A) Is it true that only a few people are capable of reason, as Plato says?
B) Are there really philosopher kings? — ernestm

A) Plato was grossly underestimating the abilities of the competition
B) I hope not

Mitch McConnell is an honorable man — frank

Mitch McConnell is a slime ball. (In the spirit of bi-partisanship, so is Nancy Pelosi.) As far as I can tell.

I think American culture is hypocritical — Drek

Of course it is. ALL societies, ALL cultural and religious institutions, ALL individuals everywhere are hypocritical. Hypocrisy is part of the human condition. That's why we advise each other to not believe everything they read and hear and not take others' statements at face value. People aren't hypocritical all the time, and you won't detect each instance that they are being authentic.

We are prisoner's of our own minds. We need to be free. — Drek

And once you escape your mind, where will you be? Yes, in a real sense we are all trapped in our skulls with nothing but a stream of second-hand information from the senses to inform us of what's "out there". Carry that far enough and you end up with encapsulated solipsism: "I am the only mind that exists".

How do you teach children ethics? How do you teach people to care? — Drek

You teach them the simple rules of ethical behavior when they are young, and then you model the desired behavior as they grow up into adulthood. Show your children what ethical behavior looks like, and correct them when they behave wrongly. Show them what caring behavior looks like.

Fundraising: There is no reason to donate money to rotten charities. Go here for ratings of charities.

https://www.charitywatch.org/join (may be a donation/fee)
https://www.charitynavigator.org
BBB Wise Giving Alliance (Better Business Bureau)``

You can call your state's Attorney General to find out if the charity you are interested in is currently being prosecuted. The IRS also reveals some information about charities.

Give to charities that use less than 25% of their income for all overhead activities -- including fundraising. (Charities that use more may not be crooks; they may be merely incompetent.)

Here is a list of police/veteran fundraising outfits that Consumers Union considers least reputable:

***American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens
Titusville, Fla.
***Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation
Ste. Genevieve, Mo.
***Firefighters Charitable Foundation
Farmingdale, N.Y.
***National Association of Chiefs of Police
Titusville, Fla.
***United States Deputy Sheriff's Association
Wichita, Kan.
Veterans
***Disabled Veterans National Foundatio
 Lanham, Md.
***Help Heal Veterans
Winchester, Calif.
***Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation
Annandale, Va.
***Paralyzed Veterans of America
Washington, D.C.
***Veterans Support Foundation
Silver Spring, Md.
***California Police Youth Charities
Sacramento, Calif.
***Law Enforcement Education Program
Troy, Mich. — Consumers Union

My hypothesis is government and business are in bed together. — Drek

Yes, sir, they are not only in bed but they are fucking each other's brains out.

A more gracious quote on the matter from Karl Marx: Government is merely a committee for organizing the affairs of the Bourgeoisie.

I like it, "for the sake of virtue".

I don't care whether you drive barefoot or naked.

A person needs to identify a key virtue with which they will weigh their choices. Love is a possible key virtue. Of the 6 kinds of love

Eros, or sexual passion. ...
Philia, or deep friendship. ...
Ludus, or playful love. ...
Agape, or love for everyone. ...
Pragma, or longstanding love. ...
Philautia, or love of the self

Pragma, Agape, or Philia -- love of others in any case, might suffice.

Or, maybe Freedom, or Loyalty to some canon of virtue suits being a key virtue. There are others. When it comes to judgement (especially of squishy categories like "hate speech" or "Patriotism") you need a consistent standard of what is important.

So, for instance, which approach towards a thing most advantages agape, freedom, or family values -- whatever you measure importance by. When I measure importance with freedom, then so called hate speech is and ought to be protected. If "family values" are my guide, hate speech, porn, liberal values, and much else will be deemed not worth saving.

Am I delusional? — Drek

Maybe, but there is insufficient data. Please provide much more information. Do you happen to have a a copy of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) around the house? If you do, fill it out and send it to the forum. That would help us answer the question about your possible delusional state.

My understanding of marriage is that in the US ONLY the state issues licenses to marry. One can not be considered "married" without the state issued license. A priest or a justice of the peace can marry people ONLY if they have the state issued license. The Roman Catholic Church can not make you more married than any old Justice of the Peace can.

We considered our gay relationship adequately protected by our mutual desire to be in the relationship. That worked for 30+ years till death did us part. There are fairly simple procedures to own property together so that in the event of death the survivor becomes the sole possessor.

two four six eight
ditch the church
& screw the state

Cover from what? — Wallows

I always thought it was better to be merely a nonconformist than be considered a diseased pariah.

he most often disregards the social contract they were born in and does their own thing. It takes a great deal of courage to be a Cynic, and stay a Cynic. — Wallows

IF one is going to be a nonconformist, if one is just going to do one's own thing, one ought to be nonconforming for some worthwhile end.

There is a great deal of pressure from society to conform to its commands — Wallows

Really cutting loose from the demands and commands of society may be a pretty dangerous thing. If society withdraws its approval and tolerance from non-conformers, life can become wretched, or one might be terminated.

How many people are deliberate nonconformists, and how many are people who have decided to call their unhappy fate the result of their personal rebellion? For instance, is someone rejecting property, material goods, and luxury because they lost what little they had, or failed to gain the vast sums for which they hoped?

I've always thought of myself as something of a non-conformist. In fact, in many cases I just didn't fit in (and didn't know how to fit) so declaring nonconformity provided me cover.

Likely it will require the testicles of all the Republicans be stitched back on — tim wood

If I had had Senate Republicans' testicles in a box, I would have fed them to the cats already.

Shutting down the government is not a violation of his oath? — tim wood

Congress has to appropriate funds for the government to operate. While a debt ceiling has been in place for quite a long time, the use of it as a political tool arose in the 1990s. Congress establishes the debt ceiling and either lifts it, or doesn't -- in which case non-essential government operations can be suspended.

The President can decide how much of the government to shut down, but whether shutdowns can happen is in the hands of Congress.

Richard Nixon was impeached for "obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress" while Bill Clinton was impeached for "perjury and obstruction of justice".

You all may not have been around for the Watergate hearings, but the proceedings were broadcast (for weeks on end) and the process of evidence gathering was extensive. By the time Nixon resigned, the case against had been very well built.

Operatives in Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President (aka CREEP) burglarized the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate hotel. What followed was an elaborate cover-up, proving again that covering up a relatively minor crime can self-inflate into a major disaster. Another thing that has been proved is that once investigators start digging, remarkable finds can be brought to the surface.

I think we can count on sufficient evidence being available to impeach President Trump. What will be needed for impeachment is the ability of the House Democrats to successfully carry out the proceedings, so well that the Senate would be compelled to try and convict. I wouldn't hold my breath.

If you are asking whether morality or legality is more important, it would matter what the stakes are, would it not? If the act is trivial and nothing is at stake, it doesn't matter. If the stakes are high, then the relationship between morality and legality are worth considering.

Which takes precedence--legality or morality? Which one do you think is the most reliable guide to behavior -- moral teaching or law? Law is more specific and detailed; morality is general and stated in principles. Law is perhaps more thorough than morality: In time the law is elaborated to cover all manner of behavior, everything from hunting squirrels to the way depreciation should be calculated. Usually following the law will result in one being moral, but not always.

Where morals and law become difficult to reconcile is when need arises that requires moral, but illegal, action. In order to save an accident victim, I might have to trespass and damage private property. Both are illegal, but the morality of the situation requires busting down the fence and trespassing. If an aggressive animal is treating the victim, I might have to shoot it--more illegality.

No formulae is foolproof. Some over-riding principle is needed to determine which system--morals or law--you should follow. Jesus says one should love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Thereby hangs the entire law. So, love might be the overriding rule.

"OH?" because I wasn't clear on whether you thought we did or did not need Soma. A gram saves a damn.

and don't need 'soma' to cope with the mundane and boredom that life may have — Wallows

Oh?

Because pot has been linked to improving bone strength — Athena

Pot has been linked to improving just about every ailment from which people suffer. Clearly some or many of the claimed benefits are not valid. Cannabis makes many people "feel better". Nothing wrong with feeling good or feeling better, but that feeling may not be the same as being cured or having a significant improvement.

The trouble with pot as medicine is that formal research into cannabis benefits was banned for a long time. Now, amateurs can gather real evidence, and some claims of benefit made by amateur researchers and users are probably true. [During the early years of AIDS amateur researchers gathered very useful information about various pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical medications. They tracked research, the conducted some experimental therapy, and published results. They provided something definite where there was nothing much.]

Smoking or eating cannabis may be illegal (or not, depending). Some people enjoy it; others don't. Most people don't use it at all. Casual use does not strike me as a moral issue. What makes any drug-use moral or immoral is the consequence. I would apply that principle to many other casual activities whose effects on self or others are trivial and transitory. An occasional modest use of heroin or meth strikes me as the same (but definitely involving more risk).

Where any activity, be it smoking or eating cannabis, playing video games, or watching shopping channels on television, or anything else begins to dominate one's life it becomes morally problematic.

Yesterday, for the first time in about 30 years, I got high (on edible cannabis). I was definitely impaired, but since I stayed inside listening to music, I put neither myself nor others at risk. Using cannabis is illegal where I used it, but not where I bought it. I find it difficult to judge the event as any more morally significant than having a couple of beers or taking the dog out for her daily walk.

Depression is real, I get that. I've been depressed for years at a stretch (diagnosed; medication; therapy; the whole bit) and I understand HOW it is debilitating. My late spouse was bi-polar and was severely disabled at times. Still, he managed to volunteer for causes he valued. His efforts were modest, but he found it satisfying and the places he volunteered found it useful.

When I suggest you volunteer, I'm not picturing you as SUPER VOLUNTEER who regularly performs miracles. I'm thinking of a small project, maybe involving 1 or 2 hours a week, doing something relatively easy and low stress. For instance, I used to volunteer an hour or two a week (or less) at a food coop. One of the jobs was cutting up large hunks of cheese into small hunks and wrapping them in plastic. This was low pressure, low skill work; there were other volunteers to chat with.

Are there any adult mental health day activity centers in your area? You might qualify as a client or volunteer, either one. At least the one's I've seen operate as drop in centers, sort of; they are places to spend some time at; socialization opportunities. Low stress, no great expectations. It would get you out of the house for a short while.

I'm not suggesting you start with anything more than quite small efforts. I picture you as being in your house most of the time. A worthwhile goal would be to go outside for a short walk every day. Do you do things of that sort? Do you have a yard in which you could mess around with? Plant some seeds, watch them grow.

Foreign aid given Per Capita
1. Norway $812.58
2. Sweden $701.10
3. Luxembourg $609.48
4. Denmark $447.05
5. Switzerland $421.37
6. Netherlands $338.38
7. United Kingdom $284.85
8. Finland $234.13 — ssu

Polls have for decades shown that Americans' estimate of US Government foreign aid to be far, far higher than it actually is. Many people think it is in the range of 5% to 10% of the federal budget. Of course it is nowhere close to that much. The Agency for International Development (part of the State Department) was budgeted for $50 billion 2016. $50 billion is peanuts in an almost $4 trillion dollar federal budget.

Besides $50 billion not being a big amount, no international effort operates without overhead, so significantly less than $50 billion ends up in goods and services overseas.

An international health NGO I worked for in the 1990s operated 3 small USAID projects, each budgeted at around $100,000 per year in a three year grant (Uganda, Kenya, and Nicaragua). These were child survival and maternal health programs. We were required to raise matching funds for about a third of each projects cost for a total of $100,000 in private donations over a three year period. The programs were good grass root capacity building projects. We delivered in the field, but we couldn't deliver in the domestic fundraising area. As a consequence, we were de-funded and went out of business.

Of course one can give donations to charities and even volunteer. Yet wouldn't be giving a job to an unemployed person be even more of a help? — ssu

It would indeed be better to employ someone without a job than to give them charity, but most people (who are working class) do not have it within their power to employ other people. So the best thing for those people to do is to act collectively in political activity to provide jobs.

But charity (caritas) is important to the individual giver and receiver, but especially the giver. Why? The act of caring for others establishes a connection between the carer and cared-for which validates their common humanity. The validation of common humanity is important because people tend to distance themselves from those in need. If the needy are distant enough, one can more conveniently forget about them.

Political activity can qualify as caritas et amo but the rigamarole of politics is likely to bury caritas et amo under layers of tedious procedure.

Therefore what's the solution? To start caring even more? — Wallows

BC: Right: Care more!

How? — Wallows

BC: By actually doing caring. Feeling like you care is nice; what matters is that you actually perform care. So glad you care about starving people. Now go do something about it.

WS: Yeah, but I don't have enough resources to solve all of anybody's problems.
BC: Nobody asked you to solve all of anybody's problem. Find a problem that is shared by people and make a contribution (time, talent, or money) to that group of people.

For instance: Donate $ or food to a food shelf. Donate toothbrushes and toothpaste to shelters and food shelves. Toilet paper, shampoo, sanitary products for women, condoms, paper towel, etc. are all things that people who rely on shelters and food shelves may need. Buy some, whatever you can afford, and give it to them. If you live in the northland, men's and women's cotton sox and cotton T-shirts, men's underwear, and women's underwear (most sizes are needed, not in equal numbers...)

Places like St. Vincent de Paul take used clothing. Some places take all manner of household supplies (clean and in working order; they aren't junk haulers)

Volunteer some time at a shelter; people with problems are real people and interesting to talk to; quite often have good reasons for being in the situation they are in (bad things happen). "Be ye doers of the word and not only hearers of the word."

There are a whole host of ways to help other people.

The NEW major centers of Christian belief and affiliation has moved south to Africa, Asia, and South America. ("NEW" here refers to the last 20 to 40 years up to the present.)

It is western Europe that is out of step with world practice, whether referencing Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jain, Hindu, Daoist, or animism and ancestor worship.

I don’t think he is speaking of a celestial realm — Noah Te Stroete

I don't think so either. On the other hand, I don't think he was suggesting that the kingdom of God was interior. Jesus was prophesying the coming of a terrestrial kingdom, in the flesh, in this world. Just to connect current creeds with Jesus, "I believe in the resurrection of the body" the three creeds of the church declares. Christians (according to the creeds) believe in bodily resurrection

I'm not personally expecting resurrection of any kind, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

#me2 and various other manifestations of liberation or outrage emerge when they can emerge. Meaning, #me2 is possible because women have enough security that they can afford to go on the offense. That they have gone overboard in many cases is nothing against the #m32 movement: whenever people build up some momentum they tend to go overboard.

Women's liberation, gay liberation, Unionism, abolition, temperance, women's suffrage, etc. are all examples of movements emerging when economic and political circumstances allowed for these movements to develop. (Note: Sometimes economic and political factors caused these movements, other times they just opened the door.

Namely, that many (not all) people are selfish and egotistical. They want money so they can lead better lifestyles. We consume more than we need. Wants for "stuff" dictate our lives. The majority, do jobs that make them unhappy, and only to further this goal for personal satisfaction. If you zoom out, it seems like a sorry predicament with no end in sight. — Wallows

1. Egotism and selfishness are in our genes.
2. Just because people want more stuff doesn't mean that not wanting stuff will make them content.

Therefore, I have arrived at the conclusion that I am different in so many ways from other people, that it causes me to feel alienated from humanity. — Wallows

3. You are not all that unique. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." (Henry David Thoreau, American Transcendentalist)
4. The Human Condition is, in fact, a sad state of affairs a good share of the time.

you should embrace the alienation — DingoJones

5. Alienation is a wretched feeling. Making connections to other people is the antidote.

Wallows: One of the ways you ARE different from many people is that you are drilling deeper into the reality of your life than most people do. It's a risky exercise. Do it anyway, but pay attention to #5: make connection with other people. Sorry, the cure for alienation isn't quite as simple as plugging in a toaster.

The Philosophy Forum is a safe way of making long-distance mostly anonymous connection with other people, and that's worth something. But aim for at least a few flesh and blood up-close-and-personal connections.

And Merry Christmas.

Yes, terrorists are not primarily arsonists intent on destroying buildings. They are out to destroy symbols and affective features of life, such as the sense of security, collective invulnerability [we are safe], and such. Non-ideological terrorists, like the ones who shot up a gay bar in Florida or opened fire from a hotel room in Las Vegas, accomplish approximately the same thing, whether their intent is ideological or psychopathological.

Some defense is necessary. What I think would be more effective at airports are more intelligence operatives looking for certain types of behavior. People removing their shoes, getting personally scanned, swabbing hands, and manual frisking (as pleasant as that is) is just plain nonsensical. It's theater.

Perhaps allowing more proactivity on the part of prosecutors would help: Terrorists are often on various watch lists. But prosecutorial proactivity can be a problem too. Certainly intelligence gathering directed toward detecting plots is necessary.

Otherwise, I think people do need to get on with their lives, knowing that they are most unlikely to be the victim of terrorism. Overestimating ones personal risk is easy to do, of course. There are many more likely risks which we live with quite comfortably.

So Merry Christmas, or Glad Yule, or reasonably satisfactory late December days--whatever works--and Happy New Year.

the fitness of a (critically) endangered species — Hans

The fitness of critically endangered megafauna is in good shape. There is no improved fitness possible for various megafauna if we decide to kill all of them for their tusk, tail, testicles, or whatever. Maybe somebody could modify the white rhino so that it could shoot to kill in self-defense?

As for modifying the genes of various non-glamorous non-megafauna, we don't know what conditions they should be able to survive (because global warming is changing so many environments so rapidly). At the rate we're going, WE won't be around long enough to carry out much genetic jiggering.

Why do countries do that? — Wallows

Suppose Canada (which wasn't a country yet) had territorial designs on the United States back in the mid-19th century. Suppose they wanted to seize the northern tier of states (Oh, would that they had!!!). What better time to make a grab than at the Union's low point during our Civil War?

Trying to find the right candidate from what's available is like trying to find one's chewing gum in the chicken coop. The choices are distasteful.

I have always found explanations of the Trinity to be pious gobbledegook. The Trinity can be pleasantly invoked for blessings, and referencing the Trinity is comforting for many people (a comforting ritual, making the sign of the cross...) but once theologians start to explain it, the whole thing falls apart. I'd prefer that there be one god (the father) or there be three -- father, son, and holy ghost. Making one god into three and insisting that you are only talking about one... it's crazy.

But then there are other difficult things to explain -- like how bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, and why anyone would especially want bread and wine to be changed into flesh.

Then there is that star which guided the 3 wisemen to this alleged stable supposedly in Bethlehem: What happened to this exceptionally specific guiding light after the 3 wisemen arrived? Did the star just go out? Did it keep drifting to the west? Did it backtrack to where it started?

And let's not even get started on the virgin birth.

Wasn't it Socrates that said:

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Another factor: Did it make any difference that the distribution of land was much different during the carboniferous? The continents were not distributed, but were clumped together:

The Carboniferous was marked by the progressive formation of the supercontinent Pangea. The present day Northern Hemisphere landmasses moved towards the equator to form Laurasia and to join the large Southern Hemisphere landmass Gondwana. The collision between Siberia and Eastern Europe created the Ural Mountains, and China was formed with the collision of several microcontinents and Siberia. The collision between Gondwana and Laurasia led to the formation of the Appalachian belt in North America and the Hercynian Mountains in Europe. Gondwana also shifted towards the equator while the continents moved from east to west.

[Tectonics and Paleoclimate ----> http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/carboniferous/carbtect.html ]

DOES ANYONE ELSE REALIZE WHEN EVERYONE IS WORKING FOR A PAYCHECK AND IS OVERLOADED BY A WORK SCHEDULE AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES... — Athena

The 30 year mortgage did a great deal to pacify the population.

Somewhere along the line I read that the reason the dead plant matter in the carboniferous period didn't rot was that the organisms that are capable of digesting wood (lignin, etc.) like fungi, hadn't evolved yet, or hadn't evolved far enough. So the wood didn't rot (and thus release the captured CO2 back into the atmosphere).

The Carboniferous period was characterized by dense, widely distributed forests which consumed much of the atmospheric carbon (CO2). Over millions of years the trees fell layer on layer and did not rot -- re-releasing CO2 that had been sequestered. as the timbers sank, were covered, compressed, and heated the plant matter was converted into coal. As the levels of CO2 declined, so did the temperature, and with the temperature declines, the formation of polar ice caps and glaciation.

Mammals, by the way, weren't around in the Carboniferous period -- they appeared around the time the dinosaurs appeared (within 10 million years).

That's true, and I thought of Washington, Grant and Eisenhower. They were good generals and were at least adequate presidents. The military contains many an effective executive; it isn't for lack of competence that I prefer civilians (though Trump manages to be an argument against civilian presidents). I also wouldn't have selected Michael Bloomberg to be Mayor of New York on the basis of his being a multibillionaire, but he did a reasonably good job of running New York.

I would still just as soon the generals stay on base, but I'll grant you that generals are not inherently unfit for Hail to the Chief. Government (and its personnel) ought to be honest and competent. Good and bad presidents prove that it is the character and ability of the individual in the office that counts. Our system don't need more Hardings, Nixons, Reagans, Bushes and Trumps. What the US needs are more of are Lincolns, Roosevelts (both), and Kennedys.

Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse — Jake

Before you vote for the poultry and vermin characters, better check out Walt Disney's politics. Bugs Bunny (Warner Brothers) has a deep irreverent streak which commends him more than the duck and rat.

As you probably know, General Mattis just resigned as Secretary of Defense. I don't know a lot about him, but it popped in to my head that he might make a good presidential candidate on the Democratic Party ticket. Let's explore that together. — Jake

I'd just as soon generals stayed on base. Civilians are supposed to be in charge of the government.

The problem isn't whether Bernie Sanders (who will be 80 years old in 2021) or Elizabeth Warren would be better than Donald Trump. We currently have a junk yard dog in office, so the list of candidates who would be better than Trump is exceeding long. The problem is the practice of politics has entered a new stage.

The problem is an unrecognized, unstated, unspoken class war.

The Republican Party's policies--instantiated in the federal office of the president and in a number of state governments--is un-democratic and is carrying out class warfare against working class people. [Here's a relevant slogan to tattoo on your body where you can see it: Class war is the only war.] The Democratic Party is not all sweetness and light, of course. They would be, should be, and are opposed to the Republican's crude methods, but they look good only because the Republicans look so bad. Neither party is in favor of any significant redistribution of wealth, and with it, a redistribution of power, away from the oligarchy and favoring the working class (who are about 90% of the population).

But the real problem is, again, class warfare. It isn't a new thing in this country. The Gilded Age, located in the later third of the 19th Century was a period of class war. The Progressive Era was a counter reaction, followed by an intense and vicious Red Scare attack on the working class brought on by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The 1930s produced another braking of the class war in the form of several New Deal programs which conservatives in the Republican Party would very much like to destroy (80+ years later) along with Medicare and several other minor reforms like the ACA (aka ObamaCare).

White working class people enjoyed a boom, and a fairly generous economy after WWII. The tide began to turn against the working class in the 1960s, and picked up speed in subsequent decades. The economic slide of working people was subtle, but steady, in the form of a slow, continuing fall in wages and purchasing power from the mid-1970s forward, along with a steady accumulation of the percentage of wealth among the oligarchy (both of which were helped along by tax law). Whether the Democrats or Republicans were in power between 1968 and the present has mattered little.

So, what we have right now is a more savage Republican attack on both democracy (which is most useful to the working classes -- the oligarchy can get along quite well without it) and state services. Look at Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Republican Party managed to bust public employee unions, retrench state services, and then to frost the cake, passed several laws on their way out which will hamper the next governor (a Democrat) in governing.

No one should think they can read the human genome and predict behavior. As far as I know, very few specific short passages of the genome have been linked to any particular behavior. The evidence, or suggestion if you will, that some personality features are linked to genes comes from longitudinal observations of others and self. The way in which genetics would be linked would be by comparing the genomes and personalities of many people. (This is the way genetic causation for certain cancers have been found.)

Another way is by animal models. I would cite the silver fox experiment in Russia. Silver fox are bred for their fur and are generally hostile towards their captors/caretakers. By selecting out animals that displayed ever so slightly less hostility and breeding them, they eventually produced a variety of silver fox that was much more dog-like; accepting physical contact (petting, for instance). The fox also lost their nice fur features and their ears became less erect. The key to these changes turned out to be cortisol levels: they were consistently much lower in the fox that had been bred for reduced hostility. This breeding program required many generations, and went on for something like 60 years.

I agree with you that the range and repertoire of behavior in humans makes drawing connections between genes and personality very difficult. The same goes for intelligence, memory, disease response to adverse environmental factors, and so forth.

The beginning of time and space is as far as we can go, whether one posits a Big Bang, a Creatio Ex Nihilo, or a Steady State Universe that always existed.

The universe doesn't seem to be heading for a big crunch at this point. It seems more likely (at our current understanding) that everything is heading for the Big Freeze. The expanding universe will expand forever and keep getting colder and thinner.

Some people think the world will end in fire, others in ice:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. Robert Frost

Who the hell maintains the list of accredited public intellectuals, anyway? Does one qualify by self proclamation? I'm an intellectual, sort of, and kind of public about my opinions, so... gee, I should be listed. Call me -- I'm a public intellectual!

Just because one has a position from which one can pontificate doesn't make one infallibly insightful. The fact is "public intellectuals" are as likely to have as many vested interests as anyone else -- maybe more. People who publish books, teach, write columns for 'important' periodicals and newspapers, have a decent retirement account, own a nice house of some sort, travel a lot, appear on television talk shows, are minor celebrities, etc. have an essential stake in the status quo. Vested interests blind them. Vested interests do the same thing to everybody else, too. Someone who is flat out broke with no assets whatsoever and zero prospects comes pretty close to having no stake in the status quo. They can afford to see society clearly. It's just that people who are flat broke with no assets and no prospects just don't count, and nobody is going to put them on a talk show, god forbid. Fucking riff raff.

So it is that we have a lot of pontificators who seem to have a pipeline to the truth sitting there pontificating away. Now, pontificating doesn't prove that one is wrong. Sometimes the pontificators will be spot on. Like me, here. This is all 100% true. Trust me. I've studied this. People site me as a source.