“Alpha Male” – Politics Plus

Open Thread March 28, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:54 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Mar 282023

Yesterday, I once more got the New Yorker’s Name Drop puzzle on the first clue – and I’m willing to bet that most of y’all will or would too. The image of that red coat and sunglasses will take shape in your brain as it did in mine, and the face behind the sunglasses will be very familiar. (In fact, you may get it from just what I have said.) Aside from that, it was pretty quiet. I think I got pretty well caught up on my sleep, but also found a new quote from Robert Reich to console me in case I didn’t. “The sleep fairies do not favor the elderly.”

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – Trump’s Calls For Violence More ‘Blatant’ and ‘Overt’ Than Before
Quote – Lofgren brought up Trump’s horrific Truth Social post (that he fortunately deleted) –the one that shows Trump holding a baseball bat right next to a photo of Bragg. She also mentioned Trump’s continual parade of insults and name-calling and his threats of “death and destruction,” coupled with his comments during the rally Saturday. “This is cause for concern,” she said. “We know that certainly not all of his followers are inclined to take up arms, but there’s enough of them who are willing to do battle in his behalf that someone could get killed. And people were killed, obviously, on January 6.”
Click through for details. If you have already noticed this yourself, let me assure you that you are NOT imaginng it. It is real.

The New Yorker – The Myth of the Alpha Wolf
Click through for details. I’m not quoting, because I have a lot to say on this, and if you are paywalled out, let me know – I will send it. It’s been known for some time that the initial “research” which came up with the terminaology in the title werenot carried out on wolves in their wild habitat, but exclusively on wolves in zoos. This is like doing research entirely in prisons and then claim that it applies to civilization as a whole. It’s really no wonder, is it, that almost all of the people who seriously buy the “alphamale” image are actual or potential criminals.
But what is new in the latest research (and which surprised the researchers so much that it sent them looking to other species – and fining similar reaults) is the fact that, when two packs battle, the pack that stands the best chance of winning, by a significant margin, is the pack which contains one or more older wolves. Ant that is the most impostant single factor. Apparently, respect for our elders has actual, solid survival value. I believe we should seriously think about this.
We don’t know whether wolves (or elephants or other species) are vulnerable to dementia, and that does make a difference. No one wants Dianne Feinstein to run again for the Senate. But that’s a matter of health, not simply aging. When we have elders like Joe Biden – Nancy Pelosi – Elizabeth Warren – Bernie Sanders – GRACE LINN – who literally have knowledge of what works and what doesn’t,because they have seen, time and time again, what works and what doesn’t – I think we need to stop talking about age as if it were a disqualifier.

And speaking of wolves (and canines in general) and prisons, here is an extra, which I would have used in the video thread if if had beeen possible to embed it. (The srticle ccontains an embed code, but it doesn’t do anything through my computer, not did it work for Lona, who passed it on to me.) I hope y’all will enjoy it. The Colorado prison system does have a “Prison Trained K9 Companion Program” – in fact they just picked up a bunch a couple of weeks ago who were rescued from a hoarding situation – but no lifers that I know of. So I have also sent information on the article to the DOC (not the live link – they have to be suspicious of links – but the defanged link and the information to find it through a search engine.) Do click through for a sweet story.

Food For Thought

Open Thread October 11, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:54 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 112022

Yesterday, I overslept. That was certainly no surpise to me, and some of you may even have been able to read between the lines of yesterday’s Open Thread introduction that I expected to. But I didn’t expect how well it would work for me. I hope I can get a lot done even though the day may be a bit short. Also yesterday, I discovered that Faithful America is co-sponsoring a petition with Daily Kos. You mey remember last week I shared a new web page they have on “False {Prophets” and which they are co-sponsoring with a number of other liberal religious groups. Daily Kos is not one – it’s absolutely a secular group. Of course, I knew that Faithful America was willing to work with secular groups for common goals. But it encourages me that Daily Kos is willing to work with a faith group on common goals too. I can assure you that there are a few indvidual members of Daily Kos who aren’t. And – yes, I am aware that Russia bombed Kyiv (with non-nukes, which are plenty bad enough) but I haven’t had time to dig into the details.

Cartoon – (How TC knew in 2014 that David would die first and Charles would stand alone by 2022 is beyond me.)

Short Takes –

Wonkette – In 1886, When The Rent In New York City Was Too Damn High!
Quote – Henry George made one of the most important forays in solving the problem of industrial capitalism. George started his political life as a Lincoln-supporting Republican in the Civil War but soon came to criticize the growing system of industrial capitalism, especially the dominance of railroads over American life, as well as the influence of Chinese labor on white wages. In 1879, George published Progress and Poverty, arguing for the Single Tax as the surest way to bring corporations under control. The single tax was a basic property tax. At its core was the idea that people earned the value of own their own labor, but that land was a common resource for all and should essentially be quasi-socialized with very high taxes on large landowners. George’s ideas quickly spread beyond the US and were especially popular with the English and Scottish working classes, as well as the Irish resisting British domination.
Click through for article – a little lesson in history. We are in a new Gilded Age, and there is still no “one way” to fix it – which should surprise no one. But it’s still true that, to fix it, we have to want to fix it.

[Business] Insider – There’s no such thing as an alpha male
Quote – As the writer Saladin Ahmed pointed out, the concept of “alpha male” wolves that assert dominance over their pack through aggression comes from a debunked model of lupine social groups…. David Mech introduced the idea of the alpha to describe behavior observed in captive animals. Alphas, he wrote in his 1970 book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” win control of their packs in violent fights with other males. But, as he outlined in a 1999 paper, he’s since rejected that idea in light of research into the behavior of wolves in the wild.
Click through for article. This is not new iformation, nor was it new in 2016, when this was first published. But it just won’t go away. You have to feel sorry for David Mach – and for everyone still deluded by this fake idea. Captivity is not the same thing as civilization.

Food For Thought

BIG Mouth Awards

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