Tag: politics
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NotebookLM on Project 2025
At the risk of ruining your Thanksgiving holiday and throwing us further into a “psychological funk” as we approach the political uncertainties of 2025, I’d like to share a brief (and successful) experiment I conducted yesterday using the full PDF of Project 2025 and the artificial intelligence (AI) model NotebookLM. As you may be aware,…
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Ending Christian Nationalism
These are my notes from Amanda Tyler’s presentation about her book, “How to End Christian Nationalism” on October 22, 2024, at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was a conversation facilitated by Jennifer Roberts, former mayor of Charlotte. MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS…
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Dehumunization is Wrong
Dehumanizing other human beings: Denying the essential humanity of other people, is ethically wrong and immoral at a basic level. It is also dangerous, because people who view other human beings as sub-human or “inhuman” are capable of horrific atrocities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights embodies the aspirational values of our founding documents in…
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Communists and Conspiracies
One thing that has surprised and even confused me in recent months has been the assertion that our U.S. schools and mainstream, progressive political parties / leadership circles are “filled with communists.” This “fringe argument” has sadly become more mainstream. It is instructive as well as sad to read more about the historical roots of…
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LISTEN Carefully to his Words
I’ve never previously recommended on my blog that anyone watch an official video from the National Rifle Association / NRA, but I am tonight. Today after school and following an evening school event, I watched the entirety of our 45th President’s recorded address this afternoon at the “NRA-IRL Leadership Forum.” He was the last speaker…
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Transcending Political Polarization
I’ve been paying for the “Plus” version of ChatGPT for several weeks, but haven’t really used it much. This evening, I experimented with some questions about how we might transcend our presently high levels of political polarization in the United States. ChatGPT 4’s answers are remarkably good. Here’s a transcript of our dialog. I’ve added…
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Learning About Russia
The Russian-initiated war in Ukraine is continuing into its second year, and it’s hard to believe not only the harsh and cruel realities of that conflict which are ongoing, but also the dismal prospects for both regional and global peace at this point in human history. (March 2023) It’s a good time for all of…
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Putin and Christian Nationalism
Whether or not you are a follower of Jesus and publicly profess “Christianity” as your faith, it’s important to pay attention what many “Conservative Christians” have been saying and continue to say about Vladimir Putin and his cultural / political agenda. I want to recommend two recent articles and OpEds on these topics. First, check…
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Polar Extremes on NOVA – Behold the Reality of Higher Carbon Dioxide Levels
Thanks to Mike Sharp, one of the members of our Sunday School class this year (“Curiosity and Questions: Jesus and Science”), I learned about the new NOVA PBS Special, “Polar Extremes.” Here’s a 3 minute preview of the full episode I watched tonight, which runs just under 2 hours long. I watched it on AppleTV…
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Understanding the Puerto Rican Blackout: Bank Regulation, Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Leadership
This afternoon I watched the outstanding PBS Frontline documentary, “Blackout in Puerto Rico.” The program unwraps the story of why it took 7 months to restore electrical power to most of the island of Puerto Rico, following the devastation wrought by hurricane Maria in September 2017, and the complicated reasons why the infrastructure of the island had…