Peterkin

Have you considered investing in a couple of small appliances? I have a gizmo that bakes two little pies in about 10 minutes, and a grilled cheese sandwich maker. They cost $6 each at the thrift store. The crock-pot set me back all of $10, about seven years ago, and it's still earning its keep in the form of soup, stew, rice and bean dishes. You and the baked potatoes might benefit from a toaster oven. They cook single batches of other foods, as well, like burgers and pizza. Also, you could install an LED strip light, for when you don't need the overhead light - under a cabinet, or above the stove or sink or both, for when you just need a drink and don't even have to open the fridge. Of you're heating with electricity, lights are relatively negligible, but you could have a measurable saving on other things, of which cooling, cooking and clothes-drying are the most substantial. BTW, you may want to put your microwave on a power bar and switch it off when not in use, so it doesn't drain way wattage while sitting idle. https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_microwave.htm Some other appliances may do, as well, if they have any kind of timing or remote control devices. As a general rule of thumb, the fancier they are, the costlier they are.

No, actually. Bone is the exception. When it's harvested, all soft tissue, living cells, blood, marrow, everything another immune system would reject is removed. When it's implanted, it's just the calcified parts that are used. Plastic bone lasts longer, double or more the lifespan of titanium. Ideally, however, the implant should provide a scaffolding to guide the patient's own bone, which will replace it in time. Intriguing! But is it advisable?

I agree, but I honestly don't believe my figuring it out will stop the ruination - even if I had the tech-savvy to figure it out. I'm actually okay with current programming, which i watch two hours a night, max, plus free shipping on stuff we buy. Once the pandemic ends (assuming it ever ends) i mean to drop amazon*. On You Tube, sometime when I have better to do, I'll do a lot of random program selecting, whether i watch it or not. *I bet they heard that and will make my next soccer game unwatchable picture quality. I don't think my internet usage affect anyone's reality very much.

OTOH, I use them to confuse Google. People I wouldn't encounter in ordinary life interest me in subjects i normally wouldn't investigate, so I do research on this and that, and some entirely unrelated other thing, as well as my mundane lookups (the price of a steel barn, is that actor is still alive, how do you prune a philodendron) as well as any figures, names, places, background I need for a story. I search for so many kinds of things, poor Goog doesn't know what to advertise at me. It usually settles for bloody Grammarly. We quit Netflix, partly for that reason. I'm much happier subscribing to public television networks: Knowledge in BC is by donation and CBC Gem is $5 a month, commercial free. New programming, and both offer closed captions. We still subscribe to amazon prime, while i finish watching a couple of old favourite series, but I notice the lack of diversity. Signed up to You Tube less than a year ago, and it's already trying to channel me to premier league football and building projects. And kittens. Everybody gets kittens.

I don't see how it can be well intentioned. How many Russians, accessible to the average Facebook user, are directly responsible for attacking Ukraine? How many Russians in Russia itself had any say in the matter, or bear any responsibility? For that matter, how many Facebook users can tell the difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian?

They do to a large extent in the UK, too, I understand, though it's slightly easier to be Black or Indian there than Polish or Afghan. However, they also have a huge block of prejudice against the working-class poor - more or less deliberately revived by the conservative [privatizing, mass unemployment causing] factions of the Thatcher era. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10408011-chavs In the US, while trade unions were ruthlessly crushed, the working people were deprived of their class identity [solidarity] and swept under a giant, lumpy social carpet - still trod-upon, but no longer named. In Canada, they were 'elevated' to "the middle class and those working hard to join it": the working class wasn't vilified; it just became invisible and inaudible.

The difference is in scale and scope. The internet connections mobilize huge movements, for good or ill - more often ill - that can topple governments, destroy in a week social structures that had taken decades to erect, or get thousands of their adversaries and their own adherents killed and jailed. It's easy to distort the perception of reality - at least locally. It's relatively easy for widely broadcast media (national press, commercial tv, religious pulpit) to spread propaganda over an entire population and thus distort a population's perception of reality. The internet is different from those media in that the audience is no longer passive recipient but active participant. That, with the speed of dissemination, distorts the functioning of a society, and has an immediate effect on the real world.

Yes, very much so. But it's not only social media, it's the internet in general. So many people no longer get their news from mainstream broadcasting - which is governed by some public standard, even if not held to a very high one - but all kinds of sources. These sources, many of them unaccountable, unreliable and unverifiable, are owned by political, religious or commercial entities with a particular POV and agenda to promote. They gather a loyal following that hears no other voices, and the same audience passes the links back and forth among themselves, creating a web of misinformation, validating and reinforcing one another in the same shared ideas - creating hive minds with fixed ideas. But there have always been 'influencers' on a smaller scale. The grannies gossiping over fences long ago did create a similar web of opinion in some neighbourhoods and small towns, and the mean girls do in high schools, and the frat-boys do do in universities, and the cliques of every kind do in every parochial jurisdiction - especially when it came to prejudices and denigration of a designated 'out' group.

That's outside the box, all right; in fact, right off the reservation.

So is Christianity and so is the Bible. Truth-handling-wise, a little information goes farther than a little snit.

Like the entire Holy Roman Church with their trinity doctrine? They're not calling anybody anything. They're affirming that Jesus, during his life on Earth, was a mortal man (and thus, telling the simple truth in those chronicles), he was also the son of their God, and therefore, once he had ascended to his rightful kingdom in Heaven, he partakes of godhood forevermore, and therefore is God.

I don't think that will be necessary, thank you.

It my be coherent, but it's also a useless, self-pleasuring question. I disagree that the subject requires that, or any other obfuscation. So? If value doesn't exist or matter.... who cares? Sure enough to prefer the former. Yes, you kind of did. In fact, there were a great many moral precepts and laws long before anybody made a theory about them. Just is part of being a social species. Part of our operating system.

People had values long before they had theories. It's a simple concept: whatever is regarded as contributing to the welfare of the individual or collective slides up toward the good end of the value scale; whatever is perceived as detrimental slides down toward the bad end. I didn't name any specific things, ideas and traits that people value. It depends on their circumstances. is like the colour or colours or the number of numbers metaesthetically and metamathematically respectively Because it's a whole lot harder to prove than gender and ethnicity. Not really sure what this means to be honest. Means you could never pass the law, even if you tried to conceal it something that a large faction usually votes for. Just like you can't give a cat pills hidden in tuna or a vegetarian a piece of steak under a pile of spinach: they eat around it. Not really. Spectrum would introduce another dimension and make it too nebulous.

On what value-scale? People have them. Individually and collectively, people prize some things, some ideas, some character traits, some goals, some behaviours, and despise, reject or vilify others. Everyone's scale is slightly different, which is why societies have to use some mean or consensus - unless they're dictatorships of some kind, in which case one person's or institution's values are imposed on the whole society. Tend to be?? They are the very foundation of any system of morality, and every legal code. They would lose. One office joker's opinion is not a preponderance of evidence. Catty remarks generally do not constitute a legal case. (No, not even if you could get such a rider to some 1200-page omnibus bill with lots of tax exemptions in it past the conservative faction.) They might fare better in a civil suit for income loss and damages, but then, you would have to prove that the plaintiff had better qualifications than the person who was ultimately hired, as well as more expensive clothes (this alone would be difficult to prove retroactively) - and you got an all-poor jury in Walmart wardrobes. Where two applicants are equal in all other respects, no law can stop the employer choosing the person he likes more, even if it's only for their taste in clothes. *sigh!* The same places yours and mine and Putin's come from: inclination, nurture, education, religion, culture, historical period, class, personal experience, reading, reflection, discussion. The more background people share, the closer resemblance their belief-systems tend to bear. (In this case, 'tend' is correct, since there are always some deviations from a cultural and temporal norm, even among peers.) [as legislators] Only, when people are are in a position to draft a national constitution, they have far less to gain or lose than temporary elected officials; they have the luxury of a longer view.

No, they are not. They are the designations given to what is valued at one end of the good - bad scale, and what is rejected or despised, on the other. Decisions were made according to the values, principles, convictions and beliefs of the persons drafting the document (what they considered to be right and wrong, plus a number of compromises, elisions and pragmatic concessions), then amended by later generations, where the original value system changed over time, (yes, possibly due to new information, or a change in the economic conditions, or a shift in demographics or because the original was couched in language that was clear to those like-minded persons, but became obscure to their heirs who think differently.) In some cases, yes. In some cases, there may be motives not remotely connected to a morality.

Those two decisions can't be considered together: your criteria would be different. As an employer, you would want someone who is productive in a particular task, takes or gives direction effectively (depending on the position) and is well suited to the work environment. In a college, all you need to know is whether a prospective student can pay the fees and won't make disciplinary problems. If they're specially talented in some competitive endeavor, the fees may not be important. Nothing but plain self-interest. Rich people don't need employment; if they don't like an assignment, they can tell you where to stick your job. As an employer, you're far better off with people who depend on you for their living. Usually, an admissions board. Usually, the college has a policy regarding how various aspects of an application are rated. By the time it's down to the admissions director, the students under final consideration rarely have only that single point of difference. When they do, the rich one gets the slot - unless there is a quota to fill. Thee wouldn't be any point. If you're hiring for show, the applicant who presents the more appealing front - whether in good looks, couture, manners or charm - is expected to win. No outside agency can make a valid ruling on whether income was the deciding factor in such a case. Yes, but not at the college or employment intake level. Intervention has to be much earlier. No. 'Wrong' is too subjective; it can be explained, but not justified or compared. If you choose on the basis of prejudice, rather than a test of how well either candidate fits the specific position, you will ultimately penalize yourself. Law-making is not based on any 'objective' standard of right and wrong, but on the values of a society as expressed in its constitution and interpreted by its judiciary - with some clumsy and often counterproductive intercession by a legislature.

And thereby alienated the Jews. They had been promised a messiah to lead them against their foreign oppressors and rule over Judea as king.

I wasn't talking, in that passage, about tribal peoples, animism, organic spirituality, but organized religion in 'civilized' societies (and I certainly never characterized anyone as simple brutes! Not even the MAGA crowd - credulous, yes, I call the vast majority of Jews, Muslims and Christians credulous. Also, please note, I included nationalists and followers of every stripe.) In fact, the shaman/priests made that crucial bridge between science and magic: they were the healers and psychologists, as well as the spiritual guides of their tribe. As were, later on in pagan societies, the herbalists and wise-women, the juju and medicine men of Africa and North America - the southern continent was already civilized and organized - when the Europeans conquered them. Shamans and mages were the peoples' priesthood. These were the ones whom militant Christianity, under the monsignors, bishops, archbishops and grand inquisitors (the imperial, hierarchical priesthood) was determined to blot out once and for all. And it grew very dark, indeed, if never simple. It's dark enough now.

There may be one or two or three other reasons. Due diligence takes time and effort, but it's never wasted.

There was a previous thread on this subject, in which I explained my reasoning in detail. I'm disinclined to go through it again, facile assessment of my mental state notwithstanding. Retirement is my best option. Interesting. I should revisit him to see why that should be.

Me too. You could have said what they were, and which of my statements were erroneous. (None were intended to be deceptive.) True. I didn't feel that the thread had sufficient merit for me to safeguard its integrity. I can enlarge upon the theme of religion, its origins and development (again), or withdraw the objectionable statement(s) - assuming I agree with the reasons they're considered inadmissible - or else retire from the discussion. Because the individuals who fire on all cylinders are burned at the stake in one culture and given gold medals in another. That is cultural selection.

I thought it was an expansion, without going on at the tedious, pedantic length i usually do, of pithier and less inclusive views that had gone before. But, hey, if I've managed seductive, deceptive and dangerous, I've achieved something literary. Thank you!

That's how science comes about. You see parts of the puzzle and make guesses as to what's in between: try things out, change some factors and see what changes, imitate how things happen in nature and thus learn to control them.... That's one side of pattern-formation - and it's not exclusive to humans. Then, there is the narrative side: filling in what may have happened before, to cause the present event and projecting what might happen after, as a result. We make stories, we elaborate, exaggerate, embellish. That's how art comes about. And then, the most emotional aspect of pattern-formation is wishful thinking, or magical thinking: the desire - so strong that we convince ourselves (not you, obviously; those other people) that we can affect something that is, in fact, beyond our control. That's also a contributing factor in superstition, as it is in gambling, risk-taking behaviours, unused gym memberships and popular self-help books. Organized religion, like nationalism and ideologies, is simply a way for some clever people to harness all of that potential for belief (the need to see pattern, the narrative and the sense of empowerment) and build it into a hierarchical social structure, with themselves at the top, the most ruthless members of the tribe as facilitators and the most credulous at the bottom.

Nothing begins with humans; we inherit the instincts and habits of survival from a long, long line of ancestors - and then kick it up a notch, or two, or ten, until it makes sense only to the human imagination - only in the story we tell ourselves - and has long ceased to serve its its original function.