This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Page 2
why is McGraw on there twice?
what it reminds me of: http://www.daylightatheism.org/images/1915_Boston.jpg
I consolidated parts of two paragraphs, one of people already contacted through Facebook and the other a request list for private e-mails. She was on both lists.
Trial pot from the Redhead,s iPad
ah, ok
I confess to being curious how many women they’ll find to sign that, vs. how many women would sign a “We, The Women Undersigned, Feel Unwelcome in Mainstream Secular, Atheist and Skeptic Groups” letter.
Because this is totes a competition and stuff.
:-p
Share?
Project Steve.
(Or indeed the G.O.D.D.S..)
Are you going to join, David?
I haven’t been invited… <Homer Simpson>so far!</Homer Simpson>
*poke*
Slept well?
Not gone to bed yet.
I’m watching Sonny and Cher videos on yutub.
No.
I don’t know why.
Seems to me that some of the poor silenced women on that list are better known for being incapable of leaving others alone *cough* Sara Mayhew
Does anybody know about Stef Mc Graw s current position on this?
Because what I’ve seen of her wasn’t hostile…
@ chas (previous)
Oh noze, my “To Fisk” inbox is overflowing.
@ Jadehawk
*jawdrop*
The story never changes …
Please help me console a budding scientist.
This lovely nephew of mine is six years old and wants to be a biologist. He caught a caterpillar four days ago and put it in a big bottle with some leaves. I saw him two days ago; like everybody else, I was shown what to me was an undistinguishable yellowish bug and made some approving noises. I assumed his father would be telling him how to take care of the thing.
Yesterday his younger sibling, while in the open country, let the caterpillar escape. I wasn’t present, but I’m told that the owner bawled his eyes out (without blaming his brother for a moment, just out of pure frustration). The kid is tenacious enough to carry everywhere a bottle for three days, moving around different houses and places, and that should earn him some respect. But it seems that his mother said he was just trying to call attention to himself, and anyway why should he worry about a stupid caterpillar.
This little story, very small as it may seem, hurts me — my nephew is an enthusiastic child whose hobbies, interests and, what’s worse, disappointments are, from what I hear, quite often belittled. I’d like to compensate him somehow for the loss of the caterpillar. I’ve got a couple of ideas, but then I thought I could post the story here. I’d like to hear what a six-year-old future scientist would have enjoyed as encouragement. Please, does any of you have some suggestion?
By the way, I have just done a quick research and I suspect that the caterpillar was some sort of Lasiocampa.
@ Jadehawk
… and notice that it is signed by “John” and “Charles”…
@ Forelle
Sorry, can’t help there, I was into dinosaurs and chemistry.
(A microscope or science kit, of any kind, would go down a treat though.)
Thanks, theophontes. I’m thinking about a second microscope, yes. I found a decent one on sale a year ago and bought it for them a year ago. It’s not for children, though; I hoped that the parents would share it with the kids, since they have the necessary knowledge, but I’m not sure they’ve used it at all, so one specifically meant for children would be a good idea. I’m also thinking about another book on insects.
The pity is I’m no scientist myself. They already know many more things about animals (and dinosaurs) than I do. Oh well — they haven’t seemed bored yet of teaching an uninformed, ignorant adult like me.
@ Forelle
I would say that you need not teach much about science at all. Rather just feed the passion and let your nephew do the rest. It will all be about playing and looking and losing oneself in the fun anyway. And feeling like a scientist. The rest will come later.
Belittling is toxic. Jeez, he’s a six year old for FMS’s sake!
I hope he has at least one close, older relative who gives him unequivocal support. ;)
(Now is slow on Pharyngula, try back when more of our pet scientists are awake.)
I don’t want an argument but this is an unpleasant topic so I’m not opening it in the Lounge. I’ve finally found someone worse than the anti-woman commenters who clog up the inboxes of outspoken women with their ire: the more rabid anti-vaxxers: Family of dead infant is harassed by anti-vaxxers for four years.
Forelle, these days you can get a science kit microscope that puts the images onto your computer screen, which means everyone can talk about what the ‘scope is showing. And there are some hybrid devices powered by USB. I don’t know if these are the same thing!
http://www.microscopemaster.com/usb-computer-microscope.html
forelle
There are many “discovery” kits out there for kids, especially for catching and watching bugs and the like. Or if you want to go a less accident-prone route, there are also books for kids that allow them to watch and identify local plants/animals and keep a record.
IIRC you’re German, right? There is even a project where people can send in pcitures of rare/endangered animals to help authorities to actually find out who’s living where.
actually, it’s signed
Mrs. John [something I can’t read] and Mrs. Charles P. Strong.
Many antis were women. Many antis were even women doing a lot of work on other women’s issues. But they were still completely wrong and regressive on this issue. Hence the parallel.
Gilliel, thanks. That’s a great idea. Some time ago I saw a few simple kits for collecting bugs, of German manufacture, I think. (By the way, I’m Spanish — my nickname is an old, sentimental reference to Schubert’s Lied.)
I feel quite reassured by theophontes’s comment that I don’t have to teach. I also understand that it doesn’t have to be about gifts and money (although I’m very proud of their first book of insects, which was a big success). As to the lost caterpillar, for example, I’ve been thinking of stories to tell about lab disasters and the doggedness of scientists. Something I try to do is to be enthusiastic and unapologetically exuberant about the things that I do know about and that I can share, however simple. And I admire their knowledge very much — I don’t have to fake that at all.
Belittling can be toxic indeed. And that supposed social virtue of “not calling attention to oneself”… that’s enraging when applied to a child who’s crying.
(Giliell, sorry for misspelling your nick.)
Hey guys,
Some of you may remember that I am an active participant in a site called Debate.org and at the moment I’m enjoying it. The reason I’m here today is because I am in a debate about global warming with someone who is acting as the instigator and Con for the debate title: “Mankind Is the Main Cause of Global Warming”. To summarise Sabutai’s position in his own words to me before we agreed to do the debate,
The debate is here: http://www.debate.org/debates/Mankind-Is-the-Main-Cause-of-Global-Warming/4/ , and the list of sources Con used for his Round 2 are listed as following:
[1]: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
[2]: http://www.livescience.com/1349-sun-blamed-warming-earth-worlds.html
[3]: MacRae, Paul: “Alarm: Global Warming– Facts versus Fears.”
[4]: http://www.climate-skeptic.com/category/other-causes-of-warming
[5]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2011/08/25/did-cloud-just-rain-on-the-global-warming-parade/
[6]: Singer, S. Fred, and Dennis T. Avery: “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.”
[7]: http://www.isil.org/resources/fnn/2007june/global-warming-hoax.html
[8]: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/11/971114070632.htm
[9]: http://www.eutimes.net/2011/09/cern-the-sun-causes-global-warming/
[10]: http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php%20%20%20%C2%A0
I would appreciate some help with some resources to materials that provide evidence for man-made global warming as well as some useful starting counter-arguments to make against what Con has said.
Much thanks,
Jon
Forelle, you can also send an image of an insect to “What’s that bug?” website, although it might be more fun to find a key or bug book and try it yourselves, first.
About the anti-vax harassment, I should have linked to the original article instead of the repost: Grieving mother Toni McCaffery was vilified by anti-vaccination bullies.
Oh, wow.
“Woman Suffrage increases taxes”…
Hi jonmilne. I have a link further up here called :
How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming.
Just have a quick look because it is extremely well set out – the main page is the table of contents. It is my go to resource (and I have very many great ones).
One aspect that people are not so aware of is the contribution of agriculture – livestock and farming – which is third in the world for CO2 emissions. CO2 isn’t even the leading GHG emission from farming, as methane is the major contributing by-product. It is huge:
http://www.worldwatch.org/agriculture-and-livestock-remain-major-sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions-0
There is no way that this much methane and nitrous oxide are from natural causes, and the fact that 50% (I’ll get a link) of the earth’s surface is given over to farm and grazing land means a huge loss of forest, which serves as a carbon sink(the main sink is the oceans, however), so combined deforestation plus emissions from agriculture are man made.
I will try to look at your debate and see where it is at, and where it’s going, but is there anything specific you wish to refute?
The amount of arctic ice loss is now greater than 3 million years, and that’s not from natural causes.
Here, and here
Here is another resource: CO2 NOW.
Apparently, forest loss contributes 9% to CO2 build up, and forests account for 26% of CO2 absorption, so deforestation has been a huge man made contributor as well.
– – –
I have tons of stuff, jonmilne, so let me know on any specifics. I’ll go do some debate reading now!
Climate myths: Assessing the evidence (New Scientist)
And this has another list of skeptic claims and their rebuttals from published work at New Scientist and links to research off-site: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed
Personally, I liked:
“Woman Suffrage is…wanted by every Socialist, every I.W.W., and every Mormon ”
And also:
“The men of New Jersey voted to Protect their Women from Politics”
That is because they are polygamous and all wives will vote as they are told.
Gee, Vijen still won’t prove his inane point with real evidence and coherent language? Worthless git….
Hah. I was wondering what the reasoning was behind that, and that sounds like it is about in the ballpark.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm
This conclusion is confirmed by many studies finding that while the sun contributed to warming in the early 20th Century, it has had little contribution (most likely negative) in the last few decades:
Huber and Knutti (2011): “Even for a reconstruction with high variability in total irradiance, solar forcing contributed only about 0.07°C (0.03-0.13°C) to the warming since 1950.”
Erlykin 2009: “We deduce that the maximum recent increase in the mean surface temperature of the Earth which can be ascribed to solar activity is 14% of the observed global warming.”
Benestad 2009: “Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.”
Lockwood 2008: “It is shown that the contribution of solar variability to the temperature trend since 1987 is small and downward; the best estimate is -1.3% and the 2? confidence level sets the uncertainty range of -0.7 to -1.9%.”
Lean 2008: “According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years…”
Lockwood 2008: “The conclusions of our previous paper, that solar forcing has declined over the past 20 years while surface air temperatures have continued to rise, are shown to apply for the full range of potential time constants for the climate response to the variations in the solar forcings.”
Ammann 2007: “Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century.”
Lockwood 2007: “The observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanism is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.”
Foukal 2006 concludes “The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years.”
Scafetta 2006 says “since 1975 global warming has occurred much faster than could be reasonably expected from the sun alone.”
Usoskin 2005 conclude “during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.
Solanki 2004 reconstructs 11,400 years of sunspot numbers using radiocarbon concentrations, finding “solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades”.
Haigh 2003 says “Observational data suggest that the Sun has influenced temperatures on decadal, centennial and millennial time-scales, but radiative forcing considerations and the results of energy-balance models and general circulation models suggest that the warming during the latter part of the 20th century cannot be ascribed entirely to solar effects.”
Stott 2003 increased climate model sensitivity to solar forcing and still found “most warming over the last 50 yr is likely to have been caused by increases in greenhouse gases.”
Solanki 2003 concludes “the Sun has contributed less than 30% of the global warming since 1970.”
Lean 1999 concludes “it is unlikely that Sun–climate relationships can account for much of the warming since 1970.”
Waple 1999 finds “little evidence to suggest that changes in irradiance are having a large impact on the current warming trend.”
Frolich 1998 concludes “solar radiative output trends contributed little of the 0.2°C increase in the global mean surface temperature in the past decade.”
@forelle
in case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, you can buy chrysalis kits cheap, so you can get your young friend to see how his caterpillar might have turned out.
example:
http://www.bugshop.com.au/pro2.html
I just can’t get over how awful Pharyngula is.
forelle asks for some suggestions (in The Thunderdome) and is met with
strident rants about how big a loser forelle is and Rebecca Watsonsuggestions.
We suck.
Regarding the “and every Mormon” part of the picture linked in Jadehawk’s #503:
The Mormons like to pretend that they are ground-breakers in women’s rights, because Utah granted women the right to vote in 1870 (in order to give a good impression to the rest of the country regarding the way they treated women, because polygamy was so reviled), before statehood and way before the Nineteenth Amendment. Of course, this was almost immediately repealed in 1887 by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which sought to curtail the influence of the Mormons in territorial governance, and anyway the leaders of the Mormons in Utah realized that allowing women to vote was a barrier to statehood, as well as the polygamy thing, and they really REALLY wanted statehood. So women were stripped of their rights and polygamy was “officially” abandoned. In fact, people in Utah had to swear an anti-polygamy oath before being granted the right to vote. The FLDS had to split at that time, because the feds were pressuring Utah to crack down on people who were still practicing it.
…..Anyway, the Mormons were considered the “other” at this time (and most Mormons still carry that persecution/martyrdom complex very close to their hearts).
[cross-posted from Benson’s place]
Well. Shit.
I can understand a reporter getting chummy with a detestable group, in order to get the inside scoop. But…. this seems to cross a line.
PETA wants to sue anonymous internet commenters on HuffPo article
From the article:
Whoops.
Hi mikmik, and thanks especially for that “How to talk to a Climate Skeptic” page. I haven’t seen something that impressive and comprehensive as a guide to understanding something since the Index To Creationist Claims on Talk Origins or the expertly detailed takedowns of Thunderf00t by Michael Nugent and Richard Carrier.
With regards to specifics from the debate, I’d appreciate help where Con talks about data from Mars:
Con also claims that anomalies in ocean temperature are helping to rise the temperature on Earth, and that we are experiencing high solar output that happens to be coinciding with reducing cloud formations, hence also apparently contributing to the warming, as well as also appealing to the notion that the Earth was apparently warmer during the middle ages.
Thanks in advance,
Jon
Jon, Khabibullo Abdusamatov?
Wow, that petition is pathetic.
So as ever, they’re whining about being banned from various forums and PZ not letting Slymepitters on Pharyngula. And oh no – not a meme! How can they withstand a meme!
This sounds serious. I better check what the specifics given are…oh?
And the evidence linked to is…er…hmm.
What drivel. One day it’s “FTB is an irrelevance”, the next it’s “FTB is a monster of opression!”
thetalkingstove, clearly FTB is in a state of quantum superposition. :)
standard projection. They took the complaints made of THEIR behavior, and simply spit it back out.
It’s the adult “I’m rubber you’re glue” attack; a favorite of authoritarians everywhere and any age.
sounds a lot like the way fundie xians attack atheists, doesn’t it?
there’s a reason for that, and it’s because the underlying problem is the same for both groups: they’re both RWAs.
PETA has been an embarrassment for ages now.
Sad, really. But, there are other organizations that do better to look out for animal welfare issues these days anyway.
Ichthyic, another excellent idea! I’m googling that now. Thanks!
chigau, the loss of the caterpillar was Rebecca Watson’s fault, but shhh.
I’ve heard that chrysalises won’t even hatch if Rebecca Watson is anywhere nearby!
….this makes me think that somewhere there is a “Rebecca Watson vs Chuck Norris” mocksite.
…and a mocksite of that mocksite.
…and that I can’t even imagine being Rebecca Watson, and having to face this unprecedented inane assault on a near daily basis for YEARS.
jonmilne,
Here’s one source on the “other planets are warming so it must be the sun” nonsense.. Abdusamatov has no qualifications or scientific publications in climate science, atmospheric physics, or any other closely related field – he’s an astronomer and mathematician.
Hey, thanks, jonmilne. John Morales quoted directly from the wiki p. about Abdussamatov being not widely accepted, and that’s putting it mildly. He has zero papers published in peer review journals, he is a mathematician and astrophysicist – not climatologist – and is a well known koo-koo on CC denier lists.
Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility – In One Pie Chart
= = =
Here, though, is one rebuttal to interplanetary warming and earth from New Scientist:
Climate myths: Mars and Pluto are warming too
= = =
I didn’t see an actual link, is this “petition” a real thing? And who exactly are these clowns petitioning?
@rorschach, I assume they are petitioning CFI as evidence for the “silencing” that Ron Lindsay alluded to. Although why he should care about womens silence I don’t know, I thought it was white male philosophy PhDs being silenced that got his goat.
[whoops, forgot about the linking rule. Here’s attempt two at a cross-post from B&W]
Well. Shit.
I can understand a reporter getting chummy with a detestable group, in order to get the inside scoop. But…. this seems to cross a line.
The petition is real, but still in draft. It’s in a thread devoted to it at the sl*mepit, so it can’t be linked directly. As to whom is being petitioned? *shrug*
Vacula has the capacity to use the Westboro Baptist Church as his personal army?
But he doesn’t.
Just the kind of brave, heroic guy he is.
I think he deserves a cookie.
who
mhate it when that happens
@Chas
My go-to honorary cookie picture includes (written in icing) the words: “Meets minimum standard for decent human being.”
I don’t think that Vacula deserves such a cookie. Perhaps a day-old, broken cookie. Or a cookie karob instead of chocolate.
I’ve been slumming and I think it’s worth noting that Vacula does not have the unanimous support of the sl*mepitizens–many there regard him as an “attention whore”.
But…but what about #bravehero?
Vacula’s bravely raising money to attend conferences at which he does nothing but sit in the back and give interviews to AVfM. Surely that’s bravery on par with the student protester facing down tanks at Tiananmen Square.
In other news, the wacky satirists at the ‘pit have been moved to create not one but three different Hitler’s-bunker-Vacula-in-Dublin vids.
I watched them so you don’t have to. Two are exacly the kind of puerile, mean-spirited nastiness you’d expect, but I have to admit I found the third one pretty funny.
link
Vacula reminds me of Brave Sir Robin. He even comes with his own wandering gang of minstrels singing his praises.
Markita Lynda: sorry, I don’t know why I missed your message about microscopes. Yes, the one I bought is supposed to work with a computer. I’ve been checking simple experiments like this observation of stomata to do with my nephews whenever I have the chance, but I know that I will have to fight first with the software.
The key is a great suggestion too; I’m having a look at this one.
Bravely bold Brave Hero
Rode forth from Twit-a-lot.
He was not afraid to talk,
Oh brave Sir Hero.
He was not at all afraid
To be criticized in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Hero.
He was not in the least bit scared
To be chewed out into a pulp.
Or to have harassment called out,
And his patriarchy broken.
To have his movement split
And his bias burned away,
And his movement all hacked and mangled
Brave Sir Hero.
His Voice for Men removed
And his donations cut off.
And his Radio smashed in.
And his Slymepit plugged
And his webblog gone.
And his trolls thrown out.
And his Twit-
****
Brave Sir Hero ran away.
Bravely ran away away.
When FTBullies reared their ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Hero turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the brave, Brave Hero!
@ Forelle
Check out this linky on another thread: Chart Perhaps print out this (or something similar) and plasticise for his next road trip. Things need not be expensive to be cool.
[digital microscope] They are pretty damn cheap and give quite good resolution: image of moss
To give you an impression: Chronos Digiscope USB 2
@#528 & #537: how’d you post all those links at the same time?
lol.
Moss, huh?
@ chas
I was intending to film tardigrades for “The Great Pharyngula Movie ™ “. It has been a bit of disappointment, in that I can find lots of moss, but precisely zero tardigrades. I would have though South East China would be ideal tardigrade country – there’s moss everywhere.
@anteprepo
*Applause*
With the centennial anniversary coming up soon,* I thought I’d share a virtual performance and visualization of The Rite of Spring (via NPR):
Scene 1
Scene 2
*Wednesday afternoon/evening in Paris, if you’re really picky. Soon enough.
Why do people insist on continuing a conversation when one as politely explained that the topic is too close to them to discuss calmly. Fucking faux Vulcan privileged gits who can’t realize when they are treading oft-discussed ground.
This particular case was “I heard some [un-named] woman neuroscientist say that men and women are different. I think this explains why most of the women I know stuck at following directions/reading maps/thinking in 3D.”
Me “Your conclusion does not make sense with your premise. What the the scientist actually say and where is the peer reviewed paper?”
Him “Oh you can find all kinds of stuff on it online.”
Me “…really?” *brain short circuits*
**
Apologies for any lack of clarity or misspellings. My phone does not like WordPresses text bix.
*sigh* stuck=suck
What the the=what did the
Bix=box
Whoa. That’s actually quite like something I saw at an *ahem* one time whilst *cough*. ;-)
—
More seriously, that’s actually a really interesting way of presenting a piece of music. Being able to see (a) how it’s constructed in terms of the notes played, whilst (b) how it’s constructed in terms of the contrasts deployed (albeit without (c) having the music theory described–boo!)) is awesome.
I especially like the way diminuendos make the insides of the boxes shrink. That’s cute.
Facebook promises change:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/29/facebook-campaign-violence-against-women
“…and they ate Robin’s Minstrels, and there was much rejoicing.”
;)
It’s all fun and games ’till someone loses an eye.
you know what I find really amusing about that?
they fail to see the irony in putting themselves in the place of Hitler, and Watson in the place of the liberator.
so, shall we expect them to swallow poison, shoot themselves, and have someone burn all traces of them to ash soon?
’cause I gotta admit to kinda wanting to see that.
“…but all options are on the table!”
fucking idiot.
I just read Ally Fogg’s post on why he doesn’t identify as a feminist. Most of it I don’t have much of an issue with, but he said this:
This is something I hear again and again from MRAs, and though I haven’t read any feminist critiques of the idea, the immediate problems with such prosecutions appear to me to be the following:
1. It will reduce the reporting of rape. Not only will it deter false allegations (which I’m assuming, charitably, Fogg means malicious and deliberate false allegations), it will deter victims of rape from reporting. It’s just one more thing to worry about, on top of all of the awfulness of having to report, wondering whether law enforcement will believe you, whether the prosecutors will even think it’s worth pursuing, whether the defense attorney will drag all of your sexual history into the trial, whether the jury will decide that you consented “enough” that it wasn’t rape…. On top of all that, the fear that if you don’t get a guilty verdict, your rapist can press charges against you for “false” allegations.
2. How would this apply to rape victims who are minors? Would young teens and children be charged with making false allegations? Can they be held culpable for that? Should they be held culpable for that?
I just don’t see how prosecuting false rape allegations would NOT be abused to silence and harass and imprison victims, who have already lost in the balance of power.
And yes, I could leave this in a comment on Ally’s actual post. But I don’t have the spoons right now.
I know what you mean.
Yeah. There’s a little bit of description in the notes under the video, in case you missed it.
But there’s no formal analysis or anything, if that’s what you mean. Not that it would do us a lot of good for Stravinsky anyway. He pretty much trashed that idea. :)
The dude’s been trying for decades to cram as much information as he could into piano-roll scores like this. Not necessarily useful information, but lots of it.
I don’t think that’s indicating diminuendos, just duration/decay. It’s redundant, since each note already has a length. Every note gets it (I think), so there would presumably be growing bars inside for crescendos if shrinkers were diminuendos, but I haven’t seen that happen.
The color wheel thing doesn’t work very well, since it assumes the circle of fifths. (Or maybe it works perfectly, but it’s only one measurement of tonality when there’s lots of other stuff going on harmonically, even in Mozart, etc., you know?) It’s colorful at least.
I also don’t really like the way the notes float from one to another whenever it’s the same instrument, as if there’s a portamento instead of a jump. (How do I tell when there really is a portamento?) It’s visual movement but it doesn’t correspond to any change of sound, since it’s actually a static relationship of timbre/instrumentation. Gah! The music doesn’t look like that.
Apparently, he’s still trying to get his system to work for a live ensemble. That would be neat.
Heh. Mrs cm and I spent last weekend coaching kid #1 (he of the perfect pitch and incredible mimcry) on Taylor Swift for a potential sing-off. :-)
I’ve also been listening to Martha Argerich. Because well-played Schumann is good, too.
Wow. Taylor Swift kills threads stone dead! Who knew¹?
That might come in handy …
*notes in lab journal*
—
¹ I’ll confess, I suspected.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22691267
[Right, off to do stuff!]
Mythbri@581
I can’t see why you’d want to engage him. He smacks of UMP, and has all but said “but what about the men?” His comments are Slymepit lite (Andrew Gemmer is there!) and he’s rather weakly defending Sarkeesian by restating 101 ad nausem.
I’m convinced HPfM is a honeypot by Brayton and Myers at this point.
Rafal Blechacz, 2005
Li Yundi, 2001
Argerich, 1965
Apparently, I’m obsessed.
@Xavius
I just don’t know what to make of him. If it quacks like a duck…
Some of the things he’s written have made me think, and in a good way, but there is no fucking way I will ever support legislation to prosecute false rape accusations. There’s just no way for it NOT to be abused.
….
I’ve written a post about the first three sections of the Chemical Safety Improvement Act that’s currently in committee:
http://geekinthebreeze.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/chemical-safety-improvement-act-sections-1-3/
….
Beatriz, the woman who petitioned the Supreme Court of El Salvador to obtain permission for a life-saving abortion, has been denied.
They said NO.
They said no.
I expect we’ll hear of Beatriz’s death in the near future. She’s at 26 weeks.
Mythbri:
That is awful. That woman does not deserve to die. Fucking believers and their fetus fetish.
Joey:
The above is the kind of world YOUR actions are in service of.
@Mythbri 589:
Yeah, most of his stuff is essentially a combination of MRA-Lite talking points with Fincke’s Civility Pledge. His reasoning regarding ‘feminism’ seems to come off as a strange libertarian screed:
I don’t know if this is humor or some form of higher order pontification on some perception of “corruption” of the movement, but later these seemingly conflicting quotes come up.
So, on one hand, he’s rejecting the principle that “the patriarchy hurts men too” because it somehow fails in addressing “male-specific gender issues” with little back-up or point, in either this article or his referenced article on Meninism. This is then essentially used to segue into a point on how he views the movement SHOULD be.
The bolded piece really reads like him taking the Ron Lindsay approach to feminism, in that someone is wrong, and he MUST get involved. He doesn’t seem to understand the concept of supporting a movement without getting entrenched in the politics so deeply he can’t make an argument (and yet here he is doing the selfsame to the whole movement as a result!)
All of this has a disturbing tone of gender-essentialism. This is a “womens issue”, and from his own words, should be compromised of women. Attempting to solve men’s issues using feminism is like “Like Procrustes, the murderous innkeeper of Greek mythology, they can only accommodate male problems in the feminist bed by sometimes lopping off a limb here or stretching an appendage over there.” Other than a DEEPLY FUCKING PROBLEMATIC analogy that could go all sorts of wrong ways WRT transpeople and queerfolk, this implies some unbridgeable gap between gender and sexual politics.
Yet, he calls for some sort of “separate but equal” alliance on his Meninism article, just down the page:
So, all of this is boiling down to what reads, to me, to be gender-essentialist men’s rights activism with a thin veneer of politeness and either knowing malice or complete stupidity in the implementation. This is the polite version of Lindsay. Mansplaining and handwaving issues about, as usual.
“The menz”
@Xaivius
Well, it IS called “Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men.” In his initial post he indicated that it’s an ironic title, but I haven’t seen him address problems that face people (men in particular, I suppose) that are NOT heteronormative.
In fact, I haven’t ever heard or read any standard MRA talking point that addresses issues faced by gay or trans men. Almost as if they’re more concerned with gender essentialism than addressing a spectrum of problems faced by a spectrum of people…
@Mythbri
yeah, that point is already an issue, but you’d REALLY think that if you wanted to present gender issues to men, you’d cover the fact that the patriarchy IS heteronormative, and what that means to the straight white cis dudebro crowd.
*sigh*
So how are YOU doing, thunderdome?
And now some good news: Julius Richard Petri’s 161st Birthday!
The dancing tardigrades will be breaking out the tambourines and tipple, to celebrate with much cavorting and wild fandangos throughout teh Thunderdome.
{lights hecatomb}
Yes. We need moar tardigrades.
Academia.
It seems each new novella on TV is designed to irritate me more than the last.
The current one is a pro-life screed that had me cringing since the first chapter. It shows the various assholes trying to chime in on a woman’s decision to abort a pregnancy as a good thing, the adopted child and her unknowing biological mother share an instant majjyykal bond from the first time they meet, and there’s the whole subplot about a woman who discovers (as an adult) she’s adopted, freaks out and goes to live with hippies in Peru…
From the Department of I Blame Theophontes (and His Ilk)™:
http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-densitiy/1
(Keep clicking the photos. It’s somewhat hypnotic.)
For fun:
http://photomichaelwolf.com/#lost-laundry/1
(My favourite is camouflage [whatever it is; pants?].)
—
Oh, and “modern tardigrade housing” made me LOL. :-)
Hmm, so evidently the FFRF gave a 250 dollar scholarship to Justin Vacula recently. I sent a letter condemning it to them, and it might be worth letting them know that’s not acceptable.
zhuge
Google shows that Vacula was one of 4 awards for Honorable mentions: Graduate/mature student essay contest
As much as I’m loathe to spin anything positive towards that [unmentionable], if FFRF had an essay contest and he won, I’m not sure I can condemn their grant. Not that it is necessarily that honorable a mention, I couldn’t be arsed to actually read it. Perhaps there were 4 slots at this level and this was just one of the better of the bunch. If it is an essay contest and his essay qualifies and is judged (on merits, relative to other entries) sufficient then I think it would be bad form to bring in other criteria such as his complete suckage in every other aspect of himself to then disqualify him.
They took money from donors like myself and gave it to a bigot, along with awards and accolades. As far as I am concerned that is a strong reason not to support the FFRF financially. If they are unwilling to make sure that the people submitting their essays aren’t even remotely minimally decent human beings, then I wonder what the point of the essay contest is. They aren’t a writing education group, they are a secularist and hopefully humanist group and they ought to strive for better.
It may be true that Justin was within the rules of the award. But that does not mean it is ok, it means there is a problem with the rules.
And once more in moderation at Ophelia’s. I give up.
Jebus, MaxDevlin and VHutchinson posting today. Weren’t they trolls at Sciblogs, or is my memory failing?
Rorschach:
Have you asked Ophelia if she’s placed you in moderation?
Theophontes! Theo is headlining at Rattitude.
@ Caine
AAAAAaaaaaaawwwWWWWH….!
Theo munching mielies.
@ cm’s
I went onto the roof to take you a picture of my surroundings for comparison. And would you believe it….(linky) …?
Fascinating! (One wonders about their lifecycle. What do they eat? How do they breed?!)
B.
Vic Hutchison is a biologist and the founder of Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education.
(I don’t recognize the other guy.)
Theophontes:
He was very excited, it was his first time with mielies. They’ll be expecting it from now on. :D
I’m confused about the false rape prosecution thing. As far as I know, it is already illegal to lie to police during the course of an investigation. I read a story last year about a woman in Oregon who was actually prosecuted for lodging a false rape allegation – I think she had to pay a hefty fine, not sure if she spent any time in jail. Anyway, it was newsworthy because a couple of years later, police arrested a rapist and found that he had kept photographic evidence of all of his rape – including video of when he raped the woman whom police had prosecuted for lodging a false allegation. I don’t think Oregon is some strange outlier in terms of legal means of prosecuting people who waste police resources by reporting crimes that haven’t happened, so I’m really not buying that there’s some sort of deficiency in our legal system with regards to false rape accusations.
(By contrast, I keep my laundry captive.)
Foxnews allows a progressive voice to kick two insufferably condescending and fuckbrained arses.
OK, I had him confused with the late JAD’s pet sycophant.
Crossposting from OK, OK, I won’t eat the octopus no more thread, cause I’m really looking for an answer and that thread may be dead. :-)
————————–
Can anyone point me to any reputable sources for info regarding the impact of small scale, grass fed, beef ranching?
Everything I’m finding seems to be more applicable to the Monsanto style of production, which I hate soooo much. I want to find out more about the impact that my father’s ranch* may be having. In terms of overall impact, his operation would be at the very bottom of “beef production” scale, I think, but I know that there IS some impact. My google-fu is apparently too weak at this scale. Any help?
* 60 head of longhorn grazed on 100 acres of grassland + 50 acres of woodland, some supplemental feed provided in the winter but mostly hay from the summer cutting. Fields aren’t watered. No manure ponds, no feedlots, etc.
Thanks!
Ye Olde Blacksmith – Spocktopus cuddler,
I came across this book(online): Livestock’s long shadow, that looks like it could address your sort of situation. The difficulty, I surmise from my google-fu forays, is that local impact has so many variables like water supply, bio-diversity effects, and I can only guess that there is more to consider – disposal or impact of waste, etc, etc.
I found a chart on tricki-pedia here that shows water use in the production/ton of product. (I am glad to see that milk production is very low, and hopefully that indicates the general eco impact). I am very interested in this myself and have been trying to find the impact of one North American’s/European’s average consumption of meat/year, including poultry, so that perhaps attitudes towards consuming livestock, and plans or methods of reducing consumption, can be suggested to the general population.
I am not popular here in Alberta because I am anti- oil and beef(but not milk, lol).
I will keep looking and post back. It seems that it might be necessary to generalize down to find an average per animal per acre, or something.
VMartin. yeah, he was a piece of work.
Thanks, mikmik. I’ll check it out.
This might be what you’re looking for, Ye Olde Blacksmith – Spocktopus cuddler:
The Truth About Grassfed Beef
There is very much more on that page. I hope it helps! :)
@ cm’s
clothes pegs = shackles of babylon!
@ Ye Olde Blacksmith
To take another tack to mikmik, you could also look into how much bang-for-your-buck you get out of each foodstuff. Try googling “nutritional value X”, where X is each item in the list.
For example, Per 100g serving: Soyabeans —>Protein 17 g, Steak –>protein 25g
That would tend to mediate the high water demand figures a little, as steak provides about 50% more protein by weight.
@theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物)
We need new measurements like: (overall nutrition/calorie/carbon thing/dash of water)/(letusdrink units) = total eco-annilation/yummy. It is plotted against a tartigradient.
Well, off to find a Creationist Science journal to submit my new Nutrimentalological Theory.
NutrimentalologicalNutrimentalocological TheoryHey, did you know that you can highlight the html tags below the text box, and drag them up and drop them? Do it twice and just add the slash in the closing bit!
@ mikmik #622
You could, of course, just go ahead and treat yourself to a Text Formatting Toolbar.
Greatest and most lovely Tartigrade, theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物):
Quite simply, you rule. Not just now, but always have, and always will. This is perfect for when I submit my paper to The Journal of the Creationist Scientists(Real ones).
They use a text input box that uses, if I recall, BB code.
Fucking eh!Zowies!PSA for people posting on the hivemind using FB.
They are my preferred instruments of oppression … ;-)
—
4 feet behind and to the left of the camera is a lovely Acer palmatum purpurea.
I can attest that for child-the-tiny, clothes pegs are the perfect decorations thereupon.
It’s very wearing having to explain that they’re probably not very good for the tree.
—
(And no-one’s mentioned the lilac or azaleas. *grump*)
OK, not really *grump*. But seriously, tangerine-coloured azaleas? Who has those?!
Hi guys, I’m in the final round of my debate over global warming that I referenced earlier on in the thread. As Con, I will be posting the last argument. For some reason, debate.org isn’t loading up for me, but I do still nonetheless have Pro’s R4 round saved for future reference. Here’s the first part of how he’s responded to the stuff I’ve brought to the table so far:
And here’s the second part:
So yeah, I require plenty help with this.
Thanks guys,
Jon
Oh darn. Please wait for my first part to come through from my opponent’s response in my debate. It’s still apparently “awaiting moderation.”
Hey, WTF? How come you weren’t supposed to rebut his stuff on your first go? Every article he linked to in his opening had refutations and/or opposing viewpoints in the articles themselves!
Okay, jonmilne, this guy is focusing on solar heating. That’s messed up so I’ll apply some effort here to rebuke his ass in a surgical manner. The hockey stick shit he brings up is outdated, so we get dates on that stuff.
That magnetic field stuff is big red flag for pseudo-science crackpottery.
His link to MIT via that blog is 11 years out of date, For. Fancies. Sake!
The sun has been dipping in intensity – the opposite of what Mr Con is saying:
From 2010d
Look, the next paragraph:
My Con is fucked. I am still lying in bed here. Coffee, and I’ll BRB ;)
“Mr Con is fucked,” my closing argument should read. Don’t know how I made it into a link without knowing it, though. Yikes!
(Tip o’ the hat to Oberlawd wisdom for the formatting)
Alright, my days of “hanging back” in the Slymewars are over. I’m getting angry now. And much like the Hulk, they won’t like me when I’m angry. Or green.
Yeah, That’s another thing that I will follow up on, and this is a back breaker. The intensity in variation of the ‘brightness’ of the sun is far to small to account for the recent warming of the earth:
Okay, here is the base amount of warming the earth gets from the sun:
A) The base temperature of earth, without greenhouse warming is 0°F, or -18°C.
B) The amount of warming due to GH effect at ~1900C.E. is 57°F (32°C).
C)There has been a .74°C increase in temp over 110 years, and is rising at the rate of .13 , or 1.56°C/century recently:
D) The percent change in temperature over the last 110 years is .74°C/32°C = +2.3%
Now, the change in solar radiance has increased T
thus:
E)The extrapolated amount of change in solar radiance in the last 110 years is + .55%
F) The ratio of change of temperature to the rate of change of solar radiance is 2.3%/.55% = 4.2 times as fast
Not only that, but the rate of change of temperature is increasing. Now compare these two graphs, the first is the changes to solar radiance over the last 150 years: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/93620main_sun5m.jpg
And the change in temperature: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-3-6.gif
THE BASELINE OF SOLAR RADIANCE IS FLAT and the BASELINE OF TEMP CHANGE IS RISING
There is NO CORELATION between solar output and global temp over a 150 year period, and there is a 4.2 TIMES GREATER INCREASE IN TEMPERATURE COMPARED TO SOLAR OUTPUT.
THEREFORE: Solar radiance can, at most, only account for less than 25% of the total increase in temperature over the last 110 years.
There’s no link to this! It is invalid if it can’t be checked. Mr Con already has been shown to use old and debunked references for his arguments in the case of Mars warming. Never-the-less:
Something just occurred to me, jonmilne. The temp in the trposphere decreases with altitude. With a more energetic dynamic occurring in the troposphere due to heating, or overall energy increase, the higher and lower altitude air will mix more and the resultant surface temps will appear cooler even though the overall heat content of the troposphere has increased!
Fuck, I found his source! It is a free webpage for subscribers of shaw internet, and is a denier site: http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Climate_Change_Science.html#Stratosphere
Ha! Look at the graph, and then the length of line the “cooling” is based on. The overall graph shows data consistent with longer term warming. By taking the shorter time frame that the author does(11 years), the graph can be interpreted, for the years 1979 – 1989, to show an even more dramatic cooling effect, even though the long term trend including that time frame is warming. Ten year, or so, periods are not relevant, contrary to what the author tries to show!!
Another method of troposhere cooling is by the energy expended in increasingly energetic storm systems. These systems have a net cooling effect on the troposphere*:
*(this link is from his denialist site, and of course the link he needs isn’t working. Lot’s of this dudes(Mr Con) links don’t work, or the links in his linked to references)
I’ll tell you right now that this is due to an unusually intense el Nino in 1998, which produced the overall heating, as there is a great lag effect to el Nino of several years. Of course there is cooling as the ocean returns to homostasis.
Ha! Apparently that link of Mr Con’s is suspect for two reasons. One, the whole report is not included in the link Mr C gives, and leaves out the part where the author of the research doesn’t claim the cooling is long term, but is a possible short term anomaly, and two; THE DATA WAS FUDGED! The author discarded data that did not fit his hypothesis.
From the comments of that very link provided by Mr C:
The thing is, is that Mr C relies on short term and out dated data to bolster his views. He is guilty of shoddy research and also cherry-picking sources, sources of confirmed climate change deniers THAT ARE NOT QUALIFIED CLIMATOLOGISTS.
To continue with the comments section of My C’s link:
Now, I have to peruse this stuff to verify all this, but I want to point out that la Nina has been the influence for ocean cooling since 2006. Sigh, quite a different picture here, Mr C:
Notice that el Nino didn’t return until 2009, and is not included in Mr C’s studies which only date UP TO 2009. Also note that whatever the fuck the ocean temps, it is a RED HERRING! The global temps are still increasing dramatically, and furthermore, no one knows what affects ocean temperatures reliably.
On a side note, the author of this article that Mr C links to for his ocean temperature arguments also predicted that Arctic ice levels would begin to increase, based on his interpretation of the ocean temp papers.
His predictions were wrong. What does that tell us about the veracity of his ocean temp arguments?
Sorry, that second quote from the comments above is talking about something else, it says the opposite of what I thought it did, but overall, I don’t know what it is all about!
But, Hark! Willis, the author of that study, is a mathematician and physicist. He collects data, he doesn’t interpret it. Curious, though, the titles of his last two of four papers that address the ocean temps, are singing a different tune
Willis, J.K., D. P. chambers, C.-Y. Kuo, and C. K. Shum (2010), Global Sea Level Rise: Recent Progress and Challenges for the Decade to Come, Oceanography, 23(4), 26-35.
Lee, T., W. R. Hobbs, J. K. Willis, D. Halkides, I. Fukumori, E. M. Armstrong, A. K. Hayashi, W. T. Liu, W. Patzert, and O. Wang (2010), Record warming in the South Pacific and western Antarctica associated with the strong central-Pacific El Niño in 2009-10, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L19704, doi:10.1029/2010GL044865.
http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Willis/
Thanks mikmik, you’re an absolute legend on this, apparently the first part of what I showed from Con still is awaiting moderation, which is why the first members shaw link hasn’t been seen by anyone here yet.
Out of curiosity, are you someone working in the profession or a related one right now? And if so, are there any particularly interesting tales of your work you can regale me with?
Over on the Turkish creationists thread, DDMFM:
Fascinating.
And poking around:
Fascinating *and* surprising!
Then it gets weirder:
Fascinating and somewhat macabre.
I like!
Oops. Meant italics. Troglodytes troglodytes.
(On an ornithological note, how the hell is Puffinus puffinus not the Puffin. *flail*)
Thanks, jonmilne. I am a recovering alcoholic and addict(2 years now) and have no formal education. I am looking at school right now in database management, but I am going on 54, can’t work due to sports injuries, and I’m trying to save enough money to get into a course or two so I can establish an aptitude and comprehension level that’s enough for one of twelve spots every year in the tech college and university here.
The only anecdote I have is that I did enroll in a Chem/physics BSc, and in the first lecture we had a quiz to determine our level from high school. I got an A, but it was all downhill from there(drinking).
I managed to get a passing mark, but didn’t have enough lab hours to receive credit for Organic chem, the class with the quiz. I originally enrolled with the primary goal of getting access to glassware and chemicals and to learn enough to set up a lab and make drugs(LSD, for instance), so I had a bad intention from the start.
I had to take a year off, and I went back to repeat. We had the same quiz first lecture, and this time I struggled to get a C! Even though I had a year more education than the first time, I seemed to have forgotten most the things that had been second nature to me.
Just before this I didn’t get my soccer scholarship, so I dropped my classes and became a janitor, among other things, and was my last job until my knee gave out entirely.
I’ve always had good research skills and interest in high energy physics and chemistry etc, so I’ve kept up with reading over the years.
And, I found this:
Mr Con is wrong, there is not a stronger correlation to sun activity than CO2 levels to temperature. I showed that above with the radiance energy contributing less than a quarter the energy needed to cause the increased temperature in the last century.
Here is the first bit from the pdf linked above:
Thanks again for the compliment, jonmilne.
Yours irrespectively of education,
mikmik, world’s smartest janitor! ;)
Mike Laing
jonmilne, I am curious about your vocation, too, and that always goes for everyone.
re: P. puffinus, it seems that they were there first!: Sez ‘kipedia:
It’s my irrelevant opinion that it’s high time for this blog to start enforcing Clarke’s Rules.
In particular, I am sick and tired of all the internets that keep getting awarded to people. These people have not, in fact, won shit.
mikmik, I myself am an enterprise student approaching the end of my course. It’s been a pretty fun ride and I’ve enjoyed immensely learning about business and actually getting to run my own business and having both myself and my business partner make a tidy profit of over £150 each (incidentally, we were selling a mixture of sweets, crisps, chocolate bars, cereal bars, fruit, canned drinks and healthy drinks around the college on a trolley. Obviously, there are times when capitalism gets a bad rep, but damn does it feel awesome when one is freshly into the business world like myself and one starts raking in sweet sweet money. Incidentally, I also got to meet Peter Jones at Buckingham Palace alongside the Duke of York. No joke. And if any British people are here, one of the other people working with Peter Jones is someone who was part of this Aquatique (I think that’s their name) water dance group on Britain’s Got Talent. That was one hell of a fun day.
Incidentally, on a separate topic, I would like to address the controversy over Star Trek Into Darkness. I think something that hasn’t been mentioned here is that while there are indeed unfortunate implications in casting someone who is meant to be an Indian character with a British white guy, I will point out I think there would have been more unfortunate implications with assigning the role of a terrorist annihilating cities with an Indian character. Plus, call this blasphemy, but frankly I think Cumberbatch again showed why he’s one of the very best actors around at the moment, and I think he’s considerably better in the role than the original guy, and really I find Reboot!Trek to be considerably more enjoyable than the previous movies (I’ve only ever watched the movies), since I only really find First Contact remotely enjoyable and the only ever Trek movie I really liked otherwise was Nemesis, despite the dislike it apparently has..
But yeah, I think STID was actually really really good, and was certainly the best of the movies to come out near the start of the summer period of this year.
Clarke’s Rules are pretty darn good. Somebody hand him a shiny new inter…no, wait, don’t do that.
@ mikmik, world’s smartest janitor!
I see you have not yet amended your profile to match your new nym.
…
[God on Money]:
I read a piece about Brazilian money having the words ““Deus Seja Louvado” (“God be praised”) printed on them. Immediately my subversive invertebrate mind turned to the idea of making a little chop that replaces the “D” with a “Z”. As I understand it, such minor marking of paper (as opposed to coinage) is actually permitted.
A little googling showed that this idea is not that original, for example: Linky1, Linky2.
Perhaps it is time to consequentially go about amending each and every note of this type that we ever chance upon. Does anyone know more about the laws pertaining to this? I am a little upset that it has not been undertaken on industrial scale to date.
I don’t understand why “you win an internet” is annoying. Perhaps I just haven’t been exposed to it that much.
I also recall a great many more people labelling their own comments as TL;DR rather than applying it to someone else’s. Though “Long Post Ahead” might be better.
UnknownEric:
Why did you decide to stop hanging back (if you’re keen to share)?
One of the primary factors is that I’m pretty disappointed/angry with Michael Nugent right now. He seemed like one of the good ones, who could quickly figure out that the “other side” is nothing more than a bunch of whining brats who like to bully people. But yet, here he is, giving them open reign to run around screaming sexist slurs and telling lies and his response is “Dialogue.” FUCK dialogue. Would he suggest that the Taliban and secular Afghan people get together and “talk it out?” So why does he think us talking to people who have nothing better to do with their lives than send one thousand tweets calling FtBers ridiculous names will solve anything? It’s complete and utter bullshit, and my mind is boggled that he can’t see that.
Joint press release from the Departments of Whoa! and Things Were Very Different Back Then:
http://laughingsquid.com/map-of-pangaea-with-modern-political-borders/
@ Uknown Eric
A private project to prove he is a Reasonable Person ™ ?
Tony,
At least for me, part of the joy of humour is that what is said is different. Regurgitation can be funny, but it’s finicky. So I at least have some sympathy when people complain about repetitive humour.
Welp, looks like Chris Hallquist over at Patheos has issues with people angry about Lindsay. He’s already attracting a bit of slyme in the comments. He doesn’t have a real argument per say, just a lot of “concern” and “irritation.” Nice to know there’s another blog to chuck off the roster. Has ANYTHING good come out of the Patheos athiest section other than Hermant and Libby Anne?
The Duke of York is a piece of shit.
Apparently that’s even more domicidal than Taylor Swift.
Good to know, I guess?
[Elsewhere: Thanks, John Morales for the wp-admin fixup. That worked for me.]
From the Department of Whoa!, I was a guest at HB’s wedding. Cat, the DJ, rocked!
My pleasure, cm.
broboxley from the Lounge
Except, you know, the examples of working economies based on worker cooperatives that I just mentioned above, and the democratic governments with next to no corruption problems found in parts of Northern Europe, Japan, and a few other places. And the fact that self-interest leads one to seek a prosperous, peaceful life, and that is most efficiently obtained by cooperation and equality. Except for all the ways that your statement is nonsense, you’re totally right, though.
japan is communist? Last I checked corruption/yakuza/media/finance was pretty endemic, example
http://www.uni-due.de/in-east/fileadmin/publications/gruen/paper23.pdf
Northern europe hmm do you mean the one where the immigrants are rioting because they don’t like the results of the peaceful democratic worker co-operatives or the other one?
Dalillama
I can agree that communism can work well… on a small scale. When it’s still based on people, not wide-ranging policies. As broboxley mentions, while you’re still operating within the group, things go extremely well. The trouble arises when people start drawing lines about who is in the group and who is not, and when opinions differ. It’s not always something that can be settled by voting, because even if the majority allows the out-group in, you’re now working with a far more unstable situation within the group. Of course, it might settle over time, and it might not.
The problem is merely that I don’t know of any group, anywhere, who accepts just anyone off the street as an immediate in-member. There’s usually a process of initiation (so to speak), following which there is tentative acceptance, with slightly different rules than for everyone else (if only non-formal social rules). And if someone doesn’t pass that initiation, then they’re an Enemy of the group (for whatever reason – religious affiliation, different work ethic, etc.). If the Group perceives that you’re making them look bad for whatever reason (rocking the boat, so to speak), you have divisions happening. You have separation within the group, which can lead to power differentials (because everyone wants to win, or at least not get stomped on), which leads to different subgroups within the group, among which some have more privilege due to being the right kind of subgroup, and others don’t.
The other issue I have is the fact that it’s extremely hard to dial it down to complete power-equality in today’s day and age. It takes one person to not co-operate with the fair division for others to be afraid that they won’t get their share – and then it all descends into a competition where, instead of sharing out, people grab what they can in order to have something (see: privatization in Eastern Europe following fall of USSR – kind of a bad example, but Soviet-government/nationalized property was supposed to be shared out better than it actually is, what with the billionaires/politicians sitting at the top and still making deals amongst themselves and ignoring everyone else).
Also, the questions I had:
1) Ok, sounds good.
2) Ok, sounds good.
3) How do you ensure that no one individual/group of individuals does not have too much power over others? Practically speaking? Laws is laws, but they’re not always followed; and if you’re in a slightly more privileged group, you can afford to break the law, because heck, they won’t come after you.
4) Hmm, interesting idea, and it sounds pretty good. I like the idea, but there’s the whole question of fair price (and who regulates it), and who’s making what (How do we make sure there are not only potters making those darned popular clay pots (which bring in a lot of money) but also bakers, cobblers, etc.?), and how does one ‘encourage’ a particular group/person to engage in the making of something else if they don’t want to. If I love making shoes, but everyone else is doing so, and I don’t really want to change my occupation, but I end up on the poor side of things because market saturation or whatnot, where does that place me when I’m in need of some government/group aid, and how willing would people be to support my apparently bad choice?
5) Ok.
6) See, this is what scares me the most. Keeping an eye on the ruling class/group, sure. Ok, fine. But is there a police force? Who keeps an eye on them? Who enforces laws? Does everyone? That sounds eerily similar to previous policies of keeping an eye on the neighbours just to have information on them, so that when the time comes, you’re nice and armed with a few juicy bits of gossip that will put them on the wrong end of the law, and yourself – not. It’s the enforcement-by-group bit that scares me the most, but I don’t see a better alternative in police forces, necessarily… Is there anything that works?
rq the western world has changed a tad for marxism to work well. Parts of it are very useful.
we don’t really have a true bourgeois any more. Our craftsmen and articifers have been replaced with robots or 3rd world slavery. The power of the church has been greatly diminished. We still have several classes of folks tho,
Owner’s of the raw materiel (governments mostly)
Owners of the means of production (corporations mostly)
workers of note (small group of shrinking pool of technical types, plumbers, masons, truckdrivers etc)
workers (service workers without great technical skills replaced the serf class of yore)
artisans (people who small shop their own hand made goods)
Now how to equitably handout the dumplings is where it tends to accumulate power. The corporation is joined at the hip with the government leaving the rest of us to squabble over the crumbs.
broboxley
Mmm, crumbs. :)
My main problem is that as far as I’m concerned, some element of coercion would have to be necessary in order to implement the system as at least in modern first world countries it is in the interests of a significant minority of the population to retain a capitalist system – maybe 20% of the population. In order to implement communism, you would thus need to trigger a civil war in almost all instances, which is arguably worse than an inequitable system. I suppose you could avoid the war, but I can’t really think how.
From my memory, Communist regimes were more farcical than anything by the time my parents were born. The whole thing was just grossly insincere:
1. Everybody had a job
2. Although everybody had a job, nobody worked
3. Even though nobody worked, the targets were always more than 100% achieved
4. Despite the fact that the targets were always more than 100% achieved, there was nothing to buy
5. Even though there was nothing to buy, everybody had everything
6. Although everybody had everything, everybody stole
7. Even though everybody stole everything, in the end, nobody went without.
These are the seven miracles of the People’s Republic of Poland.
That’s what they want you to think :-p
Seriously, yes we do. The means of production are in effect owned by a small elite – in legal terms, members of this elite own large-to-enormous fortunes (the number of billionaires has grown enormously in the last three decades), but beyond that, they effectively control far more, even if formal ownership is distributed among pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc., through their control over mobile capital.
Divide the elite against itself. It has to be done anyway if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change, since a considerable part of it is determined to prevent any effective action to do so; but it’s objectively in the interests of the rest of the elite that such action should be taken, which is what could make it possible.
This is my problem really. The elite aren’t an abstraction, they aren’t the enemy, they are people. Living, breathing people who have every right to live without being guillotined. Certainly, they’re disgustingly rich and screwing us over, but they’re not Lord Sauron and we shouldn’t be talking in terms of it as a monolithic evil.
Um, we’ve had some disturbing messages around here lately, but I don’t think any one of us has been arguing for anything even close to dehumanization of elites or advocating taking them to some sort of metaphorical guillotine.
Unless you consider taxing the hell out of them to be a metaphorical guillotine. Or actually making them accountable to the law.
A lot of evil done by the elites could be avoided if we simply made them accountable under the same laws and regulations as the rest of us. So lets work on that. No murder or mayhem.
Yeah, I’m dreaming, I know.
It’s just that something has to change. Humans are horrible. :(
@dongiovanni
Certainly. Something that goes hand-in-hand with that, however, is not buying into or legitimizing the rhetoric that the very rich and their advocates use to describe the “horror” of abiding by the law and paying their fair share of taxes.
I see much more demonization of the poor in order to weave a narrative that traps middle and lower-middle class people into despising them as well. I see much more rhetoric that is designed to give the middle and lower-middle classes hope that one day, if they work hard enough, they will be rich, too. Deluding people into believing that eventually, laws that are intended to balance society’s burdens will negatively affect them is exactly what the very rich and their paid politicians want.
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/05/century-chest-100-year-old-time-capsule-revealed-oklahoma/
For some bizarre reason, I was most impressed by “25. Hat, …”.
—
Or as someone I knew said 20-ish years ago, “the middle class is the new proletariat”.
Sorry! Trying to log out, but!
KT Tunstall vs. A Boy and His Tuba–Episode 8: Sweet Dreams
I remain only partially-convinced that modern technology is improving music. :-)
I’ll admit that no – one was suggesting guillotining and that that was in bad taste. My feeling, however is that much of the time referring to them as “the elites” goes hand in hand with dehumanising people. From experience, labelling people as elites, Bourgeoisie, trotskyists or any other group of that sort tends to work on emotions and can create a situation where anger predominates over reasoned debate.
I’ve personally had the experience of being shut out of a number of discussions when I’ve suggested that people are starting to dehumanise others, so I often get quite uncomfortable when it seems to me like this is happening. I apologise, as it is now very clear that this is not happening and I was jumping to conclusions, but I hope that give some background as to why I reacted as I did.
As far as I’m concerned, everything we can do to ensure the rule of law is a good thing. A good place to start might be a blanket ban on all political donations, as this would remove one major source of corruption. Then perhaps impose a cap on the maximum amount of personal wealth anyone is allowed to accumulate and use the money raised from this to pay for a universal basic income?
#666 Nick, think you are confusing bourgeois (from guilds, traders, artisans, people in the middle of town with stuff for sale) with bourgeoisie (french for those who control the means of production)
674, so you dont own money? The government allows you to rent some?
Warning: long post ahead.
broboxley
#660
I listed those countries as places with very good corruption indices in their democratically arranged governments. This remains true, although you are correct that Japan doesn’t belong in the top rankings; I misremembered their standing. I listed different places as examples of the economic success of worker cooperatives. Please do not conflate these examples or pretend that I have done so. The ethnic tensions are not actually related to corruption, and therefore do not constitute a counterargument for that point. The riots you mention come, in fact from a failure to implement the plan I described completely: Members of those nations are disenfranchised and do not have a voice in those democratically arranged governments. This is a failure for which they should rightfully be castigated. However, nowhere did I argue that those places were utopias, nor that a communist society would be one either. I merely argue that those are examples of how communistic principles improve those societies and economies, and I stand by those arguments.
675
The latter of which could be changed instantly, did our lawmakers have both spines and ethics. The former merely means that the same worker can in principal make the same money for a fraction of the labor, as would be the case in a system where the income from sales of a factory’s product were allocated democratically by the workforce, rather than having all value possible sucked out by non-producers.
rq
Which is different from now how, exactly? As I said to broboxley above, I’m not promising utopia, just improvement over status quo
Consensus-based democracy addresses many of those issues, although there are scaling issues. Until that’s solved, all I can do is fall back on the old saw about (representative) democracy being the worst form of government there is, except for all the other ones that have been tried. Fundamental guarantees of human rights written into law are also good things.
That is slightly oversimplified, in that nonmembers are not intrinsically the same thing as enemies. Furthermore, this is once again a problem that occurs regardless of economic arrangements; sometimes people don’t or won’t fit into a workplace environment, and they are encouraged to leave.
Yes and no. Certainly it will take a fair amount of doing to get there from here, but a) that’s true of any significant reform program and b)that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done. As far as ‘only takes one person’, not cooperating, that’s no more true than in any other large-scale collective endeavor. If Bob the Billionaire doesn’t want to give up some of his assets, that’s though for him, because the government can seize his assets anyway, under relevant law ( usually tax law or eminent domain; that
s why many billionares are opposed to the existence of tax laws).
Well, yes, that worked out dreadfully, but I can’t see how anyone could expect differently, given the 7 decade clusterfuck that was the USSR; as I said in my initial post, Leninism, and its philosophical descendants Stalinism and Maoism, are a particularly godawful form of totalitarianism, distinguishable from fascism primarily by worse dress sense.
Practically speaking, we’re working on that right now, aren’t we? I seem to recall there being a whole lot of discussion around these parts about privilege, people abusing it, and how to get rid of it. I don’t have any better answers than have been proposed in those discussions, many of them much better ideas than I could have come up with on my own. Put differently, we’ve got that problem now, and under my plan at least more people would have more resources of their own to throw into the problem.
It’s not at all clear to me that anyone would need to. If there was a need, I would suppose that the government would do so; I’m not proposing that we abolish government. That would be absurd; infrastructure, and hence government, is needed for any society larger or more complex than a hunter-gatherer band or neolithic farming village.
How do we ensure that now? People who want to start a pottery business will get together and start a pottery business; the seed money would ideally come from a fund established by the government for same, with a certain amount allocated per person (I base this on Muhammed Yunus idea of the right to capital; see Creating a World Without Poverty). If their pottery is any good, people who need pottery will buy it. Similarly for breadmaking, etc.
That was mostly flippancy; since I also support a guaranteed income, if you want to spend your time making shoes no one wants to buy, that’s on you. If you’re any good at it somebody probably will, though. It’s a big world out there, and it wears an astonishing variety of shoes.
Of course there is. And ideally civilian oversight boards who have direct access to the constant raw feeds from the helmet audiovisual cameras that all police officers wear at all times while on duty, and the archives of same. Probably also a separate government agency that does the same thing, as a backup.
The police.
I interpreted the initial question as “Who watches the government?”, hence the answer of “Ideally, everyone.”
dongiovanni
Start with progressive income taxes and a strong social safety net (As seen in several European social democracies, which have few to no superrich, and didn’t get there by violence). Focus the taxes on capital gains and particularly on stock trades. Increase minimum wages. Pass laws capping the ratio of pay between the highest and lowest paid employees. Ensure that unions have strong legal protections. Ensure that corporate law adequately covers cooperatives of various sorts (Many U.S. States don’t have any laws at all covering incorporating as a cooperative, for instance). Add tax breaks for cooperatives that have just formed. Extend business services and advice to new coops via local boards of commerce.
Create a pool of money collected from a special fee on cooperatives to provide startup and operating capital to new cooperatives. Move on from there. All of these have been implemented (although not all at once in the same place, AFAIK) and produced significant improvement in economic and other metrics. Move on in that vein until you get to the point where all the corporations are worker cooperatives, and you’ve got communism.
See my previous remarks on Leninism etc. Centrally directed economies suck; always have, always will.
Who said anything about guillotines? Didn’t you notice my answer to rq’s first and second questions? The bit about not having any violent revolutions? We tax them, that’s all.
Broboxley #676
This is substantially correct, yes.
yeah, american indians come to mind.
#678 let me know when the US is close to that, I will start looking at relocating
these look nice http://www.guryasamarealestate.com/79-first-page/87-m#
Do you have a point, or are you deliberately misinterpreting my statements. If you wish to address ethnic issues, kindly address yourself to the areas where I am discussing ethnic issues. This type of thing adds to my suspicion that you are not an honest interlocutor in this matter, although I admit I did not expect you to be, based on your history.
You misunderstand. Your statement at 676 is an accurate description of how a monetary economy with a central bank operates. Since the U.S. is such an economy, that is an accurate description of the situation which obtains in the U.S.
#680 Dalillama, Schmott Guy
What is to misinterpret? I simply provided a scenario where the original american colonists had exactly the same ethic, they decided communally how to allocate the work and ran the Indians off because of
. You are quite clearly stating support for the tyranny of the majority. That immediately brings in ethnic issues whether franc or alsace, franc or walloon, or franc, afrique .
Now if you are presenting a scenario of perfect people in a perfect world that is one thing, but in this world that is colonial thinking at it’s best. Do what you are told or else, the governing body knows best. Hasn’t worked well in the past and isn’t working now in europe.
from the cradle of communism
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/georegions/Europe/France01.htm
Broboxley:
Did you miss the point where I said workplace fucking environment? It is a fact of life that sometimes a particular individual will not be able to fit in in a particular group. I do not advocate this as a positive feature of any class of social organization, I merely acknowledge it as a fact of existence which appears to be fundamentally unchangeable. Things like harassment and diversity policies can minimize the degree to which this is true, but cannot eliminate it, unless you have evidence of such that I do not. Therefore, failing to perfectly resolve that problem is not a counterargument.
As I noted, repeatedly, above, ethnic tensions are another matter, and I do not have a magic wand to resolve all such issues, although ensuring that minorities have civil rights and economic opportunities demonstrably helps a lot, as do such things as hate crime laws. Since I have specifically advocated in this discussion for a government which a) guarantees the civil rights of all persons under its jurisdiction and b) ensures economic opportunity exists for same (see, specifically, the bits about guaranteed income, infrastructure (soft and hard), and a right to capital), those things will at least somewhat ameliorate those issues. And, once again, you don’t get to use problems with the current system which might persist to argue that the changes proposed will not still have a net benefit for everyone even if other problems do persist to some degree. This is the last response you will receive from me on this topic unless you actually a)present an argument which b)addresses something I’ve said.
Well, yes, that worked out dreadfully, but I can’t see how anyone could expect differently, given the 7 decade clusterfuck that was the USSR; as I said in my initial post, Leninism, and its philosophical descendants Stalinism and Maoism, are a particularly godawful form of totalitarianism, distinguishable from fascism primarily by worse dress sense.
I’m not entirely convinced that Leninism and such are entirely separate from communism per se, to be entirely honest. The way I see it, it demonstrates many of the problems that occur when an ideology is placed ahead of human welfare (war communism, the Kronstadt rebellion) and combines it with the issues that occur when a system of government is forced on the population for their own good as they are seen as brainwashed or deluded. My problem here is that I think that communism is extremely vulnerable to these occurences, and that in particular the idea that the working classes can’t decide on their system of government for themselves is nigh on impossible to disentangle from the system.
If you look at Marx, Lenin, Engels, Trotsky and much of the original communist party, none of them were even remotely recognisable as peasants. They were Bourgeois to the core. The peasants supported the social revolutionary movement – a political movement which was run by the peasants and for the peasants, and may well have supported their interests quite well. This was supplanted by the Bolshevik movement due to the fact that their ideology – their communist ideology – claimed that anyone disagreeing with them was a bourgeois dupe – despite the fact that in this case someone simply happened to disagree with them.
Who said anything about guillotines? Didn’t you notice my answer to rq’s first and second questions? The bit about not having any violent revolutions? We tax them, that’s all.
Admitted, that was bad phrasing.
Problem is, I don’t think implementing it democratically would work, both due to the fact that the philosophy has strongly exclusionary leanings (everyone who disagrees is either deluded or evil, which leaves little room for rational disagreement or debate) and the fact that the people who are screwing us control the army and the police force. I mean, how are you going to prevent people who disagree with the system from being vilified?
Crap, sorry, I still can’t get blockquoting working. The last bolded section was me. Also, I don’t think that owning money has done anyone any favours, as with our current system the currency is, despite everything, effectively privatised. When a small number of people control the vast majority of the cash, they can manipulate the currency more or less at will, and a system where the money is state – controlled would be preferable in my opinion.
sorry, I thought you were conflating that into the inter-communal exchanges you had described.
Remember this thread started because I stated people don’t work that way, never have.
You disagreed with that. In #682 above you are a long way from the sweeping statement that northern europe (after you gracefully withdrew japan) is the model we should follow. All I was pointing out is that once you try to insert real people into that model it devolves really fast.
I don’t think you can extricate ethnic tension from your model. I don’t remember whether you have facebook, but a post linked by sally strange is very appropriate. It explains why you cannot extract race from the conversation. In no am I way implying that you are thinking that way, it just needs to be brought into the model.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=491469084257058&set=a.157593050977998.39186.148018205268816&type=1&theater
FFS, did you miss all the fucking bits in there about fucking democracy? The whole bit about the proletariat not being ready to decide for themselves was added in by fucking Lenin, which is one of the major reasons I’ve spent this whole fucking discussion badmouthing the wretched fuckwad’s ideas. The original meaning of “dictatorship of the proleteriat,” (as proposed by Marx and Engels) was a democratic state with universal suffrage; see? The proleteriat all get to vote (and since social class is not recognized in such a state, everyone is the proletariat), and, therefore, everyone is collectively the ‘dictator.’ The system where the totalitarian state owns everything and no-one gets a meaningful vote is as far from that situation as Mussolini’s Italy, and indeed is functionally indistinguishable from same in the long term.
I’m not denying that some of the were prone to fanaticism; no movement is without such fanatics, although it doesn’t pay to let them make all the decisions.
Incremental change. All of the specific proposals I’ve advanced are beneficial in and of themselves, and are likely to become popular when those benefits begin to manifest.
To be fair, many (though not all) of the counterarguments commonly used, then and now, are indeed nothing more than propaganda; specifically what is the downside of any of the specific proposals I have advanced? What is the counterargument to those things which is not predicated on bullshit advanced by paid propagandists? I am very interested in hearing them. (Note: I’m not looking for arguments about how it will be hard to get there from here. I know that. I am looking for specific arguments showing that the proposals I have advanced would not be an improvement over status quo (Not a panacea. An improvement)).
But, you see, if we can use the democratic process to elect people who agree with us, then those people will control the army and police forces. It will take a lot of work, and might not succeed, but once again, that is not a counterargument.
broboxley
I suppose I will make one more effort here.
Do you understand the meaning of the word “Corruption”? Do you understand that the meaning of the word has nothing to do with who does and doesn’t have things like the vote? Are you capable of comprehending the idea that I proposed that we should look at the things they have done to reduce corruption and emulate those things? Not that I am saying they are perfect exemplars of all that is good and holy in the world of democracy? Do you understand that the riots your talkning about are happening because neither immigrants nor their children are usually given citizenship, and thus that they haven’t got things like the vote? Did you notice the several times where I said that I am proposing that everyone have the vote, once (#667) specifically in reference to the people in Northern European countries who haven’t got the things I was saying the government should guarantee to everyone?
I’m not fucking trying to. I’m pointing out that the specific fucking proposals which I have advanced will improve everyone’s situation, even if ethnic tensions remain at their current levels. I have also noted the probability that these proposals will also reduce ethnic tensions, which is once again better than the current situation. I cannot state this any more clearly, nor can I see any way that a reasonably competent speaker of English can misinterpret what I have said. If you would care to address my actual fucking points now, I am at your service.
Yeah.
Maybe I can catch up.
Dalillama, dongiovanni, broboxley
Wow, I slept through a whole conversation.
Immediate thoughts:
1) The phrase ‘state-controlled currency’ brings fear into my heart.
2) Incremental change via policy, law, etc. is a good thing. Democracy is a great tool, and I agree it is a better system of change than revolution… sometimes. You still need to have elections, so who controls the elections (as in, organizes, deems candidates worthy, equal visibility for all, fair distribution of candidates by race, gender, orientation, etc.)? Because the USSR had elections. There was just one party running, but they were elections. That’s how Latvia lost its independence the Soviet time – the communists came to power democratically, then they had a democratic election with one party (there was a second one, but they were arrested shortly before the election and stricken from the lists), and they won with, I think, something like 99.5% of the vote (the rest were spoiled ballots), and voila! within a short while, Latvia had ‘voluntarily’ become a member republic of the USSR.
(via Wikipedia, but the Latvian Museum of Occupation has lots of similar information) So, the question is, how does the system get past this kind of election fraud? Or, plainly speaking, how does one get people to look past election propaganda and make a sensible choice (see: America; Mitt Romney vs.Barack Obama). I’m not advocating that anyone make the choice for people, but there needs to be a huge educational overhaul about… well, everything. More so in some countries than others (I see Sweden is progressing well in a lot of areas, I have severe doubts about Latvia, Estonia is kind of on the right track, etc.). The main question is, then, Who and how makes sure elections are fair and unbiased?
3) I really don’t think it’s practical to separate an idea from its implementation (and its effect on people now, since people now is what we have to work with). It seems kind of like all the theoretical discussion people like to have about things that have real-world effects while ignoring the real-world effects (which often leads to a highly idealized ‘result’ and lots of disagreement). It’s often easy to see the goal, but it’s difficult to map the road for getting there.
That wasn’t all that short or quick… :P
Anyway, Dalillama, I see what you’re trying to say with improvements over the current situation and all that, and I agree. I think communism has lots of great ideas, but it’s always the implementation that worries. You’ll probably agree that we have far to go (education-wise, social justice-wise) before any such system can be workable without the fear of failure. I agree that there is (some) progress – as you mention, discussions about privilege and accountability and taxation (I’m a big fan of taxing the rich!!!). So maybe all of my doubts will eventually resolve themselves.
But right now, it’s hard to see how the system would actually work. I may be short on imagination, I may be scared of the past. Peaceful revolution/protest can work, at least to bring attention to a cause, so there are alternatives to democratic elections (see: the Singing Revolution, Baltic Way).
Anyway. I’m losing my focus, time for breakfast. Thanks for the discussion so far.
A fair number of places seem to be able to run elections without significant vote fraud; transparency and a verifiable paper trail are important, as are multiple groups represented in vote counting, so as to allow them to keep an eye on each other. Allow each candidate and/or party (depending on what type of electoral system you use; I favor a proportional representation scheme, with weighting for individual candidates and universal suffrage for adults who’ve resided in the jurisdiction for at least 6 months, although I can be flexible on the time frame.
What other types of currency are currently in circulation? I mean, I suppose there’s BitCoins and a couple of similar outfits, but they’re pretty much jokes, economically speaking.
Well, let’s see. Going over my proposals, I covered elections above, Universal health care has plenty of great models for implementation, no worries there. Quite a few places seem to have a decent social welfare system at least to the point that no-one goes hungry or freezes in the streets, so look at that as a good start, but build up some from there til you get a basic income sufficient to meet basic needs plus a bit. Increasing minimum wage,union protections, and capital gains taxes are pretty unexceptional ideas, I should think, and don’t need a lot of explaining. Similarly, corporate law covering the existence of cooperatives is fairly well established, with plenty of models for jurisdictions which lack them.
See Emilia-Romagna and Mondragon for examples of the types of incentive and organization I’m discussing to encourage cooperatives. See Yunus’ books for a discussion on availability of capital and how it relates to poverty reduction. Regarding issues of privilege and marginalization, look particularly at how much it benefits women particularly. Are there any other of the proposals I outlined that raise such concerns?
There is no system that can be workable without fear of failure. The current system is a failure in many important ways, and sure inspires a lot of fear in me that it’s going to start failing in more of them any day now. How about you?
By the way I wanted to thank you for the reading suggestion.
Also, your implementations sound fine – they’re great ideas, and they would be fantastic. But you make it sound so easy, which makes me suspicious. And I wonder how all of that will work. How do you get people to the level where they choose these things, instead of grabbing at what they can for immediate comfort. How do you teach people to plan for the long-term/for the well-being of everyone, not just themselves? That’s the part that worries me.
Then there’s the issue of scale: not everything that works on a small(er) scale will work on a large one. I read about the organizations you pointed out, and they have their advantages, and they seem to work. On that scale. What’s the guarantee they’ll still work on a larger scale? Or do you simply propose a collection of similarly-sized organizations (which could work)?
I would also like to point out: you keep arguing that Lenin and Mao and etc. were assholes (where I agree), but you also keep saying they weren’t Real Communists (fascists in disguise). Yet they themselves identified as communists, spoke of communist systems, thought they were smart communists and would fix the world, etc. Are you arguing No True Communist in their case? Because that’s not very nice.
And it reduces the actual effects of real-world communism that I see around me every single fucking day – the consequences of attempting to implement such a system, and its greatest failures. Those who disagreed with the idea were dealt with brutally, they were enemies of Communism. That’s what they were called, labelled, etc. And I blame Communism for the way things went down in this country for 50 years (or so). You can’t convince me that it wasn’t Communism, because that’s what everyone called it (including those implementing it). Your proposals seem to avoid the pitfalls so inherent in the same sort of system imposed by force, so maybe you’ve gotten around that whole historical-failures bit. I haven’t. I’ll agree that there’s communism badly implemented, and communism implemented well. But you’ll never convince me that what this country had (and the Eastern Bloc) wasn’t communism.
Oh, and I totally forgot to add billingtondev to the list of people to thank for the discussion. So sorry, and thanks to you too!
I’m not saying that any of your suggestions would be in any way a bad idea, but I do feel that if it can be shown that they can’t be reasonably implemented without the potential for a massive mess, then this constitutes an effective counterargument. Certainly, Universal health care and such are a good idea, but it seems like that’s less communist and more being an at least slightly moral human being. I honestly would be hard pressed to find someone here who would oppose this. Of course, it could do with improvements, but I get the distinct impression that we have completely different ideas of what we’re arguing over.
I think that perhaps the only way we can get out of this situation is to get the vast majority of the population involved in politics – it doesn’t even matter that much what they think as long as they are thinking (incidentally, this excludes republicans) and arguing about how their society should be governed. We might then get out of this mess, but as long as the majority of the population is disengaged anything we do is likely to turn nasty – as is happening now.
Thanks very much to all of you for the conversation, and I hope I have not ruined too many nascent friendships :/
dongiovanni
The Thunderdome exists for such friendships to take a beating. ;) And then come together again – here or in the Lounge. It’s no worse (I think?) than getting into a shouting match with the people you went out with to have a beer or two, and then calling each other up the next day and asking, ‘Want to do it again?’
Just for the record, I still like all of you and I’m not angry at anyone or about anything.
rq
A whole lot of really tedious discussion, argumentation, and pointing to the places where it works and the benefits it provides there. It’s slow fucking going, to be sure.
(In the long run, improving educational standards would do wonders for making those arguments easier, but unfortunately there’s a lot of tedious arguing to get through about that first. Like I said. Slow going.) Overall though, once things like that are implemented, they tend to be popular, and people are unlikely to vote to get rid of them (for an American example, Medicare, which was the bugaboo of the Right before it was passed, but now the Teabaggers are screaming to keep it. The NHS has similar status in the UK, as I understand it, in that despite the cuts and privatization efforts, anyone who actually proposed abolishing it would lose the ability to win elections; anyone from th UK correct me if I’m wrong on that one)
Pretty much this, yes. A big enough network, and it’s an economy.
I’m sorry, but is the DPRK democratic? No, they are not. Calling a thing something doesn’t make it so. Marxism and other communist philosophies (Kropotkin, Trotsky, etc) describe an economic situation where the means of production are owned directly by those who use them to produce and there is no social class. Totalitarian dictatorships where everything is owned by a central body are a species of fascism or possibly monarchy, depending on details, but cannot, by any reasonable standard, be considered the same category as advocates of economic as well as political democracy.
dongiocanni
Yes; you seem to be arguing with some other Communist who isn’t here and has a lot of foolish and evil ideas. I’m talking about how to fix some of the massive failures of capitalistic systems.
Dalillama
Well, it was certainly labelled and reacted to as communism when it was going on (as the reverse of capitalism) and I still see people (here, in the States, in Canada) proudly and communistically wearing t-shirts with the inscription CCCP and the hammer-and-sickle symbol like it’s something to take pride in as a symbol of… commmunism! Surprise! And it fucking hurts, because they have no idea they’re wearing the symbol of a genocidal tyranny machine on a scale equivalent to the fucking Holocaust. Because, see, they’re communists, and so was the USSR, so what’s the big deal?
True, this is a lack of education. The Soviets was on the Good Side in the War, so a few minor genocidal actions and oppression of others can be ignored and brushed under the rug, especially since Russia is still a big ‘winner’ with a propaganda machine to match, and it can go around denying historical claims of asshole-hood.
So, you’re right, by dictionary definition it wasn’t a communism, but it certainly was down in the dirt, where everyone was supposed to suck it up for everyone else’s sake, because that’s what you do in communism – you share each other’s
joys andmiseries, and don’t worry, those guys up the ladder, they have it just as bad as you do, but they still make the rules, so please just follow them, or we’ll have a couple of nice bare places for you in the next cattle-wagon to Siberia. Leaving at 2AM, no advance warning, 10 minutes to pack, thanks. Sure you can take the kids, but your husband’s going thataway and oh yeah, say goodbye while you’re at it, this bullet’s got his name on it. That was communism in action then. Like I said, communism badly implemented, but they certainly went around with a lot of communist philosophies and 5-year plans to save the economy, touting the benefits of communism and the fantastic-ness of Dear Leader in addition to mandatory participation in parades and demonstrations as to the greatness of Dear Leader and the Communist State in general. So, in their minds and the minds of the people living under that regime, it was communism. Like I said, you’re not going to convince me it wasn’t.The DPRK, by the way, no longer officially follows the tenets of communism, but it still (nominally – that is, in-constitution) considers itself a democracy. It (supposedly) uses democratic tools (elections, etc.) internally, but they also have the word ‘dictatorship’ to describe themselves, so in their minds, at least, they are both (oxymoron, I know – dictatorship of democracy, is how they word it). (Officially they could be considered a monarchy, but that’s neither here nor there.)
I suppose my ‘point’ here is do we go by self-labelling or do we go by external labelling to determine what something ‘is’?
Test.
Oh, believe me, that pisses me right the fuck off, oh yes. The USSR was pretty much an unmitigated blight on history.
See, this bit right here is why I classify that as a species of fascism or monarchism (there are surprising similarities, under the hood). They consistently hit at least 12 of the Eco’s 14 ways of looking at a blackshirt. I know that the the DPRK no longer claims to be Communist, and I would continue to characterize them as fascist; see above for the reasons why. I categorize ideologies by the outcomes they produce and the methods they advocate/use.
Dalillama
I suppose it’s fine for you to categorize them like that, but trust me, it looks a bit different when the world you live in self-applied a label that you see as something completely different. You know, all that theoretical vs. real world stuff / self-labelling vs. external labelling. You’re free to call it what you want. The people who lived it call it communism.
Who’s to say who’s really right?
Hi, Caine!
Well, there’s a different term that adequately covers what they were doing, while there’s not a different term that adequately encapsulates what I’m doing (except anarchy, I suppose, but that tends to lead to a whole other set of endless explanations, to it’s kind of a toss up.
To clarify: I understand why people who live/lived in the ostensibly communist totalitarian states have a very bad reaction to the word, but I still don’t have any better term to encapsulate what I’m talking about.
Dalillama
I think I get you. And like I said, I like your ideas.
But can we call it social democracy instead? :)
I think there’s something already called that too, but what the hell. I tend to be too prescriptivist in my definitions anyway.
Myeh. Thanks for the discussion!
Economic democracy also works, thinking about it. I initially though it was too narrow, but I don’t think to really.
Seconded. This is definitely Social Democracy.
What? Youse moved the conversation from the Lounge here for that!?
(Bah)
finally can get caught up. Dalillama shouting doesn’t make your ideas any better :-)
First a little of my background. My father was a shop steward for UAW during the sixties, several strikes were settled around our kitchen table. His best friend was a socialist from Glasgow, the table also held wobblies as well as reasoned anarchists a communist or two as well as unreconstructed ukraine nationalists escapees from 1956.
So I have heard quite a few ways to do things. Some of them useful. As noted in a link about france above legislation doesnt integrate. Education and mainstreaming does. Your proposals may in fact exacerbate ethnic tensions because the in group will grumble and hate the fact that the “others” are getting a free ride. Look at the US.The meme from the right is lazy black folk with multigenerational welfare, obama phones etc without realizing that there are twice as many whites on multigenerational welfare, aid and other assistance. Integration needs to start young, in the south we are slowly getting better. We need mandatory public service where young people of all races and class must be separated from their clans send to mingle together and work in teams with the ability to learn skills. Once you get a little learning people skills you can advance with some of your ideas.
Better.
Bronze Dog here:
But are any of these things truly “designed”, in the absolute sense? How is the formation of a bike fundamentally different from the formation of a human eye, or how is the construction of an engine fundamentally different from the construction of a planetary solar system? Aren’t the creation of all these things absolutely bound by the natural laws of the universe?
But is there a difference between natural and designed objects? Can an atheist say there is truly a difference? If there is, at exactly what point in the formation of a “designed” object did actual “design” come into play?
———-
stevem here:
Actually, this is my point. Under atheism, there is no such thing as “designed”, everything is natural.
Talk about your stupid presupositional not thinking Joey, this is a classic case. Bikes and engines are made by humans. Nature makes eyes through evolution, and planetary systems through gravitational forces. No need for a creator. Which, like you imaginary deity, you would have to show exists prior to it even being considered for anything.
Yep, humans make designed objects. The rest is nature. What part of reality don’t you understand? Oh, any part where your imaginary deity isn’t needed. Go stick your head in a hole. It isn’t ever needed for anything. Live with that.
Sorry, logic 010 fail by failure to think. You may not understand the difference, since you are a presuppositional and delusional fool, but anybody with a modicum of intelligence knows better. Still a failure at reality you are.
Joey, thanks for popping in, I was a bit bored.
Yes.
There is intent and purpose to the one and not to the other.
Yes.
(Such inanity!)
Yes. There is no intent and purpose to the one but there is to the other.
Can an atheist say there is truly a difference?
This atheist can.
You are equivocating between the verb and noun senses of “design” and “designed”.
(at exactly what point in the formation of a “formed” object did actual “form” come into play?)
There’s an absolute sense of being truly designed? What is that?
Someone intended a bike to have a certain form. They took some pre-existing raw materials and acted upon them to achieve some end result. There is no one doing any of that for eyes or solar systems.
As an aside, scientific laws don’t need to “make” things happen or make them “bound” to happen. It’s sufficient to consider them descriptions, not prescriptions, of what regularly does happen. You have a description of a state, and you have a description of which kinds of patterns the evolution of the states can have over time. The “law” terminology is misleading in this sense. Electrons aren’t “forced” to behave a certain way or “penalized” if they don’t “obey” some “commandment” or whatever. The law, as far as electrons are concerned, is just what the electrons do, not something else outside the system which obliges them to do that.
There’s no god out there, designing eyes or solar systems. That’s a true difference, is it not?
When some person was in the process of designing something, before and during the process of forming it based off their design.
Well, it was what might be charitably called a “robust” discussion.
In reality there is no “absolute” sense for almost anything. Of course there are few exceptions, because even this statement is not absolute.
But there are few designed things included in those exceptions.
Designed objects are natural objects. They are the subset of natural objects whose parts were at least to some degree purposely assembled by an intelligent agent with a goal in mind.
All such intelligent agents are themselves natural objects.
Easily. See above.
The one and only delineating feature of a designed object and a non-designed object is the existence of the designer and its expressed purpose/goal.
All other features and categories are shared. There may be some statistical differentiation domains overlap.
For example, the feature of “complexity” is shared by both, but the RANGE of complexity for non-designed objects is greater at both ends. Non-designed objects can be significantly more complex than designed ones, as well as significantly simpler. Large ecosystems, for example, can be far more complex than any designed thing has ever been observed to be.
Another example is chimerism. Designed objects are more likely to feature chimerism than evolved non-designed objects, but evolutionary mechanisms can produce some degree of chimerism through things like lateral gene transfer and symbiosis.
Nerd:
Why can’t you say that nature makes bikes and engines? Is that a false statement?
So nature makes humans through evolution, and then bikes and engines are designed by humans. So somewhere between nature making humans and humans making bikes/engines the rules fundamentally change?
Humans are not the result of nature? Does nature stop once humans exists?
——————–
John Morales:
Alright…
So your requirement for design is intent/purpose. So if true design absolutely exists, then intent and purpose must absolutely exist. But do you believe there truly exists such things? Why is it valid to say that a human “intended” to create a mug, but it isn’t valid to say the Milky Way “intended” to create our solar system?
The way I see it, assuming the natural laws of the universe is all there is, then “intent” and “purpose” don’t exist in the absolute sense and are merely illusions (same boat as free will). And if there is no intent/ purpose, then how can there be design (other than illusion)?
————–
consciousness razor:
That a rational agent has an absolute intent/purpose in mind when willingly creating the designed thing. I would say that I am “designing” the contents of this post in the absolute sense. In other words design is real and not an illusion.
Why can’t it be said that our galaxy designed our solar system? That the Milky Way intended to create our solar system? How is that fundamentally different than saying that a human designed a computer?
I know a fundamental difference between the two. The solar system lacks agency and free will, whereas a human has agency and free will. But don’t most atheists believe free will is only an illusion? So they can’t use that difference.
The only way to know if an object is designed is to discover, or already know, that is has a designer.
You know a watch is designed ONLY because you already know that watchmakers exist and that they design watches. Indeed, that you yourself are a potential watchmaker – a being capable of purposely designing an object with the goal of telling time.
If you did not know that watchmakers could exist, you would not be able to recognize a watch as a designed thing. You would not know that the watch’s purpose is to tell time – you know this only because you already know that watchmakers exist and that they are interested in making things that tell time, and that you are one of them, with a potential interest in or desire to tell time, and the capability to make something that can tell the time. With out that a priori context, the watch with its various parts with have no meaning to you, and you would not recognize it as being designed.
You can say it all you want, but unless you present a priori evidence that the Milky Way possesses intelligence and is capable of intent, it is nothing but poetic words.
The term “intent” has a SPECIFIC meaning in the real world – it describes a SPECIFIC PROCESS with SPECIFIC PROPERTIES.
Yes, show me a bike/engine laying around that was made by nature, and not man. Where is your EVIDENCE for your imaginary deity, vidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Something equivalent to the eternally burning bush. NADA ZIP ZILCH ZERO NOTHING.
Actually, for your fuckwitted purposes yes. There is no deity.
Both were made by the same gravitational processes. No deity involved.
That “design” is nature. Humans designed bikes and engines. Not the same. CATEGORY ERROR, major philosophical error.
Of course they can. Atheists do not believe that free will is only an illusion.
Most atheists believe that free will is relative, not absolute. ABSOLUTE free will is only an illusion.
And agency is not the same as free will. Only the first is required to have
Amphiox:
If “intelligent agents” are themselves natural objects, then all “designed” objects that come from these “intelligent agents” must also be natural objects as well. So in other words, everything is natural. Thank you for agreeing with me.
The existence of a “designer” is illusory once you conclude that all objects are natural, which what you’ve already done.
Citation needed presuppositional fool.
Who says? You, the proven liar and bullshitter? I don’t think so Tim….
Standard pattern for joey, yet again.
Unable or unwilling to get out of the straightjacket of absolutist thinking.
Sorry fool, designer is a human. a part of nature, a nuance not missed by atheists. No deity needed except in the mind of presuppositional fools like yourself.
Truly, joey, you are an idiot. DID YOU NOT SEE THE WORD “SUBSET” in my post? You even quoted it.
DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT “SUBSET” MEANS?
So NO I DO NOT AGREE WITH YOU. Your claim was that there was “no difference” between designed and natural objects.
My argument is that one is a SUBSET of the other. And a SUBSET IS NOT THE SAME AS THE LARGER SET, EVEN IF IT IS A PART OF THE LARGER SET. All designed objects are natural, but NOT ALL NATURAL OBJECTS ARE DESIGNED.
Ergo, there is a DIFFERENCE between the two categories.
Your intellectual dishonesty, once again, is pathetic.
NO.
broboxley
No, but it got you to respond with something more substantive than ‘Ha ha race riots.’ so there’s that.
So, like, when I proposed improving education, and ensuring the enfranchisement of minorities (de facto, not just dejure)? This is what I mean when I say it doesn’t seem like you’re actually reading what I’m writing. Particularly since you entered the conversation with a goalpost shift. To refresh your memory, rq asked a set of questions about establishing an economy based on communist principles, or, as I’ve now agreed to start calling it, a democratic economy. I answered her questions with a brief description of what such an economy would look like, and what sort of government would be required in order for such an economy to occur. You pooh-poohed this, saying that “Greed and self-interest always win out.” I provided examples of democratic governments where greed and self-interest on the part of officials were not major drivers of government action, and of where worker cooperatives had served as the backbone of some economies over a period of decades. You immediately shifted to talking about race riots in Sweden. The thing is, as you keep repeating, ethnic tensions are not fundamentally based on economics, although economic factors can certainly exacerbate them. Therefore, you cannot point to a set of economic proposals and say “Ah, but that doesn’t resolve ethnic conflicts, therefore you’re wrong.” The economic proposals are not meant to resolve ethnic tensions, because those are not economic issues. They are meant to resolve issues of poverty, unemployment, etc. because these are economic problems. If you have a point to make about how ethnic tensions would be more problematic for the specific economic proposals that I have advanced above than they are in the present economy, I would be interested to hear them. If you just wanted to point out that those problems exist, I am aware of that, thank you.
Yes, I’m perfectly aware of this. Did you miss where I specifically said that it would be a long term thing, and that improving education would make things easier when the younger generations grow up? There’s also lots of opposition from the right to capital gains taxes, increased minimum wage, and all the other things I suggested. That’s why it’ a long, hard process with lots of tedious argument, discussion, etc. as I noted to rq above. If there weren’t such opposition, it would be easy to accomplish those things, you see.
It sure helps. How that’s relevant to the benefits of a different economic system is beyond me, though.
That’s certainly one way. It’s not a bad idea, nor does it conflict in any way with anything I’ve been proposing. Incidentally, speaking of education, going to college at a large and faraway university is also helpful, especially if we (I am defaulting to discussing the U.S. in this post, as we are both residents of that country) had a proper educational system meaning one which, for instance, was free through university, not just k-12. That’s just a fraction of the needed reform, of course. For starters, there need to be Federal standards for curriculum, none of this local school boards pushing creationism and made-up history and the like. Also, school funding should be pooled at the state level, rather than local districts then allocated on a multi-pronged basis, with one portion being a per-student portion which is allocated equally to all schools based on the number of students. A second pool would pay for maintenance and improvement, initially starting by improving all schools in the state to the equivalent physical plant of the newest/best equipped. Probably do an assessment and start with the ones with the worst physical plant first and work up the list from there. After that’s been achieved, new improvement s are paid for on a lottery basis, with those schools receiving the improvement being removed from the lottery until each school has received an improvement. As I’ve noted before, it’ll take some doing to get there, but that says nothing about whether it’s worth trying to.
What, I’m running for election here? This is the Thunderdome.
joey:
Welcome to the concept of categories of being.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy good enough, I’m heading back to the lounge
NEW THREAD.