[Gilithin]

 barmar, on 2021-October-08, 13:37, said:

What SCOTUS essentially decided in Roe v. Wade was that prior to the third trimester a foetus is not actually a person, so it doesn't have the right to be born and live, and the mother's life and choice takes precedence

Roe actually decreed that States had no rights in the first trimester. For the second trimester, various forms of restriction based on medical considerations could be imposed during the second trimester and a complete ban was allowed for the third trimester aside from special considerations, such as a threat to the life of the mother. The idea of viability did not directly come into things until Casey, which was a reasonable solution to the issue of viability having come down by approximately a month in the intervening 19 years. It should also be noted that SCOTUS upholding Roe in this later ruling was something of a surprise given that 8 judges had been appointed by Republican Presidents and the only Democrat-appointed judge had been in dissent for Roe. It would be nice if people could have as much faith in the current SCOTUS to rule with similar distinction.

[johnu]

 Gilithin, on 2021-October-08, 15:29, said:

It would be nice if people could have as much faith in the current SCOTUS to rule with similar distinction.

The Supreme Court lost whatever goodwill it had as a nonpartisan branch of government with the Bush v Gore ruling. Then among many controversial rulings, there was the Citizens United ruling which basically said $1 = 1 vote and the side with more money can try to buy any election. And skipping forward to today, the Texas abortion law was allowed to be the law of Texas by the Supreme Court in their secret shadow docket. That's not even considering Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization which could overturn Roe v Wade which has been the rule of law for 50 years. Dobbs v Jackson could have been on the shadow docket with the court denying the challenge but they decided to take the case presumably to overturn Roe. Why else would they take the case??? Forget that the 3 Trump appointees all said under oath that Roe v Wade was settled law. They lied.

There is absolutely no reason to give the current Supreme Court any faith that they will rule with distinction.

[Chas_P]

 y66, on 2021-October-07, 22:17, said:

I suspect Krugman would be pleased if he knew his words had the power to rouse his critics from hibernation if only to mock his optimism in a highly literate and entertaining fashion before heading back to sleep. I am.

I think everyone is pleased by Ken's humor and insight. I know I am.

[kenberg]

 Chas_P, on 2021-October-08, 17:17, said:

I think everyone is pleased by Ken's humor and insight. I know I am.

You must take care with praise. As told before, when I was in eighth grade I could not get my mother to shut up with telling the neighbors about my good grades so I set out to get bad grades. I was pretty successful at that but they put me in the college prep track anyway when I went to high school.
And in high school I brought my Classics Comics of A Tale of Two Cities to class and read it during study time,. When asked what I was doing I said I was preparing my book report.

When it was announced in senior assembly that I had gotten a college scholarship my Spanish teacher (from two years earlier) sought me out to make it clear she thought I didn't deserve it. I remember her fondly, she's one of my favorites.

Another of my favorite teachers was a student teacher assisting in my senior English class. I had argued in class that I did not like reading novels and could not see why anyone would do so. She caught me in the library reading a novel. She kept my secret but she clearly took great pleasure in having this over me.

I was not on the honor roll. I am proud of that.

I like to think that I have matured. I'm free to think that. I have definitely aged. Not the same, I suppose.

[hrothgar]

 Chas_P, on 2021-October-08, 17:17, said:

I think everyone is pleased by Ken's humor and insight. I know I am.

Perhaps

However, I think that's far more likely that you're desperately sucking up to
one of the few long standing members of the forum who doesn't routinely
brand you a racist...

[Gilithin]

 hrothgar, on 2021-October-09, 08:22, said:

Perhaps

However, I think that's far more likely that you're desperately sucking up to
one of the few long standing members of the forum who doesn't routinely
brand you a racist...

Really? I took it as sarcasm, as the vast majority of Chas's "compliments" are. He does like his little "private" jokes. Deep down though, I suspect he is still somewhat hurt by the way most forum posters turned on him. Before the whole alt-right invasion here, Chas posted in a constructive way and was well enough respected I felt. It was only after he pitched his wagon to drewes and co, along with some overtly racist posts in the backwash from that, that he got such negative reactions from the WC forum regulars. Since then, what I have observed has been a descent into trolling. Honestly I wish he would take a mikeh-style break and eventually come back under a different name, perhaps restricting himself to the bridge forums for 6 months or so. It would be good to have the old Chas back and I am sure he would be happier for it too.

[barmar]

 mycroft, on 2021-October-08, 15:07, said:

But you will hear libertarian arguments that people have no right to life, and certainly no requirement that they must use any of their precious property ensuring people don't die. And that includes some direct actions that are not strictly violence.

I don't doubt you've heard that, but I don't think it's mainstream libertarianism.

As I understand it, their fundamental principle is that you can do whatever you like as long as it doesn't harm someone else. Surely causing someone else's life to end is the most extreme form of harm.

And as I mentioned earlier, our modern world is so highly interconnected that it's really hard to avoid impacting other people. Insurance premiums are based on average payouts, so if some people do things that increase the amount of claims they make, everyone's premiums go up (the same thing is true with socialized medicine, just replace premiums with taxes). When hospitals are full during a pandemic, anyone who needs a hospital bed may be preventing someone else from getting treatment.

True libertarianism is probably impossible to achieve these days, unless you become a hermit and live by yourself in a cave.

[johnu]

 barmar, on 2021-October-09, 13:40, said:

True libertarianism is probably impossible to achieve these days, unless you become a hermit and live by yourself in a cave.

This is something I can strongly support 100%.

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2021-October-09, 13:40, said:

True libertarianism is probably impossible to achieve these days, unless you become a hermit and live by yourself in a cave.

All you have to do is open the door to any 7th grade classroom in the country and you'll find around 30 of them sitting at their desks..

[kenberg]

Thought for the day: Some people are an X, some people are a Y, some people are a Z. Probably very few people living outside of an asylum are a True X, a True Y, or a True Z if the adjective requires total adherence to each and every tenet of Xness, Yness or Zness.

[Chas_P]

 hrothgar, on 2021-October-09, 08:22, said:

Perhaps

However, I think that's far more likely that you're desperately sucking up to
one of the few long standing members of the forum who doesn't routinely
brand you a racist.

No Richie. I just meant that I truly enjoy Ken's musings. They give me something to think about. You and your cohorts, OTOH, give me something to laugh at. Please keep up the good work.

[mycroft]

Second hit for "libertarian right to life".

As I said, I can't think this way. And it's not quite what I was saying (which sometimes is Very Good! I'm glad I don't understand libertarianism!)

"True Libertarians" don't seem to mind driving on the roads for free and not stepping in the garbage, and all the rest of the things that their "stolen property" pays for, oddly enough. So I'm agreeing with you there.

[kenberg]

 mycroft, on 2021-October-09, 20:25, said:

Second hit for "libertarian right to life".

As I said, I can't think this way. And it's not quite what I was saying (which sometimes is Very Good! I'm glad I don't understand libertarianism!)

"True Libertarians" don't seem to mind driving on the roads for free and not stepping in the garbage, and all the rest of the things that their "stolen property" pays for, oddly enough. So I'm agreeing with you there.

I will use your link to explain why I believe discussing libertarian philosophy, and often philosophy in general, is a trap.

Quote

If I have a right to life, you are obliged to see to it that I remain alive. Thus, you become a slave of mine. I can order you to keep me alive, and you are legally obligated to obey me. I will then in effect have kidnapped you, enslaved you, but that is an obvious rights violation.

No. Or rather, I disagree. You (any "you") having a right to life means that I should butt out and let you have your life.

Or is that what it means? And there is the problem.

Instead of discussing practical matters we get into an abstract and mostly unproductive discussion of the meaning of a phrase. Probably few people think that I have an obligation to donate a kidney to someone in need, although I suppose an argument can be made for it. Do I have an obligation to at least call the police if I see an assault in progress? A moral one certainly. but these are rare matters and getting into the philosophical details distracts us from more pressing questions such as vaccine mandates. Some people have reasonable medical reasons to be cautious about a vaccine. Questions are asked about this before we are given the shot. Some people have religious objections. What should we do about that? There are various specific questions that are important, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by linguistic matters.

I don't like people telling me what t do and I have no great interest in telling other people what to do, but sometimes I think both of these things are needed. We need to practice restraint. That's enough of a guide for most decisions that I make. At times I of course have to balance competing values. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this".

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-10, 09:50, said:

I will use your link to explain why I believe discussing libertarian philosophy, and often philosophy in general, is a trap.



No. Or rather, I disagree. You (any "you") having a right to life means that I should butt out and let you have your life.

Or is that what it means? And there is the problem.

Instead of discussing practical matters we get into an abstract and mostly unproductive discussion of the meaning of a phrase. Probably few people think that I have an obligation to donate a kidney to someone in need, although I suppose an argument can be made for it. Do I have an obligation to at least call the police if I see an assault in progress? A moral one certainly. but these are rare matters and getting into the philosophical details distracts us from more pressing questions such as vaccine mandates. Some people have reasonable medical reasons to be cautious about a vaccine. Questions are asked about this before we are given the shot. Some people have religious objections. What should we do about that? There are various specific questions that are important, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by linguistic matters.

I don't like people telling me what t do and I have no great interest in telling other people what to do, but sometimes I think both of these things are needed. We need to practice restraint. That's enough of a guide for most decisions that I make. At times I of course have to balance competing values. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this".

I don't understand how you Kant see this my way.

[Chas_P]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-10, 09:50, said:

. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this"

And then there was Socrates, but let's not go there.

[pilowsky]

On the other hand, a little bit of philosophy goes a long way.
I used to play at a club where one of the players wore a Jumper that was gold in colour and had the brand name, Kant.
When I commented that he seemed to be taking comfort from the golden wool I was met with a surly expression.

[kenberg]

 pilowsky, on 2021-October-10, 19:53, said:

On the other hand, a little bit of philosophy goes a long way.
I used to play at a club where one of the players wore a Jumper that was gold in colour and had the brand name, Kant.
When I commented that he seemed to be taking comfort from the golden wool I was met with a surly expression.

Golden wool? The reference is not something I recognize. I remember encountering a sentence, reading Kant, that had two semi-colons and a colon. I decided ok, I have some time, I am not getting up from this chair until I unravel this. Still, it didn't change my life.

I looked up some Kant quotes. eg

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

I am not sure I completely understand this but I like it.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2021-October-11, 07:31, said:

Golden wool? The reference is not something I recognize. I remember encountering a sentence, reading Kant, that had two semi-colons and a colon. I decided ok, I have some time, I am not getting up from this chair until I unravel this. Still, it didn't change my life.

I looked up some Kant quotes. eg

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

I am not sure I completely understand this but I like it.

Or to paraphrase, the sound of one hand claptrap trying to figure out the compound squeeze

[y66]

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT

Quote

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Like toy blocks hurled from the heavens, nearly 80,000 shipping containers are stacked in various configurations at the Port of Savannah — 50 percent more than usual.

The steel boxes are waiting for ships to carry them to their final destination, or for trucks to haul them to warehouses that are themselves stuffed to the rafters. Some 700 containers have been left at the port, on the banks of the Savannah River, by their owners for a month or more.

“They’re not coming to get their freight,” complained Griff Lynch, the executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. “We’ve never had the yard as full as this.”

As he speaks, another vessel glides silently toward an open berth — the 1,207-foot-long Yang Ming Witness, its decks jammed with containers full of clothing, shoes, electronics and other stuff made in factories in Asia. Towering cranes soon pluck the thousands of boxes off the ship — more cargo that must be stashed somewhere.

“Certainly,” Mr. Lynch said, “the stress level has never been higher.”

It has come to this in the Great Supply Chain Disruption: They are running out of places to put things at one of the largest ports in the United States. As major ports contend with a staggering pileup of cargo, what once seemed like a temporary phenomenon — a traffic jam that would eventually dissipate — is increasingly viewed as a new reality that could require a substantial refashioning of the world’s shipping infrastructure.

As the Savannah port works through the backlog, Mr. Lynch has reluctantly forced ships to wait at sea for more than nine days. On a recent afternoon, more than 20 ships were stuck in the queue, anchored up to 17 miles off the coast in the Atlantic.

Nearly 80,000 containers jam the port, 50 percent more than usual.

Such lines have become common around the globe, from the more than 50 ships marooned last week in the Pacific near Los Angeles to smaller numbers bobbing off terminals in the New York area, to hundreds waylaid off ports in China.

The turmoil in the shipping industry and the broader crisis in supply chains is showing no signs of relenting. It stands as a gnawing source of worry throughout the global economy, challenging once-hopeful assumptions of a vigorous return to growth as vaccines limit the spread of the pandemic.

The disruption helps explain why Germany’s industrial fortunes are sagging, why inflation has become a cause for concern among central bankers, and why American manufacturers are now waiting a record 92 days on average to assemble the parts and raw materials they need to make their goods, according to the Institute of Supply Management.

On the surface, the upheaval appears to be a series of intertwined product shortages. Because shipping containers are in short supply in China, factories that depend on Chinese-made parts and chemicals in the rest of the world have had to limit production.

Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.
But the situation at the port of Savannah attests to a more complicated and insidious series of overlapping problems. It is not merely that goods are scarce. It is that products are stuck in the wrong places, and separated from where they are supposed to be by stubborn and constantly shifting barriers.

The shortage of finished goods at retailers represents the flip side of the containers stacked on ships marooned at sea and massed on the riverbanks. The pileup in warehouses is itself a reflection of shortages of truck drivers needed to carry goods to their next destinations.

For Mr. Lynch, the man in charge in Savannah, frustrations are enhanced by a sense of powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond his control. Whatever he does to manage his docks alongside the murky Savannah River, he cannot tame the bedlam playing out on the highways, at the warehouses, at ports across the ocean and in factory towns around the world.

Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2021-October-11, 09:30, said:

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT


Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

The only thing that will stop a bad ship is a good ship with a gun - GOP slogan.