Somebody needs to make t-shirts, hats and buttons with that saying.
I just heard about the mailbox conspiracy. It’s very funny.
“Be good” pills coming from a government near you
What shall we do about all these people running around without masks on? Ah! One ethics expert has the solution. He claims we should drug them into submission.
My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are non-cooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good.
Okay. So far, so good. There are lots of ways to induce non-cooperative people to change their behavior. You can try to persuade them. You can fine them. You can even use subtle psychological tricks, like marketers regularly do.
For example, hotels try to find ways to get more people to participate in their “save the earth, use a dirty towel” efforts. They experiment with different messaging, and find that some messages work better than others. For some odd reason, messages that compare the performance of the floor you’re on to the rest of the hospital seem to work. Why “go team 2nd floor” works is pretty doggone weird, but it does, and it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, so … go for it, I say. (Although I always use the clean towel myself. To heck with the planet. Last time I looked, it had plenty of water.)
To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?
I see. So when you check in to a hotel, they give you shot to make you more likely to use yesterday’s towel.
I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others.
We can engineer a better man through chemistry!
Sounds like “the pax” from Firefly, and I’m with Mal Reynolds on that front. “I don’t hold to that.”
Jack London’s Wolf Larsen, the Sea Wolf
The boys drink and review Yuengling’s Oktoberfest beer, then discuss Jack London and his amazing character, Wolf Larsen.
London was an incredibly prolific writer, with 23 novels, 3 plays, several works of non-fiction, some poetry and a huge collection of short stories.
In The Sea Wolf, we meet Wolf Larsen, the captain of a sealing schooner. Larsen is a fierce, aggressive, brutish and cruel man, who is also an autodidact, and a convinced materialist who places no value whatsoever on human life.
P&C reflect on Larsen’s worldview, whether it’s a necessary consequences of materialism, and how it touches on existentialism.
Politics is a dirty game
Durham has scored his first point in the investigation of the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia probe. Kevin Clinesmith has pled guilty to making false statements in documents used to obtain a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page.
But get this.
Attorney General William Barr hinted Thursday that the indictment was coming in the Durham probe, though he said it was not “earth-shattering.” He told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that other “significant” developments will happen in the Durham probe closer to the election.
IOW, they’re planning an October surprise.
I have mixed reactions to this.
October surprises are unfair, because you only hear one side of the story. That’s the whole point, of course. You want to whack your opponent with something ugly that will stick through the election, thus influencing the results.
It doesn’t matter if the accusation is true, and they’re often not. It only matters if it’s effective. It’s a dirty trick that works, and has become part of the game.
From that perspective, I don’t like it. I’d rather people played fair.
On the other hand, politics is a dirty game, and the world is a dirty place. An honorable, fair, gentlemanly fellow with lots of Boy Scouts awards might not be the best choice for a guy who has to stand up to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. Or, to put it another way, do we really want a guy who plays fair?
Good news from the Middle East?
The Trump administration has brokered a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that normalized ties between the countries. Israel agreed to suspend the plan to annex the West Bank.
Perhaps the most important part of this (from my not very well informed perspective) is that the Palestinians no longer hold a veto over these decisions.