Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Tax the Rich

Website Wednesday

Gorgeous, long legs

I always feel the guilt when I miss a posting but I really, really feel the guilt when I had a topic. And Monday, I had a movie to review. However, newsletter deadlines (yes, that's plural now) and the dentist (the DDS was a piece of cake compared with the deadlines) intervened. I'll keep the movie review till next Monday and "make it up" by presenting a picture of Miss L at 6 months.

Miss L is a sweetheart with a coat like sable. Someone who knows labs says he's never seen a coat so supple She is just about getting too big for me to control her if she decides to sprint. Remember, these dogs are not to be taught to heel so she's pretty much a free spirit, though very obedient to commands like "Sit."

On to my website pick, with an small intro: Have you been reading that the US Congress now talks on the level of 10th graders which is down 7 grades from Founding Fathers' time when the Constitution was written at 17th grade level? (I was pleasantly surprised to learn that these grade levels are measured using, my favorite, the Flesch-Kincaid scale.) 

So in the spirit of trying to smarten up the world and especially the US Congress, my pick is: 

http://www.edge.org/

Edge is a series of written and video essays which says about itself:

Edge is a Conversation: Edge is different from the Algonquin Roundtable or Bloomsbury Group, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. Closer resemblances are the early seventeenth-century Invisible College, a precursor to the Royal Society. Its members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Another inspiration is The Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age — James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, and Benjamin Franklin.
The online salon at Edge.org is a living document of millions of words charting the Edge conversation over the past fifteen years wherever it has gone. It is available, gratis, to the general public. (Flesch Kincaid level of grade 11.1)

We really have moved beyond (or below) conversation in daily life. Oh, we talk at one another, usually trading gossip bites but I wonder, outside a structured learning experience, how many of us exchange and explore ideas.  I like this from Edge's About page:

Edge.org encourages people who can take the materials of the culture in the arts, literature, and science and put them together in their own way. We live in a mass-produced culture where many people, even many established cultural arbiters limit themselves to secondhand ideas, thoughts, and opinions. Edge.org consists of individuals who create their own reality and do not accept an ersatz, appropriated reality. The Edge community consists of people who are out there doing it rather than talking about and analyzing the people who are doing it.

Currently, Edge has written and video essays on Essentialism, Testosterone On My Mind And In My Brain, and A Cultural History of Physics. These are not fast 15 minute reads; these are ideas to get you thinking further.

A minor quibble for me is the fact that of the 20+ pictures accompanying the topics only two are women; (one being a favorite of mine, Elaine Pagels ) but while I'd like to see more women, a good idea should be sexless.

I am interested watching Steven Pinker's lecture on "A History of Violence" which he begins with:  

Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. The decline of violence, to be sure, has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero (to put it mildly); and it is not guaranteed to continue. But I hope to convince you that it's a persistent historical development... 

And, I have to read about John Brockman who is touted as "the man who runs the smartest website."

I like the fact that videos accompany the essays at Edge because there are so many times my ears have more free time than my eyes. So let's all dust off our "thinking caps" for a while and take a stroll  on the Edge. I don't think we'll be disappointed.