Welcome back to the Stranger Voices Bazaar, a quasi-regular mid-monthly round up of interesting essays elsewhere. Stranger Travellers (i.e. paid or bartered subscribers) should feel free to submit whatever they may find for inclusion in the bazaar - my only request is nothing should be behind a paywall.
From the Stranger Travellers
Asa Boxer has a piece at Analogy looking at Kuhn’s remarks on the role of the textbook in science education, entitled “Science & Textbook Pedagogy”. It’s a capstone to a great run of pieces looking at ‘The Science’ with the scepticism that is appropriate to the sciences, yet all too often absent in practice.
Nearby
L.M. Sacasas is one of very Substackers other than myself to be influenced by Ivan Illich, and I appreciated both the essay and the footnotes to this recent piece, “The Wisdom of Daybreak”, which takes driving as the dawn hits as a spur for an essay on the conditions for thinking. For me, this is about technology for all that it also apologises for not being very much about technology!
Otherwhere
Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson’s recent piece, “Smokescreens - Part 6”, is part of a long series disentangling the spin around “the F word” (flu), and drawing attention to the scurrilous way health authorities fall in line behind whatever new thing it is the pharmaceuticals industry wishes to peddle. I greatly admire their scientific prudence, as demonstrated in “Smokescreens - Part 9”.
Speaking of scientific prudence or its absence, this piece by Wil Ward at Sensible Medicine, “How Many COVID Vaccines Are Enough?” is an excellent primer for anyone who is pro-vaccine yet unaware of just how far the CDC and FDA have fallen from the empirical evidence.
Paul Kingsnorth recently converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity from neo-paganism, and has been a fascinating person to read ever since! I especially enjoyed this rather long reflection “Atheists in Space”, which I disagree with in terms of his take of the Enlightenment, but still find a worthy reflection to contemplate.
If you’d like a long essay reflecting on the collapse of the artistic scene in New York (and by extension elsewhere), I highly recommend Russell Dobular's “The Art Scene Is Dead and the Liberal Class Killed It”, which offers the kind of contrasting perspective forbidden in the legacy media.
Finally, it is one of those years when the United States choses a terrible president. This year, it seems as if we don’t get the option of a new terrible president, but merely a choice between the last two terrible presidents. For a wildly freewheeling electoral vox pops of a kind you certainly won’t find anywhere in the legacy media these days, check out Peter Savodnik’s “The Great Scramble” at The Free Press.
Comments open. A new bazaar next month, chaos willing!
Thank you, once again, Chris. I do enjoy finding treasures here and there in your roundups.