Resisting the AI future?

What will become of us? How technology is changing what it means to be human” is the title of a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine. Something about the helplessness of that plaintive question says a lot about our situation when it comes to the computerization of life and AI (artificial intelligence). Two […]

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January 5, 2019 – 6:11 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

If it can’t happen here, why not?

“It can’t happen here.” Since Trump was elected, we’ve heard this phrase a lot, with its ironic message of Oh yes it can. In fact it might be happening even as we speak. (And we, frogs in slowly heated water, have just gotten used to it.) So what’s the “it” that we’d like to think […]

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December 6, 2018 – 1:05 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

The crazy-making premise of Veterans Day

The recent Veterans Day got more media notice than usual as the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, its earlier form, created to commemorate the ending of World War One. That war was demoted to just another world war from the “Great War” when it turned out not to be the “war to end all wars.” […]

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November 30, 2018 – 9:50 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Contradictions of our modern romance of the ocean

There was an emotional gathering at Newcomb Hollow beach in Welllfleet in October to celebrate the life of the young man killed by a shark. Part of it was a “paddle-out” of dozens of surfers to form a circle. It took some guts to go out there, I thought, well beyond warnings on the posted […]

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November 9, 2018 – 3:49 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

The logic of not voting. And of voting.

For as long as I can remember, a theme of civic life has been the scandalously low voter turnout in national elections. On average 40% of eligible voters don’t vote in presidential elections, about 60% in off-years. A curious phenomenon, this failure to vote–to exercise the most basic right in what we think of as […]

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October 26, 2018 – 7:14 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

The shark crisis: speciesism vs. ecological altruism

In response to the shark fatality crisis, Wellfleet’s selectboard scheduled what was called by some a Shark Town Meeting. It filled the elementary school gym to overflowing, maybe half again the number of attendees as at the Special Town Meeting earlier the same week. After preliminary statements from town officials and shark experts, the meeting […]

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October 12, 2018 – 12:31 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Contradictions of shark romance

“We all knew this day would come” ran the big front page headline about the fatal shark attack in Wellfleet. Well, actually, no, we didn’t. Six deaths annually worldwide on average (and first fatality in Massachusetts in 82 years) is pretty good odds Sure, those odds rise when you eliminate all the people who don’t […]

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September 28, 2018 – 10:17 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Crazy poor Americans

Can we talk about “Crazy Rich Asians”? We crazy, poor Americans are turning out in crazy numbers to see this movie, whose exotic opulence transcends its cliched romantic comedy plot. The movie seems fresh, not just in its all-Asian cast, but in widening our continent-locked, monolinguistic diversity horizon. The plot takes us to Singapore, where […]

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September 13, 2018 – 10:52 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Good for us; shame on us

You know that trick of eyesight: how you can see a moon crater as concave or as convex, but not both at the same time? It keeps flipping between. There was a story in this paper recently that produced for me something of the same effect. Back in the 80s and early 90s, Ben Buck, […]

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September 3, 2018 – 1:07 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Discriminating between two forms of democracy.

As an English major I’ve been confused by the term “populism” being bruited about recently. It has the sound of democracy, of which I have always been a fan. So why are so many liberals associating it with the drift toward fascism? Turning dutifully to my wikipedia, I discovered that the confusion is not just […]

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August 20, 2018 – 1:25 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)