If it had been taken from Victoria, BC you would be able to see the crater.
Is that a typo? There is an impressive mountain range and a whole lotta horizon between BC and Mt. St. Helens. You can, however, see Mt Baker from Victoria, which puffs a little steam sometimes.
Hey, I'm part Albertan, so lay off with your embarrasing pseudo-ebonics. I live in BC and S. Ontario too, and socialize across class and ethnic lines, so I have perspective.
We may be more conservative that [sic] the rest of Canada, but we are far from being Republican.
En masse, yes. On the surface. There are significant demographics in AB that are indistinguishable from moral-majority style Republicans apart from accent, and it isn't just rural-urban dynamics--it's noticeable in Calgary / Edmonton too. These attitudes are largely theocratic authoritarian in nature and range from foreign policy to policing the bedroom. They wield great power in Alberta and move mindshare on politics into red-state territory.
Peter Loughheed may have sold us out, and Steven Harper may want to continue that, but we see what NAFTA, Mad Cow, Softwood Lumber, live Hog and Wheat tarrifs have done, and we are not impressed.
Full agreement there. I didn't say that there was a significant movement to become an annex (though it's about the only place in Canada where one can hear such things). These are only commercial issues, which will likely fade; the underlying political and moral values will persist. Albertans are the friendliest canadians one-on-one, in keeping with the wild west feeling. I prefer the on-your-sleeve prejudice of AB over Ontario's cool politeness with an undercurrent of class/race/culture nastiness any day. Still, those 'conservative' values you refer to undoubtedly have more in common with Montana and Texas than coastal BC.
Tell me then, why is Canada's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, refusing to go along with your cockamamy "Missile Defense Shield" program?
For once, the popular opinion was louder than corporate appeals and backroom deals. Political will on this is wobbling, though.
Major threats to Canadian (especially regional) sovereignty: NAFTA, FTAA, Foreign ownership of Canadian businesses (mainly USA), trade barriers like beef and lumber and border crossings, preferential or punishment-based awarding of contracts (such as in Iraq), integration of the two militaries (look at how Canada is buying expeditionary equipment for "policing" abroad, rather than defense equipment like tanks), and of course Bay Street - Wall Street alliances, and their effect on politicians. If all that fails, there's always Fort Drum to worry about... 6 hours to Ottawa via tank.
You're going to see a great deal of pressure around various resource and commercial issues in the next few years: water (especially Great Lakes and the Great Plains), oil (as a US security issue, general feeling is that they have a bloody right to it and will likely start patrolling pipelines), and the building pressure to unify the currency.
Importantly, while Canada in general is not a US lapdog, it's pretty safe to say that Alberta is--our very own 'red state.'
What do you mean by version? and which versions do you mean?
Genesis 1:26-28 - creation, simultaneously, of people, male & female.
Genesis 2:5-8 - creation of female from part of male.
There are other discrepancies in the creation account, leading to all kinds of mental gymnastics over the centuries aimed at exegetical harmony. An example of one approach is a conclusion that they are two different acts, that the first creation of female produced Lilith, not Eve. (Her implied equality in the first version provided fuel for all kinds of doctrine about obedience and the nastiness of uppity women.)
Some scholars argue that the first version was ancient, the version extant before the Hebrews made their book, and that the second version was rabbinical. YMMV. Have fun tracking down the details.
The fact that Macs generally still only have one button and no scroll wheel is so lame
Uh, every mac I've used in the last 9 years has at least two buttons on the mouse/trackball... no they're not stock, it's a $20 option, kind of like a firewire card on a wintel box usually still is, only easier. And I work in university labs often.
The software eject is Safe design. Disk mounting is careful in OS X, it helps protect data. I hit a dedicated eject button on the keyboard, disc ejects if the files aren't in use. Easier and safer and more consistent. If it gets stuck in there, there's a hardware eject that's hidden from noobs.
with much less functionality.
WTF?? I have access to an enormous range of powerful free software tools, many are industry standard and built-in, plus a solid majority of crossplatform business apps. It all multitasks smoothly and works without significant vulnerabilities or bitrot. Drag'n'drop works properly. Network operations seem an order of magnitude easier and more capable out of the box. Not to mention the experience of anyone who's done a side-by-side comparison of multimedia functionality... you can get a wintel box to work as well as a mac with that DV camera, and manage the resulting media, it's just... difficult or annoying, even for us pros, and the setup never lasts as long.
We don't really differ on the goals, but the means. If you read with any care, you'd notice that I support regulation, not "free availability" -- since they'll be available in any case, despite the best intentions of prohibitionists. Ever thus.
My responses are based on professional experience as a front line worker, as a cultural policy researcher, and as an ongoing student of society and inner life. They're simply practical, and I never named any abstract ideology, other than my objection to the eagerness of power-hungry politicians to control a person's body chemistry and mental state; in fact I feel the whole debate has been about the difference between the abstract and the everyday. You say prohibit; I say regulate, educate, and change context. I'm talking about what will work, and what will backfire.
For those running things, reductionism is a necessary evil.
Provisional reductions, yes. I use "reductionism" in the restricted (non-math or scientific) context of applying mechanical principles to social contexts, resulting in grossly inadequate approximations. It means most of the results of these decisions will be unjust.
The capacity does not exist, to be able to allow anybody freedom of choice in recreational drugs without endangering the weak willed, and thus society.
Fundamentialist religions, especially charismatic sects, endanger the weak-willed. Put them on your list, for they produce dangerous agressors. From there it's a short hop to judging and prohibiting weakness wherever convenient. [Note that you use the word "allow."]
you have the disturbing mental disability of being unable to perceive the use of duality as a concept, coupled with the obsession of identifying any dualistic themes no matter how faint or trivial.
Now that's an ungrounded personal attack, I know this is/., but don't be a jerk. Note that the yinyang symbol contains emergent opposites, which signifies the limitations of a static symbol in a dynamic system. I've pointed out to you that dualities are generally useful as a starting point, but misleading as a guide to specific situations. I identify your overuse of them in this thread. Reread Mevlana.
you gabble libertarian ideology
"Now what is that, for Christian word?
I hope she feeds on dried goose turd."
--R. Creeley
Your athlete's other accomplishments are beside the point. She failed the strength of character test when she became an alcoholic.
That's another fine example of reducing human behaviour to one factor. One is always weak in some areas, especially blind spots, and strong in others. Simultaneously. Addiction is merely one weakness among many. Arrogance, contempt, and superiority complexes can be just as damaging, but usually directly to others. And yes, my stepsister's no longer on crack thanks, and the other family member's sober for 45 years now. But the arrogant elitist family member is still wreaking havoc in others' lives, as she's in denial about it.
you were implying that I was a fascist.
I wasn't in the previous posts, I was stating that particular attitudes were authoritarian. And even thought the Eco quote was a goad in response to your overreaction, it doesn't call you a fascist, nor do I. It states that fascists rely on elitism as a basic and very public part of their ideology.
You'll feel different about drugs when you have children of your own.
Whippersnapper, my own children are well schooled in the nature of toxicity and mental balance. They know restraint and thresholds, and understand the concept of moderating even restraint. I've been a houseparent to streetkids, 10-year old car thieves, 12 year-old prostitutes, 14 y.o. junkies. They've almost all been sexually abused, and are emotionally stalled at that moment. 'Their fault, they were weak 6 year olds! They are beneath contempt for having learned to abuse their bodies!' Bodies that were taken from them by an authoritarian act. Abuse perpetuated by a system that purports to be philanthropic, but falls into the category of domination you propose.
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.
--Thoreau, Walden.
Proletarian vices are equally available to the weak in all walks of life. It's not about wealth, or even education. It's about spirit. Some are strong, and some are weak.
What is it with you and absolutes / dualities? The people your judgement rests upon in the above quote have overcome more than most: one of them was an olympic-qualifying athlete who mastered extremely complex heavy equipment and rose to the top of her field despite being the only female in it within 300 miles, suffered extreme working conditions, raised intelligent independent children and a large garden while doing all that... and fell into addiction despite it. More strength and perseverance of spirit through most of her life than a gaggle of Nietzschean strutting bozos.
The Low don't have the stomach - or the heart, the brains - to defend their rights every moment of their lives.
This is where it gets scary, because someone who has great moral fortitude in the realm of the senses takes it upon themselves to decide who is deserving or isn't, based on the limitations built into their particularly specialized (and generally grossly reductionist) way of thinking. Oh yes, there are a great many fools who could do with some decent education (I don't mean a 'public' school). Yet I've met many ordinary unschooled folks who lead simple lives, have a little fun, work hard, keep their own mind about things and treat others fairly. I've met internationally lauded heros and leaders, prophets and great artists; they are all weak, they all have mastery over some part of their spirit, they are all fools and geniuses. (Orwell's a good example of that: very insightful, but overconfident, and at once compassionate and a real prick.) You crave a simple humanity, in your writing. Perhaps you misrepresent yourself.
By the way I am no authoritarian; just the opposite.
Yet you claim "Drugs are dangerous" and advocate that the government extends its dominion into our personal chemistry, despite the evidence that prohibition doesn't work.
individual liberty notwithstanding I don't see that the rest of us owe it to you, to let you drink yourself to a painful squalid, undignified and utterly pointless death like my father suffered. If I can stop you doing that I will be glad to do so, no matter how much it may prick your sense of injustice.
No, never let someone ruin their lives needlessly. Please stop people doing that when you see them... just don't try to put them in jail, because that's worse, or tell them they're low animals, because that's just stupid, or hand the responsibility over to a legislative body, because their motives are perverted by the process. Perhaps your utopian studies can include things like peer intervention, popular education, a sense of purpose and self-esteem, and other tools for strengthening atrophied spirits. Regulate substances by demanding purity standards and good strong labelling, fine. Control consensual behaviour by fiat? Time to grow out of that.
in your terms, either we all have the right to do whatever we want to ourselves, or else it's fascism.
Now, you see? You're doing it again, without quoting me, and durn near invoking Godwin's Law while you're at it. Well, you started it:
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
Anyway, you have to believe me when I say I think the world's analog. Consensuality is context-dependent (and don't go making puddles about sophistry and shit; it's a real-world notion, not an abstraction). Don't get intoxicated in the park, or I and some friends will encourage your departure, because you'll ruin it for us. But a can of beer with lunch on a park bench? Whate
On the other hand I do not believe anyway that chemical intoxication is an absolute pre-requisite for religious experience.
Who wrote that? You have a reading comprehension problem, as you consistently cite me inaccurately. Or, perhaps it's a spillover from a preponderance towards dualities.
Unfortunately, experience suggests that allowing the former inexorably leads to a preponderance of the latter. You forget that the proles care nothing for mysticism - only for how long they must wait until they can get off their faces again, so they can lie drooling in the gutter.
Such noble condescension! is this your transcendent behaviour in action? So, you're to be one of the people who allows or disallows, hm. Not one of the proles, hm. If there's a drinking problem, perhaps you should deal with the problem, not the drink. Improve your education system and your distribution of power, and you might see results.
I have seen the worst of human intoxication, have cared for street kids, and have crack and alcohol addicts in the family--an educated, privileged and religious family. I know toxic tragedy. I still believe the desire to self-derange is a useful trait gone treacherous, like the urge to consume fat and sugar. However, I make no apologies for the avaricious, the brutal, the domineering. An authoritarian society, where someone tells me what I can and cannot put in my body, or what I can or cannot view or learn or share, is ignoble and damned. Feel free to make suggestions, or provide opportunities; but stay the hell away from my decisions, when they concern me alone.
The difference between one who destroys themselves and one who destroys others is that between a fool and an asshole. I say: suffer fools, patiently, but disempower assholes, forthwith! Then you will move into a transcendent humanity, not before.
I am not a fan of overdomestication or easy living, you assume too much. It sickens me to watch. However, this binarism between noble humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom that you suggest is a universal truth has always been controversial, and the objections aren't about justifying foolish behaviour, or defending privilege. It's about confusing the symbol for the thing itself.
The context of the comment you poured contempt on was concern over prohibition. Binarisms, when it's forgotten that they are only a rarefied tool for reducing reality to manageable bits, lead to absolutes and extreme reductionism. Such as, "no intoxicants." Period. I maintain that this is foolish, for, aside from arguments about the effectiveness of prohibition, it also fails to recognise that intoxicants, like medicine, have their place. With any toxin, use is a question of prescription and dosage.
Only a fool or suicide would drink a bottle of aspirin. Yet some do. Ban aspirin? Or deal with the cause of despair or ignorance?
I say that self induced derangement (through chemistry or other techniques) is at the heart of all mysticism, and thus crucial to inquiry into humanity. Prohibition fails to recognize this. I say that celebration involves intoxication for adaptive reasons, that such behaviour is both animal and noble without clear distinction--and you imply I want a crack house on every corner.
Maybe some Mevlana will illustrate: -----------
"They prattle of 'balance', of 'moderation', of 'decorum'.
I wrote on one of their doors in secret:
"You think you know, You died long ago:
"You think you see? reason ate your eyes."
I have shrunk beyond the smallest atom, Expanded further than the last star. All that is left of Rumi is only This garden, laughing with fruit."
"This miracle, daily as dawn and sundown Normal as bread, as sleep after love, If I look at Him, I see my own image, If I look at my own, I see His, flame."
"Grind yourself, strip yourself down. To blind loving silence. Stay there, until you see You are gazing at the Light, With its own ageless eyes."
"I was once like you, enlightened and "rational", I too scoffed at lovers, Now I am drunk, crazed, thin with misery.
No one is safe! Watch out."
You only need smell the wine. For vision to flame from each void. Such flames from wine's aroma! Imagine if you were the wine."
They say they love, and make such dainty distinctions, If they'd seen the Fire, could they name it, flame by flame? One moment of madness, their soul would be a ruin. I pray for them all: Ruin them before they die.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag. I see and know all times and worlds, As One, One, always One. So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking? Admit it and change everything! This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.
For days I am not in the world Nor am I out of it Not "here" not "there" Only silence, light , space.
Whaterver is said or thought I am in you and I am you. No one can understand this Until he has lost his mind.
In the dryest, whitest, stretch, Of pain's infinite desert, I lost my sanity, And found this rose.
base are those who only appease their animal nature, and transcendent are those who transcend their animal nature.
Oh, for a digital universe! Great god Binary, take me!
Is praying a transcendent activity? What if it gets you high, and you like it? Is that a non-human, base response? Yes, in everyday idiom, it's trivial to distinguish between these; but upon closer inspection, when we're trying to address mass social issues, or questions of the spirit, casual idiom is just lazy.
animal + x = human, maybe;
x - animal = human, not likely.
Your posts read like you derive a base pleasure in extending your moral framework into the realm of universal ethics, perhaps because it gives you self-esteem. Re-read what you wrote; is that an intelligent, organised response? Did you attempt to acknowledge the whole range of human response, or did you generalize and stereotype? Did you actually understand my use of the word indoctrination?
Life is pretty much analog, like it or not; you can't say "this is base, this is transcendent" with absolute surety, unless you rely on indoctrination. And ideology is like halitosis: it's always someone else's problem.
[Your insults only detract from your argument, BTW.]
If you want quiet XServes you'll have to buy or build an iso-rack for them, under load they sound like a stack of Hoovers.
I use a dualG5 sometimes, and it's in an iso-box too, so we can hear each other talk when the rendering gets heavy. Those 9 fans in there sure are quiet... until it heats up.
Ah, you know all about what it is to be human! We've been looking for you, myself and all the other inquirers into the human spirit!
Tell me, how did you come to understand what is base and what is transcendent? Did you read it in a book? Did you take it on authority? Did you pray until you heard the all-knowing Voice? Did you fast under a Pipal tree for months? Did you spin and chant endlessly, until the walls of illusion crumbled?
Perhaps you've been reading Whitman. No, you haven't been reading Whitman. Paul? you've been reading Paul? Or Dr. Phil?
It is weaker to simply and comfortably believe, to filter the world through the fine mesh of your indoctrination and pass judgement like some demigod, than to try to see through the haze of pain to its causes.
I make no apologies for the behaviour of the avaricious, the brutal, and the domineering. Do you?
"Maybe we need to ask ourselves why we engage in such useless behaviours"
I grew up watching squirrels and robins get stinkin' drunk off the crabapple tree droppings out back... drunken or stoned deer have nearly suicided on my truck numerous times (mushroom season)... all kinds of examples of drunk and disorderly animal behaviour, from all parts of the globe.
Get over your puritanical impulses. Getting blotto is part of being animal, like most of our behaviour. More, it's part of the fundamental nature of mysticism, and thus at the root of all religions. Revelations was written under the influence of fasting visions, for instance; wherever we inquire into the great mysteries, we employ techniques to help us get closer. Sometimes those techniques involve chemicals.
Then there's Carnival, as an impulse, not an actual festival. We need to party, and if we really want to party well, we need to forget who we are. Being blotto is fun, and like any medicine, when dosage is respected, it's good clean fun with a probable adaptive benefit.
Turning fun and religious stuff into vice means there's despair, opression, and profit involved. Focus on the substance just results in displacement; you're attacking symptoms. Try dealing with the despair and profit end of things, and the rest will settle down.
There were over 100 million votes cast, vs Canada's what 2 or 3 million?
Way to confirm those stereotypes, billybob.
Actually, our biggest election problem is counting the icicles we use for markers, you know, blue ones for this candidate, red ones for that... apparently if the room has too many people in it during the count they just wind up with purple puddles. Eh.
Look, Mr. Coward, the genocide is ongoing; the effects of being denied your livelihood, mother tongue, cultural traditions, trade relations, rights to stewardship, ecological niche, etc., carries on for generations, and those who uphold the institutional frameworks that maintained these strategies are complicit. On much of the continent, the theft and lies didn't end hundreds of years ago, but continue to this day, and they are morally continuous with the slaughter of entire villages in the 1600's.
This is a question of the unresolved abuses to sovereignty of existing peoples, with a persistent and extant connection to the land despite various forms of defeat and outright opression. You can't belittle it by trying to reduce it to the same status as nationalizing property owned by fascistic foreign corporations or events thousands of years old that have been resolved.
But, it is very much in the interest of any settler state ideology to find ways to obscure the nature of active settlement, so I expected your answer, from someone.
It's a cheap trick to say "get over it, it's a done deal" when a) it's not a done deal and b) you continue to reap economic and social benefits from the dishonourable and deployed plans of your immediate predecessors.
"only one of us is speaking from ignorance it would appear"
Yes, I concede that the mesoamerican civilizations and the inca were famously brutal, and more civil than tribal; I was referring to vast majoriy of the Americas. These civilizations, however, were not the first contacts for explorers, as the outlying peoples were all tribal.
A strong case can be made that the Iroquois are not and never have been a civilization, since their settlements never got beyond large villages, by design. That they were politically advanced and had strategic advantage over the newcomers is no indication of civil order; in most respects, their daily lives and values resembled their unquestionably tribal neighbours far more than any city-dwellers.
Likewise with the Powhatan, who were village folk with a typical Woodlands lifestyle, seeming more like a civilization because of not having to be nomadic. The peoples of the Pacific NW at that time, by the way, were far more numerous and socially developed than you seem to think, and some of those communities are still pretty big.
I maintain my position that the Americas were tribal in outlook, with a vastly different experience of "vices, power struggles, warfare and savagery" than the civil societies of Europe, or of civilized history in general.
Actually as far as I'm concerned, anything more than a single human lifetime may as well be equivalent. As long as there isn't a single person alive that was a player in that era, its irrelevant to me, be it 100 years or a 1000 years.
That's completely irrational. Do you mean to say you do not partake of any of the spoils of genocide? You don't drive on highways, use metals or electricity, or participate in government institutions? Do you speak the local language, or english?
Go ahead and deny the continuity of society and its institutions, and claim no part in it, but you'll be a hypocrite. The notion of a statute of limitations implies that a thing is finished: however, this process of colonization is far from over, and culpability for it rests with those who continue to accrue privilege based on it.
They were and are humans just like everyone else and suffered from the same vices, power struggles, warfare and savagery as every other example of humanity throughout history.
This is a quaint quasi-humanist notion that equates tribal society with civl society. They're fundamentally different in structure, values, and effects on the landscape and neighbours. Some tribal values persist in civilization, but they're usually the nasty ones, which provides nice fodder for the ideology of justified expansion over top of tribal peoples that is still well under way.
History doesn't generally include tribal societies, as history is primarily the story of cities. You can't extend that history to a time and place of which you're ignorant.
And which Ultimate, Original Native Americans did the Native Americans take the land from? Don't they get a say also?
OK troll, I'll bite: many of those issues are actually being dealt with in courts and treaty negotiations, where the extant peoples in question are still making claims against other indigenous nations. We aren't talking about stuff that happened thousands of years ago, we're talking about right now. Your ignorance is no excuse for claiming that two wrongs make a right.
" this idea of all native tribes being peaceful and cooperative"
Well, only doe-eyed new age pseudoliberals really express that sentiment.
The Iriquois Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee, consists of six nations, the Mohawk merely being one of the more publicised. The US Constitution borrows heavily from their political organization, which was extremely sophisticated for the 1700's.
The Ojibway (chippewa, pick yer anglicization), one of the largest indigenous nations on the planet geographically, were, like nearly all other nations, at war at various times with their neighbours over territory. War is never pretty.
I think the crucial difference is between the war-of-honour typically waged by tribal societies and the total war of civilization, which dispenses with honour in favour of expediency and victory.
I strongly object to your assertion that the locals on this continent never "learned the principles of advanced agriculture." Do a survey of your kitchen and pantry, and tally the percentage of foodstuffs that were developed in the Americas by the locals-- you'll find it's disproportionately American. For example, the Incas had over 5000 varieties of potato when they were invaded, cunningly used to stagger plantings, adapt to many microclimates, survive pests, provide variety in nutrition, texture, and storage capablilities, etc. Where I live now is near the former site of an enormous corn plantation, collectively run with many smallholder parcels, hugely and sustainably productive and both biologically and socially complex, well before "contact." There are endless examples of staple cultivars: squashes, pineapples, beans galore (incl. soy), corn/maize, 'taters, sweet potatos, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, squashes, sunflower, cucumber, etc. etc., and of course, cocoa and cotton.
Also, examine the early sketches and engravings of unconquered settlements in east N.A. -- they look pretty darn advanced, to a subsistence farmer's eye.
Your guage of intelligence is extremely instrumentalist, which is one of the root causes of the problems we find ourselves in now.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that a typo? There is an impressive mountain range and a whole lotta horizon between BC and Mt. St. Helens. You can, however, see Mt Baker from Victoria, which puffs a little steam sometimes.
Hey, I'm part Albertan, so lay off with your embarrasing pseudo-ebonics. I live in BC and S. Ontario too, and socialize across class and ethnic lines, so I have perspective.
We may be more conservative that [sic] the rest of Canada, but we are far from being Republican.
En masse, yes. On the surface. There are significant demographics in AB that are indistinguishable from moral-majority style Republicans apart from accent, and it isn't just rural-urban dynamics--it's noticeable in Calgary / Edmonton too. These attitudes are largely theocratic authoritarian in nature and range from foreign policy to policing the bedroom. They wield great power in Alberta and move mindshare on politics into red-state territory.
Peter Loughheed may have sold us out, and Steven Harper may want to continue that, but we see what NAFTA, Mad Cow, Softwood Lumber, live Hog and Wheat tarrifs have done, and we are not impressed.
Full agreement there. I didn't say that there was a significant movement to become an annex (though it's about the only place in Canada where one can hear such things). These are only commercial issues, which will likely fade; the underlying political and moral values will persist. Albertans are the friendliest canadians one-on-one, in keeping with the wild west feeling. I prefer the on-your-sleeve prejudice of AB over Ontario's cool politeness with an undercurrent of class/race/culture nastiness any day. Still, those 'conservative' values you refer to undoubtedly have more in common with Montana and Texas than coastal BC.
For once, the popular opinion was louder than corporate appeals and backroom deals. Political will on this is wobbling, though.
Major threats to Canadian (especially regional) sovereignty: NAFTA, FTAA, Foreign ownership of Canadian businesses (mainly USA), trade barriers like beef and lumber and border crossings, preferential or punishment-based awarding of contracts (such as in Iraq), integration of the two militaries (look at how Canada is buying expeditionary equipment for "policing" abroad, rather than defense equipment like tanks), and of course Bay Street - Wall Street alliances, and their effect on politicians. If all that fails, there's always Fort Drum to worry about... 6 hours to Ottawa via tank.
You're going to see a great deal of pressure around various resource and commercial issues in the next few years: water (especially Great Lakes and the Great Plains), oil (as a US security issue, general feeling is that they have a bloody right to it and will likely start patrolling pipelines), and the building pressure to unify the currency.
Importantly, while Canada in general is not a US lapdog, it's pretty safe to say that Alberta is--our very own 'red state.'
Genesis 1:26-28 - creation, simultaneously, of people, male & female.
Genesis 2:5-8 - creation of female from part of male.
There are other discrepancies in the creation account, leading to all kinds of mental gymnastics over the centuries aimed at exegetical harmony. An example of one approach is a conclusion that they are two different acts, that the first creation of female produced Lilith, not Eve. (Her implied equality in the first version provided fuel for all kinds of doctrine about obedience and the nastiness of uppity women.)
Some scholars argue that the first version was ancient, the version extant before the Hebrews made their book, and that the second version was rabbinical. YMMV. Have fun tracking down the details.
First version mentions no rib:
God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them.
Biblical scholars argue about the two versions and their origins; as usual with political arguments, qui bono?
Uh, every mac I've used in the last 9 years has at least two buttons on the mouse/trackball... no they're not stock, it's a $20 option, kind of like a firewire card on a wintel box usually still is, only easier. And I work in university labs often.
The software eject is Safe design. Disk mounting is careful in OS X, it helps protect data. I hit a dedicated eject button on the keyboard, disc ejects if the files aren't in use. Easier and safer and more consistent. If it gets stuck in there, there's a hardware eject that's hidden from noobs.
with much less functionality.
WTF?? I have access to an enormous range of powerful free software tools, many are industry standard and built-in, plus a solid majority of crossplatform business apps. It all multitasks smoothly and works without significant vulnerabilities or bitrot. Drag'n'drop works properly. Network operations seem an order of magnitude easier and more capable out of the box. Not to mention the experience of anyone who's done a side-by-side comparison of multimedia functionality... you can get a wintel box to work as well as a mac with that DV camera, and manage the resulting media, it's just... difficult or annoying, even for us pros, and the setup never lasts as long.
Not to sound like a troll or anything,
Oops, I fell for it.
We don't really differ on the goals, but the means. If you read with any care, you'd notice that I support regulation, not "free availability" -- since they'll be available in any case, despite the best intentions of prohibitionists. Ever thus.
My responses are based on professional experience as a front line worker, as a cultural policy researcher, and as an ongoing student of society and inner life. They're simply practical, and I never named any abstract ideology, other than my objection to the eagerness of power-hungry politicians to control a person's body chemistry and mental state; in fact I feel the whole debate has been about the difference between the abstract and the everyday. You say prohibit; I say regulate, educate, and change context. I'm talking about what will work, and what will backfire.
Provisional reductions, yes. I use "reductionism" in the restricted (non-math or scientific) context of applying mechanical principles to social contexts, resulting in grossly inadequate approximations. It means most of the results of these decisions will be unjust.
The capacity does not exist, to be able to allow anybody freedom of choice in recreational drugs without endangering the weak willed, and thus society.
Fundamentialist religions, especially charismatic sects, endanger the weak-willed. Put them on your list, for they produce dangerous agressors. From there it's a short hop to judging and prohibiting weakness wherever convenient. [Note that you use the word "allow."]
you have the disturbing mental disability of being unable to perceive the use of duality as a concept, coupled with the obsession of identifying any dualistic themes no matter how faint or trivial.
Now that's an ungrounded personal attack, I know this is /., but don't be a jerk. Note that the yinyang symbol contains emergent opposites, which signifies the limitations of a static symbol in a dynamic system. I've pointed out to you that dualities are generally useful as a starting point, but misleading as a guide to specific situations. I identify your overuse of them in this thread. Reread Mevlana.
you gabble libertarian ideology
"Now what is that, for Christian word?
I hope she feeds on dried goose turd."
--R. Creeley
Your athlete's other accomplishments are beside the point. She failed the strength of character test when she became an alcoholic.
That's another fine example of reducing human behaviour to one factor. One is always weak in some areas, especially blind spots, and strong in others. Simultaneously. Addiction is merely one weakness among many. Arrogance, contempt, and superiority complexes can be just as damaging, but usually directly to others. And yes, my stepsister's no longer on crack thanks, and the other family member's sober for 45 years now. But the arrogant elitist family member is still wreaking havoc in others' lives, as she's in denial about it.
you were implying that I was a fascist.
I wasn't in the previous posts, I was stating that particular attitudes were authoritarian. And even thought the Eco quote was a goad in response to your overreaction, it doesn't call you a fascist, nor do I. It states that fascists rely on elitism as a basic and very public part of their ideology.
You'll feel different about drugs when you have children of your own.
Whippersnapper, my own children are well schooled in the nature of toxicity and mental balance. They know restraint and thresholds, and understand the concept of moderating even restraint. I've been a houseparent to streetkids, 10-year old car thieves, 12 year-old prostitutes, 14 y.o. junkies. They've almost all been sexually abused, and are emotionally stalled at that moment. 'Their fault, they were weak 6 year olds! They are beneath contempt for having learned to abuse their bodies!' Bodies that were taken from them by an authoritarian act. Abuse perpetuated by a system that purports to be philanthropic, but falls into the category of domination you propose.
What is it with you and absolutes / dualities? The people your judgement rests upon in the above quote have overcome more than most: one of them was an olympic-qualifying athlete who mastered extremely complex heavy equipment and rose to the top of her field despite being the only female in it within 300 miles, suffered extreme working conditions, raised intelligent independent children and a large garden while doing all that... and fell into addiction despite it. More strength and perseverance of spirit through most of her life than a gaggle of Nietzschean strutting bozos.
The Low don't have the stomach - or the heart, the brains - to defend their rights every moment of their lives.
This is where it gets scary, because someone who has great moral fortitude in the realm of the senses takes it upon themselves to decide who is deserving or isn't, based on the limitations built into their particularly specialized (and generally grossly reductionist) way of thinking. Oh yes, there are a great many fools who could do with some decent education (I don't mean a 'public' school). Yet I've met many ordinary unschooled folks who lead simple lives, have a little fun, work hard, keep their own mind about things and treat others fairly. I've met internationally lauded heros and leaders, prophets and great artists; they are all weak, they all have mastery over some part of their spirit, they are all fools and geniuses. (Orwell's a good example of that: very insightful, but overconfident, and at once compassionate and a real prick.) You crave a simple humanity, in your writing. Perhaps you misrepresent yourself.
By the way I am no authoritarian; just the opposite.
Yet you claim "Drugs are dangerous" and advocate that the government extends its dominion into our personal chemistry, despite the evidence that prohibition doesn't work.
individual liberty notwithstanding I don't see that the rest of us owe it to you, to let you drink yourself to a painful squalid, undignified and utterly pointless death like my father suffered. If I can stop you doing that I will be glad to do so, no matter how much it may prick your sense of injustice.
No, never let someone ruin their lives needlessly. Please stop people doing that when you see them... just don't try to put them in jail, because that's worse, or tell them they're low animals, because that's just stupid, or hand the responsibility over to a legislative body, because their motives are perverted by the process. Perhaps your utopian studies can include things like peer intervention, popular education, a sense of purpose and self-esteem, and other tools for strengthening atrophied spirits. Regulate substances by demanding purity standards and good strong labelling, fine. Control consensual behaviour by fiat? Time to grow out of that.
in your terms, either we all have the right to do whatever we want to ourselves, or else it's fascism.
Now, you see? You're doing it again, without quoting me, and durn near invoking Godwin's Law while you're at it. Well, you started it:
Anyway, you have to believe me when I say I think the world's analog. Consensuality is context-dependent (and don't go making puddles about sophistry and shit; it's a real-world notion, not an abstraction). Don't get intoxicated in the park, or I and some friends will encourage your departure, because you'll ruin it for us. But a can of beer with lunch on a park bench? Whate
Who wrote that? You have a reading comprehension problem, as you consistently cite me inaccurately. Or, perhaps it's a spillover from a preponderance towards dualities.
Unfortunately, experience suggests that allowing the former inexorably leads to a preponderance of the latter. You forget that the proles care nothing for mysticism - only for how long they must wait until they can get off their faces again, so they can lie drooling in the gutter.
Such noble condescension! is this your transcendent behaviour in action? So, you're to be one of the people who allows or disallows, hm. Not one of the proles, hm. If there's a drinking problem, perhaps you should deal with the problem, not the drink. Improve your education system and your distribution of power, and you might see results.
I have seen the worst of human intoxication, have cared for street kids, and have crack and alcohol addicts in the family--an educated, privileged and religious family. I know toxic tragedy. I still believe the desire to self-derange is a useful trait gone treacherous, like the urge to consume fat and sugar. However, I make no apologies for the avaricious, the brutal, the domineering. An authoritarian society, where someone tells me what I can and cannot put in my body, or what I can or cannot view or learn or share, is ignoble and damned. Feel free to make suggestions, or provide opportunities; but stay the hell away from my decisions, when they concern me alone.
The difference between one who destroys themselves and one who destroys others is that between a fool and an asshole. I say: suffer fools, patiently, but disempower assholes, forthwith! Then you will move into a transcendent humanity, not before.
I am not a fan of overdomestication or easy living, you assume too much. It sickens me to watch. However, this binarism between noble humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom that you suggest is a universal truth has always been controversial, and the objections aren't about justifying foolish behaviour, or defending privilege. It's about confusing the symbol for the thing itself.
The context of the comment you poured contempt on was concern over prohibition. Binarisms, when it's forgotten that they are only a rarefied tool for reducing reality to manageable bits, lead to absolutes and extreme reductionism. Such as, "no intoxicants." Period. I maintain that this is foolish, for, aside from arguments about the effectiveness of prohibition, it also fails to recognise that intoxicants, like medicine, have their place. With any toxin, use is a question of prescription and dosage.
Only a fool or suicide would drink a bottle of aspirin. Yet some do. Ban aspirin? Or deal with the cause of despair or ignorance?
I say that self induced derangement (through chemistry or other techniques) is at the heart of all mysticism, and thus crucial to inquiry into humanity. Prohibition fails to recognize this. I say that celebration involves intoxication for adaptive reasons, that such behaviour is both animal and noble without clear distinction--and you imply I want a crack house on every corner.
Maybe some Mevlana will illustrate: -----------
"They prattle of 'balance', of 'moderation', of 'decorum'.
I wrote on one of their doors in secret:
"You think you know,
You died long ago:
"You think you see?
reason ate your eyes."
I have shrunk beyond the smallest atom,
Expanded further than the last star.
All that is left of Rumi is only
This garden, laughing with fruit."
"This miracle, daily as dawn and sundown
Normal as bread, as sleep after love,
If I look at Him, I see my own image,
If I look at my own, I see His, flame."
"Grind yourself, strip yourself down.
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light,
With its own ageless eyes."
"I was once like you, enlightened and "rational",
I too scoffed at lovers,
Now I am drunk, crazed, thin with misery.
No one is safe! Watch out."
You only need smell the wine.
For vision to flame from each void.
Such flames from wine's aroma!
Imagine if you were the wine."
They say they love, and make such dainty distinctions,
If they'd seen the Fire, could they name it, flame by flame?
One moment of madness, their soul would be a ruin.
I pray for them all: Ruin them before they die.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag.
I see and know all times and worlds,
As One, One, always One.
So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?
Admit it and change everything!
This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.
For days I am not in the world
Nor am I out of it
Not "here" not "there"
Only silence, light , space.
Whaterver is said or thought
I am in you and I am you.
No one can understand this
Until he has lost his mind.
In the dryest, whitest, stretch,
Of pain's infinite desert,
I lost my sanity,
And found this rose.
Oh, for a digital universe! Great god Binary, take me!
Is praying a transcendent activity? What if it gets you high, and you like it? Is that a non-human, base response? Yes, in everyday idiom, it's trivial to distinguish between these; but upon closer inspection, when we're trying to address mass social issues, or questions of the spirit, casual idiom is just lazy.
animal + x = human, maybe;
x - animal = human, not likely.
Your posts read like you derive a base pleasure in extending your moral framework into the realm of universal ethics, perhaps because it gives you self-esteem. Re-read what you wrote; is that an intelligent, organised response? Did you attempt to acknowledge the whole range of human response, or did you generalize and stereotype? Did you actually understand my use of the word indoctrination?
Life is pretty much analog, like it or not; you can't say "this is base, this is transcendent" with absolute surety, unless you rely on indoctrination. And ideology is like halitosis: it's always someone else's problem.
[Your insults only detract from your argument, BTW.]
If you want quiet XServes you'll have to buy or build an iso-rack for them, under load they sound like a stack of Hoovers.
I use a dualG5 sometimes, and it's in an iso-box too, so we can hear each other talk when the rendering gets heavy. Those 9 fans in there sure are quiet... until it heats up.
Ah, you know all about what it is to be human! We've been looking for you, myself and all the other inquirers into the human spirit!
Tell me, how did you come to understand what is base and what is transcendent? Did you read it in a book? Did you take it on authority? Did you pray until you heard the all-knowing Voice? Did you fast under a Pipal tree for months? Did you spin and chant endlessly, until the walls of illusion crumbled?
Perhaps you've been reading Whitman. No, you haven't been reading Whitman. Paul? you've been reading Paul? Or Dr. Phil?
It is weaker to simply and comfortably believe, to filter the world through the fine mesh of your indoctrination and pass judgement like some demigod, than to try to see through the haze of pain to its causes.
I make no apologies for the behaviour of the avaricious, the brutal, and the domineering. Do you?
"Maybe we need to ask ourselves why we engage in such useless behaviours"
I grew up watching squirrels and robins get stinkin' drunk off the crabapple tree droppings out back... drunken or stoned deer have nearly suicided on my truck numerous times (mushroom season)... all kinds of examples of drunk and disorderly animal behaviour, from all parts of the globe.
Get over your puritanical impulses. Getting blotto is part of being animal, like most of our behaviour. More, it's part of the fundamental nature of mysticism, and thus at the root of all religions. Revelations was written under the influence of fasting visions, for instance; wherever we inquire into the great mysteries, we employ techniques to help us get closer. Sometimes those techniques involve chemicals.
Then there's Carnival, as an impulse, not an actual festival. We need to party, and if we really want to party well, we need to forget who we are. Being blotto is fun, and like any medicine, when dosage is respected, it's good clean fun with a probable adaptive benefit.
Turning fun and religious stuff into vice means there's despair, opression, and profit involved. Focus on the substance just results in displacement; you're attacking symptoms. Try dealing with the despair and profit end of things, and the rest will settle down.
Way to confirm those stereotypes, billybob.
Actually, our biggest election problem is counting the icicles we use for markers, you know, blue ones for this candidate, red ones for that... apparently if the room has too many people in it during the count they just wind up with purple puddles. Eh.
Look, Mr. Coward, the genocide is ongoing; the effects of being denied your livelihood, mother tongue, cultural traditions, trade relations, rights to stewardship, ecological niche, etc., carries on for generations, and those who uphold the institutional frameworks that maintained these strategies are complicit. On much of the continent, the theft and lies didn't end hundreds of years ago, but continue to this day, and they are morally continuous with the slaughter of entire villages in the 1600's.
This is a question of the unresolved abuses to sovereignty of existing peoples, with a persistent and extant connection to the land despite various forms of defeat and outright opression. You can't belittle it by trying to reduce it to the same status as nationalizing property owned by fascistic foreign corporations or events thousands of years old that have been resolved.
But, it is very much in the interest of any settler state ideology to find ways to obscure the nature of active settlement, so I expected your answer, from someone.
It's a cheap trick to say "get over it, it's a done deal" when a) it's not a done deal and b) you continue to reap economic and social benefits from the dishonourable and deployed plans of your immediate predecessors.
"only one of us is speaking from ignorance it would appear"
Yes, I concede that the mesoamerican civilizations and the inca were famously brutal, and more civil than tribal; I was referring to vast majoriy of the Americas. These civilizations, however, were not the first contacts for explorers, as the outlying peoples were all tribal.
A strong case can be made that the Iroquois are not and never have been a civilization, since their settlements never got beyond large villages, by design. That they were politically advanced and had strategic advantage over the newcomers is no indication of civil order; in most respects, their daily lives and values resembled their unquestionably tribal neighbours far more than any city-dwellers.
Likewise with the Powhatan, who were village folk with a typical Woodlands lifestyle, seeming more like a civilization because of not having to be nomadic. The peoples of the Pacific NW at that time, by the way, were far more numerous and socially developed than you seem to think, and some of those communities are still pretty big.
I maintain my position that the Americas were tribal in outlook, with a vastly different experience of "vices, power struggles, warfare and savagery" than the civil societies of Europe, or of civilized history in general.
That's completely irrational. Do you mean to say you do not partake of any of the spoils of genocide? You don't drive on highways, use metals or electricity, or participate in government institutions? Do you speak the local language, or english?
Go ahead and deny the continuity of society and its institutions, and claim no part in it, but you'll be a hypocrite. The notion of a statute of limitations implies that a thing is finished: however, this process of colonization is far from over, and culpability for it rests with those who continue to accrue privilege based on it.
This is a quaint quasi-humanist notion that equates tribal society with civl society. They're fundamentally different in structure, values, and effects on the landscape and neighbours. Some tribal values persist in civilization, but they're usually the nasty ones, which provides nice fodder for the ideology of justified expansion over top of tribal peoples that is still well under way.
History doesn't generally include tribal societies, as history is primarily the story of cities. You can't extend that history to a time and place of which you're ignorant.
OK troll, I'll bite: many of those issues are actually being dealt with in courts and treaty negotiations, where the extant peoples in question are still making claims against other indigenous nations. We aren't talking about stuff that happened thousands of years ago, we're talking about right now. Your ignorance is no excuse for claiming that two wrongs make a right.
" this idea of all native tribes being peaceful and cooperative"
Well, only doe-eyed new age pseudoliberals really express that sentiment.
The Iriquois Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee, consists of six nations, the Mohawk merely being one of the more publicised. The US Constitution borrows heavily from their political organization, which was extremely sophisticated for the 1700's.
The Ojibway (chippewa, pick yer anglicization), one of the largest indigenous nations on the planet geographically, were, like nearly all other nations, at war at various times with their neighbours over territory. War is never pretty.
I think the crucial difference is between the war-of-honour typically waged by tribal societies and the total war of civilization, which dispenses with honour in favour of expediency and victory.
I strongly object to your assertion that the locals on this continent never "learned the principles of advanced agriculture."
Do a survey of your kitchen and pantry, and tally the percentage of foodstuffs that were developed in the Americas by the locals-- you'll find it's disproportionately American. For example, the Incas had over 5000 varieties of potato when they were invaded, cunningly used to stagger plantings, adapt to many microclimates, survive pests, provide variety in nutrition, texture, and storage capablilities, etc. Where I live now is near the former site of an enormous corn plantation, collectively run with many smallholder parcels, hugely and sustainably productive and both biologically and socially complex, well before "contact." There are endless examples of staple cultivars: squashes, pineapples, beans galore (incl. soy), corn/maize, 'taters, sweet potatos, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, squashes, sunflower, cucumber, etc. etc., and of course, cocoa and cotton.
Also, examine the early sketches and engravings of unconquered settlements in east N.A. -- they look pretty darn advanced, to a subsistence farmer's eye.
Your guage of intelligence is extremely instrumentalist, which is one of the root causes of the problems we find ourselves in now.
No it isn't. It's an ongoing problem that's tied up in courts, classrooms, bars, highways, and the wilderness. Genocide takes a while to fade.
Spoken like a true settler, though.
But you reap the benefits, isn't that nice?
Hmm, over 700 military bases stationed 'outside' the land of the free.
The outside believes you should stay inside. Some of them believe it strongly enough to strap bombs to their bellies, maybe you care about that?
Of course, if you don't actually have a double-plus-good empire, then 'who cares' is fair enough.