Static: What Is It All About?

Maybe it is because I am a scientist type personality that I find the following discussion so discouraging.  The recent installment of the culture wars brought another striking example of how lost we as a nation must be.  President Biden's Supreme Court nominee was confronted with the question of what was a "woman" according to her understanding.  At the risk of being dismissed by many, I am taking a few quotes from a Fox News report.  I don't follow Fox at all, but when I googled the exchange between Judge Jackson and Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Fox report popped up first, so being lazy, I just copied the following.   "Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden's  Supreme Court  nominee, said she was unable to define what a woman is." "Jackson told Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., that she was unable to answer the question because she is "not a biologist." "It is a simple question. What is a woman?"  said Blackburn. Now, most p...

 I officiated a funeral this week of a cousin of my wife.  He died of Covid at 66. Interestingly, almost no one wore a mask. I knew people would not wear them, even to psychologically support his mother who has carefully worn a mask in public. People can tell me masks do not work and one is a fool to wear them. However, I, having worked in the environmental business most of my life where protection from dangerous gasses was paramount, have a pretty good idea of what a cloth mask is capable of providing.  Interestingly to me is that we have understood that these masks don't protect the wearer of the mask so much as they protect those around us. A mask can help reduce exposure, but if the air is filled with Covid and you are in that atmosphere for any length of time, you are going to get a big exposure. However, a mask will cut down how much Covid an infected person will spew into the air. That is why doctors wear masks in surgery. They aren't trying to prevent catching the...

 The first real question I ever asked myself was whether we actually have free will.  Do we have an independent will or are all our choices, actions and thoughts simply controlled by physics? Are we just one complex algorithm? We humans take for granted that others have free will and we generally like to think we are independent agents impacting our world and not just a "very complicated rock." The one glaring exception is when we have a "bad habit" and we blame our upbringing, our circumstances, others, etc. Then it seems our free will isn't so free. Now, this question is so fundamental and so crucial to how we evaluate ourselves and others, how we see history, policies, faith, our actions, etc., one would think that people would be concious of what they believed. But I don't find many who have even asked the question. "Did that psychopath kill those people of his own free will," or "Did he have to because his algorithm make it unavoidable?...

 This blog is only about my thoughts on whatever is on my mind.