hamburgers, the world, and English bishops. (or "bishies", but that's something different)

[alexr_rwx]

- You should read this article. It's about food, and how it's produced. It's like a very small version of Fast Food Nation. Slow Food for a Dying Planet.

- It pisses me off that this sort of thing (or most things) is politicised, becoming "left versus right". We expect, I think fairly commonly, that there are actual things, actually happening in an objectively-extant Real World... but descriptions of these Externally Happening Events are dripping in spin, and it's very difficult to even think of what it might mean for them not to be. I mean, when you encode a description of an event, you necessarily have a perspective on it. If only by the doppler effect. But damnit, there's a real world, and "people dumping crap into rivers" and "climate change" and "people dying in hard-to-pronounce places" and "people getting really fat and unhealthy, or else maimed in cow-processing places" are not partisan issues!! Economics should not be partisan! Biology and cosmology should not be partisan in the slightest!! *growls, pops knuckles, eyes dart around...*

- Marty samarin and I are working on a language that uses no symbols or syntax, and relies entirely on context/pragmatics.

- Before I started thinking about politics and the fucked-up-ness of the world (or at least of human relationships), I was having a lot of fun, as evidenced by our earlier discussion about making up silly symbol-free languages. Also, I'm going to reject Bayesian probability theory and become a Frequentist. Your "relative degree of belief" dogma is degenerate and childish, O you Bayesians!

Comments

[agonistes]

Some time we need to have a big group discussion circling around the AP US History textbook of the future, and we shall make predictions of what is to come. And then (assuming we haven't all been drafted and are dead) when we have kids in AP US History, we'll steal their textbooks and check and see if we were right.

It'll be grand. :D

(Though -- reading post-cataclysmic fiction like The Handmaid's Tale and The Dark Tower scares me even more than looking at present-day politics, because it shows us what we might become. Gives us a conclusion to look at, so to speak.)

[the-itch.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the article, but I've read Fast Food Nation twice, so I'll assume everything in there I've seen before.

I don't see how the issue can be anything but politicized. Politics is all about crafting morality into policy in a convincing way. Your view that "maiming cows" or "dumping crap into rivers" or people "getting fat" is wrong is your opinion and people disagree with you. I disagree with you. And I don't think that the government should do anything about it.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Ah, there's a distinction between maiming cows and maiming people. And you know all about the people getting maimed, if you've read FFN.

But for the large part, you're probably right. Or something. Or maybe the stars are burning out...

[neuroticmonk.livejournal.com]

The thing that FFN forgets is that people get hurt doing lots of things. You'd agree that building homes is a good idea, but people get hurt doing that all the time. I have no doubt that slaughter houses could be made safer, but that doesn't mean we should stop them now because they aren't as safe as possible.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

It's not just that people get hurt. A large part of the issue (have you read FFN?) is that a lot of folks getting hurt in the slaughterhouses are unregistered workers from Latin America, so when they do get hurt, there's no recompense and nothing done about it...

I imagine that construction has a lot of the same problems, although it seems like (from reading Atlanta Latino) the construction workers are more organized and have a better handle on things... and while roofing tar isn't super-pleasant, the Harsh Chemicals involved in cleaning abbatoirs are, I gather, Less Pleasant.

[samarin.livejournal.com]

Nothing should be partisan, unless I'm not thinking of some odd way in which it helps anything. Partisanship alienates those who cross partisan boundaries and gives people bad names.

[neuroticmonk.livejournal.com]

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dummer." - Plato

It's been a problem for > 2000 years. It's not going away anytime soon, sorry.

[samarin.livejournal.com]

That's what people said about flying.

I guess my point rested in the use of the word "should." Noone should be murdered either. There are ways of reducing murder and there are ways of reducing partisanship.

[lomonthang.livejournal.com]

Lloyd and I are (I believe) in accordance on this: it will work itself out, after The Crisis.
Most of the worlds' population of humans (and lifeforms probably, will gain firsthand knowledge of annihilation. Things will grow again.

I see no enlightened society in the future. But the idea that humans will not always be on this lovely planet....that excites me.

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

Gotta admit that Bayesian theory is pretty silly.  I was especially amused by the model of Heinz von Foerster using the most accurate bayesian model to date which predicted, accurate as of 1973, that human population would reach infinity on November 13th, 2026.  I'll live to see the human singularity, with a bayesian probability upwards of 93%!

I stll maintain that all events have a 50% chance of occurring-- either they do or they don't.

      "Live from the People's Republic"