TheVat

An adjudicator does not have to be an expert or authority on a subject to render a sound judgment. They need only solid evidence and some basic rules of evidence evaluation. Expertise may help in evaluation of evidence, but judges and juries can use that expertise without themselves having to be become experts. And in many cases, expertise is not needed at all to determine some facts. I don't bring in a mycologist to determine my cheese is moldy.

People vary. My wife likes honest appraisal when she asks about some aesthetic choices. She has the good eye for color, I supply the good eye for proportions and contours, so asking me is recognizing that we are a good team where each fills some gaps for the other. On other matters, I agree that if you don't have any useful insight, and someone is looking for assurance, it is best to just be supportive. I like George Carlin's observation: If honesty is the best policy, then by process of elimination dishonesty is the second best policy.

Drivers must be pretty mellow out here - Phi's idyllic drive is often the experience here, especially when tourist season ends. Sometimes seems like human beings do better when they are not overly crowded together. I am generally tired of the political polarization, where only the most extreme and unsupported positions survive in the social media ecosystems. And various institutions, from churches to school boards to legislatures, seem now to be subject to continual invasions of Brown Shirts seeking to push out anyone less fanatical. This website offers genuine political discussion, and is relatively low in "squabbling." Possibly because members are educated lifelong learners and critical thinkers. The real strife in the world, the strife that's not generated by faux-outrage, comes from the basic human desire for justice and fair treatment. When people see they are not getting justice, when they see others having unearned privileges that they do not, when they are told they do not matter, when their anger is met with a truncheon or a gun or being caged up, then there simply cannot be peace and all the social goods.

Article Two simply sets up the Electoral College system. If there be "faithless electors, " that is covered by state law, which in 47 states either binds the electors or nullifies the vote of faithless one. Other sorts of filings against an election result can go to either state supreme courts or federal district courts, sometimes ending up in the US Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices, whatever their ideological leanings, are usually pretty serious jurists who believe in the rule of law, so there would have to be some ironclad facts supporting any claims of election fraud. Note that district courts tossed out something like 61 out of 62 filings of election fraud in 2020. And the only case that wasn't, IIRC, involved some fraudulent vote by a Republican that was never actually accepted by the county. The best amendment would be to scrap Article Two, section I, and the related 12th amendment, and go to a national popular vote. Had that been done in 2020, the results would have been VERY unambiguous. The margin was YUGE.

The concern for a bloodless coup is real, given that state GOP coalitions are seeking to have greater control on election boards and secretaries of state. https://www.pewtrusts.org/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/07/28/republican-legislators-curb-authority-of-county-state-election-officials

I'd never put my huevos in ice water.

Also, if it's water for drinking, I like to let the faucet run for 30 seconds or so, because many plumbing systems now use PEX, PVC, or other plastics that can leach chemicals into the water. Moving the water that's been resting in those pipes along, so you can obtain water fresh from the main, may be best.

If you are open to new ideas here, I will suggest there's a basic newbie rule everywhere on the web, which is: start out courteous and low-key, then bring out the colorful and wild as you get to know people and understand how your comments will land. Without all the information-rich channels of body language and facial expressions and vocal tones, the limited signal path of a message board means there is more time needed establishing a friendly vibe, humor, genuine intent, etc. If you start out stepping on toes, people may not charitably assume "it is just a fluke." I liked some of your writing, like "naked and crying in a ripped bean bag chair from the 1990s," and don't forget punctuation and capital letters, properly deployed, helps readability and humorous impact.

Are you just yolking around with this thread? Omeletting that question go, for now. The albumen is called the white because we cook it. It is referred to by color because there is a significant change in color. The yolk stays it's color, so it makes sense to keep calling it the yolk.

I sometimes have a certain sympathy for table jumpers, provided there is some method to the madness. FWIW, I am not wild about social reputation systems, and posted on it in the feedback section a couple months ago. The one used here at least seems to be used sometimes to thumb up well crafted thoughts rather than just a popularity rating, though I have seen it abused, too. If Ferrum's posts are all part of a social science experiment, I would say there might be methodology problems that need peer review. If some have to hand out downvotes, I would rather see them for bad methodology in science than because someone was offended or doesn't personally approve of a gadfly. I would have to review more of Ferrum's posts to see where he is going with all this... if anywhere.

Yes, that's the Ellison one. I think @zapatos story might be Hell is Forever, by Alfred Bester. A novella, from the 1940s. Was in an anthology of his, IIRC, but not sure which.

Sounds like a Harlan Ellison story. And then there's that Greek myth where Tithonus gets eternal life but has to shrink down to a cicada and so he ends up miserable and longing for death. Yeah if I had a youthful body, sharp mind, and some absorbing long-term project, I might view extended lifespan more favorably. And perhaps centuries of life would alter the mind in some wonderful way we just can't imagine. (not like those nasty immortals on Star Trek OS who enjoy telekinetic torture of dwarves and kidnapping starship officers who are forced into bad community theater) I look forward to @Peterkin reporting on their five years of being an iguana. Watch iguana dew? (been saving that one)

Good God no. I think healthy consciousness needs a fresh brain after a century or so, no matter how much wisdom or patience age brings. I would think the most creative and self-regenerating and joyful person in the world would inevitably find their thoughts growing stale and jaded after a century. I don't think we humans are wired for immortality, and our lives are meaningful because they are quite finite. At the least, we would need some sort of biological form of reincarnation, something that wipes the years clean every so often and restores a youthful openness.

Re, the first four words of your paragraph, glad someone noticed. Amazed that the blather of JP has catalyzed so much discussion here. Imagine someone predicating their behavior towards black people with JP's logic. Pfft, "black" isn't a real thing, is it? We should listen to anthropologists rather than your lived experience!

Thanks. It's been a half century since my reading Catcher in the Rye, so I may have to dig around to get what you're referring to. You are referring to the loss of innocence - as in the Burns poem - I gather.

Hahaha! Amoebazon is also good.

Would just like to say to whoever zeroed out my plus one: My post was entirely in jest, a bit of gentle satire, nothing more. Perhaps some need an emoji to guide them?

I like Rovelli's approach, that it's all about the interaction and not about any properties intrinsic to the object of observation. It's the observer (device)-photon relation that is wavelike or particle-like, not light in and of itself. You can even have device interactions with buckyballs (C60) that are wavy and say nothing about intrinsic ballsy-ness in the absence of which-path info (the experimenter is another matter). Bangstrom, if you recall Marshall at SCF, he was a big Rovelli fan, owing to the relational perspective.

Zapatos, poor sod, has never witnessed the passion of earthworms mating and the forbidden love between a toad and a cat, the love that dare not speak its name. From the humble paramecium and its many paramours, to the literate and steamy sonnets of the witty dolphin, the biome is drenched in love!

Only "discovered" him about a decade ago, which means four decades of my life bring poorer than they could have been. Effortless and stunning guitar playing, amazing baritone with Scottish pipes droning deep within. A friend recently quoted from Down Where the Drunkards Roll, which made me think of him and the necessity to revisit his work and recharge my soul.

For a half hour or so, I have been unable to make either the quote or reply function work here in a couple threads. I click on the buttons, but nothing happens. I verified I was still logged in. Is this a routine glitch here or is something going on today? This thread, obviously, is not having the problem. OK, now it's working again. As with many glitches, there may be no answer to this.

That was surreal.

The philosophy seems to be nihilism as interpreted by the most self-loathing. With a paradox at the center: If adherents self-apply the core doctrine, then they may well increase the suffering of family and friends, which would then contradict their stated goal. If they destroy animals and forests, then they increase human suffering, which again contradicts their goal. Any philosophy that can only be successfully implemented by a total holocaust is not worth your time.

Fairness seems to be of less concern to the lifelong entitled. Now you would think anyone with the mental acuity of a small soap dish might be able to grasp, when lives of less privileged people are described for them, that there is a Rawlsian case to be made for enforcing some degree of fairness. http://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/veil-of-ignorance

LOL. Too much "aether," perhaps.