This week I finished: Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave, directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery: If you've followed my pursuit to learn about the pattern of how people are induced to act against their values by culture around them---also known as corruption---you'll recognize the subject of this movie. It's about high school history teacher Ron Jones, who in 1967, when his students asked how Germans could become Nazis, threw some experiential teaching their way. He started teaching them strength through discipline, unity, and community. They inadvertently fell into Nazi youth-like behavior. I recently watched the made-for-TV special The Wave I had seen as a kid and the German movie Die Welle, plus tons of interviews and documentaries. This movie, Lesson Plan,…

This week there wasn't much sun, so I read and listened more than usual since they take little to no power. I finished: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, by Bill McKibben: I've met Bill and support his environmental work. Bill writes in this book that he doesn't believe people will change their levels of consumption so concludes that only by producing more clean, green, renewable energy can we avoid catastrophe. For the rest of the book he relays his optimism that solar and wind can replace fossil fuels and save us. We only need big government support for renewables, he conveys, and to stop supporting fossil fuels. I've written many times in this blog…

This week I finished: "Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound," by Larissa MacFarquhar in the New Yorker: A few years ago I learned that most people, when they imagine something visual, actually visual something, as if they were seeing it. By contrast, when I imagine seeing something, I don't see anything. I just imagine it. Apparently nobody knew of this distinction until recent decades and only recently has it become well known, studied, or verified through methods like brain scans. It also acquired a name: aphantasia. For my part, it's relieving to know I'm not alone. It explains a few things that didn't make sense, like how counting sheep wasn't a complicated exercise. When people told me to visualize things like…

This week I finished: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, directed by Marc Rothemund, starring Julia Jentsch: This movie was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language movie in 2005. I confess I only learned of the White Rose movement, and two of its key members, Hans and Sophie Scholl, this year. I recommend learning more about them, especially if you're interested in learning what leads people to oppose a culture acting against your values. You are almost certainly acting against your values, induced by our culture. Hans and Sophie Scholl were siblings raised in Germany in the wake of World War I. The movement was mainly students who organized against the Nazis in and around Munich. This movie focused on Sophie, in the events…