Lizard Brains Endangered!

 Admit there is something tempting about having a lizard brain. Like you might tempt Eve with an apple. That you can slither around and stick your tongue out. That under the fat and the sagging muscles you are a secret T. Rex.

If this is how you feel, then do not read Do humans really have a ‘lizard brain’ lurking beneath our rational minds? from The Guardian.

Neuroanatomically and behaviourally, if not yet in the popular consciousness, the idea that we all have a lizard brain has been thoroughly discredited. Yet despite the mounting evidence, and the success of more recent frameworks, the triune brain endures. Shockingly, it is still being widely taught in introductory psychology textbooks (as one journal article mischievously titled “Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside” showed). The study also highlighted some of the pitfalls of allowing the hypothesis to go unchallenged, which include giving students a false sense of how evolution unfolds, and promoting the idea that human beings have a monopoly on “rational” actions such as deferring gratification – sacrificing a short-term reward for a longer-term gain.

And speaking of lizards, Jacob Rees-Mogg accuses Tucker Carlson of ‘verging on defending Hitler’ (The Guardian).

In the lengthy debate on foreign policy and global tensjons, the US commentator repeatedly goaded Rees-Mogg over the smallness of the UK armed forces and suggested Russia was more powerful. Rees-Mogg explained that the UK economy was bigger and made the case that Britain and western allies had to support Ukraine and deter Russian aggression.

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The interview has raised eyebrows in the US as well as Britain, with Mike Huckabee, the Republican and US ambassador to Israel, posting on X: “When it seemed impossible for Toxic Tucker to descend deeper into the sewer here he goes opining that UK should have let Nazis take over. Forget that Hitler murdered 11 million people? I thought Tucker was against killing? He needs help. Serious help.” 

 That Tucker Carlson does need.

But between simplistic ideas about the brain and simpletons like Carlson, I want to bring up something that has been bothering me. That is that size matters always. Carlson seems to equate Russia's size with might. Ukraine has shown size is easily turned into the status of stumblebum. 

It is all about how you use that size. Trump and Hegeseth are just as confused by that idea as was Stalin about the pope's divisions. If size were all that counts, the Spanish Armada would have beaten the English; the Persians defeated the Greeks; and the English would never have ruled India.

 sch 10/4