Who's on first? etc.

The old Abbott and Costello routine raised absurd identity questions...

And, the Sounds-Aviators series, just concluded, was also an interesting study in shifting identities. The Las Vegas Aviators were the Nashville Sounds up until this season, when their parent Oakland A's decided to drop their Nashville affiliation. The Sounds are now hooked up with the Texas Rangers. Confused?

 

It gets even more muddled on Throwback Thursdays, when the Sounds impersonate their '70s-era forebears.

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Funny how Identity issues seem to pop up everywhere, once you start to notice. I was out riding my bike Saturday afternoon, listening to The Hidden Brain. (Are we identical with our brains? Or emergent from them?) The show was about the advancing technology of sex doll robots, and how their use might call into question the identities of both them and their users. It wasn't on the website yet, stay tuned... but looking for it led me to some other recent episodes of interest:

JUNE 10, 2019

Me, Myself, and IKEA: What Our Love For Swedish Furniture Says About Narcissism

Are women named Virginia more likely to move to Virginia? Are people with the last name of Carpenter more likely to be carpenters? This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a favorite 2017 episode about our preference for things that remind us of ourselves, and why this tendency can have larger implications than we might at first imagine.

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JUNE 3, 2019

People Like Us: How Our Identities Shape Health And Educational Success

Generations of Americans have struggled against segregation. Most of us believe in the ideal of a colorblind society. But what happens when that ideal come up against research that finds colorblindness sometimes leads to worse outcomes?

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Speaking of IKEA... this charming item (that I admired when shopping there in LA last month with our transplanted daughter) just arrived, for Fathers Day: