Stinko Lysenko.

How did they "jointly" father Donald Trump? — T Clark

How the hell would I know. I wasn't privy to the details, being only 4 months into my own pre-natal career. I just report the fake news. Somebody else will have to provide background. How did Mary remain virginal after giving birth to Jesus and his three brother James, Jude and Simon?

No. Santa Claus is definitely not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent.

Santa Claus only knows whether you are sleeping or awake, and whether you have bad or good; he can't tell whether the news if true or fake. His standards of naughty or nice are strictly bourgeois. He creates the impression of omnipresence by being in many places at the same time during one 24 hour period a year, but needs the magical assistance of 8 tiny reindeer who dilate time. His Red Obesity requires 364 days to recharge and he forces Chinese slaves to produce megatons of brightly colored plastic junk. So he can't be counted as omnipotent. He does seem to be fire-resistant, a necessary hold-over from the times when houses used open hearth heating systems, and seems to be coated with Dupont Teflon™, since soot and reindeer shit doesn't seem to stick to him.

So, he is a decidedly lesser and localized sky god. He had a tawdry affair with Mary Poppins and abused Peter Pan and Tiny Tim. He and Joseph Stalin jointly fathered Donald Trump during a drunken KGB orgy in Moscow--hence the Russian connection. Unfortunately for Donald, he didn't get any of the good genes.

Any other questions?

What specifically were the changes that freed your from your depression? — Hanover

It was actually two events that one would normally classify as very negative that brought about the necessary change. The first was getting fired. While the job had been right up my alley, I had never worked in a place where the group dynamics of the staff were as negative as these were. Firing was salvation, in this case. Because of the recession, I received a year of unemployment compensation (twice the usual 6 months) at the end of which it was obvious to me I wasn't going to go back into the workforce. The second event was my partner's long illness and death, then grieving. Sometime in 2011, the two decades long depression lifted.

I was the recipient of these changes, not the author. Looking back, I was the author of several decisions that kept my life in the same rut -- such as the kinds of work that I sought out. There were self-defeating behaviors and some delusional ideas about life that made things worse. Retirement, and living alone, mooted a lot of that. I don't say "corrected" because some of these delusions about life are still kicking -- like unrealistic expectations, erroneous ideas about work, economic organization, social dynamics, and so on.

Change is the solution, but I wasn't very successful in engineering the kinds of changes that would have led to better outcomes. There were times before I settled on "depression" as the problem that I seemed to be trapped inside a self-referential bubble where "reality" just didn't penetrate. Then there were times I was totally realistic and highly productive. I tried, but couldn't develop sufficient self-insight to avoid ending up in the ditch again.

So, I still recommend making "the right changes", whatever those might be. But if one is lost in the forest, it's going to be tough finding the right changes to make.

Anti-depressants might help one cope, but they are not a cure. The idea that antidepressants will cure depression is probably a dead end.

'There is no joy in the tavern as on the road thereto' — dog

As St. Catherine of Siena put it, "All the way to heaven is heaven."

I recently took a break from work for 2 weeks over the Christmas holidays, and I was restless because I didn't know what to do with so much free time. — Agustino

We'll take up the tragic cases of unimaginative workaholics in another thread

Intermittent positive reinforcement is the most effective method to encourage learning.

Bear in mind that when "discipling the child" we are not talking about beatings or harsh punishments.

using fear of retribution is damaging to children — Pseudonym

You were saying about pop psychology???

The child's brain is wired to make a connection between the limbic system, where fear is felt, and the pre-frontal cortex where we make decisions about right and wrong. "Fear" doesn't require harsh discipline, but enough punishment (which may be nothing more than disapproving expressions and gestures, or being sat in the corner for 5 minutes) for the child to feel that he has something to lose by behaving badly.

Haven't we been through all this several times already?

Which Satie piece? I like Satie. Gymnopédies

Do you want me to answer why we continue to live rather than commit suicide? — schopenhauer1

Yes.

obedience to God? — Pseudonym

God is actually quite useful. ALL children develop morals through the gentle fear of punishment that parents the world over, and throughout the ages, have instilled. Children fear the loss of love, and the learn to behave well to keep the love vibes happening to them (to quote the Beach Boys). God takes the place of the parents in the religions that have a sky-god father figure who sees all, hears all, knows all, and says very little.

People who worry about the sky god behave because this god knows all their secrets, their comings, goings, and various wicked acts if they had performed any.

The good behavior of believers is a small price for non-believers to pay.

executed by deletion

This is better. All knobs, no USB ports, no female phono plugs. Cloth over the speakers. Beautiful.

The RCA Skyscraper model 115.

Is that right considering the fact that we couldn't really help it? — bahman

Exactly. I didn't know the gun was loaded.

"The court knows no humour". — Akanthinos

That's why jokes should not be subject to rules or laws.

Of course Christianity did not invent compassion. Compassion is a most worthy thing, honored all over the world since time immemorial, more in the breach than in the observance. So every reminder helps.

Exactly.

The #me2 movement includes many people who acknowledge what the difference is between a wolf whistle and rape, It also includes "lumpers" who don't. Hence the accusations against Senator Franken and Garrison Keillor that they touched a woman inappropriately (on one woman's rump, on one woman's back). Keillor was disowned by his longtime employer, Minnesota Public Radio, and also the Washington Post for something not even remotely resembling an assault. Ditto for Franken.

Harvey Weinstein represents one end of the spectrum, Keillor the other end. They are a very long ways apart, but in many people's minds, since they were deemed to be on the same continuum, they are both guilty.

I once knew that 1+1=2, but I forgot. Therefore you have taught me a fact in arithmetic. Similarly, people have learned things at various times, and then forgotten them. Or a few people learned them, but not everybody. Some ancient Greeks learned a thing or two about democratic government, but what they knew didn't get passed around and remembered by everybody -- like the Romans, for example, or later Greeks.

Similarly, what our hunting and gathering forebears knew didn't get passed down along with their genes.

(I wonder if 'full of shit' has the same resonance outside the states.) — dog

During a period of international conflict having something to do with some guy named Napoleon, A Hapsburg minister referred to a French minister as "a sock full of shit". So, from that I take it that "full of shit" probably has resonance outside the states.

His assertion, initially, was that Christianity was responsible for teaching us things like equality and compassion for the less fortunate. The investigations of anthropologists have clearly shown this assertion to be false. — Pseudonym

Anthropologists have shown that Christianity doesn't teach compassion for the less fortunate? Anthropologists have shown that Christian teachings have nothing to with our conceptions of personal worth and equality? News to me.

Are you suggesting that hunter-gatherers taught us these things? How did they do that, considering their isolation for most societies around the world?

They contend that the #MeToo movement has led to a campaign of public accusations that have placed undeserving people in the same category as sex offenders without giving them a chance to defend themselves. “This expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner, or sending messages with sexual connotations to a woman whose feelings were not mutual,” they write. The letter, written in French was translated here by The New York Times.

#me2, and #Balancetonporc aren't the same as the anti-free-speech practitioners of political correctness, but they have something in common:

The all want a society where individuals will not be confronted by unwanted interest or opinions with which they disagree. A desire for a safe world appropriately means not being subjected to rape or being mauled in a locked room from which they can't escape. Opposing rape is right and proper. What's not so appropriate is to confuse the stolen kiss, the proposal in the form of a hand on the knee, or a wolf whistle with rape and sexual assault. It seems akin to demanding protection from the virgin-ear piercing utterance of a disapproved political opinion, or a slur of some sort, for which "safe spaces" need to be erected.

There is a quid pro quo here: we will not have a free and open society if ordinary sexual expressions, as well as disapproved political expressions, are verboten.

And what is it about women that they should never be whistled at or touched on the knee? What is it about the female personality that requires their person to be so inviolate? Women spend a considerable amount of time and money on making themselves sexually attractive in public (so do men), but then object when their carefully constructed attractiveness is not ignored. It's crazy, ladies. Neurotic.

We either take the bible as a whole or we pick each idea we like from it and ignore the ones we don't. If we do the latter then the bible need not be mentioned aside from a brief credit as to the origin of the idea, if we do the former then the atrocities it condones need to be accounted for by normal moral standards. — Pseudonym

I recommend that you keep the ideas I like, and skip the rest.

Certainly the behaviors described in the OT, especially during the conquest of the "promised land" by the Hebrews was brutal, which conquest generally was, in those days--and more recently, too. Yes, the approach was genocidal in intent, even if it wasn't genocidal in fact. And certainly, we shouldn't take the behavior of Israel in it's formative years (all BCE) as exceptional. Warfare and conquest was brutal pretty much across the board. I don't like it, but that's the way it was. Of course, we civilized moderns NEVER do anything wantonly brutal, ghastly, genocidal, cruel, murderous, etc. as we carry out 20th/21st century policy.

Humans are a bad lot, I tell you.

Have you not heard of Religion? — Pseudonym

I was referencing your response to Erik, and the quotes about hunter-gatherers, not the Bible. I don't totally disbelieve what the authors said about hunter-gatherers, but I am suspicious of anthropologists' observations and conclusions. For one thing, HG groups are small, and whatever it is about them doesn't translate very well to societies with even 10,000 members, let alone 320 million to over a billion members. The other thing is the idea that these groups are the same now as they were 12000 to 15000 years ago, and earlier. Doubtful. Some anthropologists seem to suggest that civilization killed the hunter gatherer star. If so, tough bounce.

As far as the Bible is concerned,

Either we take the bible to be a load of irrelevant nonsense (my preferred choice), or we examine it as a philosophical text. — Pseudonym

The Bible is neither a load of irrelevant nonsense nor is it a philosophical text. There may be "irrelevant nonsense" in the Bible, and there is some philosophical material. But the Bible is mostly a multi-purpose text that was accumulated, revised, and edited to suit various purposes at various times.

In other words, its a problematic book, OT and NT both.

Are we supposed to believe that all the stories you read in these books are true?

when we do reflect on why we live life each day, we tend to come up with a nice ideal: "I live life for the betterment of others", "I live life for the beauty of things", "I live life because it's my imperative to do so", etc., ad naseum. — Noble Dust

Whatever defense we offer for our drab wretched lives is invariably total bullshit, but the cover story is important. It is better if it sounds good. "I live to bring beauty and joy into the lives of others" is nauseating, but it sounds better than "If you can't take a big healthy crap every morning, you might as well be dead."

Or... maybe not.

has never made an effort to develop her mind and the consequence of that, it appears, is that she's like a lost and helpless child. — praxis

Sounds like the President of the United States. Wolff of Fire and Fury fame says Donald Trump doesn't read. It isn't clear whether he can read. He doesn't listen to people either. He watches televisions.

A dog will provide you with a reason to get out of bed every morning. It will get off the bed and stand beside you and whimper softly. Then whine louder. Then poke you with its nose. Then poke harder. Then bark once, loudly. Repeat. You WILL get up because its bladder is full and its stomach is empty, an intolerable situation. It will do this every day throughout its long life.

I didn't like that either, but it sort of looks like vintage legit.

And it's wrong to say we will pump every last drop out of the ground. At some point the energy required to get a barrel of oil out of the ground will exceed the energy contained in the barrel of oil, and that will be the end of the oil industry. That, however, may be some time off. But before then, the cost of pumping oil will gradually eliminate fields from production.

ART DECO, decidedly beautiful.

Beautiful steam engine


Beautiful radio


Beautiful table lamp

↪batman The question I have is: "How much of our mental structure (conscious, unconscious) was evolved and is present in other animals?" I am quite sure that we were not the first draft of consciousness, or sub-consciousness. I suspect many animals evolved features that are present in our minds, only to a lesser degree, and in many cases, a lot lesser degree.

So a dog's mind obviously has less capacity to think than we do, but people have observed the outcome of "dog thought". Dog thought isn't very elegant, as far as I can tell. A lot of what they think about seems to be how to get us to do things they want us to do. Or, how to circumvent limitations (like fences) that we have placed on them.

We didn't evolve from dogs, but we have common ancestors and a lot of animals display varying levels of mental activity, sometimes fairly complex. Not just dogs; think of parrots and crows; primates, of course. And other animals.

I don't have time just right now to read the whole thread, but I want to add this, in case it hasn't been raised.

The brain where consciousness and subconsciousness reside is a system. It does a lot of things, everything from triggering heart beats, breaths, putting you to sleep and waking you up, to imagining the plots of novels, and deciding what kind of canned tomatoes to buy. The various facilities of what we call "the mind" aren't discrete parts as much as they are the products of this "system".

We probably over-rate the conscious mind. I don't know what exactly consciousness is, but I am pretty sure it is supported by a much more extensive not-conscious part of the brain that not only does a lot of heavy lifting, but also, in a very real sense, runs the conscious mind. Since we can't access what is going on second by second in the subconscious, non-conscious 'mind', we think the conscious mind dominates. It is a subtle process to tease out what the non-conscious mind is doing.

You are your conscious and non-conscious mind. There isn't "something else" or "somebody else" between your ears: It's all you, all the time.

Why does that even require explaining, is my point? Isn't it intuitively obvious or am I missing something in their rationale? — Posty McPostface

Conservative climate change deniers are perfectly capable of understanding the economic impact of climate change. However, like most people, their heart is where their treasure is, and a lot of climate change deniers have a lot of treasure in the energy sector (that stands to lose if we decided to get real about climate change).

They can't just pivot away from coal, oil, and gas to solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power. Their asset values will fall if they don't defend fossil energy. To whom are you going to sell an old coal mine these days? Better to keep it going.

I have no sympathy with the prospect of energy stockholders losing money -- tough bounce, but they don't look at it that way.

Very aware of the controversy. There was a "sex panic" at the time. Some people (like prosecutors) were conjuring up scenes of wild abuse in day care facilities, for instance, or repressed memories that suggested child abuse of all sorts was endemic/epidemic, and so on. Lives were ruined.

There is, of course, no question that sex abuse does exist, and that sex abuse has existed in the past. The facticity of actual sex abuse is the raison d'être of rooting it out where it doesn't, hasn't existed. Collective hysteria is a co-factor, along with an obsessive focus on abuse.

One would expect the severity of abuse to vary, and thus the consequences to vary. One would also expect a good deal of individual variability in the way the child copes with, and is, or is not, affected by whatever abuse occurred.

So, yes, in this kind of atmosphere, people can be induced to cough up the sort of memories they are expected to have. With coaching, one can also come to believe that the memories one coughed up are true to the "facts". And this whole process can be harmful to the individual and the community.

It's tricky: Everyone's life includes horrid embarrassments, for instance. It might be better to cover these horrid embarrassments with something more palatable. On the other hand, there are elements in one's history that are better to be remembered clearly, and better that one deal with them (and not just abuse issues). For instance, IF one attended a really crappy public school, it could very well have impeded one's progress in life. Better to understand that, then placing all the blame on one's self for for not being a brilliant success. On the other hand, maybe one attended a bad public school, and was also lazy. One has to face one's past (stored up there in the memory banks) and try to arrive at the truth.

Yes, but the question remains that how does one address this insidiously 'common sense' talk about the economy professed by conservatives and classical economists in light of climate change? — Posty McPostface

1. Don't bother arguing with conservatives.

2. Put the hay down where the goats can get at it.

3. Tell the truth. If people don't believe it, then there is nothing that can be done.

• You and your children's futures really are at stake. Global warming and extensive pollution caused by fossil fuels are already here, and are big problems. But it's not too late to reduce severity.
  
• Oil companies do not care about your future. They never have, they never will.
  
• Oil companies put their own interests first. That always have, and they always will.
  
• Fight the oil and coal companies
  
• The best way to demand more efficient cars is to stop buying less efficient cars.
  
• Work on consuming less "stuff" that you don't really need. You'll be money ahead, and contribute to less energy waste.
  
• Individually you can do nothing. Joint with other people, join groups that already exist, or start groups that can make a louder noise than you can by yourself. There energy conservation battles to be fought in your neighborhood, your city, your county, your state, and in your country.
  
• Get acquainted with mass transit and use it whenever possible. Increasing ridership means more resources and better mass transit.
  
• Don't assume you will be dead before all this becomes a problem. If you are in your early 60s, for instance, there is a very good chance you will still be around when bigger hunks of shit are hitting the fan than what we've seen so far. It's up to this generation to decide how bad it will be for our children and grand children, let alone those who come after that.

The cost of a getting a barrel of oil out of the ground has gotten more expensive. Drilling through the ocean floor costs more because of the rent on the drilling rig, the extra and more expensive labor, the time and materials it takes, and the cost of greater risk. Fracking is more expensive than drilling into a shallow well and sucking up sweet crude. So, why do they do it?

Because the world supply of petroleum is slowly getting smaller, and the average price is rising. As it rises, more expensive methods of getting oil become affordable.

Then there is the externality business. The fossil fuel industry has made itself very profitable by externalizing everything from pollution from drilling, shipping, refining, to using the product -- whether it be coal, oil, or gas.

Why do regulators let them get away with it? Because the economic might of the fossil energy industries is huge, and we are all dependent on a steady supply. Most governments are simply unwilling to take on the energy business in a frontal assault.

In order to understand how this works, the average citizen has to pay some sustained attention to the news, and do a little background reading. The popular mass news media do not, by and large, present a lot of information about all this. They do talk about the price of gasoline going up and down, but they don't really explain much. PBS does, but their programs tend to be an hour long (or maybe 90 minutes) which is a long time to pay attention. There are a few magazines that often do a good job of explaining this in ordinary language, but one has to go look for such magazines

Another factor is that most people (more or less correctly) do not see what difference they can make in the whole problem. A lot of people have almost no choice but to continue using energy (cars, gasoline, oil products, natural gas, electricity generated from coal, etc.) the way they always have. I can do without a car because I can't drive anyway and located myself where there is pretty good mass transit. I also use a bicycle. Millions and millions of people can't choose what I did because they don't live near mass transit, and they can't afford to move, and even if they did, it's tough raising children and doing all the things a family wants to do without a car, plus getting to work, getting to the day care center with young children, etc. etc. etc.

Still, things are changing.

Some states are on schedule to eventually achieve their long term goals of supplying their citizens with renewable energy. States like Minnesota have no coal, no oil, and no hydro electric resources worth mentioning. We do, however, have wind and sun. Wind generation is turning out to be a much better bet than solar for large scale electrical supply.

Unfortunately, a lot of the oil we use in the northern tier of states (and we use as much per capita as any body else does) comes from one of the dirtiest of all petroleum sources -- the oil sands of Alberta.

I don't know what will happen. I do know that Nature bats last, and we may end up being totally screwed.

Of course, and I got the metaphor. Sometimes I can't resist...

When ropes are made out of continuously extruded fibers of nylon the threads or fibers could be as long as the rope.

Your statement is true of long ropes made out of hemp fibers, for instance, or linen, cotton, silk, etc.

do we know the reason God planted the Tree in the garden — Abdul

In his short book, On Not Leaving It to the Snake, Harvey Cox takes the view that Adam and Eve were meant to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were meant to take responsibility for the choice to eat it, however. Instead, they allowed a snake to seduce them into eating the fruit.

The story is about claiming important knowledge, and making that claim honestly and taking personal responsibility for it.

Had Adam and Eve had been more responsible, "had more guts", they would have leapt over the fence, eaten the fruit and would have then gone looking for God to tell him about it, rather than hiding in the bushes.

I have been inclined toward human service work, and that's mostly what I've done. Once in a while it was fulfilling; most of the time, not too much. I gave of myself to various causes, and that part was good. I had a lot of sex, loved several men, there was lots of sturm and drang, and here we are in retirement, a widower and a bachelor again, and likely to stay that way.

Now my goal in life is to make it to the grave as gracefully as possible. I spend a lot of my time on filling in the holes of my now long passed undergraduate education. This task is very satisfying. For instance, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year-History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin has tied together a number of loose ends from three biology and geology classes in which I wasn't paying that much attention. The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery By Wendy Moore is a biography about John Hunter, a pioneering surgeon and anatomist in the 18th century. Knife Man filled in several small holes. So did three books by neurosurgeons. There are many holes left to be filled.

To what end is all this study and reading? No end really, other than to learn. It won't help me get a job (not at this point) and it most likely will not get me into heaven or keep me out of hell, or even make the hereafter a slightly less boring eternity. I have an unknown amount of time to fill, and learning is a pleasant way to fill it.

Futile? No more futile now than it was when I begin college in 1964. Had I learned as much back then as I have since learned, I could have been a college professor, one of the cushier jobs on the planet. But if I had done that, then I would have had to put up with decades of POMO, and that would have been at least as bad as dealing with the fakery and futility of the helping professions.

*credit to madmikesamerica for the info. — The scientific philosopher

A reading of the Bible yourself will reveal even more appalling stuff, and some very pleasing passages as well.

There are various threads running through the OT: there are the prophetic threads, the holiness threads, the historical threads, the liturgical threads, and so on. Warfare in Biblical times and places was brutal, and sometimes the intent was genocidal: kill the women, children, and men, making sure that nobody survives. The holiness threads include some fairly brutal guidance for people who behave contrary to the local norms.

So, as has been noted elsewhere, the Bible is basically adult reading material, and one has to parse out the brutal from the pacifistic passages, like Isaiah 52:7,

How lovely on the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news, Who announces peace And brings good news of happiness, Who announces salvation, And says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

We will pass over in silence the fact that sometimes "feet" were a euphemism for "penis". For instance, in one passage, there is reference to someone "covering their feet" and another someone shaved their feet. Probably not their feet, more likely their dick. Or, in a passage someone touches his father's thigh and swears loyalty. I bet it wasn't his "thigh" that he swore on.

But never mind that.

One has to remember that ancient Israel was founded in the middle of a cross roads between various competing power blocks, and had to defend itself, and even then didn't succeed a good share of the time.

It is possible to pull several quite different narratives out of the Bible for one's own use.