TheVat

It was never clear to many of us in the US how "rebuilding" a country that's a patchwork of five different nationalities that didn't much like each other was worth soaking American taxpayers for two trillion dollars because of terrorists who can melt across remote borders whenever things get sticky. As @Alex_Krycek and others note, the war certainly provided a nice welfare program for what Pres. Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex, " with companies like Halliburton and the defense contractors (listed above) doing quite well. Everything else was window-dressing for gullible Americans, a fairy tale about promoting liberal democracy and protecting our citizens.

I see how these discussions start circling endlessly. Once we have humans reduced to terms like "monster" or "evil " or "animal," then many feel the work is done and there is no need to examine their nature further or try to understand what degree of choice they have or ask if they have any prospect of redemption. In the study of psychopaths, in behavioral science, it's usually discovered that the psychopathic actor is also a victim, someone subjected in early life to profound neglect, abuse, and the general withdrawal of love. When evil seems to overtake an entire group of people, as in Nazi Germany, there is what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil," where we see that no one sets out intending to do evil but rather curtails the process of thinking and awareness to uncritically and obediently follow the group ethos. I think endlessly citing awful deeds, provoking and stoking our emotions of repulsion, as if that's an argument in itself for retribution, is missing the process of understanding what sort of person we are dealing with, and if punishment, for its own sake, has value.

Has anyone looked into the matter of flavor, BTW? There are many many plants that provide calories and are edible, but humans don't bother with them because they have an unappealing taste. (or only use them during a famine, like Swedes who used to grind up certain tree barks) I note Endy's first link cites them as having potential for biofuel (made into combustible pellets, say) but not being considered viable as a food. Thanks for the links, @Endy0816.

And Keith Richards still lives. Amazing.

Anything that resembles a hotdog on a stick deserves some research into its potential. Calories aside, what is it's protein content, and what other nutrients does it have?

Biological structures have been known to arise from some orgasms. Could some meteorites come in at a very shallow angle and therefore skip along, picking up some material from the ground, then bouncing? ....or even skipping like a stone does on the surface of a lake or sea? If so, this might result in unusual deposits on the surface.

I generally am conscientious, but dotting every "i" on a job is not always that much fun. Some work is drudgery I'm happy to see getting over with. With age, and a meditative cast of mind, I seem to enjoy the drudgery a bit more. I do make every effort to finish senten

DR: I reckon a lot of altruistic sentiments have some selfish element to them. As your video (thanks!) said, we're only human. Still, it's a bit of a struggle for me to believe the comp-, erm, humane regard apparent in your posts is "purely selfish. " I would say, on the extreme and rare scenarios of monsters who rape and torture children, that I find my own empathy system shuts down, goes dark. And the thought occurs to me, hey, it might be merciful to just put such a depraved being down. But as Reepr points out, the situation in real life is usually more nuanced. Rag n Bone Man has a great blues baritone. This quote somehow didn't appear atop my reply, so here it is. Somehow I thought page six was the end of the thread, and my reply would be next. A brain fart.

I really appreciate your compassion towards people who have been damaged and poorly nurtured. Some are so broken that they don't seem to be repairable, and so can only be sequestered. Agree that punishment provides no remedy. I remain unsure if it gives some consolation to a victim (or victim's family) to punish. Is just knowing the perp is locked up enough? Some victims want revenge, others say that enough harm has happened, why add more. Which impulse should society validate?

There is, overall, a problem when purely scientific empirical standards are applied to the domain of art. We don't really have an objective handle on how much better is the judgment of a trained musician ear than an ordinary listener (except in regard to pitch identification, which can be objectively measured). And the musician may be moved by the player's artistry when judging tonal qualities, which blows in more subjective smoke. And so many of the descriptive terms, like "resonance, " don't have rigorous definitions. It is telling that the trained listeners in @zapatos linked study seemed unable to accurately distinguish old and new instruments.

I mean no offense, but having lived in the United States through the horrific decisions and policies of the Bush/Cheney administration, I was aware long before "Vice" was made of the ways in which our VP took control of the administration and manipulated the President. I will leave it there, for now, and let wit and humor continue to reign supreme in the thread.

That raises a good point. One reason we have prisons is because other social structures that have been around for thousands of years have fallen apart or don't scale up well. In small homogeneous societies, based around villages, humans used to deal with crime by shunning or other forms of ostracism. These methods were likely more effective than prisons, because most people want to be part of their group and not shut off from connections. And exile, the most extreme form, could mean eventual death. It helped that you knew and had continued contact with any people you might consider wronging. It's still the case that more homogeneous societies, like Japanese or Norwegians, have less need of prison, even though they're long past the village stage.

Dick Cheney.

Yes. The difference between two woodwinds is keenly dependent on the reeds (which is why reed making is an especially big part of being a professional oboist) more than other parts. A poor reed will ruin a woodwind. But string instruments seem to depend on a much wider range of factors, involving contact points, parts and acoustic surfaces. Fascinating study. I liked both sound clips, new and old violin, and didn't find one to be better. But hearing it live, in the hall, would be more useful than sound clips on a tablet. I think the comparison of a Strad to a Picasso might be valid. Buyers aren't shelling out millions for a Picasso because his painting is superior to others, they pay because they value his cultural impact and reputation and power to influence. They value it both because it's good art AND because the artist is an iconic figure.

I note the article carefully refers to the tonal qualities of these violins as "unique" and not "better than others." Also, I don't see the claims made as "spectacular, " but rather fairly restrained, in the article cited. As a musician myself, I have heard string players (string theorists, if you will) speculate for years that it was the varnish that made Cremona violins stand out, so I found it interesting to hear that old canard tossed, and that perhaps it was the anti-worm treatment that made more of a difference. This makes sense, and I agree with the researchers that further research is needed to see how these chemicals change (and then preserve) the tone.

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-secret-stradivari-violin.html New research co-authored by a Texas A&M University scientist has confirmed that renowned violin maker Antonio Stradivari and others treated their instruments with chemicals that produced their unique sound, and several of these chemicals have been identified for the first time. Joseph Nagyvary, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M, who first proposed the theory that chemicals used in making the violins—not so much the skill of making the instrument itself—was the reason Stradivari and others, such as Guarneri del Gesu, made instruments whose sound has not been equaled in over 200 years. An international team led by Hwan-Ching Tai, professor of chemistry at National Taiwan University, has had their findings published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. About 40 years ago at Texas A&M, Nagyvary was the first to prove a theory that he had spent years researching: that a primary reason for the pristine sound, beyond the fine craftsmanship, was the chemicals Stradivari and others used to treat their instruments due to a worm infestation at the time.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/weather/greenland-summit-rain-climate-change/index.html Lots of tipping points to teeter on out there. Apparently, the albedo of the Greenland sheet drops a bit when it gets rained on. At least until fresh snow falls.

Not sure what you're saying here. I wasn't opining on specific tactics (not my forte), just agreeing with your Hanlon's razor -- i. e. that our intentions have not been malicious so much as misguided by bad intelligence (in Vietnam, the MacNamara report would be a case, if you've looked at that era) and meager cultural understanding. If I misunderstood you, I am sorry. Full disclosure: I'm an American, and any critique I offer is made from a place of loving my country and always wanting it to grow fully into its principles of freedom and justice. Fifty years of watching our foreign adventures (I come from a family of journalists) has led me to the opinion that we might do better with a more hands-off approach militarily, and stick with economic support that helps struggling states not become failed states.

Panda walks into a bar, orders lunch and a beer. When it's finished its meal, it draws a pistol from a holster and fires it into the ceiling, then walks out. A patron nearby yells, "what the hell was that about? " Bartender produces a dictionary, shows patron the entry for "panda. " Patron reads panda (n) : an Asian mammal that eats shoots and leaves... Anyway, with all the adaptive complexity of thriving in some ecological niche, I think a key factor may be the challenge of producing new neurons (they don't replicate, recall, but are grown from ESC) when struggling with the challenges of being ex utero. So if a hundred billion is adaptive, they are best in place from Day One. ( if you've followed research on stroke and TBI victims, you have heard that new neurons can appear in some areas, but this is a slow laborious process that uses stem cells)(so wouldn't apply well to newborns who are quickly developing their "software") Remember that babies first develop their brains by growing (then pruning, after age two) synaptic connections rather than by neurogenesis.

The version of that which has "stupidity," instead of incompetence, is known as Hanlon's razor, and one of my favorite razors. The USA, in its military incursions into Asian countries, seems the poster child of combined stupidity and incompetence.

Am aware. My point was somewhat muddled by insufficient context -- I wasn't suggesting that we could skip boosters and ship aging doses to Africa (especially unfeasible with Pfizer) ... rather, I meant that promoting boosters would divert effort from getting the rest of our unvaxxd populace educated and vaccinated. And globally, might require larger shipments from pharms that would better be sending those fresh doses to Africa et al. However, on further thought, it may be better to promote the short shelf-lifed Pfizer for boosters where it's clear the VAX "hesitant" (that's the nice term, mine would be NSFW) are simply not going to get the near-expired doses sitting in Walgreen's, and so they may as well do some good elsewhere. Then, the more hardy Moderna vax could be shipped in larger quantities to places like Africa where deepfreezes are thinner on the ground.

Officials at the World Health Organization said Wednesday that it strongly opposes booster shots for all adults in rich countries because the boosters will not help slow down the pandemic. By diverting doses away from unvaccinated people, booster shots will help drive the emergence of more dangerous mutants, say the WHO doctors. "I'm afraid that this [booster recommendation] will only lead to more variants.... And perhaps we're heading into an even more dire situation," says WHO chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaninathan. The problem with a call for boosters, she says, is that the virus is primarily circulating in unvaccinated people — not in the fully vaccinated. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/18/1028941909/why-a-push-for-boosters-could-make-the-pandemic-even-worse I imagine if I was in that tiny percentage of the populace that is most vulnerable and would benefit from the booster, I might not want a third shot at the cost of dire global consequences. In any case, I'm skeptical of Biden's assertion that the US can do this without diverting doses away from the unvaxxed. Report to moderator http://forums.escapefromelba.com/Themes/core/images/ip.gif 75.76.164.18

Some Afghans were always going to welcome the Taliban back, because they saw them (in spite of the oppression) as inherently less corrupt than any civil government. Taliban is the Pashto word for "students, " and refers to them all being raised in the madrassa system and its very disciplined (ascetic, really, to a western eye) approach to life. For Pashtuns generally, who are about fifty percent of Afghans, Taliban rule means more Pashtun power. For many men, I suspect the conservative (Wahhabi) ideology is sold in terms of better job prospects emerging when all women are forced from their present jobs (as has already begun, per the NYT, in major cities) and vacancies need filling. Basically, most ordinary people there aren't concerned with big-picture stuff, like how great western secular government might maybe possibly someday be. Poor nations are full of poor people who have poor people priorities. And there may also be a bit of that Trumpian effect, where someone publicly deplores a regressive policy but has privately been thinking that way. Just as Trump openly promised to take us back to 1953, and expressed white nationalist sentiments that had secretly been held by many, so perhaps the Taliban also resonate with many Muslim citizens who have publicly professed moderate and progressive leanings without, erm, total sincerity. Some are genuinely concerned about women's rights, including I'd imagine most women, which may explain why the Taliban spokesmen are telling happy stories about the New Improved Softer emirate they're bringing. It'll be interesting to see if any of that is real -- one could hope that students fresh from the madrassa in the 90s are now older and wiser. Sending women home suggests maybe not all that wise. Maybe not chopping off your hands for swiping an orange is the best that can be expected. (I copy/pasted this from myself, but for some reason the text editor here insists on altering the font and making it look sort of like a quote. Not sure what that's about. )

If you have a species with selective advantage in a large brain, then a lot of neural development has to happen in utero, in order to get a large brain. The brain has to be somewhat prepared for perception and learning when it emerges from the womb, for a variety of reasons you can probably figure out. One example is the bonding with the parents. Another issue is bipedalism. To achieve that, narrower hips are needed. If we had stayed quadrupeds, squeezing out those bigheaded babies would have been much easier. Also bear in mind neurons are extremely specialized cells that don't have time or resources to replicate themselves.