DShomshak

One proposal is based on the fact that while the Constitution ordains an Electoral College, it says nothing about how the states apportion their votes. For instance, some states apportion their electoral college votes proportionally to the votes received by candidates. So, one group proposes that each state pass a law that it will award all its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote -- this law to take effect when the number of states with this law is sufficient to guarantee victory in the electoral college.
 
Unfortunately, a majority of states currently have all-Republican governments. The Electoral College currently favors Republicans because it favors less urbanized states with lower populations. As the precinct-by-precinct map of the 2016 election results shows, the big cities are liberal and vote Democrat while the rest of the country is conservative and votes Republican. Republicans will not abandon this electoral advantage.
 
Dean Shomshak

This isn't truly political, but just too brilliant for words: Japan's first lady pretends not to speak English rather than chat with Donald Trump.

Recommended: The July 1 issue of The Economist has a special report on "Donald Trump's America," looking at his base in several parts of the country -- what motivates them, how they differ from other Americans, and what underpins his popularity with them.
 
Short form: They tend to be deeply alienated from a culture and political system that they think doesn't respect people like them. Charts and graphs to back it all up. *Not* caused by economic hardship; it's pure status anxiety.
 
Dean Shomshak

NRP Tweets Declaration Of Independence--Trump Supporters Get Offended

Or mothers, who get paid nothing at all? Many statements of reverence. Not so much backup from policy.
 
Dean Shomshak

Or mothers, who get paid nothing at all? Many statements of reverence. Not so much backup from policy.
 
Dean Shomshak

Strange.  For decades, I've had a theory that, job-wise, a group's worth to society is in inverse proportion to their income.  If every CEO disappeared from the face of the Earth, for example, life would go on.  Same with every movie star.  But if, say, every fireman disappeared, things would not go well at all.  Same with police officers, teachers, farmers, etc.
 
The main exception I've seen to this are doctors (who typically have pretty good incomes, at least in the US, and have obvious worth to society).

Introspection is of course a flawed tool for psychological analysis. I've encountered too many people who seemed otherwise intelligent -- often more intelligent than me, on many topics -- but who were completely and, I believe, provably bonkers on one or two issues. An example would be a computer and robotics engineer of my forum acquaintance (not these forums) who is a very nice person, has enlightened me on a number of topics, but who presented transparent fallacies and wackadoodle conspiracy theories to reject any claim of anthropogenic climate change.
 
At least I am pretty sure they are deranged. The problem is that if -- as I have come to believe -- everyone is completely effing insane about something, and part of the insanity is that they can't see their own illogic, the unavoidable inference is that this must apply to me too. On something, I must be completely irrational; it's obvious to other people; but I can't see it and will not accept any attempt to point it out to me.
 
This disturbs me.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, for anyone who's interested in a bit of self-analysis I recommend The Righteous Mind by the aforementioned Jonathan Haight. It's his exposition of the "Moral Foundations Theory" he's developed through his years of research in political psychology. So far, he's identified six moral foundations -- standards of what constitutes good or bad behavior - that deeply, reflexively, and often unconsciously shape personal political beliefs and wider social narratives. Moreover, he finds that different self-described political orientations correlate very strongly with high valuations of different sets of moral foundations: Liberals fixate strongly on Care/Harm, to somewhat lesser degrees on Freedom/Oppression and Fairness/Cheating, and virtually ignore Loyalty/Treachery, Authority/Insubordination and Purity (or Sanctity)/Defilement. (I may not be getting these terms exactly as Haight labels them, but they are close enough.
 
(There's a complication with Purity/Defilement. Liberals score very low on conventional issues such as social limitations on sexuality, drugs, etc. But they often show a strong sense of reverence for the natural world, and disgust at its perceived defilement. So sometimes you need to look at a moral foundation obliquely.)
 
Libertarians fixate almost totally on Freedom/Oppression (no surprise), show some regard for Fairness/Cheating, and nearly ignore the other four foundations. Conservatives score about equally in all six -- which shows the frequent liberal accusation of moral simplicity is provably wrong.
 
Another of Haight's experiments involves asking people of different political persuasions to answer surveys as they imagine people of different views would, then comparing the results to the answers by people who really are of those political views. Social conservatives are consistently better at pretending to be liberals than liberals are at pretending to be conservatives.
 
Applying Haight's ideas to myself, I find that I don't fit well in any of the three political categories; the weight I give to the six moral foundations is, well, odd. (As best I can tell, anyway, from my attempts at introspection.) But people may be interested in trying to rate themselves in each of the six virtues, on a scale of 1-10, and ask how and why they feel as they do.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, for anyone who's interested in a bit of self-analysis I recommend The Righteous Mind by the aforementioned Jonathan Haight. It's his exposition of the "Moral Foundations Theory" he's developed through his years of research in political psychology. So far, he's identified six moral foundations -- standards of what constitutes good or bad behavior - that deeply, reflexively, and often unconsciously shape personal political beliefs and wider social narratives. Moreover, he finds that different self-described political orientations correlate very strongly with high valuations of different sets of moral foundations: Liberals fixate strongly on Care/Harm, to somewhat lesser degrees on Freedom/Oppression and Fairness/Cheating, and virtually ignore Loyalty/Treachery, Authority/Insubordination and Purity (or Sanctity)/Defilement. (I may not be getting these terms exactly as Haight labels them, but they are close enough.
 
(There's a complication with Purity/Defilement. Liberals score very low on conventional issues such as social limitations on sexuality, drugs, etc. But they often show a strong sense of reverence for the natural world, and disgust at its perceived defilement. So sometimes you need to look at a moral foundation obliquely.)
 
Libertarians fixate almost totally on Freedom/Oppression (no surprise), show some regard for Fairness/Cheating, and nearly ignore the other four foundations. Conservatives score about equally in all six -- which shows the frequent liberal accusation of moral simplicity is provably wrong.
 
Another of Haight's experiments involves asking people of different political persuasions to answer surveys as they imagine people of different views would, then comparing the results to the answers by people who really are of those political views. Social conservatives are consistently better at pretending to be liberals than liberals are at pretending to be conservatives.
 
Applying Haight's ideas to myself, I find that I don't fit well in any of the three political categories; the weight I give to the six moral foundations is, well, odd. (As best I can tell, anyway, from my attempts at introspection.) But people may be interested in trying to rate themselves in each of the six virtues, on a scale of 1-10, and ask how and why they feel as they do.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, for anyone who's interested in a bit of self-analysis I recommend The Righteous Mind by the aforementioned Jonathan Haight. It's his exposition of the "Moral Foundations Theory" he's developed through his years of research in political psychology. So far, he's identified six moral foundations -- standards of what constitutes good or bad behavior - that deeply, reflexively, and often unconsciously shape personal political beliefs and wider social narratives. Moreover, he finds that different self-described political orientations correlate very strongly with high valuations of different sets of moral foundations: Liberals fixate strongly on Care/Harm, to somewhat lesser degrees on Freedom/Oppression and Fairness/Cheating, and virtually ignore Loyalty/Treachery, Authority/Insubordination and Purity (or Sanctity)/Defilement. (I may not be getting these terms exactly as Haight labels them, but they are close enough.
 
(There's a complication with Purity/Defilement. Liberals score very low on conventional issues such as social limitations on sexuality, drugs, etc. But they often show a strong sense of reverence for the natural world, and disgust at its perceived defilement. So sometimes you need to look at a moral foundation obliquely.)
 
Libertarians fixate almost totally on Freedom/Oppression (no surprise), show some regard for Fairness/Cheating, and nearly ignore the other four foundations. Conservatives score about equally in all six -- which shows the frequent liberal accusation of moral simplicity is provably wrong.
 
Another of Haight's experiments involves asking people of different political persuasions to answer surveys as they imagine people of different views would, then comparing the results to the answers by people who really are of those political views. Social conservatives are consistently better at pretending to be liberals than liberals are at pretending to be conservatives.
 
Applying Haight's ideas to myself, I find that I don't fit well in any of the three political categories; the weight I give to the six moral foundations is, well, odd. (As best I can tell, anyway, from my attempts at introspection.) But people may be interested in trying to rate themselves in each of the six virtues, on a scale of 1-10, and ask how and why they feel as they do.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, for anyone who's interested in a bit of self-analysis I recommend The Righteous Mind by the aforementioned Jonathan Haight. It's his exposition of the "Moral Foundations Theory" he's developed through his years of research in political psychology. So far, he's identified six moral foundations -- standards of what constitutes good or bad behavior - that deeply, reflexively, and often unconsciously shape personal political beliefs and wider social narratives. Moreover, he finds that different self-described political orientations correlate very strongly with high valuations of different sets of moral foundations: Liberals fixate strongly on Care/Harm, to somewhat lesser degrees on Freedom/Oppression and Fairness/Cheating, and virtually ignore Loyalty/Treachery, Authority/Insubordination and Purity (or Sanctity)/Defilement. (I may not be getting these terms exactly as Haight labels them, but they are close enough.
 
(There's a complication with Purity/Defilement. Liberals score very low on conventional issues such as social limitations on sexuality, drugs, etc. But they often show a strong sense of reverence for the natural world, and disgust at its perceived defilement. So sometimes you need to look at a moral foundation obliquely.)
 
Libertarians fixate almost totally on Freedom/Oppression (no surprise), show some regard for Fairness/Cheating, and nearly ignore the other four foundations. Conservatives score about equally in all six -- which shows the frequent liberal accusation of moral simplicity is provably wrong.
 
Another of Haight's experiments involves asking people of different political persuasions to answer surveys as they imagine people of different views would, then comparing the results to the answers by people who really are of those political views. Social conservatives are consistently better at pretending to be liberals than liberals are at pretending to be conservatives.
 
Applying Haight's ideas to myself, I find that I don't fit well in any of the three political categories; the weight I give to the six moral foundations is, well, odd. (As best I can tell, anyway, from my attempts at introspection.) But people may be interested in trying to rate themselves in each of the six virtues, on a scale of 1-10, and ask how and why they feel as they do.
 
Dean Shomshak

Several years ago when the ACA was plodding through Congress, All Things Considered ran a series of reports on the health care systems of 6 different countries. Canada, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the US.
 
Canada and the UK are single-payer. It was either Germany or Switzerland, IIRC, that had pretty strict regulations about what plans must cover, and mandated that everyone had to buy health insurance, but let providers compete within those boundaries. I seem to recall Japan being even more free-market, though I can't recall the details.
 
All of them deliver better care at lower prices than the US. Our bizarre chimera of a system -- some socialized, some employer-provided, some pay it yourself and hope for the best, is uniquely bad.
 
I was dubious of the ACA from the start because it seemed to add another layer of Rube Goldberg complexity. But hacking away at the chimera in hopes of butchering it into something better doesn't seem plausible, either. More than that, I don't feel qualified to say.
 
Dean Shomshak

Several years ago when the ACA was plodding through Congress, All Things Considered ran a series of reports on the health care systems of 6 different countries. Canada, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the US.
 
Canada and the UK are single-payer. It was either Germany or Switzerland, IIRC, that had pretty strict regulations about what plans must cover, and mandated that everyone had to buy health insurance, but let providers compete within those boundaries. I seem to recall Japan being even more free-market, though I can't recall the details.
 
All of them deliver better care at lower prices than the US. Our bizarre chimera of a system -- some socialized, some employer-provided, some pay it yourself and hope for the best, is uniquely bad.
 
I was dubious of the ACA from the start because it seemed to add another layer of Rube Goldberg complexity. But hacking away at the chimera in hopes of butchering it into something better doesn't seem plausible, either. More than that, I don't feel qualified to say.
 
Dean Shomshak

Several years ago when the ACA was plodding through Congress, All Things Considered ran a series of reports on the health care systems of 6 different countries. Canada, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the US.
 
Canada and the UK are single-payer. It was either Germany or Switzerland, IIRC, that had pretty strict regulations about what plans must cover, and mandated that everyone had to buy health insurance, but let providers compete within those boundaries. I seem to recall Japan being even more free-market, though I can't recall the details.
 
All of them deliver better care at lower prices than the US. Our bizarre chimera of a system -- some socialized, some employer-provided, some pay it yourself and hope for the best, is uniquely bad.
 
I was dubious of the ACA from the start because it seemed to add another layer of Rube Goldberg complexity. But hacking away at the chimera in hopes of butchering it into something better doesn't seem plausible, either. More than that, I don't feel qualified to say.
 
Dean Shomshak

Several years ago when the ACA was plodding through Congress, All Things Considered ran a series of reports on the health care systems of 6 different countries. Canada, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the US.
 
Canada and the UK are single-payer. It was either Germany or Switzerland, IIRC, that had pretty strict regulations about what plans must cover, and mandated that everyone had to buy health insurance, but let providers compete within those boundaries. I seem to recall Japan being even more free-market, though I can't recall the details.
 
All of them deliver better care at lower prices than the US. Our bizarre chimera of a system -- some socialized, some employer-provided, some pay it yourself and hope for the best, is uniquely bad.
 
I was dubious of the ACA from the start because it seemed to add another layer of Rube Goldberg complexity. But hacking away at the chimera in hopes of butchering it into something better doesn't seem plausible, either. More than that, I don't feel qualified to say.
 
Dean Shomshak

I still haven't caught up reading the thread, but if I had time to create a god and all the rest, I think I'd propose a god of many names, but the truest name is Folly. His/her/it's domain is Interference. Everything Folly does is a muck-up of some other god's work, as Folly tries to horn in on their domains.
 
Example: Folly thought War was AWSUM BADAZZ and tried to be a War God too. In so doing he created Massacre, Stalemate and Scorched Earth -- forms of war devoid of victory. Seeing what a mess he'd made, Folly tried to be a diplomat in service of Peace. The result was Appeasement, the peace without honor that inevitably leads to later war.
 
And so on. Has something like this already been done?
 
(I can't imagine how Folly would corrupt the Trickster's work. Um. Puns?)
 
 
Dean Shomshak

Pick #9: 
 
Interference: The Vicissitation
 
Mortals: In order to reflect the scintillating uniqueness of your samsars, your bodies shall be wonderfully diverse even within the many races that inhabit the World.  Your skins and hair will vary in hue from black to silver to bronze; from plain to mottled to striped; from bare to furred to armored to feathered.  You may sport hooves instead of feet; you may sprout tails, fangs, tusks, claws, additional arms, or even wings.  In short, your differences shall be so undeniable that none shall be different; so rare that all shall be common.
 
Only the most ignorant and cowardly among you will find reason to hate and discriminate based on the form of others.  For though each samsar has its own path to tread, each also has the same destination as its ultimate aim.  Go now, and behold each other in wonderment, fascination, and acceptance.
 
--translated from the Clarion Stanza of the Wordless Codex

10th pick -- Geography: The Foundations
 
At long last, the new world took shape. Continents, chasms, mountains, and all manner of beautiful geography adorned its surface. Pr'Jah, the Master of Earth, was pleased. But he knew that in time, the world would grow stale. The plentiful forms of life that inhabited the world would eventually discover all there was to know of it, and would be damned to eternal complacency if there were no changes. So, as his final gift to the world, he created The Foundations, the mechanism by which the world itself would evolve and change.
 
What do The Foundations involve, exactly? Plate tectonics? A giant world machine powered by tidal forces from the world's three suns? Turtles all the way down? The Foundations encompass all of these things and much more, in a great and complex system that will guarantee change and growth for all the world for millennia to come.
 
Note: The Foundations includes a vast, worldwide network of caverns that reach to all places on the surface of the planet--even the 'Gluteal Cleft of the World'.

There actually is a smallish, alt-right-ish group that calls itself Neoreactionary (NRX for short) that claims to promote a
Dark Enlightenment" that rejects all the moral, philosophical and political standards of the Enlightenment. Their great sage (he said sarcastically) uses the pen name of Mencious Moldbug; I found an extensive summary, written in truly fawning tones, by a supposed "philosopher" called (IIRC) Nick Lane. I couldn't get though it all; at my age, I have less endurance for rampant nonsense.
 
Bumper-sticker version is: "People don't need a voice, they just need an exit." Qatar and the other Gulf sheikdoms extolled as models of a properly-ordered society. (It was not lost on me that the Gulf sheikdoms are slave states: Great if you're a citizen, but they run on hired labor, the majority of which has their passports taken away by the firms that import them, so the laborers have neither a voice nor an exit. The slave-in-all-but-name labor outnumbers citizens more than 5 to 1.)
 
An essay by a fellow who bills himself as NRX-curious but not an actual believer made the quite reasonable analytical point that many people do not share the view, predating the Enlightenment but associated with it, that societies are essentially arbitrary constructs designed to perform certain functions, and thus can be altered if goals and values change. A great many people indeed hold the contrary view that social orders are (or should be) fixed and sacred. The conflict between these two views is nothing new, though it's heated up of late.
 
Personally, I found Nick Lane's exposition of NRX fell into the same trap of quasi-Christian sentimentality that he claims underlies the Enlightenment. Namely, the idea that a social order should make people happy and if it doesn't should be changed to do so. Mr. Lane argues that people would actually be happier in an NRX autocracy. Well, if you really believe that certain facts of human nature and social order *are* facts, which Enlightenment democracy tries to deny, then human happiness is irrelevant. No voice; no exit; and no choice, because that's just the way things must be.
 
Oh, and they're racist. Just take my word for it, 'cause life is short and I'm already tired of describing these nutbars.
 
Dean Shomshak

There actually is a smallish, alt-right-ish group that calls itself Neoreactionary (NRX for short) that claims to promote a
Dark Enlightenment" that rejects all the moral, philosophical and political standards of the Enlightenment. Their great sage (he said sarcastically) uses the pen name of Mencious Moldbug; I found an extensive summary, written in truly fawning tones, by a supposed "philosopher" called (IIRC) Nick Lane. I couldn't get though it all; at my age, I have less endurance for rampant nonsense.
 
Bumper-sticker version is: "People don't need a voice, they just need an exit." Qatar and the other Gulf sheikdoms extolled as models of a properly-ordered society. (It was not lost on me that the Gulf sheikdoms are slave states: Great if you're a citizen, but they run on hired labor, the majority of which has their passports taken away by the firms that import them, so the laborers have neither a voice nor an exit. The slave-in-all-but-name labor outnumbers citizens more than 5 to 1.)
 
An essay by a fellow who bills himself as NRX-curious but not an actual believer made the quite reasonable analytical point that many people do not share the view, predating the Enlightenment but associated with it, that societies are essentially arbitrary constructs designed to perform certain functions, and thus can be altered if goals and values change. A great many people indeed hold the contrary view that social orders are (or should be) fixed and sacred. The conflict between these two views is nothing new, though it's heated up of late.
 
Personally, I found Nick Lane's exposition of NRX fell into the same trap of quasi-Christian sentimentality that he claims underlies the Enlightenment. Namely, the idea that a social order should make people happy and if it doesn't should be changed to do so. Mr. Lane argues that people would actually be happier in an NRX autocracy. Well, if you really believe that certain facts of human nature and social order *are* facts, which Enlightenment democracy tries to deny, then human happiness is irrelevant. No voice; no exit; and no choice, because that's just the way things must be.
 
Oh, and they're racist. Just take my word for it, 'cause life is short and I'm already tired of describing these nutbars.
 
Dean Shomshak

Wind blowing through leaves. It's kinda magical.

Oh. Referring to the article linked a page ago, on how the alt-right media echo chamber exploits Google, I think we've already seen the narratives used to distract from the substance of Comey's testimony. First, that aw shucks, Trump just didn't know the arcane social protocols for talking inside the Beltway. It's no worse than not knowing which is the salad fork. Maybe, that it even shows his American authenticity, instead of the sly, slippery codes used by the bureaucratic Enemy. The other is that Comey is/was a coward for not telling Trump that what he was saying was out of bounds. Comey admitted he should have done so, but by pushing this point the Trumpists can deflecdt the issue into personalities instead of the actual events. All part of making this a nation of men instead of a nation of laws.
 
(The latter was the tack taken by the Trump ally interviewed by the BBC World Service. So, they didn't waste time. I predict we'll hear a lot more of this in the next few weeks.)
 
Dean Shomshak

Oh. Referring to the article linked a page ago, on how the alt-right media echo chamber exploits Google, I think we've already seen the narratives used to distract from the substance of Comey's testimony. First, that aw shucks, Trump just didn't know the arcane social protocols for talking inside the Beltway. It's no worse than not knowing which is the salad fork. Maybe, that it even shows his American authenticity, instead of the sly, slippery codes used by the bureaucratic Enemy. The other is that Comey is/was a coward for not telling Trump that what he was saying was out of bounds. Comey admitted he should have done so, but by pushing this point the Trumpists can deflecdt the issue into personalities instead of the actual events. All part of making this a nation of men instead of a nation of laws.
 
(The latter was the tack taken by the Trump ally interviewed by the BBC World Service. So, they didn't waste time. I predict we'll hear a lot more of this in the next few weeks.)
 
Dean Shomshak

Heard this week on the radio, and read about in The Economist: LIGO has detected a third pulse of gravity waves. As The Economist notes, gravitational wave detection is transitioning from physics experiment -- just proving that the waves exist -- to astronomy, as a technique to observe events not observable in other ways.
 
Dean Shomshak