Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle: Science, Commerce, Freedom, and the Origins of Modernity
They witnessed the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna, ending a thousand years of implacable Islamic expansion.
They witnessed the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna, ending a thousand years of implacable Islamic expansion.
To figure out what’s really going on, it’s worth taking a broader look at today’s teens – a generation of kids I call “iGen” – and the environment they’re living in.
If you’re easily offended, it’s hard to understand the world.
Damore stresses that these are differences at a statistical level between large populations and that we should not assume that they are descriptive of any particular individual.
Comedians poke fun at the absurd, unreasonable aspects of our thought, our behaviour and our societies so it is tempting to assume that they are rational themselves.
Sometimes people use it to mean pretend outrage, in which people cry “crocodile tears” over things that don’t really upset them.
Within the lens of Western culture, it is sex and not money that is the primary root of all evil.
Western leaders and policymakers who bemoan the referendum can, if they choose, flatter themselves as “realists.”
These might be two separate and superficially different incidents, but they are qualitatively very similar and underline the same cultural tensions that lead to these scenarios.
This robustness does still exist, but only at a fairly low level, where raw packets of data are routed between numerical addresses.
Having falsely established that Charlie Hebdo were just picking on Muslims, he can lay the charge of hypocrisy upon anybody that has ever objected to any other speech.
Yet, modern art is still portrayed as being avant-garde, defying trends, and sticking it to the establishment.
One consequence of these genetic battles is the effect on reproductive compatibility within a species.
There is no room for nuance, no room for subtlety. Feelings supersede facts. The emotions of the most fragile must be soothed at any cost, even if the truth is a casualty.