what the holiday is supposed to mean, at least according to all the armchair philosophes.

My mother is more enamored of the childlike aspects of Christmas than my father ever was, and he indulged her. She still holds to that in her small way, even as circumstances have changed.…

Space

Posted on July 13, 2021July 13, 2021 By Mark Tiedemann

I must confess, I am conflicted about this.

Richard Branson made a suborbital flight in his own spaceship. Elon Musk is talking about going further. Together with Jeff Bezos, private space flight is a real thing and it’s getting realer.

Make all the jokes you want about wealthy people spending absurd amounts of money to book passage on one of these in the near future, but the fact that it’s happening at all leaves me a bit gobsmacked. Would I rather this had been achieved by the government? Probably. But would I rather have not seen it achieved at all? Absolutely not.…