Burning Thoughts Lookback at 2023
It surprised me to see that I published over 30 items in 2023. The monthly newsletters group items by date. Here are my favorites from last year by category.
| Chet Stories and Others | Length |
|---|---|
| Be Brave Chet learns a lesson from college kids. | Short story |
| Difficult Step At work, Chet tries to assume a fresh identity. | Short story |
| Gambler’s Grumble Can math tells us anything about the real world? | Flash fiction |
| Mr. Owl’s Charity A parable in the mode of Aesop. | Flash fiction |
| Never Be Published Creativity and rules clash. | Short story |
| Talk to Me, Casey Mother grapples with son’s mortality. | Short story |
| Goodtime Charlie Departed one’s point of view. | Short story |
| Immortal Did Chet draw a sensible conclusion? | Short story |
| Problems of democracy, in high school, fired my interest. |
|---|
| Constitution True-Up When it takes longer than the presidential election cycle to decide if a Constitutional oath has been violated, the Constitution is not doing its job. |
| Culture Warrior Using fear to squash change, condemns the society to old solutions for new situations. |
| Democracy or Mobocracy The Constitution lists individual rights which are undeniable, beyond the rule of the majority. |
| States are Democracies, but the Union of States is Not Sixteen percent of the population live in 25 states giving them half the Senate, making them equal to eighty-four percent of the population. |
| Allocating and Pricing Resources Lead to Economics |
|---|
| Daily Life Over Epochs Changes in leisure and wealth from agriculture to industry to services. |
| News with a Twist Five news items that mean more than they say. |
| How We Think |
|---|
| Reasoning by Analogy We use analogies when facts and logic aren’t enough. |
| Mentalese Thinking in words, images, and patterns. |
| Implicit Learning We learn many skills, without conscious or academic effort. |
| Emergence: Mind from Brain The brain is physical. The mind is our grappling with incomplete information. |
| Improve Your Knowledge Experience is the best teacher and the primary one after you finish school. |
| Bicycles and Probability Share a Secret Facts and logic may not lead you to all consequences. |
| Our Social Nature is Tested by Technological Change |
|---|
| Chatbot Assistant or Replacement Brief overview of ChatGPT and its potential impact. |
| Natural Social Groups Who is in your in-group and who’s not? |
| Grab Bag of News School admission fairness, at-large elections, profits, and wages |
| Emotions Can Require Poetic Liberty |
|---|
| Rainbows and Science |
| Unexpected |
Image of 2023 created by Bing, DALL-E, from my prompt.
