Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

The f-word

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Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’ simpliciter. Continue reading →

Writing history

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I have been reading The Sea Peoples, another book about the widespread destruction at the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean. From page 173:

There is a dangerous temptation to link destruction levels together in the interests of tidiness and economy, but history is seldom tidy or notably economical, however it may be with philosophy. This is one of the reasons why history should not be written by philosophers or sociologists.