Category «Deep Thought»

Some Aspects of the Yellow Peril

Ages ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I was wandering across Asia and decided to spend some time in Taiwan. The Chinese interested me, and Taiwan was then as close as it was practical to get. Then, as now, the Chinese were thought by many to be exotic, inscrutable, devious and unlike normal people …

Constructing the TerminatorA Top-Down Approach

}these are deranged ramblings, perhaps of psychiatric interest. If pressed, Fred will deny authorship and possibly bring an action for defamation. }beware. These days, not unreasonably I think, people wonder whether artificial intelligence will produce an electronic being superior to, well, us. Others of darker immaaginings ask whether we don’t face the arrival of a …

A View from Mexico

We gringos south of the border hear considerable rumbling and grumbling from the US about things that Mexico does that set poorly in the north. Well, yes and no. There are other ways of looking at things. A few reflections. In 1965 the United States, not Mexico, changed the immigration laws, apparently to encourage immigration …

Odds and Bits

  Freedom of expression, as distinct from speech. Fred, Grand Klarified Klingle of Los Cucu Clan, with severe visual problems, but still dangerous. Regalia by Violeta, of used typing paper. Probably a fire hazard. Obsidian knife shows ethnic sensitivity. Today we will have luminous insights in small dollops. They will doubtless spur the formation of …

The Maya: Notes on a Curious People

Inasmuch as America has a large population of Latin Americans, it seems to me that some might want to know about them, and what they are, and where they came from. Most Latinos of the south are either a mixture of Spanish and Indian, or sometimes pure Indian. We have some idea of the Spaniards. …

Of Army Ants and Pit Bulls: The Biological Roots of War

The biological–that is, genetic—roots of human behavior have been a disputed matter at least since The Bell Curve, most heatedly regarding race.  The measure of racial intelligence has been the sharpest focus with psychometrists universally, as far as I can determine, ranking races by IQ as Ashkenazi Jews, East Asians, whites, Latinos, and blacks. While …