America First and the rest doesn't matter. It is not difficult to parse the logic of Donald Trump: 1. Forget about logic. 2. Trump can rely on the per...
No corporation currently has 'sovereign' status, as far as I know; so in one sense, any sovereign state is more powerful than any corporation. Soverei...
@"Wayfarer" Since you are swilling gin and tonic and typing on your iPhone at a bar , I presume you copy/pasted the definition from the web. Drink res...
No, no. Not character. I do not think one can identify someone's character at a glance, or even through a little casual interaction, such as a fairly ...
As well it should. Of course, proceed with caution. But actually, it's not all that risky if one uses common sense. There are people I wouldn't approa...
Oh, is "gaydar" not known everywhere? Gay radar or "Gaydar" is the mystical ability of gay men to recognize each other at a distance based on nothing ...
I hope they are not actually mistaking their car for a person. If they are, they need to see a neurologist on the double (see The Man Who Mistook a Ha...
or imagine being beige among the mauve, or being puce anywhere. Being among a large hostile red crowd tends to squelch my lavender pheromones, but it ...
We tried to make our dog contribute to household income, but she was unwilling to get to work on time, pay attention to direction, observe break times...
Absolutely. Larger identities (like, "Scandinavian", "Anglican", "French" (especially French), are inherited. Some identities like "millennial" or "hi...
We'd be spoiling your thread to continue a discussion of socialism here; there's Tinman's thread on socialism and Fdrake's thread on Marx's value theo...
People do seek interpersonal conflict. I think it is a critical piece of individuation. However, by 'conflict' I mean verbal contest. Debating, arguin...
The USSR was a command economy sometimes described as "state capitalism". What the hell does that mean, you ask? In state capitalism there is one corp...
It is always important to keep things in perspective. Bad things have been happening in the United States for a long time. Fifteen presidents or forme...
Well, Schop, I've said several times in several places in the Forum that I believe the universe has no inherent meaning. It expands in all directions ...
I actually try to avoid anthropomorphizing; animals have their own raisons d'être; they don't need ours, and we quite often infantilize animals as wel...
As a socialist, it's not my job to defend capitalism. "We have not come to praise Capital; we have come to bury it." I do not believe that capitalism ...
Don't get all fragile and guilt ridden at this stage of the game. Enjoy your upper hand while you still have it. The brown hordes are on the move. As ...
My master premise is that people are not walking around thinking that life is suffering. If they do recognize that there is suffering in life (there s...
There is no reason that I know of to suppose that socialism can, will, or should result in some sort of rigidly defined "equality". What? Should every...
For the reason you cite in your paragraph: Capital finance (embodied in a few hundred people who make major investment decisions) and fossil fuel owne...
I quite readily anthropomorphize dogs. I am quite aware that even a very bright dog has limits which prevent them from having the sort of complex, abs...
Truman Capote was a much better writer, certainly. I read Kerouac's book as part of a short course in beat literature I was offering myself. I found i...
Indeed one could do that. But solar-thermal power hasn't taken off. Mirrors can focus a lot of heat, but not on cloudy days, and not at night. Your so...
No new technology springs out of the box and takes over the market. It tends to take around 50 years (rough figure) for a new technology to fulfill it...
Soooo many books, soooo little time. Be aware that you can read a lot and still be stupid, and read sparingly and be quite wise. Start and stick with ...
Visionaries very often work alone. When they start working with other people, they start receiving annoying (but very useful) new information, and the...
I blame primates. Had they opted to stay in the trees and not evolve, we wouldn't have all these problems. Alas, they did. And alas, they didn't evolv...
If solar generated hydrogen is a practical energy source (and let's say it is) then the logical place from which to obtain capital finance is the mark...
The oil mortgage plank in your platform needs clarification. A mortgage is given by a bank because the value of the property can be cashed out if the ...
Philosophers, mind your manners! Gentlemen never walk off in a huff. You both recognize that we face grave problems. You disagree about methods of avo...
the problem of equality among workers in a socialist state will not be solved by magic. We are not "equal" in physical and mental attributes, needs, p...
You probably know this story already: We could say that the pure science took place in a setting that was inherently ideological: Academic physicists ...
This is part of the problem that James Howard Kunstler points out: a lot of chemicals go into making solar and wind power and all the associated equip...
I grew up in the upper midwestern part of the US during the entire period of atmospheric nuclear bomb testing Of course fall out from the tests drifte...
Right. The Manhattan Project was very "scientish" but was essentially a tremendous technological nuts and bolts project. There was, of course, an ideo...
Somebody on one of the late night talk shows called these sorts of glittering generalities "deepities". They sound a lot profounder than they are. Ano...
Thanks for opening this thread. Compare the treatment John F. Kennedy's, Bill Clinton's, and Donald Trump's sex lives received: Kennedy's promiscuous ...
I'm not an anti-natalist because I don't accept the central plank in their platform that "having children under any and all circumstances guarantees c...
Your point above is a resting place. Society has to decide whether to commit, and to which technology. (Society as a whole isn't going to decide -- it...
Actually, we don't need to worry about dark-minded terrorists working in gloomy basement labs to cook up something really really bad. It's as likely t...
Come now! You haven't gotten responses from wankers; you have gotten responses from reasonable thoughtful people who disagree with you. That doesn't m...
If you want to hang the theologians along with the preachers, OK. You'll just need a bigger gallows. One almost inevitably generates inconsistencies w...
One of the unfortunate outcomes of a mass migration threat could be defensive war involving population annihilation. It might be nice if all the desti...
Trump is reptilian, in any case. There is no mind-body problem. The body (including the CNS) produces "the mind". "The mind" is the noise the brain ma...
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