Ennyman's Territory

Patterns, Fibonacci and Our Awesome Universe

2026-04-15T09:31:00.006-05:00

While watching an episode of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, "Night Call" (Episode 139 -- February 7, 1964) there is a scene where the old woman has been assisted into a wheelchair. The camera angle is from the viewpoint of an adult looking down to the woman. Across her lap is a knit afghan with a zigzag pattern similar to the kind my grandmother used to make, and for just a moment the camera lingers on the pattern.

One of the thoughts I had in that moment: what would an afghan look like if instead of being knit into a pattern, the colors and knitting were totally random? Isn't it the pattern or design that gives the afghan its interest?

In 2008 I wrote about color as a facet of making or appreciating art. Design and pattern could be added to the list of things which can make a drawing or painting interesting.

Nature is full of patterns, from atomic structure to the design of galaxies... from the incredible Fibonacci sequence to the rhythm of waves... from the phenomenon of day and night to the miracle of a heartbeat...

In the Renaissance, artists did not see beauty as accidental. They believed it could be discovered, studied, and deliberately constructed. Pattern—whether in proportion, repetition, or geometry—was one of their primary tools for doing so.

Figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti were not only artists but thinkers who sought underlying order in the world. They were deeply influenced by classical ideas of harmony, especially the belief that mathematics revealed the structure of reality. This conviction shaped both painting and architecture.

One of the most intriguing patterns associated with Renaissance art is the Fibonacci sequence and its related “Golden Ratio.” While not always applied consciously in a strict numerical sense, its proportions—roughly 1:1.618—appear repeatedly in compositions. Painters arranged figures, horizons, and focal points along these invisible lines, creating balance that feels natural rather than forced. The eye is gently guided, not commanded.

In architecture, this pursuit of proportion becomes even more explicit. Alberti and others designed buildings where height, width, and spatial divisions followed harmonious ratios. The result is not merely structural integrity but a sense of calm coherence—spaces that feel “right” even if the observer cannot explain why.

What makes this especially compelling is that these patterns mirror those found in nature: the spiral of a shell, the arrangement of leaves, the unfolding of galaxies. Renaissance artists believed they were not imposing order but participating in it—echoing a design already embedded in creation.

In this sense, pattern is not decoration. It is revelation. It is the quiet framework beneath the visible surface, the hidden scaffolding that gives a work of art its unity and power. And once you begin to see it, it is hard to unsee—the world itself starts to look like a carefully composed canvas.

Elton Trueblood once suggested that if the world is the product of an Infinite Mind, its beauty should not surprise us. That idea becomes more than philosophical speculation when you begin to trace patterns—not just in art or music, but in mathematics itself.

Educator/mathematician James Nickel describes how for him this realization did not come through formal schooling, but almost by accident. While preparing to teach high school mathematics in the early 1980s, he began exploring resources that connected numbers to the real world—books on geometry in art, the growth patterns of nature, and the Fibonacci sequence. What struck him was not merely the elegance of the numbers, but their recurrence—in shells, architecture, spirals, and proportions that seemed to echo across creation.

What had been presented in school as isolated facts suddenly revealed itself as something cohesive, even luminous. Fibonacci—Leonardo of Pisa—was no longer just a historical figure attached to a number sequence, but a doorway into what Nickel called “an opulent beauty,” a harmony linking human creativity with the structure of the natural world, and ultimately pointing the Creator God of All, all nature declaring His glory.

Equally striking was what had been missed. Traditional math education, with its emphasis on deduction and abstraction, often stripped away this sense of wonder. Geometry became a system of proofs rather than a language describing reality. The “pattern” was still there, but the meaning had been muted.

And so the rediscovery of pattern becomes, in a sense, a recovery of vision—learning again to see what was always present.

Check out this interview with author/mathematician James Nickel on The Wonders of the Fibonacci Sequence.

A Warning from Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

2026-04-14T03:38:00.001-05:00

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
--Gustave Le Bon

I have long been interested in the subject of crowds and mass movements, perhaps stirred in part by having come of age during the antiwar Vietnam protest era. In my second semester I took a sociology class related to this theme (mass movements, not Viet Nam).

Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895; often subtitled The Psychology of Revolution in later editions) is a seminal work in social psychology. Le Bon argues that individuals in crowds lose rationality, descending into a collective mind driven by emotion, suggestion, and impulsivity. I witnessed this first-hand on two occasions while in college, the first during the Mayday protests in Washington D.C., 1971. The second was at Ohio University.

I remember a hilarious Dave Berg cartoon in Mad Magazine in which four self-conscious teen-aged boys of the "Aw shucks" variety are hanging out. Once together they are suddenly hoisting a battering ram to break into a house where there's a party of girls. Berg's amusing cartoon illustrates how we often change when part of a group.

What is a crowd? Gustave Le Bon described it as a group of people brought together by a shared idea or belief. But this shared belief isn’t necessarily formed through careful thinking or by weighing evidence. Instead, crowds tend to accept ideas quickly and emotionally, often using them as motivation for action—sometimes even radical action.

According to Le Bon, when a person becomes part of a crowd, something changes inside them. They no longer think or act the same way they would on their own. In a real sense, they stop functioning as an independent individual and begin to take on the mindset of the group.

Crowds can become barbaric, credulous, and led by simplistic ideas, images, and prestige rather than logic, Le Bon correctly observes. He classifies crowds as heterogeneous or homogeneous, explores leaders' manipulative role via affirmation, repetition, and contagion, and applies this to revolutions (e.g., French Revolution), warning of democracy's risks from mass irrationality. His writings influenced both Freud, and Hitler, as well as modern crowd control.

Le Bon argues that "when societies decay, it is always the masses that bring about their downfall. This is a controversial but thought-provoking idea, especially in today’s era of viral outrage and mass protests."*

Critique

Le Bon's insights on suggestibility and deindividuation prefigure modern psychology (e.g., Leary's deindividuation theory) and remain relevant in analyzing mobs, social media echo chambers, or populist movements. Deindividuation explains how people in groups or anonymous situations can lose their sense of individual identity and self-awareness, leading to reduced inhibitions, less accountability, and behavior that deviates from personal or social norms—sometimes impulsive, aggressive, or antisocial. LeBon's emphasis on emotional contagion explains rapid idea spread.

Critics, however, say the work is pseudoscientific: anecdotal, elitist, and racist (portraying "inferior races" as crowd-prone). They also say it overgeneralizes, ignoring rational crowds (e.g., protests achieving reform) or positive collective action. Deterministic and anti-democratic, it influenced authoritarian propaganda. Empirically weak by today's standards—no data, experiments—but historically pivotal for understanding group dynamics' dark side. Having witnessed the manner in which crowds can seduce people into abandoning common sense, I would suggest that LeBon was to some degree on target with his own early observations.

* Tapan Desai

James Nickel on Stanley Jaki and the Worldview Behind Science and Discovery

2026-04-13T10:51:00.004-05:00

The Soil That Grew Science

We tend to think of the rise science as inevitable—as something that would have arisen anywhere, given enough time and curiosity. But what if that assumption is incorrect?

That question animates an essay by James Nickel, who revisits the work of physicis Stanley L. Jaki, historian of science, and Templeton Prize winner. Jaki’s claim is striking: modern science had only one true beginning—and it happened within a culture shaped by belief in a rational Creator.

“I was drawn to Jaki because he challenges things we take for granted,” Nickel told me. “He asks not just what science has achieved, but why it arose at all.”

Jaki argued that science depends on a set of underlying convictions: that the universe is orderly, that it operates according to consistent laws, and that the human mind is capable of understanding it. Those assumptions, he believed, were not universally held across civilizations.

Nickel is careful to clarify the point. “Jaki isn’t saying other cultures lacked intelligence or ingenuity,” he said. “But their efforts didn’t develop into a self-sustaining, ever-advancing enterprise in the way science did in the West.”

The difference, in Jaki’s view, comes down to worldview. If the universe is seen as cyclical or ultimately impersonal, the search for universal laws may never fully take hold. But if the world is the creation of a rational mind, then it invites investigation—and rewards it.

That raises an uncomfortable question for modern readers: Do scientists today still rely on those same assumptions, even if they no longer recognize their origins?

“You can’t do science without trusting that the universe is intelligible,” Nickel said. “The question is whether we understand where that trust comes from.”

Jaki also warned that certain philosophical trends—whether reducing knowledge to raw data or dissolving reality into perception—can quietly undermine science by weakening that trust. (I think here of Sowell's Is Reality Optional? and notions suggesting that reality is a projection of our minds and doesn't really exist.)

At the same time, science has limits. It deals in measurement and prediction, not meaning or purpose. Those questions, Jaki insisted, belong to philosophy and theology.

“When science becomes the dominant voice,” Nickel observed, “there’s a tendency to act as if those larger questions don’t matter.”

Perhaps the deeper point is this: science did not emerge in a vacuum. It grew out of a particular way of seeing the world.

And if that is true, its future may depend on whether that vision still endures.

* * * *

Check out my interview with James Nickel regarding the work of Stanley Jaki. Nickel's "Jaki Musings" is part of a series exploring the the vistas and power of mathematics as seen through Biblical Christian eyes. Here is the series thus far:
Math Circle 1: Whither Mathematics Education in the 21st Century
Math Circle 2: Introduction: The One and the Many
Math Circle 2: Calculus, Meaning and Beyond
Math Circle 3: Quotable Quotes

Bonus Tracks by James D. Nickel
Science and Creation: A Rare Jewel of a Book
In Honor of Stanley L. Jaki (1924-2009)

Hans Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture:

2026-04-11T20:55:00.000-05:00

After philosophy, much of my college study (1970-74) was dedicated to the fine arts. I immersed myself in painting and drawing, as well as continuous rummaging of the art books housed in the school library, which was almost the nearest building to my dorm. Though captivated by much of what I saw, and at times sought to emulate, there was plenty that I wasn't really attracted to. I did, however, have a great love for the process of laying paint on canvas. I found the process of creation magical.

During that time I had a friend who periodically told me, "The artist is the vanguard of the revolution." His meaning was clear. Art was to be subservient to political ends. My friend Walter Urban created powerful works of this nature, a life-sized soldier on a cross (protesting Viet Nam), a family in the future taking a walk in the park wearing gas masks.

I myself saw many ends that art could serve. After the death of a best friend in high school art served a therapeutic function for me. There were dark things in my heart that words seemed inadequate to express. Beyond the grief there were other emotions and art was a means of working it out.

As one stepped back and surveyed the previous 100 years, one could see that art also served as a mirror of the culture. This is the theme tackled by Dutch author, professor and Christian scholar Hans Rookmaaker.

Hans Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (1970) explores how the development of modern art reflects the spiritual and philosophical collapse of Western civilization. Writing as both an art historian and a Christian thinker, Rookmaaker argued that art is never created in a vacuum—it mirrors the worldview of its time. As Western society drifted from its biblical foundations, art, he says, became a visual record of man’s alienation, fragmentation, and loss of meaning, themes taken up by mid-century existentialists like Camus and Sartre.

Rookmaaker traces the story from the harmony of classical and Renaissance art, where beauty and order reflected divine creation, through the Enlightenment’s turn toward human reason, and finally into the modern era, where faith in transcendence eroded. Artists like Van Gogh, Picasso, and Pollock emerge as prophets of a disintegrating world: their work cries out with spiritual yearning but lacks the hope once rooted in a Christian understanding of reality.

For Rookmaaker, the “death” of culture meant more than a shift in artistic style; it pointed to a deeper moral and spiritual drift. When God is no longer at the center, both art and life begin to lose their unity and meaning. Yet he did not fault the artists themselves. In their confusion and despair, he saw an honest reflection of the human condition. His response was not condemnation, but invitation—a call to recover beauty and, through it, a renewed sense of order and purpose.

[This seems to be a good place to insert a couple of comments by my eight-year-old grandson who visited New York's Museum of Modern Art this week. My daughter said, "He was so funny at the art museum with his sort of pithy, harsh reviews of the art: 'So, um ... How did this get so famous anyway?' and (no doubt responding to Pollock) 'Huh. It kinda looks like they just splattered paint on the paper.'"]

Ultimately, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture is not an argument against modernism but a plea for spiritual reawakening. The book invites readers to see that the renewal of art depends on the renewal of belief—that culture can be reborn only when it again recognizes its source in the Creator.

"Red Star"

Now that we are more than fifty years removed from Rookmaaker’s diagnosis, the story of art has not reversed itself so much as it has unfolded along the very trajectory he observed.

The boundaries are gone. The gatekeepers have loosened their grip. What once required training, patronage, or institutional approval is now open to anyone with a vision—and sometimes even to those without one. From installations and performance pieces to digital art and street murals, expression has multiplied in every direction. In this sense, there has indeed been a kind of liberation.

And yet, with that freedom has come a curious diffusion. Without a shared center—without a commonly held sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful—art often speaks in a thousand private languages. Some works are deeply personal, even therapeutic. Others are expressions of love. And then there is art that is simply functional, enriching us more than endless halls of empty walls.. And we still have the overtly political, echoing my friend’s conviction that the artist stands at the vanguard of revolution. Still others seem to revel in irony, fragmentation, or shock, as though meaning itself were suspect, though what shocks some seems to miss the mark because many of of oldsters have seen it all before and, yawn...

But beneath the variety, one thread persists: art continues to tell the truth about us. It reveals our longings, our confusions, our search for identity and transcendence. If the last century showed us the fracture, the past fifty years have shown us what it is to live within it.

Which leaves us, perhaps, where Rookmaaker left us—not with a neat conclusion, but an invitation.

If art is a mirror, then what we choose to create—and what we choose to behold—matters. The question is not only what art has become, but what it is for. And whether, in the midst of all this freedom, we might yet rediscover not only expression, but meaning… and perhaps even beauty in its myriad forms once again.

Related Links

The Painted Absurd

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/05/painted-absurd.html

A Century of Rebellion: Exploring 20th-Century Art Movements

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-century-of-rebellion-exploring-20th.html

The Future of Work in the Age of Automation: Proceedings of a Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s 21st Century Legacy

2026-04-10T17:15:00.003-05:00

"If you're not thinking about AI, you're not thinking." ~ Chris Meyer

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), has been famously cited as the mathematician who founded the field of cybernetics with the publication in 1948 of his seminal book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. His work was the direct intellectual precursor to modern AI and automation.

Wiener was hardly optimistic about the effects of AI on the future of work. He repeatedly warned that unchecked automation would cause massive unemployment, treat machines as the “precise economic equivalent of slave labor,” and force human workers to accept slave-like economic conditions.

In 2023, an IEEE Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s legacy examined how AI and automation are reshaping the future of work. Drawing on Wiener’s warnings about job displacement and the ethical duties of technologists, participants critiqued overly optimistic “technological determinism” narratives that ignore social costs.

Discussions highlighted qualitative losses — reduced meaning, creativity, and human connection in work — alongside risks of growing inequality and environmental harm. The workshop called for interdisciplinary collaboration, stronger governance, and a shift toward human-centered values like dignity and flourishing, rather than pure efficiency or profit, to ensure technology serves society rather than disrupts it.

One of the paricipants of this workshop was Pedro H. Albuquerque (Senior Member, IEEE.) Born in Brazil he obtained an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Brasilia, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our paths crossed while he was teaching economics at UMD here in Duluth approximately two decades ago and became part of the philosophy club we hosted in our home.

He is now a Research Fellow with the Aix-Marseille School of Economics in France and a Cofounder of ACCELERATION & ADAPTATION. He has published articles in a large number of scientific journals and has presented at leading international conferences, in fields as varied as occupational science, engineering, economics, finance, and social studies. His areas of interest are technology studies, economics, occupational science, sustainability, and finance.

Over the years Albuquerque has been a gracious resource, and the increasing adoption of AI I've been leaning in to hear his cautionary thoughts on this topic. What follows are a batch of short answers to long questions pertaining to the workshop on Norbert Wiener of which he was a member/participant.

EN: Norbert Wiener emphasized the moral duty to anticipate risks and societal impacts. How do you balance that responsibility with the risk of overcorrecting—where caution itself might slow or block beneficial innovation?

Pedro Albuquerque: Generally the opposite risk doesn't exist, when it's mentioned it's normally a political narrative in favor of some status quo. The real challenge is not having enough restraint (example, development of nuclear weapons).

EN: Some argue that technology threatens “meaning” in work and life. But isn’t meaning ultimately an individual responsibility? To what extent should technology be held accountable for something so personal?

PA: The effects of technological innovations on our lives are hardly under our control (example: parents are unable to avoid the consequences of Internet misuse on their children, no matter how much they try hard).

EN: There’s concern about “loss of human engagement” in an AI-driven world. How much of that is driven by technology itself, and how much is the result of individual choice and personality differences?

PA: It arguably affects all, some more than others though.

EN: When we talk about “fairness” in the age of AI, what does that actually mean? If technological progress raises overall prosperity, is it inherently problematic if some benefit more than others?

PA: It doesn't necessarily raise overall prosperity, technology is neutral on that. Prosperity in its use is a political choice, not a technological matter.

EN: The discussion often emphasizes “justice” and “equity” in AI outcomes. How do you define those terms in practical ways, especially compared to clear historical injustices like redlining?

PA: Redlining is a good example, technology may be politically chosen to be the instrument of oppression.

EN: We currently see large numbers of unfilled jobs in certain sectors. Could AI and automation actually solve labor shortages rather than displace workers—and how should we think about that distinction?

PA: Again, the outcomes are not driven by technology, but by political choices.

EN: Many discussions focus on what could go wrong with AI. How do you weigh those risks against the possibility that the opposite—positive, transformative outcomes—may be just as likely?

PA: As humans are risk averse, normally risks and damages are the central concern.

EN: There’s a concern that efficiency may come at the expense of artistry or human connection. But in areas like housing or healthcare, speed and scale can meet urgent needs. How should we balance efficiency with human-centered values?

PA: Efficiency can be evaluated both as quality and quantity. Modern societies have been lobotomized by a "quantity over quality" productivist ideology, where what can't be measured or financially evaluated is thrown under the rug.

EN: AI’s energy use is often criticized. How should we evaluate that concern in the broader context of energy innovation—such as nuclear or other emerging solutions?

PA: It's a whole other Pandora box. Let's just say for now that this new technology will put increasing and extreme pressure on a system that's yet unsustainable and under great danger of collapse.

EN: When people talk about “ensuring worker wellbeing” in an AI-driven economy, what does that mean in concrete terms? What should actually be measured or protected?

PA: Another Pandora box, we'd need to ignore economics, which isn't very helpful for these matters, and let the public health and occupational scientists speak. But in the current political and economic systems their voices remain mostly unheard.

EN: AI outcomes are often described as unpredictable. But uncertainty has accompanied every major technological shift. At what point does uncertainty become a reason for caution versus a normal condition of progress?

PA: History tells us we've always done less than optimal in prevention.

EN: Efforts to design “ethical AI” often focus on minimizing inequality. How do you balance that goal with the reality that individuals make different choices and define success in different ways?

PA: Public policies are known to successfully address these matters.

* * * * *

Download The Future of Work in the Age of Automation: Proceedings of a Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=Love%20et%20al

What Are Your Thoughts on These Things?
Please leave a message in the comments.

Related Links
A Visit with Futurist Calum Chace on his new book The Economic Singularity
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-visit-with-futurist-calum-chace-on.html

Surviving AI by Calum Chace Is a Must Read for Those Who Plan to Be Here in the Future

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/surviving-ai-by-calum-chace-is-must.html

Will Computers Put Journalists Out Of Business? Check Out These 7 Stories

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/04/will-computers-put-journalists-out-of.html

A Dozen Quotes to Mull Over on a Dreary Day

2026-04-09T11:25:00.004-05:00

The weather outside is dreary and grey. As for me, I draw my strength from the weather within. Right now it's blue skies and, yes, here comes the sun.

When I lived in Mexico I bought a notebook in which I began recording quotes from my readings. It was nice having them all in one place, like a personally curated Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, which every serious writer was encouraged to acquire before the Internet em
erged.

Wikiquote is a website that arranges quotes by both author and by theme. If you are a writer and unfamiliar with it, I believe you'd find it worth your while to explore.

The quotes on this page are arranged neither by author nor by theme. Their common denominator is that I found them interesting because they give you something to ponder and mull over. It's a bite-sized list to be savored slowly, not gobbled up in a rush to get on with your day.

Recently I discovered an extremely interesting page of quotes about Mathematics that you might want to explore. Harvested and assembled by mathematician James Nickel it's titled Quotable Quotes in Mathematics. James is a longtime friend, and an author of numerous books pertaining to math from a Biblical Christian worldview perspective. This past week I interviewed him about his 30-page collection of math quotes. You can read the interview here.

Without further ado, here my dozen quotes to mull over. Read them all, pick one and roll it around in your mind till it yields fruit.

"Don't you ever wonder sometimes what might have happened if you tried?”

—Kazuo Ishiguro

“The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

—Steve Jobs

“In science, there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.”
--Lord Kelvin

“Don't pay any attention to the critics—don't even ignore them.”
—Samuel Goldwyn

“More law, less justice.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten."
—Aldo Gucci

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been."
—John Greenleaf Whittier

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

—Albert Einstein

"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

—Paul Simon

"Behaviorism is a flat earth view of the mind."

—Marvin Minsky

"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."

—William Shakespeare

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

—C.S. Lewis

Let the sunshine in!

Another Example of Misinformation from Experts and How Mainstream Media Journalists Fail to Do Their Job

2026-04-09T00:33:00.005-05:00

Blue Light Special

On Wednesday I wrote about a pattern that makes my skin crawl: "agenda driven narratives based on misinformation, a pattern that keeps repeating itself more and more the longer I live." The day before I wrote about how the Eugenics movement was spawned by "experts" who bought into Social Darwinism, pushing it to the degree that more han 30 states legalized sterilization of those these experts deemed to be misfits.

Countless examples can be found, but when this one here came to my attention I felt obligated to bring it to yours.

A research paper published in February in the journal Nature Communications claimed that people living in U.S. counties near nuclear power plants have higher cancer death rates. The authors — a Harvard doctoral student and his professor — estimated that about 115,000 extra cancer deaths occurred over a 19-year period because of proximity to these plants. When the study came out, many news outlets ran big headlines about it. But there’s a major problem with the study: the researchers never actually measured any radiation from the nuclear plants.

Eric Meyer, Founder and Executive Director of Generation Atomic, didn't just roll his eyes at this absurd assertion. Meyer assembled three real experts to dissect the study in order to see whether there was even a shred of merit in it. The investigators were Philip Hult, a nuclear engineer at Generation Atomic; DJ LeClear, a health physicist with nearly two decades of field experience; and Jim Smith, a professor of environmental science who has studied Chernobyl since 1990.

The article Meyer wrote includes the link to a YouTube video in which he interviews Hult, LeClear and Smith.

Writes Meyer, "The study uses geographic distance as a stand-in for radiation exposure. Closer to a plant means more radiation, the authors assume. Talk to anyone who actually measures this stuff for a living and the premise falls apart. DJ LeClear has spent years taking readings outside nuclear facilities, and he put it plainly: the doses are so low they’re barely detectable. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) puts the dose of living within 50 miles of a plant at about 0.01 millirem a year. You get the same dose from eating a banana." [EdNote: Link to U.S. NRC FAQ page.]

Here's a summary of the rest of Meyer's article in The Kernel:

Every time a scary headline about nuclear power plants and cancer pops up, the same panic happens: people hear the word “radiation” and immediately assume danger. In this faulty Harvard study the researchers never actually measured any radiation at all. They just looked at how far counties were from plants and compared cancer statistics.

That’s not a radiation study — it’s a geography study pretending to be science.

Nuclear plants are usually built near rivers, coasts, and cities for practical reasons. Those same areas also tend to have more factories, traffic, and urban stress — all things that can affect health. The study tried to account for other factors, but the experts Meyer spoke with said it’s nearly impossible to do cleanly.

Real-world evidence tells a very different story. Large, rigorous studies that actually tracked radiation doses on hundreds of thousands of nuclear workers show that the tiny amounts of radiation the public gets from normal plant operations cause virtually zero extra cancer risk.

The real danger here isn’t radiation — it’s fear itself. Scary, poorly done studies like this fuel “radiophobia,” which can hurt communities, shut down clean energy, and push us toward dirtier power sources that actually do kill people through air pollution.

Bottom line: Bad science isn’t harmless. When it attacks one of our cleanest sources of electricity without solid evidence, it becomes a public health problem in itself.

* * * * *

Today I am adding radiophobia (fear of radiation) to the list of phobias I've recently written about including yesterday's story on Trypophobia.

For what it's worth, I'm wondering if we can coin a word for another phobia that seems prevalent in our time: Fear of Common Sense. If you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Related Links

The Banana Stand: How a Piece of Fruit Became a Symbol for Nuclear Advocacy

How Do You Blame Nuclear Power for 115,000 Deaths? Don't Measure the Radiation.

Trypophobia: When Patterns Make Your Skin Crawl

2026-04-08T19:42:00.000-05:00

I learned a new word recently: Trypophobia.

Trypophobia is a strong aversion, disgust, or discomfort triggered by seeing clusters of small holes, bumps, or repetitive circular patterns. It is not officially recognized as a distinct mental disorder, but according to Google many researchers classify it as a form of specific phobia when it causes significant distress or impairment.

I once saw a fellow transformed from "tough guy" to terrified child by seeing a spider in his water glass. (Arachnophobia) And my mom's uncle went hysterical when Dad drove into the Lincoln Tunnel years ago.* (Claustrophobia) But I can't say I've ever seen this particular dread. In fact, I've known a number of people who find patterns as fascinating.

The term comes from the Greek words trýpa (meaning "hole") and phobos (meaning "fear"). It was purportedly coined around 2005 on an online forum and gained popularity through the internet.

It's a strong aversion or disgust towards repetitive patterns like those in honeycombs, lotus seed pods, or sponges, often triggering anxiety, nausea, or panic attacks, though it's not yet a formally recognized mental disorder.

I myself love patterns. I recall times when I've seen patterns when there were no apparent patterns at all. Patterns fascinate us. We usually find them beautiful or pleasing, even mesmerizing. Fractals, hexagons, tessallations, logarithmic spirals in shells, hurricanes, the Milky Way; cloud formations, branching--all of creation appears to point to a cosmic order.

So why is it that those same patterns can make some people uneasy? It's a question I don't feel prepared to answer.

Many fears are easy to understand. People have phobias about many things like spiders, mice, heights, or tight spaces. But trypophobia is different. It’s not really about an object—it’s about certain patterns, especially clusters of small holes or tightly packed shapes like honeycombs, lotus seed pods, sponges or coral. Even certain skin images can trigger it. People usually don’t feel fear so much as strong disgust.

The reaction can be immediate. People report feeling nauseous, itchy, anxious, or just deeply uncomfortable. What’s strange is that this happens before they even have time to think about it. They know the image isn’t dangerous—but their body reacts anyway.

Trypophobia is a reminder that not all reactions are logical. Some come from deeper instincts—old wiring in the brain that still shows up in surprising ways.

I will admit that there is one pattern that does make my skin crawl. It's agenda driven narratives based on misinformation, a pattern that seems to keep repeating itself more and more the longer I live. When journalists cite studies by so-caled experts and fail to question the data or the motivations, it's utterly galling.

If able, I will share an example here on Ennyman's Territory by the end of the week.

* * * * *

* If you know the Lincoln Tunnel, you'll recall that there are several lanes of traffic inching their way forward in a huge arc so that it make take half an hour to pass the pay booth and reach the tunnel entrance. When my mom's uncle saw that they were entering a tunnel, his claustrophobia kicked in and he began going berserk. Dad stopped the car, but this only antagonized the cars behind him. He couldn't go forward or back until the police stepped in, helped direct traffic so he could turn around and escape. It could have been worse. Alas, there is a lesson here.

America’s Real Problem Isn’t Failure. It’s No Consequences

2026-04-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

I was listening to a talk by Thomas Sowell yesterday. He noted that when businesses make poor quality or useless products that no one wants, they lose money and either learn something or go out of business. But when a government program fails, no lessons get learned. It isn't their money, it's the taxpayers. Instead, they ask for more money and do more of the same.

One of the saddest failures today is our American education system. For years we've seen articles about the decline of education, including not only outcomes but expectations and standards as well.

Here's just one example of how far we've fallen, a 2024 article in The Atlantic titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," by Rose Horowitch. The subtitle sinks home her message: "To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school."

Horowitch examines how many students at elite colleges (e.g., Columbia, UVA) arrive unprepared to read full books—often due to high school practices favoring short excerpts, standardized testing, smartphones, and shorter attention spans. Professors note students struggling with long-form reading, getting overwhelmed by novels or multiple books per semester, and sometimes shutting down when facing unfamiliar or challenging ideas.

This feels shocking to me. I remember reading Dickens freshman year (A Tale of Two Cities) and having an "Aha!" moment my sophomore year while reading Cyrano de Bergerac. I have a hard time imagining an education without reading being a fundmental practice.

Over the past decade, according to Idress Kahloon, staff writer for The Atlantic, American students’ academic skills have sharply declined, regressing to levels not seen in 25 years. Test scores have fallen to record lows, while the percentage of students reading at a “below basic” level has reached record highs. As staff writer Rose Horowitch has reported, a shocking number of American college students say they didn’t read an entire book in middle or high school. What exactly went wrong?

Some believe Covid is partly to blame, along with smartphones. But Kahloon believes there is aother factor a play: low expectations.“Schools have demanded less and less from students,” he writes, “who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.”

When I read this I wondered if this is one of a primary issue is our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we

When I read this I wondered if this is one of the primary issues in our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we look for someone or something else to blame. The system. The economy. The curriculum.

But rarely do we ask: What was expected? And was it enough?

Expectations shape behavior. When standards are high, people stretch. When standards fall, people settle. That’s not cruelty—it’s human nature.

In my case it was expected that I would get good grades and I got them. My parents also expected me to go to college. In short, they set me on a trajectory. (There was also an incentive when I was in grade school. I'd get a dime for every A and yes, incentives matter.

Somewhere along the way, society began confusing compassion with the removal of standards. We didn’t want students to feel discouraged, so we made the work easier. We didn’t want failure to sting, so we softened the consequences. We didn’t want anyone left behind, so we lowered the bar.

But lowering the bar doesn’t lift people up. It simply changes what “success” means.

And over time, that redefinition spreads. If a student can graduate without reading a book, what else can be bypassed? If effort is optional, what happens to discipline? If discomfort is avoided, what happens to growth? Failure is painful, but it's also a prod that goads us to figure out the why.

I once knew a publisher who had previously been a high school football coach in Texas. If you know Texas, football was a big deal for small towns there. He was recruited to coach a team in another town that had never won a game in several years, and frequently they were spanked quite badly. When he arrived, he quickly saw the problem. There were kids with talent, and heart, who loved playing foorball. But they were in the wrong division. It would be like college kids playing the Seattle Seahawks. By spearheading the division change, his team was suddenly competitive.

The point here: failure is an opportunity to learn. And sometimes the solution involves thinking outside the box.

This is not just an education problem. It’s a cultural one. Thomas Sowell’s point lingers here. In the private sector, failure teaches. In public systems, failure can be absorbed, explained away, or funded again. The feedback loop breaks. And when that happens, decline can continue for a long time before anyone is forced to reckon with it.

The irony is that most people—especially young people—are capable of far more than we ask of them. The question is whether we still believe that. Because if we don’t expect much, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get much.

Experts Gone Awry: Eugenics Movement Revisited

2026-04-06T20:24:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I shared how an expert, with major funding, built what was expected to be the first airplane. Instead, it crashed, and the New York Times declared that it would be a million years before we'd witness a manned flying machine. This was 1903, yet before the year's end the Wright Brothers made aviation history. The point being that experts don't always know what they're talking about.

Looking back on a century ago, one might be surprised at how many bad ideas were germinated by so-called experts, especially when you consider the ideas spawned by Social Darwinism. Because of its utopian belief in human perfectibility -- that is, the perfectibility of the human race -- and confidence in it experts, the movement went off the rails by embracing the eugenics movement.

I don't know your thoughts about Woodrow Wilson as a president, but the more I learn the further he falls down the ranks in my book. Woodrow Wilson was a supporter of the eugenics movement and the broader "racial science" prevalent during the Progressive Era. He viewed it as a rational, scientific approach to improving human heredity and social organization. His endorsement of eugenic principles was intertwined with his advocacy for white supremacy, and his policies on segregation.

I never knew that as Governor of New Jersey, Wilson signed a bill in 1911 that authorized the compulsory sterilization of criminals and those considered mentally disabled. It was described as "An act to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded, epileptics, rapists, certain criminals, and other defectives". This aligned with similar measures he campaigned for in Indiana in 1907 with the end result that Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. [EdNote: The law was overturned in 1921. However, in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions. Go figure.]

How could this happen? Well, because educated "experts" persuaded the public this was good and right.

Wilson used the theories of eugenics to justify his belief in the inherent superiority of white individuals, particularly those of Nordic descent. He frequently expressed racist views and viewed Black people as inferior.

On March 9, 1919, the Legislature of North Carolina passed a similar law with the fancy title "An act to benefit the moral, mental, or physical condition of the inmates of penal and charitable institutions." The purpose of this legislation, as the name suggests, was to "improve" the condition of individuals living in state institution by allowing them to be sterilized.

Actually there were a lot of liberal ad ssocialist intellectuals who supported eugenics during the early-to-mid 20th century, including H.G. Wells and the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger, as well as Bertrand Russell. Regarding Russell, I remember hearing Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame going on a rant against Christianity on the radio and citing Bertand Russell, "the smartest man of the las 100 years," as proof that there was no God because Russell was an atheist. Which again proves my point: experts don't always know what they're talking about.

[EdNote: This occurred around late February 2004, right after The Passion of the Christ opened in theaters. Contemporary accounts describe Rooney delivering a “mean-spirited diatribe” against the film and Gibson, essentially arguing that a brilliant thinker like Russell (a well-known atheist and philosopher) rejected Christianity, so the movie’s religious premise was suspect or unworthy of serious regard.]

The scary part of this story is not what we've done in the past. Rather, how pervasive, influential and damaging they can be when pushed by so-called experts and their media mouthpieces. It takes work to stay informed. When advocates trot out their troves of experts, it does not mean they are right.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences.

Second International Eugenics Conference

https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/timeline/517228a6eed5c60000000017
includes timeline

September 25-28, 1921. The Second International Eugenics Congress at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, one of three held between 1912 and 1932. Fifty-three scientific papers were presented, most by Americans, and Alexander Graham Bell served as honorary president. The conference was originally scheduled for 1915 but due to the outbreak of the First World War, was re-scheduled.

America's Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement

https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/#:~:text=The%20eugenics%20movement%20took%20root,and%20principal%20interested%20in%20breeding.&text=Movies%20and%20books%20promoting%20eugenic%20principles%20were%20popular.

The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. Beginning around 1930, there was a steady increase in the percentage of women sterilized, and in a few states only young women were sterilized

A 1937 Fortune magazine poll found that 2/3 of respondents supported eugenic sterilization of "mental defectives", 63% supported sterilization of criminals, and only 15% opposed both.

No one knows for certain how many compulsory sterilizations occurred between the late 1960s to 1970s, though it is estimated that at least 80,000 may have been conducted

Harry Laughlin

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/eugenical-sterilization-united-states-1922-harry-h-laughlin

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin

A 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics.

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is 502 pages long and has seventeen chapters. Harry Olson, the Chief Justice of Chicago's Municipal Court, introduces the book, followed by a preface written by Laughlin

the book reports Laughlin's analysis of how states could benefit from sterilizing their mentally disabled residents, and it reprinted his model sterilization law, which he encouraged state governments to adopt. Laughlin's model sterilization law stressed the need for the sterilization of populations that Laughlin deemed inadequate for reasons ranging from physical appearance to socioeconomic status. The document influenced twentieth century legislation in the US about reproduction and compulsory sterilization. Although Laughlin suffered from epilepsy, he advocated for breeding out specific populations from the general population, including epileptics, the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, alcoholics, the blind, and the deaf.

Related Links

Bad Ideas: The Eugenics Movement In America

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/bad-ideas-eugenics-movement.html

Shedding More Light on the History of Eugenics: Are These Ideas Still With Us Today?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/02/shedding-more-light-on-history-of.html

Eugenics, Revisited

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/02/eugenics-revisited.html

When the New York Times Said Manned Flight Was a Million Years Away, How Quickly It Was Proved Wrong

2026-04-05T15:56:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite themes over the years has been the unreliability of experts. You can read a batch of examples here in my 2007 blog post "Experts don't always know what they are talking about." Most of these examples are quite amusing. Would that all proclamations were harmless and amusing.

Da Vinci's design for a flying machine.

Nevertheless, I just learned a new one about human flight, and I think you'll find this entertaining.

In October 1903, the New York Times published one of the most famously wrong editorials in journalistic history. Titled “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly,” it confidently declared that a practical flying machine would require “the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years.”

No doubt many people were thinking about manned flight in those days, in part stimulated by Jules Verne's fanciful 1886 sci-fi novel Robur the Conqueror (a.k.a. The Clipper of the Clouds) which featured a massive, propeller-driven heavier-than-air machine named the Albatross.

Four centuries earlier Leonardo Da Vinci contemplated the possibilities of manned flight, so this was not an entirely new idea. What was new were the advances in technology that had been emerging over time.

So back to our story.

At the time, the most respected scientific authority on aviation in America was Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Langley had conducted promising experiments with unmanned, steam-powered models. Impressed, the U.S. War Department gave him roughly $50,000 — a huge sum in 1903 — plus institutional backing from the Smithsonian to build a manned “Aerodrome.”

With Langley's prestige, funding, and the full weight of America’s scientific establishment behind it, the Aerodome was launched from a houseboat on the Potomac River. It promptly plunged into the water like a “handful of mortar,” as one observer put it.

The pilot, Charles Manly, survived thanks in part to a cork jacket. (You can see one of these at Corktown here in Duluth, I believe.)

The New York Times jumped on the fiasco just two days later with its October 9 editorial. Langley’s very public failure was proof that powered human flight was essentially impossible in any reasonable timeframe. If the best-funded, most credentialed expert in the country couldn’t do it, the editorial implied, then who could?

Langley may have been humiliated, but to his credit he didn'quit. On December 8, 1903 Langley tried again. This time the Aerodrome collapsed during launch, its wings crumpling as it tumbled back into the river. Another high-profile disaster.

Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903

Nine days later, on December 17, 1903, if you remember your history, at a windswept beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, achieved what the experts had declared would take millions of years. Orville and Wilbur Wright — self-taught bicycle mechanics with no formal scientific training, no government grants, and only a few hundred dollars of their own money — flew the first powered, controlled, sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine.

They completed four flights that day. The longest lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. They built their own wind tunnel, designed a lightweight gasoline engine, and solved critical problems of control through relentless experimentation and iteration. They didn't have elite credentials or massive institutional funding. Just a "can do" persistence and practical ingenuity.

At its core, it’s a story about how elites and credentialed “experts” can mistake their own failures — or the limits of their approach — for the permanent boundaries of human possibility.

Langley had resources and prestige. The Wrights had grit and a willingness to question conventional wisdom. One approach crashed (literally). The other soared. Or sort of soared. For sure, they got off the ground and that was a start. As I write these words Artemis II is two-thirds of the way to the moon with four astronauts sharing the adventure of a lifetime. [Trivia: Did you know that Artemis, in Greek mythology, was the twin sister of Apollo?]

I'm surprised at how quickly the NYTimes rushed to declare the death of the dream (of manned flight) after the establishment’s golden boy failed, then had to watch these two nobodies from Ohio prove them wrong.

Lesson: Whenever you hear confident pronouncements from prestigious institutions that something is “impossible,” “decades away,” or “requires massive top-down funding and expertise,” remember the Wright brothers.

My main point remains: experts, even when earnest, don't always know what they are talking about. Add to this the reality that there are a lot of people with agendas who use the media to parade their "experts" in the service of those agendas. Don't be suckered. Learn to discern.

Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

2026-04-04T13:33:00.001-05:00

Fifty years ago or so I came to a realization that there were essentially, below the surface of all our various differences, two basic views on the human condition. One was utopian and the contrary one tragic. The former believed in the perfectibility of man. The latter, that we live in a broken world and that brokenness, despite our best intentions, was within us as well as in the culture and society around us.

Writers like Charles Reich (The Greening of America, 1970) proposed that some new wonderfulness had emerged in the Sixties and people would not only live in harmony with nature but with one another. I specifically remember one passage where he said there would be no more bullying in schools, at which I threw the book across the room. (No, I didn't really do that. I simply stopped taking him seriously.)

Naturally I felt out of step with these utopians, and looking back over these many decades it's evident that my gut was right.

Actually, it wasn't my instincts alone, but a basic truth from the Bible that spoke loud and clear (even though Scripture itself says God speaks in a "still small voice.") As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things."

Even the Greeks understood this, leaving a trail of insights about human nature in the plays of Aeschyles and Sophocles. Likewise we see tragedy re-enacted in the plays of Shakespeare and many others from Ibsen to Tennessee Williams.

So it was refreshing to find confirmation in a number of contemporary writers who spoke clearly to this matters, one of these being Thomas Sowell. In his book A Conflict of Visions (1987) Sowell argues that many enduring ideological divides in politics, law, economics, and social policy stem not primarily from differing interests or surface-level disagreements, but from these two fundamentally opposing "visions" of human nature and the world. These visions are based on presuppositions that serve as a pre-analytical frameworks—intuitive senses of causation, reality, and human potential—that shape how people interpret evidence and prioritize goals, even when they share similar moral ends like justice or equality.

Sowell calls them the constrained vision (sometimes linked to a "tragic" view) and the unconstrained vision (the more utopian or optimistic view). They form a continuum rather than rigid categories, but they consistently cluster beliefs across disparate disciplines and issues. Sowell draws on thinkers like Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Friedrich Hayek for the constrained side, and William Godwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others for the unconstrained side.

The book pits these opposing perspectives against one another is four areas: (1) Human Nature and Its Limits
(2) Knowledge, Reason, and Decision-Making
(3) Social Processes, Trade-Offs, and Causation
(4) Implications for Key Concepts (Freedom, Equality, Justice, Power)

When it comes to human nature, it seems self-evident to most of us that we are inherently flawed, self-interested, and limited in morality, reason, and foresight. Selfishness and dangerous impulses are enduring features, not easily eradicated. Social order and progress depend on external constraints (institutions, incentives, traditions) that channel self-interest productively while accepting trade-offs and unintended consequences.

The optimistic view sees human nature is malleable and fundamentally good (or perfectible) when freed from corrupting influences like bad institutions or insufficient enlightenment. With proper reason, education, or leadership, people can transcend narrow self-interest and achieve far higher levels of altruism, rationality, and harmony. Problems often stem from systemic barriers rather than innate human flaws.

This utopian optimism sounds good, but where and when has it ever panned out?

When it comes to knowledge, reason, and decision-making, the constrained view emphasizes accumulated experience, systemic processes (e.g., markets, common law, evolved traditions), and decentralized decision-making. Sowell repeatedly stresses that no individual or elite possesses enough knowledge or virtue to centrally plan complex social outcomes effectively. "Locus of discretion" lies with individuals acting in their own spheres, guided by incentives and feedback rather than articulated grand designs.

The utopian (unconstrained view) trusts articulated reason and the insights of the intellectually or morally advanced. (i.e. The elite.) Experts or surrogates (e.g., enlightened leaders, planners) can discern and impose optimal solutions for society as a whole. Systemic processes are suspect if they produce imperfect results; intentions and rational redesign matter more than historical precedents.

I've been listening to a number of Thomas Sowell videos lately (which prompted me to pull out my books) and in one of them he shares one of the major differences between private businesses and government. When a business makes bad decisions and lose too much money, they fail. It's an expensive learning experience or, if too costly, they go out of business. When government bodies make bad decisions, they didn't lose their own money. It was taxpayer dollars, so there is little personal pain. Thus they are free to double down on bad ideas and lose even more money, which likewise causes little pain.

Here in Minnesota the ongoing trials and convictions taking place in the Feeding Our Future fraud cases illustrate perfectly the conflicting visions at work. The utopians (unconstrained vision) in their belief in the goodness of all people place little oversight on their programs because of their faith in the basic goodness of everyone. I saw this firsthand while painting apartments in South Minneapolis in the early 80s. The only difference between the Feeding Our Future scam ($250+ million*) and things I saw 45 years ago is the scale.

* * *

In the realm of social processes Sowell reminds us that there are always trade-offs. Society improves (or avoids disaster) through evolved processes that create incentives and restraints, producing incremental gains amid inevitable trade-offs.

The utopian focuses on achieving desired results through deliberate solutions. Social ills have identifiable causes that can be rationally addressed and eliminated (or greatly reduced) by reforming institutions or empowering the right actors. Solutions are feasible; trade-offs are less emphasized than the moral imperative to fix injustices directly.

[For example, we can could theoretically eliminate all crime by placing extreme constraints on our freedom. Spielberg's Minority Report shows a future where murder can become obsolete by arresting criminals pre-crime.]

Language plays a role here as well. In communicating key concepts like freedom, equality, justice and power, each side defines the issues differently.

Constrained thinkers often prioritize process characteristics (e.g., rule of law, equal rules, negative freedom from coercion) and accept unequal outcomes as natural.

Unconstrained (utopian) thinkers emphasize outcomes or results (e.g., equality of condition, positive freedom to achieve potential, social justice via redistribution or intervention).

The two visions, for most people, are not fully articulated theories but deep-seated assumptions that resist falsification by evidence alone—people interpret facts through their vision. Liberation from being locked into one vision or the other can happen only when we begin to adopt a humility that makes us willing to re-evaluates our core beliefs.

In his book Sowell stresses that the conflict is not merely left vs. right (though there are correlations); hybrids and shifts exist, but the underlying tension is ancient and enduring.

Related Links

Thomas Sowell discusses his Conflict of Visions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvYqaxSPp4&t=3s

Are You Protopian, Utopian or Dystopian?
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/07/are-you-protopian-utopian-or-dystopian.html

Read other reviews here at Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056

*Source: Dept. of Justice

PostScript
Psychologist/author Karen Horney, in her book Our Inner Conflicts, proposes that human neurosis is directly related to the degree to which our idealized self-image diverges from the reality. When our self-image corresponds with who we really are, that is, when have realistic self-awareness, we are healthier and whole. I would suggest that this applies to societies as well. When our leaders are honest and realistic, our laws and governance will be healthier and more fruitful than when our leaders persist in ignoring reality to embrace dreams of a future La-La Land.

Is Reality Optional? Thomas Sowell’s Sharp Warning Against Wishful Thinking

2026-04-03T14:05:00.000-05:00

My copy, purchased in 1994

When it comes to thinking clearly and speaking pointedly about contemporary issues, there are few better minds than that of Thomas Sowell, an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's widely regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers of the past half-century for his clear-eyed, data-driven critiques of liberal social policies and his emphasis on empirical reality over ideological wishful thinking.

In 1993, Sowell published a short but powerful collection of essays titled Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays. Don’t let the title fool you — this isn’t some abstract philosophy book. It’s a no-nonsense straight-talking takedown of the idea that we can simply ignore reality when it doesn’t fit our favorite theories.

If you step off the roof of your house there will be consequences, whether you believe in the law of gravity or not. So, too, there are laws of economics, which we ignore to our own peril.

Sowell’s central argument is blunt: too many intellectuals, activists, and politicians treat reality as optional. They believe that with enough good intentions, clever policies, or bold social engineering, we can reshape human nature, fix complex problems, and create a better world — even if the evidence says otherwise.
He contrasts two very different ways of looking at the world. One vision (which he calls the “unconstrained” or visionary view) sees humans as highly malleable. If society has problems, it must be because of bad institutions or not enough compassion. The solution? Big government programs and new theories to remake everything.
The other view (the “constrained” or tragic vision) is more realistic. It says human nature has built-in limits — scarcity, self-interest, imperfect knowledge, and trade-offs. Good policy, Sowell argues, must work with these limits instead of pretending they don’t exist.
A quote on the back cover (of my copy) captures the problem perfectly:

““Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.” (EdNote: This was more than three decades ago, and the trend has continued unabated.)

Sowell points to real-world examples in crime, education, welfare, housing, and race relations. Again and again, “bright new ideas” were tried, problems got worse, and yet the people pushing those ideas rarely faced any consequences.
He repeatedly warns against what he calls “intellectual hubris” — the dangerous belief that experts know better than millions of ordinary people making decisions in their own lives. Sowell stresses the importance of empirical evidence and common sense (which, as they say, is as rare as the dodo). Start with observable facts and historical results, not beautiful-sounding theories.
At just 192 pages, Is Reality Optional? is short, readable, and often contrarian. Sowell writes like a man tired of watching the same mistakes get repeated while reality keeps sending the bill.
In a world full of grand ideological promises, Sowell reminds us of a simple truth: reality is not optional. You can ignore scarcity, incentives, trade-offs, and human nature for a while — but eventually, they push back.
Here are a few quotes that will give you the flavor of Sowell's ideas.

On Economics vs. Politics

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

On Faith Masquerading as Science

“Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’”

On Forgiveness and Being Right

“People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.”

A few more notable quotes from the book:

--“Ordinary people, lacking that gift [of ignoring reality], are forced to face reality.”

--“The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

--“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

Recommended: Thomas Sowell, who was born in 1930, is still alive and kicking. YouTube has a treasure trove of videos that will give you an opportunity to engage directly with Sowell's ideas. His brain is stuffed with truckloads of facts from a lifetime of research, facts that often remain buried because they fail to fit the Progressive narrative.

Throwback Thursday: Sometimes Even When You Don't Understand a Dylan Song You Can "Get It"

2026-04-02T11:03:00.001-05:00

“I don't like the idea of 'understanding' a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need to have it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.” ~Federico Fellini

There it is. This is what some people mean when they talk about art, whether music, poetry or a painting. It's like a joke; you shouldn't have to explain why the punch line was funny.

To this day I don't "get" Dylan's "Changing of the Guard," but it moves me every time I hear it, and remains one of my favorite Dylan songs. What's it all about, Alfie? The images connect with something inside like a series of dreams, rising up from a subconscious sea teeming with shimmering mysteries.

In his book The Dylanologists David Kinney devotes one chapter to the Lyrics Dissecters. These are the ones Fellini is calling out above. It's like Dylan's lyrics are a secret code to be cracked, if only we had an Enigma Machine.

People have the same problem with abstract art. "I don't get it" has been exclaimed in art museums and galleries all over the world.

"Ballad of a Thin Man" is another song that falls into this category, difficult to apprehend but one that definitely haunts. The opening bars on the piano send a chill through the room and the confounding imagery shocks and frightens. Something's happening, even if you don't know what it is. "You try so hard, but you don't understand," Dylan hisses.

The words and images can confuse, but when ignited there can be light, revealing the outlines of shapes and scenes that darkness conceals.

* * * *

For what it's worth, Duluth Dylan Fest is just around the corner. May will be here faster than you know it. The events are slated for May 17-24 this year. If you want to celebrate with us here in Dylan's home town, mark your calendars. There will be a birthday celebration on his 85th, May 24, in front of the house he grew up in. And there will be plenty of music... some of it you'll "get" with your head and some with your heart.

Meantime life goes on all around you. Be a part of it.

Project Hail Mail Reflects Recurring Images and Storylines from Film History

2026-04-02T10:19:00.000-05:00

I'd heard enough raves for Project Hail Mary that it got my attention. As I considered going, what caught my eye was that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had been screenwriters for The Lego Movie, which I found sizzling with great lines and a clever storyline.

Imdb.com places the film in several categories including Buddy Comedy, Sci-Fi, Epic, Adventure and Comedy. My take is that it's essentially the story of a lonely problem-solver in space, with both overt and subtle echoes of earlier films. We'll return to this after briefly outlining the story.

Here's how Amazon MGM summarizes it: Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction... but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

In other words, it begins as a mystery. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Why am I all alone? There's a sense in which we ourselves periodically need to take stock of our lives and ask outselves these fundamental questions.

Tributes
A few days after seeing this film I reflected on how many previous films were echoed here. The most obvious, of course, is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The lighting and manner in which Ryland Grace's spaceship silently glides through deep space is pure Kubrick magic. The infinite frontier, the massive emptiness, and the loneliness.

A second film seems directly echoed in this one, in a different way: Spielberg's E.T., the curiously cute creature from another world who is unable to effectively communicate that he wants to go home. And yes, that is the trajectory of Project Hail Mary as Ryland Grace succeeds in making contact. with alien life. And "Surprise!" The film transforms from a mission to save the world into a love story.

The Martian is a third film this story pays tribute to. As it turns out, both Project Hail Mary and The Martian are based on novels by Andy Weir. Both involve hard science and technology, and both feature a character in similar circumstances, alone and a long ways from home.

The next echo for me, and I'd like to know if it was intentional, is Fellini's 8½. You may be curious how that film relates to this one. If you recall the storyline, it is about Italian director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who is having an existential crisis. But the backstory is that he has been contracted to direct is an epic science-fiction project about humanity fleeing a dying, post-apocalyptic Earth. In several scenes we see a large set made of vertical pipes, poles, and scaffolding is the massive, unfinished rocket launch pad / spaceship launch tower built for the science-fiction film that the protagonist, Guido, is supposed to be making.

The reason I draw attention to this is that when Ryland Grace reaches his destination, the spaceship for the alien (Rocky) looks like this strange assembly of rods, poles and pipes. Having seen Fellini's famous flick twice this past year, the rods, pipes and poles image was fresh in my mind.

Other films this film may have drawn inspiration from might include Oppenheimer (sparks and SFX in his semi-lucid dream sequences), Apollo 13 (survival through improvisation), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (communication across species barriers). There are no doubt others, but these are all films I'm familiar with that seem reflected here.

One last comment. Yesterday Artemis II launched, the first step in a new chapter for the space program. This has been a long time coming. Was there some measure of coordination between these events? Maybe not. Sci fi fiction has a long history, and whatever unfolds in real life will likely have been foretold in one form or another creative minds making imaginative connections.

How Does Learning Happen?

2026-03-31T08:40:00.002-05:00

When I was in seventh grade I witnessed something that somewhat shocked me. I was walking down the hallway and a teacher was talking with a sixth grader about how to spell the word"cat." I had been reading since kindergarten, believe, and was reading biographies by second grade. It mystified me that this boy who I played football with after school could not spell cat.

My senior year in high school the dean of students, Mr. Griffith, whom I'd had in Civics in ninth grade and History in eleventh, asked if I would be willing to tutor a tenth grade student who was failing his math class. I was taking Calculus in the honors prograrn and it would be arranged for me to meet with this student during study hall. I can't recall if it was once a week or more than that, though I do remember that up till then he had failed every test or quiz since the beginning of the year.

When we met after the third week he was genuinely surprised to have gotten a D on a math test, his first passing grade. The following week he got a C. I was surprised at how quickly he was improving.

The next week, though, he didn't show up. For whatever the reason, we stopped meeting. Occasionally I've wondered if there were something going on in his home life. He seemed smart enough to "get it" with a little personalized attention, but I never found out what happened.

Several years later, a friend whose career involved teaching math recommended a book called The Seven Laws of Teaching. by John Milton Gregory. iPublished in 1884, t's not a new book with the latest research, success stories and modern anecdotes. Rather, it's a straightforward presentation of seven common sense principles of teaching which have stood the test of time.

In simple terms here's the essence of the book: know your subject, engage attention, speak in words the student understands, connect new ideas to things already understood, guide discovery, require expression, and reinforce through use. Gregory’s key insight is that teaching works best when it aligns with how people naturally learn.

Another memory comes to mind about public school and learning. My next door neighbor, Kenny K, was failing all his classes in fourth grade and the school wanted to hold him back. His mother went to the school and insisted that this was not the solution to his failing grades. I don't know if testing was done or if she was simply persuasive, but instead of being held back, he was placed in sixth grade, skipping fifth grade altogether.

What happened? Kenny became an A student. He was no longer bored to tears by the pace of the class.

When we homeschooled our children for a few years we worked hard to find the right curriculum and the right pace. We saw they had a hunger to learn that we called "learning rage." The time to throw logs on a fire is when the fire is hot.

How does learning happen? It isn't magic.

Learning happens when experience meets attention and gets reinforced over time. It isn’t a single event but a process—taking in new information, connecting it to what we already know, practicing it, and then using it in real situations.

Whether you are a teacher or leader of any kind, you will find the principles in Gregory's book to be helpful. Here are the "laws" as Gregory presents them.

1. The Law of the Teacher

The teacher must know the lesson thoroughly. You cannot teach what you do not understand.

2. The Law of the Learner

The learner must attend with interest. Without attention, there is no real learning.

3. The Law of the Language

The teacher and learner must use a common language—clear, understandable terms.

4. The Law of the Lesson

The new lesson must be connected to what the learner already knows.

5. The Law of the Teaching Process

Teaching is not telling—it is guiding the learner to think and discover.

6. The Law of the Learning Process

The learner must restate or express the idea in their own words to truly grasp it.

7. The Law of Review and Application

Knowledge must be reviewed, reinforced, and applied to become lasting.

A Deeper Look at he Human Condition through the Lens of Dylan's "License to Kill"

2026-03-29T22:24:00.004-05:00

Infidels was Bob Dylan's first album following his trilogy of Gospel infused albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love. "License to Kill was the fourth track on side one. It contains some meaty, thought-provoking content along with an ambiguous chorus and title.

After his overt Gospel period, Bob Dylan didn’t abandon moral vision, he synthesized it, weaving its threads both visibly and discreetly through the albums that followed that period.

Songs like "License to Kill" carry a quiet, probing ethical weight, where questions of power, conscience, and human responsibility echo with biblical depth beneath the surface.

The song depicts the consequences of human arrogance, which is itself an interesting word. Arrogance is the habit of overstepping our place—assuming authority, control, or wisdom we do not truly possess. When we “arrogate power,” we act as if we are ultimate judges or masters, forgetting our limits. It’s the illusion that we can dominate outcomes, people, or even nature, as though we were accountable to no higher order.

The “license” is symbolic: humanity acting as if it has permission to dominate, exploit, and destroy. For me, though, it was the fourth verse and its reference to Narcissus that stimulated my curiosity to dig deeper into this song when I first heard it nearly 44 years ago.

Verse 1 begins "Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please..." Dylan opens with a sweeping indictment: humanity assumes ownership of the Earth as if we are the ultimate authority. It's the illusion of dominion, and Dylan's song is a cautionary warning. Progress without wisdom is dangerous. Because of man's pride, the seeds of our own destruction are already planted.

For years I've always found the refrain a bit curious. "Now, there’s a woman on my block // She just sit there facin’ the hill // She say who gonna take away his license to kill?"

She's watching, waiting, and powerless. Perhaps she represents all of us who see the havoc generated by the narrative-spinners, bomb-slingers and power brokers. With each passing stanza her question is reiterated, and it remains unanswered.

The second stanza addresses social conditioning. Dylan shifts from “man” in general to the conspiracy of systems that shape him—education, culture, media, institutions.

"They take him and they teach him and they groom him for life // And they set him on a path where he’s bound to get ill // Then they bury him with stars // Sell his body like they do used cars

The third goes further still, the aim of propaganda:

"Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused // And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill // All he believes are his eyes // And his eyes, they just tell him lies"

How many times have we read and seen things online or in the media and honestly don't know what's true any more. As Mark Twain once said, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." [EdNote: Guess what? Mark Twain didn't actually say that. It was Edgar Allen Poe. Or was it Ben Franklin?]

People aren't just ignorant of the truth, they're actually products (victims) of engineered misunderstanding. "And his eyes, they just tell him lies." Our perceptions are being deliberately distorted. What we see and believe may be deeply and intentionally misleading.

Preceding the last verse is a bridge that reminds those who think they are powerful, impressive and influential that they may still be playing a shallow role in a larger, misguided system. As we look at today's global chaos, one has to ask what is the endgame here? Who's really running this crazy show?

Oh we think we're so hot. Here's how Dylan puts it:

"Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool

And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled

Oh, man is opposed to fair play

He wants it all and he wants it his way"

The reference to Narcissus is so apt. Instead of striving for something higher, man becomes his own god. When he looks in the mirror he loves what he sees.

"But there’s a woman on my block

Sitting there in a cold chill

She say who gonna take away his license to kill?"

She sees. She still asks. We still don't hear an answer.

It Happens Every Spring: Baseball and Duluth Dylan Fest 2026

2026-03-27T18:04:00.005-05:00

Yesterday morning a pair of low-flying bald eagles flew across my front yard just above the treetops. Earlier this week I saw hawk-watchers on Thompson Hill counting raptors migrating to their northern habitats. These are standard signs of spring here in the Northland. And then there's baseball.

Artwork by Misisipi Mike

Major League Baseball has opened this week. When I was a kid my family would watch It Happens Every Spring around this time of year. The film opens with college professor Ray Milland working on a chemistry project as some kids playing baseball outside hit a ball through the window, smashing his beakers and test tubes. The various chemicals cause something unusual to happen. The stained baseball is repelled by wood. As a result, you can't hit it with a bat. His "discovery" fuels his dream of being a major league pitcher and he takes a sabbatical to help his beloved St. Louis Cardinals reach the World Series.

Bob Dylan was about eight years old when this movie came out, and I have no doubt he saw it. If not at the theater, then I'm sure he saw it on TV because every year it was no doubt broadcast in Hibbing as it was in Cleveland when I was a boy.

Once you start to notice, you will see a lot of connections between Dylan and baseball. Did you know Roger Maris was born in Hibbing? Maris achieved controversial fame by breaking Babe Ruth's home run record the same year Dylan moved to New York City. The Maris controversy was due to the fact that 1961 was the year MLB lengthened its season from 154 to 162 games. This seemed unfair to some diehard fans and sportswriters. Of course, Dylan himself would go on to create his share of controversies.

This year's Duluth Dylan Fest emblem features a cartoonish Bob Dylan in a baseball uniform with the #85 on his back, representing his 85th birthday which we will be celebrating for a week here in Duluth later this spring. The Dylan-Baseball connections are many, hence this year's "logo."

A lot of folks are unaware that Abe Zimmerman played semi-pro baseball here in the Northland. Abe once shared how he travelled from Duluth to Hibbing around 1929 or 1930 to "play ball," where he and his teammates earned about $2 each for the day. In 1941, the same year Robert Zimmerman was born, Duluth built a minor league ballpark called Wade Stadium, which may have been part the inspiration for Dylan's minor league ballpark tours in 2004 and 2009 with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. The day after Dylan performed here in Duluth's Bayfront Park in 2013, he and his bandmates performed at the St Paul Saints Midway Stadium ball park. Bobby Vee was there and Dylan sang Vee's "Suzie Baby" as a tribute.

Illustration by the author.

Longtime Dylan fans are well aware of his Theme Time Radio Hour in which the bard shared his love of nostalgia, trivia and music history. One of his 100 episodes was dedicated to Baseball, the Great American Pastime. Until recently it was the one sport that was not dictated by time. You will enjoy Dylan's atypical rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" near the beginning of the show.

No blog post connecting Dylan and baseball would be complete without mentioning the song "Catfish," which was a nod to Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter, a million-dollar man--"Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can." The song was actually a collaboration with Jacques Levy, who contributed to seven of the nine songs on Dylan's 1976 album Desire.

Baseball is a game of heroes and dreams, and just like you and me, Dylan has had heroes and dreams. Some of those heroes played baseball.

Baseball is also a game of numbers and statistics. A non-profit group called Retrosheet keeps records of every conceivable stat, even those you seldom, if ever, think about. One page of this statistically bloated catalog is devoted the 302 times players were successfully eliminated from the base paths by the "Hidden Ball Trick." What a humiliating way to be sent back to the bench. Listen to some of these names of players who fell prey to this deceit: Joe Quinn, Chief Zimmer, Cupid Childs, Hobe Ferris, Birdie Cree, Fred Snodgrass, Happy Felsch, Wildfire Schulte and Bae McBride. 302 ballplayers suffered this indignity. One thing for sure, though. These guys had colorful names. Bump Wills. That's a baseball name.

Lazy stadium night Catfish on the mound “Strike three,” the umpire said Batter have to go back and sit down
Catfish, million-dollar-man Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can

* * *

SCHEDULE FOR

DULUTH DYLAN FEST 2026

CLICK HERE

Patra McSharry Sevastiades, Co-Author of Grace Unbound part 2

2026-03-26T07:44:00.003-05:00

March 9, 2026 press conference in Chicago.
This is part two of my Interview with Patra McSharry Sevastiades. In the second half of our conversation, co-author Patra Sevastiades reflects on the craft behind the book—how raw material became a compelling narrative, how structure and storytelling choices were made, and what it meant to shape another person’s deeply personal story with care, discipline, and trust.

EN: I've collaborated with authors on two books. Each had important and fascinating stories but needed a lot of editing, which was my role. What was the process of your book project as co-author with Fr. Demetrius?

Patra: What I brought to this project was a facility for writing and for editing.

Here’s the back story. My late husband, Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, had heard that

Fr. Demetri had met a man on death row, Andrew Kokoraleis, and had attempted to save his life. My late husband recommended that that Bishop Demetri write a book about the Orthodox Christian perspective on the death penalty and even developed a book outline. But he died in 2004 so that book never came to be.

Perhaps fifteen years later, the bishop asked a different priest to write a similar book, and the bishop asked me to edit it. I read it and I marked it up. I did not think it would appeal to a general audience. But what was gripping in the 300 pages of manuscript were the little stories that popped up. One, two, or three narrative paragraphs might show up in a given chapter. So I suggested a new approach: focus on the stories and allow narrative to drive the book. We pretty much wrote a completely new manuscript.

One thing we agreed to from the start: we wanted the book to appeal to the general reader, not someone steeped in church history or theology or even spiritual topics.

Second, we found a good process. His Grace talked about things—he is a natural storyteller with an excellent memory—and I took a stab at writing it down, for instance, a given scene or event that he described. I would build in many options (asking him to choose among 3 or 4 adjectives or verbs or to suggest a different one) and I would build in questions. How did that feel? Why did you do that? How did another person look/sound? This would open up a larger conversation. I would understand more, and that would be entrusted to the page as well.

We would go over a section again and again until we got it right. I remember one time we spent 45 minutes—or maybe it was three hours!—talking about one verb! A lot of the book had to do with crisis points in the lives of either the bishop or the people to whom he was ministering, so we were very careful about details and language. We developed an outstanding process of dialogue and a trust between ourselves. Let me add that a question often brought up other stories or clarifications that were themselves quite interesting. In this way, the book bloomed in front of us.

Third, the story also involved a great deal of contextual research. My husband, Dean Casperson, suggested that we add background about HIV/AIDS, since a lot of people probably don’t know that story. He was right. I also needed information about the death penalty, in Illinois and in the United States. In the end, I took out subscriptions to newspaper archives to research events and people, and that research was then woven into the text.

“I was afraid the book was going to be a ‘church’ book,” admitted Politico journalist Shia Kapos when she recently interviewed Bishop Demetrios in Chicago. “But it wasn’t, it was written in a journalistic way.” When I heard her say that, I was relieved that our approach—combining personal narrative and research—had been deemed successful by a journalist.

Beyond the book itself, I did a great deal of research on how to write a great book proposal. I did research on how to write sales copy for the back of the book. I did research on how best to tell a story. I researched literary agents. I submitted 24 book proposals, all of which yielded a no or a non-response. I kept improving the book proposal each time before I sent it to a new agent. But the 25^th book proposal, the one that had all the magic ingredients in just the right measure, was the one that landed us an agent. A month later, we had a publisher.

EN: A lot of editorial decisions go into the structure of a story like this. I believe I understand the motivation for beginning with the grisly details of the "Ripper Crew" murders. It is palpably gripping. But it also takes place years after the story of Bob, the man with AIDS. How was the interweaving of stories decided?

Patra: The overall arc of the book is about Andrew and the death penalty in Illinois because the story occurred across twelve years, and there was a great deal of storytelling about what happened in the state.

Once we made that decision, then we had to say, what do we do with everything else? The story about the AIDS pandemic had fewer details to address; the volume of information would fill less space. If you have two stories, and one is longer than the other, what do you do? Make it chronological? Or open with a dramatic scene that is out of chronological sequence? Sometimes the two timelines overlapped—what then?

And of course, you need drama right off the bat. One of the most dramatic things was the question of whether a man named Andrew was going to be executed or not, and we needed the reader to care about Andrew and about the priest visiting him, Fr. Demetri. We wanted to leave readers wondering, chapter by chapter, What’s going to happen?

The architecture of the book is something we wrestled with. A lot of my time was spent not on writing, but on thinking about the structure and moving things around, thinking, would this work, would that work? Might something else work? You will have to tell us if we succeeded!

We decided to include the story of Demetri, the teenage boy who becomes a priest (and later a bishop) despite his family’s disapproval. His calling to the priesthood was a reminder of the timeless, transcendent quality of some aspects of tradition that are not “logical” but are deeply reassuring. This also allowed the reader to see the bishop as a vulnerable, flawed, relatable person. Following Demetri’s personal spiritual journey and tying that journey into the chapters about HIV/AIDS would allow the book to feel balanced: Andrew and the death penalty in one chapter, HIV/AIDS and Demetri’s spiritual journey in the other, alternating, a 50/50 treatment.

Just when we thought we were done, our editor said, You need to add a final chapter; the action in the book ends in 2011, and you need to update the reader. This was a surprise, a demand that, in the end, pushed open another door, one that allowed readers to walk with the bishop through the most painful passage of his life, when everything fell apart. But what else could we do?

We wrote the new chapter. It was challenging, painful for the bishop to recount. It wasn't until we were almost finished with that chapter that I suddenly gasped the deeper point of the book. It showed up at two crucial moments early in the book, and again in the closing scene. The writing of the book had clarified the meaning of Demetri’s calling to the priesthood; even the painful passage of his life glowed with a meaningful brightness.

And then he wrote the pithy epilogue that he'd always dreamed of writing.
Throughout, there was always a back and forth, an interplay of good ideas and shared effort. I know that the writing was improved by having two minds weighing in on it.

EN: A book project like this is a major time commitment. What prompted you to make that commitment, to tell someone else's story from start to finished publication?

Patra: I loved the idea that I would get to finish the project that my late husband had suggested. The book was quite different from what he originally proposed, but that connection was still very meaningful.

I had retired from the Duluth Library Foundation, and the challenge appealed to me. It was also paid work, so that helped!

In the end, it took about three years to write a compelling book proposal (with a gripping letter to an agent, three solid chapters, good sales copy, and a good argument about why it would sell), find an agent, find an editor, then finish writing the book.

Story is important, but the person behind the story is even more important. Grace Unbound was somebody else’s story, not mine, and it was important to respect that. It had to be told from the bishop’s perspective and how he experienced it; he would live with the consequences of the book in a very immediate sense. As for me, I wanted to be proud of the work that I was doing, and I wanted His Grace to feel that his story was accurately reflected. I heard a lot of personal stories. Some of them ended up in the book. Some of them didn't. But when you share that much about yourself, you get to know someone pretty well. We came to trust each other, and that was also meaningful. In talking to our agent and talking to our editor, we would always refer to one another to make sure that we were always speaking as one and backing each other up. We had a very strong sense of teamwork. This mutual respect was very special.

It was a great honor to work on this book with Bishop Demetrios.

To purchase Grace Unbound, you can ask your local bookstore to order it, or find it online here at Amazon.com.

Read a book review here:

Grace Unbound: Memoir of an Orthodox Bishop Who Takes the Roads Not Taken

Illustration: Susan Jessico

A Visit with Patra McSharry Sevastiades, Co-Author of Grace Unbound

2026-03-25T10:18:00.001-05:00

Patra McSharry Sevastiades

Patra McSharry Sevastiades is an accomplished author, editor, and advocate whose career bridges publishing, education, and community leadership. She began by editing scientific papers for Soviet émigré scientists before authoring nine acclaimed children's nonfiction books, including The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and The Hoover Dam. Her editorial work includes significant religious texts such as Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation and The Gospel of Love: A Meta-Translation.

She served as Editorial Director at Rosen Publishing Group in New York and later as Executive Director of the Duluth Library Foundation, championing literacy and civic engagement. A widow of Greek Orthodox priest Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, she now lives in Duluth, Minnesota, with husband Dean Casperson, their blended family of seven children, and nine grandchildren. Her latest work, co-authored in 2025, is Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop, a compelling narrative of faith-inspired social justice through the life of Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos.

EN: What was your role with the Duluth Library Foundation and what is the foundation's mission?

Patra: I worked at the Duluth Library Foundation from 2011 to 2021. In the last several years of my time there, I was the executive director. Before that, I was an independent contractor, a consultant trying to make things happen. The mission of the Duluth Library Foundation was to expand the Library's capacity to purchase materials and offer programs beyond what the city budget allowed, and I'm happy to say we were able to accomplish that owing to the graciousness of generous donors and the success of pursuing grants.

We had an endowment, of course, which grew from $700,000 at the time that I started, to $2.1 million by the time I left. That felt pretty good. Obviously, that has to do with how money is invested and how the market is doing, but it also reflected remarkable bequests and gifts from people with a heart for the library and books. It gave us a capacity to help the Library, as did several fundraising events and campaigns that we ran each year. It was a joy to see the librarians happy with expanded resources and especially to see children and adults enjoying something that the Foundation made possible.

EN: What prompted you to ask Santa for a dictionary when you were six?

Patra: Why did I ask Santa for a dictionary when I was six years old? I liked language. I thought it was fun knowing stuff. I think, too, that to the child I was, a dictionary embodied the idea that life is safe, not chaotic. A dictionary means that a word has a meaning, or meanings, that are predictably the same.

EN: You have published four books for young readers on diverse themes including The Vietnam War Memorial and the Hoover Dam. What inspired you to tackle these projects and what did you learn from writing books targeted to 8-10 year olds?

Patra: The reason I wrote the children’s books that I did was because there was an opportunity. Those books needed to be written to round out a series, and I was willing, and I needed to earn more money. It was a way to accomplish those things. It was fun to learn how to write for a certain age. It forced me to simplify my thoughts and boil them down to their essence. I also like learning facts and the often-surprising histories behind each topic.

EN: Your career has taken you from studying Russian in Moscow to editing in Washington, DC, and advocating for literacy in the Midwest. How have these diverse experiences shaped your perspective on resilience and adaptability, especially for women navigating multifaceted careers?

Patra: Looking back, there seems to be rhyme and reason to it, but at the time, it certainly didn't seem like it. Life is full of twists and turns, and you follow your heart and your intuition. Opportunities popped up in moments I didn't expect them. Things happened, and I had to pay the bills. A door would open and I'd walk through it, and unexpected things would happen on the other side of the door. I suppose I don't see that as being unique to women, or to parents. As a parent, I found, part of you has to pay the bills for your children’s sake, they're depending on you. It's not just you or your spouse, but these little faces looking up at you. Necessity and resilience both played a part.

I'm grateful there has been so much good in my life. So many doors did open, and there was a kind of a through line that brought me from being a six-year-old wanting a dictionary to studying Russian in college because I loved the work of Dostoevsky, then from translated Russian manuscripts to mainstream publishing, through publishing to my first husband, and from that to raising money for the library, which in turn brought me to my second husband, himself a book collector.

I would say this: keep your eyes open. Look for the next opportunity. I often kept my nose to the grindstone and didn’t look up enough to see what else might be possible. I wish I'd done more of that.

L to R: Patra Sevastiades, Catherine McSharry and
Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos

EN: Your role as an editorial director in New York involved growing both the team and the number of books published. Can you share a memorable experience from that time where you helped bring a writer’s vision to life, and how did that shape your perspective on the power of storytelling?

Patra: My interest in the power of story and storytelling and shaping it got started when I was working outside of Washington, DC, for Delphic Associates, a “beltway bandit” that secured government contracts seeking information during the Cold War about Soviet science. My boss, Gerry Guensberg, owner and founder, had a vast and growing collection of resumes from Soviet scientists who had immigrated to the United States. The US government might want a paper on Soviet helicopter technology, and Jerry would find a scientist to write it and would submit a proposal. Once the contract was secured, we would commission a paper and then have it translated.

As a rule, the scientists are brilliant but usually not great writers. We would have it translated into English and then work with the author to improve it, working by phone and also face to face. We added historical background and political context and made sure the text was clear to the general reader. Then we published it. I discovered that I loved the process, and I loved working with authors.

EN: Can you share a little more about your career as an editor?

Patra: In my experience as an editor, the magical part happens when you help an author see with fresh eyes how their manuscript reads. I remember one particular moment when I had the pleasure of working with Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He submitted a short story to our publication, Icarus, a quarterly of international writing, modeled after Granta but for young adults. It was excellent. As was my norm, I wrote a letter complimenting the author on the story and suggested only one small change, to clarify a slightly confusing image of the movement of a fish.

Then I called him, as previously agreed, and he was angry at me. He had a point: he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Who was I to suggest a change to his story? I listened to him, and when he was done venting, I said, “I understand what you're saying.” Then I asked, “May I tell you how I understood the sentence as it is written?”

I read the sentence and told him what had confused me: I couldn’t tell if the fish was in the boat or outside of it. That had made me stop and wonder.

“My concern,” I told him, “is that if a reader stops reading because something is unclear, they might just stop reading and put the book down. I don't want them to put the book down. I want the text to be clear enough that they'll keep reading.”

He listened and perceived that it was in his interest that I made my suggestion, it wasn’t about my ego. “Tell me how you would change it,” he said. I read it to him with my suggested change. “Oh, that's all,” he said. “That's fine.” He was a lovely, gracious person.

That was a great experience. It was and is a pleasure to work with other people and come to a good resolution. It is satisfying to see good ideas get better.

CONTNUED

Tech Tuesday: A.I., Robots and Future Impacts of the Tech Revolution

2026-03-24T09:10:00.000-05:00

Over the past decade, I've been fascinated by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and its profound impact on work, creativity, journalism, marketing, and society at large. From early conversations with futurist Calum Chace about The Economic Singularity and Surviving AI, to exploring how ChatGPT is reshaping storytelling and white-collar jobs, I've been tracking AI’s journey from speculative fiction to everyday reality.

In this collection, you’ll find reflections on jobs that AI may soon transform or eliminate, ethical questions surrounding AI-generated art in advertising, the poetic warnings of Richard Brautigan, optimistic predictions from Mark Cuban, and even the possibility of chatbots falling in love. Whether you're concerned about the future of your career, curious about AI’s creative potential, or simply trying to make sense of this technological revolution, I offer these posts as a thoughtful, wide-ranging look at one of the most important stories of our time.

AI Artificial Intelligence

A Visit with Futurist Calum Chace on his new book The Economic Singularity

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-visit-with-futurist-calum-chace-on.html

Surviving AI by Calum Chace Is a Must Read for Those Who Plan to Be Here in the Future

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/surviving-ai-by-calum-chace-is-must.html

Will Computers Put Journalists Out Of Business? Check Out These 7 Stories

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/04/will-computers-put-journalists-out-of.html

The AI Revolution and Marketing (Part One)

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-ai-revolution-and-marketing-part-one.html

What Kinds of Jobs Will Be Lost Due to AI?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/07/what-kinds-of-jobs-will-be-lost-due-to.html

Four ChatGPT Stories with Implications for All

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/04/four-chatgpt-stories-with-implications.html

Can ChatBots Fall In Love?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/03/can-chatbots-fall-in-love.html

Tech Tuesday: A.I. Is Already Taking White Collar Writing Jobs. Who's Next?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/08/tech-tuesday-ai-is-already-taking-white.html

Interview with David Asch Offers Insights On A.I.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/10/interview-with-david-asch-offers.html

The Importance of Klara and the Sun For Data Science Workers (by David Asch)

https://medium.com/management-matters/the-importance-of-klara-and-the-sun-for-data-science-workers-2b9768c2d50f

Tech Tuesday: The Future of Jobs (Part One)

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/06/tech-tuesday-future-of-jobs-part-one.html

Richard Brautigan's "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/02/richard-brautigans-all-watched-over-by.html

Tech Tuesday: Two AI Specialists Place Wagers on the Economic Impact of AI

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2017/12/tech-tuesday-two-ai-specialists-place.html

Tech Tuesday: Mark Cuban Predicts AI Entrepreneur Trillionaires

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2017/03/tech-tuesday-mark-cuban-predicts-ai.html

A.I. Art in Advertising: Unethical or Much Ado about Nothing?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/04/ai-art-in-advertising-unethical-or-much.html

Flashback Friday: Will A.I. Finally Solve the JFK Assassination?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/11/flashback-friday-will-ai-finally-solve.html

Michael Glover Smith Sheds Light on Bob Dylan as Film Maker

2026-03-24T00:21:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago I learned about Michael Glover Smith's new book Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think (McNidder & Grace, 2026). Smith is both an avid fan of film and of Bob Dylan, whom he has seen in concert more than 75 times, and his book is an impressive deep dive into its subject.

Smith is an award-winning Chicago-based filmmaker whose latest production, Hekla, was premiered March 6, four days after after the release of his new book. In this insightful interview, Smith draws on his own experience as a director and makes a compelling case for Bob Dylan as a legitimate auteur. The book explores Dylan's directorial works—like the experimental Eat the Document (1966/1972), the epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), and the semi-surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003)—revealing how these films offer a personal window into Dylan's evolving identity, performance, and artistry across key eras.

Dylan as a Filmmaker

EN: Dylan is often described as an elusive or anti-narrative artist. How does that sensibility translate into his filmmaking—does he reject traditional storytelling, or is he creating a different kind of narrative altogether?

MGS: The films about which I consider Dylan to be the primary author, Eat the Document, Renaldo and Clara, and Masked and Anonymous, all employ strategies familiar from his songwriting. Dylan's best narrative songs always feel intentionally "incomplete" -- as if he's giving us a puzzle with some of the pieces missing, and we have to work with him to complete the narrative. I'm thinking of "Tangled Up in Blue," "Brownsville Girl," and even something more recent like "Tin Angel." They're all story-songs that are disorientingly non-linear or that shift their perspectives in tantalizing ways. Dylan's films operate in a similar register.

EN: Many viewers find Dylan’s films challenging or even frustrating. Do you think that’s intentional? Is he testing the audience in the same way he has throughout his musical career?

MGS: I think Dylan likes to challenge his audience, no matter the medium he's working in. The fact that he's been phenomenally successful as a musician has probably allowed him to care less about whether the films are successful. Larry Charles gave an interview at the time of the release of Masked and Anonymous where he claimed that Dylan had said to him something like, "Don't worry about how this movie does in the short term." It was as if Dylan knew the film wouldn't do well initially but would eventually be re-evaluated, which is exactly what happened. Not many people working in the film medium have that luxury. Most filmmakers want to be as successful as possible right away because that will allow them to make the next movie. Masked and Anonymous is very perverse: It has a huge A-list ensemble cast, and yet it refuses to function as a commercial object, which is why I compare it to Godard's King Lear. It's deliberately anti-climactic: The whole film seems to be building up to this big benefit concert but when it finally happens, it gets shut down after one song.

EN: If we think of Dylan as an auteur, what are the defining characteristics of his cinematic voice? What themes or techniques recur across his work as a filmmaker?

MGS: I make the point early on in my book that the subject of every Bob Dylan film is "Bob Dylan." He's telling us how it feels to be him -- what his life is like on the road as a touring musician, his relationship to his art, and the difficulty he has in striking a balance between his personal life and his professional life. I would go so far as to say that I think he's more nakedly autobiographical in his films (especially when he's playing characters named "Renaldo" and "Jack Fate") than he is in his own songs. Formally, Dylan's movies are most interesting in terms of how they're edited. In Eat the Document and Renaldo and Clara, the two films that Dylan directed, he exerts his authorial voice most as an editor. He's using footage shot by D.A. Pennebaker, Howard Alk and others, and then re-arranging it to create new meanings in the editing room. I think that with Masked and Anonymous, he did essentially the same thing but at the scriptwriting stage (i.e., combining different literary fragments like he does in his recent songs).

Renaldo and Clara (1978)

EN: Renaldo and Clara blends documentary, fiction, and performance in unusual ways. What was Dylan trying to achieve with that hybrid form, and how should audiences approach it?

MGS: I think Renaldo and Clara is the ultimate Bob Dylan movie. He's deliberately experimenting with the language of cinema by combining different modes of filmmaking. I think a lot of viewers have been frustrated by it because they bring preconceptions to it. I've read a lot of reviews, for instance, that claim that the character of "Bob Dylan" is played by Ronnie Hawkins and that "Mrs. Dylan" is played by Ronee Blakley -- because that's how those actors are credited at the end. So people watch the movie with that in mind and try to make sense of it in that way. But I think Dylan created those credits as a joke in the editing room. Blakley has said that she was unaware she was playing Dylan's wife during the shooting of her scenes. It's a wild movie, and it's very funny. My advice to anyone watching it for the first time is to just let it wash over you. Let it take you for a ride and don't worry about what it "means" any more than you worried about what "Desolation Row" meant the first time you listened to it. Then, if you feel compelled to watch it again, I would advise paying attention to Dylan's use of juxtaposition. Why is he cutting from this image to that image or from this scene to that scene? What do the scenes have in common on a thematic level? Why does he juxtapose a particular song with a particular set of images? It's a very carefully edited movie, but the juxtapostions are more poetic than they are narrative.

EN: The film has often been criticized as self-indulgent or incoherent. In your view, is that a fair critique—or are critics missing something essential about its purpose?

MGS: Calling a film "self-indulgent" or "pretentious" is often a way for critics to let themselves off the hook. They don't even have to try to analyze what the movie is doing. They can just describe their own confusion and how hostile they feel about it. You see this with virtually every mainstream review of Godard's work in recent decades. The amazing thing about Renaldo and Clara is that Dylan's screen time is relatively minimal! Pauline Kael famously said that Dylan gave himself more close-ups than any actor has had in the entire history of cinema. I'm guessing she said that solely because of the "Tangled Up in Blue" sequence, which is a single-take scene of Dylan performing the song in close-up. But Dylan was very generous as a filmmaker in terms of how much screen time he devotes to all the members of the Rolling Thunder ensemble. He allows us to see great performances by Ronee Blakley, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, etc. Ginsberg barely performed on the Rolling Thunder Revue, but he ends up being a major presence in the movie.

EN: In college I went to a lot of "art films" (including an hour of Warhol's 24 hour Empire.) Was R&C deliberately more "art film" as a genre or something else?

MGS: Renaldo and Clara is definitely an "art film." Dylan was exposed to European art films for the first time when he arrived in Greenwich Village in 1961. He has cited Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, Godard's Breathless, and Fellini's La Dolce Vita as influences in interviews. I don't think Eat the Document would have turned out quite the way it did if Dylan had not been exposed to those films. It's interesting that you mention Warhol's Empire. Dylan also praised Warhol's use of the long, uninterrupted take in that film when promoting Renaldo and Clara in 1978.

Masked and Anonymous (2003)

EN: This film feels like a fractured allegory of America—almost dreamlike and disjointed. What is Dylan saying about American culture or identity through that structure?

MGS: Masked and Anonymous is a very bleak and pessimistic movie. It takes place in a version of America that's a totalitarian police state in the midst of a civil war. There's only one television network, and it's controlled by the government. At the time of the film's release, that seemed fanciful. But in 2026, Larry and David Ellison, who are aligned with Trump, control CBS, HBO, Warner Brothers, TikTok, CNN, and a whole bunch of other cable channels and networks. I don't think Dylan and Larry Charles were necessarily trying to predict the future in making that movie. They were just looking at American history -- the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, the American Civil War, the legacies of slavery and racism -- and using that to create a version of America as seen in a "carnival mirror" (to borrow a phrase Dylan uses to describe La Dolce Vita in Chronicles: Volume One).

EN: Dylan’s character seems both central and strangely passive. How does that reflect his artistic persona, and what role does he play within the film’s world?

MGS: I talked to Larry Charles about this at the Sundance premiere in 2003. The central idea of the movie is that Jack Fate is a Buster Keaton-like figure, completely stone-faced. Everyone around him is acting their asses off. They're all giving these verbose monologues, chewing up the scenery, and Dylan just stands there silently. Or maybe he'll say one pithy line. It's as if he's a blank slate and they're all projecting onto him. That was very deliberate on Larry Charles' part. I think part of the reason was recognizing Dylan's limitations as an actor, not requiring him to have to do too much. There's also a long history of laconic leading men in American cinema -- the "strong, silent type" that you see in westerns and in film noir. They're riffing on that as well.

Shadow Kingdom (2021)

EN: Shadow Kingdom is visually controlled and intimate, almost theatrical. How does this film differ from Dylan’s earlier cinematic work in terms of style and intention?

MGS: I love Shadow Kingdom! You're right in describing it as "visually controlled." According to Alexander Burke, who plays the accordion player in the film, Dylan "respected the shit out of" director Alma Har'el. I think he trusted her and was content to let her do her thing in a way that he may not have been with, say, Richard Marquand in Hearts of Fire or the directors of some of his music videos. The production design and the cinematography of Shadow Kingdom are both really great. It's beautifully lit and shot. The director of photography was Lol Crawley, who would go on to win an Oscar for The Brutalist. The extras are all wearing period costumes, and there are all sorts of interesting set design touches -- the checkerboard floor, the air conditioner with tassels in front of it, etc. All of that took a lot of care and planning. We thought it was going to be a live concert, but it turned out to be a real movie instead!

EN: The film revisits Dylan’s earlier songs in a stylized setting. Is this nostalgia, reinvention, or something else entirely?

MGS: I think that Dylan had been wanting to do something like this for a long time, and that it took the pandemic for him to finally have the time to realize it. According to journalist David Wild, who I interviewed for the book, Dylan wanted to make a fake documentary about the making of "Love and Theft." The idea was for him and his band to go back into the studio after they had made the album, lip-sync the songs, and have someone film that. And then pretend like that was real footage of the making of that album. For whatever reason, he decided not to do it, but Shadow Kingdom ended up being a kind of similar cinematic hoax. I think the biggest stylistic influences on Shadow Kingdom are French Poetic Realism (a kind of precursor to American film noir) and Twin Peaks: The Return, which incongruously features lip-synced performances by famous musicians in a similarly intimate and surreal "roadhouse" setting.

EN: Michael, thank you for your time. I'm impressed by the book and your enthusiasm for both film history and Dylan.

RELATED LINKS

Interview #50: Michael Glover Smith

Dylan on film author opens up

Simon Warner, 2026

Bobcats Interview with Matt Steichen

Michael Glover Smith talks about his Bob Dylan fandom,
from the Traveling Wilburys to the RARW Tour

Michael Glover Smith

Bio, Films, Books, News

Bob Dylan in Minnesota
Troubadour Tales from Duluth, Hibbing and Dinkytown

Mathematics Isn't Just for Math Nuts: An Introduction to James Duane Nickel

2026-03-23T08:46:00.001-05:00

James Duane Nickel is an American educator, author, and mathematician who integrates Christian perspectives into mathematics education. Holding a BA in Mathematics, BTh, BMiss, and MA in Education, he serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Cultural Leadership. He is best known for his book Mathematics: Is God Silent? (revised edition), which argues for a biblical foundation in math, and the curriculum series The Dance of Number.

Why Study Mathematics? It Is the Language of Creation
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/08/mathematics-is-god-silent.html

Let's Talk Algebra: Ten Minutes with James D Nickel

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/02/math-guy-talks-about-algebra-interview.html

Book Review – Mathematics: Is God Silent?

https://www.kuyperian.com/p/book-review-mathematics-is-god-silent

Interview with the Author of Mathematics: Is God Silent?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-author-of-mathematics-is.html

Interview with James D. Nickel on Mathematics: Is God Silent? (Part 2)

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-author-of-mathematics-is_27.html

Book Review: Mathematics – Is God Silent? (James Nickel)

https://relentlesspursuit.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/book-review-mathematics-is-god-silent-james-nickel/

Why James Nickel wrote "Mathematics: Is God Silent?"

https://biblicalchristianworldview.net/documents/whymathematicsisgodsilent.pdf

What others are saying about "Mathematics: Is God Silent?"

https://godandmath.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/review-of-mathematics-is-god-silent.pdf

"Every Christian teacher of mathematics should read this book."—Gene B. Chase

I would be remiss not to mention that James has been a long-time friend as well as a source of inspiration. At his Biblical Christian Worldview website you can see for yourself his dedication to the pursuit of God, love of mathematics and passion for educating future generations regarding the wonder and beauty of mathematics.

Nevada Bob Gordon's Latest Album Earns Praise from the Bob Dylan Center

2026-03-22T04:53:00.001-05:00

Nevada Bob Gordon is one of those rare individuals whose life reads like a country song come to life—full of twists, hard work, and a deep love for music. A singer, songwriter, and author (best known for his memoir 50 Years with the Wrong Woman), Nevada Bob has worn many hats over the decades: Navy veteran, police officer, cattle rancher, gold mine assayer, and hydrocarbon well analyst. Through it all, music has been his constant companion.

In late 2025, he released his ninth album, titled I'm Happy Wherever I Go... Most Folks Are Happy Whenever I Go! Recorded in Nashville--with an All Star team*--the project features a mix of covers and originals that showcase his gravelly voice and storytelling style. Standouts include classics like Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill," John Fogerty's "Bad Moon Rising," Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings tunes, and Wyland's "Keep It Country Keep It Real."

One track in particular stands out: a heartfelt cover of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" from Dylan's 1965 masterpiece Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's original is a slow, laid-back blues gem—one of the more relaxed cuts on an album packed with electric energy. It draws from traditional blues roots, weaving in influences from legends like Charley Patton, Brownie McGhee, and Leroy Carr, while adding Dylan's poetic touch.

The song carries a world-weary resignation: life can be tough, joy doesn't come easy ("it takes a lot to laugh"), but sorrow arrives almost inevitably ("it takes a train to cry"). Trains in blues lore often symbolize departure, lost love, or life's transient journeys—perfect for a track that's equal parts melancholy and gentle groove.

Nevada Bob brings his own flavor to it, infusing the tune with a seasoned, lived-in feel that honors the original while making it feel fresh and personal.

The highlight? An email from Steven Jenkins, Director of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The center, which houses Dylan's vast archives and celebrates his legacy, reached out after Nevada Bob shared his CD:

Howdy Bob,

Nice to chat last week, and thanks again for sharing your CD with me. I really like your Dylan cover—you bring a whole new feel to the song—and the rest of the album is terrific as well.

Thanks again, and wishing you all the best from the Dylan Center.

Steve Steven Jenkins

Director, Bob Dylan Center

Coming from the official stewards of Dylan's work, these kind words carry real weight. It's a nod that Nevada Bob's interpretation resonates even with those closest to the source material.

At 85+ (and still going strong), Nevada Bob Gordon proves that passion for music—and a good story—never ages.

If you're a fan of classic country, bluesy covers, or just authentic voices from the road, give I'm Happy Wherever I Go... a listen. It might just put a smile on your face... most folks do when Nevada Bob's around.

(You can find his music on platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and more. And naturally, if you're ever in Tulsa, swing by the Bob Dylan Center—it's a treasure trove for Dylan enthusiasts.)

What do you think of Dylan's bluesier side? Have you heard Nevada Bob's take? Drop a comment below!

Musicians accompanying Nevada Bob on this CD: Wanda Vick Burchfield, Charlie McCoy, Mark Burchfield, Eddie Bayers, and Randy Moore.

The Secret Sharer

2026-03-21T10:52:00.001-05:00

I still remember the first time I read "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad. I had obtained this peach-colored paperback titled Great Short Works of Joseph Conrad. His story "The Lagoon" knocked my socks off when I first read it and made me hungry for more of Conrad's stories and novels. This volume included "Heart of Darkness," famously re-interpreted in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, as well as this one, "The Secret Sharer." I was determined to learn how to write short fiction (I didn't believe I had enough free time to write a novel while raising a family and holding down a full time job) so I selected classic authors and burrowed through as much of their work as I was able. Conrad was one of these.

I loved Conrad's stories for several reasons. First, because I was impressed by the fact that English was his third language. Second, because they were deep. He found ways to touch deep parts of our inner lives by making vivid the psychological complexity of his characters. Third, his descriptions were so alive and the writing beautiful. You could easily tell he had experienced the settings where his stories took place---a South Pacific island or Congo backwater or, in this case, a sailing vessel in the South Seas.

This story is told in first-person by a young, unnamed captain taking command of his first ship. Only later did I learn that "The Secret Sharer" is based partly on a real shipboard tragedy and partly on Conrad’s personal memories of himself commanding a vessel for the first time, which makes the story so real, even though that's not precisely what the story is about. By combining those two sources, Conrad created a psychological sea tale about leadership, responsibility, and something bigger.

That "something bigger" is the nature of human nature. When I myself read "The Secret Sharer" I saw the story as a metaphor for our "two selves," the one that is hidden and the other that is known. This "house divided" cannot stand, thus the story is includes the question of how to bring resolution to this inner conflict.

As the story begins we learn that narrator is captain of a ship at port in the Gulf of Siam. Across the way there is another ship anchored called The Sephora. We quickly learn this our hero's first command as captain. He's quite young for such responsibilities, still in his twenties, and this story is essentially a rite of passage, his personal initiation into leadership.

The night before departure he instructs the crew to knock off early so they'll be rested for the voyage. The mates obey, but think it a curious thing for the captain to take the night watch in this manner. What happens next is even more curious. In the dark he goes to pull up the ladder but it seems stuck on something. When he looks, it startles him to see what appears to be a headless man holding on to the bottom rung of the ladder.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea lightning played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly, silvery, fishlike. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no motion to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude.

He goes on to say...

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the ladder to swim away beyond my ken—mysterious as he came. But, for the moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the sea.

In reading this I was immediately given the impression that this "bottom of the sea" was a metaphor for his subconscious self.

The man (his name is Leggatt) is invited to come aboard and the captain rushes off to get him clothes so that they are dressed alike and even look alike, Leggatt himself being in his twenties as well. As they talk, we learn that Leggatt shares the same education and background. The captain calls him his double, so there is no mistaking the meaning of this character.

But we also, the captain and reader, learn that Leggatt is a fugitive. He killed a man while serving as first mate on the Sephora. The young captain listens to the man's account of the incident. The chief mate, refusing to follow orders to secure a sail, put the Sephora at risk and with it the safety of all aboard. In short, though Leggatt saved the ship he was locked up for the crime.

Feeling the crime may have been justified, the narrator of this tale hides his double in his own quarters. They each share their personal stories and consider how things will unfold as a result of this unplanned, unlikely twist of fate.

So begins a tale fraught with tension, first because this is also a test of the captain's own ability to lead. And then there's the stress generated by having to conceal this secret from the crew. The story is a perfect setup to address themes of isolation, the duality of the self, courage, and the struggle to assert authority.

As the story unfolds the screws tighten, but as in life, stress reveals who we are and what we're really made of. This is the heart of the story.

* * *

Joseph Conrad had been working on the political novel Under Western Eyes, which dealt with life and politics in Russia, to write this shorter story which was originally called “The Secret-Sharer: An Episode from the Sea.” It was first published in two installments in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in August and September of 1910. A couple of years later, in October 1912, it appeared again as part of a small collection of Conrad’s sea stories titled ’Twixt Land and Sea: Tales.

Read the story here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/220/220-h/220-h.htm

Bonus Track: The Lagoon

https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Lago.shtml