TheVat

Hamas soldiers behave badly? I learn so much here. I had been led to understand that soldiers were the cream of society who attended picnics with their foes, played badminton and sipped tea as they discussed whose turn it was to fling themselves onto a bayonet.

There are various ethical systems that could be applied. One is Rawlsian ethics, based on John Rawls "veil of ignorance." The core idea is that any ethical society should seek justice with regards to a random person's birth, i.e. the womb you happened to pop out of should in no way confer a worse life upon you. Any ethics should work towards that goal, that you are not treated worse, nurtured less, or capriciously murdered simply owing to a particular social group you were born into. A Rawlsian approach then is to seek justice for all civilian populations, giving equal value to any innocent life. The notion that Palestinian civilians are somehow expendable because they happen to reside in a place with a terrible governance and a terrorist military wing is then deemed insupportable. The rights of a Palestinian child are no less and no more important than the rights of my children or the children of Charles III. Military attacks that target civilians in any way, then, are unethical and should be viewed as a criminal violation. Civilized nations should join together to condemn and ostracize nations that commit such a violation.

Don't forget that some neutron stars are pulsars and go Bossa Nova.

This continuance of the shift in warfare to remotely delivered blows, at push of a button, was behind my pages-ago comment on the cowardly and cruel nature of such attacks. I wasn't exonerating either side, or even being ideological, just trying to balance all the awed responses - wow, that's so clever and sophisticated, and ever so much tidier than airstrikes! - with an awareness that a button was pushed without regard for where pager users might be or who standing next to. Hence, at least a dozen deaths, two dead children, and thousands of maimed and blinded. Many, apparently, not actual warriors. So, again, I don't see it offering some moral high road for Israel, and I'm glad to hear you also question the "brilliant method."

One of those bits of rhetoric whose edge can be turned back on the speaker too easily. And underscores the drift of Likud-dominated Israel away from being "the good guys." Indeed, it's much like something Putin would say. It's awkward for the US to be supporting this kind of mission creep with billions per year. The good guys with an extremely well funded military and the largest contingent of F-16s outside of the USAF. Interesting how Palestinians often describe Hamas in the same way, because the average experience of Hamas, for most Palestinians, is civil service people who help them get a business license, or food ration cards, or all the other quotidian business of a government. We see only the ruthless militants who hide in tunnels and come out to launch rockets or conduct murderous raids. The complexity of the Palestinian relationship to Hamas is something that doesn't fit in a media sound bite.

No one is doing this. Again, as others note, it's not some binary thing. Bibi can be corrupt and unscrupulous AND Hamas can be led by vicious and corrupt men who send their most zealous (sometimes sociopathic) soldiers to unleash terror on civilians. Likud can have goals that are, functionally, ethnic cleansing AND Hamas can harbor those who have the same goals for Israel, going way beyond a reasoned two state solution. What I am suggesting is that an extremist like Bibi gains leverage when his longterm oppression of Gaza/WB causes Hamas to morph towards its own most extreme version. It gives him traction to pound the crap out of Gaza and lock down WB, and call it all self-defense. And the US swallows this narrative whole.

About the time he was facing criminal indictments and losing popularity, one of the leaders decided he could rescue himself by setting up the conditions (including dropping border patrols in key areas) for provoking a war which would then require him as a Strong Defender and help turn the polls around. I leave it to you to decide which leader that was.

Hope that clarified what I was responding to.

A bit embarrassed to say I didn't know Bowie had that oddity until he played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige. I'm a mix of Isles, Baltic, Russian, so there's range of eye shades in the family - mine have brown in the center with green surround. Called this green for decades until a driver's license examiner pointed out, "that's actually hazel, honey." One of those nice Midwest ladies who call everyone honey. Later, the spouse and I were at a carnival where they had a fortuneteller, she specialized in eyes, said mine were dramatic and perceptive. So then my wife goes in, returns and says that her eyes had also been deemed dramatic and perceptive. Guess we were a good eye match. Rather like Pict, another fairly heterogenous group with a label slapped on by outsiders.

Palestinians have distinct subgroups, so Gazans are not just homogeneous with Israeli Arabs. That Israeli Arabs enjoy the rights of citizenship does not negate the repression of Gazans. Gazans, and West Bankers, lack freedom and justice and free passage. Is anyone here seriously going to try and give legitimacy to Likud Israel's actions because Israeli Arabs are doing fine? Please.

If we accepted this premise, then pretty much any theory could involve transformed ghosts. That would be so handy! It would also explain why cookies disappear so quickly. And dark matter. Someone notify the Academy in Stockholm.

This clip does not represent all of my reply fairly. I was suggesting that the side backed by economic wealth and billions of US dollars and SOTA munitions become the functional adult in the room and move to the table to discuss a two state solution and restoration of West Bank lands and homes they stole by force. Please do not caricature a different opinion as approving violence - can we not by this point in the chat stipulate that all here agree both Israel and Hamas have committed vile and Geneva Articles violating acts against civilian populations? By "stop the cycle" I mean that the powerful party shows some willingness to address its own actions and deal justly with a couple million people it has dispossessed and starved and stolen from. The power disparity between Israel and Gaza (or the 32% of Lebanon that is Shiite/Hezbollah) is great - it is generally held that with power comes some responsibility and accountability. Jesus Fucking Christ how hard is it for Israel to just admit, We violated your rights, stole your land, massacred civilians, denied your national sovereignty, and are currently starving a million of you or more in hideous festering camps, geez, maybe that wasn't quite right. Surely everyone here, all people of conscience, understand that there is no peace when people are denied justice. The US, after a long and painful process, got there with its tribal peoples; I see no reason Israel can't get there to. Step One: dump Netanyahu and his merry band of would be fascists.

Weird. Ever since the forced dispossession of 700,000+ Palestinians in 1947-8, aka the Naqba, the native peoples of that region have offered a real simple suggestion. Stop stealing people's land and kicking them out of their homes and razing their olive and fruit groves and systematically brutalizing them while forcing them into small enclaves of poverty. Stop the endless cycles of reprisal and repression. Allow a two state solution. Stop calling people who want their homes back terrorists and vermin. Stop carpet bombing and killing innocent civilians in vengeful and vicious ratios up to 40:1 to your own losses and then shrugging it off as collateral damage while you blame the victims. Really not a big secret. I am delighted to hear that you support the Palestinians in their ongoing struggle to gain those rights!

Sounds like the same old schist to me.

There are multiple ethical issues that swirl around veganism v carnivory. The ethics of how we treat animals - which gets into how animals suffer, factory farming conditions, and whether animals are lesser beings which we may legitimately use for our sustenance. The ethics of the resource-intensive high carbon footprint production of meat. An issue of eco stewardship and sustainability for eight billion plus people. The ethics of public health policies and recommendations against meat consumption - i.e. impact on human health and any obligation to make the costs of meat consumption known to the general public. For me, there are some things that change when you go from a hunter gatherer population of 10-200 million people to modern societies supporting eight billion. I am vegan, five days per week, with sustainable catch fish and free-range eggs two days per week. Pure veganism results in fatigue and minor health issues for me, an experience that seems to be pretty common. Generally, I am happy to (as GB Shaw put it) mostly leave the animals alone. Factory farming (which I've experienced up close) is a nightmare.

Cruel and cowardly as much of warfare now is. Not everyone who buys a pager is going to be an enemy combatant. Makes me think of that alien device in the original Star Trek series which allows Bad Universe Kirk to remotely vaporize people he doesn't like with the push of a button. Humans shouldn't be entrusted with anything beyond pointed sticks. /venting

Well putt.

Hypothetical, and unsupported. And irrelevant, since you acknowledge that mass violence would be reduced. Guns make mass killing easy. And that feeling of ease with a gun IS germane to the psychological aspects of the problem. Plenty of evidence to suggest an alienated angry teenager would more likely kill classmates with the feeling of power a gun, especially an assault style rifle, confers. Mass knifings are quite rare, even in places where no civilian legally possesses a gun. So it is not "politicizing" to inquire how to render mass murder more daunting to someone emotionally unstable. Even if it were, psychology and politics often intersect. Get used to it.

Reading news this morning, I reflected for a moment on the disturbing decline in marksmanship skills in this country.

I sorta assumed that, given the threat title. The notion that there aren't issues that pertain particularly to a gender would depend on an utter blindness to everything that goes on in the world. When I have heard people take this tack, it is usually a prelude to "dear Lord, us poor white guys and all the terrible inconvenience we have to deal with because all those other people are laying about pretending to be victims!"

OK as treats though I'd add that dogs don't digest milk well, and it can also lead to kidney stones. Bread and butter is good with a bit of roughage, like green peas or the vegs @Peterkin mentioned. I've noticed dogs, like humans, can have a sweet tooth so carrots and peas are appealing due to their slight sweetness.

Even democracy is prone to what de Tocqueville described as "the tyranny of the majority." Perhaps there could be forms of direct government (as opposed to representative government) like anarcho syndicalism which could be developed into systems where divergent minority groups could (within reason - i.e. not abusing basic human rights in their cohort or poisoning the river) pursue their own lifestyle without interference from an outside majority. DK, you might need some Plato type philosophical advisors in key positions where they could help maintain guardrails. I don't think there's any escaping the need for some set of democratic norms, e.g. to prevent unscrupulous philosopher-advisors from acquiring power and corrupting such a system.

That was my first reaction, to ask you why. So, being stymied in that regard, I will just congratulate you and your brothers on your apparent prescience. I remember liking the series, though some of the humor (from such scriptwriting eminences as Robert Towne and Harlan Ellison) went over my young head. Later had a GF who was mildly obsessed with Ilya Kuryakin, whose buttock shiftings seemed to also affect respiration albeit among his female admirers. Don't entirely follow this, but some instinct tells me to request no further explanation.

Yes, the article does make clear that these researches have value. The awards – which have no affiliation to the Nobel Prizes – aim to “celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology” by making “people laugh, then think.” As for enteral ventilation, I think politicians could find this useful: if you talk through your ass, it would help to be able breathe through your ass.

Not necessarily. Dogs, unlike cats, or their ancestors wolves, are not obligate carnivores and are more omnivorous. Their GI tract will benefit more from roughage and some plant nutrients, so protein levels are just one part of the equation. One example is that dogs have the genes that produce amylase. Wolves do not produce amylase, which breaks down starch in the diet; modern dogs do, suggesting an adaptation to process plant-based foods as would be found in a scavenger diet. While a wolf or a cat can get all it needs from animal muscle meat and organ meats, plants provide dogs with beneficial fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes and phytonutrients not found in meat. They help it maintain a gut biome that it needs for optimal nutrition. So rather than rely on protein content, you should look at the overall balance and type of plant materials in the dog food. When I was researching this for my dog (RIP), for example, I found that oats, millet and brown rice were better for him, while wheat and corn were best avoided. Of course, cheap dog foods tend to have a lot of corn and wheat (we used to call it "corn stink").