Relaxed Focus: White/Pinkman 2016.

Friday, January 16, 2015

White/Pinkman 2016.

Money is the New Morality | Scott Adams Blog: "Today, morality is not limited to what your neighbors are doing. Now we look at the entire globe and see that morality is subjective. In ISIS-held territory it means beheading innocent people. To you it might mean donating time at a homeless shelter. Those are the extremes, but the point is that your neighbor has a different idea of morality. He’s hitting the bong and climbing on top of his friend-with-benefits while you’re in church. The Internet allows us to see just how subjective morality is. Or to put it another way, morality is mostly magical thinking that had utility in earlier times but now seems quaint.

Luckily we have a better substitute for morality in 2015. It’s called capitalism, social media, and the Internet. Now if you treat others poorly you lose customers, lose job prospects, and lose social options. Capitalism is doing what morality once did — keeping people in line. So when you accuse me of putting money above morality (which I do all the time) it’s not because I’m possessed by Satan. It’s because you get a better result in the year 2015 by being smart in business than you do by being morality-driven. "

Empirica: On lard (from Gary Taubes): ""Take lard, for example, which has long been considered the archetypal example of a killer fat. It was lard that bakeries and fast-food restaurants used in large quantities before they were pressured to replace it with the artificial trans fat that nutritionists have now decided might be a cause of heart disease after all. You can find the fat composition of lard easily enough, as you can for most foods, by going to a U.S. Department of Agriculture website called the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. You'll find that nearly half the fat in lard (47 percent) is monounsaturated, which is almost universally considered a "good" fat.

Monounsaturated fat raises HDL cholesterol and lowers LDL cholesterol (both good things, according to our doctors). Ninety percent of that monounsaturated fat is the same oleic acid that's in the olive oil so highly touted by champions of the Mediterranean diet. Slightly more than 40 percent of the fat in lard is indeed saturated, but a third of that is the same stearic acid that's in chocolate and is now also considered a "good fat", because it will raise our HDL levels but have no effect on LDL (a good thing and a neutral thing).

The remaining fat (about 12 percent of the total) is polyunsaturated, which actually lowers LDL cholesterol but has no effect on HDL (also a good thing and a neutral thing). "In total, more than 70 percent of the fat in lard will improve your cholesterol profile compared with what would happen if you replaced that lard with carbohydrates. The remaining 30 percent will raise LDL cholesterol (bad) but also raise HDL (good). In other words, and hard as this may be to believe, if you replace the carbohydrates in your diet with an equal quantity of lard, it will actually reduce your risk of having a heart attack. It will make you healthier. The same is true for red meat, bacon and eggs, and virtually any other animal product we might choose to eat instead of the carbohydrates that make us fat. (Butter is a slight exception, because only half the fat will definitely improve your cholesterol profile; the other half will raise LDL but also raise HDL.)""

Man in dress who talks to invisible friend says other stupid things. Pope Francis Supports Free Speech, Unless It Offends People - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Today Pope Francis aligned himself with those who, after witnessing a massacre in retaliation for cartoons, say freedom of speech should be protected as long as it does not upset people too much...

Censorship based on an audience's anticipated emotional response is highly subjective and hard to distinguish from a heckler's veto, which encourages violence and gives hotheads the power to squelch speech that offends them. In effect, Pope Francis expands the misbegotten (and apparently obsolete) "fighting words" doctrine from its original context of in-person, one-on-one encounters to published words and images that make people mad. Because that anger can be expected to result in violence, he says, those words and images cannot be tolerated. Call it the terrorist's veto...

Francis also "said religion can never be used to justify violence," but his analogy suggests otherwise: If a punch in the nose is a normal and understandable response to an insult directed at one's mother, surely violence is a normal and understandable response to an insult directed at one's faith. It is what you would "expect," and therefore the blame lies with the one who issued the insult. Because certain messages predictably elicit a violent response, according to the pope, those messages should not be legally protected."

What Pope Francis Got Wrong About Free Expression - Reason.com: ""Every religion has its dignity" is Francis' arguable contention. "One cannot provoke. One cannot insult other people's faith. One cannot make fun of faith." If those who kill are not members of a religion, surely Francis is offering us a non sequitur. If you can be provoked to kill, you are not a person of faith, right?

But then the vicar of Christ went on to explain that those who mock faith should expect to be punched in the face. "If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," said Francis. The pope is unimpressed by provocateurs. He wants them barred. Someone should ask him whether provocateurs should expect an asymmetrical response. For instance, if Gasparri uttered a curse word against the pope's mother, should he expect to have his family blown up? That would be a more pertinent analogy.

But let's take it further. Where are the limits? Why does "mockery" hold a special distinction in our debate? And what constitutes contemptuous language or behavior toward another faith? For instance, can we intentionally criticize another person's faith without expecting to be punched? What if that faith is in direct conflict with the beliefs of our own set of beliefs—beliefs that deserve, according to the pope, the same respect as any other? Is it ever worth getting punched in the face?

...What if one of these faiths is unable to live in free and open society because the principles of the faith conflict with those of others? What if one religion feels mocked by the things that other religions put up with in society—such as wearing skirts above the knees or eating pork sausages or failing to accept that Muhammad is God's prophet? What if those of a certain faith feel this is ridicule toward them? What if they believe it worthy of retaliation? Should the rest of us avoid these things so as not to upset anyone?

Obviously, I comprehend there's a distinction to be made between secular debates and the way people of faith conduct themselves. I get that there are religious reasons for not mocking others—and I also imagine people of faith avoid this because they do not want to be mocked themselves. The pope himself defended free speech as a fundamental human right and claimed that Catholics have a duty to speak their minds for the sake of the common good. But then he also asserted that this fundamental right should not extend to faith. Any faith. Any government."