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The Science of Superstition Part II

Summary of Part I In Part I of this 2-part article, I began by listing the typical superstitious behavior college students engage in before taking a test. I identified the conditions of superstition, what superstition is and then added the range of its scope. My piece is about socially shared and personal superstitions rather than […]
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The Science of Superstition

Orientation Examples of Superstitious Behavior Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and the author of one of the books I’ll be referencing called Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. In that book he used his students as guinea pigs for his research on superstition. Before taking one of his exams Vyse found the following superstitions […]
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Chance Encounters as the Walls Close In

“Apple Blossom – Blue Sky” by amandabhslater A treasure stumbled upon, suddenly; not gradually accumulated, by adding one to one. The accumulation of learning, ‘adding to the sum-total of human knowledge’; lay that burden down, that baggage, that impediment. Take nothing for your journey; travel light. — Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body, 1966 These are […]
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We’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic: don’t ask me to help out

A small section of my followers are excited that someone on Substack has written a “rebuttal” that supposedly “tears apart” my recent article on the climate crisis. Loathe as I am to promote climate scepticism, for those who are interested it can be read here. Its supporters seem to believe it outs me as a […]
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Why Neopagan Marxists are Not Pantheists or Animists

Orientation In human life it is clear that we are external nature – we have an affinity with other life forms like primates as real, objective beings. However, we also have an internal nature – a psychology – of mental states, goals, imagination and sexual urges that is internal to us. We know from cosmologists […]
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Doing Nothing? In a Trance? Recipes for the End of Humanity
From time to time, I read articles defying any semblance of rationality. They are, in a nutshell, absurd and some frightening. My immediate impulse to rebut is thwarted because I either missed the deadline to respond or no opportunity to comment exists. This article is my opportunity to rebut! I bear no malice toward the […]
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Rehearsed Lives and Planned History
The technical achievement of advanced industrial society, and the effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mystification. . . . the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification. – Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man General, man is very uselful. He can fly […]
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Why Isn’t the Democratic World a World?

Alain Badiou is undoubtedly among the greatest of living philosophers; one that may fairly be credited with rescuing philosophy from academic irrelevance, and the twin enemies of scientism and historicism. For Badiou, philosophy does not merely interpret the world (as Marx famously asserted in his “Theses on Feuerbach”). For an interpretation of the world, we […]
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Listening to the Chronicle of Higher Ed

Note: I am not attacking people personally, or their right to opinions. However, I have been in this rodeo since 1983, academia, with the deans, chairs, provosts, VPs and presidents, and plethora of others, who hands down (not all) got it wrong about the value of and reason for education, K12 and higher ed. This […]
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On Human Nature: Thinking, Believing, and Seeing
What is our very nature as human beings? Philosophers, poets, psychologists and other human beings ad nauseam down through the ages have addressed that question. Is it presumptuous or arrogant of me to chime in with my two cents? Or make it three cents since I will “only” tackle three attributes of human nature; thinking, […]