Commentary & Pubs

Nostalgic thoughts and religion

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By Ande Jacobson

I was looking through my old high school yearbooks recently, and it got me thinking about some friends and classmates from long ago. There were four of us who went to school together for 16 years, from first grade straight through undergrad, but two of us had additional connections back then. We also went to Sunday school and temple youth choir together. Andrew and I were friends most of the time growing up, although we also had some disagreements that got blown a bit out of proportion. His mom was a lawyer and a notary, so when we’d have a fight when we were kids, he’d draw up a contract that he wouldn’t speak to me ever again and had his mom notarize it. Of course it generally only lasted a day or so before becoming null and void. I guess that practice served him well because he ultimately became a lawyer like so many others in his family. Continue reading →

Every vote matters

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By Ande Jacobson

2026 is a particularly ugly election year. While negative campaigning has become far too common in US elections, it has reached a fever pitch with disinformation far outweighing factual data in the flood of noise blanketing the internet where most people get their news and information these days. That makes it ever more challenging to honestly evaluate our ballots for each election. Fortunately, at least in California, there are a number of fact-based sites where voters can research the propositions and the candidates honestly. Continue reading →

Dangerous manipulation

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By Ande Jacobson

The thing that strikes me about our current moment is the extreme amount of manipulation that is becoming normalized. Teri Kanefield discussed this at length in her book, A Firehose of Falsehood, which I wrote about here and here. Watching the amount of disinformation intended to manipulate the voting public in the upcoming election though has reached heights I’ve never imagined. It got me thinking about something that happened about 30 years ago when I was the lead of a team of technical advisors for an important government system we were supporting. Continue reading →

The dangers of indoctrination

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By Ande Jacobson

I’ve long been wary of indoctrination. The Concise Oxford English dictionary defines the verb indoctrinate as:

“Cause to accept a set of beliefs uncritically through repeated instruction.”

Indoctrination is the practice of indoctrinating, and the most common form of indoctrination is how religion is often presented to young children by their parents and clergy with whom they are acquainted. They are generally taught from early on that these religious beliefs are not to be questioned. They are to be accepted without evidence as facts. Continue reading →

25 years later I am tired

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By Ande Jacobson

Like so many of us, I remember exactly where I was 25 years ago today when the twin towers were attacked on 9/11/2001. I was at work during a week I spent in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. Although we were mostly cutoff from the outside world while at work, we were just outside the beltway, and within less than 10 minutes after the first plane hit everyone at our location knew that it happened. When I was able to contact my manager back in my home location later that morning, he told me that my colleague and I were not authorized to drive across the country to return home. We were to stay at our location until we could fly home. We were scheduled to fly back on Friday that week, but our journey got complicated, and our stay was slightly extended. We were lucky. We were safe, and although we weren’t able to return home until Sunday, we had a comfortable place to stay, food to eat, and work to do. The story of our attempts to get home is a bit jumbled, but in the grand scheme of things it is unimportant now compared to the trauma others suffered that week and in the weeks and months that followed. Continue reading →

AI, ghostwriters, editors, and authorship

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By Ande Jacobson

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the use of AI, ghostwriters, and editors, and what authorship really means. Having written a book myself, I know the kind of effort that goes into such an endeavor, even when you know the material extremely well. Getting the wording right, making sure that your ideas come across the way you intend, and even the aesthetics of the prose are all of concern. Writing an essay requires a similar amount of polish as well, although it’s significantly shorter and quicker to write compared to a book. One could even apply the same considerations to something as mundane as an email or a personal letter. All that said, what exactly is authorship? Are you technically an author if you use a ghostwriter to write your manuscript for you, or are you committing a type of fraud by taking credit for something that you didn’t actually do? Is the manuscript still your work if an editor changes it, or is that a matter of degree? Continue reading →

Writing can be therapeutic

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By Ande Jacobson

I’ve kept a journal since I was a child, although in recent years I’ve not made many entries. In some ways, the essays I write have taken its place helping me delve into things that I’m thinking about. Sometimes that means writing up thoughts on books I’ve just read or delving into a concept that intrigues me. Often though it involves taking a step back from current events and sorting out something that’s bothering me. That last category has covered a lot of ground over the last several years. Along with an increased focus on politics and the historical significance of various policies and actions, it drove me to add a history and politics page to my commentary library. Continue reading →

The US at 250

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By Ande Jacobson

We are quickly approaching the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. That should be cause for celebration. 250 years ago, the fledgling colonies did something momentous. They threw off the bonds of tyranny and royal rule and emphatically declared that they were to be self-governing. They weren’t without discord, but together they wanted something different from whence they came. Continue reading →

Why be good?

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By Ande Jacobson

I’ve long held that it doesn’t take faith for somebody to be good, or more to the point, to be a good person. What exactly is a good person though? Realistically a good person is one who treats others with respect and who sees beyond their own nose striving to do what they can for the greater good. This isn’t about politics. It’s about science, philosophy, and survival.

I’m reminded of a conversation with a friend many years ago. He was raised in the Catholic tradition, but as an adult he no longer practiced and claimed to be agnostic with respect to his belief. Still, he couldn’t escape a certain amount of fear that was instilled in him during childhood. I was explaining some of the differences between Christianity in general and Judaism. Judaism, aside from not centering on Jesus, lacks any afterlife and by extension the concept of heaven and hell. He was stunned. He wanted to know why somebody would be good if there was no threat of being sent to hell if they weren’t. He had no concept of the need for the greater good other than as a defense against eternal damnation. I guess he wasn’t quite as agnostic as he thought. Continue reading →

Religion can be dangerous

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By Ande Jacobson

I don’t have any faith in any supernatural being(s) based on everything I’ve learned throughout my life, although based on observation, I came to that conclusion in childhood. I have studied science and rely on the scientific method in my exploration of the world around me. I have also studied religion growing up, not just the faith in which I was raised, but others as well. I have copies of numerous religious texts including an Old Testament (from which the Torah is drawn), a New Testament, a Qur’ân, a Book of Mormon, a Haggadah, and a Union Prayer book. I view them as literature written by men reflective of the times in which they were written. I do not view them as supernatural or divinely inspired. They are books, and as such, they are food for thought as are all books. Continue reading →