In other news...

[Old Man]

Having ridden the trains in Tokyo, I can say that everything claimed about their punctuality is 100% true.  Admittedly that was thirteen years ago, and I never experienced the pushers, but I recently read that the train company there issued a formal apology when one of their trains was 20 seconds late. 

 

Even the buses in Kyoto were that punctual, and they were operating on surface streets in traffic. Inconceivable. 

 

If only the Japanese could run nuclear reactors with the same precision and attention to detail. 

[Christopher]

27 minutes ago, Old Man said:

If only the Japanese could run nuclear reactors with the same precision and attention to detail. 

It was not poor timing that resulted in Fukushima. It was poor planning for natural Disasters.

[Tech priest support]

3 hours ago, Christopher said:

Drug Tests in my country are relatively rare. I know we had one as part of the Draft Programm, back when we still had a draft.

Everything more must be in the Job Contract. And even then the results transmitted are stricly tied to "job relevant" and are otherwise under full patient/doctor confidentiality.

Somehow we have less of a Drog Problem then the US.

 

The Anti LGBT people can be really wierd. The most insane thing I heard was people actually fearing "Marriage with Toasters" and other Inanimate Objects would become legal.

Wich is nothing but stupid, because Toasters were never even eligible for Marriage (natural Person and not already married). And nothing in changing "1 man + 1 women" to "2 eligible people" would change that.

 

Alcohol makes people act insane. One reason I do not drink.
The other is that it takes bitter and makes me sleepy.

 

Saddam was not deposed by the people. But by the US Troops under Bush Jr. Very different case.

 

That is just one of the Kerfluffles created by a Republican President, that Democrat (Obama) had to fix. And then people blame Obama on how he fixed it.

 

A friend of mine was actually in Japan a few times and the timining for trains is insanely precise. So precise they hire people (called Pushers) to make sure the doors can close on time.

And from that point of view 20 seconds to early is actually worse then 20 seconds too late. Because it means people did not get the train due to the extremely tight shedule.

 

This article seems relativey well written. But the proposed links and embedded video seem very onesided indeed.

God I can't believe people in Japan actually tolerate this....

[death tribble]

You haven't seen the London Underground during rush hour or Oxford Circus at Christmas. I can well believe it.

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Christopher said:

It was not poor timing that resulted in Fukushima. It was poor planning for natural Disasters.

 

TEPCO knew the Fukushima seawall was too low and that its backup generators were vulnerable to flooding years, if not decades, prior to the tsunami. In a country with a long history of earthquakes and tsunamis. 

[gewing]

On 11/16/2017 at 9:51 AM, Sociotard said:

I wish Markdoc was still here. not sure how far off this article is.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453748/research-replication-crisis-growing-problem

In Medicine, the Science Has Stopped Working
 

Well I would want to at least a second maybe a third opinion, because one little thing I caught in it was the statement that after using antibiotics to combat diseases for centuries... But we've only had them since the World War II era. Maybe I'm just too picky

[Tech priest support]

I really thought the Japanese were smarter than that. Seriously the Japanese build artificial islands off shore but they didn't built an elevation to put their nuke plant on? Yeah, a couple months with heavy movers, several hundred thousands of stone and dirt, built an artificial plateau like 30' (or 10 meters if you're a metzi)  and this would have been a non issue.

 

Or have massive portable diesel generators and heavy lift skycranes to deploy them, lift the generators to Fukushima, deploy them, hookmtyem to the coolant systems and you're good.

 

Yeah yeah I know the "hindisght's always 20/20” line but dammit if I can think of this they shold have too.

 

[Tech priest support]

6 minutes ago, gewing said:

Well I would want to at least a second maybe a third opinion, because one little thing I caught in it was the statement that after using antibiotics to combat diseases for centuries... But we've only had them since the World War II era. Maybe I'm just too picky

Well, people have used natural antibiotics for a long long time without knowing why or how they worked. Ancient Egyptians knew that putting honey on a wound helped prevent infection. Nostodamus used garlic based concoctions tonight the black plague. Honey and garlic are natural antibiotics. 

 

True actual, intentionally made antibiotics are relatively recent, but people were using natural antibiotics thousands of years ago without  even knowing about germs 

[Christopher]

11 minutes ago, gewing said:

Well I would want to at least a second maybe a third opinion, because one little thing I caught in it was the statement that after using antibiotics to combat diseases for centuries... But we've only had them since the World War II era. Maybe I'm just too picky

Ancient Greeks and Egypts already used first froms of Penicilin. Eating plants and seeing if it helps was how we developed the first Medical Treatments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin

 

History is full of cases where we found what helps, but did not know how or why it helped and then forgot it:

We have encountered Scurvy - and it's treatment - multiple times across history, only to forget it again.

But we only discovered Vitamin C (the cause/solution) 1912. And we never really had the technology to isolate it before then.

 

Then acient scientific Method was heavier on the "Trial and Error" side. But then again error usually meant "just what happened if you tried nothing".

It is kind of like doing Clinical tests for Malaria Vaccines in Afrika: The process is accelerated, because it is literally better then nothing.

 

2 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

God I can't believe people in Japan actually tolerate this....

"You can say what you want about [Insert deposed absolute ruler name], but at least the Trains came on time."

You need to get from A to B. Traffic and walkways are even worse. So that is the lesser of two evils.

Even I personally started to realise one thing about the train waiting for late people: It means I get home later. It helps me get over missing a train "because it would not wait longer".

[Tech priest support]

Maybe the endemic overcrowding and anthill like existence of people in Japanese cities might be part of why they are now suffering a negative population growth.

 

[Ternaugh]

Tokyo's population density is 6,158 persons per square kilometer.

Manhattan's population density is 27,826 persons per square kilometer, and New York City's population density as a whole is 10,947 persons per square kilometer.

 

Japan's population as a whole is an aging population. For various reasons, there isn't a whole lot of immigration, and (generally), a well-educated population tends to delay having children until later in life. That typically means fewer children, as well. By comparison, removing future immigration in the US would slow our population growth considerably and start to skew the median age upwards, which is a trend in most EU countries, as well.

[Christopher]

1 hour ago, Tech priest support said:

Maybe the endemic overcrowding and anthill like existence of people in Japanese cities might be part of why they are now suffering a negative population growth.

 

 

1 hour ago, Ternaugh said:

Tokyo's population density is 6,158 persons per square kilometer.

Manhattan's population density is 27,826 persons per square kilometer, and New York City's population density as a whole is 10,947 persons per square kilometer.

 

Japan's population as a whole is an aging population. For various reasons, there isn't a whole lot of immigration, and (generally), a well-educated population tends to delay having children until later in life. That typically means fewer children, as well. By comparison, removing future immigration in the US would slow our population growth considerably and start to skew the median age upwards, which is a trend in most EU countries, as well.

Sub replacement fertility seems to be a simple result of increased life expectancy/development. It is a natural development of developed societies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

 

I think the bulk of Chinas "one Child Policy" was about getting the social structures of a modern society forced onto people that had thus far lived a rural life. People could effectively move from a 10th century village to a 20th century city.

Everyone reproduced a lot more in the 10th century. Incomparably much, by modern standarts. And they could not afford such reproduction rates in cities as well. Now the city culture is properly "primed" for small families and newcommers will automatically adapt.

There are two things Autocracies are really good at: Forcing a lot of socio-economic change in a short time (the rulers lifetime). And providing stability in changing times (wich usually results in the country falling back compared to the world). China had literal milennia of the later, until the Opium war forced them into the former.

[Badger]

4 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

God I can't believe people in Japan actually tolerate this....

 

I went into a near claustrophobic freakout when going to Wal-Mart at the wrong time of season.  I can see myself losing and throwing fist, feets, and no telling what else, in a wild random and futile effort to fight my way out of that.

 

I don't deal well with crowds,  which makes extra glad I live in a rural community. 

[Badger]

13 minutes ago, Christopher said:

 

Sub replacement fertility seems to be a simple result of increased life expectancy/development. It is a natural development of developed societies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

 

I think the bulk of Chinas "one Child Policy" was about getting the social structures of a modern society forced onto people that had thus far lived a rural life. People could effectively move from a 10th century village to a 20th century city.

Everyone reproduced a lot more in the 10th century. Incomparably much, by modern standarts. And they could not afford such reproduction rates in cities as well. Now the city culture is properly "primed" for small families and newcommers will automatically adapt.

There are two things Autocracies are really good at: Forcing a lot of socio-economic change in a short time (the rulers lifetime). And providing stability in changing times (wich usually results in the country falling back compared to the world). China had literal milennia of the later, until the Opium war forced them into the former.

 

Of course, with 10th century life, you might have to have 8 kids, because 3 would die in childbirth/disease when very young.  And more kids, often meant more cheap labor on the family farm until they had their own families on up until fairly recent times.

 

Note: I dont have numbers off the top of my head, just giving an example.  My own maternal grandparents had 11 children, and had a small farm to supplement income.

[Cygnia]

Look: Shaq creates 'broken rim tree' from baskets he's destroyed

[death tribble]

Remember Boaty McBoatface ? Well the British public has done it again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-42026485

[Michael Hopcroft]

The family behind Hobby Lobby has opened a big, bright new Bible Museum in Washington, and the prize of their collection is a set of Dead Sea Scroll fragments from their very large and expensive collection.

 

The catch? Some scholars think the Greens' entire collection of fragments is probably fake.In 2002, just before GWB invaded Iraq, previously uncatalogued Dead Sea Scroll fragments started appearing on the open market. It is now believed that most of them were forgeries. Some scholars have said all of them were.

[wcw43921]

BIH Charles Manson

 

It might be possible that someone in this world could shed a tear for the "loss" of this man. 

 

I'm not sure I'd care to meet that person.

[Badger]

9 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

BIH Charles Manson

 

It might be possible that someone in this world could shed a tear for the "loss" of this man. 

 

I'm not sure I'd care to meet that person.

 

Is it ok for me to celebrate, or would that be too much?

[Tech priest support]

Manson was a sad pathetic little insane  man who spent about 75% of his life in prison and died in it. There was no mystique to him. He had some form of charisma that appealed to a pack of mixed up alienated teens and used it to make himself into a little god to lost children. His whole life out of prison was a sad pathetic quest for attention and relevance. His plans for a race war were incredibly stupid and all he'll be remembered for is creating a lot of misery and suffering for his victims and those who followed him and ended up in prison forever too. In the end he suffered nearly 50  continuous years in a cold, hard, uncaring, grey steel and concrete warehouse waiting to die surrounded by people who had no real feeling for him. He never even had his mother's love from what's known of his early life. 

 

Personally I'm glad he's finally free of the insane, miserable, loveless, empty suffering of his life.

[Tech priest support]

2 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

BIH Charles Manson

 

It might be possible that someone in this world could shed a tear for the "loss" of this man. 

 

I'm not sure I'd care to meet that person.

I won't shed a tear for him.  He created too much misery and suffering in the world for me to do that. I will say based on what I learned when I studied him in school was that apparently as a child he never had a single family member that really loved him, even his mother. For that I pity him.  But I don't mourn him.

 

[Badger]

 

Yeah, I can understand "pitying" him to be honest.  I admit one of my failings, is mercy for someone like that who has caused so much misery.  Maybe I should, I don't know.

 

 

[Starlord]

Exercising mercy indiscriminately could be viewed as foolish in some cases, but having mercy is not a failing IMO, Badger. 

 

Also FWIW, there is some evidence out there that many psychopaths are victims of some type of frontal lobe or general brain damage from birth or early childhood.

[Badger]

 

Well, actually, I did mean I don't have mercy for someone like him.  and that maybe lack of mercy is a failing of mine.  (A word seemed to have disappeared between my brain and my fingers)

 

But, I do understand pity, in the sense of his childhood, in responding to tech priest.   But, I think we can all agree when it is said and done, that has to be overcome if you wont to end up being a worthwhile human being.  Or at least overcome enough, where you aren't involved in mass murder, and being a complete manipulative bastard.

 

I guess there are many spots on  the plain between pure good, and pure evil, but Manson seems to have chosen to go as close as possible to the latter, and in the end was probably worse than what created him.

 

I hope that makes sense,  I am 15 minutes from bedtime

 

 

 

 

[Tech priest support]

Manson never, according to best sources, had a loving family or was even loved by his own mother.  I guess he wanted to create a family in which he was adored, respected, cared about and so on. Many people who suffered a lack of loving family go on to create one later in life and be part of it. Manson tried to do this but did it in a horrible and destructive way. He was probably a victim of violence and anger in his childhood and only knew those ways to deal with life.

 

He suffered a life that was mostly spent in prison.  He's dead now and I do pity him his existence.  As for mercy for him, maybe a humane execution would have been mercy compared to nearly 50 straight years in a maximum security prison.