_Robert_

Strega wrote:
it’s not just people dying, like snuffing out a candle. It’s about leprosy, polio, and a million savage unrepairable wounds. It’s about the misery of pain, and the proximity to animal violence that pervaded in your ‘sounds great’ description.

I take your point, that living conditions and the lack of advanced medicine would have made…[Read more]

I wonder if Schrödinger was ever nervous on Christmas morning as he opened his boxes of presents? Did he call his cat “socks”??

Reg:

Arizona senator who thinks mankind came from monkeys has a say in childhood education.

Senator Farnsworth didn’t say he thought mankind came from monkeys, but rather that the Theory of Evolution said so. He is doing a good impersonation of a monkey by flinging poop, though.

Also, Mitzi Epstein got it wrong when she said that “Evolution…[Read more]

As always, you are very welcome Strega 🙂

Thank you Reg. I’m really touched. Your poem is amazing and I’m honoured by the dedication.

(And thanks for Sunday School!)

I smoked some good weed last night. I imagined an artist digging into the earth for inspiration with bare hands and scraping the hand of a philosopher digging from the opposite direction…. so I wrote a poem. I will dedicate it to Strega 🙂

Digging

You dig from your side
with charcoal hands,
following a feeling
you can’t quite name.

I dig fro…[Read more]

Have a great week and Happy Solstice from close to where I live, this morning. More here.

@simon it’s not just people dying, like snuffing out a candle. It’s about leprosy, polio, and a million savage unrepairable wounds. It’s about the misery of pain, and the proximity to animal violence that pervaded in your ‘sounds great’ description.

I just read the linked article and i confess utter ignorance of the Kabyle people and their struggle for self determination. I just wonder who the lefties will support.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-israel-of-north-africa-just-declared-independence-the-west-cant-ignore-it/

I keep hearing about where AI is weak, and that’s ok. It’s often true. But many in society typically prefer to just leave it at that, ignoring that AI is at least good at: Summarizing the words and conclusions of everything published on the internet. For better, and for worse, of course, but I love delving into topics that would take ten or a…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
I’m saying there was no Garden of Eden or “Golden Age” or “Noble Savagery”, whether terrifying, beautiful, or otherwise.

No power, no oppression, no money, no patriarchy?  Sounds great.  It’s true that people died very young though.

Simon,

You’re talking about life in the Garden of Eden. I think it must have been both terrifying and beautiful.

I’m saying there was no Garden of Eden or “Golden Age” or “Noble Savagery”, whether terrifying, beautiful, or otherwise.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
As rotten as things can be today, it was always worse in times past.

You’re talking about life in the Garden of Eden.  I think it must have been both terrifying and beautiful.

Simon:

It did, and any political violence is deplorable. Even if he was aggressively anti-liberal, he had the right idea in debating people.

You are correct and I certainly wasn’t supporting that as an option. Just pointing out that all ways of dealing with opposing viewpoints have outcomes that are hard to pin down.

Simon:

All the more reason to look after them and try and heal them.

Come to think of it, you’re right here. I suppose that’s where the role of medicine man/shaman came from.

Still, the earliest known writing wasn’t around during hunter/gatherer times, so any medical wisdom they had would have spread by oral tradition, with the Telephone…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
But if too many members of a tribe got injured or sick at once, wouldn’t that mean less hunting and gathering and everyone would starve?

All the more reason to look after them and try and heal them.

I read of an instance where a hunter-gatherer tribe left behind an old lady who had dementia.  If people were/are being lo…[Read more]

Simon:

That’s not true at all. There’s plenty of evidence of prehistoric people caring for their sick and injured, and this evidence increases as we get nearer the present day.

There’s no denying that primitive people certainly got injured often. I know this from a flintknapping class where we had to wear safety goggles, leather gloves, and…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
And an assassin’s bullet did nothing but give Charlie Kirk martyr status

It did, and any political violence is deplorable.  Even if he was aggressively anti-liberal, he had the right idea in debating people.

@jakelafort – I stay out of the “left”, I won’t sign my name to any ideology.  I find them totally nuts.  I saw that Instagram post, and they seem to have forgotten that slavery was invented in the Bronze Age.  I’ve had conversations with feminists who are completely ideology-bound until you shock them out of it.  The big problem is gro…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
There would be little place for the very young, the very old, or the sick and infirm in a Hunter-Gatherer world.

That’s not true at all.  There’s plenty of evidence of prehistoric people caring for their sick and injured, and this evidence increases as we get nearer the present day.

E.g.:…[Read more]