TI-Burr-Brown parts shartage?

You would have a stronger case if you ever posted something that was cheerful, optimistic, creative, goofy, or even interesting. All I see is either cynicism or boasting. Not much fun on either end.

John

Sure. That's what they all say after the event.

I've got enough nephews and nieces - not to mention a god-daughter - to understand the joys of parenthood. I also know enough about the incidence of infertility to know that a significant proportion of the people who don't have kids can't have kids and aren't happy about it. Claiming that non-parents haven't had kids because they are self- centred can be pretty offensive - downright mean in some cases.

Well, I haven't invaded Irak recently. And I'm not playing trim-hockey (Dutch field-hockey for the elderly) at the moment, though I find that bit of advice from my physiotherapist decidedly unpalatable.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

had

You do seem to have a blind spot for irony. I guess I can live with the fact that I can't expect to amuse everybody.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I love mine. I'm immensely gratified that they exist. They are far more important than I am. You wouldn't understand.

understand.

But it's often true... the low birth rates in Europe and parts of America are not the result of ignorance or infertility: it's "choice." Birth control and abortions are deliberate acts. Europe averages 48 abortions per 100 pregnancies (heavily weighted by eastern Europe) which sure sounds like a lot of people don't want kids.

John

I obviously can't share that emotional experience, but most of my friends and both my brothers have kids, and I've seen and heard more than enough to have an intellectual appreciation of what is going on.

understand.

People want kids when they can look after them properly - my wife's female post-docs tend to have their kids once their careers are underway, rather than earlier. Where birth control isn't accessible, abortion levels tend to be high - whether abortion is legal or not. Abortion wasn't legal in Australia when I was at University, but it was available.

Some people's lives get screwed up so that there is never a real opportunity to have kids, and that's tragic, but something 5% of males and 5% of females are infertile, which means that 10% of couples can't have kids.

Sometimes the test-tube baby technology can help, but it is a performance, and only gives you a 30% chance of conception when you do go through the procedure. At least one of our acquaintances dropped out in mid-procedure because she couldn't put up with the side effects.

Being sanctimonious about other peoples lives is - as I've already said - a deeply unpleasant habit. Don't do it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

This particular sub-thread began when someone said that Republicans didn't have sex, and someone else suggested that they didn't understand where babies come from. Can we agree that both were idiotic things to say?

John

I don't recall anybody saying that Republicans don't have sex - which I agree would have been a ridiculous thing to say, if that is actually what was said. As you have pointed out, here and elsewhere, Republicans have more children per head than Democrats, which implies some level of sexual activity.

I think that the suggestion that they don't know where babies come from is your version of my assertion that they have more children per head because they might tend to be careless when it comes to birth control, which isn't quite the same thing.

Granted that the current Republican administration has a well- established tendency to look for the advice they find palatable, frequently ignoring the advice of established experts in favour of advice from people who can't be described as disinterested - as evidenced in the "justifications" advanced for the invasion of Irak, and in the rejection of the scientific concensus on global warming, amongst many other lower profile situations - one can well imagine that a Republican couple might opt for the birth control method they find most congenial, rather than the one that offers the lowest risk of an inconvenient conception - perhaps opting for the rhythm method rather than the pill or some mechanical barrier.

This doesn't in any way imply that they don't know where babies come from, but just that they might be self-indulgent when it comes to the mechanisms they might adopt for spacing out their children, which is a rather different proposition.

In other words, I'm accusing you of setting up a straw man, which isn't a respectable form of argument. You can do better, and - for the sake of your self-respect - you should do better.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The most you can accuse me of is setting up two straw men, which I didn't do. So how's this:

The US Constitution set up a winner-take-all system that tends to stabilize with two dominant political parties. Each of the parties caters to and takes for granted its fringe, far left or far right, but the mass of votes is in the center. So the parties continuously servo towards that center, working against the pull of the respective fringes (which is why Democratic activists are protesting Hillary, and not Republicans.)

In a population with a continuous gradation of interests and opinions, the "Democrat" versus "Republican" division is actually a synthetic dotted line determined by the servoing of the party positions. So to make crude generalizations about the behavior or nature of Republicans is absurd, since the majority of Republicans are just a little to the right of the servo boundary, as most Democrats are a little to the left; there's no big difference except on the lunatic fringes.

Today's Republican platform would have looked like radical socialism

50 years ago. Today's Democratic platform would have looked like a pit of sin and depravity.

I don't separate people into masses by party, which would be incredible intellectual sloppiness, I separate them individually by what they do, in their actual lives, to make the world better or worse. Homer cares for all the children of the world, but has lots of excuses for not actually helping any of them. Read Brook's book, "Who Really Cares?" for some interesting statistics in that regard, then get back to me and re-explain how horrible Christians and Republicans are.

John

So cut and paste the original text, with attributions.

That's the voters. The party activists have to keep the other active members of the party happy, and the heavyweight contributors who provide the serious money. The Democrats and the Republicans draw their core support from very different groups, with distinctly different agendas.

You don't seem to know what radical socialism looked like 50 years ago. In 1957 the British Labour Party still believed in nationalisng the commanding heights of the economy, and they weren't particularly radical as socialist parties went.

Not to the liberals of that period.

In fact you do, when you claim that Republicans have more children or give more to charities.

If the population did in fact represent a Gaussian distribution from liberal to reactionary, with an essentially arbitrary dividing line around the peak of the population, discussing democratic versus republican behaviour would be comparing the behaviours of the centroids of each half of the distribution, and these would be quite a long way apart.

In reality, those people who do label themselves as Republicans or Democrats can be expected to change their behaviour - at least to some extent - to conform to the attitudes of the other people who have adopted the same label. Those in the middle, who don't take politics seriously - the floating voters - won't identify themselves with either party, and fall out of the discussion.

So what?

regard, then

Whoever claimed that Christians ot Replicans were horrible? Both are guilty of varying degrees of self-deceit and wishful thinking, which does provide a plausible explanation of the tendency of the members identified with these groups to have more children than the U.S. average, but it is a long stretch from there to horrible.

You have tried to set up yet another straw man. It's a habit that makes it difficult to take you seriously.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

that regard, then

Bill, you really ought to read the book: it's a revelation.

After all, someone in this very newsgroup recently claimed...

"Republicans traditionally search for the advice that that they like, rejecting advice which they find unpalatable, even if it happens to be right."

and we wouldn't want to conclude that you're a Republican, would we?

John

that regard, then

I long ago checked out "Who Really Cares?" on Amazon, and I see no reason to disagree with the results presented. Unfortunately, private charity doesn't work anything like as a well as a decent welfare system, as you can see by comparing U.S. puyblic health statistics with those of the advanced industrial European countries, not to mention places like Cuba and the state of Kerala in India.

The effort and money that compassionate U.S. conservatives put into charity work would be better devoted to pressuring the U.S. government to improve socal security to European levels, but as a group your compassionate convservatives believe - without a shred of objective evidence - that the "nanny state" inhibits individual initiative.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

That's exactly not what the book is about. Read it and see.

And Cuba is, literally, falling apart.

John

Why? Private charity is a mildly interesting subject, but it isn't any kind of substitute for a decent welfare system. I'm not all that interested in tales of Christian Republicans playing Lady Bountiful and ministering to the "deserving" poor. Somehow, I doubt that the book will have much to say about the way private charity is sometimes used to coerce the less-deserving poor into behaving in a way that appeals to the charity-giver - the reviews didn't mention this aspect of "charitable" behaviour.

But its public health statistics remain good despite the U.S.imposed pressure on its economy.

Cuba - like Kerala - is remarkably poor, but despite this its public health health figures are remakably good.

I'm sure that a Cuban investigation of U.S. hospitals would be able to show up a few equally decrepit and ill-maintained examples, and it seems odd to find U.S.-based critics complaining about Cuban patients having to pay extra to get specific treatments where the demand exceeds the supply, when the basic U.S. system is based on this sort of free-market procedure.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I see. You have made up your mind and aren't interested in hearing anything else. You *are* a Republican!

The book does point out the selective nature of charity... as an advantage.

Its public health propaganda is very good. And the US is not imposing pressure, it's imposing a boycott. Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world, which is pretty big actually, yet remains "remarkably poor." Has there ever been a non-poor communist country?

John

I agree entirely.

Maybe that would be a Christian Democrat over this side of the pond ?

Graham

Read the book. It's not that simple.

John

Eeyore and Slowman have no clue. Our private charities are far more efficient that ANY government entity.

My favorite charity...

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

They only read what they already believe. And they probably give little or nothing, beyond paying taxes, to help others.

John

I wonder how Jim measures the efficiency of a private charity? Or for that matter how he defines it?

Of course, if the U.S. had a social security system, such a charity would have a lot less to do."Seniors on fixed incomes and families living below poverty levels are struggling to put food on their tables

12 months a year."

The children of families living below the poverty level probably aren't getting the full advantage of such education as is offered to them, because kids that don't get enough to eat don't learn all that effectively - the brain uses about 25% of the bodies metabolic resources, and doesn't work well when there isn't enough glucose around to keep it running.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen