General

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

communeofone — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:08:13 GMT

things that me go "huh?":

anarchists that want to use direct action in order to create a more activist central government. i once read a discussion thread on facebook where a group of left-anarchists were planning on blocking traffic at several major intersections around the country until congress passed a proposed universal health care bill.

---

when i lived in washington, dc during the early 00's, i would get these really strange phone calls that sounded like radio dramas. on a few occassions, my phone would pick up these weird radio dramas without even ringing. i'd simply hear audio coming through my phone's speakers but there was never any ring or anything on the display to suggest that someone had just called or that i had just dialed out. oddly enough, this would only happen when i was in dc city limits.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

BrianAnderson — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:25:22 GMT

They both ignore the basic premise that, oh I don't know, we should have a right to make our own decisions.

I agree. I can't even take anyone seriously anymore that wants pot to be legal but not other drugs because "they're bad". Whenever I pass a those guys with NORML petitions around school, I ask them if they think all drugs should be legal and they look at me like I'm a lunatic.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

Bert — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:40:20 GMT

G8R HED, I'm sure the glass eyeball collection would have been worth a lot. I don't know how much individual glass eyes are, but if you have 20-30 of them, I'm sure it's way more than $125.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

Libertyandlife — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:07:47 GMT

^I hate that argument. It's so illogical and just plain wrong. It's like the people who say we should legalize it and tax the hell out of it. They both ignore the basic premise that, oh I don't know, we should have a right to make our own decisions.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

BrianAnderson — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:35:58 GMT

The other day I saw someone had written, "We should just get rid of all of the oil in the world and then we wouldn't have to start wars! Legalize pot!" in the same sentence. I don't know whether to be more confused about the oil remark or about his sudden lapse in consciousness.

Further down from that comment someone was arguing that they should legalize pot (this was on a medical marijuana proposition page, by the way) by not any other drugs because pot isn't a drug. "It's from the ground," he said. I asked him, "What about opium?" and he didn't respond.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

G8R HED — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 11:34:04 GMT

A few years ago I recall being in a local pawn shop - can't remember why I would have been there.

I came across a glass eyeball collection in a velvet lined wooden case. Must have been 20 to 30 of them in there. I think there was a little price sticker on it that said $125.00

I looked at that glass eyeball collection for a while. Yep, that made me go......."huh".

Well, I thought about that glass eyeball collection for a couple days....."now there's something you don't see every day".

I had to have that glass eyeball collection so I went back to buy it. It was gone.

That made me go........"huh.............................................Huh."

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

Nonfederal Nonreserve — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:31:23 GMT

I thought the US government ~~forged~~ "intercepted" it to get us in the war?

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

fakename — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:20:32 GMT

The Germans were trying to distract us, but I don't think we entered the war before the telegram? Or were we planning to?

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

Nonfederal Nonreserve — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:06:56 GMT

Supposedly, it was to distract the US long enough for Germany to take over France. Which would have been easy since Germany could bring over all the troops from the Eastern Front.

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

fakename — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:56:52 GMT

Actually, what came to bother me the most, was the whole Zimmerman Telegram in 1917. I never knew the whole story but the very idea that Germany could get Mexico to attack America in that year seems to overestimate the power of mexico -wasn't the US occupying that country at the time?

Re: wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

Libertyandlife — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:34:47 GMT

The whole idea that "We had wipe a a whole city off the map with a nuke to save our troops" always bothered me, even before I became an anarchist. This was when I was a kid and a very much a nationalist. I don't know how people buy that.

wierdest things you've heard -or things that make you go "huh?"

fakename — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:30:11 GMT

This thread is just about the strange and inconsistent things you've heard about politics/economics or in fact anything that made you have a mental question mark pop up.

for me:

that whole cooperation thing I started a thread about -still seems inconsistent to me but whatever, I suppose I could find the answer in Menger's treatise but still, even that seems like a rather big correction...

I was reading a book by Edward Carr critiquing the "empiricist" or "historicist" view of history (and also the "nihilist" view as well) but IMO his alternative was just a more nuanced-sounding version of empiricism -it was essentially the same. For instance Carr: history is about interacting with historical documents -taking their ideas and using them to form interpretations. Empiricists: history is about recording facts and sometimes making interpretations which are by nature tenuous. The prime difference is one of attitude only (well and time technically speaking), the two views are rather alike?

There were several good ideas that I took to heart on this forum which makes the LTV even weirder to me -if the value of output is equal to labor and labor is the only source of value then a primitive economy could never advance because all the labor they put into advancing is equal to the labor taken from some other area so there is no real economic growth.

Finally, a professor of mine said that pre-columbian trade routes went from south to north. But how can trade routes go one direction if trade is actually going -shouldn't there be another lane, another route that takes goods from north to south?