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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 118 to 142 of 142. Go back in thread:
Posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 14:40:38
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely., posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 14:34:46
So Liberal really is a town in Kansas.
Andrew Bacevich came from Normal, Illinois.
Posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 14:48:09
In reply to Re: And so it is Christmas » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 9, 2019, at 21:33:50
>White people feel the oppression of non-eurocentrism.
So it seems.
(I like the European musical tradition. What else do they have in mind?)
It is the poor who should be worried, many of whom are white. They live on boats that the rising tide never lifted.
Speaking of rising tides.......
Posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 15:41:35
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely., posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 14:40:38
What I don't understand is that Christians, knowing and privately believing the science, would use the opportunity to militarise the borders so that they starve while making the problem worse and getting so much pleasure out of it.. (To say nothing of Obama militarising the police forces.)
The price of food commodities will be interesting to watch. But they are black, it's their own fault for having too many kids, slavery, colonialism and economic imperialism are beside the point.
What is in central Africa anyway, apart from those blacks who live above our minerals? How many US troops and bases (rules based international order) are there? How many Chinese?
Posted by beckett2 on December 11, 2019, at 1:40:53
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely., posted by sigismund on December 10, 2019, at 15:41:35
This letter to the Guardian surprised me. What do you think? You guys aren't this bad off, are you?
Because of my upbringing, I have a general aversion to scripture. Recently, however, these lines come to mind often:
"And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized."
The election shocked me. As with trauma, my life now has a before and after. I feel sad but at times free.
Posted by sigismund on December 11, 2019, at 16:28:51
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely. » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 11, 2019, at 1:40:53
Kevin Rudd's letter was about half right. However Rudd had a terrible temperament. It was the big wasted opportunity. When the backroom boys had him removed his government looked as if it was going into a tailspin. In any event they should have waited until the need was obvious, much more obvious so as to justify it.
Julia Gillard followed. She ran a good government and was treated terribly by the shock jocks, Murdoch press and Tony Abbott. (Ditch the witch, why doesn't someone put her in a bag and throw her over the edge of the boat?)
>"And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized."
That can be how cults end. If the leadership has been careful to make the followers complicit it will not likely be betrayed (Germany, Russia). Real and deep confusion. Imagine being born in Lviv at the turn of the century. War, revolution, more war, Poles, Germans, Russians with all their phantasmal enemies. I have been reading intermittently East West Street, unlinked at Amazon, about the 2 major political legal thinkers from there who developed 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' as legal concepts, used at Nuremberg.
Is Trump a cult leader? I think so. This world is made of cults and ponzi schemes. What interests me is how and why the scales fall from the eyes.
We grew up in a world with a bad and useful enemy and few lies were necessary beyond the acquisition myth...we got it because they did not use it. There are a lot more lies now. They say even LBJ was kept from knowing the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The pattern of the moment is to turn everything into a culture war, whether it be fires, climate, the war on Christmas. First Dog territory. These things take a while to play out. Why you would want to do it this way when the edge is so close I don't know. Like you said, shoot the messenger. What you have in the US seems like projection as politics.
Posted by beckett2 on December 12, 2019, at 18:39:35
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely., posted by sigismund on December 11, 2019, at 16:28:51
>The pattern of the moment is to turn everything into a culture war, whether it be fires, climate, the war on Christmas. First Dog territory. These things take a while to play out. Why you would want to do it this way when the edge is so close I don't know. Like you said, shoot the messenger. What you have in the US seems like projection as politics.
This is what I am most pessimistic about.
Posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 0:18:06
In reply to Re: I don't believe he reads widely., posted by sigismund on December 11, 2019, at 16:28:51
Posted by sigismund on December 13, 2019, at 18:43:03
In reply to hope and friendship » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 0:18:06
An American woman in Boston, confronted with my wife's recitation of these problems replied 'Small acts of kindness will have to see us through', which sounds wrong, kind and comforting all at once.
For every human problem there is a solution to make it worse, and the fact that these are seriously entertained is the hardest for me. Rivers drying up? Need more dams, rather than another form of agriculture. Base load electricity? Nuclear power. I'm sure there is a long list, or you could half remember them, make them up. Global warming? Fill the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide. Because we need to act out our tribal hatred? Freud had, as well as Thanatos an idea about 'the narcissism of small differences'.
Rivers drying up, tradable water rights......not so far from what Bechtel was doing in Cochabamba, Bolivia.....privatise the rain. Everything is commodified. Could I sell myself to someone else and rent myself back (income stream).....who has the energy for this nonsense? That's what happened to our biggest river. The family farmers rightly feel it is sinful for water to be wasted while the communities and animals go without. But it is where these policies (and corruption) have left us.
Posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 20:43:53
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by sigismund on December 13, 2019, at 18:43:03
> An American woman in Boston, confronted with my wife's recitation of these problems replied 'Small acts of kindness will have to see us through', which sounds wrong, kind and comforting all at once.
>
> For every human problem there is a solution to make it worse, and the fact that these are seriously entertained is the hardest for me. Rivers drying up? Need more dams, rather than another form of agriculture. Base load electricity? Nuclear power. I'm sure there is a long list, or you could half remember them, make them up. Global warming? Fill the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide. Because we need to act out our tribal hatred? Freud had, as well as Thanatos an idea about 'the narcissism of small differences'.
>
> Rivers drying up, tradable water rights......not so far from what Bechtel was doing in Cochabamba, Bolivia.....privatise the rain. Everything is commodified. Could I sell myself to someone else and rent myself back (income stream).....who has the energy for this nonsense? That's what happened to our biggest river. The family farmers rightly feel it is sinful for water to be wasted while the communities and animals go without. But it is where these policies (and corruption) have left us.
>
>The Guardian reported on a water bottling company (Coca Cola?) stealing water or buying up farmland to 'water mine'. Is this an exaggeration? Stealing water in the night and a school being closed for lack of water. (California, mind you, has a dark history of water rights. From the state that brought you some of the best noirs.)
My thoughts were about crops. If the farm is purchased for water mining (why can't farmers water mine?) then who is growing the wheat?. Oh, nevermind. Import some.
On other topics, the poem "First They Came For Me" was brought up in a conversation. I wonder if that prose poem structure works for food supplies. "Then there was no one left to grow for me."
Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 20:58:20
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by sigismund on December 13, 2019, at 18:43:03
I think it is a bargaining strategy.
Here is a way of doing business:
Advertised for $1000
'I'll give you $1 for it'
'$999'
'2'
'998'
'3'
...
End up settling on a fair price but with the addition of many many many many hours of wasted labor for meetings and negotiations.Here is another way of doing business:
Status quo.
'I suggest you change the status quo to something better'
'We counter your suggestion with something worse than the status quo'
Many many hours of meetings and negotiations.Status quo.
Status quo, with the additional cost of all the meetings and negotiations.
Being paid by the hour for meetings and negotiations at exotic locations around the world:
Criminal.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 21:03:34
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 20:58:20
I went to the High Court and saw many many white old men with suitcases suggesting they flew in for the occasion.
It was some appeal of the land court.
It was something about how the tribe or charitable trust or small business or whatever that has whatever assets...
Can't seem to manage their list of who is 'in' and who is 'out'.
Who is a trustee / beneficiary or not, in other words.
You know how it is... Mobbing x today and he's don't one of us...
Mobbing y tomorrow and x is back in the good books after whatever favor was done...
I got the distinct impression the only people benefiting were these foreign investors.
Wasting the courts time.
The judge was even speculating about what would happen if x and y and z were to pertain...
It is not the judges job to wax on these things. It is not the judges job to give a leture... To waste the courts time in this manner / fashion.
It is the judges job to hear the particulars of the case before them and to pronounce the just thing / interpret the law with respect to that particular case...
In such a way that the inherent grain of wisdom is in the ruling...
To bring light to other particular cases that may come before the courts.
Only... They weren't bring wisdom to the situation.
The entire thing was a f*ck*ng expensive joke.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 21:17:38
In reply to Re: hope and friendship » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 20:43:53
It isn't an exaggeration.
Clean drinking ground water is a scare resource in much of the world.
People don't need much.
Agriculture needs more.
Crops are thirsty.
Mammals are thirstier.
Industry is thirstiest of all.Manufacturing is moved off-shore because it is cheaper to manufacture things in places where the Country doesn't pay it's workers a living wage, and where there aren't really any health and safety laws to speak of.
A lot of those processes use a lot of water.
Then the local well dries up.
There isn't any water for the people.
They will need to buy water from Coca Cola.
Water is more expensive than soft drinks full with sugar or (potentially carcinogenic or GI upsetting) artificial sweeteners.
It is upsetting when people in NZ or the Pacific Islands don't have access to clean drinking water.
Because of our rainfall, I mean. Because we could collect rainfall and be more selfsufficient in our water supply that way. But we aren't.
When I was in Australia I used to have many conversations with a couple PhD students who were working in Agricultural Research. One of them was very very down on Monsanto (I think that is the name of it). Controling seeds. For seeds that were not fertile. So the growers would need to buy new seeds from the company every year they wanted to plant a crop.
Who will grow the food for us?
Yeah.
People don't think, often.
Posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 13:20:21
In reply to Re: hope and friendship » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 20:43:53
>My thoughts were about crops. If the farm is purchased for water mining (why can't farmers water mine?) then who is growing the wheat?.
Here you can have title to the land, but all under the land belongs to the crown.
What about if you poison the aquifer (Great Artesian Basin) on which pastoral industry depends? It is supposed to take tens of thousands of years for the rain in New Guinea to end up under western Queensland. The Adani mine has been given 100 years use of this precious water. Biggest coal mine in the world? Thermal or coking coal? Totally automated mine with self-driving trucks?
You have to put up with this all the time. I've forgotten his name and won't try to remember it. Bl*w j*bs at Fox News, one of those two. 'Hitler was such an idiot', he said. After the Las Vegas massacre he said 'That's the price of freedom'. Well, that deserves a prize.
Posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 13:23:36
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 20:58:20
>Here is another way of doing business:
>Status quo.
>'I suggest you change the status quo to something better'
>'We counter your suggestion with something worse than the status quo'
>Many many hours of meetings and negotiations.>Status quo.
>Status quo, with the additional cost of all the meetings and negotiations.
>Being paid by the hour for meetings and negotiations at exotic locations around the world:
>Criminal.
Oh yes, Alex.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:23:35
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 13:23:36
Or like selling arms to both sides of a war and becoming invested in keeping the hatred / conflict alive.
I guess that was the 'conspiracy theory' about HIV. That it was cooked up in some laboratory and dissemated by the people who wanted to sell their cure.
I read a book... I can't remember the author or the name of the book.
Little vignettes (half remembered) about the Medici family.
Apparently (this is likely a false remembering but the idea:)
If you give a person just a tiny little bit of... Mercury? Then they won't die (but they would die if you gave them too much of it). They adapt. You can increase the dose. You increase the dose. You increase the dose. Then if they don't get the dose (without a gradual reduction taper) they will die from having it suddenly withdrawn.
Apparently the Medici family used to do this to their household servants. Putting it in their food or whatever. On the down-low, I believe. It was a form of insurance that the person who likely heard many secrets wouldn't go work for the opposition. If they tried to leave the household, they would die, you see.
But then you can probably get more leverage out of telling people that that is what you have done (whether you have in fact done that or not). The people will stay and won't be so complain-y becuase they believe you have the power to end them.
And of course then you get to thinking about infant formula. And about the next step: The weaning foods. And about the next step. And the next step. And you can see why Countdown (Australian supermaket) tracks your Countdown purchases (for a discount price you will allow it) and... Sells you pharmaceuticals. For whatever ails you.
There was an art exhibition here last year around the time of Medical Interview. It was really freaking cool. Lights. Very trippy. Looped animation.
It is an ancient symbol of the snake chasing it's tail. Devouring itself.
But that is perhaps the inverse of what I was talking about of the co-dependence of the problem and the cure.
Anyway...
I suspect Coca Cola (or some subsidiary, Nestle or whomever) probably does pay or sponsor a job or two in public health. Every now and then we get a 'should we tax sugary drinks' debate. I think they are hoping (really and truly) that the public health people will think it a good idea to (all on their ownsome) launch a public health campaign actively promoting artifically sweetened drinks and / or fruit juices as healthy. The companies make more money off of these 'premium products' (well rubbish marketed as being) than they make off of cheap sugary soda drinks anyway. Chance to make still more.
The Public Health people here actively promoted vaporising, too. Apparently oblivious to the fact that people have been vaporising marajuana for years for the supposed health benefits of not inhaling smoke and oblivious to the obvious problems likely to arise with these liquid ampules with respect to f*ck knows what substances the drug companies are putting in these new and trendy crack pipes that Public Health actively marketed as healthy. For 10 year olds. Well no, they say, they marketed them as healthy for people quitting smoking. But no they didn't. They did their inaccurate minimal paraphrase to try and keep things as simple as they could for people as stupid as they could find them and they marketed them as healthy. 'Good'. 'Eat most'. You get the idea.
Cheapest marketing campaign ever (from the companies with the most money to burn). I'm sure.
I got reading back through forum posts I made (not here) during first year.
I was clear all the way back there that they weren't grading things properly. That the lecturers couldn't tell the difference between 'impossible' and 'improbable' and 'x says' and 'x has shown' and 'x is true' and the like. So... Impossible to know what they want you to say on multi-guess questions.
Answer the question like you are too stupid to grasp these distinctions? But where do you draw the line on how stupid you are supposed to be? Mateship is the primary value on the Australian Ethics Test? I mean... ?? Who the f*ck knows.
They picked the kids already. Everyone else was only there to fund them their place. To fund them their scholarship. To fund them their residential hall.
Was the... Inhumane treatment of the masses required or essential for greater freedom?
The kids who were chosen to do it... They weren't free. They were being tortured, too. They were getting an entire year of 'if you don't join us then this is your lot -- you can join them'.
That's not freedom either.
Who are the people deciding?
The people re-acting their own traumas of what was inflicted on them most likely.
They are not free, either.
It's not freedom.
They go around saying 'our kids don't really understand anything they just parrot back what they have memorised'. They say it like it is a bad thing. Like their students should hang their heads in shame.
But I have realised that they are bragging. They do want to induce shame in their students (of course) but it is also a brag.
Because they fail people for encoding for meaning.
We were taught many things awkwardly or unnaturally or unnecessarily confusingly.
You could just blindly rote learn memorise repeat what you were told and do a meaning blind mechanical search like a computer for the piece of information...
I re-encoded things so they made sense and recalled the meanings.
So I hemmorrhaged marks when I used synonyms or said 'ipsilateral' or 'same side' rather than 'left'. Etc.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:40:42
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:23:35
I remember being afraid when I chose to major in Philosophy. I chose to major in Philosophy because I had many questions... I wanted to know the answer. I thought that I could learn the answer. Or that I could learn enough to make up my own mind and be at peace that I had resolved things to my satisfaction. I had made an informed decision, I guess. On what to believe.
Things like:
Is there a God?
What (if any) meaning is there to life?
Why did I get associated with this body, why does it have to be like anything at all to be me?I remember feeling afraid. I thought it could genuinely turn out that there wasn't a meaning. That things were rotten to core through and through. Just a nasty pointlessness to everything at all.
Maybe discovering that my suffering was essential for greater joy for the sadist.
But I worked at things, anyway. Because I genuinely wanted to know. I had curiosity. Philosophy raised questions in the vicinity of things that I cared about / wanted to know. Primary readings showed me what genuinely intelligent people had to say about this, that, and the other thing. I came to make up my own informed mind.
I don't think that freedom for some requires oppression for others. Freedom (the concept) doesn't include the notion of 'freedom to opppress'. That is not something that is compatible with freedom.
If people think they are free because they are opressing others then I think they are reacting (rather than responding) to trauma. Their own incapacity / inability to find / work out a better solution.
They can be so focused on their trauma that they can't identify a better solution when they see it, though.
They should not be in the position where they can control others.
I guess it is hard because the freedom / opression thing is a matter of degree... When it comes to conflict resolution and who gets ones way. And the strategy one employes for getting things to go more ones own way.
Inhumane.
We have recently re-discovered that word in our vocabulary.
'But that is / would be inhumane'.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:45:57
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:40:42
Co-operation is supposed to be that 1+1= more than 2.
That we can do more together than each acting independently.
We co-operate to carry something that cannot be carried by one of us alone.
It gets done.But instead people want to play a zero-sum game of 'I win - you lose' and think that that is the very very very very very very best outcome there is.
They accept that things might go badly / poorly and the outcome is 'you win - I lose'. But they are young and willing to live dangerously. Willing to play a high stakes game. Double or nothing! Winner takes all!
But wait!
Your short-sightedness / stupidity blinded you to the opportunity cost of playing a zero-sum game instead of finding a 1+1=more than 2 game to be playing.
Is your game (winner takes all) better than me just keeping to myself all autistic-like and refusing to play with you, at all?
Well, let's see...
Your game produces inequalities.
Inequalities are the thing that drive ill health.
Instability.
Insecurity.
Your strategy / game / way of life is unsustainable.
For you over the long haul.
For me.
For us all.
You are ruining things for everyone.
Gutted.
Posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 22:43:37
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2019, at 21:17:38
>Who will grow the food for us?
Food production and prices are the things to watch.
You know the precious water from the Murray Darling has been bought up by cotton producers and now exists in dams at the side of the river? Market mechanism.
Posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 22:49:19
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by alexandra_k on December 14, 2019, at 15:23:35
The Australian ethics test in the 30s asked prospective immigrants 'If a visitor calls at your house you should offer them
Beer
Wine
TeaMateship may have been the taciturn response to the shared murder of the indigenous, maybe the taciturn response of the soldiers from all the wars. (We had troops in South Sudan. Is that General Gordon and Khartoum?)
Posted by sigismund on December 15, 2019, at 22:00:01
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by sigismund on December 14, 2019, at 22:49:19
Posted by sigismund on December 16, 2019, at 0:00:31
In reply to Tradable Water Rights (I guess), posted by sigismund on December 15, 2019, at 22:00:01
The poor bastards. They won't know what hit them.
Posted by beckett2 on December 16, 2019, at 15:24:11
In reply to 60 to 70 m flame height, posted by sigismund on December 16, 2019, at 0:00:31
> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/dec/16/australia-bushfires-wa-nsw-qld-fires-new-south-wales-gospers-mountain-sydney-heatwave-latest-updates-live-news
>
> The poor bastards. They won't know what hit them.My god, sigi. And I think about the animals. They don't deserve this. I could cry.
Posted by Beckett2 on December 16, 2019, at 19:31:26
In reply to Re: 60 to 70 m flame height » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on December 16, 2019, at 15:24:11
Morrison and the orange one must cook these propositions together.
Posted by sigismund on December 17, 2019, at 22:22:13
In reply to What would jesus do? » beckett2, posted by Beckett2 on December 16, 2019, at 19:31:26
I recall Jamie (MR) saying of Trump that he gives snorting Adderall a bad name.
Posted by sigismund on December 18, 2019, at 18:50:27
In reply to What would jesus do? » beckett2, posted by Beckett2 on December 16, 2019, at 19:31:26
Though I don't much like Nancy Pelosi, I love the way she says she prays for Trump. It gets under his skin.
This is the end of the thread.
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