Peterkin

They have reason to be cocky. **Since Nixon and Billy Graham, their political influence has been courted by candidates, and their power has grown along with the white supremacist faction's, as the Republican Party, at the federal level, and even more obviously in the state governments, have catered to their demands in preference to the general population's interests. That holy war is simply one flank of an all-fronts attack. Once they've broken the United States and its accustomed form of government, they'll turn on one another. Very cold comfort! Afterthought. It's a bit more complicated, and harks back to another cozy bedfellow of the political right. https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/one-nation-under-god-how-corporate-america-invented-christian-america And now, of course the death industry supports God and Jesus has learned to love guns. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/In-god-and-guns-they-trust/article14005414.ece

I quite like this comparison. Until the Democrats are tough enough to be willing to do how Republicans do, they're just as bad as the Republicans. Keratosis and melanoma are both skin blemishes. Why quibble over which one you have on your face? That's fine as long as you're alone. A subjective sample of 1, however, doesn't give you the statistically significant comparison. Try riding a crowded downtown bus late on Friday night.

You might not get many takers with that approach.

Our ability or inability to influence events is irrelevant to the question. "Is it then already part of the future based on the near impossibility of any other incident preventing it happening." No, it is a projection based on calculations of what is known. There may be unknown factors already at work, and unknown factors yet to take effect that will change the event and invalidate the prediction. Venus could be knocked out of its orbit by a meteor collision, or explode from within, or be stolen by Davros. The key word there is highlighted. No. It can be considered highly probable. All of our decisions in life are based on degree of probability of the outcome of the confluence of current evens and our own actions. Sometimes we're underinformed, sometimes misinformed; sometimes we miscalculate, sometimes we miunderunderestimate the unknown unknowns, sometimes we just close our eyes and jump, trusting to luck or a deity to make it all right in the end. The reason you can't kill your grandfather before your father was born is that your father was born. The good news is, he can't recsind your own or your father's birth, either.

We should probably determine whether the objection to the petition was valid. It appears to have been, so, but not sufficient to throw out the whole list. The party line voting is pretty much a given in US politics (other countries, too!) but the motivation is not entirely clear. Closing ranks behind one member who did something underhanded, but in their own eyes forgivable, for a small advantage? Automatically voting for anything that might dilute the other party's base, regardless of its validity? Both are common reactions. Strategic voting is not entirely unknown to Canada, either - to the detriment of the Green Party in particular. I guess they know the drill by now: their best option is to support a party than can win and persuade it to adopt their platform, or join a party that can win and advocate for their platform -- which is routinely done. While the situation doesn't come to near the scope or effectiveness of gerrymandering and voter suppression (i.e. not quite the equivalent of what I've been 'constantly complaining' about), wrong is still wrong, and ought to be righted. From the most egregious to the most trivial, there are so many flaws inherent in the present electoral system and so many accumulated abuses and corruptions over time, by whichever party had the opportunity at one time or another, that it has become barely reflective of the will of the people: only marginally and sporadically democratic. The two-party system is an unlikely stage on which it can be righted. The electoral college is an unlikely tool for righting it. And the current Supreme Court is not the champion to accomplish it.

It will get ugly at on the highways and harbours, too, when vigilantes intercept women trying to get out of their clutches, and anyone who tries to help women do that. They will be making 'citizen's arrests', beating men and groping and humiliating women in the cause of ... the usual: supremacy. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-it-legal-to-travel-for-abortion-after-dobbs

The fact that you asked

We don't rely so much priests in Canada. They kinda lost their halos with the whole Residential School business. The abortion issue was entirely between the doctors and the lawyers. The legislators fussed and fumed and fought among themselves but every decade, one strong Liberal government comes in and does what the voters mostly want.

Why assume state laws are reasonable?

Here we go again! In the late 1960's, the same law was used to obtain abortions in cases where the woman's life was seriously threatened by the pregnancy. Some, then many physicians chose to interpret that loosely as if the woman's life is at risk. Then they included emotional risk, such as possible suicide. If you wanted an abortion, you had to apply to go before a committee or two physicians and a psychiatrist. The committee system did not function well: the wait for a hearing would often put the termination beyond the 12-week gestation legally allowed, (In those days, you didn't get a positive result until 4-6 weeks into a pregnancy) plus it tied up valuable doctor-time, so it became a rubber-stamp process. (You don't have to come in and do the histrionics, just say you 'll kill yourself if you're forced to have this baby, and we'll approve the application.) In 1969-72, our inner city hospital was doing about 20 suctions and maybe 10 D&C's every Wednesday afternoon. Very, very few later than 16 weeks, and those would be severely defective foetuses.

How many of the things you use every day do you know who made them? They don't have to hide; they just have to blend into the background that doesn't interest you - like all the people who resurface your roads, unload the containers of retail goods, stock the shelves, swab the hospital floors. Have you ever even tried to read the name of the quality inspector who signed off on your box of teabags? That's because it's not 'made' at all. It happened, as a result a whole lot of previous events, with no intelligence behind them - just mindless, intractable, inescapable physics.

I'd be really interested to see it in use. (I do a lot of chopping and my boards look like battle-scarred veterans of a turf war.) Can we have updates from time to time?

That's way too beautiful to mess up with cutting. Very fine work!

I have transgressed many commandments of which I was aware and some of which I was unaware, but I have never before been threatened with resurrection. At last, my life has Meaning!

It's a failing Alzheimer's will no doubt correct.

The question is based on an unfounded assumption. The answer, therefore, is another question: Does life have "a meaning" in the general sense? Even more broadly, in what sense and what context can such a large and complex phenomenon as all of life have any meaning at all, let alone one single identifiable Meaning? The question could be answered meaningfully if it specified something humans can actually think about in their own terms, such as: How does an individual human being find purpose for his life? Have you, personally, found one? Through introspection or subscription? Again, based on several poorly founded assumptions. What's "God"? Shrink it down to: Do you subscribe to any supernatural belief system? Is it inhabited by a god or gods? What is their function in your life? What do you think their function is in the universe? That question is just plain self-annihilating. It assumes an undefined concept herein named 'Reality', which may be construed as another name for Nature. Physics might, in that instance, be the exploration of the realities of Nature. But the word 'nature' also signifies the complex of traits which together comprise the character which defines an entity. Philosophers may set themselves the task of exploring the characteristics of all that can be known, including Nature, but they can only go about the same way Physicists do: one smaller question at a time. Now you know one more. Were you planning to conduct a seminar?

Probably best. Then, you can choose to have nothing underneath* if it's hot or several layers of clothing if its cold, and adjust accordingly. (*advisable: underwear with a pocket for ID and contact number in case of rioting and arrest)

'The past' is a whole different concept from 'the individual'. Individual entities, sentient and living or mineral and inert, exist in time. The past exists nowhere except in language, imagination, memory - in abstract creations of the mind. The past, speed, love, philosophy, grammar, civil rights, evil, the taste of potatoes - none of these concepts exist in the way that a physical entity exists. The past can be neither alive nor dead (nothing that has not been alive can be dead); it is the nebulous product of memory. Yes, we do. Identity is not the same as memory, which is not the same as individuality. These are aspects of self, while we are selves, but we may not claim them or own them or rely upon them to last as long as our bodies do.

It might be simpler to compare yourself to a tree. It was a seed, then a seedling, then a sapling, then a tree, for some period of time - maybe as long as 4000 years, maybe as short as 20. As far as we know, it has no memory of any of that time. But birds lived in its branches, ate its fruit, spread its seeds. People and other animals have rested in its shade. It has taken nutrients from the soil and shed leaves on it. It may harbour all manner of insect life which would have n habitat otherwise. What is present in the world, alive or not, is in the world, exactly as itself; it affects the world around it exactly as itself and not some other entity, whether it's aware or not, whether it retains knowledge of the experience or not. And if it's alive, it goes on being alive while it's asleep, unconscious or suffering from Alzheimer's, right up until the moment that it dies. The continuity of the individual doesn't depend the individual's knowledge, only its presence.

Yes, that is a bit tricky. Squash is a familiar word in everyday use, while quash is almost exclusively used as a legal term, and the two have a similar application as verbs. (Squash also has very dissimilar secondary meanings, as nouns: for a healthy food source, a soft drink in England and a sport... It is one of those OP words.)

That is certainly the case. It's tough, not being able afford healthy food, like cabbage and carrots! But it doesn't make you more nearly correct on any known scientific basis. For example, I very much doubt licking the cathode of 9V batteries will compensate for the lack of nutrients in cabbage and carrots. Sad, but there it is.

In Johnson's UK, those are 'scandals'; in Trump's USA they wold have been 'an average month' - just so you substitute a virgin diet coke in that glass. The real difference is that the British Parliament can still act; can change rules that don't work; can oust bad leaders. What's the realistic alternative government that can take over quickly?

I place my faith in climate change. Of course I agree, resistance is futile. Anyway, we'll all be dead soon. But in the meantime, it does no active harm to hold, or even express, opinions.

But local or even sloppy pronunciation causes far less actual harm than deliberate obfuscation and misuse of words. It doesn't help. She pays no attention whatever to what I am saying, let alone asking. Also, I'd have to understand her answers, and if I couldn't make out the response to "Why are you calling?" I will probably fare no better with a weather report. If it's a cold sales call, no loss. If it's the secretary of a specialist I've been waiting to hear from, that's a problem. Actually, that happened to a close friend of mine. He misunderstood the young woman on the phone and turned down his chance to be scheduled for a much needed cataract operation. Now he has to wait a year, gradually going blind.

PS I'm not mad keen on 'nucular', ether, but I've learned to live it, as I have with shopping at the groshie store and having my teeth repaired by a Dennis.