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Tuesday, April 22, 2014 - 3:44pmSanction this postReply
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Excellent article, Ed!

 

Regarding non-biodegradable waste, I remember reading somewhere that in Japan they take the least bio-degradable waste, like plastic, and crush it into huge blocks that are sealed in cement so it will last nearly forever, and then used to create new 'land' to build on where before they had swamp or shallow seas.  Not a proper government function, but an intelligent use of that waste.

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I'm not sure that anyone who is the head of the Catholic church would ever be open to unfettered capitalism.  Just a guess, but I'd say that forcing people to adhere to top-down rule based upon altruism will always trump beating hunger.



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - 5:06amSanction this postReply
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Thanks Steve! As a kid, before government mandates, I'd make money collecting old newspapers to sell to what we would now call a recycling business. I also remember that when local governments in Maryland got into the business, giving everyone blue bins for cans and such, they made it known that it was illegal to "steal" from those bins at the curb waiting to be picked up. Why? Because there was a private market to recycle cans and street people especially would collect them to make extra money.

 

A fear that the Pope might not be a regular reader of Rebirth of Reason and so will miss this post. Pity. He could use the revelations contained within!

 

(Edited by Ed Hudgins on 4/23, 5:27am)



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - 7:25amSanction this postReply
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The Pope and other technological illiterates look upon modernity as so much incomprehensible and thus not to be trusted Competing Magic.

 

Never mind as a threat to their own brand of soap selling; they and theirs just don't have the first clue as to how any of modernity actually works.    As does not most of mankind.   And so, that innate source of mistrust can be used,  politically, to sell more accessbile competing brands of Magic.

 

I'm not sure more can be made out of utterances by the Pope and these other technological illiterates on the topic of technology.

 

The IPCC: 1500 of the world's leading Hollywood jewelers, florists, tarot card readers, crystal gazers, pet groomers, ... giving forth on Magic.

 

And the more they fail, the harder they double down and flail.

 

regards,

Fred



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - 7:33amSanction this postReply
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Have either of you two noticed a new political meme floating around out there?

 

'Science envy' has been morphing into "Say...what is so special about science?   So ask we science illiterates."

 

Oddly, often the same tribe arguing in the next breath for a restoration of 'authority' -- by technological illiterates, no doubt, over matters of technology.

 

If this keeps up, I predict we see a renaming of Political Science back to Political Religion/Magic.

 

The Spookers will have are having their day.

 

regards,

Fred



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - 8:07amSanction this postReply
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Fred,

 

I'm not sure I've noticed antagonism towards science as a new meme, but more like seeing trogdolites becoming increasingly emboldened over time.  My guess is that they will begin using some of the social sciences to "prove" that the rest of science is mostly baloney.  Even the scientifically illiterate are probably aware on some level of the way some in the political arena are using science - making it into part of their scam.  I can just hear their little wheels turning, "If they can just make up scientific stuff, then why not us.  This is a case of intellectual entitlement.  We are entitled to our beliefs and therefore have a right to be right just as much as those science people.  Time to do away with the growing intellectual inequality in our nation."

 

When science lets itself get used as part of the new social/political religion, then the next thing we should expect is some division into sects.  

 

If whole generations aren't taught to think critically then it isn't long before things begin to shred at the epistemological level.



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - 8:54amSanction this postReply
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Steve:

 

The egalitarianism of ideas certainly was no part of that selectively vaunted Athenian Democracy/pure democracy by The People, as it has become remarketed and repackaged in modern times, by the Fellow Travellers of The God That Failed and Who Wants To Fail Again.    It is 'new' only in the sense of long scale historical trends.   The march of modernity reaches a certain stage, generations find them floating miles above the earth (literally in many cases) with no concept at all of how they arrive at that state, and believe that any flailing in mid-air trajectory is possible.

 

They are absolutely right; all the way to impact from a great height.   How we rise is not how we fall.

 

The Universe imparts no requirement that we fall gracefully from great heights.    That's not the only way down.

 

regards,

Fred



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Monday, April 28, 2014 - 6:28amSanction this postReply
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35th anniversary of Three Mile Island(TMI) accident recently.    Continuing coverage on local state network, PCN, just went on forever.   Number of people who died in the aftermath of TMI as a result of accident: 0.   Meanwhile, an actual person, a 17 yr old HS girl, was brutally stabbed to death 80 or so miles to the east that very same day -- March 28, 1979, and is the only real remaining mystery in PA from that day.   TMI is well understood.

 

Looking back, alot of MBAs and 1979 era wide tie three piece suits managing the TMI optics.   Poorly.    

 

But interesting studies afterwards about community response; continuing loss of trust in authority, especially with regard to issues of use of complex technology.   Rightfully so, because in the end, these things are managed as group projects, subject to the unavoidable fact that on average, we are average, and that group effort is what is managing these massive technological effors.   Can't finesse our way around that, it is true.

 

We can have our licensing schemes and our boards and our bureacracies, and make them as arbitrarily large and powerful as we want, but in the end, no matter how large we make them, they are ultimately staffed by folks whose eye's glazed over in jr high algebra I, and are in no position to have a clue what it is they are regulating, or how to interpret the bullshit being fed to them by equally clueless business managers trying mostly to sqeeze a buck out of something they don't have the first clue about.

 

The regulators can only deal with the business managers, because they are of the same tribe in the Two Tribe Problem, and neither has any idea what the frings nerds are saying or doing at any given moment in time.    Take the slightest amount of effort to research what was going on at Morton-Thiokol in the runup to the 1986 Challenger disaster, and see the exact same tribal dynamic at work.

 

Our tribal mistrust is poorly aimed, but then, politically, how could it be anything but?

 

regards,

Fred



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