Sandbox (3)

Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

This is also a continuation of previous Sandbox threads (1) and (2) that have fallen victim to the dreaded page bug.

1,013 thoughts on “Sandbox (3)”

  1. Sorry. I should have mentioned what I did. I just resorted to html ordered list with list items and added the numerals manually.

    <ol>

    <li>1.</li>

    </ol>

    I’m sure you could add html code for paragraphs to that and it would work fine.

    <ol>
    <li>1.</li>

    Para 1.

    <li>2.</li>

    Para 2.

    </ol>

    Nah. The html paragraph didn’t work. Trying blockquote.

    1.

    Para 1.

    2.

    Para 2.

    ugly

  3. Is there someway I can alter the settings on my account so that search engines won’t track what I say here if someone does a search on “Kantian naturalism”? (Not that anyone would, but you know what I mean.)

  4. Kantian Naturalist:
    Is there someway I can alter the settings on my account so that search engines won’t track what I say here if someone does a search on “Kantian naturalism”?

    You could change your nickname on your dashboard but that wouldn’t stop existing material being picked up.

    (Not that anyone would, but you know what I mean.)

    Someone (me) just did. You were fifth hit. 😯

  6. Kantian Naturalist:
    Is there someway I can alter the settings on my account so that search engines won’t track what I say here if someone does a search on “Kantian naturalism”? (Not that anyone would, but you know what I mean.)

    I’m using my alternative account (where I am not an administrator). I login there (rarely) as “NeilWR”.

    I have just changed the nickname to “nwr” (in the “Profile” settings). And then I could set the display name to either “NeilWR” or “nwr”. So I set that to “nwr”.

    And now I’ll post this to see how it turns out.

  7. keiths: Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.

    Interesting point, and one that was obliquely mentioned in “The Big Short”.

    Earlier in my lifetime, the drivers of the economy were farming, mining and manufacturing. Somewhere along the line it became banking and government. With healthcare taking a rather huge chunk.

    Someone’s campaign neglected the former blue collar skilled workers. Bill Clinton would not have made that mistake. In fact, he did not make that mistake. But he was ignored.

  8. Trump will be ruinous for those who voted him in. Coal isn’t coming back, China isn’t the threat to manufacturing job, automation is.

  9. petrushka: Interesting point, and one that was obliquely mentioned in “The Big Short”.

    Earlier in my lifetime, the drivers of the economy were farming, mining and manufacturing. Somewhere along the line it became banking and government. With healthcare taking a rather huge chunk.

    Someone’s campaign neglected the former blue collar skilled workers.Bill Clinton would not have made that mistake. In fact, he did not make that mistake. But he was ignored.

    They didn’t entirely forget the blue collar types, but used scare tactics with them primarily. I’m in a blue state, but ads from bordering states were trying to scare people with the thought that Trump might start a nuclear war. This is, what? 1964? Trump, who arguably is overly fond of Putin, is going to nuke Russia and some of his own capital?

    It was stupid, and people didn’t buy it. WTF were the Clinton people thinking?

    Glen Davidson

  12. GlenDavidson: It was stupid, and people didn’t buy it. WTF were the Clinton people thinking?

    Just a badly run campaign. I honestly can’t think of any positive promises. As for nuclear war, jill Stein undercut that by accusing Hillary of being most likely to start one.

    But I think the core of the losing strategy was assuming, after eight years of recession, that people wanted another eight years of the same policies. This has nothing to do with Hillary or Trump. It’s just a fact that when things aren’t booming, people vote for change. the only reason hillary was even close was that Trump was incessantly demonized by newspapers and news networks.

    I expect at least one network and one major newspaper to fail in the next five years. Perhaps not disappear, but be forced to sell or consolidate. It can’t get much worse than when mainstream news sources have a lower favorability rating than congress.

  13. As I’m just off to Geneva for a rendez-vous with my daughter and won’t be back till the 26th I’d just like to wish all members and readers Joyeuses Fêtes, Happy Yuletide and Merry Christmas!

  22. “Gunpower From Guano” would be a great name for a Frankie & Phoodoo podcast / blog…

  29. Joe Felsenstein,

    No, it’s my mistake, Joe. I enabled password protection while I was writing the OP and didn’t notice it wasn’t removed till I opened the site before logging in. Sorry about that.

  31. AhmedKiaan: Are We Becoming More Moral Faster Than We’re Becoming More Dangerous?

    Folks who live in or frequently visit France or Germany or Chicago could chime in.

    It is my opinion from living in Chicago and in Vietnam during the war, that news tends to amplify disaster. I do not wish to minimize the pain cause by war and storms and earthquakes, but there is a certain noise level of murder and mayhem that takes place everywhere.

    I think this noise level has diminished over the centuries. Not much comfort to victims, but violent crime seems to be diminishing, even if you include terrorism.

  32. “It is my opinion from living in Chicago and in Vietnam during the war, that news tends to amplify disaster. ”

    “News” is biased towards the attention-grabbing stuff. Unfortunately that stuff is usually really, really unimportant, and can distort your understanding of the world. Old people watch the news all day and get all manner of wacko ideas.

  33. AhmedKiaan: Old people watch the news all day and get all manner of wacko ideas.

    Interesting tidbit, that. Is that something you picked up on “the news”?

  34. It’s mostly something i picked up in years of working hardware retail stores in florida. You get subjected to daily rants by 75 year olds who spend every waking moment parked in a barcalounger watching Fox and Friends, and don’t have anybody else to vent to.

  35. The only good thing about having to listen to elderly rants about how “Bill Clinton is a child sex pervert!” and “Obama pledged his LIFE to the Muslims!” etc is at least while they’re doing that, they’re not loudly telling me n***** jokes.

  37. Crank magnetism

    “A sovereign citizen, a creationist, an anti-vaxxer, and a conspiracy theorist walk into a bar. He orders a drink.”
    Crank magnetism is the condition where people become attracted to multiple crank ideas at the same time.

    Crank magnetism also denotes the tendency — even for otherwise “lone issue” cranks — to accumulate more crank beliefs over time.

    The most common pair we see is evolution denial plus global warming denial. But there are more. My biggest regret about UD was I was never able to get PaV to expressly lay out his HIV denial. He alluded to it, but when pressed he got really defensive.

    🙁

    That would have been loads of fun.

  43. I’ll just note that the last 5 posts (topics) are all be ID proponents / creationists. Consider that when accusations are made of one-sidedness.

  44. I will note that starting topics is not a measure of the bias displayed here. I will also note that evolutionists never start a thread that shows natural selection, drift, CNE or any other mechanism is up to the task at hand.

    150+ years after Darwin’s “Origins or Species” was first published and we are no closer to understanding how vision systems evolved than he was. And the evidence is the same, ie varying degrees in complexity in observed vision systems. And thanks to the modern synthesis evolutionists have to unpack the alleged evolution at the genetic level. That’s not happening so why not attack straw men of ID, right?

  45. 6 posts.

    I will also note that ID/ Creationists never start a thread that shows an empirical test for design with worked examples.

  48. Richardthughes: I’ll just note that the last 5 posts (topics) are all be ID proponents / creationists. Consider that when accusations are made of one-sidedness.

    It’s a concerted effort to get that nasty pinned topic off the first page led by the intrepid yours truly. 😉

    Sorry DiEb.

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