Well, me, for one. And I sure took a lot of heat (and vitriol and even metaphoric urine) for mentioning it at the Swamp: humans tend to be naturally cooperative. Or so argues Paul Robinson in Pirates, Prisoners and Lepers. I would quibble with his use of the word government, as I think he is restricting the word to mean our current idea of government, where I would use it more to mean governance. Surely once a group decides to mete out punishment, in any sort of formal way, they are governing themselves, and have in effect established a form of government. But taking this pedantic point, and tossing it overboard, I hope you will enjoy this latest offering from Russ Roberts. It does touch on something that helps explain the continuing attraction of the doomsayers and anarchists in that as we lose respect for government because we see injustice created and imposed by the corrupt system we have allowed to envelop us, we become sceptical about all forms of government and if the law is an ass, we will govern ourselves by our own privately derived moral codes. But we will govern ourselves, and care for the group, or probably perish.
Paul Robinson on Cooperation, Punishment and the Criminal Justice System
EconTalk Episode with Paul Robinson
Are human beings naturally cooperative or selfish? Can people thrive without government law? Paul Robinson of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Pirates, Prisoners and Lepers talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts [about] the ideas in his book. Robinson argues that without government sanctions or legislation, there is an evolutionary drive to cooperate even in life-and-death situations. In such situations private punishment and norms play a crucial role in sustaining cooperative solutions. The last part of the conversation deals with the criminal justice system and how attitudes toward the system affect society-wide cooperation and crime.
It’s not exactly karma, but the stranger you help might save your life. So here’s to compassion and cooperation … even if in the end they make one selfishly happy. The old altruism quandary: evolutionarily advantageous, and way more fun than the alternative. May you have a tremendous Tuesday … unless you have made other plans.
I never considered that. I just like rainbows.
for Xty, and well intentioned..and it just floated in, which is a sure sign of relaxation.
Here’s something to while away some time … is that the right while? … and possibly contribute to slumbers (apropos lyrics in the Dead song, as I type, thank you!) as well that I have just started listening to about the early history of man, pre-Greek and Roman history, where we tend to pretend things started. Agriculture, henges, olive oil, irrigation, counting, writing …
Fall colors on some of the Dogwoods already. I’m ready for Fall. Crazy hot summer here,..way too extreme and a very short spring which is my other favorite season. Need some good 70’s-50’s from maybe now until early November.
Was gonna ask about acupuncture Xty. Anything there?
The link didn’t show up but the baby bulldog did. Here it is:
http://ancientworldpodcast.blogspot.ca
And I might resort to acupuncture but I really don’t want to try it. Not a fan of needles … yoga first, and the next session starts at the end of September, and I think I might be able to go. I miss it – it was really beneficial and I still breathe better after just those few classes.
The baby bulldog being our youngest’s girlfriend’s puppy, Luna.
My mother-in-law gave me a little dogwood from her cottage a few years ago and it must be coming of age because some of the leaves have turned an amazing shade of red … it hasn’t flowered yet but I think it will next year. I know nothing about them and don’t remember it turning this colour last year. And I totally agree about fall being the best and spring being second best.
Good heavens – the tree in our front yard that flowers so beautifully in the spring and then produces these irritating hard little fruits – and has been attacked by a fungus is recent years but still blooms prodigiously – it might be a dogwood. I thought they were shrubs more than trees, but the web has quickly set me straight. And the picture I found of the “fruit” really looks familiar.
Here is my tree, in the spring many moons ago:
Could it be a dogwood? The fruit certainly isn’t edible by humanoids, but drops and buries in the lawn and starts to grow.
We have Dogwoods galore and they are beautiful..naturally occur here, a really pretty tree. Their roots are shallow, even when they grow large, and thats why i mentioned dry summers and droughts. Even the mature ones are at risk. Full sun might be best there and constant water with good drainage.
No. Dogwoods don’t have fruit. That is some kind of fruit tree! Give me a minute to see.( our minutes may vary)
damn-it. you got me off topic again. I don’t like needles either, but i don’t think that the acupuncture needles hurt and are worth a try.
Good morning … happy Labour Day weekend. I know it is just acclimatization but I do like the u’s in colour and labour in our archaic British spelling. And if nothing pans out with the MRI in September I will give acupuncture a try. Eldest’s offspring’s posslq’s (person of opposite sex sharing living quarters) mother is a physiotherapist and also does acupuncture … and her kids have quite the stories. But I do understand the principle behind it and think it could help especially with muscles that are guarding, which mine certainly do.
And sorry to quibble but according to the web dogwood trees do bear fruit, which is not very edible … bitter and some claim toxic but apparently not:
Links being weird. Here is the pdf about dogwoods, the state tree of Virginia:
http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/database/documents/pdf/tree_fact_sheets/corflof.pdf
Hey I found out the other day that West Virginia didn’t join the confederacy … and found out at the same time that South Carolina only started flying the confederate flag as a protest against the Civil Rights Act – damn straight they needed to take it down, and way to go West Virginia.
And a song to combine those two unlikely topics. I was so stunned when I realised what this song was about. I was used to Ella Fitzgerald and Fats Waller, and then suddenly there was this, excuse the phrase, dark underside to everything.
Well, that was super depressing. How about
there is a new face at DOLTS pointing out how ludicrous Fix’s position is on a society functioning with no government. this person will be shouted down and eventually be run off. no one can compete with Fix, nor Green Lantern, as they both use dictation software. (narcissistic much?) the DOLTS forum is really mostly just Fix now and a select die hard few especially revolting and/or brain dead holdouts from his old fan base of morons. Nana got run off her own forum many months ago by Fix and Green Lantern and has not posted since.
All he means by no government is running by his rules. The Ancient Worlds podcast is fascinating (if a little soporific) and while I am only at episode 7 (not B7 or R7 … there seem to be three series) the fluctuation between order and no order is definitely a pattern, and I was trying to imagine why people accepted domination but there was stability under a leader, and then in general the leader would over-reach and over-tax (someone, pre-Hammurabi, got praised because the elite were no longer “plundering the orchards” of the people) and it would all fall apart. Or there would be a natural disaster or hideous invading force. But people survive when they work together, and working together requires some sort of governance, and some sort of justice. I thought Nana was a plant … but maybe she was just an idiot. They really do eat their own don’t they, as she was mostly responsible for insisting that the site maintain a conspiracy flavour, and no theory seemed too bizarre for her. That Hidden Doorways podcast comes to mind when I think of the remaining denizens of the swamp, with his invented sponsor intent on improving life underground, despite them now knowing they didn’t need to go underground.
And good morning. Managed to rake the lawn this morning! Whatever mutant fruit tree I have, dogwood or otherwise, it is shedding its blighted leaves, and luckily they fall early and the ginkgo falls late, as I like to mulch the garden up for the winter, but not with these suspect leaves.
Fix did not like my latest artwork at all.
Reply to: DOTS….
Now I’ve got some catching up to do… by Mr. Fix
39 sec ago
Good evening folks,
I hope you’re all having a wonderful Labor Day weekend, the weather here is gorgeous, the sky is crystal clear, and It’s been a wonderful opportunity to clean out my car, organize my tools, do a few minor repairs that I was meaning to get to for the last month or so, and get ready for what promises to be a rather interesting fall.
As no stranger to controversial topics, both public and private, I’ve always been enchanted by this forums usual civil discourse, particularly when life long held beliefs are challenged. I know of nothing else even remotely similar.
My inbox has literally hundreds of pages of discussions, and on some occasions, they have spilled over onto this forum. Jeremiah Jr. Welcomed me to this website when I first started posting, and we have been discussing topics closely related to biblical authenticity for approximately 3 years now. NWVIEW entered our discussions shortly afterwards, with an occasional appearance by Daystar.
Nana often participated both on this thread, as well as privately, and I consider her loss most unfortunate, but I do understand that she believes she’s doing the right thing.
Turd Ferguson has made his wishes known to me, that he does not appreciate disparaging remarks related to his religion on his website. Multiple posts of mine have disappeared when I have crossed that line, and that’s life, this is his website, and he can do with it as he pleases. I have even been privately informed of his wishes for me to back off any discussions of the Pope or the Vatican, since Turd is of the belief that he will have to answer to God someday for what gets posted on his website.
I informed him in a reply, that I would stop doing my “Pope Watch” articles, but if this website is dedicated to “the end of the great Keynesian experiment”, the Pope is in it up to his eyeballs, and I am not going to ignore the elephant in the middle of the room.
Dear Turd:
If God ever mentions my Internet posts when you meet him, kindly send him in my direction, and inform him that I am solely responsible for what I write. If you show him this post, it should get you off the hook, and God will then know where to direct his wrath.
I have attempted to walk a fine line in these public discussions, with my attempts to state what I believe to be true, without unnecessarily insulting fellow members for their beliefs.
In the posts over the last couple of days entitled “Old Ground”, these were replies to an article where by a Texas Sheriff publicly declared that his authority is “granted by God”. As everyone agrees, the Bible is on his side. I felt compelled to argue to the contrary, working from the basic premise that such beliefs are what got us into this position in the first place.
I have informed the old timers, years ago, that I would not be swayed in my arguments with Bible quotes. I have been ignoring them for years. I felt perfectly justified in informing a new member who had replied to me with his fourth and fifth post what the others have known for years. It’s only fair.
When I woke up this morning, Jeremiah Jr posted his Dr. Laura letter, with biblical quotations that I’ve been aware of for many years, and yet strangely, I’ve never used biblical quotations to make a counter argument. I simply don’t believe in their validity.
The video that I posted, discussed many of the same biblical passages that Jeremiah posted this morning. I let it make my argument for me, that this can’t possibly be the words of an all loving and all forgiving anything. The things that the Bible is sanctioning, would be criminal activity in any civil society, and the only thing that even comes close would be sharia law.
Of course, islam is “a religion of peace”, I hear it all the time. But their holy book has the same crap written in it.
I feel that I asked a perfectly legitimate question. The answer can only come from a true believer who is a biblical scholar.
Quite frankly, I don’t know too many of them off-line, and the ones that I do help pay my bills through the work and the customers they provide for me.
I’m not that stupid.
As for the shithead that I’ve been calling “Pecker Head” for the last couple of years, he’s had a knack of interrupting conversations for the past three years, with literally nothing to offer whatsoever. He’s changed his username at least four times, but due to his extraordinarily limited vocabulary, combined with his timing, he couldn’t be more obvious if he was trying. I don’t believe in coincidence. (Really, I don’t).
I don’t personally give a crap whether or not he’s a government troll, or just an epic asshole, but I don’t feel at some level it would be right to just perpetually ignore his overt disruptions and name calling. Generally speaking, I don’t feed the trolls, but this one just keeps changing its name and coming back.
Peckerhead,
personally I hope you are employed, and making a living shutting down discussions all over the Internet, and are not just working some personal vendetta like you promised to destroy me a couple of years ago on another forum.
If you’re working for the NSA, or some other deep dark government agency, then my message to go fuck yourself stands.
If you’re simply some kind of epic asshole who gets kicks out of being disruptive, your job should be easier when you go fuck yourself, since your all encompassing asshole should be large enough to find as hitting the side of a barn with a shotgun from the inside..
Now for connecting some DOTS… And why I would reiterate my question to the Bible thumpers, while calling out a shit head.
I personally find both Pecker Head and Bible quotes repulsive, and this is a much better thread without either of them.
I hope I have made myself perfectly understandable, so that at least we are all on the same page again.
JJ, Jim,
Thanks for the replies, as well as Bugzy for his input, I forgot to address the question of what we would do without government, and you cited great examples, I’ve got about 100 more.
Be back shortly…
Are our only choices government troll or epic asshole? Speaking of limited vocabularies. And a limited imagination.
And I love how he still tries to get authority from mentioning his private conversations. He would often say his inbox was full of letters from people who agreed with him, but who wouldn’t speak publicly. I think you have gotten under his blue skin.
And as to making himself perfectly clear … um, no. Baffled as usual. I think a bible quotation (they ain’t quotes) is coming over me, just hard to pick which one. None are so blind I have used recently. Oh, this seems apt, from Proverbs:
He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
And to answer the question of what we would do without government for the millionth time, we would die or invent it. Without any rules it is a short, brutish trip to death. With rules it seems to be a long, brutish trip, but at least it lasts longer.
no one is backing him up this time. that over the top lunatic rant may finally be his undoing. and he really isn’t going to get much traction going after the so called “bible thumpers”. the posters he’s complaining about have been about as civil as saints.
hey, never thought it could happen, but it’s been a lot of fun posting over there lately. so if you have any messages to send along to Fix, i probably will be stopping over there later today. 🙂 🙂 🙂
oh, and this! too funny. how does an asshole become epic anyway? must require creative writing, or perhaps poetry.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=epic
epic
the most overused word ever, next to fail. for even more asshole points, use them together to form “epic fail.”
everything is epic now. epic car. epic haircut. epic movie. epic album. epic shut the fuck up.
saying “epic win” doesn’t make you sound any better, either. and for fucks sake, don’t ever say it in person.
Beowulf … now that’s epic. And it takes an epic effort to try and translate it, requiring both arms and the man, to borrow from a truly epic poem. I remember taking Old English but I don’t remember much Old English. And the Latin is rusty, and I never really had any Greek, but epos is the root of epic, and means speech or song. So I guess a truly epic asshole would be Le Petomane:
i remember reading Beowulf. it helps if you know German. German and English of course have a common root, and that explains why they both sound pretty ugly when compared to the romantic languages.
do you think it would flatter Fix too much if i referred to him as a farteur? actually i think fartiste works even better. you can listen to him for yourself at you-tube, and then decide.
I like fartiste … it has a nice ring to it.
OMG what a world is out there on youtube. A headline from Alex Jones: Vaccine Death Toll Rises. And they start to rant about how the measles outbreak affected vaccinated people and to blame it on the unvaccinated shows that the vaccination story is breaking down …. The number of lives saved by vaccines is impossible to estimate, but eradicating small pox has been estimated at saving something like 5 million lives annually. The numbers I found are from 1996 but they are compelling. Our eldest who is now in 3rd year at med school has had to be tested for all sorts of exciting diseases, and one of the things they test for is to see if your vaccines are still effective. But I didn’t find Mr Fix yet.
Well, I can’t sit through a whole video of his apparently, although I did enjoy reading some of the comments ….
So I thought I should see if I have received any comments on my exciting youtube videos and the answer is yes! One on the Holy Modal Rounders going fishing video, by someone who says they love the rounders, and which causes me unabashedly to post it:
And a few nice ones, although I’m not sure I understand the first one, which shows last, when I posted Eddie Minnis’ The Buffet, which I probably wasn’t meant to but I directed people to his website and in no way stand to materially profit from having done so. But some Bahamians seem to have appreciated finding it. And I do like his tunes, but must forgive him his homophobia, learnt in church and hard to shed when once indoctrinated.
Somehow no one has commented with a long line of zzzzzzzzz’s on the audio of the Miramichi boat cruise.
The only version of this I found on the web was in a real estate ad, that almost failed to credit the artist. So while I shouldn’t do this, I have, and at least point to Minnis’ website. iMovie is mysterious but I am working on it.
I forgot to mention the vaccine death toll had risen by … 1.
there is one remaining vaccine denier left at DOTS. yet this person has no qualms drinking an aqueous solution of sodium chlorite. he denies it is the same thing as bleach. but ask any chemist. or look up the MSDS sheet. or spill some on your finest upholstery. or just smell it. um, yeah, sodium chlorite smells just like bleach. um, because it is.
chlorite (ClO-) and hypochlorite (ClO2-) ion have nearly identical properties. hypochlorite is used for common household bleach, or pool shock. i think it is more stable, or maybe less expensive to produce.
anyway, what i am talking about is another quack cure called MMS, or “miracle mineral solution”.
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm220756.htm
There was a wacky amount of terrible health advice on that site: colonoscopies killing people, when they are actually a phenomenal life saver, fluoride as a plot to make people dumb, and drinking colloidal silver come immediately to mind. But drinking bleach is a new low!
you really have to wonder if advice followed at TFMR has directly killed anyone yet. i have no doubt at all that financial advice there has resulted in a few suicides. but these DOLTS at DOTS have taken things a step further.
i am going to let sneaky Pete take the 100 spot. it’s even better than being first. so i will be back a little later. hope he doesn’t make me wait all day. 🙂
Good morning. Not sure why, but this somehow came to mind: