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We haven't had a Rand thread for quite a while. Gird up your loins.
February 27, 2022 at 07:10
Mustard and pork were made for each other -- a sharp, horseradish coarse ground. With sweet potato or mashed white potatoes and pork gravy. Alas, I ne...
February 27, 2022 at 07:08
Yes, I should have acknowledged your good point about lives saved. Still, it was a vicious affair. To the extent that a given war involves two (or mor...
February 27, 2022 at 02:31
the Balkans are an insoluble simmering cesspool of dissatisfactions. They (various) have had conflict for quite some time. Tito's regime kept a lid on...
February 27, 2022 at 01:18
No: It isn't a 'default state'. "Depression" describes a reduction in physical, cognitive and emotional functioning. It is a disease state, ranging fr...
February 26, 2022 at 18:35
My theory is that as soon as the electricity grid goes down, the batteries fail, and they've used up all the drugs and booze, they will turn to cannib...
February 25, 2022 at 23:12
Which knife edge of precocity are you most concerned about? Nuclear annihilation? Conventional world war? Global overheating? The Black Plague (or its...
February 25, 2022 at 23:03
It would appear that even a 60 cycle hum has its very regular ups and downs. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_eZmKGTaqgB0/TVAtGsaT2wI/AAAAAAAAKJU/VT...
February 25, 2022 at 05:52
What on earth doesn't have ups and downs?
February 25, 2022 at 04:50
In the past (like... 40 years ago) people often used 'the' when referencing--'the Ukraine'. Fox News says "The Ukraine” was previously used as a short...
February 25, 2022 at 03:39
It might be "game over", and Trump never faded into the sewage lagoon where he had been consigned; he keeps resurfacing. Stephen Marche's The Next Civ...
February 25, 2022 at 02:25
Some days I think that would be unfortunate, and other days I think "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out". E Pluribus Unum has worked, and ...
February 25, 2022 at 00:09
Reading what you wrote, seems to me I heard Putin say that it was the Bolsheviks who granted 'independence' to provinces of the old tsarist empire. My...
February 24, 2022 at 21:49
@"et al" Were the United States to invade Canada, capturing Ottawa early on and decapitating the government, we would probably be successful. (Just th...
February 24, 2022 at 20:51
You were asked and you gave. Blessings on you. Given his recent good fortune, it would not be unreasonable to expect at least a gesture of reciprocity...
February 24, 2022 at 05:40
There are all these great songs from the '60s, but sometimes I just can't match the face of the vocalist to the sound he sings. Take House of the Risi...
February 23, 2022 at 23:17
No; that was Donald.
February 23, 2022 at 18:51
Jesus is having nothing to do with this. Not hard to swallow, but difficult to force it. @"Frank"'s pronouns are indecently indefinite, Biden being th...
February 23, 2022 at 18:50
This is something else that Sigmund Freud got wrong. It isn't women who have penis envy, it is men. We all want to know how well we hang in comparison...
February 22, 2022 at 22:54
Congratulations; as Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify."
February 22, 2022 at 22:50
It is a Kinseyism that a lot of people are neither heterosexual or homosexual, they are bi-sexual. They are said to have satisfactory sex with both th...
February 22, 2022 at 22:20
La Cage, as a film, contained no actual spontaneous behavior of any kind. It employed a fair amount of exaggeration for effect, but sure, the gay char...
February 22, 2022 at 22:09
Some very campy gay man (can't remember) said "I never had a closet to hide in" because he was a campy child. This sort of thing was just outside my c...
February 22, 2022 at 21:51
I'd be a lot happier with gaydar if it were more reliable. Like radar, it's a great advance over flying around in the dark. One might use 'gaydar' as ...
February 22, 2022 at 21:00
Certainly didn't mean to suggest that. We are everything between scalp and toe nails, all connected to the brain. l The existence of a 'self', the bra...
February 22, 2022 at 01:34
I've come across Walzer in decades past (in the pages of Z Magazine--which seems to have bit the dust). My dim recollection is that he was difficult t...
February 21, 2022 at 18:58
Do you think your brain is something other than you? I am my body, my brain. What my brain thinks, I think. Many of the brain's activities are not con...
February 21, 2022 at 06:52
I assume that you are NOT suggesting that William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), Romantic poet, was the cause of pain and war. So, some other sort of roman...
February 20, 2022 at 20:00
Congratulations! You are the first person on the forum to modify the noun "asshole" with "pizza". Please don't do it again!
February 20, 2022 at 10:04
"It's not even past" Faulkner said. But yes, past polarization fades over time. Black-white relations in the US have always been polar, slave and mast...
February 20, 2022 at 10:02
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcQTSdBG0kOrkR_Nc3Nkcg1DmxS_m0ze38qORK1Y_CMJ8lwaJ9SIY0U3BJj08Sc&usqp=CAE It's very scolery,
February 20, 2022 at 02:18
I think we are much more polarized. There was some polarization in the 1960s. Vietnam was the principle locus. Also hair length, hippie clothing and l...
February 20, 2022 at 00:48
It appears to belong to the Christian / Liberty-obsessed sphere, a vaguely defined area of the right/far right political zone (this scholarly conclusi...
February 19, 2022 at 21:25
Sorry, but what is the difference between a political realist and a political pragmatist? They seem to overlap quite a bit.
February 19, 2022 at 20:53
Does Walzer really think that any leader would do that? Given the notion that power corrupts, it seems highly unlikely that any leader with sufficient...
February 19, 2022 at 20:02
Theologians have talked about "dirty hands" too. The hands that perform works of mercy are often 'dirty' in the sense that they have performed wrongfu...
February 19, 2022 at 19:50
Are you suffering from species dysphoria? Have you been thinking of using CRISPR to become a transpecial? There are support groups for that. I think I...
February 19, 2022 at 00:19
I feel that wolfing food down improves the experience.
February 19, 2022 at 00:06
This approach will definitely not avoid moral reprehensibility. "Lifestyle" involves choices that affect others in material ways. This woman is living...
February 18, 2022 at 22:11
What sort of 'horrible and grotesque' ways of living are you thinking of that would not pose moral problems? Some people do live horrible and grotesqu...
February 18, 2022 at 21:59
February 18, 2022 at 19:24
Stephen Marche (The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future) said that "'the reduction of empathic distress' the basic inhumanity that the...
February 18, 2022 at 19:08
Perhaps. But the point is, intelligence is primarily demonstrated through performance. Doing nothing distinguishes neither intelligence or a lack ther...
February 18, 2022 at 00:15
So, intelligence is the ability to analyze a complex problem, create at a solution, and then perform the solution. Intelligence is analytical, creativ...
February 17, 2022 at 23:46
Insightful observations about extraordinarily complex behaviors and mental processes. Good observational skills can be developed, but they also requir...
February 17, 2022 at 21:38
Yes, absolutely, Homosexual men are definitely the most sensible of men. Some gay men are even more macho than straight men, but maximum-machismo is s...
February 17, 2022 at 21:32
Right. People generally don't shower marginalized groups with positive traits. Generally the opposite. But marginalized groups can shower positive tra...
February 17, 2022 at 20:15
Why the hell not? I agree. It seems like "delusional" is our default state. There are convenient delusions, necessary delusions, harmful delusions, an...
February 17, 2022 at 19:37
So, a positive judgement based on color, race, ethnicity, or religion would be bigoted to?
February 17, 2022 at 19:29
No, there is ample, hard evidence that life sucks. Reality is a bitch and then you die. And the dead stay dead, nothing more. So in the meantime, gath...
February 17, 2022 at 07:01