lemur

I was wonder if experienced chemists tend to think of molecules in terms of dominant and subordinate parts. For example, hydrogen seems to be almost like chemical filler in many compounds, such as when carbon forms chains or combines with other elements with hydrogen filling in the rest. Is it correct to call water "hydrogenated oxygen," or methane "hydrogenated carbon?" By thinking like this, it gives me the idea that such compounds can be understood in terms of a dominant element, e.g. oxygen or carbon. That way, it seems like you could look at natural processes involving these compounds as essentially interactions of the dominant elements. E.g. when I think of rust and water, I usually think of those in terms of iron and hydrogen because that is the first element in the chemical names, but couldn't you also think of those as two variations of oxygen and compare them in terms of variation in the behavior of oxygen-based compounds? I hope you see what I'm getting at here. I'm trying to look for different ways to approach chemistry to see things in a different way, for whatever innovative effects it might have to do so. Maybe some people already think like this, though.

I wonder if it isn't related to the declining popularity of paternalistic culture in which gossip was dismissed as feminine and therefore inferior. It seems like culture has evolved to reject paternalism as male-supremacy, which may be good in various ways, but I wonder if it is possible for feminine culture to develop an independence ethic where it becomes common once again to stand up against gossip and believe in thinking for oneself and reasoning for oneself what is right/wrong and good/bad. It seems like traditional femininity rejects this as being too confrontational and not consensus-oriented enough.

You should probably choose a bank and talk to the loan officer. It will probably depend on your income and how assured they are that it will continue through the course of the loan repayment. You could also think about saving up for the improvement instead of borrowing money.

Isn't this only problematized because of nationalism, though? If a business moved a factory from one region of a country to another to lower costs, wouldn't that just be considered good business sense? Economic exploitation requires generally that commodities can be sold at a high price yet be produced at a low cost. Thus it can pose a problem if you have to pay wages at a rate high enough for workers to afford their product, right? So workers actually want to be able to have more purchasing power and be exempt from less desirable labor; so their ideal is to get high paying jobs and relegate less desirable tasks/jobs to people other than themselves, no? The question is what is better: 1) use unions to increase purchasing power among privileged union members and even entire national citizenries with the result of high materialist/consumerist economy or 2) use the free market to seek out increasingly cheaper labor markets where people are able to make due with less, thus rewarding those who can make due with less and putting pressure on more expensive workers to simplify their lifestyles and reduce materialism/consumerism to less burdensome levels? I have noticed that sometimes unions attempt to avoid supporting certain workers or issues. They do this because it is more work/expense for them to pursue everything and they gain bargaining power by suppressing some claims in favor of pursuing others. In practice this means that certain individuals and/or issues are not just suppressed by the business but also by the union as well. My question become thus what can be done for people/issues that are not taken up by unions? Further, what can be done about the union itself when it insists on requiring all grievances to be pursued through its channels. If a union isn't helping a certain person/cause, the business shouldn't say that the union not pursuing the issue is evidence that the issue isn't valid. In other words, I think instead of dealing with issues directly, people tend to focus on the institutional channels and other tactical issues instead of just making their case in public discourse. So unions can just be more sand that people stick their heads under instead of actually trying to resolve issues.

In a sense, unionism is based on a radically different principle than democratic discourse. Unionism assumes that business will always do everything in its power to exploit labor/workers and, therefore, that labor must organize to garner collective power to pursue worker interests despite resistance. This assumes that democracy can't and/or won't work to achieve fair economic practices by means of reasonable political discourse. So what do you think: can democracy do with reason and government what unions do by threat of strikes, etc.? Or are people so far beyond reason when it comes to pursuing economic interests that the only possibility for fairness comes from collectivizing people into organized unions, corporations, and other factions that pursue their own interests and agenda without regard for others beyond their scope of inclusion?

Campaign strategists brainstorming in a think tank: participant 1: Come on, people, what other kinds of government successes could win votes for an incumbent candidate? participant 2: making gas $1/gallon? participate 1: ok, anything ACHIEVABLE? participant 3: what about creating world peace by eliminating all national security and secret police globally? participant 4: wouldn't that put us out of a job? participant 3: oh yeah, never mind participant 2: oh, I know, what about assassinating Bin Laden? participant 4: but Bin Laden doesn't actually exist participant 1: but he does in the mind of the public . . . participant 5: ok, good job people; now the question is whether we need to pay Trump anymore or do we have the harassment-victim sympathy vote covered?

What if it could low enough to receive payloads from conventional jets? It seems like the problem with mediating between the atmosphere and orbit is that orbit is very fast relative to the atmosphere. So if you could have a series of buoyancy-vehicles at progressive speeds, couldn't they "hand off" payloads in sequence and by doing so accelerate the packages up to the speeds needed to maintain orbit?

Here's the irony: why would someone choose to be humble except out of shame for their ego? If you really got over your ego and didn't care how others regarded you, what benefit would humility be? Humility is an ego trip that strengthens the ego's position by hiding it. Humility is a source of pride and worship, and thus ego. Again, condemning people for being "overbearing" is also part of social-control through ego-regulation. Why would angels, saints, and prophets worry about being overbearing? If you were busy performing miracles all day and were being worshipped as a result, you would ignore the worship and just go on performing miracles. If someone would call you "overbearing" for performing so many miracles, wouldn't that just be out of jealousy and thus their own ego? If you are being overbearing in the sense of pushing others to do the right thing or change their lives for the better, why would they condemn you as being overbearing except that they want to be left alone to pursue whatever you are criticizing about them. If they weren't being ego-territorial, wouldn't they just show you why you were wrong and they were right for your benefit of learning from their wisdom? Here I think you're confusing personality/character with ego. Ego, imo, specifically refers to the identification and aestheticization of a self-image for the purpose of objectifying it. You could be an honest person and that is just part of your character/personality, but when someone decides to identify that quality about you, e.g. praising you for being such an honest person, that has the potential to egoize you. Then you may suddenly be distracted from thinking that honesty is just good to thinking about how good you are as a person because you're honest. See how the focus shifts from the value of the thing you're doing to the value of yourself as the person doing it? Attacking egos only tends to make them swell and grow larger. The exception is when people learn to control their response to ego-assaults because they recognize it is a trap luring them into greater egoism. How can ego be "killed?" It is just the potential for self-recognition and identification of one's traits as being a form of personal property. Such people have a stronger potential (temptation?) to become egoized about their deeds, but they may also have greater capacity to resist the temptation to be diverted from their missions in favor of ego-worship/hate. The less visible case, I think, would be the powerful people who have a secret inferiority complex, which drives them to try to prove themselves. It's easy to feel ashamed of oneself and thus attempt to redeem oneself as a result. There's no real escape from this form of egoism, as far as I know, except to try to accept oneself and focus on what you want to achieve while trying to ignore one's sense of shame and/or inferiority. Maybe some bankers are like that but it is actually possible for bankers to be focussed on good. Realize, for example, that money-lust is fueled by desire to embellish and spoil oneself and others, as well as to reduce ones work efforts by living off money instead of labor. Money is also a means of controlling/dominating other people. So bankers actually lock up the power of money in vaults and investments that keep it out of the hands of those who seek to abuse it. Obviously not all seek to prevent the abuse of money, though, and some actually promote it as a means of making greater gains on investments. Anyway, the point is that there are numerous critics of banks for preventing money from circulating because these people long for economic privileges without thinking about the ethical consequences of economic behavior. They may be so egoized and "bound by wild desire" that they have no capacity for reflecting on relative poverty as freedom from temptation and the domination of others, which a moneyed lifestyle often promotes without people even being aware of it.

My language was hard to follow. Sorry. What I meant was this: If someone knows that you want to avoid a fight, they may pursue something that you would fight over, using your pacifism as a shield to their advantage. So my point is that pacifism isn't more civilized because it promotes greater domination/authoritarianism. If you look at western culture since WWII, it has developed increasing cultures of deference and conflict containment/avoidance, which has promoted greater exploitation. In other words, it's not as if conscience-less people suddenly start behaving responsibly because culture has gotten more civilized. Instead, they feel that much more secure in pursuing their interests by unethical means. These people are certainly resolving their problems by non-violent means, but those means may involve deceit, manipulation, and sugar-coating of otherwise corrupt moral/ethical reason. They reason that as long as peace and quiet is maintained, anything goes.

Humans have developed the ability to exploit the desire to avoid violence in the interest of pursuits that would otherwise incur it. Humans too often defer conflict instead of seeking civilized means of addressing it.

I think you're confusing identity with agency itself. "Ego," imo, refers to the identity, i.e. the sense of self that is separate from total freedom to act according to free will. Ego is felt, imo, either individually or collectively when the individual feels pride or shame in how s/he/they are regarded by others. Still, the individual has the ability to act independently of ego, by concerning itself with its own independent judgement beyond considerations of how it will be regarded by others as a result of its choices.

Guilt and embarrassment are basically the same as shame and pride, which are the essential egoizing emotions, imo. You go from being focussed on what you're doing to being focussed on yourself. Your own good judgment is replaced by concern with how others may judge you. You become subjugated to external authority. When people are focussed purely on their egos, they can't do what they truly believe is right (imo) because they are distracted by what the consequences for themselves are in the eyes of others. They reduce themselves to subsidiaries of some other human master, judge, or authority. Ultimately, when you see beyond what anyone else may think to believe in what you have seen to be clearly true at a given moment, you transcend ego to do what you know is right.

The ethical arguments in favor are that stem cells are supposed to have the potential to heal and rejuvenate in unprecedented ways - though I've heard this questioned in practice. The ethical arguments against are that people could be getting paid to abort pregnancies to sell stem cells. The ethical problem with that is that if people are in an economic position to choose to sacrifice their own reproductive potential to provide biomaterial to someone who has the money to pay for it, they would be essentially sacrificing their human right to reproduce for others' healing.

chop the tomatoes, add the spices and add salt until it tastes like a sauce. Once the chicken is sufficiently baked, put it in the sauce and let it simmer. This will make it juicier and more flavorful. If it tastes terrible, don't blame me and just be happy you have food to eat and it's not burnt or raw enough to make you sick.

Yes, but some people will say that being civilized instead of barbaric means sufficiently subduing the workers to serving the established distribution of privilege. I would not like it if the purpose of education was to generate acceptance of a particular distribution of labor or other social structure. I want people to question authority, institutions, and innovate alternatives that increase their freedom.

That has nothing to do with losing ego. Attack of the ego for being egotistical is ego-re-inforcement. Realize that the social attack of egoism is part of subordinating the ego to social control, which must maintain the ego to use it in service of wordly domination. You could call it "ego-enslavement" or "enslavement through ego-control." Transcending ego involves the individual become actualized in a way that is no longer fixated on concerns of worshipping or hating/rejecting ego/image. It is pure action without regard for identity or self. It is the ability to interact directly without image-issues being involved. Most of the time, people are engaged in ego-battles of identity-assertion and reaction to other people's identity or collective identities. Few people can engage materiality or subjectivity directly, imo, because of their focus on identities and other nominal appearance issues. They cannot transcend social judgment as the ultimate object of all action.

Usually, when a couple has established a relationship, either would be socially judged for engaging in romantic activity outside the partnership. This is a culture of monogamy. Yet, because there is also a culture of civility, once a person finds a new partner and leaves the old relationship, the social expectation emerges that any infidelity that occurred in the old relationship should be forgotten, the old partner should accept the new partner in the life of the children, etc. In other words, extremist forms of retaliation such as those we hear about in Sharia law, etc. are condemned and all are expected to love and celebrate the new relationship, even if it resulted in a breach of monogamy in the old relationship. Is this serial monogamy reasonable and civil as a way for people to move from one relationship to the next without social dishonor? Or is it a form of hypocrisy that has evolved as the west attempts to develop from a more conservative traditional culture of rigorous monogamy to one of total individual freedom without family and sexual responsibility? How long can we expect to flip from one channel where people are pouncing on their ex-spouse's new partner to the next channel where a therapist calmly tells someone that it is not civil or realistic for them to expect to have people take their side when they were the victim of cheating? Will one or the other culture win, or will they just go on battling to assert the legitimacy of everyone without regard for who may be wrong or right in an ultimate sense?

Imo, the problem with mixing money and education is that the money becomes the primary purpose for many people involved. I actually had someone tell me recently that teaching physics to young people is important because they need to understand how the gadgets work that they spend so much time and money on. The mentality is that if something doesn't involve money, it's not worth thinking about, and if it is producing money and jobs, it is important to study. The irony of this is that money causes people to ignore the reality of economic processes for the most part, even though the only real purpose of money is to facilitate and regulate exchanges between economic actors. The purpose of education is to inform people not only how to make money but how to do everything else as well. This doesn't mean that money has to be spent on education, though. People could be educated directly, on the job, provided this was a less expensive route for employers than paying for schools. What's more, government could simply mandate successful producers to assist less successful people about how to become more productive with their labor. This, of course, assumes that people can get access to the basic resources and equipment needed to harness their labor productively. It also assumes an economy of direct material productivity instead of the current one, which generally seems to involve corporate bureaucratic social-interaction to regulates flows of money, goods, and services from distant suppliers to distant consumers. What's the purpose of education for such jobs since their only real purpose is to distribute the means of consumption?

But can go-karts drive all day at @60mph? If so, they can be made street-legal by raising them to the height of a motorcycle so they're visible to passenger cars.

I have heard that liability-waivers don't hold up in court. Supposedly, if someone wants to sue someone else for something involving them or their property, they can and this causes the person getting sued to at least go to the trouble of assessing whether the claim has any validity. For this reason, many people prefer not to deal with people at all unless the benefit substantially outweighs any costs or liabilities. Maybe there is a form of public easement that could allow a section of a piece of property have the status of public land without actually transferring ownership to the government. I would guess that even if this was possible, though, local governments would eschew attracting low-income campers with the presumption that they would cause some kind of nuisance.

For some reason, many people with socialist governments are proud of socialism. I don't know about you personally, but it seems like it has something to do generally with suppression of individualism in favor of collectivism. Anyway, that's a topic for another thread but the reason I mention it is because there's nothing particularly socialistic about free camping. It's just as ruggedly individualistic to venture off on a nomadic journey with just a tent and some basic necessities, arranging food/etc. on the way. I wish Americans would view free camping as a modern form of freely roaming the western plains or something like that so that it would gain political support. If politicians starting claiming that free camping is popular in socialist Sweden where everyone has public healthcare, etc. they would rally against it just because it was mentioned in the same sentence with public healthcare.

I didn't say that there's something wrong with wine, per se'. I just think that the miracle was taking something as simple as water, its purity and clarity and its ability to keep your consciousness clear, and elevated that to that status of wine.

It's sounds great. Probably the fact that it's already done in Sweden means that US politicians would call it socialist and condemn it. I think if government allowed liability immunity for the property owner and allowed owners to withdraw their camping rights when people trashed their properties, it could work.

Pedestrian nomadism, including hiking and bicycling, would be a nice way for people with little economic means to travel around on a budget. There is lots of open land where people could pitch camp for the night, but the problem is liability for the property owner for anything that occurs on their land and risks to lone campers in relatively unpopulated areas. Could governments allow special liability-free free-camping areas to be set up along roads so that pedestrian nomads could pitch camp for free or very low cost? If this was allowed by governments and land owners, would campers clean up after themselves to a standards that would keep land owners and governments from shutting down camping areas? Are there other reasons free camping would or wouldn't be a good idea?

Maybe these animals just get confused as the feeling of orgasm begins to approach and stop because they're afraid something bad is happening. It takes a certain degree of foresight to recognize before orgasm that climax is going to end in relief. Imagine if you worried that the build-up would just keep going - you might stop too. Maybe humans have sex less because they control the sex act more effectively, pursuing it to completion in one go instead of trying to stop only to have the urge continue and have to keep starting (and stopping) again. Btw, sorry for the crass detail of the act but I don't know how else to consider what might be going on with these animals.