Local Community Standards.

Interesting. It seems like an insightful paragraph from the pre-anesthesia era. I wonder if it's on kindle.

*Life in the Sick-Room*

This neglected gem of a book was written by Harriet Martineau, best known for her 19th century tracts on political economy.  Now I learn she was a forerunner of behavioral economics, occupying a space somewhere between Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the pain meditations of Dan Ariely, excerpt:

I have spoken of the relief afforded by visitations of severe pain.  These really the vital forces, and dismiss the temptation, by substituting torture for weariness — at times a welcome change.  The healthy are astonished at the good spirits of sufferers under tormenting complaints; and the most strait-laced preachers of fortitude and patience admit an occasional wonder that there is no suicide among that class of sufferers.  The truth is, however, that the influence of acute pain, when only occasional, and not extremely protracted, is vivifying and cheering on the whole.  The immediate anguish causes a temporary despair: but the reaction, when the pain departs, causes a relish of life such as the healthy and the gay hardly enjoy.  Though a slow death by a torturing disease is a lot unspeakably awful to meet, and even to contemplate, there can be no question to the experience, that illness in which severe pain sometimes occurs is less trying than some in which a different kind of suffering is not relieved by such a stimulus and its consequent sensations.

The Wikipedia page on Martineau is especially good.

Because I really hate raking leaves.

Why Don't Atheists Cut Down All the Trees?

So… umm… this really happened on The 700 Club:

 here's a rough transcript, courtesy of Hoyden About Town:

Pat Robertson: Atheists don't believe in ANYTHING. I mean, a theo means "no God," they have no Gods, so they don't have anything, so they don't believe in anything. But they can protest, somebody who believes in SOMETHING. I mean, isn't this a strange thing, that we would allow somebody who doesn't believe in anything to restrict the freedom of those who do? I mean, it makes no sense! Sooner or later we're going to wake up, but I think maybe we are…but our hats are off to the forest service, this is just one minor little skirmish, but these atheists, they're just enormously creative in figuring out things they can do that give us trouble. Kristi…

Kristi Watts [interrupting]: You know what I just thought of, Pat?

Pat Robertson: What's that?

Kristi Watts: You know you've got different kinds of, well, let's call them religions…there's one called Wicca, and they're all about the environment, right? So, their religion that believes in the environment, and they believe that trees are their god, why are these atheists not saying that we should cut down every tree? Because it's offensive. [holds out hand towards PR} Do you know what I mean?

Pat Robertson: Yes...

Kristi Watts: It's the same mentality!

Pat Robertson: Oh, absolutely.

Kristi Watts: Right?

Pat Robertson: Absolutely. OK.

Kristi Watts: [dramatic shrug] Just a thought.

Yes… Wiccans like trees… and Wiccans are a religion… so let's CUT DOWN ALL THE TREES!

Never mind that Wiccans don't actually "worship" trees… and they aren't going against the Constitution and trying to cod...

B Herr

Tampa

I forgot how much I like trying new beers and annoying new people in new cities.
Cheers


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Heathrow Dr,Tampa,United States

If we follow Rick Santorum's logic to its inevitable conclusion.

Philosoraptor on angelic rapists

Miss you Barney.

To Protect and Service

Sent to you via Google Reader

Undercover UK cops infiltrated environmental groups, seduced women in the groups, fathered children with them, abandoned them

Undercover police agents in the UK infiltrated environmental groups, had sex with their members, struck up long-term relationships with women in these groups, fathered children with these women, and then abandoned the children.

Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.

In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children's mothers for many years.

Good thing the police were there, though. Who knows what kind of unethical behaviour an environmentalist might be getting up to.

Undercover police had children with activists

Sent from my iPad