Some good news in manufacturing in America

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

I have never, ever before advocated the banning of anyone from iTulip though I have been on the receiving end of a number of such calls.

I must say, however, that Erixymachus has thus far contributed exactly zero to any discussion involving anything beyond the depths of human negativity.

aw, c'mon, c1ue. we haven't had a fella like this to fun with since i don't know when. sucks he hijacked jeff's thread, tho. i vote we start a new one in rant & rave... where we can ask...

Eryximachus: Are you a true physician or just arrogant?
By ANNA IRIS TORRES CACOULLOS on December 5, 2009 4:08 PM

In our last class meeting we discussed Eryximachus and attempted to agree on what his role is in the dialogue. We all agreed that his speech and attendance in the banquet is key; the position of his speech must be critical as it is placed in the middle of all the other speeches. We also tried to understand the importance of the curing of Aristophanes' hiccoughs during Eryximachus' speech.

It is evident that Eryximachus distinguishes himself from all others present at the banquet because of his frequent medical interjections and references of his techne as a doctor. In every opportunity he finds, Eryximachus does not fail to demonstrate and offer his medical opinion. At his introduction he delivers a quick lecture on drunkenness at 176c-d and then later on hiccoughs in reference to Aristophanes' own spasms of hiccoughs at 185d-e).

"....I probably will provoke less displeasure when I tell you the truth about the nature of intoxication. I believe it has become clear from medical practice that intoxication is a harmful thing for human beings. I myself would not voluntarily drink too deeply, nor would I advise anyone to do so, especially when they still have a hangover the previous day" (176d).

When Aristophanes has a fit of hiccoughs, he turns to Eryximachus for help. "Eryximachus, it would be appropriate for you either to stop my hiccups or else to speak for me until I'm able to stop." The doctor replies, "On the contrary, I'll do both [....] While I'm speaking, you hold your breath a long time perhaps the hiccups will be willing to stop. But if not, gargle with water, and if they're vere severe, grab something you think will tickle your nose and make yourself sneeze!..." (185 d-e).

Yet not only does Eryximachus speak like a doctor when he is asked for his medical advice, but also in his speech on Eros he still speaks like a man of medicine. At 186b, Eryximachus begins his speech by referencing his pride in his profession. " I will speak initially from the medical perspective because I treat that art as preeminent." In fact, it seems that Plato is making a point of bringing out the medical personality that Eryximachus possesses. However, it is not only Eryximachus but all those who are present that Plato seems to bring out individual characteristics of each person, such as Aristophanes and Agathon who have characteristics of their profession as poets.

At 186a-b, Eryximachus makes a rather arrogant remark: he claims that all he knows come from his knowledge of medicine. "I think that one sees from the perspective of my art, that is medicine, how great and marvelous the god is and how he permeates everything, both human and divine." Is Eryximachus a conceited physician? Also, going back to the question of the importance of the curing of Artistophanes' hiccoughs during Eryximachus' speech, does Plato want us to think that Eryximachus is to be ridiculed? A man of medicine has always been the typical image of authority for arguably, our lives are in his/her hands. Does Eryximachus know what's best?

[lektrode]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

methinks he needs his own personal RANT AND RAVE section...

[lektrode]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

you may want to read up a bit more on that:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...he-word-yankee

What is the origin of the word "Yankee"?

July 11, 1986
Dear Cecil:
What is the origin of the word "Yankee"?
— Listener, WFBR, Baltimore
Cecil replies:
What's so complicated? You got your yankers, obviously you also got your yankees. However, I can't claim the etymological authorities are exactly lining up to embrace this notion.



The origins of "Yankee" have been fiercely debated throughout the history of the Republic, and to this day the Oxford English Dictionary says the source of the word is "unascertained." Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation was advanced by H.L. Mencken, the well-known newsman-scholar (and don't tell me that isn't an unusual combination), who argued that Yankee derives from the expression Jan Kaas, literally "John Cheese." This supposedly was a derogatory nickname bestowed on the Dutch by the Germans and the Flemish in the 1600s. (Wisconsin cheeseheads can undoubtedly relate.)



The English later applied the term to Dutch pirates, and later still Dutch settlers in New York applied it to English settlers in Connecticut, who were known for their piratical trading practices. During the French and Indian War the British general James Wolfe took to referring derisively to the native New Englanders in his army as Yankees, and the term was widely popularized during the Revolutionary War by the song "Yankee Doodle." By the war's end, of course, the colonists had perversely adopted the term as their own. Southerners used Yankee pejoratively to describe Northerners during the Civil War, but found themselves, along with all other Americans, called thus by the English during world wars I and II.



The alternative explanations--Mencken lists 16 of them--are that Yankee derives from various Indian languages, or from Scottish, Swedish, Persian, etc. James Fenimore Cooper claimed that Yankee resulted from a fractured attempt by the Indians to pronounce the word "English." But most others think Cooper was about as good an etymologist as he was a novelist.
— Cecil Adams

[lektrode]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

LOL! I'm a proud yankee, .....

+1

and if you LOL'd on that one, you'll LOVE his commentary on congress (a bit dated, but just as appropo as ever ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7o9p0fP6cQ

being PC he will not ever be accused of....

(and dont say i didnt warn ya...)

[Eryximachus]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

your model of an ideal society is a totalitarian dictatorship with the social order based on racial profiling? create super-humans with drugs? hmmm... has a ring to it...

Oh boy, I know you guys are about as "mainstream" as you can get, but Godwin's Law? This early in the debate? Really?

I'm not really sure what the ideal society is at this moment to be honest. But I do know that it can't be one that is based on lies, which is what the United States is entirely founded upon. Such a society will never last.

My point is simply this: pretending that intelligence is not heritable does nothing positive. Further, we will not be able to successfully compete against countries that are not beholden to these lies. If you really spend time with smart Chinese, they laugh at how stupid and barbaric Americans are.

I mean, there are stories like this every day:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/arrests...2#.TvJnZzVSRjm

41% of Young Americans will be arrested by age 23?

I'm always amazed on sites such as this. I imagine most of you live in very isolated suburbs and are sheltered from the reality on the ground in America. But it's not pretty. I could list a hundred articles like this from the past year, of extraordinary barbarism that was unheard of a generation ago.

China does not have these problems. Europe does not have these problems. America DOES have these problems. I believe it has a lot to do with the acceptance of human variation in ability. Here, we don't tell idiot kids (the kind prone to violence) that their place in the world is to follow the direction of their betters in their community. We don't have any communities really. Instead, we tell them that society has failed them. The evil racists kept you down. You'd be a doctor or lawyer if it wasn't for people like me. But few really believe this stuff anymore. I know dozens of ardent "progressives" who realize the grand dream of equality of ability simply won't be realized. They realize the dream of turning America into some kind of incubator for the intellectual elite is a fool's errand. Moreover, they realize that the ultimate casualty of this reign of terror of international finance, which was the reason Adolf Hitler came to power, is the common man who once upon a time could get a job in a factory or a farm and have a decent life. You didn't have to be brilliant, you just had to be responsible (i.e. have sufficient IQ to delay gratification and control impulses).

Now, these people are screwed and nothing in this thread at all indicates to me that there will be any work for the tens of millions of unemployed who aren't smart enough to join the modern knowledge economy.

Now, before I get another Hitler comment:

A simple and fair solution is a guaranteed minimum income. This would limit the degree to which the elite could siphon wealth out of what is left of the middle and lower classes. But that's a whole other discussion and I haven't the time.

[Eryximachus]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

methinks he needs his own personal RANT AND RAVE section...

Ok, you guys win. Byebye.

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

I have been to China. While the availability of firearms is certainly less, there is organized crime in the country.

hah! the country IS organized crime.

But most violent crimes in the US don't involve guns. In Brooklyn, a woman was just doused with gasoline and set alight in an elevator. Surely, the Chinese have access to gasoline.

Last June, hours after her students went home, Sunny Shi, the principal at a kindergarten in Shanghai's Pudong district, was bludgeoned to death in her office. The suspect was another school employee.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...022278452.html

that be one unreported crime... 1 of millions 'under the iceberg'. the tip...

Crime has been increasing at a rate of 10 percent a year since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Deng reforms were introduced. Economic reforms and growth has been accompanied by an increase in petty crime, drug abuse, prostitution, truck hijacking and even kidnaping. Rates of serious crime, especially murder and kidnaping, have increased a lot, especially in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, but are still very low. The Deng reforms heralded the return of money changers and pawnshops. Numerous secret societies and criminal organizations sprung up or were revived. In some remote areas road blocks have were set up on highways and drivers had to pay a "toll" to pass. Sometimes even the police participated in these endeavors.

The crime rate tripled between 1984 and 2004. The total number of criminal cases rose 13 percent to 2.2 million between 1998 and 1999. In 2004, there were more than a million serious crimes. In 2006 there was a rise in the number of “major criminal cases” including explosions, kidnapings and homicides, with crimes being committed by younger and younger people.
The crime rate in Guangzhou has soared in recent years, particularly the number of thefts, purse snatching and robberies. Violent crimes such as muggings are also on the rise. Counterfeit currency shows up in ATM machines and pay packets. Around 100,000 crimes are reported to police; many more go unreported.

Many of those arrested for petty thefts are migrant workers. Migrant workers are blamed for many crimes. Some hold them responsible for the rising crime rate. Many also blame the general get-rich-quick mentality.
In his book Country Driving , Peter Hessler's tells the poignant story of the wife of a factory machinist who headsback to her home province of Guizhou with her recently born son, where she is mugged by a gang of men who pretend to offer her a ride in a van only to take her to a remote spot, drug her and steal all her belongings. Only the presence of her baby boy saves her from being killed on the spot, but she also manages to rescue her most prized possession, a digital camera. [Source: Andrew Field, Squarespace, blog, July 31, 2010]
The rising rate of lawlessness in rural areas is particularly alarming. There have been cases where innocent people have been killed in their homes during pitched battles between rival villages while the police stood by and did nothing. In Lanshan such a battle was triggered by a schoolboy fight and escalated to pitched battles in which villagers built ramparts and fired cannon made from empty gas cylinders.
The lawlessness in the countryside—and to some degree in China in general—has been blamed on breakdown of Maoist discipline and the rise of cutthroat capitalist competition and links between police and criminal gangs. There is often no rule of law and power is in the hands of local leaders and clan chiefs, corrupt police or Communist Party officials and gangsters.
Foreigners are generally not victimized by violent crime. If they are and the criminals are caught they are dealt with harshly. In 2000, two men who robbed a Shanghai-based American diplomat and one man who robbed two Dutch tourists for about $80 worth of Chinese currency were sentenced to death.
Foreigners are very rarely the targets of crime in China and if they are the crimes are investigated more thoroughly and the criminals get a worse punishment than if Chinese were the victims. On June 20, 1987, the first American to be murdered in China in 40 years was a Texan named Ewald Cheer who was killed after being robbed of $186. The murderers were quickly tracked down, found guilty and executed.
In 2000, a German businessman with Daimler-Chrysler, his wife, 14-year-old daughter, and 12-year-old son were stabbed and killed at their home in Nanjing. The four men involved in the crime were believed to be migrant workers after money.
Some rape crimes are quite brutal. In 2007, a 15-year-old Chinese girl survived after being raped beaten and buried face down underground under a pile of stones in an abandoned mine shaft for six days in the municipality of Chongqing. The girl was raped by a 50-year-old man who was a partner in her father’s motorcycle taxi business.
In March 2008, a Chinese man took 10 Australians hostage on a bus in Xian. A police sniper shot and killed him.
In July 2008, a Canadian model was robbed and murdered in her Shanghai apartment after being in China for only two weeks.
In September 2005, a teacher in Mianyang, Sichuan Province was executed for raping 32 schoolgirls and committing obscene acts during physical education class and after school.
The crime rate is increasing among females. In the Mao era, only about 1 percent of crimes were committed by females, now the figure is as high as 20 percent in some places. Many of the crimes are sex-related. In Sichuan, there are all female gangs.

Juvenile crime, almost unheard of in the Mao era, is a growing problem in China. Stories about crimes committed by young people are common. Juvenile crimes are now believed to account for round 10 percent of all crimes.
Widely publicized cases include one in which a 16-year-old Beijing high school students killed his mother for “being too strict” and took $50 from her pocket and headed to an Internet café. In another case a 15-year-old Beijing student stabbed a friend 17 times with a fruit knife for flirting with her boyfriend. In Guanxi, a 23-year-old student was executed after killing four roommates with a hammer over a card game. Another youth was caught pouring battery acid on zoo animals.
Most of the crimes are of petty nature. Describing a 12-year-old pickpocket working in Hekou, a town on the Vietnam border, Seth Faison wrote in the New York Times, "Here it comes. Maybe. A gaggle of red-capped tourist from northern China approaches a clearing by the river front, chattering and snapping pictures. [The pickpocket] circles in, eyes darting. he drifts alongside an overweight woman with a fat red purse, but she notices him getting close and clutches her moneybag, and he backs off.



etc, etc, etc...


http://factsanddetails.com/china.php...=8&subcatid=50

Now, I have only been to fairly urban parts of China (Shanghai and Suzhou), so I can't comment on truly rural areas. But again, there is a procedure in place to bring peasants of sufficient ability into the urban world - this is why they aren't allowed into the Shanghai region would special clearance.

a procedure in place to bring peasants of sufficient ability into the urban world...

i like your plan!

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

Oh boy, I know you guys are about as "mainstream" as you can get, but Godwin's Law? This early in the debate? Really?

I'm not really sure what the ideal society is at this moment to be honest. But I do know that it can't be one that is based on lies, which is what the United States is entirely founded upon. Such a society will never last.

My point is simply this: pretending that intelligence is not heritable does nothing positive. Further, we will not be able to successfully compete against countries that are not beholden to these lies. If you really spend time with smart Chinese, they laugh at how stupid and barbaric Americans are.

I mean, there are stories like this every day:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/arrests...2#.TvJnZzVSRjm

41% of Young Americans will be arrested by age 23?

I'm always amazed on sites such as this. I imagine most of you live in very isolated suburbs and are sheltered from the reality on the ground in America. But it's not pretty. I could list a hundred articles like this from the past year, of extraordinary barbarism that was unheard of a generation ago.

China does not have these problems. Europe does not have these problems. America DOES have these problems. I believe it has a lot to do with the acceptance of human variation in ability. Here, we don't tell idiot kids (the kind prone to violence) that their place in the world is to follow the direction of their betters in their community. We don't have any communities really. Instead, we tell them that society has failed them. The evil racists kept you down. You'd be a doctor or lawyer if it wasn't for people like me. But few really believe this stuff anymore. I know dozens of ardent "progressives" who realize the grand dream of equality of ability simply won't be realized. They realize the dream of turning America into some kind of incubator for the intellectual elite is a fool's errand. Moreover, they realize that the ultimate casualty of this reign of terror of international finance, which was the reason Adolf Hitler came to power, is the common man who once upon a time could get a job in a factory or a farm and have a decent life. You didn't have to be brilliant, you just had to be responsible (i.e. have sufficient IQ to delay gratification and control impulses).

Now, these people are screwed and nothing in this thread at all indicates to me that there will be any work for the tens of millions of unemployed who aren't smart enough to join the modern knowledge economy.

Now, before I get another Hitler comment:

A simple and fair solution is a guaranteed minimum income. This would limit the degree to which the elite could siphon wealth out of what is left of the middle and lower classes. But that's a whole other discussion and I haven't the time.

any of these you do NOT agree with?

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.

I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

The day of individual happiness has passed.

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be "discovered" by an election.

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

Ok, you guys win. Byebye.

tucks tail & runs so soon? dern... ya done scairt dat one off too easy, trode! we hicks gotta know our place & i fer one was on fer a teachin from mr hitler.

[lektrode]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

ayuh... DANG mm! - and just as we was gittin goin too...
even from waaaay ovah heah it was pretty cleah that he was stahtin to git scayahd that we was gangin up on 'im...
friggin leftys, they aint got much moxie when it comes to scrappin and then all they wanna do is staht insultin people.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

Thanks to all of you for getting Eryximachus to exit. He was the most irritating poster we have had here since Nov 2008 when I joined.

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

ayuh... DANG mm! - and just as we was gittin goin too...
even from waaaay ovah heah it was pretty cleah that he was stahtin to git scayahd that we was gangin up on 'im...
friggin leftys, they aint got much moxie when it comes to scrappin and then all they wanna do is staht insultin people.

let sen ol mr hitler off wit ah good ol yakee cryah...

[metalman]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

While I'm fairly perplexed as to what you mean by "human negativity", I guess you're trying to say that I've contributed nothing to this discussion. I probably won't bother participating here anytime in the near future, but I will say this: I've lurked here for some time, it's the same few posters, with the same old tired nonsense. As this depression has continued unabated, the desperation, the confusion, and the vitriol has only increased. This, sadly, always happens when the lies upon which a society is based begin to crumble.

What precisely are YOU trying to accomplish here? I am trying, ultimately, to save what is left of Western Civilization. What about you? You want to protect your retirement fund? You want to further the totalitarian vision of bureaucratically managed equality, tolerance, and diversity? You think that once everyone has access to the same useless consumer goods and toys that suddenly they will enjoy life again and we won't have to lock up millions of our citizens in jails? You want to silence those of us who challenge your religion, the belief of human equality? You want to eliminate suffering, the most insane pursuit of all?

I am hear to tell you that the things you hate are what makes us human. I am hear to tell you about the REAL Darwin, not the liberal fantasy used to attack dead religions and its desperate, lost adherents.

Man is unique from an evolutionary standpoint. Animals are concerned exclusively with hedonistic impulses. Man evolved to endure great suffering and strive to overcome it, the very tension of the soul in unhappiness - that which I'm sure you perceive as "human negativity" - is what cultivates our strength in the face of great ruin. In man, creature and creator are united. In us, there is chaos and nonsense, but there is the creator, the form giver, hardness, and the spectacle of divinity and idealism. You concern yourself (and by you, I mean all disciples of the Enlightenment) with merely the creature of man, what in essence must be broken, forged, torn, and purified. You wish to have a world that deprives mankind of the very means by which we become more than simply animals. The ultimate conclusion of Enlightenment philosophy, weather it is capitalism, communism, or Western-style totalitarian liberalism, is the same: extinction and devolution of man into some other creature. A casual stroll through any suburb in America should make it quite clear that creature is an obese, decadent monster.

How bad does it have to get? How many more millions of people must go to jail? How much more food will our citizens have to shove down their throats? How many new antidepressants must be invented and produced in ever greater quantities? How many new spectacles can be created to distract the people from the misery of their lives?

I'm sure on a personal level, you are a fine person. In fact, I don't really recall anything you wrote that was particularly unusual and I'm not entirely certain as to how I've incited your wrath. But if you have children or family and you care about the future that awaits them, I implore you to reconsider your positions. At the very least, if you survive, there will come a time where you will not be able to ignore reality any longer. It is better to come to grips with these concepts now, rather than later. In particular, as this site clearly oriented towards the belief that the US will win this terrible game against Europe, Russia, and China, I would ask you at least consider: what if EJ is wrong? Surely, that is worth considering.

[lektrode]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

now dont go gettin all fired up enthusiastic just cuz the dude left, he might come back...
hell, we already did enuf damage to this otherwise goodnews thread just trying to get him to leave
and poor jeff, he trys to get us rev'd and then even he gets dragged into it (sorry jeff)

[subtly]

Re: Some good news in manufacturing in America

any of these you do NOT agree with?

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.

I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

The day of individual happiness has passed.

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be "discovered" by an election.

I googled the phrase: "Struggle is the father of all things.....". The quote is credited on several sites to Hitler

"the very tension of the soul in unhappiness -...- is what cultivates our strength" Nietzsche from "Beyond Good and Evil".

Got any more original thoughts, Eryx?

You are now the second user on itulip I've placed on "ignore". You should feel special; it's a very select list.

Subtly

Oops! Sorry for the senior moment. That was MM baiting you on the "struggle" quote. But, you could have at least given Nietzsche credit for the quote in post 43.