All right, if using stone tools makes one stone age, OK. But the stone age people of Eurasia (up to about 10,000 years ago) didn't domesticate plants or build cities while they were using their stone tools. They remained hunter gatherers until... 8,000 BCE. Then they started getting more complicated.

Domesticating the horse, and making metal tools was a big deal -- no doubt about that. The guy who was found in the Swiss glacier who died 5,000 years earlier had a copper knife on him -- but his bows were, I believe, stone tipped. If I remember, he was killed by a stone tipped arrow. (There's nothing primitive about stone arrow heads that can kill you.)

In many ways we're all troglodytes; we just have fancier tools.

The Americas were populated later than the old world as far as i know. — christian2017

Well, sure -- the old world was populated first. But it wasn't stably populated. There was quite a bit of turbulence in Eurasian population movements--maybe in Africa too, but I'm less familiar with Africa.

The first people arrived in northern North America around 13,000 - 14,000 years ago. They were as "developed" as the rest of the world's peoples -- in other words, ready, willing, and able to explore, innovate, and invent.

They didn't develop the wheel because they didn't have a traction animal to pull carts. Cart pulling is something that buffalo would not put up with. Not having wheeled carts was something of a limitation when it came to moving stuff around. On the other hand, it limited warfare to what one could do on foot.

Perhaps that fact that these civilizations were effectively stone age civilizations played a part too — I like sushi

They weren't stone age civilizations. While it is true that most of their tools were stone, or other hard materials...

a) they built large cities
b) they built large temples (the better to cut hearts out with)
c) they used astronomy (in the sense of observing the skies, and calculating time)
d) they developed several crops from primitive plants: corn, peanuts, pineapple, potatoes, chocolate, tomatoes, avocado, amaranth, papaya, several beans, quinoa, squash sun flowers, sweet potato, and tomatillo.
e. Some indigenous people had writing systems (sort of like hieroglyphics)
f. They used irrigation systems

All of this exceeds what one thinks of as "stone age people".

But there has to be a reason to build large boats. England, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Italian city states didn't build large boats and then look for a purpose. They had been trading and fighting around their coasts and in the Mediterranean for a long time, and as trade grew, their boats got bigger, and they developed sea-faring skills. So did the Vikings. So did the Chinese.

Indigenous Americans traded with each other, but mostly within a few hundred miles. For inland trade, small boats are the way to go. (But canoes were built that could carry quite a bit of stuff.)

Europe and Asian traders had a different mind-set than western hemispheric peoples -- not better or worse, just different. Their economies were different.

Not having traction animals was a limitation, but it doesn't seem to have been a huge limitation. Had Indians along the future New England or Washington/Oregon shore wanted to build big boats, there were big trees right handy. But again, one has to have a reason to build a big boat.

And here is the same box on the 20th of March, a fortnight before the picture above. Doesn't seem to have the tacky white contact material attached which P.M. May had tried to remove,



Compare:



No wonder they can't get Brexit straightened out.

Maybe you have some insight into the box?

Tell me how I can identify truth, subjective truth, and objective truth.

Thank you,

I'm not sure one can make one's self be happy. (I'm not saying one can not.) It might be like grace -- unearned, undeserved, "unmakable". Many people are happy even though their lives have been at least somewhat unpleasant. And, conversely, some people are unhappy who have little reason to be miserable (apparent to an outside observer).

I didn't used to be happy, I'm happy now. Did I achieve or engineer this state of happiness? No. It happened. Is it permanent? Probably not.

Is it making you happy?

Get happy, Wallows, or else.

I've been in trouble for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. In the back of my mind, I fear that I might get in huge trouble and live a lesser life as a result. — TogetherTurtle

Just don't waste saying the wrong thing about the wrong thing. There's no point in shooting one's self in the foot.

The 1977 Mel Brooks comedy "High Anxiety" is probably condemned these days. It's a satire on Alfred Hitchcock's movies. One of the scenes shows a hired serial murderer assuring Nurse Diesel that he very much wants to kill Dr. Thorndyke. Later he attempts to strangle Thorndyke (Mell Brooks) in a phone booth and dies trying. The woman on the other end of the phone call (Madeleine Kahn) mistakes the sounds of choking as an obscene call and becomes aroused. And so on.

It has some great comic scenes, but it isn't one of Mel Brooks' best movies, because (as the critics said) Alfred Hitchcock's movies are hard to parody. They aren't loaded with the 'self importance' that makes a delicious target for satire. (Donald Trump, on the other hand...)

is funniness not also a feature of a joke? — TogetherTurtle

I don't know; "funniness" per se is hard to pin down. It takes other rhetorical devices to make us laugh at a joke (and a joke itself fits into several rhetorical structures--"knock, knock" being one). As Mel Brooks said on a late night show, "My getting a paper cut is a tragedy; your falling into a sewer and dying is funny." On the face of it, the Mel Brooks quote isn't funny at all. What makes it funny is the wild absurdity, or the ridiculous self-absorption of the speaker. And the delivery, of course.

"Funniness" also depends on the receiver of a joke. There are some humorless, literal-minded people who don't get a lot of jokes.

I was called on the carpet once for saying "Whoever set this mail system up ought to be taken out and shot." I was reported for making violent threats. This was like... 2002 or 2003. The person to whom I was reported dismissed it, saying she said that all the time. I should have reported her, I guess.

In my opinion, Libertarians are full of shit. — Frank Apisa

This demonstrates an admirable economy of expression.

What are some features that make a joke funny? Is "funniness" one of them? Or is "funniness" derived from other features? It seems like the humor or comedy of a joke derives from other elements, not "funniness" in itself.

Absurdity; cruelty; surprise; wordplay (puns); cleverness; bad manners, inappropriateness or mild insult; caricature; satire, slapstick, or travesty; and so on. In other words, a great joke is not altogether "nice".

Here is an old joke that just popped into my head: "Why do they call it "pre-menstrual syndrome?" "Because 'mad cow disease' was already taken.")†

A lightbulb joke is a joke that asks how many people of a certain group are needed to change, replace, or screw in a light bulb. Generally, the punch line answer highlights a stereotype of the target group. There are numerous versions of the lightbulb joke satirizing a wide range of cultures, beliefs and occupations. Wikipedia

"How many Mexicans does it take to change a lightbulb?" "Juan."
"How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" "One. They're efficient and not very funny."

"German humour! It's no laughing matter."

"How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?"
"Oy, don't mind me...I'll just sit here and suffer in the dark."

†"mad cow disease" = bovine spongiform encephalopathy; it emerged as a public health issue in the mid 1990s.

This is a good one — TogetherTurtle

The sponge joke was moderately funny. I thought the Julius Caesar joke was not funny. Not offensive, just not funny.

I prefer things like The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. Or, The Dingo Ate Yo Baby.

Are you bipolar?

It seems to me that the best thing for bipolar people (and lots of others, as a matter of fact) is to do what you are doing: take your medication consistently, make your appointments, and monitor yourself so that you can access emergency intervention before your stability deteriorates too far.

I've experienced depression, but nothing worth a journal write-up. Pedestrian, ho hum. My partner was bi-polar, and managed it for a good 40 years. He did have some hospitalizations along the way after going into pretty severe mania. He found support groups (not therapy groups) helpful -- he learned about manic depression/bipolar disease, made some good friends, and a couple of times got some very good leads on better psychiatrists. (He died of cancer a few years back.)

So, good luck in your care. Mental illness is a tough challenge.

But neither do I want to see these people force wrongful and abusive attitudes on the civilization. — Ilya B Shambat

Oh, don't worry about that, dear. The American Ruling Class has more wrongful and abusive actions up its sleeve than you can shake a stick at.

BTW, you seem to be big on physical fitness. You mention physical fitness or athleticism quite often.

"Redneck" and "Hippie" became important cultural terms at about the same time -- the 1960s.

"Redneck" has been used and misused into oblivion. The classic redneck is a southern white farmer whose neck is red because he works in the fields. The classic term may have been coined after the Civil War ended. But there are cultural traits of the "redneck" that have nothing to do with farming.

Southern whites came from 17th century northern England and Southern Scotland, for the most part. They brought with them an honor code culture, meaning you wear your sensitivities on your sleeve where they can most easily be offended (there is a note of sarcasm in my definition). The southerner prefers minimal government, and especially any activity of government which might inconvenience him. They generally practiced do-it-yourself justice where they could get away with it. They tend to apply the "shoot first and ask questions later" approach.

The southern redneck culture resides in southern whites and blacks, though it might be located as far north as Duluth. It is primarily a working class culture.

Farmers and working class people across the northern tier of states are not rednecks for the most part. The social culture in this part of the country is much like that of Puritan New England and Scandinavia. In this system the state is a central institution, and values are more communitarian rather than individualistic.

Hippies: In fact, there never were very many genuine, registered hippies. There were, however, a lot of college aged people and college students or grads not otherwise employed in the U.S. Army or Corporate establishments who wished to be hippie-ish. People like me and my friends, for instance.

We found jobs that allowed for flexibility--some days working very hard, some days not--and spent a lot of time discussing the war, the riots, famous communists (Trotsky, Mao, etc.) and enjoying urban life (this was in Boston). It was all pretty much good.

Soon enough, though, we shelved our sandals and bell bottoms, got some standard threads, applied for real jobs, and took jobs with the assumption we would be inside agitators and continue the revolution from within. We were not very successful, of course. The corporation and the republic for which it stands are all doing fine.

As for the real hippies, the hippest hippies were beatniks (beat was a shortening of "beatitude"). The beats were hard core to the hippie soft core. What the hippies wished to do had been already been done by the Beats and other decadents.

All this was not my view at the time. (I was buried in the darkest corner of the upper midwest at the time, and the hippies seemed like avatars of the New Age.) It's only recently that it has become clearer to me that hippies were just strung out beatniks. Or visa versa -- hard to tell at this distance.

At any rate few hippies founded anything or caused any sort of boom. Real beatniks and real hippies were alienated people, and alienated people usually aren't on the cutting edge -- why would they be?

As for rednecks, they too were, are alienated. They find an acceptable society among themselves (in their millions), but by preference, I think, they prefer to be outsiders to the larger community. Outsidership is the cost of rigid individualism.

We must rely on the young to think crazy and the old to think sane, no? — TogetherTurtle

No -- let's all try think sane. What young people ought to do (because if they don't do it when they are young, they never will) is follow their dreams. At least for a while--sometimes our dreams turn into nightmares, or at least headaches, and then it's time to try something else. And, just for your information, not all old people are thinking sanely. Some of us are stark raving mad. Crazy young people and insane old people are an unhealthy combo.

Anyway, that's probably what you meant by thinking crazy -- following your dreams.

But is it maybe crazy to think sane and sane to think crazy? — TogetherTurtle

Erich Fromm (one of Freud's students) wrote a book about that: The Sane Society. In crazy societies people who are INSANE are deemed to be quite normal, and in sane societies, crazy people are thought to be crazy. I think he concluded that a lot of contemporary societies are insane.

You have a positive, upbeat view of the future. Hang on to that.

It seems the only alternative to death is reaching for greatness, even if you may die in the process. — TogetherTurtle

There is no alternative to eventual death. You are a young man and you are thinking about what great accomplishments you can achieve. That is the way you should be now. Soon enough life grinds down our idealism, our aspirations, our hopes and dreams. Don't despair -- that is how we get from rough to smooth and polished. With any luck, you will become a brilliant gem before you exit.

If evolution (biologically and sociologically speaking) doesn’t correct, then what does it do? — TogetherTurtle

Evolution isn't directed towards any end. It is visible only in retrospect. The renaissance view (in Hamlet, WS) was

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! ...

These days we are less likely to think of ourselves as "the paragon of animals". Evolution wasn't striving to produce our agile bodies and big brains. We just happened the same way squirrels happened, and whether we are going to be successful in the long run isn't at all clear yet. We have gotten ourselves into a tight corner (global warming) that we might not get out of.

I don't know whether we are in charge of our own society or not. We might not be, because "society" is an emergent property of many individuals. No one individual can guide all the other individuals; we aren't a hive species ruled by a queen. Someone has a new idea; the idea is bounced around from person to person and develops (changes, gets better or worse...) and begins to affect behavior in unpredictable ways.

Take the idea of the Internet, invented in 1982-1983, and then the WWW in 1990. Who knew what would be the result back then? Netscape. AOL. Porn galore and facts on tap. Amazon and Google. Bing. Facebook. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Philosophy Forum. Deviant Art. 4Chan...

A nice, succinct summary of boomer/millennial differences.

Yes: Clinton and Obama would be better company for a figurative (or literal) night on the town than Sanders and Warren, and that is not an altogether trivial difference.

Angelfire... Lycos... Tripod... You landed on Angelfire some years back and stayed there, I suppose. I thought those old sites had turned to dust but apparently not. I'm always surprised to find some old website like Dogpile metasearch still in business.

I gather you are in academia. Your list on your Angelfire page doesn't look like the work of a hobbyist, and you have apparently been at it awhile.

Perhaps evolution constantly corrects, but the standards we hold ourselves to constantly change? After all, our social evolution is driven by us, but our aspirations also set by us. — TogetherTurtle

If I understand you, you are not speaking of biological evolution when you say "constantly corrects". For one, it doesn't "correct", and for two, it's much, much too slow for us to observe in ourselves. What does change is custom, social practice, "the standards we hold", and that sort of thing.

Whether "our social evolution is driven by us" is a very interesting question. Resolving the issue is too big a topic for here and now.

If we can know what we truly want, and know what we need to get what we want, I think that would be an ideal world reminiscent of what people think back on. If we want the world that we truly desire, we have to adapt fast enough to keep up with our desires. — TogetherTurtle

Knowing "what we truly want" is one big problem, and knowing how to get what we want is another big problem. Keeping up with our desires is a race we have never won, because "our reach exceeds our grasp" as the saying goes. Unfettered desires are a voracious malignancy which can kill us off before we come close to satisfaction. In practical, everyday terms, we need to keep our desires under control if we want to be happy.

Our desires have been an asset and a liability for as long as the species has been in business, I suspect.

Naturally, they would be anti-marxist (not that they would know Karl from Groucho) after being drenched in anti-communist, anti-working class, anti-marxist, anti-union propaganda for the last 75 years, published in the interests NOT of the working class, but the Bourgeoisie.

How many, how privileged, and how precisely defined were all these Marxists you allegedly know?

When a proper Marxist explains to a member of the bourgeoisie that Marxists plan on taking all their wealth away from them (we'll haul it away by the billions, Warren, Mark, Jeff, and Bill) they become quite vigorously antimarxist. And well they should.

Have you, like your many redneck friends, also been duped by Bourgeoisie lies?

Why do people get offended at jokes? — TogetherTurtle

As an old man, I am very offended by jokes that are not funny. I want to hear politically incorrect jokes that have a decided improper edge to them.

If I ever become rich enough to retire, I would like to travel around and collect stories from the elderly and publish that for others to read. — TogetherTurtle

Don't wait till you are rich enough to retire. All us fascinating geriatric storehouses of knowledge, hilarious sarcasm, wisdom, and so forth will be dead. Better start doing it now.

I expect both to remain vastly influential — Ilya B Shambat

With all due respect to your historical insights, Marx and Reagan aren't in the same game, the same ball park, the same league...

The businessman is not a thief; he is someone who gets things done. And religion is not “the opium for the masses.” — Ilya B Shambat

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions, the opiate of the masses."

There are more Marxists among the “elites” than there are among the “masses”; and there are more conservative people among the “masses” than there are among the “elites.” — Ilya B Shambat

Sounds like bullshit to me.

I don't get it. Doesn't that rather support my point? That we should keep a sharp eye on government and not entrust it with too much power? — fishfry

In a capitalist society / economy (such as ours, Europe, Japan...) the central role of the government is to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by the bourgeoisie. "Facilitation" is a matter of establishing law and treaties, and assisting in the accumulation of wealth. For instance, the U.S. government gave land to the railroads to encourage their westward expansion. The government built the Panama Canal to facilitate east coast/west coast transportation, and trade with the rest of the world. The government helps break strikes, and levies taxes to support its various activities.

The government (federal, state, county, city) can be, has been, and is sometimes an oppressive force--no doubt. But in focussing on the nefarious activities of The Government, libertarians overlook or fail to see the nefarious activities of many powerful corporations -- from which we consume pretty much on corporate terms, under whose various and sundry terms we work--or don't work -- and cohabit in an environment which is quite often fucked over by the corporation for purposes of cutting costs and increasing profits.

Here's an old example: Firestone Rubber, Standard Oil, and General Motors formed a combine to buy up perfectly fine electric rapid transit systems. Once owned, they were forthwith wrecked, and replaced by buses running on tires and gasoline (or diesel). The wrecking of electrically powered transit systems was imposed upon the local governments and people by the schemers at these three very large (among the largest!) corporations.

A more recent example: in 1980 most people drank tap water from fountains or taps. Perrier was a small specialty product. By 2000 there were whole aisles in grocery stores devoted to water in bottles. Better? Hardly. In many cases the water in the bottles was municipal water--perfectly good, but the same as the stuff coming out of the faucet. And all those 1 use and toss plastic bottles? Waste. Further, some of the water in the bottles had more bacteria in it than the water coming out of the faucet (still true).

Selling ordinary water by the bottle was a clever way of taking money out of your pocket and transferring it to Pepsi and Coca Cola. The water business has not been without significant externalized environmental consequences.

A current example: Boeing's 737 MAX. Somehow Boeing didn't think so much as a pamphlet was necessary to prepare pilots to fly the plane which had some special software to compensate for a stall hazard. All those 737-MAX planes are currently sitting on the ground. The government of the USA just doesn't seem to think the problem is that serious. Let the company figure it out...

The principle problem I see in libertarian thinking is 20/20 vision about the problem of governments, and blindness to the problem of corporate power. Free enterprising libertarians also seem to miss the critical role governments have played in corporate success. As Marx put it, "The government is but a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie."

Oh. Well, it was time for me to go anyway. I had annoyed Sushi long enough.

I shall not further annoy you about this thread. Or the alternative trolley thread either, unless there are interesting developments.

\

have been through such scenarios in my head and gone to some very dark places by adjusting and tweaking them once I arrived at a difficult choice. — I like sushi

If I were you, I'd stay out of very dark places.

would you like to comment ln the kind of thoughts that ran through your head? — I like sushi

Not on the subject of hobgoblins that I could, would, did, or did not conger up in my mind.

I butted out. Sorry, can't hear you.

In an unusually forceful statement, Wallows is telling me to butt out.

Will do. Meanwhile, Wallows and Sushi are tied to the track on which a trolley approaches at high speed. There is nobody at the switch. What are their last words to the world?

What do you want highlight? (This isn't a personal attack on you; it might feel like it, but it is not. I'm just bored with the trolley problem, and whatever it is supposed to reveal to people.)

I'm not the only one who doesn't seem to be getting whatever it is that you want to reveal.

do you see the issue I may be raising — I like sushi

No, I don't. The fucking trolley has been rolling down the track for years and doesn't get better by being repeated. It's just a no-exit forced choice. Boring!

Whether 1 billion people or 1 or 2 people are supposed to get killed in the forced choice, it has nothing to do with the price of corn in Iowa.

Set up a scenario where someone comes out alive, rather than gets run over, why don't you?

What was your point, by the way?

My scenario is a zinger. Yours is just sour grapes.

You pass three bums begging on the street. One is a shabby but cute white guy; one is a drunk black guy; one is a down and out white hooker. Which one is going to get the extra dollar you have in your pocket?

HEY SUSHI! SOMEBODY'S DROWNING IN THE ALTERNATIVE TROLLEY THREAD. GET OVER THERE AND SAVE THEM!

QUICK!

Who are you going to save from drowning, Sushi???

The person at the switch has a 100% chance of killing someone, either through omission or commission. Therefore, this person is worse than the prospective victims, who have a 50% or 75% chance of killing someone.

Here is a scenario (it can be adapted) that does a better job of getting at weighing decisions that the trolley scenario:

You are a lifeguard at a beach. You see that two women at opposite ends of the swimming area are both showing signs of serious trouble in deep water. One of them is slim and beautiful, the other one is fat and ugly. You can only help one. Which woman will receive the benefit of your life-saving expertise?

The two swimmers could be white and black, male and female, gay and straight (you observed them before they went into the water; that was your impression), or young and old, etc. You can't save them both, but you can save either one

In this case, the choice requires you to do something good (saving someone from drowning) rather than inevitably doing something bad (causing someone's death).

IN the real world, we are more likely to make a forced choice on whom to save, rather than on whom to kill.

Or, to whom do you give the benefit of the doubt? That's a real life situation that comes up much more often. Do you think someone may have cheated you? Why do you let it pass in one situation and not in another?

The Germans however are unfriendly — Ilya B Shambat

Unfriendly Germans? Why, Germans have always been as friendly as flowers in the spring!