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Tears on Mother’s Day
Thank God my mother is alive and well. So why my tears on Mother’s Day? Well I miss not being with her. And I feel guilty about it too. Mom’s grounded because she can no longer physically get about. Mom’s positively grounded by good-hearted wisdom. She peacefully adjusts. Mom is my hero! So why my…
Civilization’s Success Stories
There’s so much anti-government talk these days, it’s easy to forget that both the Erie Canal and the U.S. Constitution were incredibly successful government projects.
Absorbing New Information
Human capacity to recognize, absorb and integrate new information about our history is limited, because we are rightfully preoccupied with the here and now; nervous about new information, which may undermine details of the history we believe in; unfamiliar with the methodologies used to verify the information’s accuracy; and uncertain that information about the long-term…
Cherry-Picking the Hippocratic Oath
Cherry-picking refers to people’s practice of selecting information to justify their points of view, even as they ignore perspectives and data from the same or similar legitimate sources that contradict their positions.
For example, the Hippocratic Oath is sometimes quoted to justify a stance against abortion rights by the same people who are certain that faith in female divinity as expressed in this document is heretical. Indeed, this oath, from which anti-abortion advocates draw support, was created by people who worshiped goddesses. It states, “I swear by Apollo the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and judgment, the following oath and agreement.”
Assembling Humanity’s History
So now we know that early humans bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. We know this because genome sequences from these “evolutionary cousins” make up from 4% to 6% of the genomes of some humans. And we’ve recently learned that some of the genetic material introduced by this cross-breeding included an upgrade of our immune system’s…