Some strawmen created for me in the comments for Kimel’s Cato post:
– “expecting everyone else to bow down to the ‘apple stealing means death’ ethos on your say-so” (I strongly advocate the Gentleness Principle [physical aggression is to be stopped in the gentlest manner possible consistent with stopping the aggression], so this is a highly inaccurate ascription)
– “Get circular much? Really?: ‘only defensible’? That is a catechism and not an argument.” (I was claiming it’s the only defensible position on defining coercion within libertarianism. The text I linked offers a pretty robust argument as to why any other position is incoherent within libertarianism.)
– “if we did not defend ourselves by violent means from violent men, we would become their slaves” (…which is why I’m not a pacifist. I’m all for self-defense [informed by the gentleness principle.])
– “the lucky hunter shares his catch” (…indeed, if he’s generous and wants to be welcome in the community. I advocate altruism, over and above the “enlightened self interest” of the Objectivists. But we undercut the foundations of peaceful cooperation if generosity is short-circuited by expectation in an involuntary system of entitlement.)
I come to Angry Bear in order to expose myself to ideas typically contrary to those I hold. I hope for robust arguments which will either change my mind or allow me to better articulate my opposition. The knee-jerk responses and presumptuousness which abound whenever libertarianism comes up are hard to take, but I see lots of evidence of intelligence and compassion in the community here which keeps me coming back.
i would be glad to try to meet your views and arguments with my own views and arguments and hope for some mutual understanding, or even just tolerance. but when you dismiss arguments as “strawmen” and “knee-jerk” it doesn’t look like we can get there from here.
i don’t know that the lucky hunter thinks of himself as being altruistic. he is merely doing what “people do.” and the implication is certainly that those who do not share are not “people.”
as for the “expectation in an involuntary system of entitlement.” you have to come to grips with the fact that workers pay for their own damn entiltlement. and it is “involuntary” because otherwise the free riders would would sink the system.
this is still a democracy, i think, and your “involuntary” means “the majority vote for it.” i could tell you about all the “involuntary” things i do that i don’t like because “the law’… the will of the people … forces me to do it, ultimately by threat of violence. but to the extent i have understanding, a lot of things i resented when i was young and stupid now make perfect sense to me. if you resent Social Security you are a long way from understanding either it, the world in general, or yourself. SS provides, as nothing else in an industrial economy can, the ability of workers to save their own money so they can retire at a reasonable age.
but be of good cheer. the “liberals” who think they are ‘for’ Social Security, don’t understand it either and they want to turn it into welfare, where the rich pay for it.
“libertarianism” is a sweet idea. it just does not work in this world.
At what point in your original comments did you highlight “WITHIN LIBERTARIANISM”?
Not to mention by framing it in that way you have admitted that it is a form of catechism, which is to say a profession of the revealed truth of the faith. Or Faith.
Nor did you actually reference any ‘Gentleness Principle’ or show any commitment to ‘altruism’, stil less privilege it the principles of Objectivism as you do here.
Which is to say that all your protests here are literally post hoc ‘after the matter’ and amount to blaming your critics for not being mind and soul readers.
Look I appreciate people coming to Angry Bear to expose themselves to new ideas, and since my name is on the masthead I have a responsibility to defend those ideas in a straightforward manner and in your words with “robust arguments”. But equally that imposes an obligation on commenters to think before they post and to craft robust logic and data based responses of their own, rather than assert second hand talking points as established truths.
Methinks thou doth protest too much here. Your initial presentation was weak and assumed things not in evidence, for example that an appeal to Rothbard would in and of itself convey some authority when in fact he is a creature of fun here.
Your defense here still gets way too close to “Assume Libertarianism”. Well few people here do assume that meaning it is up to you to make the positive case.
I don’t know whether this critique will help you “better articulate your opposition” and I certainly don’t expect it to move your apparent opinion of me as mean-spirited, hell even my friends here concede that point. Regrettable or not successful participation in AB comment threads requires sharpening BOTH your arguments AND elbows. Much like your typical graduate seminar at a top school, if you don’t come prepared your fellow students/competitors (because that is the way top grad programs work-there just aren’t that many prizes) will tear your argument apart.
Oy. A lot of the opposition to the introduction of Daylight Savings Time in the first place was grounded in the belief and claim that it would confuse the cows by moving milking time back and forth. As if cows checked their watches before heading back to the barn from the pasture rather than working off biological and solar clocks. It is only humans that work off of clock synchronized schedules and the switch just means the dairy farmer changing his alarm clock and touching base with the driver picking up the milk each day. If it were not for the need of coordination with truck and train your typical old-style farmer could throw away all clocks and watches except the Grandfather Clock in the front parlour.
But at least there is a superficial logic in the dairy example, the expectations of man and cow needing to be in alignment on Sunday just as they were on Saturday. And you could stretch that some in the flea example if you argued the time switch changed the solar hours you were exposed to, where your old schedule had you inside when Mosquitos rise while the new one had you outside. Okay I spent a good part of my youth in Florida and Indiana, I get mosquitos. But the notion that moving the hands on the clock somehow make summer days longer and hotter is mindnumbingly dumb. You don’t reset the entire bio-sphere and solar system by changing the time on your microwave.
coberly, your points seem to imply that justness is conferred by majority vote, and that anything we think we “own” or any rights we think we have are susceptible to the capricious whims of the 51%. I would guess you don’t actually believe that, so I would love clarification here.
“At what point in your original comments did you highlight “WITHIN LIBERTARIANISM”? “
– “There are different views on this in libertarianism…”. Admittedly, I can’t expect that given my views I would be afforded the principle of charity around here.
“all your protests here are literally post hoc ‘after the matter’ and amount to blaming your critics for not being mind and soul readers.”
– I have yet to find a good way to lay out all the principles of coherent libertarianism before every comment I make, I’ll try to elevate my game in that way. 😉
“assumed things not in evidence, for example that an appeal to Rothbard would in and of itself convey some authority”
– Is it not possible to link to any author without implying that you think the link should be taken solemnly simply because of who the author is? Assume, assume…
“apparent opinion of me as mean-spirited”
– I don’t think you’re mean-spirited, just passionate and likely motivated by a high ethical view, which I appreciate. Maybe that’s a bit presumptuous. 😉
no. i often disagree with the majority. but it’s the best humans have come up with so far. when “the majority” or their elected “representatives” kill Social Security (while continuing to call the lie they replace it with “Social Security,”) I will be very very unhappy with “the majority.
but meanwhile you need to be aware that maybe there is a reason the majority think this is important enough to risk forcing you to comply.
and while i am on the subject, you also need to think, when i am not very nice to you, that you don’t need to have your feelings hurt or get angry in turn, but “why would someone get so mad at me for what I am saying?” sometimes it’s worth thinking about.
here is the point … why I agree with “the majority” so far: SS makes it possible for ordinary workers to save part of their own money so they can have “enough” to be able to retire after forty years or so of working. for most of them it is the best deal they can hope to get. for some of you financial geniuses, you MIGHT have gotten a better deal for yourself. but if you are really that smart, you can get rich even after you pay the SS “tax,” so I don’t feel too sorry for you. I am more inclined to think, first (and remember that anger thing) you are too stupid, or too young, to understand how SS works, or you don’t think that you have to pay your fair share for the “common good,” or don’t understand how the common good is actually YOUR good.
the very bad people want you to think that you are a smart young feller and you don’t need no steenking government. that’s so they can suck your bones when you have destroyed the government’s ability to protect you. and yes, they are working the other angle too: trying to take over the government. there is no cheap answer for you. i suggest working to keep the government on your side. and growing up enough to know that the word “idiot” is from a greek word meaning “a man by himself.”
the only time i objected to Daylight saving time (being moved into early spring) was when it meant my kids would have to walk to school in the dark. can’t remember if they got more fleas then, but the car traffic scared hell out of me.
that was in florida, btw. so after school in the cool of the evening they could chase the mosquito control truck down the street. might explain why they turned out the way they did.
i just read the article. didn’t realize that global warming was caused by daylight savings time.
that’s another reason you can’t trust the damn government. first they mess with the clocks, and now they want us to give up our sacred way of driving back and forth to work.
Uhh. Errmmmm. Guys–Warmer winters allow fleas to proliferate all year round thus more fleas. The writer thinks DST makes it worse but I disagree. I thought the change of topic might encourage less contention. Or not. Whattevah. Oy also. NancyO
you have no idea what charity looks like. if you want a weak simpering “have a nice day” kind of charity, you can get that from the liars who feed you crap all day. if you see someone yelling at you with anger… you may be looking at the best charity you could find, given your needs.
there is NO “coherent libertarianism,” it is an adolescent fantasy, or a fraud imposed on those who have never grown up.
personally i don’t like “links” for exactly that reason. state you own argument. don’t leave us to guess what part of your link you agree with. you will find, if you can go that far, that doing your own thinking forces you to look a little harder at the parts you gloss over when you are drinking in someone else’s with the spoonful of sugar that makes it go down so easy.
and here I thought you were being funny. there is no sound science behind the idea that daylight savings time causes global warming. it’s a conspiracy i tell you.
Poppies try starting out your comments with this simple phrase:
“As a philosophical Libertarian—” and go from there. Believe me many perhaps most Bears understand the basic tenets of Libertarianism and some are relatively sympathetic, you really don’t need to lay it all out.
But you didn’t do that. You just rolled on the scene with not even a bare “it seems to me”, just calling us all out as being naive or idiots or both.
Well as you can see that attitude didn’t serve you well, because to us all you were at that point was a screen name. While you were too ready to assert authority not yet earned.
I spent literal years as a commenter at AB before being invited to post by the current site-owner. And in that process both threw and took some elbows. And didn’t whine about the latter, after all for most of that time I was “Bruce Who?”.
Someone somewhere said something about participation in relation to “heat” and “kitchens”. You could Google it.
Okay just reviewed the Cato thread and I maybe wasn’t entirely fair to poppies. If you follow the time stamps his first comment was at 8:55 PM and clearly puts his argument in the context of Libertarianism and makes it reasonably clear that he self-associates with that philosophy. So two points to him. By that same token his reference via link to Rothbard and claim that the result was the “only” defensible conclusion in combination with his self-identification with Libertarianism rather justifies the critiques offered by Dale and me, the net result is proof by “I say so” mediated only slightly by “Rothbard makes sense to me”.
Now due to threading I came to this series of posts in an order not strictly determined by date stamps and my reading of the 8:55 was influenced by comments appearing earlier on the thread but in fact anterior in time. So my bad I guess. But overall I stand by my critique, there seems to be a lot of internalization of the libertarian philosophy and an inadequate understanding that it’s tenets are not as self-evident as people like Bryan Caplan would have it.
Yes it is a well established fact that if global warming is in fact occurring’ (which it isn’t) and if that such warming is caused or accelerated by human activity (which of course is crazy talk) that any such human induced warming was irrefutably due to fluoridation of the water or race traitor FDR’s insistence on promoting prevention of polio. Which in turn is obviously due to hatred of the God (and Adam Smith) given rights of dentists to sell teeth extraction services and medical supply shops to sell leg braces.
God could have designed a universe of never rotting teeth and absent of the polio virus. But didn’t. Who are we to second guess his decisions with that science and medicine thingy? Still less to give up our Stewardship of the Earth by burning as much God givin oil and gas as possible to maintain the American Way?
Yep, them’s some fleas, alright. I wonder how the dinosaurs got rid of them? Did they sit down and scratch like dogs and cats or maybe nibble themselves like mammals trying to catch a flea? Maybe it’s better not to know. 😎 NancyO
“By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, [as in many other cases] led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
they just wandered over to the nearest tar pit, took a big swig, struck up a light and breathed fire on those babies. this also helped to keep them warm at night and explains why you never see a dinosaur with hair.
Hmm considering how short T-Rex’s fore-arms were compared to his body and how out-sized the legs any such attempts at scratching may indeed be enough to explain their extinction. On the other hand the Orders Felinidae and Hominidae have a proven ability to scratch or lick where it itches.
It is a little humbling to think that the existence of modern humans and their masters the cat gods may be due to monkeys’ ability to scratch their privates and kitties ability to bend their spines in the multi-million year war of Vertebrate against Arthopod.
Die scallop, Die! And if we have to smother your Lobster buddy in garlic butter we will! (sign me up, because otherwise the giant dinosaur eating fleas win)
Yes the sins of the sons (Ricardo etc) are often imputed to the fathers (Smith).
Smith may have given birth to the Invisible Hand but is little more responsible for the subsequent murders committed than Jack the Ripper’s Dad or Mum was (even not assuming the most lurid conjectures on who they were).
I wonder if there were small dinosaurs, herps, or mammals that would catch and kill said fleas? You know, like oxpeckers on Cape buffalo in Africa or that little whatsis that Jabba the Hut had on a chain in Star Wars? So, while some littler dinosaurs (for example) were distracting the big badass dinosaurs by removing those evil flea monsters, another little mammal/dino/reptile etc. could be sneaking around and stealing dino eggs, or nipping a bit of the kill, etc.
has hit upon it, with a nod to Bruce. Them Dino’s employed the services of a pre-primate well adapted for picking nits and eating them. They sponsored these pre-primates and gave them a leg up the evolutionary ladder. Leaving them in charge when the dino’s had to fly off to a warmer planet.
Some strawmen created for me in the comments for Kimel’s Cato post:
– “expecting everyone else to bow down to the ‘apple stealing means death’ ethos on your say-so” (I strongly advocate the Gentleness Principle [physical aggression is to be stopped in the gentlest manner possible consistent with stopping the aggression], so this is a highly inaccurate ascription)
– “Get circular much? Really?: ‘only defensible’? That is a catechism and not an argument.” (I was claiming it’s the only defensible position on defining coercion within libertarianism. The text I linked offers a pretty robust argument as to why any other position is incoherent within libertarianism.)
– “if we did not defend ourselves by violent means from violent men, we would become their slaves” (…which is why I’m not a pacifist. I’m all for self-defense [informed by the gentleness principle.])
– “the lucky hunter shares his catch” (…indeed, if he’s generous and wants to be welcome in the community. I advocate altruism, over and above the “enlightened self interest” of the Objectivists. But we undercut the foundations of peaceful cooperation if generosity is short-circuited by expectation in an involuntary system of entitlement.)
I come to Angry Bear in order to expose myself to ideas typically contrary to those I hold. I hope for robust arguments which will either change my mind or allow me to better articulate my opposition. The knee-jerk responses and presumptuousness which abound whenever libertarianism comes up are hard to take, but I see lots of evidence of intelligence and compassion in the community here which keeps me coming back.
http://madmikesamerica.com/2012/03/daylight-savings-time-brings-more-fleas/
FYI, Bears. You’ve been warned. 😎 NancyO
poppies
i would be glad to try to meet your views and arguments with my own views and arguments and hope for some mutual understanding, or even just tolerance. but when you dismiss arguments as “strawmen” and “knee-jerk” it doesn’t look like we can get there from here.
i don’t know that the lucky hunter thinks of himself as being altruistic. he is merely doing what “people do.” and the implication is certainly that those who do not share are not “people.”
as for the “expectation in an involuntary system of entitlement.” you have to come to grips with the fact that workers pay for their own damn entiltlement. and it is “involuntary” because otherwise the free riders would would sink the system.
this is still a democracy, i think, and your “involuntary” means “the majority vote for it.” i could tell you about all the “involuntary” things i do that i don’t like because “the law’… the will of the people … forces me to do it, ultimately by threat of violence. but to the extent i have understanding, a lot of things i resented when i was young and stupid now make perfect sense to me. if you resent Social Security you are a long way from understanding either it, the world in general, or yourself. SS provides, as nothing else in an industrial economy can, the ability of workers to save their own money so they can retire at a reasonable age.
but be of good cheer. the “liberals” who think they are ‘for’ Social Security, don’t understand it either and they want to turn it into welfare, where the rich pay for it.
“libertarianism” is a sweet idea. it just does not work in this world.
At what point in your original comments did you highlight “WITHIN LIBERTARIANISM”?
Not to mention by framing it in that way you have admitted that it is a form of catechism, which is to say a profession of the revealed truth of the faith. Or Faith.
Nor did you actually reference any ‘Gentleness Principle’ or show any commitment to ‘altruism’, stil less privilege it the principles of Objectivism as you do here.
Which is to say that all your protests here are literally post hoc ‘after the matter’ and amount to blaming your critics for not being mind and soul readers.
Look I appreciate people coming to Angry Bear to expose themselves to new ideas, and since my name is on the masthead I have a responsibility to defend those ideas in a straightforward manner and in your words with “robust arguments”. But equally that imposes an obligation on commenters to think before they post and to craft robust logic and data based responses of their own, rather than assert second hand talking points as established truths.
Methinks thou doth protest too much here. Your initial presentation was weak and assumed things not in evidence, for example that an appeal to Rothbard would in and of itself convey some authority when in fact he is a creature of fun here.
Your defense here still gets way too close to “Assume Libertarianism”. Well few people here do assume that meaning it is up to you to make the positive case.
I don’t know whether this critique will help you “better articulate your opposition” and I certainly don’t expect it to move your apparent opinion of me as mean-spirited, hell even my friends here concede that point. Regrettable or not successful participation in AB comment threads requires sharpening BOTH your arguments AND elbows. Much like your typical graduate seminar at a top school, if you don’t come prepared your fellow students/competitors (because that is the way top grad programs work-there just aren’t that many prizes) will tear your argument apart.
Elevate your game and try again.
Oy. A lot of the opposition to the introduction of Daylight Savings Time in the first place was grounded in the belief and claim that it would confuse the cows by moving milking time back and forth. As if cows checked their watches before heading back to the barn from the pasture rather than working off biological and solar clocks. It is only humans that work off of clock synchronized schedules and the switch just means the dairy farmer changing his alarm clock and touching base with the driver picking up the milk each day. If it were not for the need of coordination with truck and train your typical old-style farmer could throw away all clocks and watches except the Grandfather Clock in the front parlour.
But at least there is a superficial logic in the dairy example, the expectations of man and cow needing to be in alignment on Sunday just as they were on Saturday. And you could stretch that some in the flea example if you argued the time switch changed the solar hours you were exposed to, where your old schedule had you inside when Mosquitos rise while the new one had you outside. Okay I spent a good part of my youth in Florida and Indiana, I get mosquitos. But the notion that moving the hands on the clock somehow make summer days longer and hotter is mindnumbingly dumb. You don’t reset the entire bio-sphere and solar system by changing the time on your microwave.
coberly, your points seem to imply that justness is conferred by majority vote, and that anything we think we “own” or any rights we think we have are susceptible to the capricious whims of the 51%. I would guess you don’t actually believe that, so I would love clarification here.
“At what point in your original comments did you highlight “WITHIN LIBERTARIANISM”? “
– “There are different views on this in libertarianism…”. Admittedly, I can’t expect that given my views I would be afforded the principle of charity around here.
“all your protests here are literally post hoc ‘after the matter’ and amount to blaming your critics for not being mind and soul readers.”
– I have yet to find a good way to lay out all the principles of coherent libertarianism before every comment I make, I’ll try to elevate my game in that way. 😉
“assumed things not in evidence, for example that an appeal to Rothbard would in and of itself convey some authority”
– Is it not possible to link to any author without implying that you think the link should be taken solemnly simply because of who the author is? Assume, assume…
“apparent opinion of me as mean-spirited”
– I don’t think you’re mean-spirited, just passionate and likely motivated by a high ethical view, which I appreciate. Maybe that’s a bit presumptuous. 😉
poppies
no. i often disagree with the majority. but it’s the best humans have come up with so far. when “the majority” or their elected “representatives” kill Social Security (while continuing to call the lie they replace it with “Social Security,”) I will be very very unhappy with “the majority.
but meanwhile you need to be aware that maybe there is a reason the majority think this is important enough to risk forcing you to comply.
and while i am on the subject, you also need to think, when i am not very nice to you, that you don’t need to have your feelings hurt or get angry in turn, but “why would someone get so mad at me for what I am saying?” sometimes it’s worth thinking about.
here is the point … why I agree with “the majority” so far: SS makes it possible for ordinary workers to save part of their own money so they can have “enough” to be able to retire after forty years or so of working. for most of them it is the best deal they can hope to get. for some of you financial geniuses, you MIGHT have gotten a better deal for yourself. but if you are really that smart, you can get rich even after you pay the SS “tax,” so I don’t feel too sorry for you. I am more inclined to think, first (and remember that anger thing) you are too stupid, or too young, to understand how SS works, or you don’t think that you have to pay your fair share for the “common good,” or don’t understand how the common good is actually YOUR good.
the very bad people want you to think that you are a smart young feller and you don’t need no steenking government. that’s so they can suck your bones when you have destroyed the government’s ability to protect you. and yes, they are working the other angle too: trying to take over the government. there is no cheap answer for you. i suggest working to keep the government on your side. and growing up enough to know that the word “idiot” is from a greek word meaning “a man by himself.”
Bruce
the only time i objected to Daylight saving time (being moved into early spring) was when it meant my kids would have to walk to school in the dark. can’t remember if they got more fleas then, but the car traffic scared hell out of me.
that was in florida, btw. so after school in the cool of the evening they could chase the mosquito control truck down the street. might explain why they turned out the way they did.
oy
i just read the article. didn’t realize that global warming was caused by daylight savings time.
that’s another reason you can’t trust the damn government. first they mess with the clocks, and now they want us to give up our sacred way of driving back and forth to work.
Uhh. Errmmmm. Guys–Warmer winters allow fleas to proliferate all year round thus more fleas. The writer thinks DST makes it worse but I disagree. I thought the change of topic might encourage less contention. Or not. Whattevah. Oy also. NancyO
poppies
you have no idea what charity looks like. if you want a weak simpering “have a nice day” kind of charity, you can get that from the liars who feed you crap all day. if you see someone yelling at you with anger… you may be looking at the best charity you could find, given your needs.
there is NO “coherent libertarianism,” it is an adolescent fantasy, or a fraud imposed on those who have never grown up.
personally i don’t like “links” for exactly that reason. state you own argument. don’t leave us to guess what part of your link you agree with. you will find, if you can go that far, that doing your own thinking forces you to look a little harder at the parts you gloss over when you are drinking in someone else’s with the spoonful of sugar that makes it go down so easy.
Nancy
and here I thought you were being funny. there is no sound science behind the idea that daylight savings time causes global warming. it’s a conspiracy i tell you.
Poppies try starting out your comments with this simple phrase:
“As a philosophical Libertarian—” and go from there. Believe me many perhaps most Bears understand the basic tenets of Libertarianism and some are relatively sympathetic, you really don’t need to lay it all out.
But you didn’t do that. You just rolled on the scene with not even a bare “it seems to me”, just calling us all out as being naive or idiots or both.
Well as you can see that attitude didn’t serve you well, because to us all you were at that point was a screen name. While you were too ready to assert authority not yet earned.
I spent literal years as a commenter at AB before being invited to post by the current site-owner. And in that process both threw and took some elbows. And didn’t whine about the latter, after all for most of that time I was “Bruce Who?”.
Someone somewhere said something about participation in relation to “heat” and “kitchens”. You could Google it.
Okay just reviewed the Cato thread and I maybe wasn’t entirely fair to poppies. If you follow the time stamps his first comment was at 8:55 PM and clearly puts his argument in the context of Libertarianism and makes it reasonably clear that he self-associates with that philosophy. So two points to him. By that same token his reference via link to Rothbard and claim that the result was the “only” defensible conclusion in combination with his self-identification with Libertarianism rather justifies the critiques offered by Dale and me, the net result is proof by “I say so” mediated only slightly by “Rothbard makes sense to me”.
Now due to threading I came to this series of posts in an order not strictly determined by date stamps and my reading of the 8:55 was influenced by comments appearing earlier on the thread but in fact anterior in time. So my bad I guess. But overall I stand by my critique, there seems to be a lot of internalization of the libertarian philosophy and an inadequate understanding that it’s tenets are not as self-evident as people like Bryan Caplan would have it.
Yes it is a well established fact that if global warming is in fact occurring’ (which it isn’t) and if that such warming is caused or accelerated by human activity (which of course is crazy talk) that any such human induced warming was irrefutably due to fluoridation of the water or race traitor FDR’s insistence on promoting prevention of polio. Which in turn is obviously due to hatred of the God (and Adam Smith) given rights of dentists to sell teeth extraction services and medical supply shops to sell leg braces.
God could have designed a universe of never rotting teeth and absent of the polio virus. But didn’t. Who are we to second guess his decisions with that science and medicine thingy? Still less to give up our Stewardship of the Earth by burning as much God givin oil and gas as possible to maintain the American Way?
“Mr. Santorum? I am ready for my close up!”
AND with global warmer, we will return to the days of Giant, Dinosaur Eating Fleas of the Jurrasic. Nope, not kidding.
Yep, them’s some fleas, alright. I wonder how the dinosaurs got rid of them? Did they sit down and scratch like dogs and cats or maybe nibble themselves like mammals trying to catch a flea? Maybe it’s better not to know. 😎 NancyO
oh,well, here as good as another…
what Adam Smith really said:
“By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, [as in many other cases] led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
Note Smith was endorsing trade barriers.
don’t be silly.
they just wandered over to the nearest tar pit, took a big swig, struck up a light and breathed fire on those babies. this also helped to keep them warm at night and explains why you never see a dinosaur with hair.
“scratch like dogs and cats”
Hmm considering how short T-Rex’s fore-arms were compared to his body and how out-sized the legs any such attempts at scratching may indeed be enough to explain their extinction. On the other hand the Orders Felinidae and Hominidae have a proven ability to scratch or lick where it itches.
It is a little humbling to think that the existence of modern humans and their masters the cat gods may be due to monkeys’ ability to scratch their privates and kitties ability to bend their spines in the multi-million year war of Vertebrate against Arthopod.
Die scallop, Die! And if we have to smother your Lobster buddy in garlic butter we will! (sign me up, because otherwise the giant dinosaur eating fleas win)
Yes the sins of the sons (Ricardo etc) are often imputed to the fathers (Smith).
Smith may have given birth to the Invisible Hand but is little more responsible for the subsequent murders committed than Jack the Ripper’s Dad or Mum was (even not assuming the most lurid conjectures on who they were).
I wonder if there were small dinosaurs, herps, or mammals that would catch and kill said fleas? You know, like oxpeckers on Cape buffalo in Africa or that little whatsis that Jabba the Hut had on a chain in Star Wars? So, while some littler dinosaurs (for example) were distracting the big badass dinosaurs by removing those evil flea monsters, another little mammal/dino/reptile etc. could be sneaking around and stealing dino eggs, or nipping a bit of the kill, etc.
Well, maybe not, but this link will put a completely different perspective on the whole “ooogabooga-big-scary-predator” thing. You don’t have to be all that big. Even predators start out as kids.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/11/1072703/-Rooftop-Rendezvous-Behold-The-Peregrine-Falcon?via=recent
See? Ain’t he cute? 😎 NancyO
preening?
that means fleas.
learning to fly, even at 200 mph, didn’t help those dinosaurs escape those fleas.
Nancy
has hit upon it, with a nod to Bruce. Them Dino’s employed the services of a pre-primate well adapted for picking nits and eating them. They sponsored these pre-primates and gave them a leg up the evolutionary ladder. Leaving them in charge when the dino’s had to fly off to a warmer planet.