I don't really want to think about this just right now.

One thing about the Affirmative Action decision and the legacy issue: The number of colleges where affirmative action, legacy admissions, and the like are major issues is small, mostly limited to a a small number of elite institutions, like Harvard. There are other colleges -- about 4,000 4 year colleges and universities, running the gamut of excellence. Many of these colleges admit large percentages of applicants to their very big campuses.

Just for perspective, if you don't insist on going to one of the very choosy, very expensive, very rich, very competitive schools, you have hundreds of good to excellent -- and much more affordable -- colleges to choose from. A degree from U of Nebraska or U Washington might not give a student the same entree as a degree from Harvard, Yale, or North Carolina, but if they choose majors which are likely to lead to employment, work hard for high grades, then they have a good chance of making a quite good living. They may not make it into the elite on the basis of their alma mater, but... tough bounce.

The large land-grant institutions (U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, U of Minnesota, etc.) admit large shares of their applicants, so affirmative action is in many cases much less an issue. True enough, these institutions can afford to wash out a substantial number of first year students and still have large graduating classes. Some private colleges also practice relatively open admission--it isn't ONLY public colleges.

Informative article from NYT 7/3/23

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/03/opinion/for-most-college-students-affirmative-action-was-not-enough.html

Good OP.

Personal moral beliefs, though seemingly individualistic, ultimately align with the core features of morality, including social control, emotional responses, and the application of moral principles to oneself and others. — Judaka

Personal morality is / must be derived from the social milieu in which one is reared. We may have some innate, simple forms of right/wrong, fair/unfair, but these innate forms are too limited to count as 'morality'.

(Even other animals can be observed to object to unfair treatment (in very structured situations). Primates in experimental situations stop cooperating if the rewards are unfairly distributed or are of unequally quality (cucumber vs. apple). Dogs are satisfied as long as they get something; they don't weigh quality of reward. Dry bread instead of meat counts among dogs.)

Not many children survive without adult assistance, and thus we do not have adults who really devised their own system of right / wrong. People who "march to the beat of a distant drummer" are following social morality as much as anyone else is. That someone feels the distant morality is superior to the local version is a social decision.

Rendezvous With Rama was mentioned in a news story about Oumaumau. Yes, great sci fi novel, and the sequels were (like many sequels are) not great but not that bad.

Sometimes it's hard to put things just right. It came from outer space, right; but where we are is ALL outer space. Probably its source is in our own galaxy. Things whizzing by from other galaxies... hmmm, more disturbing.

Some people long for alien contact in the same way that some people (not necessarily believers) long for god. God made manifest or sentient beings from another star system materializing before our eyes would be approximately equally shattering.

Quote: He believes the tiny objects, about half a millimetre in size, are most likely made from a steel-titanium alloy that is much stronger than the iron found in regular meteors.

He believes? How about testing the spherules to determine exactly what they are made of?

this object must be an extraterrestrial artifact — Wayfarer

It is saying nothing surprising that this object speeding across the solar system and then heading back out is "extraterrestrial". How could it be otherwise? A "made object" of course would be a big deal; unfortunately we didn't get enough information about Oumaumua to make an intelligent guess (as far as I know).

Presumably, there is stuff zooming around 'out there' that was flung into motion by various entirely natural events -- things blowing up, things running into each other, smash ups, etc. The fragments will keep moving until some other object or force interrupts their travels.

Can learnéd men of science go off the deep end? Of course they can. Smart people are as capable of believing their own bullshit as anybody else is.

All that aside, I might wish it were true that we had found evidence of other highly intelligent beings. But so far, it always seems to take a lot of common sense bending to believe the "evidence presented so far".

Weight is a perplexing issue. Once one has ratcheted up one's weight from a slim BMI to an overweight/obese BMI, it can be really very difficult for most people to lose it, without some sort of event like surgery, injury, illness, or all three intervenes. Dieting ad exercise should, theoretically, work until you realize how much a body can do without surrendering it's fat stores.

Cancer surgery and covid helped me lose weight I was happy to be rid of, but I can't really recommend either one of those options. Those sorts of things can lead to one's weight being reduced to a couple pounds of ashes.

It's especially perplexing where people have access to, and can afford healthy food; where they have access to pleasant outdoor spaces, and where they can exercise; where they have access to and can afford information and medical care. There are all sorts of groups and products to help. But losing the weight--and not regaining it--remains damned difficult.

The Nordic model may be as close to heaven as we are going to get. Soviet-style communism is not.

We could blame obesity on sloth, gluttony, and greed IF it were the case that fat people were uniformly lazy, gluttonous, and never satiated. They are not. Further, the obesity epidemic slops over into places that have no right whatsoever to have many overweight people (given the relative poverty of the place). It is estimated that 2 billion people are overweight / obese. Why? Bad food: high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt, energy-dense, and micronutrient-poor foods, which tend to be lower in cost. These are the kind of "foods" purveyed by many corporations in the food business.

Households can be found with children who are both undernourished (in terms of essential nutrients) and are overweight.

What are you not sure is correct? Survey's are one way of estimating tobacco use behaviors; market data would be another way. A third way is investigation (observation). That's the sort of stuff public health surveillance does. Researchers end up with estimates, not head counts.

The information on middle and high school students use of e-cigarettes is depressing. Tobacco smoke (well, any smoke produced and inhaled under similar circumstances) produces a rich mix of chemicals, none of which are beneficial to health. Vaping doesn't involve incineration, but the fluid in which nicotine is delivered is chemically complex and not healthy. I don't have any information on long-term consequences of vaping (aside from nicotine addiction).

The key question is if rates of lung cancer are continuing to drop or whether they are starting to move in the wrong direction. — Joshs

New lung cancer diagnoses continue to decline because of a decades earlier and continuing decline in the number of active smokers. If, tomorrow, smoking became as common as it was 60 years ago, the pattern of lug racer would not change for maybe 20 or 30 years; then it would start to rise again.

Earlier detection and better treatment has reduced the certainty of death from lung cancer, but it is still the leading cancer in the US.

The American Cancer Society's estimates for lung cancer in the US for 2023 are: About 238,340 new cases of lung cancer (117,550 in men and 120,790 in women) About 127,070 deaths from lung cancer (67,160 in men and 59,910 in women).

Imagine if we taught our kids, "the less stuff you have and the less material wealth you can get by on, the more character you are likely to have and the stronger a person you're likely to be. — Baden

What are you trying to do -- cause a world-wide depression? (joke)

I'm not sure that sparse possessions, in itself, builds character. Character may have to come first.

Education would be nice but relative GDP is the dominant indicator of a "successful'' society, so it seems we're in a Moloch-type race to the bottom. — Baden

We can practice thrift, minimal consumption, healthful lifestyles, and character building through rigorous moral calisthenics, but IF everyone is to be fed, housed, clothed, educated, cared for, usefully employed, etc., we best have solid-enough GDP.

Rather than Moloch, I prefer the view that we have been parasitized by rich people who always require MORE from the working class who always have to put up with LESS. To paraphrase Jesus, "the rich you will always have with you" but we can certainly substantially reduce their number and demands through the usual and customary Nordic democratic socialism, with just the lightest touch of soviet purge.

The US applied the Nordic model after WWII, through cooperation of labor, capital, and government. That happy arrangement lasted roughly from 1945 to 1970, them things went back to suppressing the working class, exalting capital, and neoliberalizing government.

To what extent did the effects of second-hand smoking influence political will? Would our liberal societies have been less keen on regulations if the harm of smoking only impacted the smoker themselves? — Judaka

Such as, there is no such thing as second-hand alcohol, heroin, meth, cocaine, fentanyl, etc? Second-hand smoke helped the anti-smoking cause.

Some people (maybe a very large number) have little sympathy for the problems of addicts whose use is seen to affect only themselves. Until, of course, the deleterious effects of addiction do cause problems for other people. Then the response may not be empathetic.

Second hand smoke is harmful, of course, but the initial effort to reduce smoking was driven by the very high rates of cancer and heart disease among smokers. Second-hand smoke became an actionable issue in the 1980s/90s.

In areas where indoor smoking has been banned for some time, and the number of smokers has been reduced to a low 2-digit percentage of adults (like 15%), there seems to be increased hostility toward the remaining smokers.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers have aggressively marketed highly addictive prescription drugs, such as opioids, without fully disclosing the risks involved. — Judaka

Manufacturers market to pharmacy wholesalers and to doctors. I can understand how medical staff might not be familiar with a totally new class of drug, but how the hell is it that doctors and pharmacists were not aware that opioids are addictive? Opioid addiction has been around for a LONG time!

I am pretty sure that vaping is accounted for in smoking statistics which are derived both from sales records and from health surveys.

Marijuana smoking is more difficult to track because there are no "standard" joints like there are standard cigarettes, and not all marijuana sales are through state-licensed shops. Smokable marijuana is sold in bulk (quite small bulk packages) rather than in standardized joints. Some marijuana smokers share their product with others.

Marijuana does not normally result in emergency room visits, so that data point is out. Doctors and hospitals ask about street drugs; I would guess the self-reports on street drug use are the very model of unreliable.

I think there is an assumption among many marijuana smokers that inhaling unfiltered smoke and holding it as log as possible is somehow without consequences. "Marijuana smoking is associated with large airway inflammation, increased airway resistance, and lung hyperinflation, and those who smoke marijuana regularly report more symptoms of chronic bronchitis than those who do not smoke." NIDA

Governments could reduce the potential for addiction by regulating or banning the use of substances — Judaka

Tobacco is a good example of this. Over the last 50 years, tobacco use has been substantially reduced by a combination of price factors, banning indoor smoking, tighter policing of tobacco sales, and public health education. The unavoidable fact of lung cancer helped. Taxes have helped raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes in some states to over $9. Each cigarette costs at least 45¢ at that price. E-cigarettes have undermined some level of past reductions, and too many young people are taking up tobacco use in one form or another. But the thing is, smoking is much less common now than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

Intensive public health work costs money, and under neoliberal budgets, smoking cessation (and sexually transmitted disease prevention) efforts have been significantly reduced.

Very little talk about what most people really want: efficient public transit, a public option for health insurance, etc. — Mikie

I'm not sure about how badly people want a public option for health insurance, but it certainly sounds like exaggeration to claim most people want efficient public transit. Some people do, certainly--I do--but it seems like the reluctance to use public transit -- even when it is efficient and accessible, is pretty strong.

Addictiveness increases consumer retention and engagement in food, pharmaceuticals, social media, gambling, tobacco, pornography, mobile gaming and other industries where companies seek to maximize their profits. — Judaka

Aside: In what industries are they NOT seeking to maximize profits?

I prefer to group drug or alcohol use and gambling as additions, and activities like shopping, gaming, social media, exercise. and pornography use as habituating behaviors. Some of the same brain mechanisms are active in both kinds of behaviors, but addiction (e.g., to meth) is a far more severe task master than YouTube.

That said, you are certainly correct in claiming that businesess use both addiction (e.g., Purdue Pharma) and habituation (e.g., FaceBook) to maintain and expand their customer base.

I'm not sure how Neoliberalism figures into the problem of businesses manipulating customers, except that government conducts oversight over the marketplace with fewer tools, fewer personnel, and greater passivity. Getting people to buy stuff they don't really need is fairly hard work requiring a lot of ingenuity and employment of every [not illegal] trick in the book. But... we are all in favor of a vigorous economy (growing GDP) are we not?

Has there been a case, YET, of identical male twins both becoming women (or visa versa)?



Maybe it has?

The point of affirmative action in education was to intervene early-ish in the employment and wealth pipeline, as a way to redress racial disparities that are the lingering result of our history. — Srap Tasmaner

That was the idea for college admission, but not necessarily to supply diversity to elite professions (to whatever extent university teaching is still an elite type job).

Actually, there are too many "elite" being produced. There are not enough elite jobs to go around for the kind of jobs elite people like to occupy where they actually run things.

Sure…but what is your point? — Mikie

It's plain enough. I passively support free access to abortion, but organized opposition against Roe Vs. Wade has been active since 1973. I think equal access to employment and education is a good thing; lots of people support it, but passively. Steady and widespread resistance has a long history and is likely to eventually have consequences, overcoming passive support.

Today's ruling just isn't a surprise. We've been heading toward this for some time.

how much damage this court will do — Mikie

The court will be leaving wreckage in its wake, for sure, but affirmative action has been supported and attacked since John F, Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which included a provision "that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." That was the first step, but legislative action followed in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Over time the principle was extended to other activities, like education, and at the state level, applied to more factors like 'sexual orientation'.

A pun, also rarely known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple (correct or fairly reasonable) interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, especially as their usage and meaning are usually specific to a particular language or its culture.

There's more if you need it.

All this is relevant to the Masculinity thread because Universeness and I are engaging in typical masculine rhetorical maneuvers.

That was a pun?

BTW, 'gullible squirrels' was a pun on the daily Canadian news show, As It Happens. They always end their day's lead in with a pun on one of the day's stories.

Thoughts about this or other cases — or the court in general? — Mikie

The court's decision on affirmative action is as surprising as its decision on abortion. In both cases, the court delivered on the conservative agenda because the majority of justices are conservative. It would have been much more shocking if they had upheld either one. File under "Elections Have Consequences".

It wasn't only conservatives that have had quarrels with various kinds of affirmative action.

Will the decision make a difference? Not having access to higher education is harmful from several angles, but getting a BA degree is not the ticket to career success that it once was. The percentage of workers with bachelors degrees is already pretty high.

District of Columbia 63.0%
Massechusetts 46.6%
Colorado 44.4%
Vermont 44.4%
New Jersey 43.1%
Maryland 42.5%
Connecticut 42.1%
Virginia 41.8%
New Hampshire 40.2%
New York 39.9%

Getting an advanced degree isn't the ticket it used to be either. Depending on the person's family and community background, connections, and so forth, quite a few advanced degree people end up not getting into the career slots for which they had spent so much time and money.

If affirmative action is a gateway to a BA, MA, and PhD, a ton of debt, and a run-of-the-mill job (which it will be for some) the loss isn't as great as it might seem to be.

'Went viral,' is a common phrase in use today. — universeness

Like the video of a herring gull swallowing a squirrel whole "went viral". Neither squirrels nor sea gulls changed their behavior, despite their addiction to social media.

Who knew squirrels were so gullible?

Who had the most agency with respect to the Chicago Housing Authority? In first place was the federal government which established funding and various requirements. Next in line was the Chicago City Council, which had control over certain aspects of CHA. Third in line was CHA, which had to abide by the requirements and limitations other agencies placed upon them. Fourth in line were the various community groups that did not want CHA buildings anywhere near them.

The residents in CHA buildings were at the bottom of the agency and autonomy list, They had no agency with respect to operation of their neighborhood. However, CHA always had waiting lists of people who needed housing and were willing (even anxious) to live there. It wasn't that it was so great: it was that other options were so bad.

The thing about ghettos (from the medieval Jewish ghettos in Italy where the name came from) to your average American ghetto is that living in them is no body's first choice. People are forced to live in ghettos, either by police force (the Warsaw Ghetto) or by social/economic force: it's the only place available. Where would poor people like to live? They would like to live in a nice house/apartment in a quiet, leafy neighborhood with little crime, clean streets, decent schools, parks, good stores nearby -- super markets, drug stores, Target, aldi, etc. Why don't they live there? a) they can't afford the rent in neighborhoods like that b) they won't BE or FEEL welcomed in such a neighborhood. So, they end up in noisy, dirty, high-crime ghettos with crappy schools, no near-by shopping or parks, etc.

Indeed, the problems come down to various levels of tolerance for discomfort caused by other people. — schopenhauer1

I am not confident that this description is realistic, my doubt hingeing on the word "tolerance".

There are unfortunately plenty of people who don't mind roaming dogs biting them and do look at it as if it's just a part of being in a neighborhood. — schopenhauer1

I doubt that very much. They DO mind, even in the ghetto; they don't "tolerate it" - they have to
"endure it". Bad environments (ghettos, homeless encampments, poverty-ridden rural areas, deteriorating public housing, etc.) are the cause of long-term stress-induced disease patterns. In other words, living in very bad environments makes one sick and drives one crazy.

Even bad work environments (evil bosses, bad co-workers, unhealthy working conditions, various things) are stress inducing and can erode physical and mental functioning. Workers aren't at all indifferent to these conditions, it just that IF that is where they are, they have to put up with it.

An example: in Chicago's Public Housing, places like the huge Robert Taylor Homes or Cabrini Green, many residents did resist the social and physical deterioration that was degrading these places. They tried to get repairs made, they tried to limit the effects of negative behavior in the buildings.

What killed these places was Chicago Public Housing policies, like allowing a very high ratio of children to adults. This might be somewhat tolerable when the children are little, but when the children grow into teenagers, the ratio becomes unbearable -- the teen-age children take over with very bad results.

Why did adults stay there until everyone was evicted and the buildings dynamited? They had no choice. Poor people don't have a lot of choices. What is one of the main health differences between reasonably well off people and decidedly poor people? Unavoidable chronic stress.

Some standards can be applied to anyone, without respect to their wealth or poverty, residence in a $1,000,00 - $5,000,000 per home suburb, or stinking ghetto. I suppose one could apply Kant's Universal Imperative or the Golden Rule to anyone. Neither gilded suburbanites nor ghetto dwellers should engage in drive-by shootings, frivolous lawsuits, DIY justice, bribery of private school personnel, rape, public drug use, failure to recycle their empty fine wine bottles, or public drunkenness. That dog? keep it on a leash or inside a fenced yard. Throwing beer bottles into the street? Not acceptable anywhere.

it seems like people do maintain a minimum level of acceptable behavior -- or even aimed for more than that -- because even in a ghetto, people have to interact in an orderly manner to accomplish their goals -- whether that goal is drug dealing, fencing catalytic converters, getting children to school, or scrounging for food,

Do people in gilded suburbs maintain a minimum standard of behavior or better? Or, are they as likely to be inconsiderate, noisy, bad neighbors, and so on? I have little contact with gilded suburbanites, but from what I have read, they are as likely to behave badly as anybody else, but will maintain a veneer of nice behavior. If they are going to shoot you, they probably won't call you a motherfucking bitch first. Or, maybe they like ghetto slang -- I wouldn't know. They probably will take care of their purebred dog, but might sue you for painting your house an inappropriate shade of beige, thus lowering their property value. If you up-stage them in status display, you might be snubbed at the country club.

So, minimum standards are an issue in the gilded suburbs, but the 'level' is higher. There are rules. Violation is verboten.

The neighborhood I live in ranges from stable working class to professional working class, with more upscale people living along the Mississippi River. About 10,000 people live in this neighborhood. Most of the housing is modest single family bungalows with small yards. It's a solid Democratic area. Most people maintain their property reasonably well. Off-leash dogs are a rarity. More objectionable is people not picking up their dog's shit. Driving too fast on residential streets is a problem. Lots of people display "20 is plenty" signs -- drive at 20 mph on most residential streets (it's the law). I'd say there is a consensus about what is minimum acceptable behavior here.

The kind of behavior one sees in 'ghetto' areas -- like noisier, messier partying involving large numbers of people would not be considered acceptable around here. A large party is possible, but quiet, neat, and orderly, please.

Supererogatory standard — schopenhauer1

I looked it up, but this is a totally new word to me. I believe in avoiding rare terms where common terms will serve as well.

Look, your thread title is "What makes a ghetto what it is?". In my book, the term "ghetto" requires poverty. A gated community of millionaires is a "ghetto" only in a satirical sense.

What makes ghettos is what makes people poor. The wealth pump extracts money from working people through reduced wages, reduced benefits, longer hours, inflation, and regressive taxes which penalizes working people much more heavily than rich people. The working class (90% of the population in the USA) is in a 50+ year period of gradual loss. Most working people are significantly poorer now than they were in 1970. The most unlucky working class people are now immiserated. They end up in dilapidated housing because they can not afford better. If they own their own home (which many working class people do) it may be becoming more dilapidated because they can not afford to maintain it.

People who are gradually forced down to the bottom don't just sink, they change on the way down. The milieu of poverty produces alienation and anomie. They do not feel a sense of belonging responsibility, shared community, and so on. They feel beaten, and they are. It is very difficult to get off the bottom once you land there.

How people PERCEIVE the ghetto and the people who live in it is where your conservative red herring and liberal straw men make their entry. Their opinions are relevant because effective political/economic/social intervention will, or will not occur based on one's ideology. The main response to ghettos is slum clearance -- just level them. The ghetto will then disperse and regather somewhere else, because the poor are still poor. Only their ratty, run-down, unsafe, unhealthy tenement has changed (it's now in a landfill). One response (more "liberal") is to replace the slum with nice but durable townhome units and select the residents from the ghetto carefully. Another, more cost conscious response is to replace the slum with "a ghetto in the sky" -- high-rise buildings filled without careful selection.

Ripe ghettos don't have a whole lot of community. There is too much transience, instability, unmet need, crime, etc. for people to bond with lots of other people. Poverty, isolation, anomie, and alienation again. Add cheap alcohol, and plentiful person-recking drugs, and you have a social sink added to the ghetto.

Circling back to the question of "agency": The only people connected with the ghetto who have real agency are the rich people (landlords, investors, real estate interests, speculators, building companies, etc.) who created the ghetto in the first place through very specific policies.

There are some great books on how people get fucked over in the ghetto:

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond is an excellent account of how landlords make money renting ghetto property to the poor.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of how the Federal Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. FHA and VA home loans programs created both the white suburbs (and contributed to white wealth) while, at the same time, concentrating poverty and denying opportunity in the inner city.

Several books about Detroit show how corporate policies and corrupt government turned Detroit from a really great city into the shit hole it is now.

Numerous books about the Chicago Housing Authority show how slum clearance and urban renewal ended up creating new, and worse, ghettos. Most of Chicago's ghettos in the sky have been torn down, replaced by housing for "nicer people". Many of the former high-rise residents received Section 8 housing vouchers. Whether and where they used the vouchers, how well it worked out, and where the former residents are now is mostly unknown.

I want to talk about agency and how it manifests in society. — schopenhauer1

In places like TPF, there are hard determinists who claim we do not have agency--physics is the law. Their opposites claim we have free will and executive agency. My position is that we have a fair degree of agency but free will is limited. Our behavior is subject to numerous determinants of variable strength.

Politics is one of the determinants of how we judge other people's agency. A conservative is more likely to credit individuals with agency: they are well off because they earned it -- they were enterprising, clever, thrifty, etc. The poor are badly off because they are slovenly, lazy, stupid, and wastrels. Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely to attribute their good fortune to beneficial environments, and to explain poverty by attributing to the poor harmful environments.

Neither the rich nor the poor got the way they are strictly on their own merits. The way in which society is organized has a lot to do with success and failure. Peter Turchin (End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration) describes "the wealth pump" which are the various means by which the rich extract wealth from the working class and concentrate it among themselves. Over time, the working class is immiserated, and more and more people end up on the very low end of the distribution -- destitute.

Sorry, got to go to an appointment (old guys' lunch date); more later.

Harvard Business School or not, social science experiments like this have often been found 'non-reproducible'. A different group repeating the same experiment may get much different results or interpret similar results differently.

That said, I'm pretty sure political orientation, religious background, education, wealth, height and weight, sex, market experience, and so forth all interact with each other, under various circumstances. That seems like a truism. I'm not sure I could devise an experiment that would yield consistent, valid results proving that.

Question: did the alleged conservative vegetable shoppers agree that they had picked out inferior produce? If so, did they have an explanation for their behavior? (Maybe what looked OK to the shopper looked inferior to the experimenters?)

Was some unaccounted variable at work? Perhaps wealthy people (rather than conservative) people choose food in a market differently than less-wealthy people?

So, I'm very liberal and I've very fussy about stuff I buy in person. Slightly dented can? No. Slightly discolored spot on banana peel? No. Slightly crushed box of cereal? No. Speck of something on the milk bottle? No. This might be some sort of superstitious thinking, On some things, like shoes, I expect better service from higher cost items more than very cheap ones. On the other hand, if I have to replace an appliance (washing machine) I'm likely to look on line, check out Consumer Reports, and buy it sight-unseen if it's rated highly. Does it make sense to dither over a can of beans but buying a washing machine without seeing it for real? No. (I've looked at a lot of appliances in stores. Touching it, looking at it, etc. doesn't tell you the really essential information: how well does it work, and how long will it last.

Some shopping behaviors (well, behaviors in general) are just irrational -- a little bit crazy.

Got it, Maybe 2053?

No, I missed that. What did he win? (What was his wager?)

No it's not like H & O. I'm thinking that consciousness, or sentience, isn't supported by clusters of nerves that are exclusively concerned with the operation of the animal. Walking, flying, vision, vibration detection, catching prey, avoiding predators, and so forth are managed by specific neural clusters. This is true, to some extent, in our brains too. Presumably, conscious, sentient thought activity is not handled by any and all cells. Rather, mental functions originate in certain areas.

Bear in mind that a lot of our 100 billion neurons are tightly focused on running us meat machines, not in thinking or generating consciousness, whatever that is. C. elegans (a nematode) has exactly 959 somatic cells of which 302 are neurons. Not a lot with which to generate consciousness, on top of running the tiny piece of meat.

A bumblebee clocks in with a million neurons. If 302 neurons can run a nematode, maybe a million are enough to run a bumblebee with a little left over for consciousness. A cockroach also has a million neurons.

It seems to me that consciousness requires a number of neurons well above the number needed to keep the animal alive. I don't think C. elegans has enough neurons; a bumblebee, on the other hand, can learn to do a few things not related to life support -- like "play" a very simple game. On up the ladder re many animals with billions of brain cells. A dog has 530 million cortical neurons--gray matter. Humans have about 16 billion cortical (gray matter) cells.

It seems like Fido has a better chance at consciousness than the cockroach or bumblebee had before you stepped on them.

One of the things the Wagner Group shows is that sending mercenaries abroad is safe and effective when used as directed, but having them within a day's drive of the capitol is hazardous.

Prigozhin would do well not to trust Vladimir & Company, including Lukashenko, with his life. He's likely to be dead meat sooner rather than later. I wouldn't expect too much kindness were I a Wagner soldier, either. Charges dismissed? Probably not. I'm pretty sure the empire will strike back, as soon as they get their act together.

All of my Moscow agents retired, so I don't have any inside information. But my guess is that Russia will not have regime change this week, or next.

I take American right wing militia types seriously. They are quite capable of causing real damage, and have done so at various times and places.

I certainly don't know what all happened in Russia behind the scenes and off the screen. Time will tell, maybe soon, maybe not.

How do commentators here compare the January 6 insurrection in the US capitol building with Prigozhin's coup attempt (if that's what it was)? Granted, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group had a lot more hardware than the Proud Boys could dream of, but in both cases, an attack on the center of power occurred.

According to Peter Turchin, [End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration] the USA is about due for a period of social disintegration. "The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer."

I don't know whether Russia as it is currently constituted is eligible for the kind of severe instability of which Turchin writes. The two episodes of past US instability climaxed in the Civil War, and then in the Great Depression. We are, he thinks, heading for a third crisis period.

The USSR collapsed 32 years ago. Has Russia inherited or developed enough new internal conflicts to tear itself apart? There are obviously significant conflicts, but are they sufficient for Prigozhin's coup to trigger an implosion. One thing Russia seems to be sharing with the USA is "the wealth pump" whereby the elites get richer and working people are immiserated.

Here's a picture from Sunday of "a barrier" blocking a street leading to Red Square. I don't know... It just doesn't look like an adequate barrier to block a determined skate boarder, let alone the Wagner Group. Were they so confident the barrier wasn't needed or was this the best they could do on short notice?

reason (b) a reasonable belief that the person's tie colour clashed with their socks. — unenlightened

As director John Waters showed, conclusively, in his epic film "Serial Mom", the immorality for wearing white high heels after September 1, or wearing clashing tie and socks, is a capital crime.

It seems to me that would be true only if men's lives are somehow better than women's. Is that true? — T Clark

The answer, of course, is NO, it is not true.

Over the last 50 years, real wages have been cut and inflation has reduced purchasing power at significant levels. Neither men nor women are exempt from falling income and rising costs of living. More and more families live on the precarious edge of poverty, having to work more hours in second or third jobs to avoid falling into the pit of poverty.

The realities of class overrun our educated chatter about sex, gender, men (masculinity), and women (femininity). Educated, professional workers are just not in the same boat as blue-collar / gray collar workers. I've been both. The latter is definitely more pleasant than the latter.

Battling "Patriarchy" is a war against the distorted shadows on the wall of the academic cave. Success or failure will have no consequences.