I don't get it either.

How do you think gendering words began (back in the unmapped mists of long ago)?

Here's a bit of a lesson on American Sign Language -- how is gender expressed? Now, it makes sense that man, woman, aunt, and uncle are expressed with gender, since they have different gonads and roles. But a frying pan? A shotgun? A carrot? A knothole? In some languages gendered words are as thick as hairs on a golden retriever. Why? What function did this serve, once upon a time?

SELECT SUBTITLES IN OPTIONS

I do believe that in terms of flexibility of employment, males have it better off. They are just able to do more with their size and strength. — darthbarracuda

There is perhaps not as much support for this idea as you or I might like. In many regions of the world, women perform a lot of heavy labor--construction, manufacturing, agriculture, carrying water, etc. It is true that men, on average, have larger skeletons and larger muscles, and this is an advantage for performing heavy labor, but it isn't an absolute differentiator in ordinary work situations.

In an unindustrialized world where there are no machines, male size and muscle mass is more of an work advantage, but that isn't the world we live in now.

But instead of getting all worked up about who's what and what's legitimate, we should just get rid of genders entirely. Enough of all this "gender-fluidity" bullshit - you want to identify as a man, a woman, a transgender, or a tree then go ahead and identify as whatever you want to identify as. Nobody should care that much, and we shouldn't try to put a label on everyone. Genders have become a symptom of special snowflake syndrome. Just get rid of gender entirely and call yourself a human being who has a certain genitalia. — darthbarracuda

I'm as tired as you are of gender fluidity bullshit and special snowflake syndromes. Both of them are luxury goods that wealthy, reasonably peaceful societies can afford and enjoy. People living close to the edge of survival can't screw around with this sort of stuff.

That said, our pandemic of narcissism which is amplified by social media (and leads to blizzards of special snowflakes) doesn't seem to be abating. Stable gender definitions are useful organizing tools for individuals and societies.

I feel like this would remove confusion and drama and also lead to a much more open society in which roles are not placed upon anyone, and labels aren't used as a reactionary device. — darthbarracuda

What causes confusion is gender fluidity, not gender stability. Another confusing tactic is misapplying terms. For instance, being "anti-military" isn't a gender issue, even if a lot of men and women are pro-military.

Being part of the gay community since the late 1960s, I have been in a position to observe some of this increasing fluidity first hand. In the beginning, it was gay liberation for gay men and gay women. Then it became gay and lesbian liberation. Then gay, lesbian, and bisexual liberation. (Transvestites -- aka drag queens -- were a theatrical concept more than gender definition.) Then gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender liberation, transgender taking on a very broad definition. At this point I guess it is GLBTQ + anything someone wants to tack on. All this happened over just a few years, pleasing some people and dismaying others.

A lot of this hyper-differentiation comes out of a kind of academic marxism which is obsessed with difference. Obviously, the gay community was a more likely place for all this to play out than your average Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce.

What strikes me is that most people stick to the basic gender definitions. The number of people who are actively involved in gender change (transitive) is very small. The business of separate sanitary accommodation for trans-persons is a tempest in a toilet bowl. There just aren't that many, and there aren't likely to be that many.

The small number of actual transgendered persons doesn't prevent a lot of special fluid snowflakes from fastening on to the issue as if it was equivalent to WWIII.

My solution has been to turn over, tune out and turn off most of this very peripheral, epiphenomenal crap.

After we divide states into "nothingness" and "somethingness", we can divide "somethingness" into

a. good something
b. bad something
c. indifferent something

The state of "nothingness" is neither good, bad, nor indifferent. It's empty. If one has never had a migraine headache, one can not think of "not having a migraine". Once one has had one, "migraine headache" becomes a bad something, and it's absence becomes a "good something". I haven't been shot. Being shot is a nothingness. I have broken bones several times. The prospective nonexistence of the cast is definitely a something to look forward to.

The perfect lemon meringue pie has been eaten. There is nothing left. You didn't arrive in time to get a slice. It's a nothing to you. To the lucky 6 who did eat it, it is a good something. Your suffering is nothing to us 6. We, after all, don't have your problem.

Larpenter Avenue, the street Philandro Castile was stopped on, is an E-W thoroughfare, running from downtown Minneapolis to a large park on the east side of St. Paul. It's bordered by 2 or 3 little "suburbs" which are more like neighborhoods of St. Paul. Both of these suburbs--Falcon Heights and St. Anthony--have very solid property values and numerous amenities. I doubt if either one needs income from traffic fines. Both are roughly 85%-90% white.

the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area is quite large and facilities of all kinds are scattered all over the place. One has to travel across many municipal boundaries to carry on a normal life. The main avenues of urban travel are Interstate 35 and 94, and state highways 61, 52, 55, and 36. These are patrolled by the MN Highway patrol. Minneapolis and St. Paul police patrol their cities' streets, along with county sheriffs. Smaller suburbs frequently share police costs. I don't think fines figure into local budgets in a significant way.

Speed traps and ticket factories are usually found in really small rural Minnesota burgs where property tax income is very low.

I have no information on whether Mr. Castile revealed that he was a registered concealed gun carrier in any of his earlier stops. If he did, it apparently wasn't an issue.

What I have heard on NPR is that the best procedure for gun carriers who are stopped by the police is:

1. roll down your window
2. put your hands on the upper half of the steering wheel
3. tell the officer you carry a gun, or have a gun in the car, and where it is
4. ask the officer what he (or she) wants you to do next.
5. keep your gun and car registration someplace other than your back pocket -- like on the visor or in your shirt pocket, where reaching for it doesn't look threatening.

I don't drive, and the Second Amendment anti-personnel missiles I carry on my bicycle are always visible. Police seem to be OK with that.

It is difficult to maintain perspective in the FaceBook of first-person streaming of police shootings and their aftermath.

Per the Washington Post... In 2015 he police shot 965 persons; 564 were armed with a gun, 281 were armed with some other weapon; only 90 were not armed. only 4% of those killed by police fire were unarmed. The Washington Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled [another significant problem], or they ran when officers told them to halt.

The killing of Fhilando Castile might not have happened if he were white; it might also not have happened if he was unarmed (he was armed with a gun, legally). It might also be the case that his record of 55 driving citations (some dismissed) played a role in his being stopped in the first place.

Meanwhile, a 2 year old was killed and a 15 month old was injured by stray bullets from one of two shooters firing away at each other in North Minneapolis (our 'ghetto'). The connections between 32 year old Philando and the dead 2 year are guns.

Carrying a gun may be legal, but we see over and over that it is ill-advised. The presence of a gun alone can lead to adverse outcomes that wouldn't otherwise occur.

None of this alters the fact that proportionately police kill more blacks than whites, while numerically killing more whites than blacks. That is a real problem, but it isn't the case that blacks come into contact with the police on a random basis. Blacks tend to be involved in crime much more often than their population would predict. Whites on the other hand, are involved in crime about as often as their population would predict.

Coming in contact with the police in any negative context raises one's risk. Being armed, male, and black increases personal risk more, because the police identify such characteristics as increasing the threat level.

Leadership and follower-ship are overdue to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
— unenlightened

I just want to note that I'm sympathetic to this line of thinking. — Moliere

Nice idea, but...

The emotive aspects of human thinking and behavior don't allow for the abolition of either "follow the leader" or "lead the following". It isn't that individuals can't be dispassionate, it's that they can't be dispassionate enough to still be dispassionate in groups. We're stuck with leadership and followership, like it or not.

There are different kinds of Ls and Fs, though. At one end of the spectrum there are "top gestapo leaders" who maintain their position through violence. There is also the slavish follower who gravitates to this kind of thug rule. At the other end of the spectrum are the leaders who inspire by examples of the good, the just, and the true, and whose followers are finely transformed. Hitler, or Stalin, serves pretty well as anchors for the worst negative extreme. Jesus does well as the anchor at the opposite end.

Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich are first and second echelon followers of Hitler. The Nazi hierarchy was a branching pyramid of leaders and followers, from Hitler on down to party members. Jesus didn't establish any sort of hierarchy. Jesus, the Apostles, Paul, and the string of followers was initially flat, in terms of structure. "Flatness" took on a third dimension fairly soon, as the the early church grew.

Most of the world's leaders and followers are in the middle, well away from the extremes. Leaders generally climb well established structures (party, corporation, civil service, hierarchies of various kinds) and at each level there are followers who owe a given leader quite limited fealty. Followers, in most cases, understand they are largely responsible for themselves and for what they do.

A chair of a state, county, or provincial political party likely owes his position to both higher party officials and lower party members. Given competition from below for leadership roles, and controls from above, leaders are insecure enough to keep them from becoming minor despots. Followers have lots of interests besides those of the party,

When 10, or 100, or 1000 unaffiliated people get together for a novel purpose without an established hierarchy or structure of any kind, we find a lot of jockeying of individuals into position -- some climbing, others shoved into the position. Most of us are not emotionally or intellectually equipped to operate effectively in a consensus circle of decision making. a few people who can serve as group catalysts might get the group to make consensus decisions, but the approach is usually too unwieldy to allow for quick responsiveness.

So, to make a long story short, we're stuck with leaders and followers. We can do better and worse, depending.

Your capitalization of "You" is odd by the way — Hanover

Perhaps David is confusing You with G-d, which is really odd.

What obliges us (which I'm assuming implies "us humans")? Or do You mean "us philosophically-inclined people"? In any case, isn't that obligation merely part of Your own sense of morality, which likely doesn't apply to many people? Or do You mean, we literally have to because there is no way to not, as it is the way humans process and deal with morality? — David

"Us philosophically-inclined people" are definitely obliged to examine and defend any definition of good, but not everyone is philosophically inclined. Believers in a faith system do well to examine and defend what they believe as a means to achieve the good. Just because one was raised as a Christian, Jew, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Hindu... whatever, doesn't mean one has engaged in examination and defense of one's beliefs. Examination and defense in a dialogue with other believers is better, with skeptical believers, or non-believers is best.

What do You think would would happen if people, rather than defend their beliefs attempted to reconcile them with others', holding neither above the other before evaluation of which is more reasonable or correct? Is that even fundamentally possible, or is the root of our very decisions about which beliefs are better than others, the determinant, the judge in our heads, so fundamentally decided by the beliefs that are already held that there is no reconciliation? Perhaps, this is more of a psychological question than a philosophical one, but I'd still like to hear peoples' stances. — David

I don't believe there is any point in trying to reconcile disparate beliefs. Catholics and Protestants might reconcile beliefs or practices with the help of a few rounds of beer. Christians and Hindus are too dissimilar, as are Jews and Buddhists, Sikhs and animists, and so on.

Most religions have picked up pieces of theological flotsam and jetsam from other religions over the course of their histories, but I'm not in favor of contemporary syncretism. Jesus and Buddha are both worthy of study by believers of any faith, but but we don't have to make a smoothie of them.

My personal experience has been thus: Having been raised by enthusiastic and committed believers, the principles of Christianity has been too deeply installed to be altogether eradicated. Protestant theology is my "operating system" regardless of what I have come to believe. This is not a comfortable arrangement, but there's not much I can do about it (believe me, I've tried).

I think even philosophically inclined people do better to accept that they possess a given cultural history (whether they like it or not) then to suppose that culture can just be switched out like so many memory chips. Even those raised in wishy-washy suburbias devoted to Walmart consumerism and the 3 car garage have an installed cultural base to acknowledge.

Maybe our native culture is a rut from which there is no escape, but we can certainly build on, even transcend the culture we started with. It's hard work, though.

am I doing this forum right? — David

You are. Some put up a post and rarely follow up, others engage steadily with responses.

So, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that God does exist. — Hanover

Fine by me.

What anchors the good to reality if not God? — Hanover

Are you suggesting that God is the source of good, actively anchors the good to reality, or that God is the hook on which we hang our definition of good?

Is it just man's declaration of what is good? Or, is the good good regardless of what demented person might call it bad? Unless you're willing to admit that the good is just some manmade invention subject to redefinition at will (and rejecting the view that our understanding of the good evolves over time, getting ever closer to the truth with the passage of time), it strikes me that you are a theist. — Hanover

Whether one believes that God is the source of good, actively anchors the good, or is a hook, we are still obliged to examine and defend any definition of good. God told the Israelites to kill everyone in town, including the babies by bashing in their heads against the stone wall. He also said to love mercy. Believers have to examine and defend the words (which are written by various someones...) in the Bible. If God says that Israel's burnt offerings are disgusting, and what he would really like are a few more genuinely contrite hearts, one has to examine and defend it. If one believes that it is immoral to commit adultery, for instance, because God said so, one will have to examine and defend that position.

If I decide on a list of 10 principles that I think are good, and you come up with a completely different list, both of us have to examine and defend what we think is good. There are several definitions of "good" circulating among the 7 billion + people. Most of the people think they are right. (People generally don't adhere to definitions that they think are wrong, bad, or stupid.) People examine and defend what they view as right. This leads to conflict, but there is nothing new about that.

Your god is what is good, just, and pure, and that god is what the Christian and the pious atheist both worship, just calling themselves different names. — Hanover

That's a nice formulation. I will examine, and maybe defend it.

If divine forces don't exist, then trying to make them happy is obviously just stupid. — David

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist. No god, no gods. But... humans created god(s) in their own image. It would be stupid to believe in god IF there were no collateral benefits. As it happens, there are some advantages.

Common beliefs tie communities together. If instructions for good behavior are woven into those common beliefs, so much the better. Worship of the divine being(s) involves rituals which give rich meanings to individuals and communities. People also derive meaning and satisfactions from conforming to the ideas of proper behavior towards one another, one's self, and to the created godhead. All that is to the good.

Humans invested their god(s) and the associated religions with some of their negative human traits, like vindictiveness, jealousy, cruelty, and so forth -- the list of negative human traits is familiar to us all. With or without religion, humans can be appalling bastards.

I have problems with the Christian concept of god. God the all powerful, all knowing, all present... becomes a being that exceeds our capacity. The god who is infinitely present in all places and at all times, knows all, sees all, and is capable of intervening at any time is simply beyond our time/space-bound capacity to imagine. We can formulate such a god, but we can not know such a god.

My reading of the Bible, including the Gospels, tells me that I should be good to others for their sake, and not because there will be any eternal reward. We live and know only this world, and no other. Our reward for being good in this world is a better world. Our punishment for being bad in this world is a worse one.

If we can't know god, prove anything about god, or be certain of his existence, we can't finally disprove his existence either. There will be no final proof. Atheists can be confident in their disbelief, believers can be confident in their faith, and agnostics can be sure that their dithering will never stop. And whatever our beliefs or non-beliefs, we can behave well or badly as it suits us, and accept the consequences.

we've had thirty years of anti-depressants for instance based on quite a weak correlatio — mcdoodle

It's worse than weak correlation. Assuming a lab has a unique chemical, and not just a chemical different enough from other antidepressants to count as new, tests begin. First, chemical analysis. Then tests on animals to determine safety. Eventually we get around to human safety trials -- can the drug be swallowed safely, whether it works or not. Finally, the trials to see whether it works--does it reduce the symptoms of depression?

The number of subjects in the trial is often much smaller than you would think necessary: a few dozen, a couple hundred. Small numbers.

Maybe there will be another small trial or two, and the drug will receive FDA approval. Next, the advertising: "Ask your doctor for La-La-Zone™ for those free-floating feelings of hostility, barely controlled rage, and existential despair." A million people take it over the next two years, and eventually all the reports of adverse outcomes have trickled in, and it is found that LaLaZone™ can result in terroristic ideation in 1% of the cases, especially among people likely to vote for far-right wing candidates, in whatever country they happen to reside. Those are the people, of course, closest to acting on their free-floating hostilities, murderous rages, and existential agonies. Now we get a black box warning for the drug: Be careful of who you prescribe it too.

The drug is quite profitable, so marketing continues, black box warning and all, and lots of people keep taking the drug. Some are helped, some end up being shot during the expression of free-floating murderous rage, and some just stop taking the drug and the world keeps on spinning.

LaLaZone is a bit of an exaggeration, but not a wild exaggeration. Trial cohorts are small, and the people who buy the drug are the real lab rats. The neurochemistry of mood and modification isn't all that well understood, and Koch's Postulates don't work for mental distress. There's usually no "specific agent", no lesion, no intervention that can be precisely tracked.

"Science" has gotten much, much bigger than it used to be. First, more phenomena are being subjected to granular examination that previously. Second, the vaguely defined enterprise of "science" has gotten much bigger than previously (say, 50 years ago). Third, "scientific" as a positive adjective has been appropriated by many fields where it may, or may not be appropriate.

All this adds up to a lot more people engaged in real science on one end of the spectrum and outright fraud and deception at the other end. In between are sciency, researchy, and laboratoryish activities. It's not all that hard to put together a researchy, sciency report claiming that dogs don't like to be hugged. Get some stray dogs, wire them up, and sequentially squeeze them (which, from a dog's POV might look more like the preliminaries of some ghastly procedure) and presto, results. "Dogs don't like to be hugged."

Something that I didn't see mentioned in the three articles (full disclosure: I gave them a cursory read) was that a lot of publicly funded research doesn't get published at all. Researchers are loathe to report research that reveals no progress, or negative results. You treat 1000 patients with XYZ1234 drug and nothing happens. Why report it? Well, "no results" is a result. If all research that was publicly paid for had to be published (a lot of it isn't) we might find that we either paying for more bad science than we thought, some research grantors respond more to hype than to heft, or that there are more blind alleys than we thought. But we can't know any of this if researchers don't publish results.

it should be obvious to a scientist that its entirely irrelevant whether scientists believe there to be a crisis or not. — Hanover

Good point.

To understand Trump supporters it is only necessary to consider what it is to be envious, jealous and xenophobic. — Ciceronianus the White

No, that's too simple.

Xenophobia, racism, sexism, elitism, homophobia, and like terms may describe features of some people's thinking, emotional reactions, and behavior, but they have been emptied of most of their descriptive utility by intense over-use. The terms have become the means for dismissing the dissatisfactions of those who do not match the biases of the term-dispensing person.

To envious and jealous one might also add frightened, angry, disillusioned, disappointed, confused, misinformed, and so forth--which they, we, individually, might or might not be.

Trump's, Sanders', and Clinton's supporters, and all those who feel they have no real stake in the parties or the election are all, really, at the same difficult point: We all have got to come up with some good answers to what seem like insoluble problems, and soon: How are we going to actually redistribute concentrated wealth? Or even, should we? How are we going to reduce CO2 emissions a lot and soon without crashing the economies we all depend on? Or are we? How are we going to reduce individual and large scale violence in a world as well armed (pistols to ICBMs, bullets to hydrogen bombs) as this one is? Or, will we? Is there going to be anything left over for us, for me?

We've all been jacked around by the media, the politicians, the business interests, labor interests, an infinity of well-organized and narrow special interests, and so on. It's damned hard to know who to trust.

Labor is weakened, but it's not dead yet. — Saphsin

Man, how far from dead do you think it is? It hasn't shown much life, lately. (Granted, there have been a few twitches, suggesting that the soul and body have not yet parted.)

Excellent post.

I'm about to start reading "White Trash: The 400 year untold history of class in America. Nancy Isenberg. I don't know if it will be good; one reviewer said yes, one reviewer said no. It's not about early trailer parks; it's about how working class whites have been managed since Europeans started settling North America. It's apparently not a pretty picture, leading one to think not only America isn't great right now, for a lot more people than we thought, it was never great. A lot of the ancestors of todays Trump supporters were, of course, the kind of riff raff they'd probably rather not associate with. Mayflower type ancestors are one thing, indentured scullery wenches and wood choppers are something else.

to the extent that capital still needs labour at all — unenlightened

This is a perplexing problem from a couple of angles.

Clearly, massed labor is not needed in many places, though it is needed in some. Per-unit cost is much lower in regions where still-necessary labor is relatively inexpensive (Asia). Efficient transportation (big container ships) tie production and consumption together. Manufacture in the US still exists, but it tends to be in high-end areas like tool and die cutting, design, and the like. We also still mine, and farm--but with automation. Administration (bureaucratic functions) is abundant.

The US is a big economy, so is Japan, Europe, China, India (growing), and the rest. Increasingly, economies produce goods (and services more often) through computerized, automated, mechanized methods. A lot of people around the world are economically superfluous.

My dated understanding of economic functioning is that the foundation of an economy is production and consumption. If very large portions of the population are not involved in production, they cannot consume very much. "We haven't any money so there is nothing we can buy." (Candide the musical)

Where are we headed? It seems like we are already in a world of extravagantly wealthy and privileged world elites sitting on top of an extinct (or merely 'inactive') volcano of surplus people who have no function or power.

No, Trump supporters should not be ridiculed; neither should Clinton nor Sanders supporters. The objects of support, Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and every other politician, richly deserve ridicule, confrontation, and severe criticism for their campaigns of convenient silences, lies and misinformation.

The overarching cause of the economic malaise from which at least 75%*** of The People are suffering, now going on some 40 years, is the upward redistribution of economic resources. Workers are keeping less and less of the wealth they create, the top 5% is gaining more and more for themselves. Greedy behavior is to be expected and at various times Congress has restricted it's blatant operation somewhat. During those times, and when the economy was expanding, most people felt like they were getting a somewhat fairer share of reward for their labor.

When greed gets a green light (in the form of favorable tax law and loose financial supervision) and when the economy isn't expanding very much or is contracting, the average person loses even more of what little they have.

NAFTA and existing or proposed trade pacts do not exist for the benefit of most people. They are structured to benefit the wealth-owning classes. Indeed, a lot of the laws on the books are there to benefit the wealthy.

The average Joe may not have economic theory in his back pocket, but his personal experiences (personal event horizons or not) are real. Most people are not negatively affected by free movement of labor. Their jobs are not threatened. Those who fill jobs at the bottom of the job market, though, are immediately and negatively affected.

What affects more people above the lower layers of labor are automation, robotics, off-shoring production to areas of very cheap labor, and unfavorable restructuring of jobs. In the US, white and black guys who used to do roofing for a living were displaced by illegal immigrants who undercut the going wage. Automation displaces the factory worker. Outsourcing displaces the customer service worker or production line worker. Computerization eliminates white collar jobs. Selective hiring of skilled immigrants can reduce professional opportunities for citizens.

Those who have reasonably decent incomes can buy more stuff for less. Those who can't buy food don't benefit from ever cheaper cars, TVs, washing machines, or phones.

So no. Don't ridicule the people who are earnestly searching for someone who will represent their real interests. Is Trump the One? Oh, maybe for some he will deliver a little. Clinton? She'll deliver a little here and there. The Republic and Democratic Party? Don't hope for much; they sleep in one single bed. They're busy fucking... you.

***If 25% in the US are doing OK, that's 80 million. 240 million are not doing so well.

My guess is that migration has had mixed consequences for Britain (and many other countries). Some of the consequences are beneficial, some are not. I don't see any reason why migration should be an all-or-nothing proposition. But to choose how to manage immigration means choosing how to manage the economy, and for whose benefit. In many cases, working people see that immigration (and the economy) are being managed for the benefit of the elite, at the cost of the working class.

There are areas in the US where there are not enough workers--at any price. Depopulated agricultural areas don't supply enough labor to run local agri-industrial operations like grain and alfalfa drying, for example, or meatpacking. Migration -- legal and otherwise -- solves the problem. (Besides, American workers don't want to work at wages which are attractive only by Mexican pay standards. Nor should they.)

On the other hand, immigrants can be used to bust unions and drop the prevailing wage and working conditions. At the low wages they make, migrants can't afford to live well at all, so they double, triple, and quadruple up in houses, creating a mini-tenement slum, which has a negative impact on neighborhoods. From the immigrant POV, they are still coming out ahead -- compared to where they are from.

I read statements to the effect that "American [or British] workers don't want to work on dairy farms, don't want to work in factories, don't want to work in meat packing, don't want to work in stores, don't want to do landscaping, etc. No, they don't want to work in these places at very SUB-standard wages, and they shouldn't. Neither should the immigrants.

Excellent post on leadership, Moliere.

One of the virtues of good leadership is knowing when to leave, and how. Any given leader is able to accomplish certain goals. They are able to bring their constituency along and help them to be successful. Then, they can help their constituency manage what they have achieved, find new goals, or become a royal pain in the ass.

It's difficult for both the leader and the constituency to spot the critical moment of timely leave-taking.

One boss I had did a great job starting an AIDS project back in the early 1980s. In 5 years he had found funding, hired very good staff, and formed an effective service/education organization. Had he left at that point, he would have been covered in laurel. Instead, he became a nuisance and annoyed the hell out of everybody. Eventually he was forced out amidst much sturm and drang. A couple of other people I have worked for achieved and left on time, after achieving what could be achieved. They were missed, of course, but they had done what could be done.

"Leadership" is damned hard to define, though.

The vacant isolated island became beautiful, sublime, awesome, and sacred -- in your mind as the mariner. Beauty, sublimity, awe, and sanctity are, as you observed, applied to the island. They aren't properties of the Island, its trees, its beach, or anything else. In reality, the fishermen lost their boat altogether, and everything with it. They were washed up on shore, marooned, naked, on the splendid place.

Being strong men, and true, they got themselves together fairly quickly and set off in search of the means for immediate survival. They found that oddly there were no fruit trees on the beautiful island, Just very tough, hard-wooded trees. One would need sharp tools to work the wood (theirs were now on the bottom of the ocean). Worse, they found there were no clams, muscles, crabs, or anything other than annoying insects living along the white sanded shore. And there were very few birds, no mammals, and little vegetation under the trees.

They quickly realized that far from being a beautiful, sublime, awesome, and sacred place, the island was a death trap. They were going to starve there.

Many of us grew up in places that were once beautiful in one way and are now beautiful in a different way. For instance, my hometown was once in a hardwood forest which occupied much of the land. I'm sure it was beautiful in the various seasons 200 years ago. It wasn't exactly pristine--the aboriginal people had been living across that region for at least 5,000 years. Much of the old forest is now gone, and what has replaced it are grassy river flats, pastures, fields, roads, and small villages. It is not always and everywhere beautiful, but it often is. It has been cultivated now for around 160 years.

People often grow fond of wherever they are. There are people who actually want to live around the Gowanus Canal in New York City. The Gowanus was long an industrial ditch, used to move freight short distances. It also served as a drain for all sorts of chemical companies. It's been disgusting for a long time; an industrial sewer. Now it's hot property. It is scheduled to be cleaned up, but time will tell whether this superfund site will actually ever get cleaned up or be clean. None the less, the land around it has become valuable. Developers are painting the filthy cloaca as "water front". Only in the drawings of their high rises are the rusting oil tanks and rotting warehouses gone. Readers of the brochure can not smell the cesspool.

(I've never seen there; I only know about it from the New York Times.)

You might lose the blues in Chicago, or about as likely, get shot while they are robbing you of your bottom dollar.

I readily grant that Romanians in England are hoping for a better life. So are the Poles and Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis, et al. However...

The principle that populations on the move must be allowed to migrate to wherever they wish, and no population already in place may object is problematic. The ethnically, economically, culturally, and racially mixed US has practiced this principle for 240 years, and it has had mixed success.

We were not only able to easily absorb many millions of migrants, the elite needed migrants to come to populate a continent targeted for manifest destiny. The railroad barons had trains to fill and lands to settle. Manufacturing and agriculture needed really cheap labor (a half-notch above slave labor) in areas where black slavery wasn't culturally preferred. The formerly slave populations became a generally unwanted group.

Many groups were, and/or are now, unwelcome. The Irish, Jews, Italians, Norwegians, Chinese, Greeks, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Japanese, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Swedes, Estonians, Ukrainians, Indians, Finns, Cubans, Dominicans, Negroes, etc. were all at various times unwelcome as new community members. It took some European migrants generations to become accepted. Poles didn't get the Welcome Wagon treatment in Chicago. Jews gave Norwegians the creeps in Minneapolis. The American Japanese on the west coast got prison camps in WWII.

The elite was reasonably happy to receive the black Great Migration from the south to the north in the 30s and 40s to fill up the low end of the labor pool, but: stay in your ghetto, or else. When the blacks attempted to move out of their ghettos into nicer white neighborhoods, the boundaries of the ghetto moved with them and the whites left.

SO: Why should Europeans be any different? In the US settled populations (who were once newly arrived riff raff and Euro white trash) now want to hold on to whatever security and stability they have in suburban and exurban rings around core cities. The elites, who determine policy, pass laws, and direct enforcement, live well beyond the reach of the best of the white petite bourgeoisie, let alone the riff raff trash. I imagine that applies to Great Britain and Europe, as well.

What is at stake for the losers in population mobility is reduced autonomy. They come to realize that if they are not useful to the elite, for what ever reason, they can and will be at least diluted, if not replaced.

The latest would-be arrivistes are doing what the earlier would-be arrivistes did--try to climb and mostly not make it to the top of the tree. To the elite, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp" is a sentiment which keeps the riff raff working hard, and divided.

In Foreign Policy: It's Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses — jamalrob

Must one assume that The Elites are of one mind and so are the "Ignorant Masses"? That it's either the elite's way or the highway? Is the choice between the corporate and institutional elite and fascism? James Straub, author of the linked article, seems to think so.

There are, of course, some people who have xenophobic, neophobic, racist, sexist, nativist, reactionary, know-nothing, climate change denying, fascist, creationist, and various other unwholesome opinions. The elites are not entirely free of such views. On the other hand, there are people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and impoverished who just don't share the same interests of the affluent, successful, and dominant elite classes.

When marginalized citizens object to a rapid influx of people whose arrival seems to be the result of an elite's policy, they are dismissed as xenophobic. If they don't celebrate every new swirl of distant populations into their communities, often the result of some elite policy, they are racist or nativist. After they are forced to accept a reduced standard of income, fewer resources and services, diminished quality of life, poor education options, less health care, and so on (conditions they definitely didn't vote for) they are deemed economically irrelevant by the elite.

Sometimes elite policy blows up in the faces of elites, but generally the elites are able to arrange the circumstances of their lives. If they want to experience diversity, they can go to an ethnic neighborhood festival for the afternoon, or tour the inter-ethnic cocktail party circuit. If they are interested in other cultures, they can travel and study them in their homelands. If they don't happen to like where they are living, their employment, their house, their car, their school... they can move - leave; do their own little Brexit, or Deutschexit, Francexit, Indiexiit, Chinexit, or USexit.

Most of us are stuck, having to put up with whatever the global elite sends down the pike.

Which we, non-gullible intellectual types who are in the know, none-the-less buy.

I understand how it works, I know better, but sometimes I want it, and am willing to part with a piece of gold to get it. And sometimes, even, am happy with it now that I have got it.

Here's a charming article by some hopeful psychologists who think we may be able to counter misinformation... — mcdoodle

There is a great deal of intentional misinformation, unintentional misinformation, and fairly serious misunderstanding for many topics.

Take nutritional supplements:

Contrary to the assertion of a 'science writer' in a respectable newspaper, we do know all, or at least, most of the nutrients required for normal health. (She maintained we don't.) What we don't know is whether extra amounts of any given nutrient (like C, A, Zinc...) are beneficial or harmful. There are tons of anecdotal information available, pro and con--mostly pro-supplement, and lots of research--mostly inconclusive in the final analysis.

Still, doctors, dietitians, public health professionals, pharmacists, and so on pass on information about nutrition which they do not know to be true, and/or which they may know to be unsettled. A large study showed that taking large doses of Vitamin A increased the incidence of lung cancer. Not good. Other studies had showed benefit. WTF?

At least many health people are relatively honest. People who sell a wide range of nutritional supplements really can't be honest, unless they answered "I don't know" or "No one knows" to most questions about the stuff they sell. Obviously, "Who the hell knows?" is not a response which will drive sales. What it will do is drive customers out of the store.

""Nutritional" supplement" sales are generally healthy. It's a business that rests on outright lies, unintended misinformation, and wishful thinking.

Well, the point I am trying to make is that there are liars for sure, but there are also very gullible buyers who believe outlandish claims on the basis of rhetoric rather than evidence.

But they are usually exposed as lacking integrity, credibility, reliability, decency, honesty, probity, sincerity, honorableness and scruples.

True enough: you could get up before a court and lie, misdirect, mislead, omit, and so on. You can do this in front of a Rotary Club, a government committee, your boss, your mother, your lover, your children, your cleaning lady and get away with it as long as no attention is paid to what you said. But, as soon as your audience starts thinking about what you said today, yesterday, last week, last year... your lies will be found out. Inconsistencies, improbabilities, contradictions, suspiciously convenient coincidences, and so on will be revealed. Worst of all, your partners in deceit are likely to turn you in for their own reasons.

Why not turn you in? People who lack integrity, credibility, reliability, decency, honesty, sincerity, honorableness and scruples are unlikely to think they owe you anything. Look what happened to President Richard M. Nixon: He had some good points in his favor, but he was also running some very sleazy operations, and there was a slip up. After the slip up there was the cover-up, and round and round it twirled until the whole story unfurled, in excruciating detail, and Tricky Dick had to resign in disgrace.

Nonsense!

There are several reasons to speak honestly or not: Speak to amuse, speak to inform, speak to persuade, speak to spur to action...

Speaking to amuse requires careful structure, but it doesn't require honest information, as long as everyone understands that a joke is in progress.
Speaking to inform absolutely requires honest information, as true as you can get it; otherwise, you are arguing to misinform, to mislead. That is done, of course -- rather regularly.
One can speak to persuade and spur to action, but IF false argument results in action (like voting to exit the EU) THEN the ill consequences can be laid on the doorstep of the speakers who used falsehoods.

Success in speaking depends on the structure of the arguments being effective and the information being true.

If one can "win" by using falsehoods, then how do you hope to maintain a civil society?

Lies and misinformation are part of any lively democratic campaign. — mcdoodle

Lies and misinformation end up in democratic campaigns, for sure, but I would hope that they aren't expected to be part of any lively debate! I don't know how any serious debate can take place if lies and misinformation are assumed. Can't anybody argue using honest information???

I forget by how much, but the £350 million a week being sent to the EU was a rather large exaggeration -- and didn't, for instance, account for the x£ million being sent to the UK.

In the US, same thing: Dollars flow back and forth between the states and the federal government -- in as taxes, back out as programs, and some states donate more than they get back -- because their economies are doing well.

Maybe the converse applies to Obama: that he isn't dirty enough to achieve what was hoped of him. — mcdoodle

LBJ was in Congress for a long time before he became president. He was in Congress from 1937 to 1961, and he was Senate Majority Whip. He had been there long enough to have favors that he could call in (which he did to get Medicare and the civil rights bills passed). Like as not, he also knew the dirt on everybody -- something sometimes as useful to dangle in front of a recalcitrant Rep or Senator, as favors owed. He also had a lot of inside expertise about how the House and Senate operated--something Obama doesn't have.

"Good and decent man" does have something of the diminutive about it, because "real men" know how to get things done one way or another, some not so good or decent.

Good and decent men can, of course, be leaders, and can know how to get things done. They can not, generally, walk on water; cast evil spirits out of the body politic; or calm storms on their say-so. They can't hold back the tides (or raise them either) and the Brexit vote seems to have had some tidal force behind it. It's sort of like the knee-jerk blame that Obama gets whenever things go haywire.

On the other hand, the chattering classes have been dithering a lot about a dreadful populism this summer. Apparently The People are getting out of line again, not behaving the way they are supposed to. I always thought progressive populism, at least, was a good thing and the pro-Brexit people are not Fascists, after all. I think they are wrong, on balance, even if they have legitimate complaints.

Drawing the plumbing diagram of how taste, aesthetics, or "class", or opinion, or some paradigm gets promulgated, by whom, and how it is altered--all that--would be ridiculously complicated. It's like trying to diagram the flow of energy in a forest, accounting for everything from the energy transformations of bacteria, fluid flows, activity of plants, insects, animals, the sun, wind, etc. It all gets out of hand pretty quickly.

Take the font of the New Yorker or the New York Times. People who specialize in typography think that fonts are critical. They probably are. "The New York Times" rendered in Bradley Hand would be just stupid. See?



And the New York Times's font is just one small piece of the ecology of taste making. The New Yorkers's columns, covers, font, glossy paper, cartoons, advertising format, the weight of the magazine -- all that plus the actual content -- go into it. (I haven't explained anything -- I just listed a few elements in the ecology.)

Speaking of beer: You chose to get pale ale. I grew up in the midwest; there never used to be ale around here. It was beer, beer, beer. I encountered it in the late 1960s in Boston -- Ballantine Ale, I think it was. There was no ale around here in the 1970s, either -- as far as I can remember. It appeared in the 1980s and 90s. Now you can't walk into a liquor store without tripping over stacks of all kinds of ale.

Something -- someone -- some force altered the ecology of brewing and consumption. Christ; the Lutheran church across the street has a brewing club (it's a drinking church) -- they make ale and darker beers. Lighter, darker, stronger, weaker, hoppier, etc. Here's an e-mail message from yesterday:

Boy it has been a crazy whirlwind of a summer for all of us. Our Schwarzbier is now in the keg finishing up fermentation and will be final kegged/pressurized in a week or two.

This Sunday 6/26/16, Marcus and I will be brewing a small extract kit so that we have something for people who may not prefer a dark beer at Pastor Voight's going away party. Speaking of, that will be our next big event! We'll be serving the two brews at the going-away party in August...

Paul Fussell wrote an amusing book, Class (1992). Among other things, he notes that the higher one's class, the darker one's wooden floors. The Newly Arrived want floors that look new, fresh. So the house is full of shiny bright maple floors. Up the class scale, closer to the top, dark floors are preferred. They might have been shiny bright maple floors once upon a time, maybe back in great grandmother's day, but now they are dark. Old dirt darkens the floors, gives it a patina. New Persian rugs are out of order on these old dark floors: one wants an old Persian rug, a bit worse for wear, but still very Persian. One doesn't want any mid-century modern furniture or Danish Design in most of the upper class rooms, either. Old furniture, leather; comfortable, broken in. Dark.

Then there is us working class who cover the ugly sub flooring with foam rubber and monotone plastic fiber carpet. Stain resistant, easily cleaned, holds up pretty well --20 years, maybe longer. 360 shades of beige. (Or bright shag, god forbid, for total white trash.)

Like I said, aesthetics are as complicated as natural ecology.

Oh, sure. I get what you're talking about. Dramatic advertising is never too much to sell a counterfeit ideology. Be heavy on the image; the lighting, cool effects, and background environments are just as important as the product itself. It enhances the product greatly. The viewer’s eye must not be allowed to rest. Pack as much content as you can into the aesthetic.

More is more. Technology does not fix everything, but high end technology does. Reality should not hold back your need to project an image. Practical aesthetics alters reality to suit your vision, this practical aesthetic is powered by MeituPic's Smog Auto-correct, which has been freshly released for consumption. Let smog removal give you back your blue sky.

Reality is not efficient enough, but your smart APPs are.

So, what brand of beer did you buy at what brand of convenience store? 3.2 Beer? Really! It's not worth the calories, but there is still the brand on the can. At least that is 200 proof.

It is helpful to not think of these topics as new. They are old, but the jazzy jargon is different now that it was 15 minutes ago, or 50, 500, 2000, 5,000 years ago. Each of us is a POV, never too sure whether anybody else shares our keyhole view. The only way we can be slightly reassured that we are not alone is opening our membranes and flowing into each other (symbolically, one hopes -- certainly more tasteful than used neurotransmitter fluids oozing out all over the place).

Culture, hierarchy, symbols, language, storytelling around the fire, painting in deep caves: these are the membranes we open and reach through, hoping to test what might be reality.

Good article about this. — csalisbury

This was a very lucid piece.

A quip I saw on a Tumblr porn blog: You could smack a random Brit in the face, with a 52% chance of them deserving it.

I expect Scotland will call another vote on disunion and will pass it.

The entropic heat death will also erase 99.999999% of the evidence that we ever existed. Somewhere a few contraptions launched from earth might still exist, and our last electromagnetic signals will continue radiating out into the universe, until they too cease.

Such ends have likely and will have occurred to other civilizations -- obliterated beyond recall or detection.