One Stop Thought Shop

The formation of intelligent critical world citizens !

If no one answers your call, then walk on alone.
Walk alone, walk alone, walk on alone.

If no one says a thing, oh you unlucky soul, If faces are turned away, if all go on fearing— Then opening up your heart, You speak up what’s on your mind, you speak up alone.

If they all turn back, oh you unlucky soul, If, at the time of taking the deep dark path, no one cares— Then the thorns that are on the way, Oh you, trampling those with bloodied feet, you tramp on alone.

If a lamp no one shows, oh you unlucky soul, If in a rainstorm on a dark night they bolt their doors— Then in the flame of thunder Lighting your own ribs, go on burning alone.

Martha C. Nussbaum:

No nation is so secure in its commitment to democracy that it can afford to gamble its future away by pursuing the false idols of rote learning and mere technical mastery.

Decision making and governance among Inuit authorities.

via Chris Corrigan:

Pijitsirniq, the concept of serving.
Piliriqatigiingniq, the concept of collaborative purpose.
Pilimmaksarniq, the concept of skills and knowledge acquisition.
Qanuqtuurunnarniq, the concept of being resourceful.
Aajiiqatigiingniq, the concept of consensus decisions.
Avatimik Kamattiarniq, the concept of environmental stewardship.
This planet is all we’ve got.

Rachel Laudan:

Eating fresh, natural food was regarded with suspicion verging on horror; only the uncivilized, the poor, and the starving resorted to it.

To make food tasty, safe, digestible, and healthy, our forebears bred, ground, soaked, leached, curdled, fermented, and cooked naturally occurring plants and animals until they were literally beaten into submission. They created sweet oranges and juicy apples and non-bitter legumes, happily abandoning their more natural but less tasty ancestors. They built granaries, dried their meat and their fruit, salted and smoked their fish, curdled and fermented their dairy products, and cheerfully used additives and preservatives—sugar, salt, oil, vinegar, lye—to make edible foodstuffs.

David Gentilcore:

In Italy, up until the 1950s, there was a large part of the country, even where they produce tomatoes, where they wouldn’t eat the stuff.

Most Italian dishes, such as pasta al pomodoro, are fairly recent — from the 1870s or ’80s. Italian immigrants arriving in New York City or Boston were the first generation to eat these dishes as daily things. Making a rich meat sauce with maybe the addition of tomato paste, that Sunday gravy style, is something that happens only in the 20th century.

Dan Jurafsky:

The story starts in the mid-6th century in Persia.

French fries, the “chips” of “fish and chips”, are Belgian, and came to England only in the mid-19th century. And the “fish”, deep-fried battered fish, turns out to be a cousin to ceviche; both of them, as well as some other well-known foods that’ll we’ll get to, are the direct descendents of the favorite dish of the Shahs of Persia more than 1500 years ago.

Name the person that has caused the most harm in the name of religion.

Wha?! Only one?

God’s Lunatics !

Lost Souls,
False Prophets,
Martyred Saints,
Murderous Cults,
Demonic Nuns,
and Other Victims of Man’s Eternal Search for the Divine.

“I was getting kind of crazy at the end of the book. With all the different gods, it got hard to sleep.” – Michael Largo

Gary Jones:

I tend to pretty much disagree with everyone and everything.

Feynman’s assertion that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts seems like simple good sense that generalizes to all aspects of human endeavor. Humans are fallible: this is a feature not a bug. Fail forward faster etc.

Everything that I know is wrong, though I don’t know what is wrong with what I know, or what is right, and assume that the same is true for you since I’ve seldom if ever seen contrary evidence that upon close examination proved to be sound.

I’m comfortable with the fact that we are all lack-wits and bumblers, and comfortable with continuing none the less to pursue immediate objectives that seem to be worthwhile given current circustances and understandings. Our current errors will be revealed shortly, though our general condition will be unchanged by those revealations.

Good cheer and a sense of humor are useful as salve for our embarrassment and wounds.

Not  all brooders and ruminators are created equal.

American brooders show extremely high levels of depressive symptoms. Russian brooders are less likely to be depressed. Rumination is an emotional buffer for Russians, but makes Americans depressed.

Yes, it’s true. Deepest thoughts and feelings are not the same in Moscow or Michigan.