For an interesting genetic experience, try this at home: try breeding ever darker petunias. At some point, your two very dark, dark parents will produce a white off-spring. I don't remember what the genetic mechanism was, but something along the lines of "the plant rejected the final attempt and cut the color off altogether".

I don't know what the name of the lily is. I came across it on Tumblr, and thought at first it was some sort of plastic thing, because it looked so unreal. Apparently it is a real plant, Polyethylene pamalota.

I stand by my prediction — gurugeorge

Somebody will just have to wait and see. I'm hoping to get out of here relatively soon, like... 10 years from now, preferably. 80 will be old enough.

You call that remarkable?

I'm not following your argument that a "discussion" is automatically necessary before arriving at a moral decision. I already know racism is bad, I don't need to discuss it beforehand, nor did I need to be taught it by discussion. — Pseudonym

It is likely the case that I agree with you. I too know that racism is bad, don't need to discuss it, and so on; EXCEPT that what one person means by racism may include much more than what someone else includes. That's why racism continues to be discussed.

Some people put so many different things under the terms of "sexist", "racist", "elitist" "misogynistic", and so on, that one has to spend considerable time and effort to clarify what is what. Discussions of racism end up revolving around the application of terms, rather than a common, dictionary meaning of racism.

Regarding shit holes: saying that African countries are shit holes because black Africans live there is racist. Saying that African countries are shit holes because they are poor, corrupt, lack access to capital, and have been subject to exploitative colonialism for a couple of hundred years is merely true. Claiming that American Indians are all drunks and Mexicans are all lazy are racial and ethnic slurs. Observing that whites, on average, are richer than American indians and Mexicans is only to observe reality.

Then, there are people who believe that some people are inferior because they are black. They qualify as racist. There follows then the question of whether it is permissible to hold such beliefs. Some will say it is permissible, however wrong the opinion is, others will say it is impermissible without respect to the freedom to hold wrong opinions.

its costs are starting to outweigh its benefits for most people). — gurugeorge

But urbanization is a long-term trend that hasn't reversed. By a large majority, maybe... 60% to 70%, most people in the world are living in cities, and much of that on the coasts. Cities are much more efficient than having people distributed across the countryside, doing what they do in the city. Cities are more energy efficient too.

Efficiency isn't everything, but with 7.3 billion people heading for 8 and 9 billion fairly soon, efficiency counts for a lot. Better to have good agricultural land remain agricultural, and cities be dense.

I agree, and disagree. There is some outward movement into the "exurban" territory beyond the outer ring of suburbs. True. The internet facilitates tele-commuting, so that business can sometimes be conducted in high decentralized groups, degrees can be earned on-line, Amazon... On the other hand, some companies are finding that it really does work better when people are in the same room together. While internet commerce is growing, 90% of commerce is still conducted face to face, in brick & mortar settings.

given the increasingly dystopian nature of cities — gurugeorge

I strongly disagree with this view. I grew up in a rural town of 1800 people, and was immensely happy to get the hell out of there when i finished high school. There are, indeed, good points about small villages, but the treasures of civilization both dwell in, and depend on The City to exist.

Granted, some people do not like the city, and not because it is dystopian. They dislike 1-way streets, a lack of large flat free parking lots, dense traffic at rush-hours, and stuff like that. Mostly what they dislike is the "urban core" or the central business district. Many people also dislike the higher level of diversity one finds in the city. The city, of course, allows for, sometimes enforces, anonymity. Anonymity is one of the things that thrilled me about large cities: Now that I am getting old, I'm not quite so thrilled about anonymity, but it still is better than the "everyone knows you" small town.

There are sort of dystopian areas in the city. Those are caused either by poverty (the slums, shootings, etc.) or too little street traffic, which is what a lot of downtown cores become by about 6:00 in the evening. "Street life" which makes a city core interesting generally involves lower value real estate. Cities often wreck themselves by trying "urban renewal" where high-value buildings replace low value buildings (the kind that house restaurants, art galleries, porn shops, bars--all the stuff that leads to an interesting street.

"Block E" was the middle of a very lively stretch in downtown Minneapolis. There were 2 regular bookstores, a few cheap cafes, a couple of porn shots, a couple of questionable bars--all that sort of thing. The city's mothers and fathers thought it was disreputable; it attracted too many people for the wrong reasons. So, it was leveled and replaced with more respectable entertainment and nightclub 'center'. It bombed miserably. On another street, a perfect arrangement of used book stores, coffee shops, restaurants, art galleries, a few nice bars, and so forth had formed. It was there for about 10 years, then it was replaced by several office towers. More dead streets.

Of course, some of us in our 60s and above are the very models of modern enlightenment.

I wish socialists in the best sense ... would actually get their hands dirty and help people set up things like that. It would be more rewarding for them too. — gurugeorge

Have you read much of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Transcendentalist? In his essay, Self-Reliance he says,

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

There is a tradition in American history of doing exactly what you propose: There were various communities in the 19th century, surviving into the 20th, that did what you suggest. The Shaker communities were one such example, now extinct (they believed in celibacy). The Amish self-insure themselves: the community contracts with a hospital in their area to provide health care at a specified price, and the community collectively pays the bills.

Elsewhere, the Grameen Bank loans money to self-help groups. The loans are very small (maybe... $100). They are designed to be seed money for individual projects in this world countries. Maybe the project is to collect plastic bags and wash, sew, or melt the bags, and make the plastic bags into some other kind of product. A few women can start a micro-business of making something useful that can be sold, earn money, pay the little loan back over time, then borrow slightly larger sums, and so on.

Farm Cooperatives have been useful organizations to help small farmers store and manage the sale of commodity crops.

On the other hand, because the US was a very, very big place, and undeveloped people spread out as they moved west and weren't close enough to each other to do a lot of cooperation until later on. Small school districts might include 20 families who built the famous "one room school house" and hired a teacher to educate their sons and daughters. These small very diversified school districts lasted up until the 1950s-maybe 1960 at the latest. Then they were consolidated.

One of the motivations behind the New Deal programs during the Great Depression. like Social Security, unemployment, and so on was to lessen the risk of revolutionary activity in the working classes (which was, is, most people).

Try all you like but the continuity of my pity towards you remains unchanged. — TimeLine

Now the real timeline has stood up. Just joking. I can't tell whether your self-presentation is realistic or a false front.

BTW, I know men who treat women the way you describe them: they think women are silly, trivial, shallow, stupid, etc. They don't like working for or with women. They don't like taking orders from a woman. They don't think women are smart. But almost all the time, these are men on their 60s or older. (of course, once they were in their 20s and were probably the same way then.)

I don't see this kind of behavior so much in younger men, like 20s to 40s. Younger men do seem to usually have better attitudes toward women. Do you find this to be true?

One thing I have come to recognize - when I feel contempt for someone because of something I see in them, it is because I see that same thing in myself and can't face it. — T Clark

It is presumptuous of me to question what you perceive going on in your own mind. But I do wonder whether you have contempt for an other because they mirror something in yourself. It could be that what you are perceiving is precisely labeled, and it may be a very common mechanism. The reason I doubt it is that we generally apply this theory only in negative ways. Do I like a comedian's physical slapstick humor because I am like the comedian? Do I admire bravery in someone because I recognize in myself bravery? Do I admire someone's piety because I am pious? I don't think so.

Would you (or I) not feel contempt for an other because they so thoroughly violate what you or I think is clean, right, and proper?

Whatever the mechanism, it is not a good idea to give too much free play to our feelings of contempt, loathing, disgust, and so on, because such feelings make it difficult to perceive and judge others fairly, and it makes it difficult to live in this world if we see ourselves surrounded by contemptible loathsome people. (Unless, of course, we are--but that's another thread.)

I think the great advantage of UBI (from my own pro-capitalist point of view) is that entrepreneurial adventure is more likely to spontaneously develop.

If your basic income that keeps you alive and kicking comes without strings attached, then you can relax, and when you get bored with doing nothing, you are then free to gradually cobble together and tailor your own supplemental income as you fancy. You can save, you can incrementally take risks. And that's going to encourage people to fill in all sorts of economic micro-niches. — gurugeorge

Yes, I think that's why people like Friedman favored it, in addition to it being simpler and cheaper to administer.

it would be disastrous if it were just laid on top of the existing welfare system — gurugeorge

I agree. We can't afford both systems.

In some ways, the social service welfare system is an employment program, NOT for the recipients of services but for the employees who deliver and administer it. I'm not suggesting that people who work in these programs are parasitical drones who do nothing. Many of them are intelligent, hard-working, well educated professionals who take their work very seriously. The problem is that what many recipients of services need is... MORE MONEY and not more services.

I don't want to push that point too far, because there really are people who need social services above and beyond needing more money, and they would need social services even if they were rich.

My first job after college was in VISTA, the domestic peace corps, 1968. I worked at a job corps on the east coast. We had about 100 corpsmen and the budget for the place was roughly a million dollars. The corpsmen were there for about a year, costing $10,000 each, or roughly $70,000 in today's dollar value (using the Federal Reserve Chained CPI calculator).

It was a very good program with talented, hard-working staff. But fully remediating the deficiencies of the corpsmen would have taken several years -- maybe 4, or $280,000 in todays money, or $7000 a year for 40 years--about what a UBI would have given them.

The Job Corps staff were well paid; the facility made a nice contribution to the local economy. It was a very interesting place to work. But whether, on balance, it was worth it financially, I'm not certain.

It should be noted that media content -- social or a-social --was able to compel one of the senators who spoke in the hearing, Al Franken, to resign. So... clearly, media has some power, and if it can be manipulated by foreign powers, then foreign powers could influence political behavior in the United States, or any other country.

The greatest threat to democracy s not some troll farm in the basement of the Kremlin buying ads and posting fake content on Facebook and Twitter. The greatest threat is, naturally, within our borders, or within the borders of whichever democracy is failing politically.

IF one viewed the Trump election as a failure of democracy, then it is clear that Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, the institutions of political parties, state election supervisors, the US. Congress, and the American people are responsible. I do not like Donald Trump. I think he is performing as badly as we nay-sayers thought he would. He isn't evil, he is simply not a competent, experienced politician occupying that most political job.

Since the problem is the American people and their institutions, none of the preventive measures you suggest would be appropriate.

Now, I don't have time to review all of the things that are wrong with politics as currently practiced, and you wouldn't want to sit there and read it all. I'll toss out a couple of flaws. Others can add to the list.

A, Very rich individuals are able to bend the political process to their liking by distributing large sums of money to the right places and individuals. Both political parties engage with the lobbyists, campaign bank rollers, and large donors, so there is no alternative, most of the time.

B. The two political parties do not offer a significant choice in personalities or policies, most of the time. One can vote for Twiddledee candidate or the Twidlidum person. Take your pick; Twidledee or Twidledum.

C. Neither party is especially responsive to the will of most Americans. The parties serve the interests of the funders.

Those are the sorts of threats that face democracies,

I got the impression that the purpose of this new Canadian law is to try to formalize transsexual's rights in legal terms of labor, housing, and other areas where bias is possible and that it was not the intent of the law to ban or control informal speech (as I get it). — Cavacava

That may be, but it does specifically mention hate propaganda, which draws a bead on speech.

Actually, I don't know exactly what laws govern free speech in Canada. In the US, the first amendment concerns what the government can and can not do:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Congress can make no law... but your employer can make rules, or you school (if private) can make rules, and one is stuck with those rules. Apparently the first amendment doesn't cover what private entities can do.

There are differences between Canada and the US: The US disallows double jeopardy, for instance, meaning that once one is acquitted of a crime, charges for the same crime can not be brought again. Unless it has been changed recently, Canada allows double jeopardy -- some people and organizations have been prosecuted several times on the same charge, but were acquitted, at least the first time.

The Peterson BBC interview was quite good, I enjoyed it. Apparently the issue is a bit larger than the case of a delicate snowflake vs. the hot stovetop of Jordan Peterson.

Canadian Senate Bill C-16, passed October 18, 2016

The enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and to clearly set out that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.

Peterson objects to any requirement that requested pronouns must be used, else risking liability under the hate crime legislation.

The term "Hate propaganda" makes me nervous, because "hate" and "propaganda" are not very precise terms, and can be variously interpreted by prosecution and defense, both. A person's public questioning of whether there is even such a thing as "transgender" could be considered hate speech. A refusal to use a particular pronoun (perhaps a neologism) could be interpreted as hate speech. Like a transgender persons might mash up she, her, he, him, and person and want to be called by the pronoun "shrimp". "Jerko said shrimp would attend."

Peterson doesn't want to be compelled to use "he, she, him, her, they, or shrimp" arbitrarily.

So Peterson's issue is more than a question of not offending people who claim to be transgendered, it is a question of liability to prosecution under hate speech law.

I often wonder what people 500, 2000, 5000 years ago did "know". Of course, a lot of what people know in any time is practical knowledge that works just fine. They may not have known where frogs came from 5,000 years ago, but then, they really didn't need to know, since the frogs took care of themselves.

People's heads have always been full of knowledge. Our heads (over the last few hundred years, for sure) have often been full of relatively useless knowledge. We have survival knowledge suitable to our time, but should things fall apart, we'd be up the crick. Of course, when things fell apart 5,000 years ago they were also up the crick (creek).

I really don't dislike anyone, although there are people I don't want to hang around with. — T Clark

I'm more like "I've never killed anybody, but there are obituaries that I very much enjoyed reading," Mark Twain? Clarence Darrow? (CD said, "I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

A positive scent gives one pleasure because the brain has nerves that are stimulated by scent and when it reaches that area of the brain the information networks into the amygdala and so one feels emotional — TimeLine

Scent and memory and often linked tightly together because of the way the nasal nerves connect into the brain--and ancient evolution plays a role in that. An odor can summon very specific memories, and visa versa. I can't think of any "fear/scent" combos, but a lot of scents (even noxious odors like carbon tetrachloride) summons very specific scenes -- like cleaning playback and recording heads on tape machines.

Individuals do have specific scents without perfume, made up of chemicals in sweat, affected by diet, affected by flora and fauna on the skin, how often they change clothes, whether they smoke or not (and what). Some people's bodies have a very pleasant scent, others not -- and it's not because of hygiene or disease, or any of that. They just do or they don't.

Do you consider yourself a Good person?

I consider my state a mixed bag: some good, a little bad. Most of the time the bad things were motivated by good intentions. That the bad-acts-which-were-well-intentioned didn't turn out very well is part of my bad understanding of the way the world works. Once in a while I have been cruel or dishonest quite deliberately. On the other hand, I have done and been good, too--just plain good. In being good I wasn't being heroically good. I felt confident and good about doing and being good, so I was.

Most of the time we, people including me, are indifferent -- being neither good nor bad. We are fulfilling the minimum expectations that are well within our operating capabilities. We aren't doing anything bad or good, because either one would require arousal from our zombie routine. We just chug along. We do not earn any points while being on cruise control.

Hitler may have seen goodness as a weakness. — Andrew4Handel

Hitler, and other Nazis, inverted some normal ideas of good and evil, so that "to be soft in time of war is weakness" and "to be cruel and remorseless in struggle is a strength". Killing the Jews was purifying the nation. Letting inferior people live contaminated the blood of the nation.

Christian virtue was viewed as a weakness, so was much of secular philosophy, and humanistic culture.

Of course, most Germans had enough to do just surviving the war -- not starving, not getting killed by the Gestapo, or killed by the allied bombing.

Race is real and isn't determined by culture; it's inherent in the genetic makeup of a person.
— Bitter Crank

All of the evidence that I have seen says that that is false. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Will you please explain how you think white, black, asian, and aboriginal people get born? If race isn't biological, then something VERY MYSTERIOUS is going on. You know, when two asians have children, there is a much, much better than a 50/50 chance that the children will look like other asians. Same for whites, blacks, and aboriginals. Like it or not, the races are propagated by sex.

Now, you may not like the concept of race, but the distinctions between groups of people, whether they are races or not, are still transmitted through sexual reproduction.

Race and sex would be disconnected IF, as George Carlin said, two black parents could produce a child who had straight blond hair and blue eyes.

Social roles are parts in the screenplay called society. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

And we are in this screen play whether we jolly well like it or not, playing out our various defined roles, and just like characters on the screen, we can not walk out of the screen, we can not walk out of society.

Increasingly the latter are customers rather than patients — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Calling patients, clients, students, and so "consumers" is a piece of current bullshit lingo. It's a trend that comes out of business management schools, which says that schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and so on will perform better if things are run like a business. The approach is aided and abetted by (often) laudable moves to make institutions a little more accountable.

Should professors be teaching to suit the standards of their students? Well, I don't think so, but if students are going to rate teachers, and administrators are going to look at the ratings, then they will teach to make the students happy. A large proportion of college teachers are now adjuncts -- a nice work for "temporary". If they want to get hired for the next term, they had better have good ratings.

Colleges, hospitals, and social service agencies do the same thing they have always done; a change in language (health care consumer rather than patient) is likely to be a transient phenomenon.

What stereotype is the social role of consumer built on? What immediate environment is the social role of consumer derived from? None and none, respectively. Anybody with any traits and background can act in the social role of consumer. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The "consumer" is an economic stereotype made possible and created by industrial society. "Consumer" started to become popular around 1900.

Prior to the deployment of various labor-reducing devices using electric motors, automobiles, and so forth, men and women devoted most of their time to producing. Men worked in production jobs (farm or factory, mostly) and women produced food, clothing, and some domestic goods at home. A woman often prepared food from a kitchen garden and used eggs from a backyard henhouse. Food was prepared from simple raw ingredients.

The industrialization of the home converted women from producers to consumers. One drove to a store and bought bread (didn't make it), canned fruit (didn't preserve it), meat (didn't kill it), and ready-made clothing (didn't sew it). The woman shopped for and "consumed" household goods, as well. Families consumed housing and transportation.

"Consumer" is now applied to everybody, even mentally retarded individuals who "consume" custodial care services, so the term has approached meaninglessness. But if you set aside these nonsensical uses, the term is still meaningful.

The economic role of consumption (by consumers) is a critically important element in the modern economy. Something close to 3/4 of the GDP is derived from the acts of buying stuff that define the role of consumer.

In many ways, being a "consumer" is a degraded role, a shrink wrapped stereotype.

We should at least try to name what it is that makes something beautiful. for instance:

What would make the scent of a rose "beautiful"?

A fresh scent common to outdoor plants
Intensity -- not overwhelming like lilac, but intense enough to be readily perceived
complexity -- combining sharp citrus and soft powder smells for instance, like lemon mixed with the odor of hollyhock
persistence -- lasting more than a few minutes after the rose has opened

It may be the case that the breeding required to achieve a certain color an shape will have resulted in the loss of scent. Is a bright pink, but odorless rose (or one that smells like damp newspaper) really beautiful?

What makes a beautiful tree?

height; tallness is an aspect of beauty in trees; except specialties like bonsai or aged evergreens in dry alpine environments.
shape; some trees have a goblet shape, others a fan shape. Conifers are conical. ("Conifer refers to the cone seed, not the conical shape of the plant.)
color; green leaves in the summer, of course, but many shadings.
symmetry contributes much to beauty in trees, except bonsai and aged evergreens in dry alpine environments

Some trees, like the cottonwood, tend to sprawl, are asymmetrical, and have a ragged shape. They can grow tall. American elms are so popular because of their goblet shape, height, symmetry ,and foliage. Bass trees have the virtue of having beautifully scented blossoms which bees like, but in many ways are they not a beautiful tree. The branches tend to droop, the wood is brittle, they shed lots of different varieties of plant debris over the summer. They are not symmetrical.

The tibetan cherry tree deserves "beautiful!" solely on the basis of its shining, copper red, peeling bark. The shape, height, symmetry, and leaf color are not remarkable, but the bark gives this tree great beauty. It's a deciduous tree whose greatest appeal is during the winter.

I am usually dissatisfied with discussions of abstractions like beauty or beautiful.

Of course the reality behind the abstractions exist. We have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt "beauty". We each experienced qualia when we tasted the exquisitely delicious peach, smelled the beautiful rose, felt the rich, luxurious velvet, heard Beethoven's beautiful Moonlight Sonata, saw the beautiful huge moon rise over the city. We didn't experience the same qualia, however, and we can't compare the two to determine how different they might be. Still, we agree by convention that yes, the seemingly much enlarged yellowish moon rising above the horizon is "beautiful".

Certain things tend to receive the accolade of Beautiful! Flowers and sunsets, for example. Full moon risings. The sky when it is clear and we are far away from city lights. Mountains. Waterfalls. These things are beautiful, we expect them to be beautiful, and we can readily (and safely) agree that they are beautiful.

We are much less likely to award the prize of "beautiful!" to swamps, weeds, prunes, burlap, and freeways, even though these could be as beautiful as anything else. Our ideas about beauty are at least somewhat socially conditioned. We are at least somewhat primed to have certain kinds of experiences of beauty.

It's one thing to describe a woman's breasts as beautiful (it's been done quite often) but much rarer to hear a man's penis or testicles described as beautiful, even less to hear someone's asshole be awarded the prize of beauty.

A stone arched bridge is far more likely to be described as "beautiful" than a concrete freeway bridge, but perhaps that is convention intervening in our experience. Roses are by definition beautiful ("American Beauty" is a variety), but they often smell like nothing more than the wet paper they were wrapped up in during shipping. So much for qualia and roses.

So, he was beautiful. So, so beautiful.

Hitler, and the National Socialist Party, gained some support at the polls, and then seized power by subterfuge. Once the party gained power, it deployed the crude but effective methods of terror, intimidation, and force that it had been practicing. A very rigid system of information management was deployed on the German people, backed up by considerable resources of the Gestapo and other police systems.

Yes, Germans acquiesced, avoided seeing what was before their eyes, looked the other way, and kept their mouths shut about all sorts of bad things. That's what excellent crowd control can do.

If I were going to make things up, I'd go for something a bit more edgy.

No, broadcast speech doesn't contribute much to language development in young children. We are 'programmed' to learn it from parents, or parent stand-ins, like caregivers, siblings. Real, warm, close-by people who are in actual contact with us. It was thought that broadcast speech would homogenize language. It hasn't. Regional speech patterns continue to develop in various directions without regard to all of the broadcast speech we hear. That's because speech accents are learned on the playground, among parents, peers, teachers, and so forth. We don't pick up accents we hear in media.

There has been a long-standing debate on the economic efficacy of advertising. Whether advertising spending is a leading indicator, or a lagging indicator of economic activity,; whether the roughly $200 billion spent on advertising in 2016 was effective, and how, when, where, and why isn't altogether clear.

When people go into stores that sell a wide variety of stuff, (like Target, Best Buy, Sears, Macy's) they see all sorts of items that they may or may not have seen advertised at one time or another. Same thing for on-line stores. Advertising has some influence--some of which is quite long-run influence, like the satisfaction people expect to get from a particular brand (Levis, Budweiser, L'Oréal, Toyota, Wells Fargo, 3M, etc.) is partly an advertising, partly a product experience thing. Advertising can help launch a totally new product -- like Swiffer cleaning products. Hundreds of thousands of products are launched, promoted, and fail, heavily advertised or not. Other products seem to keep going decade after decade, and are the recipient of big ad dollars.

I like looking at advertising -- it's quite often more interesting material than the media in which it appears. But that isn't the same as being effective.

Thank you.

I grew up in a rural MN county that is still about 98% white. Sightings of colored people, as they were referenced at the time, or Negroes, were very rare. We had an exchange student from Uganda in 1962-63. That was about it. Jews weren't very common either, but there was more hostility towards Jews than blacks. MN was then quite antisemitic.

My first exposure to African Americans was in '68 when I joined VISTA and was suddenly immersed in AA / black culture and people. The shock of it all was living in a really big urban area more than living with blacks. But the first person I really insulted was a Jewish fellow. I didn't intend it, and I should have known better, but it takes a long time to get rid of one's worst bits of heritage.

While in Boston I grew a beard. Back in that rural county, beards were still a rarity, and one time in a cafe somebody asked me if their young boy could touch my beard--he had not seen one before. I was intending to be a bit exotic, so that was fine.

I've lived in Minneapolis/St. Paul for almost 50 years now, and over these years it has become much more "cosmopolitan" a term that used to be code for Jews and mixed ethnics. The city is racially diverse, but more ethnically diverse, with people from East Africa, West Africa, SE Asia, Russians, Indians, and so forth. In the meantime, the Swedish Institute and Sons of Norway are still going strong; the Finns are being very Nordic, learning Finnish, etc.

I have been avatar fidgeting. I gather you are not referencing the one that is now posted at 1:59, CST, 1/20/17.

It might have been Schopenhauer. I picked it up off a google collection. I have yet to read Schopenhauer (other than our schopenhauer1). It's on my list. Whether I get to it before I get to the grave is anybody's guess.

I had considered this one:

You seem to be on a "this isn't philosophy" kick. I agree with T Clark, you should start a thread on the issue of "what is not philosophy". Is "what is not philosophy" philosophy? Doesn't saying something is "not philosophical" make it a philosophical matter, like "What is" and "What is not"?

Let's not go overboard, here.

This sounds more like a sociology come politics mix rather than anything remotely philosophy? — celebritydiscodave

Paying people enough to live on is a matter of ethics. Isn't one of the topics in philosophy "the good life"? Do you think a good life can be better led in poverty than something better than poverty? How much do people need, want, deserve...?

Sounds like philosophy to me.

without UBI we can get these jobs done for a pittance, with UBI we're going to have to pay people more and improve their job satisfaction in order to get them done. — Pseudonym

And why would we not want to improve pay and job satisfaction? Millions of people devoting the better part of their waking hours to an unrewarding job (low pay, no satisfaction, and lots of stress) is a bad thing for the individual and society as a whole.

You are quite right that there would be knock-on costs above and beyond the pay out. The floor of acceptable pay and working conditions would rise, and should rise. Who can live working full time at the $7.25 minimum wage? That's about $15,000 a year, just $3000 above the federal poverty level for one person, and below the medicaid eligibility level, assuming the job was full time, which it probably isn't. Granted, people do eke out survival on wages that low, but in much of the country, and in most urban areas, it would be a grueling project.

Some states have minimum wage levels that are significantly higher than the federal level. Massachusetts and Washington have $11 MW. Some cities have set the minimum wage at $15, and some states are scheduled to reach $15 in a few years -- that's about $31,000 a year (if full time). There are, of course, places in the US where $31,000 is not enough to live well -- New York City, for instance, where rent for a small apartment can easily be more than $30,000 a year.

So, the UBI will affect the wage scale at the bottom. This will affect some industries much more than others, depending on what their pay structure is.

Most municipal and civil engineering workers are paid much more than a pittance to maintain the city: pick up garbage, maintain streets, keep the water and sewer working in good order, etc. A UBI would not come close to matching their wages and benefits.

There are many jobs that do not pay well, do not have good benefits, and have little or no security. Some of these are city, county, state, or federal government positions, but not many. Most of these are in the private sector. The temporary-work industry would be rather severely affected, I would think. So would child-care, retail, many non-unionized jobs, etc.

And it is completely culturally constructed and corresponds to no known biological reality. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Gender is not biology. Man and woman are not biology. Male and female are biology. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

What is your stake in the view that "race is culturally constructed" and that "gender is culturally constructed"?

Some people take this view as a strategy to free people from supposing that black youth are "naturally more violent" than white youth, or that "blacks have natural rhythm", rather than recognizing that "negroid people" came from Africa, and that whites with blond hair and blue eyes come from Northern Europe, and that Asians generally do not look like either Africans or Europeans.

There is a simpler (and I think a more truthful) way of de-linking race and culture: Race is real and isn't determined by culture; it's inherent in the genetic makeup of a person. Culture is also real, and is learned. There isn't a genetic link between race and culture. There are links of learning and environment, however, between race and culture. People tend to behave like those around them--that's cultural.

Maleness and femaleness are real and are biologically determined. Men are males, women are females. Both males or men, females or women, have certain sex-linked characteristics and traits, and both males or men and females or women learn an array of culturally specific roles in connection with their sex and gender.

All humans inherit tendencies to behave in various ways, and also learn behaviors in early life. Some of the behaviors are "stereotypes", a term applied to specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole. So, girls playing with dolls and boys with trucks are "stereotypes".

A "role" is culturally defined manner of behaving. "The stereotypical male role in a family is to provide financial support and leadership." A "role" may also be biological. The male "role" in reproduction is inseminating females. The female "role" in reproduction is bearing off-spring. The male may play the role of "family defender" because biologically he is bigger and stronger than the female (usually). The male may also play the role of care-giver, which is a role usually assigned in stereotypical fashion to females.

It's just an inconvenient fact of life that roles, stereotypes, biology, and culture are braided together. With some effort the specifics can be teased apart. We struggle to do this all the time. "Was so-and-so born with high intelligence (genes, biology, prenatal environment, etc.) or is so-and-so very successful as a result of obsessively hard work? Or in joke form, "If you're so smart, how come you are not rich?"

Old book covers: — Noble Dust

I like a good dust cover. What would you say the 'golden age' of book covers was? 1950s? 1960s?

When the Guaranteed Basic Income was last seriously considered (during the Nixon administration) robotics wasn't a big issue. Then proposals were dropped. Now, 40 years later, robotics are THE major reason for thinking about how people who are not completely redundant will live.

I don't think the US can really afford both GBI and the existing welfare systems. Besides, GBI shouldn't be so little that many people would still need welfare, or so much that no one would ever need income supplements. For instance, a single person might not be able to afford housing on the GBI. If for some reason they can't find work, they may find that their income is not enough to afford rent. As a result, public housing programs will still be needed. The same will go for some families, many elderly, and disabled individuals.

I'd expect there are methods to reduce the anxiety — Hanover

One of the problems of anxiety is that there are drugs which offer speedy, effective relief: benzodiazepines (Xanax, Ativan, and others; some people still rely on barbiturates. Then there's alcohol and various recreational drugs). They do a good job of suppressing anxiety, but people become acclimated to the drugs; gradually increased doses are needed and eventually they just don't work anymore. In the long run one has to find other solutions. In the long run we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes observed.

Benzos also work for one's difficult-to-control anger and rage.

I'd rather be depressed than anxious. — Posty McPostface

They are both very attractive options so it's always a conundrum: Bleak despair or blazing terror?

Some people seem to experience only depression OR anxiety, but it seems like the two alternate, or combine for many people.

Some people are anxious about their material things, but I think it's just as likely that one will be anxious about immaterial things like love, status, friendship, being isolated, and such. Our immaterial possessions are harder to guard than our tangible goods. A fire alarm, sprinkler system, termite poisons, and the like can protect the dry goods, but how do you protect love, status, belonging, friendship, peace, self-regard, esteem, and so on?

I don't think so, unenlightened.

What is it about the various county, state, federal, or provincial prisons that isn't intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive? So, I'm sure the big, well muscled type A personality might do OK in a prison where the inmates have the upper hand. He would do the intimidating, humiliating acts in a hostile, degrading way. The not-so-well muscled, heterosexual, not-so-A-type personality are not going to fare so well, never mind the effeminate gay guy. Then there are the prisons where the guards have the upper hand which is what many assume always goes on in prison, except that it's not. Guards can provide the intimidating, humiliating conditions in a hostile degrading way, even better.

Some inmates who are very vulnerable (like the slight, effeminate gay guy or transsexual) often end up in "protective custody" which is fairly often indistinguishable from solitary confinement.

I'll grant that not everyone comes out of prison with the maximally negative possible experience.