jlc

I would like to live in a society where hatred of producers was considered destructive.

Jan

There are going to have to be tremendous changes made if the book is going to turn into a viable script. Saying, "Don't change anything." is the same as saying, "Don't make the series." I will gladly settle for, "Don't change the message."

I will be delighted to participate in the conversation.

Jan

Life is an incredibly interesting canvass, David, to which many people bring boring palettes. There are so many things ahead of us, if we can only shake loose from the losers and fly on ahead.

Let's meet to go wing-gliding on Io in another 40 years. Wanderers: http://io9.com/the-best-science-ficti...

Jan

Sure. Glad you cleared that up.

Now back to your real topic: There was some whodunit that I watched when I was a kid where the punchline was that an accused male would rather have been sentenced to prison for rape than be found innocent because he did not want people to find out that he "was not a man" - ie could not perform sexually. The response by the hero was, "You have no idea what 'man' means!"

I have a lot of quibbles about the neat (strong; adventurous) part of gender roles being traditionally assigned to the male, but I have no problems with the males having those attributes ( I just want females to have adventurous and strong roles too). So I agree that male does not = man.

Jan

I think that would be cool. I have always envied the blue people (real, not rock group). It would be neat to be able to decide to be 'blue' for a few years, just as an aesthetic choice (might be detrimental to my other vigorous hobbies, though, since O2 utilization is poorer - sigh).

Probably we would use chimp or orang for improved athletic skills, though. They would be better suited to our existing physiques.

More seriously: regeneration. We actually have the gene that allows regeneration of body parts, we have just lost the mechanism that can turn it on

Jan

You have a way with words, and with The Pithy Phrase. Thank you for letting us read this.

I am amused (but don't know if I am supposed to be...) at the play on "CCP" for a rhyme when it is actually pronounced "SSR". Was this deliberate?

Jan

It is just that your post is factually incorrect:

XY = male
XX = female

I did not know if the inaccuracy was due to a typo or because you actually thought the reverse to be true, and I wanted to drop you a clue rather than make a big deal of it. Please see Wiki 'Sexual determination in humans': " Females have two X chromosomes, and males have a Y chromosome and an X chromosome. ".

Jan

Firstly, there is a difference between genetic sex and displayed gender, and this is not necessarily a matter of 'choice'. Any woman who has never conceived a child could be genetically male - and she would never even know it. I have personally known of 3 such women (two of whom were not told the truth by their doctors). So the first thing to do is discard that there is a 'wrongness' about not having your genetics agree with your dress code.

Second, there is approx one in every 1,666 births are 'not XX or XY', so genetic sexual abnormalities happen relatively frequently. These people are all around you, and you do not even know it (and they may not either).

Thirdly, MYOB. This is the decision of the individual, not of the society. If someone wants to portray themselves as a particular gender - or as no particular gender, it is a bit out of line for a group of proponents of individual freedom insist that everyone else conform to their standards. Most people are genetically male or female and will naturally identify their gender with their genes. But if they don't, it is THEIR choice.

Lastly, I think there will come a day when you can change your genetic gender. This may happen within our lifetimes. So I think that gender may eventually be in the class of 'dye your hair red today'. It really does not matter if someone is intergender any more than if they dye their hair. (If they are prickly about it, it is because they are being a jerk as a person, not because they are intergender - anyone can be a jerk.)

Jan, XX

Incorrect.

Jan

I did not know that backstory. Thanks ewv.

"What good would it do to give money for something no one wants to teach..." Well, were I rich enough to be able to endow some obscure college with a well-funded Chair for Fungal Phages, you would probably get researchers who were interested in that esoteric topic applying from all over the world to occupy it. This would result in undergrad students who knew more about fungal phages than profs in other colleges knew, and they would pick up good jobs in Big Pharma when they graduated. Then you would get a grad school program...etc. The obscure college might become renown for its innovative studies in fungal phages.

I don't know how it works in philosophy, but in science there is definitely a "build and they will come" entry point to success. If a failing college got Koch funding and made a really good set of Ayn Rand courses...Do you think it would it follow the fungal phage progression?

Jan

The article seemed to me to be saying that the colleges are desperate for funding and that pro-capitalist sources of funds were insisting their philosophies be represented in the curriculum. The solution is logical: the colleges that do not want these funds can refuse them; if they close, so be it. If a college wants the funds, then they can openly accept them; if the flourish, fine and good.

The removal of public funding is a step in the right direction...successful alumni may well be capitalists and the colleges might have to get used to this. The article indicated that the donations were covert: If the funds were covertly attached to a requirement then that was wrong and should not be done. But if I were to make a donation specifically for a Chair in fungal phages, I would expect that this would be done in return for my money - and that not only would this not be wrong, but my name would be displayed on a wall somewhere as a donor. The fact that the University had not had a prior desire for a Fungal Phage Department is not a consideration; now they have one.

Jan
sl rewording

I will note that with the second and third parties being Socialist and Communist respectively, anyone who was opposed to communal mindset philosophy would have voted for Nazi's. (I am generally of the 'vote for the lesser evil' camp but I admit that there is another side to that decision.)

Jan

gaigal has a very good and serious answer. On a somewhat lighter note, I will mention that there was a word in use in Elizabethan English, "dateless" . Its technical meaning was simply 'a document that did not have a date'. Its actual meaning was "worthless" or "deranged". A document that did not have a date was legally worthless.

Jan, odd but not dateless

I agree. You have to read and experience widely in order to understand widely.

Jan

I agree with DrZ, not allowing dissent is what 'climate change' is all about.

Please see liberal vegan switch: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/16...

Jan

Because I lament the decline of personal freedoms in the US, I periodically look for countries that have a higher degree of personal freedom. I do not find them; I would like to. Can you point out some that you think qualify?

Jan

AHA! khallling found the post for me. Now I can conclude my comments with a short quote from rbuck's post: "On one side of the argument we want to believes that all people are intrinsically good, want to work, and if only given the chance will contribute in a positive way to society, but are not responsible enough to be trusted with a gun..."

This is actually something that I think I might discuss with some of my liberal friends, just to see if they contradict themselves. (I suspect that most of them are pro-gun, but it is a question I can ask.)

Jan

rbuck - I could not find your post again (closed tab accidentally), so I have responded to you as an independent post.

Jan

Yes. Thank you. I can find it in your link, but not in this one.

This is an interesting topic - thank you for starting it. Discussions like these compel me to clarify mine own thinking on subjects that do not often come up in general conversation.

Jan

This is puzzling and perhaps someone can help me figure out what happened. I read an interesting post by someone I did not recognize "rbuck[something]". While I was drafting a response (in Word) I accidentally closed the tab. Now I cannot find the post of rbuck.

Below is my partial answer:

Good discussion, rbuck. I have some comments.

First paragraph, "...own or possess something...". This is (to me) the hinge point. I think that if 'something' is a gun, the definition of who should be able to own it is “everyone” and then some exclusionary criteria applied: insane, felon, baby, etc. If the ‘something’ is a WMD, then I think the definition of ‘someone’ is “very few people” and the criteria are inclusionary (and level for all entities): possesses a Level 4 lab, has degree in nuclear physics, etc.

Second paragraph, “…[drugs are] rarely used as a weapon…”. I would restate this more as ‘rarely does damage to anyone other than the individual using it’. I agree with the points you make, but think that it is important to not allow future interpreters of the law to say that self-inflicted damage constitutes use as a weapon.

Third paragraph. As many people have noted, the disparity between weapons the people have and weapons the State has is a lot different now than in the 18th century, and our modern interpretations need to take that into account. However, since WWI, people have considered themselves patriots of their land and I think that the ability for a citizen army to keep their own people subdued is questionable, however large the discrepancy of armament. It is the willingness of civilians to fight back that is the key, and the possession of arms may be key to that willingness. I have seen video of people standing down armed military and tanks (both Russian) with their bare hands, but I think that raises the bar pretty high.

(there was more to rbuck's post, but this is as far as I got)

Jan

I think that we are all aware of the incremental creep of labeling and re-framing that is going on. I find this quite scary, since it has worked quite well in the past, and I think that the advent of social media has made Naming more rapid and fluid than in previous years.

Jan

Thank you, Dino.

Jan, smiling

Dr Z -

Yes, and in addition to avoiding putting data on cloud services and trigger statements on social media, please avoid listing the contents of your gun safe in the Gulch or other sympathetic pro-gun sites.

I do not have this to worry about, but I wince every time the discussion turns in this direction in the Gulch. We may not be able to stop the totalitarian socialist ball from rolling up our free society, but we can at least not be the first ones nabbed - and therefore maybe have time for some options.

Jan

No. Need to do so. Will finish series I am currently re-rereading, then I have several movies as assignments to watch for film ideas.

Jan

Jan

A lot to think about here.

"Don't be a dick" rules. In the medieval martial sport that I participate in, we have such a rule ("Combatants shall behave in a knightly and chivalrous manner..."). In any instance when there has been misbehavior on the field of combat, this rule is brought up...and virtually never enforced. It does not provide a hard standard by which one can say, "You did wrong!" So while I like the idea of a 'dont be a dick' rule, my experience with a self-selecting set of people is that this type of rule does not work.

I agree that Evil people will do evil things, even if all they have is a set of toenail clippers. But when I think of protecting myself against Y. pestis, I don't think of Evil. I think of one of my ex-employee's, "C". "C" is a very intelligent young man and he is entirely good- hearted. He also has the organization of a colony of sea sponges and the attention span of a squirrel. He would be exactly the type of person who would be willing to risk himself experimenting with Plague bacteria to try to discover a better vaccine...and who would then leave the window open. "C" is good, not evil. He also would be a danger to me. Since he is intelligent, if he had a Level 4 facility, he would have a set of SOP's he had to go through (and there would be no windows) and I would be safer...and we might get that vaccine.

Jan