$ jlc (10,306)

"We then use the electric battery in an area where there is a large population stress" I think that this is a valid use of the first person plural, as it does not denote that plurality was necessary for an achievement but does indicate that a single individual driving a single electric car would have no overall affect on a city like Los Angeles, but that 5 million people driving electric cars would alter the city's environment.

That being said, there are times when one must use 'we' in reference to an achievement. Wm and I founded a company: We founded a company. "We" can be simply a pronoun; its not always a political statement.

Jan, very much "I"

This is an excellent example of a study that is absolutely accurate but completely misleading. It is accurate in the amount of pollutants produced by the production of an electric vehicle, but it totally ignores that the crucial datum of 'how this effects the environment' is capable of being organized differently - to a different functional outcome.

Chernobyl has amply demonstrated that the greatest ecological pressure to a given area is the presence of a human population, not whether the environment itself is toxic. Wild foxes, bears, Przewalski horses - all of the wild animals have returned to the empty lands around Chernobyl, and are flourishing there.

One of the unremarked but integral characteristics of a gasoline engine is that it produces pollutants in the same region as where it is driven. Since the greatest concentration of gasoline engines occurs where there is the greatest concentration of people, there are two huge ecological pressures applied to the same area.

An electric engine has the capability of having its pollution phase separate from its use phase. We can put the production facility for electric batteries in a low-population area: we will be introducing a toxic environmental stress (a la Chernobyl) but it will be in the absence of a large population stress. We then use the electric battery in an area where there is a large population stress - but not a toxic stress. Both of these environments will be in, or nearer to, the normal elasticity for which the environment can compensate. We would have cleaner and less noisy cities and wilderness areas where the plants and animals 'only' have the toxic stressor of the production itself.

Of course, this line of reasoning is not acceptable to people who use the Green label. These people want to pretend that there is no toxic output from battery production; perhaps they think that if it takes place in China it 'does not count' or something.

Jan

What are the "vast differences in IQ scores" to which you allude? My most recent reading indicates that the differences exist, but that they are relatively small.

Jan

Of course organic molecules from the flower would alter the structure of water. It may be that the article means to indicate that the water did not contain any such molecules, but the description of the experiment did not make that clear.

This sounds closer to mysticism than to science. At this point, I am not impressed. Perhaps a more detailed report would knock my socks off, but as of right now they are still firmly on my feet.

Jan

This is the problem: "Everywhere I read, everywhere I look, every person I look up to, says Objectivism is greedy, that its wrong,..."

Many people will apply a label to a philosophy, then declare that philosophy is evil. They offer no substantiation, no rationale - just their naked declarations that "Objectivism = greedy" and "greedy = evil" therefore "Objectivism = evil.

Why do you believe them? Why does this cause you stress? It is no different than children calling, "Nyah, nyah, nyah." in a schoolyard. This may matter to another child, but we are not children. We may choose to require proof and logic and not just name calling.

Jan, a true woman of reason
(and I'll smash anyone who says I'm not)

I understand.

"A typical diversity program begins with a questionnaire of true/false statements “designed to help you increase your awareness of diversity and inclusion.” They include, for example, “Diversity training is a matter of compliance, and I’m not biased.” By “correctly” answering these “false”, you have voluntarily chosen to participate because you have self-identified as a flawed individual in need of wise counsel. If you answer “true”, you cannot get credit for completing the module. Can you think of a better way to insult the integrity of your entire work force?"

Actually, the above excerpt is one of the more evil things I have read recently.

Jan

They mis-characterize the women in the prison: at least some of them are there for violent crime. Thus it seems to me that being in a women's prison would be the perfect place for the transwoman to lose her penis. Probably with no need for anesthetic.

Jan

I think that there is a real answer and that, like most things, the answer is partially genetic and partially environmental and - again like most things - the degree to which each individual follows authority falls on a Bell curve.

datum: Social Conformity has a genetic component (per Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley)

datum: Foraging societies are not hierarchical; all known agricultural societies are very hierarchical, tech societies are less hierarchical than agricultural but more than foraging. (per Ian Morris)

datum: It only takes about 5,000 to evolve a new gene. (many)

When you put that together, you have some outside parameters set by society - and whomever fills those parameters better will have more genetic descendants. Up until about 1900, the Earth was basically agricultural, so people who did well in a structured society flourished.

The US is a genetic 'trash heap' for malcontents from Europe, so we have more of the outliers here, and - as society has gone past farming into tech - we have adapted to technology quickly.

Jan

One of the two GSD's I now have, I got off craigslist because I had tracked down (by dint of staking out a stranger's house in Sylmar) the owner of the brother of my dog. I bought a fertile bitch so that I could at least have nephew-pups, but I could not convince the owner to take his 13 year old (note age, Thoritsu) dog to the repro vet to have a sperm donation. His dog died suddenly. My bitch came into season...the next day!

If your wife is dragging her feet, then take your excellent dog to the nearest reproductive vet Today and get a sperm donation frozen. Do not make all of the mistakes I have made!

Jan, likes to be emulate for the good stuff only

It is so hard. I think that talking to her helps.

Jan

Thank you. I wrote him a poem every month for 11 months - still working on the 12th month poem. Here is the one I wrote last April.

Silver on the Hill

On the hillside where you used to run,
The wind bends silver seedheads in the sun,
Rippling with every breathy motion,
Like waves across a green and silver ocean.

I can almost see you running, after rain:
A dark path showing passage through the grain.
But now that path is empty; grass is still.
You’re on the other side of that green hill.

I hope it’s Spring there, on the other side -
Wide sunlit fields like those we used to ride,
No Stygian caves where midnight rivers flow,
Run forward, limned in love, where’er you go.

Coda:
Summer’s here; the grass is turning brown,
The squirrels are fat and lazy in their ground.
I barely see your path, although I strive,
You ran off and left me … still alive.

Janet L. Chennault
20-24 April 2018

I made the mistake of not breeding Lucifer. Please be wiser than I was.

Jan

I thought I might go the way of Dobrien and not get any more dogs when Lucifer died...but my mind over-ruled my sore heart: I actually function better when I have dogs swirling around me, so I got more.

My two two-year-old rescue GSD's are sleeping on the rug in my office as I type this. They are not Lucifer, but they are good companions. Like you - I need someone to sop up the extra love I generate, and who can give true and loyal companionship in exchange.

Jan

Thank you, Chick Ivie. It has been over a year since Lucifer died: I still dream; I still converse; I still cry.

Jan

I lost the most wonderful dog in the world 15 months ago and I miss him every day. He was the joy of my heart. You are lucky to have had such a fine dog for 11 years - and she was fortunate to have you.

Here is a poem I wrote about a friend's dog that died (it is shorter than the ones I wrote about Lucifer, so I will not unduly burden you with poetry).

That bright spark
Has fallen from the sky:
The universe has lost some of its glow.
And we who walk this world, we all know,
This damned, unplanned, good-bye
Leaves us dark.


Jan

The homogenicity of China served it ill in terms of encouraging technical progress; the disparate fractions of Europe gave innovators their choice of environments in which to produce their work. Europe won and the world now marches to the tune of Europe and its offspring colonies.

Like Blarman, I would like to see an increased disparity between the States of the US. I think that CA should be able to choose a totally bonkers leftest enviro-nazi social system if the people who live there want that society.

This has two downsides: (a) the car manufacturers either build to CA standards or have a 'CA packet' that is added to cars sold in that state, (b) I live in CA and may need to depart.

Jan

According to Pinker, one of the inherited tendencies seems to be "Conformance to Social Expectations". These people would probably be Conservatives if it were 'in style' to be conservatives and Libertarians if it were 'fashionable' to be that.

If you want to change your relatives, then change social expectations. Not only will they probably switch, but they will also probably claim that 'this is what they thought all along'. Because the did: what they thought is what Society expected.

Jan

Profit sharing. Stock. Did not matter a whit to any of them. Not one more erg of energy; not one more whit of caring. It just gave the employees who left the company a severance benefit and those people who stayed with the company an occasional magic bonus.

These employees are brilliant and behave well - graciously and ethically - in their personal lives but they have no ambition. They would be just as happy in a socialism; probably happier. They would be glad to trade freedom for security. But they would save your baby from a burning house, or give you back a million dollars you had put with them for safekeeping (and not have stolen a cent).

Needless to say, we have stopped doing both stock and profit sharing. We take care of them; they take care of us. That is working.

Jan

We tried it. SOOO did not work!

Jan

Yep. And some people think that the funneling of the tsunami along the coast of Turkey produced a wave that was 60' high.

There were probably other factors, however, in the fall of Crete. They had recovered from some devastating earthquakes between the pre-palatial and the palatial periods a few hundred years earlier, and then gone on to become the local superpower.

Nonetheless, it is interesting to contemplate what the world might be like if Crete had not fallen. I have heard someone suggest that if Minoan civilization had persisted, the Jesus might have delivered his sermons, televised...from the Moon.

Jan

The eruption of Thera, in about 1625 BC, probably involved the the ocean waters flowing into the caldera through fissures. This caused a chunk of subterranean/sub-oceanic material to essentially vaporize: it is estimated to have been between 14 cu mi - 24 cu mi of material.

Jan

Girls group changing too is fine - they should. Has anyone asked them to? Considering that there seems to be a downward trend in the number of people who want to do anything physical, my guess that a single "Scouts" group would probably suffice.

Jan

Huh?!!!

"The test should be: if you can't stand and piss on a tree trunk, you can't be a Boy Scout"

As I have pointed out before, the arguments presented here in the Gulch against girls in the Scouts are reminiscent of the same hackneyed arguments that were rolled out against women in professions, education, military, firefighting, etc

Argument against coeducation (https://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey...)
“What is at the heart of the continuing social decline? What has spawned such high levels of contraception, divorce, child abuse, promiscuity, abortion, homosexual behavior, substance abuse, violent crime, pornography and a general degradation in what refers to the arts? … The secularist ideology of the Enlightenment, with its concepts of the inevitability of progress, the goodness of human nature in the primitive state, equality of condition as the goal of morality, etc., and its philosophical offspring in the works of Freud, Marx, Darwin, and Mill, has been influential in shaping the moral behavior of society. And, quite simply, men no longer seek and obey the natural law. The natural law, among many other postulates, leads the rational man to acknowledge the radical differences that exist between men and women and to take those differences into account in the functioning of society.”

“… I believe that coeducation has been and continues to be a serious mistake because it generally ignores the radical differences between men and women in their biology, physiology, psychology, and in their proper roles in contemporary society and the family. I believe that these differences are good, that they are part of God's plan for the human race, and that by tampering with them over the course of decades we have brought the present state of society upon ourselves.”

Argument against women physicians http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowih...
“As a male physician wrote in 1867, “The opposition of medical men (to woman doctors) arises because this movement outrages all their enlightened estimate of what a woman should be. It shocks their refined appreciation of woman to see her follow a profession with repulsive details at every step.” “

I do not want to be part of a plan where I am taught how to push cloves into a lemon whilst boys are taught how to make a campfire. Equal but separate means unequal.

Jan

Thank you, Blarman.

Yes, the FDA should show the public their results and not treat us like Stupid Little People. No, glycophosphates are not particularly toxic. Yes, you should always was your produce.

from Matt Ridley's site:

"Yet almost everybody agrees that glyphosate is safe: the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organisation, our government. Even at absurdly high concentrations, lab tests show it is only one-tenth as carcinogenic as coffee – and you ingest coffee, which you don’t roundup.

Just one rogue study, driven by an environmental activist working for a body called the International Agency for Research on Cancer, disagreed, but on the basis of cherry-picked data and elementary errors of interpretation. Yet these days, it’s not the evidence but the headline, or the tweet, that counts. By the time the rogue study’s flaws were known, activists had got to politicians."

Ironically, Monstanto, which invented glyphosate, may not mind much if roundup is banned. It is off-patent, so not very profitable. This may explain why the company has been curiously absent from the debate."

Jan