1/6 Insurrection

During this week the House passed a bi-partisan bill to form a commission to investigate the 1/6 insurrection. House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, opposed it at the last minute, even though he initially gave support to Rep. John Katco (R) to work on this bill with Katco’s Democratic counterpart, Rep. Bennie Thompson. Mitch McConnell has now also publicly opposed this.

In any event, I wanted to post the articles about this in the thread, Journal During the Trump Regime (10): Interregnum, but that thread is to slow to open and navigate now. Because of that I’m starting this thread to post comments about the insurrection. I’ll start things off in the first comments by posting something from the Interregnum thread.

The Beatles Discography

I’ve been listening to entire albums on weekends, usually in the morning. The Beatles seem like a good band to listen on a Saturday or Sunday morning (at least that’s how I feel right now). But instead of writing reactions in the “Saturday/Sunday” morning thread, I thought I’d create a separate thread for Beatles albums specifically. My plan is to listen to the albums in chronological order.

Yacht Rock Thread

I’ve been discovering musicians in this so-called genre that I’ve never heard of before, and I’m amazed at how good these songs sound to me. There’s a certain sound that I really liked during the late 70s and early 80s, and I guess it would fall under the yacht rock category, but for some reason the amount of songs in this vein seemed really limited. Or maybe I’m tired of the songs I’m most familiar with. Perhaps that’s one reason I’m enjoying these songs so much–i.e., I haven’t had time to grow tired of them. What’s weird is that the songs evoke a feeling of nostalgia, although I’ve never heard them before. (Is there a plethora of good songs for every sub-genre that never made it on the radio?)

I’ll go over the first one in the first comment section.

Philly D.A. (2021)

This is a thread to discuss Philly D.A. is an eight part Independent Lens docuseries now playing on PBS. The series follows a newly elected D.A., Larry Krasner, who never worked as a prosecutor, but worked as a civil rights defense attorney instead. For most of my life, I’ve thought about improving government services, and I’ve gained some thoughts on the obstacles preventing this. For these reasons, I’m really interested in following Krasner and tracking his progress. Here’s a clip:

Great Food Synergies

Some types of food seem to go well with each other. A great example in Hawai’i is spam musubi–spam, rice, and nori. It might be the tomato-basil-mozzarella equivalent in Hawai’i, which may or may not speak badly about Hawai’i. What are some others? I’d also be interested in hearing an explanation as to why these foods go well together.

2021-2022 NFL Draft

This year’s draft seems unique, and I wanted to discuss some of the possible ramifications of this. For example, my sense is that teams have far less information about the draftees this year, due to the limitations created by COVID-19. Teams might not only have less information about the players’ talent and the way this projects into the NFL, but they may lack significant medical and psychological information. All of this creates unprecedented uncertainty, at least in terms of the last twenty years. Should teams change their approach to the draft because of this? And if so, in what way? I’ll address that in the first post.

Christianity Corner

Apparently the original thread died with the older V-I, so I thought I’d start a new thread–a general discussion thread on Christianity. I recently watched a conversation with Tim Keller that made me search for this thread. I wanted to comment on two points he made. I’ll do that in the first comment post.

Great Musicians You’re Not in Love With

I’m sure everyone has a list of well-respected musicians that you either don’t like–or you don’t like as much as others. I sure do. This is a thread to list and discuss these musicians. Here’s mine:

  • Prince
  • Stevie Wonder
  • Louis Armstrong
  • Charlie Parker
I’m sure there are others, but let me stop here. I actually like Prince and Stevie–but they’re far from my favorites. And yet, I know musicians and critics think the world of them. I never got the love for Armstrong. It’s not like I’ve listened to a lot of his music, though, so I wonder if I just didn’t hear enough of his stuff. My reaction to Parker is similar, although I think I appreciate and enjoy his music a bit more. With him, and maybe Armstrong, too, my theory is that I heard many different saxophonists who were heavily influenced by him prior to listening to Parker. It was like his thunder was stolen because of this. Then again, I heard a lot of Hendrix-influenced guitarists before really listening to Hendrix, and that did not diminish my appreciation for Hendrix. I’ll try to add more names to the list.

UH Volleyball

I started watching some UH volleyball, both the men and wahine. I haven’t watched a game for a long, long time. Two guys stand out for me on the men’s side: Rado Parapunov, who seems like Uv, part 2, and Colton Cowell. Cowell is listed as 6′ 1″, but he looks like a libero when he’s standing by his teammates–but the guy is explosive, both in terms of jumping and hitting. He can crank. I feel like I’m watching Karch Kiraly out there.

Regarding the wahine–why aren’t they playing? I wanted to see the frosh setter from Texas. My understanding is that Robin Ah Mow, when she first saw the setter said, “She’s the one I want to see run the offense for the next four years,” or something to that effect. It seems like Ah Mow (and Ljungquist) are doing well as coaches, which is totally awesome to see.

Thought Experiment: If We Could Fulfill Everything on Our Technological Wish-List, Would Humanity Eliminate Most of Its Biggest Problems?

I’m currently reading a book on A.I. One questions that lingers in the back of my mind involves the reasons we would want to build A.I.–and more broadly, the reasons we strive for newer and better technology. Improving our lives–more specifically, improving our material existence–is the obvious answer–i.e., curing diseases, making tasks that requires physical and cognitive resources easier and more efficient, etc. Clearly, improving technology is very important way to improve the lives of human beings.

However, my sense is that many people act as if this is the most important way to improve the lives of individuals and society overall, and I think this position is flawed. For example, I tend to believe the source of humanity’s biggest problems are moral and even social in nature. Improvements on the former can improve the latter, which, in turn, would have the most dramatic impact on most of our social ills. At least, this is my current position.

To test whether humanity’s problem are rooted in material or more moral/spiritual matters, I want to offer the following thought experiment: Suppose we could fulfill all the ambitions of technophiles (excluding technology that would dramatically change human nature–e.g., genetic engineer humans that are more selfless and compassionate), what would those technologies be, and what impact would we expect on individual and societies? Would we expect a significant reduction or elimination of the biggest problems we face?