appeal
November 12th, 2025
I worked so hard to get this comic out today, I nearly gave myself an aneurysm.
Latest book…
Random oldie…
March 12, 2013-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
You poor thing!
Now I understand why I find so irrational the ‘victim impact statement’ which has become a crucial element of UK criminal trials. What’s next? Blood money?
I recently re-watched Concert for Bangladesh and was astonished by how many of the songs praised God – the same God who had created the problem in the first place. “That’s the way God planned it, that’s the way God wants it to be.”
I thought most muslims think that a guitar is a tool of satan. đ€
I don’t get it – the connection with the victim impact statement.
I would think the closest parallel here would be the “perpetrator had a hard life” excuse. In Seattle there was a shit storm after the public defender’s office brought a proposal to the city council, that the misdemeanor definitions be revised to allow a defense of necessity. In reality, though, no prosecutor was going to bother to bring a mom to trial over stealing baby food, etc. – the legal cover wasn’t needed.
Yes, the victims statement is not tested for relevance nor veracity. Thus tis pointless…
âThereâs a big difference between the banjo and the guitar. The banjo has a round pot with a skinhead stretched over the top, and it projects the sound outward. The guitar can get you laid.â â Steve Martin
Aye, just been reading about Bob Fripp in the 60’s n 70’s, he had a lot of success with the ladies…đ€Ł
I just fell over this bit of philosophy (if you can call it that) on Teh Web.
Out of my depth, but what do you folks think? See also the follow-up.
Is this interesting at all? Pure sci-fi, or nearly there? Discuss in small groups.
https://x.com/farzyness/status/1990604487975694470
All the r’s. The fundamental survival machine is in control, always has been and always will be. The modern woke virtue signalling grief that people show for complete strangers who have been killed in this tragedy or that murder or some accident is ridiculous….Why? because every second some h.s.u is ceasing to exist in more or less unexpected circumstances. So the correct virtue signaller should start mourning on waking and carry on till bedtime then dream-mourn for every h.s.u who ceased to exist during the sleep period…..đ€Ł
Rubbish. Yes, there are reasons why we are altruistic, empathetic, generous, etc. So what if altruism was instilled into our mental makeup because it was advantageous? Are we disappointed that it wasn’t stamped in there by Vishnu or whoever? Personally, altruism is made more real to me, by an understanding that it’s a survival feature and not just some unreliable adherence to learned baloney.
Yes, it’s true that people often fall down here. Often they don’t fall down, and considering the whirlwinds of confusion in our minds that’s kind of a miracle. If it’s no good unless everyone’s perfect, then yeah, it’s no good. If there’s enough good that there must be some potential here, then we should celebrate that and think about how to improve.
^ You’re living in cloud-cookoo land…
though experiment….A runaway train is hurtling down a track. You have no way of stopping it but have control of a set of points. Track set Left and the train hits your grandson or granddaughter….track set right and the train smashes into a carriage with 100 strangers children on board , almost cetainly killing them all…I am killing the 100 strangers without a second thought….so would you and 100% of selfish gene protectors, and if you say no you are a LIAR…
Like all hand-wringing do-gooders, it’s easy to be altruistic if doing so has no cost to yourself or family….but when the chips are down and it’s dog eat dog then the law of the jungle holds true and you protect your family at whatever cost…thats just the way it is and those without a family probably look after number one with just as much conviction…
And yes, I’ve read The Selfish Gene and three dozen other books on Evolution…our phenotypes are merely survival machines for the nearly immortal gene….
The fact that our primary instinct is for self-preservation, which presumably contributed to where we are, does not exclude also having sympathy and empathy for others.
The fact that we would be likely to save our loved ones from the train in an appalling dilemma with the putative train is a bit misleading.
If it were just the train with the hundred innocents heading for a cliff edge unless an available points handle was pulled most people (who werenât a psychopath like Orange Don) would do so even if it risked getting a blister.
âIt is a far, far better thing I do âŠâŠâ
Vitue signalling pretend sympathy for complete strangers is just annoying. How can the death of a complete stranger in a flood thousands of miles away elicit any other feeling than, oh I’m glad I don’t live there? My thought experiment was to.prove that protection of your family would make you capable of extreme violence towards anybody foolish enough to threaten them.
Yes virtue signaling is a pain and all the Lady Di stuff was well OTT.
I would suggest though that the vast amount of mostly anonymous money that pours into UNICEF, Oxfam and the like gives the lie to the idea that most responses to othersâ suffering is simply âglad itâs not meâ.
@M27Holts – your moral dilemma thought experiment put me in mind of the aphorism âThere are no atheists in foxholesâ. Perhaps some mis-wiring in my brain, but Russellâs counter to this was (something like) âSurely thatâs more of an argument against foxholes than for the existence of God.â In other words, put people, who would normally behave in a rational and decent fashion, in an unspeakably difficult situation, and – yes – they will behave uncharacteristically, even irrationally & atavistically. For me, rescuing those I know, love, and care for in preference to rescuing a greater number of strangers doesnât falsify, mock, or trivialise my “normal-situation” empathy.
And so, with this possibly inflammatory statement, I can âunderstandâ Netanyahuâs actions, at least his immediate ones on Oct. 8 & 9, 2023, when the situation was far from normal. And yet here we are, two years later, and the originally extremely abnormal situation has become the ânew normalâ.
Just to stoke the flames further, you (all) might like to read âThe Myth of Normalâ, by Gabor MatĂ©. He argues that we canât behave normally in our toxic culture, that we are all deeply traumatised by it (people vote for hateful monsters: Farage, Trump, Putin, Johnson, Netanyahu, !!!). And he offers a process to handle, to escape the trauma.
I am sure you would find Atheists in Foxholes, just like the Russians in Stalingrad when the tanks are rolling down your street you have no option other than to fight or die…