Here’s Bill Maher’s 8½-minute comedy/news video from yesterday’s “Real Time”; the plaint is that people are going to let politics screw up the holidays. Note that his guests are Donna Brazile, Andrew Sullivan and Neil deGrasse Tyson (see this tweet). Now that the election is over, we’re more divisive than ever, with Republicans gloating and Democrats seething, wondering what went wrong. It’s all a recipe for Holiday Hatred, and Maher mocks and decries that tribalism and calls for comity.
The money line: “Family isn’t like gender: you can’t fix it by cutting off members.”
If the word “contradiction” is used instead of “divisiveness” – this is a general comment, not any one instance of the use if that common word – then there are some characters that have already sought to handle contradictions the correct way among the people. It’s a good idea to look first to their work, so as to be more effective in the fixing of things. Let’s see here…
Ah! Here’s something :
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Mao Zedong
Speech at the Eleventh Session (Enlarged) of the Supreme State Conference, February 27, 1957
Published in The People’s Daily, June 19, 1957
I honestly think is less anger and angst than there was in 2016
Well, the election was never going to resolve the division.
Actually, I think it has. The Democrats are broken.
See this important essay by Joe Klein: https://josephklein.substack.com/p/not-a-democrat
Ruy Teixeira is one of the smartest Democratic thinkers out there, even if he was wrong about the emerging majority twenty-five years ago. He just wrote an essay arguing that it’s time to throw the Democratic interest groups under the bus. I agree, but there’s a problem: they are the bus.
How fortunate the other guys are not at all broken themselves. So balanced, rational, well meaning, non vindictive, open minded, generous, intelligent, respectful…
Good reading. Some Dems understand the problem.
So, at one point in that show Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the statement that women have an advantage over men in long distance swimming. I tried googling and ultimately found this:
“Women have achieved remarkable success in this sport. Although the best times for men still surpass the women, the results are closer than many other physically demanding sports. ”
https://www.topendsports.com/sport/swimming/women-open-water.htm
Does anyone know any further details about his claim’s veracity?
I did not know that – and I’m going to assume it is true for now – and in no way does that mystify that it is impossible for male and female mammals to interconvert.
I think NdGT knows astronomy, but not much about male and female athletic performance.
Since it’s my personal interest, I did a search for differences in male and female performance in distance running. There’s some evidence that the performance gap between men and women shrinks slightly at very long distances (i.e., beyond the marathon), but men still, on average, are faster than women at any running distance.
The link you provide discusses the possible reasons why women may come closer to men in open water swimming, but until someone shows me actual data showing women outperform men at long-distance swimming, I will regard NdGT’s claim with skepticism.
I have to wonder if NdGT’s claim is due to motivated reasoning on his part, given that he reportedly has a transgender child.
I think NdGT was just repeating the conventional wisdom that women seem prominent in long-distance cold-water swimming (at least in recent years) so therefore they must be better at it than men are. But not many men are interested in that kind of swimming, perhaps because it is seem as something women do, like netball and field hockey, and favours body fat.
Be that as it may, men hold the current time records for swimming the English Channel one way, two ways, and three ways. Only one person has swum it four ways, an American woman named Sarah Thomas. Canadian Cindy Nicolas has swum the Channel two ways, five (separate) times. She has set absolute (both sexes) record times for both one-way and two-way crossings. Headlines like these no doubt feed the impression that women are better at distance swimming.
I’m confused. You write, ” . . . men hold the current time records for swimming the English Channel one way, two ways, and three ways.”
But then you write, “[Cindy Nicolas] has set absolute (both sexes) record times for both one-way and two-way crossings.”
Do you mean she once held those records, since eclipsed by men? I think that’s what my quick internet search indicates.
Wikipedia says she swam across the English Channel 19 times! That’s crazy!
Yes, you’re right. Sorry. It was clear in my mind but not in my expression.
I’ve always thought that NdGT is way over-rated, and I’ve always been puzzled by his popularity.
It’s gotta be the delivery, right? I’m guessing young’uns love how sure he is of himself, and how dismissive he seems of anyone who disagrees with him.
+1
Whatever happened to Neil deGrasse Tyson? He is embarrassing. It’s sad.
Many academics lose their way when they think they can be right about everything.