lemur

So the "goalpost" are where you have to shoot to successfully incriminate Muslims as a species and Islam as a religion? Why, so you can justify uniform discrimination against anyone who practices faith in Islam?

The funny thing is that all those peasants would just clamour for money instead of organizing their own economy. Of course, if the trillionairs organized a sufficient governmental system to police the peasants and prevent them from doing any labor or utilizing any natural resources without permission from the trillionairs, the peasants might attempt to use democracy as a means of gaining control of the economy. But why would these trillionairs stand to be bullied into giving up their control over their resources?

Do you see what you're doing? You're arguing over the numbers to imply that there is some legitimate threshold where you can hold individuals accountable for actions attributed to a collective identity.

You can't even begin to reason about this until you fully understand all the ingredients that go into cooking a meal, of which the recipe is just one part. This is getting into a discussion of textual authority verses interpretative authority, which is an endless discussion that I don't want to get into. Roland Barthes proclaimed "the death of the author and the birth of the reader" in the 1970s but the issue arguable goes back at least as far as Christ's controversial statement, "before Abraham was, I am." In any case, the point is that no religion or other ideology has been successful at preventing violence. Mostly, if anything, they tend to displace and restructure violence. The main ideology responsible for the kind of terrorist violence blamed on Islam, however, is the ideology that targeting some individuals will have an effect on others who identify with the victims. This is generally the ideology of collectivist warfare where people organize into factions and attack anyone wearing a certain uniform or otherwise marked as part of the enemy faction. You can hardly blame Islam for factionalism. If nothing else, part of Islam is that it celebrates Mohammed as being a uniter of tribes. In other words, Mohammed STOPPED tribalism, which is part of why people revere him as a prophet. So it seems rather hypocritical to blame an anti-tribalist ideology for tribalist violence, imo.

It wouldn't matter if the majority of violence was committed in the name of Islam or if the majority of Muslims committed violence. It would still be wrong to attribute that violence to Islam as a religion OR to Muslims in general. You can't hold individuals accountable for actions that they didn't commit individually. And it doesn't make sense to hold a book or an ideology responsible for actions because the actions are the result of interpretations, not the text itself. A cookbook doesn't prepare meals or ruin them, cooks do.

What about changing it to "any terrorist," since there are those who think in terms of manipulating others with violence and fear and those who argue their reasoning in a democratic fashion? Oh wait, that just gets back to the war of democracy on terror, which has lost popularity because of its ideological fairness and clarity. Ok, back to stereotyping and associative-scapegoating.

Ignoring the ethics of wage rates, it is an interesting question of how minimum wage setting along with subsidies for housing, health care, and other basic necessities influence economic activity and price-levels generally. A property-owner who rents to a section 8 tenant receives slightly higher rent than they could get in an open market. The question is whether this discourages price-competition among such land-lords. Right now there is a glut in both the rental and sales markets due to oversupply and reluctance to sell or rent real estate for increasingly lower prices. This reluctance is surely related to the unwaivering inflation of CPI products as well as other expenses that property-owners have to shoulder, such as insurance, taxes, fees, and their own bottom line due to their living expenses. If the free market were really free and competitive, I would expect dwindling sales and rental tenants to drive property owners to the point of needing to sell or lower their rental prices to whatever level the demand side would shoulder. Minimum wage keeps the level of rent that people can afford artificially higher than it would be if low wage jobs paid, say, $2/hour. What some people do, stereotypically those who work in unregulated sweat-shop or other lower-than-minimum-wage jobs, is to crowd into low-cost housing to share the costs. Local governments try to prevent this because of infrastructural stress and other problems it supposedly creates, but such regulations are yet another barrier to totally free market behavior. The question is whether it is a natural development of free market economies for ghettos to form with overcrowded low-cost housing while housing in other areas inflates to high levels due to protected wages of people with privileged positions/incomes. Imo, this kind of market stratification is due to insufficient competition at all levels of economy. Theoretically at least, if everyone was subject to wage-competition due to relentless cost-cutting at all levels by every business, it would be impossible to maintain high rents and sales prices for any properties, not just those in certain areas. Of course, this also assumes a very classical model of free market capitalism in which individuals do not consume profits but continue to save and re-invest them in the strictest fiscally conservative enterprises. This type of capitalism would not generate the high levels of consumption-driven revenues that characterize contemporary consumption-capitalism. Although people complain about socialism, it is ironically the socialist critique of capitalism that helped transform capitalism from its rigorously frugal form to the fiscally liberal version known today. Charles Dickens and others were very critical of scrooge-type investors who would pinch every penny and even themselves live in a cold room burning minimal amounts of coal to maximize their wealth instead of spending it. I don't know when the ideology arose that people who worked hard deserved to spend their income and live well, but it was surely not separate from the rise of labor unions and labor laws that negotiated higher pay and benefits for workers. What has essentially evolved is a form of capitalism where the middle and working classes enjoy socialist levels of consumption, while a certain amount of people are relegated to poverty and/or working-poor income levels in undesirable jobs like food-service, which provide the kinds of consumption opportunities that would never have been available during the time of early capitalism when Dickens' scrooges dominated fiscal activity and kept the entire payroll on a very short leash.

I know they do. Unfortunately, I am the kind of culture-critic who sees similar approaches in various disciplines and questions their general validity instead of assuming that if so many people use them, they must be valid. Although I can understand your logic, it is one of those rules that is geared toward establishing itself as a generalization and who cares about the exceptions. Imo, it does not matter so much whether specialization leads to more efficient energy-economizing because it will never be a law that defies exception. So the issue becomes what explains the success of those species that do thrive by versatility rather than specialization. I have no doubt that many thrive by specialization, but to understand the total logic of evolution, you would have to go beyond specialization, no? Just off the top of my head, I would guess that highly specialized organisms/species would do well in a very stable ecology but fare poorly during periods of evolutionary change. Thus I would expect more versatile species/organisms to survive ecological instability better than very specialized ones. Still, I don't know why such species wouldn't be extinguished during periods of stability if they are in fact out-competed by the more specialized species then.

I don't know what the rules are about citing the bible or other religious doctrine on this forum, but I'm going to do it not to prosthelytize but because it provides a different perspective on this issue. It's a controversial Christ-quote where Jesus says that he didn't come to Earth to bring peace but with a sword to turn family members against each other. I like this quote because I think it means that, yes, you love your family members but you can put the interest of truth above that of peace/agreement on the basis of blood-ties or other group-ties. You make a good point about group identification always being present in some way to varying degrees. I think it does always create some potential for fear and hatred of others deemed 'outside' the group. Probably this is why Christianity and probably other religions as well prescribe looking at all people as "brothers and sisters" under God. No matter, the point is that just because all group-identification generates some degree of exclusion, fear, and hatred and therefore a certain potential for violence, however slight - that doesn't mean that all such steps toward violence are of the same gravity. I think Ghandi's philosophy of ubiquitous violence (himsa) is relevant here because it has the capacity to recognize even the smallest acts of violence as destructive (e.g. killing microbes by breathing) but by recognizing these, he seems to be warning against reacting with even greater violence. It is almost a Buddhist technique of detachment to be aware of acts of violence and the potential for violence and to be able to respond to it in a positive way that itself resists violence in the reaction. I believe this is what Ghandi meant when prescribing "ahimsa," (i.e. resistance of himsa/violence). Of course, he also believed that he couldn't resist violence without being in a position to commit it, which is why he joined the Brittish infantry during the Boer war, supposedly.

relative humidity makes a big difference when hang-drying clothes inside or out. Hang-drying clothes indoors in the winter when the air is dry from heating is ideal because not only do the clothes dry faster but they also humidify the air a bit. Outdoor drying is ideal when the sun is shining but when it's overcast and humid, they can take a long time and smell. Dryers are nice when its humid and overcast.

I don't think it's just national ego that is getting in the way of peace, although any form of collectivist ego always seems to lead to polarization and misrecognition. Ironically, it was actually Osama Bin Ladin who suggested that the best way to stop terrorism would be for people in the US to convert to Islam. I don't think that is really necessary, but it does strike me as odd that so many people are arguing against burning the quran but how many of those same people actually want to read it? If you look at it the other way around, i.e. if there were Muslims who were not converting to Christianity or Judaism but were in fact citing parts of the bible commonly honored by these faiths, it would make a very good impression. The same would be true for westerners citing parts of the quran they find inspiring instead of just the parts that they fear or hate. At some point, people may actually wake up and realize that you don't have to join someone's church to look for some good in their scriptures and philosophy and maybe then people will stop fighting like dogs over whether some book is holy or evil and instead start just looking for pearls of wisdom in them and stop throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I take this on a more general level than you are. There are no conditions for people to be able to freely interact without fear, hatred, and violence emerging; or I should say the only conditions are that people feel secure enough to prevent fear and hatred from welling up in them and motivating their attitudes and actions. Access to technology, economic prosperity, etc. doesn't ultimately push people more in the direction of peace or war, imo. Tribalism, nationalism, and other factionalism does however, imo. Secularism, globalism, liberalism, multiculturalism, monoculturalism, or any other approach to culture and diversity doesn't prevent fear or hatred. Diversity is always present in some form or other and people seek differences to project their fear and hatred onto. So, there might be many possible ways of addressing, preventing, diffusing, etc. fear and hatred but the only ultimate test of peace is for people to be able to live together and interact freely without hatred and fear. This is why I never see the end of "occupation" as winning a war, because it usually just leads to hatred and fear of the 'former" enemy. So the question to me is what gets people to the point where they don't regard themselves as part of a nation or other ethnic territorializing faction that is opposed to others? What gets people to the point where they can freely interact with anyone of any ethnicity without regarding themselves as normal and the others as foreign? When do people just live together, co-exist, and interact as equal individuals without defining each other in terms of collectivism and territory? When they get to that point, I would say war has been won but not before that, because then it is still going on to some degree, imo.

Violence retaliating against violence is the basic recipe for escalating conflict, but to what end? Burning/fire is ironically the best analogy for describing the process of escalating/intensifying destructive feedback-loop that results from dialogues of violence, relatiation, fear, hatred, etc. In that sense, it really makes sense that these people are using fire as almost a prayer for mutual destruction. You could almost even call these rituals "hell-summoning prayers" from a religious perspective. Then all anyone has to do to join these people in the hell of escalating destruction is react against them, hence feeding the flames of hatred, fear, and potential violence. So far, I think the best response has come from Obama who basically just pointed out that burning these books is just a destructive act that doesn't send out any message of enlightenment about anything. So hopefully this conflict will evolve from being one of mutual destruction to one of mutual enlightenment. Of course, what are the chances of that with as much will to repression going on as there is?

Imo, the main benefit of cold showers or swimming in cold water is primarily to train your nervous system to respond to cold shocks and cold generally. Obviously your musculature has to tense-up to generate heat to maintain body temperature. Presumably, like anything else your body does, practice improves functioning. So if your body is more skilled at dealing with cold shocks and cold generally, it will be less sensitive and vulnerable to them. This, in turn, should make you less prone to cold-related stress when you are confronted with cold for whatever reason. This is my opinion although I believe it should be self-evidently true. I'm curious if there is another view that would contradict this.

I don't think any war/conflict is ever won completely until there is total freedom of association between individuals on either side. The day Iraqi, Afghani, US, EU, AU etc. citizens can freely live among each other and interact in a peaceful and democratic way, war will be "won." This is no easy task, though. The cold war supposedly ended when people no longer feared nuclear holocaust, which they don't really seem to fear anymore. The war on terror seems to have mostly been won insofar as people no longer fear terrorist attacks (not counting the current situation where fear of terrorist retaliation is prompting people to advise against quran burning). In general, I think as long as fear of conflict persists, war is never really won or lost. It's only when all individuals involved can freely associate with each other without fear; at that point the survivors of conflict have really "won."

I don't know where you got the idea that suicide is legal. I have always heard that it is illegal. Suicide is unethical b/c it either involves someone taking their own life for the benefit of someone else or doing it for their own benefit without recognizing someone else's loss as a result. When death is an escape from suffering, this would seem to be another story. Still, even when euthanasia for this reason is validated, there is still the idea that one should persevere as long as possible before giving in to death.

This sounds more like an economic analysis of status competition in a meritocracy. By "generalism," do you mean organisms that are somehow more biologically suited to a wider range of climates, foods, predator/pathogen exposure, etc.? If so, why would you assume that a carnivore or herbivore is better capable of finding and consuming food more efficiently than an omnivore? An omnivore might expend less energy on food search and consumption due to the fact that it can consume more calories in a shorter period of time. Anyway, I think your logic is to general and abstract to be really meaningful. You need to give specific examples and reasons to back up your points, I think. You sound like an economist defending division of labor on the basis of theoretical logics of specialization vs. generalism without any attention for detail.

I don't understand what stress-energy tensor ranking is. Does that have to do with the rate at which the field weakens as distance from the center increases? I also don't understand how spin is measured and what its mechanics are. How does a photon spinning affect its behavior? The relationship between photons and electromagnetic force is a reason that makes sense to me, though, unless some connection between that force and gravity could be uncovered. I see why you wouldn't want to mislead someone who is attempting to learn orthodox theoretical developments regarding gravitons or anything else. My concern with any orthodox learning is that people substitute rote memorization of facts and propositions for critical understanding. Likewise, people sometimes rehearse the trains of thought and equations of established scientists and come to fetishize those instead of engaging them in a way that enhances their own ability to think creatively about the material. A critical discussion questioning an orthodox fact or proposition often results in a more thorough understanding than a rehearsed explanation, although that can be beneficial as well.

Then what are you saying exactly about the relationship between Einstein, E=MC^2, and the emergence of atomic weaponry?

How does that change what I am talking about? If a million photons are in a meter of light and the light blueshifts so that the same number of photons must occupy 0.9 meters, the there is 0.1 meter whose photon density cannot be as high as the other 0.9 meter, right? If the blueshift is caused by the source moving toward the target, that would be a different story because the light is being compressed from the source. The same would be true if the target is moving toward the source. But what about when the gravity of the target is pulling the radiation toward it? Wouldn't you then have light-compression without additional emissions from the source, resulting in fragmentation of the beam into relatively discreet groups of photons/waves?

That's a good point. However, I think it does even more to support the idea that pre-reproductive death would serve to eliminate genes whose expression could potentially benefit an organism or species at a later time due to environmental changes. I think the most "fit" species/organisms would be those that are capable of the widest range of diversity and flexibility in their adaptations to different climate and resource/feeding situations. So I would still think that a fitter gene pool would be one that loses less genes to natural selection instead of more.

This approach to melancholy is still evident today in cultures of tragedy-celebration. The interesting part is why higher class-status tends more toward such tragedy-celebration while lower-class status tends more toward life-affirmation. Ever noticed, for example, that blues music has become a middle-class taste while lower-class prefers up-beat hip hop and rap? It may not be purely about class or ethnic identity, though. Romeo and Juliet and other lover tragedies are popular, imo, because the happiness of love insulates you emotionally against the suffering of tragedy. It's like only picking a scab when it's healed enough that you can endure the pain, then seeing how much you can endure before you get the wound open again. The problem with diagnosing depression or any other cognitive-emotional problem is that the label can cause the person diagnosed to feel even more said or stressed about their "condition." Really, the best way to deal with depression or any other problem is to treat it as normal feelings that have the potential to cause depression or other problems if adequate cognitive-emotional behavioral adjustments are not pursued. Things like physical exercise, paying more attention to positive thoughts and less to negative ones, learning to relax, etc. can all lessen tendencies toward depression. Such things should be treated as regular exercise, the way regular physical exercise is important to preventing physical health problems. Please note: this is not medical advice nor am I suggesting that anything is a substitute for seeking professional treatment/therapy. However, methods of staying healthy should not be ignored, imo, just because medical treatments are available once you get sick.

Well, lending it out for mortgages doesn't seem smart anymore. So investing in other revenue-generating enterprises seems wise EXCEPT the more profit you skim off of existing revenues, the more income and profits get cut out of the economy, leading to more foreclosures and business closings. So, I guess the really wise way to invest it in the big-picture of the economy would be to create businesses that compete with existing businesses in ways that put pressure on them to change their modi operandi. The trick is to figure out what you consider environmentally and/or socially/economically sustainable and invest in that in a way that you don't just throw money into a failing venture but you also don't reproduce traditionally problematic business practices.

That's true, but then you have to explain the physics meaning of "work" in contrast to the possible lay meaning, which could involve frying french fries or tearing movie tickets in half.

You're still implying that the conditions of a technological development are at least partly responsible for the usage/application of the technology in practice. What you are basically saying is that without the scientific and technological developments that were conditions for developing atomic weaponry, that weaponry couldn't have been deployed. But you could say the exact same thing about the conditions of nationalism and war that culminated in the ability to exact wholesale slaughter against a regional population without regard for the individuality of victims separately. So you're basically attributing nuclear holocaust to the scientific and technological conditions without paying any attention to the political and social conditions. Furthermore, please note that other mass killing went on during the same time and previously in history without the use of nuclear technology. So the physics may have changed the tool, but it didn't create the project the tool was used for. Would you blame physicists for the use of the guillotine or electric chair? Would you blame biologists for biological weapons or chemists for chemical ones?