A different sperm and egg would have different results, but even the same sperm and egg would have differing results. If you could run time backward, have the same sperm merge with the same egg, then run time forward and compare the difference, you wouldn't get the same result. The base pairs of the two DNAs would not combine in precisely the same way twice. Even identical twins have some differences.

Had i not seen your post, I would have been busy fucking and producing children. See what you did? A genius who would have saved the world won't be born now. On the other hand, his evil twin won't be born either. So it was a good thing you decided to write your post.

So far Bitter-Crank is the winner of this debate on purely philosophical grounds. — hks

Thank you, but winning a debate on philosophical grounds and 50¢ won't get me a cup of coffee.

The warming scenario that we are presently within is simply the other side of the Ice Age coin. — hks

Except that it isn't. What would be normal is a much, much smaller and slower rise in CO2, and a consequent smaller and slower rise in global warming.

Has the earth ever gotten very hot before quite quickly? Apparently, but the cause was geological: massive volcanism. Have their been mass extinctions before? There have - 5 of them. They were the result of rare cosmic events (the big asteroid that landed in the oily swamp of the Yucatan peninsula, started toxic burns, and eventually killed off the dinosaurs or volcanism (the acidity of the oceans became very extreme and just about everything swimming in it died). The 6th extinction is our fault, and if things go very badly, will include us. This cycle of global warming wasn't unavoidable (still may be reducible).

If you are going to reference the earth as god's footstool (OT imagery) then mention another OT reference: People are directed by god to be stewards of the earth.

SO, there was a minor shooting at a shopping center in Mississippi. Some idiots were arguing over something pointless, one of them pulled a gun, shots were fire, and a cop ended up shooting one or both of them. Well, hardly a world-class shooting, but at least the tradition was observed.

I'll just spray postmodern deconstructionism on anyone who points a gun at me, and they'll start coming apart at the seams.

There is a gun behind every blade of grass. — hks

I've been checking the news every hour or so this day of Thanksgiving to find out if there has been another hideous gun attack somewhere -- shopping mall, church, day care, hospital, Macy's Day Parade, a bar... So far, so good.

Forget about absolute certainty and perfect truth -- whatever that is. What we can obtain is a reasonable amount of uncertainty. Two concepts: "reasonable" and "uncertainty". Stick with what is reasonable, manageable and obtainable. Perfect certainty is unreasonable and neither obtainable nor manageable. We can live with an acceptable degree of uncertainty. How much is that? Well, that's for individuals to decide. If you can't stand uncertainty, then don't invest in the stock market. Don't gamble. Get vaccinated. Some people like the sharp taste of risk. For them the stock market is an elixir.

So how is it best to stop? — Kranky

Think about something else! Read a good book. Clean up the kitchen. Try to fix the broken alarm clock. Binge watch a series. Rake up the leaves. Go for a run. Do some yoga. Really, almost anything. There are a million things more productive than worrying about not being certain of anything.

This causes me anxiety. — Kranky

You seem to be confident enough that you feel anxious. So... it would appear that some things are not in doubt after all.

How can I live my life (if I even exist) doubting that every thought that enters my mind as being real and true. — Kranky

This is a game you are playing with yourself. You can go round and round with this nonsense and spin yourself into a tizzy.

Wouldn't it still be more efficient in terms of energy consumption and land preservation to switch to a more sustainable energy source — Lif3r

Yes, definitely squared. But the unsustainable model is the foundation of the world economy. That doesn't mean that change is impossible, it means that change is extremely difficult because there are so many vested interests in the existing arrangement. It isn't just oil magnates. Its everybody who likes the convenience of driving, flying, plastics, and all that.

but then again many people don't want to sacrifice economic growth for the environment, because they want to be better than, they want to be competitive, they want to have the upper hand, they want to have something others need, to feel in control, to feel more safe, because they fear others, and so they sacrifice the environment for economic growth, for power over others. — leo

Exactly.

We are forced to take part in that unsustainable machine, then those who come out on top with a lot of properties and numbers in their account want to keep what they have worked so hard to gain, they don't give that up or share that easily, so the others have to spend more and more effort to have a given standard of living, spend more and more resources, which takes its toll on the environment. — leo

Exactly.

You guys are the most logical people I know. — Lif3r

And then at 5° we all just literally die? — Lif3r

First of all, you definitely will die whether the climate warms up or not. You, along with everybody else. Nobody gets out of here alive. Second, If you live a normal life span, and if you are at least 25 years old, you have already lived 25% to 33% of your longest likely lifespan.

If you can choose where to live out your remaining 50 to 70 years of life, chose to live either in southern Canada or the northern tier of states where there will still be cold weather in the winter. Avoid the southern states where it will be just too fucking hot. Big cities tend to be heat islands, which is good in the winter, bad in the summer. A smaller sized city of 100,000 population would be good. Duluth, Sheboygan, Green Bay, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts (not Boston--heat island and extensive flooding from rising oceans), Maine. Get there early because you won't be the only one heading north.

If you can buy a small house, insulate heavily. A white reflective roof would be good. Plant a deciduous tree or two for shade, but leave room for a garden. Live simply. Enjoy life as much as possible.

With those "minor adjustments" to your life style, you'll make it as well as anybody will.

We probably won't reach a 5º C (not Fahrenheit) global temperature rise until late in this century. I'd expect chaos as life becomes unsustainable in the equatorial parts of the world and the areas immediately north and south of those regions. Flooding, fire, famine... It will be a very interesting time to be alive.

See, jamalrob could have flown into a rage at your stupid obstinate insistence on putting each cognitive distortion in a separate thread. He realized that he hadn't eaten all day, was low on blood sugar, and that this was making him feel crabby and peckish. He may have felt like banning you on the spot, but instead just sent a note advising you to put them all in one thread.

Voila! CB Victory!

I would imagine that EVERYONE, at one time or another, has engaged in emotional reasoning. How could it be otherwise, given that our emotions are so central to our mental life? How well can or does the reasoning portion of the mind insulate itself from the emotional portion of the mind, and visa versa? I get that person whose reasoning is hitched to his or her mood, rather than being able to observe mood and discount it, are likely to judge the world inaccurately.

I have, for instance, had feelings of free-floating anger and resentment which has led me to blame complete strangers for deliberately annoying me. "It's their behavior that is making me angry." Of course, sometimes other people's behavior is enough to piss off the Virgin Mary. So one has to try and sort out whether other people are guilty by reason of my craziness, or whether they are guilty of objectively obnoxious behavior that is anybody's day spoiler.

I would say Roosevelt introduced fascism to the US and I am sure he was strongly in favor of democracy. However, I think was blind to the problem of autocratic democracy. — Athena

Well, how did Roosevelt introduce fascism to the use? True, he served from 1932 to 1945 -- but that was then constitutionally kosher. Two terms were imposed on the presidency in 1951 (Amendment #22). True, he did greatly expand the federal bureaucracy (with various depression aid programs, and then war preparation programs). The US had a very small government into the 1920s. It was small enough that it did not need an income tax, except during the civil war, the 1890s (don't know why then) and then after 1913 and ever since. Most of the government income had come from excess taxes on alcohol and other items. With 25% of the workforce unemployed, the farm economy a wreck (poverty, bankruptcies, severe drought, etc.), with industrial activity at a low, and so on, programs were needed to assist people to some degree.

Roosevelt introduced his programs primarily to protect the oligarchy (of which he was a part) from revolution. Russia and Germany, for two, offered an example of how the ruling class could lose control.

Fascism is difficult to talk about because it is a style more than a platform. A lot of Germans and Italians had better lives under fascism (except for the small detail of a world war) than they had had under previous governments, and most of them were not active Nazis or Fascists. (Jews, of course, had a much less positive experience under fascism.)

You might like The Plot Against America, a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. Roth's first book was Portnoy's Complaint. In TPAA, Roth's Jewish characters find the US moving rapidly toward a fascist take over. There is also the Sci Fi novel by Philip K. Dick, which supposes the Allies lost WWII and ended up under joint German Japanese occupation after WWII. (I haven't seen the TV series.) Both are pretty good.

our democracy will become as dead as Athens democracy — Athena

If it hasn't already died. I don't know. I'm of two minds: "All is lost" and "We can turn things around". We were never a direct democracy, and even the New England towns that started out with direct democracy found it difficult to maintain once their numbers grew, and when the times were good. Direct democracy becomes unwieldy fast.

Because beautiful is better than hideous, the same way good food is better than bad food, and a good musician is better than a bad musician.

Friction... I generally talk to my siblings on the phone; in person visits are very inconvenient (I don't drive, they live in rural Minnesota) and the friction level is high. I'd just as soon skip that.

Politics is bitter (there's some friction that hasn't disappeared!) but politics by its very nature (conflict over the distribution of power) has been, is, and will continue to be nasty, brutish, and interminable. Bitter cranks abound in politics. There would be something fishy indeed if politics turned into an lubricated tea party.

Donald Trump is president. I don't like it either, but the electoral system worked the way it was designed to work. That doesn't make it good; it just makes it not a surprise.

All your observations here are on target, but many of these problems are perennial. Faster sailing ships in the 18th and 19th century facilitated trade: People could get their stuff quicker. Sears and Roebuck and Montegomery Wards were the Amazon of their day (late 19th century going forward). You could live in Montana, get around on a horse, not have electricity, but you could mail-order all kinds of stuff from Sears out of their printed catalog and it would arrive quite quickly on the railroad--everything from women's corsets to grain harvesters. Further, you didn't have to have a credit card or even a checking account. You could send cash after you got your bill.

You are right: The market dislikes friction. That's one of the problems of viewing everything as a market -- everything from a gay bar to a university classroom.

As a system, capitalism is remorseless. Of course, it is a system not a person; but actual persons who are not inconvenienced by excessive feelings of remorse run it. Psychopaths have their uses.

Psychopathy exists on a continuum; some psychopaths are a lot more psychopathic than others. A CEO who is slightly psychopathic will probably be more successful than one who is too empathetic, because he will not be bothered too much by firing 3000 people before Christmas to improve the profitability of the company. A field commander who can order troops into a pointless battle (and likely death) has to have a little psychopathy to live with himself.

The psychopath who is willing to sell nuclear parts to terrorists is on another level altogether, just like the serial killer isn't like the once-in-a-lifetime murderer.

Very large, powerful organizations are more amenable to psychopathy than small ones. A storefront food shelf probably won't house a psychopath, but the hierarchy of the Catholic Church might (some of the hierarchy seem at least somewhat depraved). Corporations around the world are likely the happy homes of more than a few psychopathic types. And then there are your gangs, drug cartels, terrorist organizations...

I've generally been a late adopter, usually a decade late and a dollar short, whether it was kitchen microwaves or smart phones. I grew up in a very small town in the early days of TV, and my folks were late adopters too (owing to poverty). There was a wind-up Victrola 78 rpm record player in the attic which produced sort of good sound (tell I took it apart). In its time (a century ago), it was revolutionary.

he got on his phone probably 15-20 times when we were supposed to be sharing vis a vis society yesterday (my society wasn't entertaining or stimulating enough it would appear) — Anthony

Appalling behavior, and so common that what is really an aberration passes for normal. BUT there are earlier examples: When people acquired televisions, a larger share of their attention was spent locked on to the screens, whether fuzzy black and white or the latest big screen HDTV.

Your buddy is responding to the critical part of the technology the way he is supposed to. It isn't the miniaturized computer in the phone to which he is responding--it's the software technology. Facebook, Youtube, Tumbler, Twitter--all social media--are designed to hold on to our attention through identifiable routines. In 2000 the web used banner adds that looked like blinking theater marquees. (Porn sites pioneered a lot of these techniques.) YouTube uses much more complicated software to hook us: like algorithms that predict and serve up what it thinks we will next find interesting.

Just like a dog chases after a ball, we chase after novelty, movement, narratives, interaction, bright lights, and so on -- we can't help it. That's why a good story teller could cast a spell around the campfire 30,000 years ago.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on the web. I live alone now, but I used to get complaints from my partner about it. I start with email, this forum, the Guardian, the New York Times, and on to less distinguished sites. Later on I will take up one of several books, and will read for hours.

Younger people who don't use media heavily are probably too burdened with child care, domestic work, and jobs.

Too much media is not good for society, but the too much is driven by the business models of Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, and earlier success stories like Yahoo and MySpace, AOL, CBS, ABC, NBC, et al.

definitely no sherpas — Wayfarer

Why are there no sherpas? Many of us need a sherpa or two to get through the day. Somebody to carry the groceries home; somebody to help us off the bus; somebody to clean the eave troughs out in the fall.

Good to raise this issue. It may be a bit too soon to know. In the early 1970s, some people in colleges were groping toward a style of education which only became possible with personal computers, lots of broadband cables, lots of content providers, lots of users, and affordability. In 1989 AOL was just too slow, yet. Around 2000 or so, and since the pieces have fallen into place. There is a vast pool of content and the means to access it rapidly.

I think it's great.

Word processors which displayed text on screen, and typewriters before that, subtly changed the experience of writing. A typewriter gives you the capacity of producing a sort of instant printed text. Technology changes things.

It accidental that people walk around staring at their phones: the phones, and the software, are designed to be captivating. So are things like YouTube. Even though I know they are designed to hold one's eyeballs, I can get caught up too.

If anyone finds the internet tedious, all they have to do is leave it alone. So far, anyway. We don't yet have FaceFuck implants yet, or YouTube hard wired into our eyeballs.

↪Wayfarer If "Truth is a pathless land" why would it necessarily be on a mountain-top? — Evil

Probably a swamp. Hot, humid, treacherous, snaky, leechy, malarial, pathless.

It should also be noted the "Prussian system" was not created ex nihilo but came out of responses to many forces — Valentinus

industry methods being used had their own genealogy — Valentinus

first chicken and egg — Valentinus

I recognize that parsing the sources of organization and methods is terribly useful for understanding historical developments. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, beyond figuring that various sources contributed to any given situation.

You are quite right about the Civil War (and its aftermath) being a watershed for organization. Lincoln, for instance, learned over a 4 year period (61-65) how to use the telegraph to control and direct his generals. Both sides used railroads to move troops -- an innovation of great significance. In one of his books Garry Wills discussed how dealing with several hundred thousand dead spurred a growth in bureaucracy: identifying the dead, the wounded, keeping track of the soldiers who survived, etc. required organization. For that matter, the logistics of the Civil War required some very good supply chain management skills. Just buying, training, and shipping horses was a huge job, never mind feed, horseshoes, harnesses, wagons, gun carriages, etc. that the horses pulled. A million horses and mules were killed.

How do you know big government and fascism are not the same? — Athena

"Fascism" is not ancient; Mussolini invented it in 1915. It isn't a coherent political philosophy, really. It's best defined by its style of operating and what it opposes: socialism, marxism, democracy, and "progressivism" in general. The political style of fascism tends to be manipulative (leveraging class fears, resentments, and traditions against designated enemies). The Jews were Hitler's designated enemies, much less so Mussolini's. Italy's fascism also did not make the trains run on time. Fascism is usually characterized by strong-man rule (dictatorship). Militarism of some sort -- German, Italian, Spanish -- is a feature.

Authoritarianism is a feature of fascism, but we can have authoritarian rule without fascism. The Soviet Union was authoritarian but wasn't fascist.

Is fascism a potential threat within the United States? Yes, and almost certainly NOT from the targets that the "antifascist" campus activists target. It's far more likely to arise within mainline politics, not some tiny white guys' club. The guys who dress up as 1930s Nazis are more uniform fetishists than fascists. Take Donald Trump: I don't think he is sufficiently 'far out' or energetic enough to be a fascist, but his continuing post-election rallies where he strokes the hostilities of a slice of the electorate is one of the features one would look for. Another feature of a potential fascism is the far right operatives in the Republican party. I don't think they are fascist (yet), but that's the sort of place, personally, I would watch out for.

Fascism will arrive in the United States the same way it arrived in Germany: the established democratic mechanisms will be subverted and a core cryptofascist cabal in Congress will destroy the means by which subversion at the highest level would normally be prevented. The refusal to hold hearings for the last Supreme Court nomination in the Obama administration (Merrick Garland) is an example.

Subversion of the central political machinery has to be backed up by a core of citizen support for such a subversion. This core has to be willing to use crude methods to back up the subversion at the top. Is such a core in place, in large enough numbers? No -- I don't see any evidence of that today.

It isn't clear to me what you see as problematic in the 1958 NDEA. What was wrong with the government loaning (or granting) money to students so that could go to college? The program was one reason that there was a doubling in the number of college students between 1960 and 1970 (from 3.6 million to 7.6 million) while the population grew about 13% to 202,000,000 in 1970. (There were other factors, of course: Vietnam, a good economy, optimism about employment, and so on.)

I wouldn't have been able to attend college starting in 1964 if it had not been for this kind of program.

The military-industrial complex has grown steadily since Eisenhower pointed out the dangers of this kind of combination. The needs of the military for weaponry, and the need of corporations for profit from making weaponry, and the desires of congress members that big appropriations benefit their district or state pretty much guarantees there will be a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. Armaments (for us and for whoever has the cash to buy them) are a critical part of our economy.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would spell out what, exactly, we borrowed from the Germans in the area of education and bureaucracy. (We may well have, but I'm not clear about what.)

By the way, there is nothing particularly fascistic about

"

Big Government (fascism) — Athena

There are both specific and general features of fascism, but large bureaucracies in themselves aren't one of them.

I do agree 100% that the threat to democracy is internal. Education can, should, but may not contribute to student's enthusiasm about democracy, or give them competence. Looking back to my high school experiences... there was nothing particularly democratic about school. It wasn't an awful prison, either, but maybe it was a bit closer to a dictatorship than a democracy.

Preparing people to be productive citizens is an important social task. Schools grew in importance during the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th, when there were many immigrants who needed to be "taught how to be American". As the volume of immigration diminished and as generations passed, that task faded away. Later in the 20th into the 21st century, teaching Americans how to be consumers became important. The school wasn't needed for this task, because the various forms of media -- print and electronic -- were perfectly suited to shape, motivate, and spur consuming behavior, 24/7/365. Schools still serve useful functions. Elite students (those who will be managing business for other people, professionals, etc.) need a decent elementary/high school education to prepare them for college, and they generally get it. That's like... 20%. The other 80% need to be taught how to behave. Whether they know shit from shinola is less important.

"They" definitely do not want a bunch of high school riff raff suddenly becoming political change agents, whatever change they might have in mind.

A large poorly employed working class/under class isn't inherently fascistic, but they are usually fertile soil for fascistic manipulation. Strong man leaders (or strong woman leaders) who emotionally manipulate the working class definitely is characteristic of fascism. Trump fits that bill. Being extremely stupid isn't a sign of fascism, and maybe we are lucky that he isn't the brightest bulb on the marquee.

Kill daylight savings time. Or at least end it sooner and start it later.

This could be the last great cartoon...

Cinema Soundtracks certainly count as serious music. Elmer Bernstein (Leonard's cousin from the Bronx) did some great soundtracks for westerns; Erich Wolfgang Korngold's soundtracks sound like concert pieces, and his concert pieces sound like soundtracks.

5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Classical Music — Brian Jones

I would definitely include some Mozart and Bach and Handel. Is Gottschalk too obscure? How about Arvo Pärt--Spiegel I'm Spiegel is quite accessible to the novice. Virgil Thompson's the Plow that Broke the Plains? Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring (even though it doesn't actually have much to do with Appalachian anything). There are some arias from operas that are meltingly beautiful (IMHO).

As far as who wrote, painted, or chiseled the last great art work, no -- I won't go for that. There are no "last great" art works. Someone is creating a work of art right now that will speak in an authoritative voice to hundreds or thousands of people. Somebody is prowling the library and will stumble upon a poem written 500 years ago, or maybe 2000 years back, and it will give them more pleasure than everything written since.

There might be a last great work of philosophy, though. Don't ask me, cuz I don't much like reading any of it.

Literature? I'd impress a young person with some good contemporary literature -- something written in the 20th or 21st century. There's lots of good stuff that's older, but one ends up with 10,000,000 choices. Lets keep it to just 1 million.

Hey, welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Isaiah 9:2 (KJV) says, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."

"Light" and "darkness" are ancient themes, as is the shadow of death. Light is good, darkness is bad, generally. We stumble in the dark. Bad things lurk in the dark, waiting to pounce on unwary walkers. I won't go so far as to equate darkness with evil, however. More like a profound ignorance of God's goodness; an indifference.

The light, in this case, was seen. And then what? Were the people perpetually enlightened? No. But once, at least, they saw the light.

Here's G. F. Handel's setting; you can sing along!

Amen.

goats be used, but don't deer live in the forest and don't we kill them? — Athena

I don't think deer are a big factor in the California forest. A saw a figure of about 500,000 deer population in northern California. Minnesota's hunting harvest is about 300,000 -- never mind the population. Deer don't clear the forest; they don't eat small trees, bark, etc. unless there is nothing else. In southern Minnesota, especially, they have very refined tastes, preferring to eat ornamental plants and gardens in the summer, corn in the fall, and then... various stuff in the winter. A lot of people feed deer, or the deer join cattle that are fed outside. And people feed them, so they come around which people like to watch.

Goats would work, I suppose, but not during a severe drought when nothing much is growing. Goats also tend to eat down to the dirt -- which was a problem in the ancient world; where a lot of goats were raised, there tended to be severe soil erosion because the goats grazed too close to the ground.

There are limits to what can be done; many forested areas in the world are flat and working on the ground is relatively easy. California is very wrinkly (thanks to plate tectonics) and many of the hill/mountainsides are steep and high. The insects killing the trees (by spreading diseases) are very hard to control over the western-continent sized area of the western US and Canada. Global warming is going to aggravate drought and insect infestation.

Where did you get your information about education? — Athena

Granted, I haven't taken any classes on comparative American/European education systems. As far as where I got such information I have... I suppose just being in the education system as student or worker for quite a few years was a source. Reading about education, of course. Discussions.

I will readily grant that the American education system (K-12, particularly) is aimed at several quite unofficial goals which dominate: training students to be compliant, adopt the mainline Corporate-American view (what you are calling groupthink), giving them minimal literacy skills, and so on. College is generally more demanding. But there are two educational systems: one for maybe 10-20% of the students who will become elite operatives, and another for the 80-90% who will be cogs in the system. Cogs -- if they are not too unlucky. The really unlucky ones won't even be cogs.

I started first grade in 1952; Things have changed quite a bit since then--like, gotten worse. When and where do people break out of the groupthink mold? Well, some do it in college to some degree; some fall in with radicals of various kinds who crack open the mold; some people are natural rebels; some people have horrible disillusioning experiences which break the mold. Had I not gone to college, had I not met some left wing radicals after college, and so on, I too would have been lost to groupthink. Well, us enlightened few just have a small set of group thinkers.

Should I start a thread for discussing what education and the military-industrial complex (New World Order) has to do with being like the Germany we defeated in world wars. — Athena

Yes, why don't you do this. I'm a little doubtful about the German nazi era being all that similar.

Once you get beyond a few people bartering potatoes or apples for socks or mittens, a market, large, small, free or otherwise, can not exist without organization. Generally, political institutions (however primitive or advanced). Rules, a currency, and some sort of policing are all required for an open, free market to exist.

This might be obvious, but "democracy" is a political system and markets are economic systems. they don't have to go together, though they usually do. China has some elements of a free market, but is not a democracy by any stretch. The US has some elements of a free market and is more like your oligarchy with democratic decor.

One could have an industrial democracy (workers own it all) and a free market where workers are also consumers. (Almost everyone in any society either is a worker or was a worker before they retired.) By buying Coca Cola instead of Shasta cola, consumers vote for Coke. By buying bacon and pork chops they vote for swine and red meat. Let them eat tofu if they must.

Of course, you will object that good training is not groupthink. — SophistiCat

Groupthink is groupthink is groupthink, whether sponsored by the state, the corporation, the church, the school board, the editorial board of the New York Times, Fox News, or Pravda. Still, some types of group think are probably better than others. I'd like to think that the top Gestapo leaders might have achieved a worse groupthink than, say, the West Cupcake PTA. But... maybe not.



Well, yes -- suppressing all fire has had the consequence of fuel buildup. And drought has made even planned burned fires very dangerous; tricky, at the very least. Insect damage shouldn't be underestimated. Throughout western North America, various insects have been spreading diseases that kill conifers by the million. Global warming has resulted in less winter die-off of these insects.

Trump has a point on this score: if you include where people build homes and towns as part of forest management, then people have been putting themselves in harm's way. Building into canyons, ridges, and mountain sides covered with trees is attractive, if there is enough rain to keep everything nicely watered. Unfortunately, the long hot drought in CA has foiled that part of the plan.

Some people from Paradise, CA are hell-bent on rebuilding. Well, maybe it just isn't a good idea to rebuild in harms way.

When (not if) the shit hits the fan, a bunker will be of little use. Unless you could build a bunker like the Chad Mitchel Trio sang about in the 1960s...

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter
Worthy of Kubla Kahn's Xanadu dome
Plushy and swanky with posh hanky-panky
That affluent yankees can really call home

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter
A push-button palace, fluorescent repose
Electric devices for facing a crisis
With frozen fruit ices and cinema shows

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter
Of chromium kitchens and rubber tile dorms
With waterproof portals to echo the chortles
Of weatherproof mortals in hydrogen storms

Bear in mind that the most comforting time on the Doomsday Clock was 17 minutes before midnight in 1991--when the Soviet Union collapsed. Were we any safer from nuclear weapons that year than in any other? Not really.

If you are a pessimist, then one is likely to think that we are screwed -- now or sometime in the next 20, 30, 50, or 100 years. There are any number of threats--some natural, some manmade, some a combination. We could reduce or even eliminate some of these threats, but doing so requires that pigs fly. We could get rid of nuclear weapons. That's very, very unlikely. We could suddenly and sharply (like, really slam the brakes on) reduce carbon emissions, but that would in itself be a crisis for many people. High carbon emissions are woven into the world economy. Those with the most to lose (their lives) have little individual power, and those who would only lose wealth are very powerful.

How the details will work out of us all being screwed remains to be seen. It will, certainly, be VERY INTERESTING.

When the English started colonizing North America, they found the forests "park like". Why? Because the aboriginal people had used controlled burns to manage the forests for their own convenience. Hunting in a park-like environment happened to be a hell of a lot easier than hunting in a forest clotted with a lot of undergrowth.

But the situation in California is not the same as the east coast or Finland, for that matter. As you pointed out, it's the difference in rainfall, temperature, and climate. Most of California is fairly arid, except at higher elevations (which is where their snow falls, melts, and supplies them with water for irrigation, household, and industrial use.

There has been an extensive die-off of trees from a combination of insect infestations and drought. I don't know whether the age and species of the millions of dead trees would make them economically useful or not, and certainly it would be safer to remove them. But California is a large area, about 164,000 square miles. It isn't all forested, of course, (81,188 sq km, 31,34 square miles are forested) and brush and grasses, which covers a lot of the remaining area, can burn quite hot too, and spread to the built environment. In addition, thanks to plate tectonics, California is a very wrinkled up place, which makes forestry more difficult.

You would have to be old to remember the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). It is quite novel to see the NDEA blamed for Trump's election. Let one old guy give a suggestion to another old soul: dig deeper.

Independent thinking without education is even more likely to lead to groupthink, and groupthink has been around since... before the last ice age, at least. A nicer word is "consensus". It isn't just Trump and the Republicans. It's the Democrats too. Both parties (in their varying manifestations) have had a tight lock on politics for a long time. The lock probably got tighter after the Civil War when conservative Democrats took over from liberal Republicans in the south (after reconstruction). There has been a lot of unquestioned groupthink in American politics.

I loathe Donald Trump, but I am not fond of the Clintons either. But remember: Trump didn't win by a landslide, and what made Trump possible is a media culture that has been developing since before the NDEA. It is difficult to disentangle actual, sociological facts on the ground from the various political, social, entertainment, and economic representations of the facts. Take HRC's use of the term "deplorables" aka, white trash. Working class whites--especially the least skilled, least educated, least wealthy, whites--have been white trash since before the English colonization of North America. They might actually be WASPS, but they still count as white trash.

The "deplorables" have, with good reason, developed a lot of resentment against the east coast establishment (whites, almost all) for giving them the shaft over the last 50 years (ever since the post WWII boom ended in the early 1970s). Trump is 100% part of that east coast establishment, just with a lot more crass than class. Clinton would have done no big favors for the white working class poor any more than Trump has.

There were good reasons why National Socialism found fertile soil in Germany. Germany lost WWI and had their defeat shoved down their throats. German resentment was deep. There are 19th century contributions for some of this, like resentments in France towards Germany after France last the Franco Prussian war of 1870. The post WWI period was particularly bad for Germans, and Hitler turned the key. You know, the USA had a strong right-wing reaction after WWI too--the Red Scare. Had we gone into a severe depression after WWI, politics in the US might have been a lot nastier.

Bitter Crank, gorilla or guerilla? — ssu

Fucking homonyms. Fucking auto-correct.

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if we lived in an ideal world where people tried things out in good faith, I would have no objection to this route. — romanv

No matter what we do--keep the old system, try a new one, or have a bloody revolution and end up in chaos--some people will not be acting in good faith. That's just a given. There are liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels in every society, and they tend to fuck things up.

Perhaps the environment is better in the USA, but you cant trust the UK government to look into this reform fairly. — romanv

NO NO, the environment is NOT better in the USA. The two parties have an iron grip on the status quo. I'm not sure that god can loosen their death grip.