Friday Ephemera

Maybe this was the inspiration.

Gotcha.

Rights are conjured by man, whether or not he invokes God as their basis. When they exist they are merely deemed divine and when they do not they are an abstract.
The notion that a sentient being has only utility to Darwin for as long as it can eke out its survival – in a hell where man descends to a being a tormenter – is refuted by every humane ethic, of which there are many spanning centuries.
We slid backwards when we adopted the perversity that Darwin join our foolish civil religion so we, only faintly conservative, could instinctively bellow at PETA and vegans and our other identity villains in order to bolster our fantasies about being dominant intelligent apes.
Whether animals have abstract rights is as useless a concept as whether we do. The question is if we’ll individually behave as if we’ll honor them. We used to be conservationists because we knew that. Then many of us squandered that honorable duty. Now we boast about lovelessness.
It’s just a choice, and it goes places that refute our dumber theories. https://youtu.be/VnXGl3opKw8

Let’s take the monkey story. Instead of an arbitrary shock to no adaptive purpose, let’s say instead that the fruit in question is grapes, laced with a poison that makes a monkey violently ill.
The moral of the story then changes radically, doesn’t it?
Were I to teach it, I would teach both versions, as a lesson to the students.

So far, scientific facts have not motivated Americans to support the huge societal transformations needed to stop climate change.
Such “facts” are asserted not as facts but as quasi-religious reasons in order to strip the majority of people of their homes, air conditioning, cars, travel beyond our hometowns, and steak for dinner. All the while Our Rulers indulge in excesses that would turn Croesus green with envy.
If the Diana Moon Glampers wannabes want us to be “serious” about climate change, they should act like they take it seriously. Demanding that people who wear crystals to clear their auras have a place on teams who view crystals as a resource to be used in technology won’t change that.

Hi Pogonip,
Glampers is the Handicapper General in the short story Harrison Bergeron.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Like 1984, it’s supposed to be a cautionary tale – not a How-To book.

“Fighting climate change with dance.” . . . . . ” Humanities Professors Demand Representation on Science Teams”
Science . . . . teams?!?!?!?!!!!
How dare Yitang Zhang work solo?!?!?!?!!—aside from the other immense numbers of other equally individual scientists . . . . .

Special offer of note.
“8 sessions”…

Special offer of note.
“8 sessions”…
They have to have backup appointments for when the operators can’t even hit the target the first seven times . . . .

So who’s Diana Moon?
Diana Moon Glampers is the full name of the Handicapper General Darleen pointed out earlier from “Harrison Bergeron”, the full text of which can be found here.

Tony Bennett is 93 today! 🎂

I wonder how many species have been driven to extinction because rich Chinese men have wanted to be able to get it up for a few more years?
John Derbyshire wrote that the Chinese people are the least religious and the most superstition. He believed the two were correlated.
By the way, David, would you like to hire a feng shui consultant to enhance the cosmic harmonies of this establishment? 😀

Interesting. I don’t think any of those people would get more than a glance if passed by on a city street.

I’ll consult! I don’t know diddly-squat about feng shui, which is why I work cheap!
I’m sure you can make up spiritual sounding shit as well as any Ancient Master of Eastern Gibberish. 🙂

“All species compete for dominance. Humans won that competition, and everything else lost. Get over it and move on.”

Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

~ RAH