True. Maybe it’s just that one type of violence is substituted for the other.
Thanks for the explanation, Stranger. I’m thinking more of a specific subset of the broader category of cranks (I call them “wackos,” but that’s my own idiosyncratic label) who are maybe a little more nuts, but a lot less dangerous, than purveyors of more widespread crankism like astrology, free-energy machines, etc. Wacko “theories” are typically so half-baked and incoherent that they don’t lend themselves to testing, really, though the cranks themselves are quite convinced that they’re on to something profound. They may misinterpret evidence, employ logical fallacies, take quotes from scientists out of context, etc. but I think in most cases they are not intentially lying, just leaping upon anything that seems to support their point of view.
But I agree that there definitely is a strong element of seeking attention and approval from authorities.
As for astrologers, there was a woman on the bus the other day who was having a loud conversation with her friend about how all Sagittariuses are good with their hands, and she had correctly guessed that her dentist was a Sagittarius and he . . . Podkayne dives for the volume control on her iPod before she says Something She Will Regret.
I believe that people who use their ‘spare change’ to save for a specific purchase, they believe they could otherwise not afford, are terrible at managing and understanding money.
It’s all a big hoax.
wanders off
No, you just **think **that’s Wyoming. It’s actually a different state that goes by the same name, in the same location.
Oh, I always wondered how you guys got those straight lines in your coast. And Hawaii’s down there too, right?
I usually never think about this when reading a book but I’ve written stories that I never finished. I have imagined (in one particular story) the main charachter stuck there in a stream infinitely panning for gold until I (the writer) finish the story and usher the charachter along to the end. But he sees it as normal that he’s there so I can take my time.
When I was really young, about 6 or so, I thought that this really was where Alaska was located. I wanted to go visit the Canadian part of that island, to see that perfectly straight coastline they had there.
If we had any way to measure someone’s comprehension of a given situation, and what experience, skills, and strength that person brings to that situation, we would understand that every one of us is doing the best we can about 90% of the time.
I knew I’d read about it somewhere (Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, I think). It’s one of those theories that I don’t believe, but I wish it were true. The world would just be a cooler place if it were…
Don’t leave him there too long. Because, really, it’s not fair. You have a responsibility. The water could be cold, or he could get hungry or something.
Being a breech birth, I like to look at most things from a different direction…
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Starting with the old Newtonian canard, “For every action, there is and equal and opposite reaction”, and thinking about it like a simple mathmatical formula where the elements can be rearranged and still be valid, I have proposed that, “The amount of offense received in a situation is proportional to the amount of defense supplied.” In other words, defense begets offense, more cops equals more crime, a bigger army increases the likelyhood of being attacked, carry a gun “in case there’s any trouble” and trouble will find you, etc. The grain of truth in this is the human tendancy to percieve power and want to equalize with it.
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Man created God, not the other way around.
It’s fun! Try it yourself!
I like your variation, except that it doesn’t tie in with Human superstitions about comets.
1. When you go to the doctor for a physical and you feel healthy, they will find something wrong.
2. When you feel sick and it so bad that you have to go to the doctor becuase it is lingering and OTC remedies aren’t doing jack, the doctor will wave you off and in underlying tones make you feel like a hypochondriac.
3. The clothing industry and the grocery stores of America & Canada are in cahoots. The clothes get smaller and smaller and the not-good-for-you-but-tastes-so-good-or-is easy-to-prepare food is always on sale.
4. The skinniest people on the planet are employed by Hollywood and Modeling.
Food that is good and nutritious for you is rarely, if ever, on sale. The Man is trying to keep us fat so that eventually everyone needs Weight Watches or a Cardiologist.
My theory on obesity - it’s the sedentary lifestyle.
Because think about it - how would Early Man survive if, say, he broke an ankle or something and couldn’t get around for a while? If he had to spend a couple of weeks basically sitting on his hairy tush, playing with leaves, then his system would need to power down so that he didn’t starve to death. So I think our metabolisms are totally f’d up by our sedentary lifestyle & there’s no way most people can be thin when they have to sit all day.
I am persuades that at the small unit level in the Great War Between Men and Women that is conventional marriage, the balance of hormones and ageing give the tactical advantage to women.
I assume that both genders have some quantity of both testosterone and estrogen floating around effecting brain function. From puberty to metaphase testosterone is the dominant hormone in males and estrogen dominates in women. With the onset of middle age the production of sex related hormones decreases in both genders falls off and there by effects the balance.
As a consequence the middle aged woman has proportionably more testosterone coursing through her brain and the male has relatively less than either had at the beginning of the engagement in youth and early maturity. With this change in hormone balance, the male becomes less aggressive and more compliant and with the passage of time the female becomes more domineering and combative.
This is why men have a shorter life span than women – men see the battle slipping away and just give up, but women accept only unconditional surrender. Death is the only honorable way out.
This make perfect sense to me. A friend, a female physician, whose judgement is clearly effected by her relatively increased level of testosterone, finds this theory to be errant nonsense and some what offensive. But then she managed to grow testicles through an exercise of pure will some time ago.
It is proven!
It doesn’t have to! 
Whose nerousis is this, anyway?
:dubious: 
That there is at least a facet of homosexuality that is expressed in response to overpopulation.
I was just talking about this other theory of mine with someone last night. I believe that eating disorders (both anorexia/bulimia and obesity) are caused by the fact that we just all think about food way too much. It’s a societal obsession, one we haven’t always had. I believe that the body knows what it wants to eat and when it wants to eat and how much it wants to eat and that dieting and calorie counting screws up our ability to listen to our body, and that that is the reason people can diet all the time and still be fat. It’s not an effed up metabolism at all, it’s a psychological problem dealing with the fact that you’re no longer listening to your body, and you forget how to feed yourself naturally. I think that diets in general are bad for both the obese and the non-obese because they take away our feeding instincts and replace them with a complicated series of rules. Except for a few really rare disorders like Praeder-Willi syndrome, humans come built-in with a diet. We’re not supposed to be thinking about food except for when it’s right in front of us, and diets make us think about food all the time. Food should be like background noise–you should only pay attention to it when you have to, and ignore it the rest of the time.
The guy I told this to said it made a lot of sense. He also brought up the point (and this is actually true, not speculation) that the body takes more calories out of food when it is expecting a certain kind of food–i.e. if you’ve spent all day thinking about having fried chicken for dinner, and then you have it, your body will collect more calories from it than if someone slaps a plate of spaghetti in front of you, because your body has spent all day manufacturing fried chicken dissolving enzymes so a different food will not be digested as thoroughly. So there may be a biological component to my theory, although I thought of it only as a psychological one.