I don't know why you two are arguing when it is perfectly clear that the only people capable of accomplishing great events are white people, and sometimes yellow hordes (thinking of Genghis Kahn), various Chinese emperors, the Japanese (helped with WWII). But mostly it was us whites: the American Revolution of course -- white on white violence; Civil War (white on whites on behalf of black people they had kept in slavery for their self-improvement, the British Empire (white people, again, on behalf of many, many helpless colored folk); the War of the Roses, 30 years war, 100 years war, 27 year war, 16 year war, a few dozen 1 and 2 year wars, WWI and WWII both started and fought by very white people mostly, (and the yellow horde) except for the brown people in various colonies who eagerly signed up out of immense gratitude to their colonial masters, The French and Spanish empires; the Reformation, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, railroads, atom bombs, television, McDonalds, and so forth.

And on the other side, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez?

Jerzy Kosinski's Being There is a great satirical story, but what do you think it illustrates in the context of maturity?

Addlepated Chance Gardner is hardly a model we elderly want to emulate.

[Addlepated - confused, mixed up, eccentric]

As one of the BBC commentators said, three years after the Brexit vote Parliament is still unable to decide what it should do with the vote.

Brexit, IMHO, was a bad idea to begin with, and it isn't improving with time.

Jawohl, mein guter Mann
— Bitter Crank

Say what? — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, my good man.

My question is that why does Western society display a deficit in the process of respect and regard for their elders?
— Wallows

I am not sure they do. If you look at our various social problems--very inadequate housing for the poor, deteriorating schools, an underclass, environmental neglect (and abuse), food-borne illness (because food has too much fat, sugar, and non-nutritious additives in it) and so forth, it would appear that disrespect and low regard is an equal-opportunity problem.
— Bitter Crank

How so? I'm not apt enough to see the merit to that conclusion. — Wallows

There's an apt for that.

It must be that I expressed myself inadequately.

What I mean is that it isn't just the elderly that are given minimal respect. Respect is conditional on having ample resources, because on one level, cash is what we respect. Nobody is going around disrespecting Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates--all three more or less elderly.

"On one level" because on other levels people use different standards. For instance, we may respect people on the basis of education, verbal facility, good looks (even in old age), and so on.

We all want respect, one way or another.

That’s true. As someone on disability, I can attest to a general deficit of respect thrown my way. I’m sure Wallows knows about this. Then again, I don’t think it would matter much even if I were gainfully employed. Like you said, disrespect is endemic in our society. — Noah Te Stroete

Every society on earth puts together reasonably flattering images of who, what, and how they are. The facts my not square with the reality.

In general, Anglo-American society (the one I am familiar with) has never extended much respect to the (absolutely or relatively) poor, the 'failure', the defeated, the minority, the deviant, the marginal, and so on. Respect has been reserved for those with property, wealth, success, the victor, the dominant class. My guess is that we (Anglo-Americans) are not all that unique. (Check out White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.)

It is understandable that in ghetto culture, "respect" is such a big issue. People who are residents of the various ghettos "don't get no respect" so have to be hyper alert to interpersonal signs of disrespect. A well-respected, financially secure, socially established person can afford to disregard personal slights.

I suppose we all have an inner Nazi to some degree. — Noah Te Stroete

Jawohl, mein guter Mann.

I could be wrong about T Clark. — Noah Te Stroete

You could be. I don't know what T Clark was like when he was 40. But he seems to be more of a Liberal/Athenian/Artist than leaning authoritarian/Spartan/Randian/Nazi.

Everybody here is a liberal Athenian, but you know, sometimes we just have to stomp on a few faces to get things done (sick joke).

Many people are resentful of their parents and other authority figures. — T Clark

True enough, but it tends to be most intense during one's youth.

Many of the values that grew out of an extended family don't apply anymore.
Changes in demographics mean there are more old people taking up more resources. — T Clark

A lot of resources are required to get a person from conception to age 21. Even more resources are needed to educate through the BA, MA, or PhD. Those resources were provided by the preceding generation (not just the parents). One can get a PhD in molecular biology because the molecular biology building and faculty and associated labs are in place.

The bulk of medical resources spent on the elderly, to pick on that one area, are applied during the last few months or last year of life. The reality of these terribly expensive last months is that the medical industry is heroically extracting as much money as possible from terminal conditions. When my 102 year-old father was in the hospital, the doctors were suggesting various (expensive) procedures they could do--all pointless. It was, bluntly, time for hospice care. Cancer patients with more or less terminal conditions are frequently given heroic surgery, chemo, and radiation for very little gain in quality life, and considerable discomfort. A good cancer can easily yield half a million dollars in income for a hospital (and all the good care providers involved).

The amount of money billed and collected during the last year of life is often more of a curse than a blessing. The elderly ought to be more resentful of the practice than they are.

My question is that why does Western society display a deficit in the process of respect and regard for their elders? — Wallows

I am not sure they do. If you look at our various social problems--very inadequate housing for the poor, deteriorating schools, an underclass, environmental neglect (and abuse), food-borne illness (because food has too much fat, sugar, and non-nutritious additives in it) and so forth, it would appear that disrespect and low regard is an equal-opportunity problem.

Asshole vs. Artist? — Noah Te Stroete

Artists can't be assholes? Come now.

My question is that why does Western society display a deficit in the process of respect and regard for their elders? — Wallows

↪T Clark Those ARE really bad and ugly reasons for despising the elderly. — Noah Te Stroete

Noah, you intensified a "deficit" of respect to "despising" the elderly. Wallows and T Clark didn't use terms close to "despising".

He used to be an animal. Then he got into philosophy and pulled himself up by his four dewlaps.

I don't know whether animals can deceive themselves or not. They seem capable of deceiving others. (Squirrels who fake burying nuts when they think they are being watched for instance.)

What you had to say is interesting, but it didn't connect with what you quoted. That's OK, not complaining.

So if humans can constantly self-reflect on their own daily primary tasks, how do we trick our brains into overcoming doing the daily grind of unwanted and unsatisfactory tasks? — schopenhauer1

I would say that the amount of mental energy one has to apply to keep from leaving the unsatisfactory work place and highly unappealing tasks probably exceeds the mental energy required to do the job.

Having a job is beneficial when one needs an income, obviously. An income allows one to be housed, clothed, fed, amused, and so forth--even if minimally. But we don't suffer from a lack of those things until they are actually gone. So, until we are destitute we can't balance the wretchedness of a job against the wretchedness of homelessness, hunger, and ratty clothing.

What we do, when we have a job we hate, is direct about 50% of our processing facilities to minutely analyze and re-analyze the cost benefits of the job, and direct the other 50% of our processing power to doing the job well enough to keep it.

[It may not be the primary task of the job that is loathsome. It may be the work environment, it may be one's pariah status as a temp, it may be a lack of respect from one's co-workers, and so on. A really low-level job can be OK if the other factors are good, and a high-level job can be bad, given other factors.]

Obviously we are enculturated. If we weren't thoroughly enculturated, we wouldn't be hired to do even stupid boring jobs, and we wouldn't be compensating all over the place trying to justify our esteemed selves being stuck in such a sucky job.
.
So, we lie to ourselves and others about what we are doing. We pretend we are not doing something abysmally bad as what we are doing. We deceive. We dissemble. We fake it.

We might resort to stealing from an employer who, and/or whose job, we really hate. Probably not grand theft, but something. We want to think that our reward (whatever is lifted) is their punishment. We might drop incorrect information into the database, lose important pieces of paper, and so on. We might, horrors of horrors, just do very little and wait for them to fire us. It might take a month before they notice how unproductive we are, and in the meantime, 4 more weekly paychecks have been received.

We will, of course, focus attention on our lousy pay - reward.

Self-deceptions don't work. — Joshs

Of course they do, but they need to be properly managed. We can safely deceive ourselves that we COULD beat the boss into submission with our bare hands, but we can not afford to deceive ourselves about getting away with it. We can safely believe that we COULD execute the perfect bank robbery; we can not safely deceive ourselves that we will be successful. When it comes to robbing banks, for instance, one needs to be meticulous and ruthlessly realistic.

Welcome to Hellworld — Akanthinos

The gated community phenomenon you describe is a hell-world kind of thing, for sure. Just be aware that not all boomers (people between 1945 and 1965 give or take a year) engage in the same dreary politics. Some of us have been contrarians from the getgo and have found our fellow boomerang's preferences to be quite appalling.

Women and transsexuals can be on the gated community security force if they display the requisite knee jerk viciousness (and a healthy inclination to use force) needed to protect the residents of such places. As far as I am concerned, let's just say no to all inclusive bathrooms. As for recycling, do it or ELSE.

You seem to be in an unusually bad mood with this topic.

There are no innocents. Everybody is guilty.

Why do you feel you have the right to even make a sound — Akanthinos

Good question. Akanthinos, go to your room and stay there until we call you.

Unlike our parents the WWII generation, we can not plead ignorance. — Jake

And LIKE our parents who were born in the 1920s (to be old enough to serve in WWII) we were not actually in charge. The decision to go to war in 1917 (for the US, anyway) and 1941, to build the atomic bomb, to organize the massive armament program, to bring 16,000,000 men into the army (11% of the population), and so on was made at the top, of course. These decisions were not made by popular vote. I'm not criticizing the WWII 'greatest generation' in any way here. Just that they performed admirably where they were sent and put.

"The People" weren't in charge of major decisions in 1941, 1951, 1961, and at many other times.

Many people are looking fondly back to 1950s and want to re-create them. I caution them against doing that. If you re-create 1950s, you will re-create the conditions that led to 1960s; which means that you will be met with something like 1960s down the road in one or another form. — Ilya B Shambat

Which conditions are we talking about here?

Are we talking about the feverish anti-communism of the 1950s, or about the Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg (waving genitals and manuscripts)? Ayn Rand or Jack Kerouac? Are we talking about William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (collectivist management) or The Cather In The Rye? Are we talking about The Bomb or the massive post-war housing program building the new suburbs? Are we talking Leave it to Beaver or the Mattachine Society and the beginnings of gay liberation?

If social conservatives try to re-create 1950s, they have not learned their lesson from history. They will be met with the same themes that took place in 1960s. And that hardly works in their best interests. — Ilya B Shambat

Slicing the centuries into decades is natural but it doesn't work very well. The push from above for more control and the counter-push from below for more openness is a constant. The hippies of the 60s, the anti-war demonstrators, the beards and long hair, free love -- all that -- didn't characterize the larger population of even those between 16 and 24, all those on the coasts, and so on. If it seemed like everybody was a hippy, it was because the hippies were associating mostly with each other.

Deviant groups (like hippies, homosexuals, high-church Anglicans, communists, KKK) tend to operate within a social membrane. What one sees, hears, experiences within the social membrane is quite different that what one will see, hear, and experience when one steps out of the membrane.

If men who practice sodomy can get a day of recognition, (Gay Pride Day); if the dead can get Halloween; if Jesus can get both Christmas AND Easter (not fair), I suppose women can have a day too. What the hell.

Apart from helping them out economically what else can be done? — Brett

That's the question. First, we haven't done all that much to help them out economically. We could do better at that task.

Still, there will always be people on the bottom, however the bottom is defined. (Just like there will always be a team that has the lowest possible ranking.) One of the questions with which we need to be concerned is, "how big is the group on th bottom?" and what do the other layers look like.

It seems to me that "the poor" form too large a group to justify complacency, plus there are quite a few layers above the bottom which are not very secure, not very successful. A large share of Americans have zero resources saved for retirement; a large share have virtually no savings for emergencies (like, $500). There is a fair percentage of working class people who do have retirement resources in addition to Social Security, and many of them also have funds for emergencies. But these people aren't wealthy by any stretch. $100,000 invested in retirement funds, and $2500 in cash for emergencies is not a thick shield against adversity.

The stats on income across the board looked better when less wealth was concentrated in so few hands.

I am not sure that education provides a way up for very many people. A few years ago I took a course in literacy, and one of the things that the professor emphasized was that literacy doesn't help that much. Literacy is a minimal expectation of employers, and gaining literacy doesn't give one much leverage. Similarly, having a high school diploma (and having good high school level skills) is a minimal expectation. It's definitely better to have it than not. Having a BA degree in a liberal arts field (history, language, literature, a science) is likewise a minimum expectation for many jobs. It's worth having, but lots of other people have the same thing.

Education is an inherently good thing; it lays the foundation for a better understanding of self and the world (but the payoff isn't instant). Education often gives one actual skills one can sell on the labor market, and that too is a good thing.

But education should be broadly affordable and it was once affordable. When states were willing to subsidize education with tax money so that tuition was within the reach of most young people, there was a good economic payoff for the individual and the state both. There was also an intellectual and cultural payoff for the individual and the state.

I still think a major like English Literature is a good thing (provided it isn't larded with POMO claptrap). Ditto for History, Sociology, German, Philosophy, etc. All study helps. A 4 year degree allows for 4 more years of maturation before one starts on one's career path. Time in a residential college setting is a broadening experience.

BUT, there is no guarantee it will solve economic problems for individuals. Some uneducated people manage to do quite well economically. Some don't. Same for educated people.

So, what concerns me most is that there are too many people in the lower third, or lower half of the economic distribution who have also been short-changed culturally and intellectually. The LEAST we could have done for those many millions of people is give them a first rate secondary education. We didn't do that.

Doing poorly in school is an individual failing sometimes. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. But school failure is more often a collective failure (often a bottom up one). Do I have a fix for that? No. Unfortunately.

The supply of love is unlimited; giving doesn't deplete the store.

You will need to delineate the difference between "love" and "True Love". Is it what Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly sang about in High Society?



"True Love" of the sort depicted in the song is nice, sweet, pretty, sentimental, romantic. That kind of love is quite different than Christ's definition: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13. Or in the verse preceding, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." and elsewhere, "If you love me, keep my commandments." As opposed to sweet and pretty, the love Jesus asks for is, as Dorothy Day put it, "a harsh and dreadful love".

True giving... again, what is the difference your are suggesting between ordinary giving and true giving?

Real gifts don't have strings attached. When you give someone something, you are done with it. This comes into play when giving beggars money. What difference does it make to you what he does with it? Once you make a gift to a beggar, your gift is no longer yours. If you give a friend a book and she doesn't read it, that's not your problem.

Give generously, give freely, if you are going to give a gift. Then think about it no more.

If you give your love to someone, give generously, give freely. Give again, but don't calculate any benefit or expectations. (like, "if I love you, then you should do x, y, and z.")

For love is something if you give it away,
Give it away, give it away.
Love is something if you give it away,
You end up having more.

Money's dandy and we like to use it,
But love is better if you don't refuse it.
It's a treasure and you'll never lose it
Unless you lock up your door.
--- Malvina Reynolds, communist folk singer

Perhaps I was too hasty in making that generalization. But it does seem to me that more elaborate automated processes, greater bureaucratic complexity, technological 'churn', and so forth make it more difficult for the average worker (white/blue collar) to find a niche in which to succeed. Of course, similar kinds of barriers existed in the past. The conversion from sailing ships to steamships, from ox carts to wagon trains to railroads, from small shops to big factories, etc. were all big changes. Not everybody succeeded who left the east to Go West into the frontier states. The simpler agriculture of the time could be a do-or-die proposition, and a lot of people didn't make it--they died trying.

Economic success is another issue. The distribution of those who succeed economically (are prosperous) and those who fail (are not prosperous on to flat broke) seems to be skewing strongly toward failure. This may not be the fault of individuals -- we may be caught in a massive defrauding scheme.

All of this is precisely the truth.

Here's a current 3D project -- printing prosthetic limbs.

grammatical errors — andrewk

It is a clumsy sentence, but I don't see any confounding grammatical error.

People aren't just letting others' expressions be stand as written, but not are also applying various social pressures, etc., are they not?[/quote]

Hmmm. Hadn't thought about that. Have they tried printing in zero gravity?

I was raised within the Mainline Protestant province of the Judeo-Christian religious empire, and I wish I could tell you how it framed my core values and moral judgements. Because it was ubiquitous in the small town (1800 people), the framing was invisible and the influence was near total. Until, at least, I was in the more secular atmosphere of a state college. This was in the 1960s. Secularism wasn't forced, it was just closer to to being background, the same way the J-C content had been. Life after college was much more secular, but I didn't reject the moral framework.

The major break with my religious tradition was a result of getting involved in the gay community and a socialist organization, both of which ranged from critical to definitely hostile toward the J-C tradition. The creedal claims of Christianity were no longer acceptable to me. I had not been a member of a church for many years, but I found that relinquishing a grip on the warmth I felt for the faith of my youth was more difficult than I thought it would be.

In time I managed to work through the spiritual nostalgia, and discard much of the moral sauce that had long been mixed with a vaguely conservative political stew. I still live in the same cultural community that I grew up in; Minneapolis is not Manhattan, in ever so many ways. If, as an old man, I want to have some sort of social life it makes sense to be involved with a church. The gay community isn't what it used to be (actually, it never was), so I belong to the Lutheran church directly across the street. Location, location, location. It serves me as a low-overhead social outlet and drop-in center. It does what a gay bar used to do for me. There are, actually, quite a few gay people in this congregation. The asst. pastor is a gay man.

Like most churches, whatever they profess, this church is dominated by real estate concerns. Maintaining buildings that were built for much larger congregations drives almost all churches--sometimes driving them right into the ground they are built on.

I am now an atheist Lutheran. I don't believe in God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth... I don't feel I owe allegiance to the church, either. I like quite a few of the people there, but the organization itself is like any other organization, and not as good as some.

to be followed from thread to thread by a moderator, not providing thoughtful counter-arguments, but repetitive blanket denials, and now outright mockery and insult — unenlightened

The specter of Hanover is haunting Unenlightened.

I think it's better when moderators don't interact with a site's regulars very often, because that tends to lead to cliquey behavior, it often leads to grudges, etc — Terrapin Station

But interaction is one of the pleasures of philosophy. Otherwise, we could just write in our private journals and publish posthumously. Who wants to moderate a philosophy forum who isn't interested in what people have to say?

The trouble with Hanover is that his bite is worse than his snark.

Maybe the only people who can moderate properly are people who really don't want to be moderators? The trouble with those ideal people is that they just won't volunteer? Moderation looks to me to be an infinitely thankless job.

On the other hand, apart from moderating, Hanover has made some very cogent arguments on various issues.

Hanover's favourite philosopher is Hanover. — Herg

Let he who is not his own favorite philosopher cast the first stone.

It seems to me that i read a laboratory had been able to produce bits of tissue using a 3D layering device loaded with the appropriate material--collagen, probably. Then placed in a bath of cells for a while, and then inserted into a mouse. The construct performed like a graft of natural tissue. Some tissues, like liver or possibly pancreatic tissue, or maybe retina tissue would be especially useful.

3D layering certainly has a future, but as you say, probably in a factory environment. It IS interesting technology. I can see a future for it in fabricated food, like... lab grown meat-like material. The obvious use, though, is in one-off objects, like a complicated piece for an unusual but important machine, or unique fashion items.

What we really need is replicator technology from the second generation of Star Trek. Say, you want a Rolex watch instead of a Timex, or fine Italian shoes instead of a pair from Walmart.

I like the Guardian 85% of the time; I always like the comments section when they are opened below an editorial. The Guardian readership seems to be quite insightful, and often display a nice casual cleverness:

Guy Hubbard

Hydrogen cats

Notfamousanymore ---> Guy Hubbard

Realistically we need to start with hybrid cats, then move onto electric cats. Hydrogen cats would be a bit too lightweight. I'm sticking with my traditional cats for now though.

Not deep but at least civilized.

We really do need to get rid of the car -- but I don't see it happening before the last barrel of oil gets sucked out of the earth.

What experiences have you learned from that could help us rebuild after something like this? — TogetherTurtle

Not many helpful experiences, myself. The main thing would be that one can travel a long way on a bicycle, especially if the weather is nice. Like, 50 to 100 miles. I do short errands on the bike in winter if it's not too cold, and if the streets are passable.

I don't know too much about them, but I'd recommend looking at the traditional Amish. The Amish are not, apparently, against all machinery. Some Amish woodworkers use small steam engines to power air compressors which supply their tools with power. So I have heard.

and reading about horsepower -- actual horse power. Horses could provide power for boats, for instance. No, they did not swim and pull the boat. They walked on a treadmill in the middle of the boat and the treadmill turned the propeller. The same approach could be used to pump water, for instance, or run a coarse cut saw. Horses were used to move big houses--using the leverage of pulleys, not by simple brute strength. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19th Century by McShane and Tarr, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Or, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, by Greene. Harvard U. Press, 2008. Try ABE Books or Alibris for a used copy.

Someone (James Howard Kunstler) provides a reasonably good picture of post-apocalypse life and skills. In his 4 part A World Made by Hand series (novels, more or less) Kunstler depicts life in an upstate New York town after some sort of collapse. The electrical grid is gone, no radio/TV/telephone, no gasoline, no gas powered machines, no central government, etc.

People struggle, work very hard, pool and use whatever knowledge they have, to put together a much simpler life. As one would expect, people who are severely injured or get very sick die. There are food shortages. There is conflict. A much reduced community forms and survives--not only in this one town, but in various places around the country. Recovery is spotty and fragile.

Kunstler writes about environmental issues; his books include The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century; Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation.

One can OD on converging catastrophes. I fully believe they are on the way BUT in the mean time there is no advantage in going crazy with all the bad news out there. The World Made by Hand is uplifting without being even slightly pollyanna-ish.

If you like post-apocalyptic fiction, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, is a 1949 post-apocalypse classic. 99.9% of everybody dies in a plague. That's disposed of very quickly. The rest of the novel is about how a tiny remnant carry on. 1949 was pre-global warming (as an issue); TV had hardly made an appearance in '49. The freeway system hadn't been built yet. ETC. It's interesting to compare Earth Abides to A World Made By Hand.

Who will survive a barely survivable global disaster?

Probably the survivors will be those with the most adaptable set of skills for surviving. People who know how to grow food using hand tools, for instance. People who know how to preserve food without electricity. People who have enough skill to fashion shelters, make simple clothing, treat wounds, and so forth. These people certainly exist -- and they aren't survivalists. They are people like a billion peasants who already survive this way. People like the Amish who use horsepower and hand tools.

People who can cooperate with others reasonably well will have an advantage. Bright, imaginative practical people will do better than coders, philosophers, astrophysicists, and the like.

Many of us would die if electrical power disappeared. Pull cars and gasoline from the scene and more of would die. In all, probably around... 5 billion? 6 billion? It isn't that 5 or 6 billion people are just too stupid to live, it's that 4, 5, or 6 billion people have become dependent on 20th century technology. Most of us lost the pre-high technology skills of the 19th century. We don't farm; we don't do large-scale gardening; we don't treat our own wounds; we don't build so much as an outhouse. We've become very highly specialized.

How many of us, in the post-disaster age, would know what to do with a female cow if we had one? How much food does a cow need? How does one keep a cow producing milk? What if one decides to eat the cow: how does one kill and butcher a cow? How does one keep the meat from spoiling in a couple of days? Will a vegan be able to chop a chicken's head off, rip off the feathers, pull its guts out, and cook it (assuming that there happens to be no organic, gluten free, non-gmo, pesticide free tofu laying about). How many vegans will be able to make tofu, assuming they happen to have a bushel of soy beans?

My paternal great grandparents (I'm 72) farmed before there was electricity, antibiotics, gasoline, autos, and the like. They had to have many of the skills I'm talking about.

One promising sign is that a lot of people are learning how to grow hops and brew beer. Somebody needs to find temperate zone plants that produce caffeine.

Hey, you found the lost post in two minutes. You are not, apparently, all that confused.

'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports — xraymike79

My city and county collect trash, recyclable paper, glass, metal, and plastic, yard waste and compostable kitchen waste (which includes paper towels and tissues). Composting turns kitchen and yard waste into a product that gets used for landscaping (particularly highway landscaping and parks). Trash is burned for the most part, as is recyclable material for which there is little demand. At one time the recycling operation could sell most of what they collected. Much less so now.

The big municipal incinerator generates steam for the downtown Minneapolis area -- heating and hot water. At least some of the garbage goes for a good cause. The city says it is a safe operation, but I would not buy a house near it. It doesn't stink, at least. Does the incinerator produce toxic waste products? Of course. You can't burn garbage and plastics without producing at least some toxic products coming out of the stack.

That's so obvious, I don't know why I didn't get it right away!

I wasn't sure about that either. I'm sure most people here have thought it, if they did not say it in so many words.