Peterkin

I don't know about that; there is no evidence. (See? When there is no evidence either way, one does not draw a definite conclusion.)You might just be in denial and protesting too much. What I do see evidence of is the syndrome where people object to things that are in no way objectionable or of any detriment to themselves, the way you have been objecting to aphantasia. That is the condition to which I was referring. I haven't named it yet, but it's obviously a subspecies of hypercriticalism.

And why does this annoy you? Being annoyed by things that have zero effect on your daily activities or experience is not a recognized condition, either, but it's a uncommon enough phenomenon that I recognize it. You have it.

I don't know if different kinds of perceptions should or can be classified as 'conditions' - though, of course, they are various conditions in which a mind happens to find to function - but they need to be recognized as real and valid variants. Synaesthesia has been recognized for some time, and eve if it were not, I would still experience colour associated with numbers, letters, sounds and even emotions.

Why does this upset you? People apparently experience something unusual that puts them at a disadvantage compared to people who don't experience it. When it's been sufficiently investigated and documented, it will be recognized as a condition - or not. That won't change the experience of the people who have it, but it won't go in the manual. If you are not one of those people, don't bother them, and they won't bother you.

It doesn't necessarily protect anybody. Rights, freedoms and protections either have to be written into the constitution and the legal code, or enacted one at a time as the polity requires a law or a custom to be changed. If there is a minority that is despised by the majority, they will never be protected, unless the majority attitude changes through some agency, and that changed attitude is reflected in the democratic process. However, it seems to me that people who feel physically safe and economically secure grow more tolerant and generous in their attitude. The marginalized minority will find advocates in the comfortable majority. Even when African slavery was the norm, some middle-class white people opposed it on moral grounds. If the concepts or equality and justice are central to the social philosophy, injustice will always be opposed... as long as the majority feels they can afford to be tolerant and fair. (The trick to preserving injustice is to sow distrust and fear in the populace: They want to take your jobs. They want to rape your daughters. They'll persecute your religion. They'll have too many babies and outnumber you. They'll adulterate your culture, erode your traditions. They're dirty and spread disease. They're lazy and unproductive and a drain on your resources.) In choosing the persons who will draft and pass legislation, you are not asking the representative to tell you what to do, you are asking him to serve your best interest - whether that's in the prohibition of certain activities of which you disapprove, or striking down old laws you consider outmoded, or reallocating public funds or providing government services. Direct democracy is not really practicable in large, diverse populations. Even with the technical possibility of the whole population voting by electronic plebiscite on every issue, it's unwieldy, time-consuming, error-prone and vulnerable to tampering. Or marijuana? Yes, in each round, there are winners and losers. If more people dislike than like having to do without onions, or indoor smoking, for four years, the ruling will be overturned when the pro-onion party takes office. This is so in every large organization, in the name of efficiency, economy, the king, national security, company policy, God or whatever. It is an unavoidable flaw in organizing on large scale. Someone has to direct each operation; others have to carry out orders; everybody has to live with the results - until something changes. Human interactions are never going to be neat and perfect, in any political system. That just means money is the most common means of corruption. Has been for some time, and not only in democracies. Better systems exist, if not perfect ones, and ours could certainly be improved.

Democracy of the inclusive parliamentary kind, not the Greek model, requires that every eligible citizen have equal opportunity to participate in the selection of its governing bodies. The citizen can vote for a person to represent his or her interests, or a policy platform proposed by a party, or some combination of both; furthermore, every eligible citizen has the right to stand for election to office. No other kind of equality is entailed or implied. Which, of course, means that clean democratic process produce governments that move gradually toward equality and equity for all the citizens, simply because the majority, not the privileged elite, decide for the policy that favours their interest. If an elite wants to retain its privilege, it must corrupt the democratic process.

It's a pretty exciting area of medicine. Too bad I've been out of the game so long!

I don't see how. I'm not really up to par on this; it's 40 years or more since I worked with bones - and they were dead. My vague notion is that bone cells are too stupid to respond to hormones. I think you need to give them a pattern. Insert a graft of the right shape. You really ought to be discussing this with an expert.

I think it would do what all bones do after a fracture: regrow and rebuild on the framework it finds. Sometimes a compound fracture is not set properly and when it heals, the limb is shorter and crooked: the framework was the wrong shape. So if you substitute a desirable framework, I expect the new growth to follow that configuration. (I'd want to know the company's source of supply)

Probably the length and method of storage. If they mixed in one load from two years ago and another that's been left out to dry with a fresh batch, you'll have different results. I don't buy them in the shell anymore: in years past, too many have been mouldy or hard - I found it a waste of money and effort. I do sometimes buy the little foil packet of cooked, shelled chestnuts; they've been a consistently decent quality. Couple of minutes in the toaster oven for snacking. Not bad for puree, either, except we don't have a potato ricer and the food processor leaves them a bit grainy.

Good! They really out to add business interests and tax returns.

Great! It's a start. Why the fla'ing fu'k didn't they do it to that other guy before he caused the deaths of so many Americans?

Yes, of course. Is there a correct legal procedure to deal with that?

I would venture to say the US electoral system is not operating at maximum efficacy.

Well, so what? Another one was president already.

So: in name only. Not only did the ruble not fade away, but its market value continued to be set against the US $ (hard currency, at that time) and people who didn't have enough rubles didn't get bread, while the commissars were importing patisserie and emmenthal.

Which countries are those? And how did they slip the noose of global capital? Or are they something other than capitalist in name only?

Is there a prescient 'contribution to the well-being or all beings' meter that rings a bell in each person's head when they have reached that moment and can reach no higher? If so, how does it measure the overall contribution to all beings when some beings - say foxes - depend on the elimination of some other being - say rabbits - for their well-being?

Where would the committee be drawn from? I should think the quickest and simplest way would be to transfer procedural matters to the civil service. And, incidentally, the funding of governance, including the civil service, to an independent accounting body - a check and balance kind of thing. But there are a couple of problems with that solution. First, the change would have to be legislated by those same politicians who thereby lose the control, which they might be reluctant to do, and then pass constitutional challenges. Second, is the civil service efficient enough and does it have the capacity to take on another biggish task? And who appoints the chief executive of the new agency? Political appointments are already a big problem for most US government agencies. I would much prefer to see promotion from inside the ranks, preferably by secret ballot within the agency.

Why? What is gained from respecting a concept without taking into consideration the methods of its practice? What is lost by disrespecting or even despising some or all of the tenets, rituals and mythos of a religion? How does a religion become "their" religion? Did they invent it? Did they choose it? Did they inherit it? Was it forced on them?

The children in the rural school near us participate in spring highway cleanup every year. Each class gets a stretch of road, some adult supervisors (parents and volunteers to make sure the children are safe) some garbage bags and recycle bags for the bottles and cans. They usually come up with returnables, as well, and make a little money. Everybody has a good time and does a good job and learns a lesson in good citizenship.

I'll never solve any human problem completely; I offer nothing more than local, temporary amelioration.

Yes, that's it! Just putting trash in containers, however innovative, attractive and expensive, doesn't solve the trash problem. All those bins have to be emptied somewhere. The cheapest and most effective solution is to produce less trash in the first place.

It's partly cultural. In a consume-and-waste economy, people develop a culture of careless abandon. In a thrifty one, they are far more aware of the material objects in their possession. There is alos the matter of respect for other people who share the public places. That has to be taught early and consistently.

Let people feel that the street belongs to them. Ban cars. Plant trees. Make it nice, so they want to be there.