Jeffrey Slater

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-may-have-discovered-consciousness-onoff-switch New research conducted on an epileptic patient has led to what might be the 'on / off' switch for human consciousness. 'The scientists stumbled upon this finding whilst stimulating different areas of the brain of an epileptic woman and measuring resultant activity in order to find the epicenter of her seizures. They discovered that electrical stimulation with an electrode placed between the left claustrum and anterior-dorsal insula caused the woman to lose consciousness. She completely stopped moving, became unresponsive and her breathing slowed.' This might have been better placed in the religion / atheism forum as yet another blow to the idea of a 'soul', but I thought it was more interesting as a point for science. For more really cool things that researchers have found by looking at people with damaged brains, check out this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind

Hi, Hopefully I can give some insight into this, as I myself am an Eagle scout (highest rank in scouts). I would personally try to dissuade your kids from joining the scouts. There were some positive experiences, but on the whole they were outweighed by the massive amount of propaganda and patriotism that were injected into everything we did. It is a very militaristic structure, where you advance through ranks by demonstrating your abilities to recite the various mantras and creeds of the scouts (as well as various wilderness related survival skills like knots and first aid). If my father had not been insistent upon my participation in this organization I would have stopped well short of reaching Eagle rank. Loyalty and patriotism are BIG themes in the scouts, and a lot of the members of my troop who stuck it out with me ended up in various branches of the military. In fact, one of the requirements to becoming an eagle scout is to earn various 'citizenship' merit badges, that basically ask you to tout the merits of democracy and paying taxes: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/boyscouts/advancementandawards/eagle.aspx http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-CITC.aspx As for the structure itself, each group of scouts is called a Troop, and is assigned a number. These troops are usually sponsored by some organization- mine was sponsored by the church I went to as a kid. Within the troops, each generation of boys is divided into 'patrols', who more or less advance through the ranks together. I don't know how it is for other troops, but most of the boys in my troop were products of the public schools, and a southern christian upbringing, so there was a lot of angst. Bullying / hazing was pretty common. The added segregation of the patrols only exacerbated that aspect. We would start each meeting by lining up in our patrols. Our scoutmasters and elected leaders from among the boys would then lead us in the pledge of allegiance, followed by the scout oath and the scout law. All the while we would be saluting the American flag with the scout salute (same as the scout hand sign, only held to your brow). Our troop chaplain would then lead us in a prayer. After this, we would discuss upcoming events, campouts, etc, and would then move on to various activities such as working on merit badges, checking out our camping equipment, and practicing our knots and first aid skills. After the hour for the meeting was up, we would gather back together, line up in our patrols, and recite the scout oath and law again. I am not sure how common my experience was. In the US south, it is probably pretty common, especially among troops sponsored by churches. I have heard that there are troops out there that are more relaxed about the religious aspects, but I doubt there are any that downplay the patriotism stuff. Even still I would bet these sorts of troops are the exception, and not the rule. I would say, if you really want to get your kids outdoors and camping, then just do it. You don't need an organization for that. There are lots of places with various types of camping, from cabins all the way down to empty plots for pitching tents. There might even be camping meetups in your area that already do this sort of thing. If you are new to it, you might grab a copy of the Boy Scout handbook. If you ignore the first few chapters about all of the scouting rituals, the book is actually a pretty comprehensive guide to camping, with lots of illustrations to show you how to tie the knots and lashings, how to do first aid, how to recognize dangerous plants / animals that are common in America, and what kinds of equipment you will need. I know this has been quite a long wall of text, but to sum it up, you would be better off dissuading your kids from joining the scouts, as it is very authoritarian, and the camping aspects are secondary to their teaching loyalty to god and country.

I have been doing the paleo diet in conjunction with a pretty strenuous weightlifting program, and it has been showing great results. I watched the 'debunking' video on paleo, and I have to say that it is complete nonsense. I can't imagine that the woman has even read any of the paleo books that she was criticizing. If she thinks the paleo diet is about 'eating mostly red meat because that is what the cavemen did' then she is buying into some strange propaganda and misinformation about paleo. The paleo diet is much more about not eating grains and legumes. In the video she says that the earliest record of humans eating grains and legumes is from 30,000 years ago. That might sound like a long time, but compared to the time scales of evolution, it is really not. Here are some time frames for evolution, to make a comparison: From the wikipedia article "Timeline of evolutionary history" In its 4.6 billion years circling the sun, the Earth has harbored an increasing diversity of life forms: for the last 60 million years, the primates for the last 20 million years, the family Hominidae (great apes); for the last 2.5 million years, the genus Homo (human predecessors); for the last 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans. So you see that it took somewhere around 2 million years for our predecessors to evolve into something that resembles our modern anatomy. The argument that the Paleo advocates are making is that, if our dietary system for the last 20 to 60+ million years has evolved around eating fruits, vegetables, and meat, and NOT grains, then a mere 30,000 years of eating grains is not enough time for our systems to adapt and be able to fully process grains. Health science seems to bear this out: many people have gluten allergies, and a range of diseases such as Crohns disease and diabetes exist in relation to the digestion of the modern diet of grains, legumes, and processed sugar. In contrast, there is no known record of anyone being allergic to vegetables. Here is a more comprehensive analysis of grain consumption, for anyone who is interested in more than a layman's explanation: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/ Anyone that tells you that the paleo diet is about eating tons of red meat is just wrong, and has obviously never looked into anything more than the anti-paleo propaganda. Paleo is first and foremost about eliminating grains, legumes, and sugar from your diet, and all of the paleo literature that the woman railed against in her slides will prescribe that you replace those grains and legumes with lots of vegetables, and a small portion of meat- not necessarily red meat, just meat, including fish, chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.

So, I got another response from the meetup team and here is what the email said: I can understand the rationale for doing this, but I still wish the two sites were more integrated, as I would like people to find our meetup group in both ways- by going through this website, or by finding it through the meetup website. Right now our meetup members are discussing setting up a regular meetup to go along with the 'meetup everywhere' group that we already have.

I sent an email to meetup but they basically just verified what you said. Here's the text: "Hi Jeff, It sounds like you're referring to the 'Find a Meetup Group' page. Is that correct? If so, please know that since Everywhere and Meetup are considered two different platforms, I'm afraid that Everywhere communities won't be listed on the 'Find a Meetup Group' page. " I'm hoping they will clarify why these two platforms are not integrated, but in the mean time I will have to find some other way to advertise. I was thinking I might just make a regular meetup group for our city, and instead of posting any meetups to it I can just put a link to the meetup everywhere site. Anyways, thanks for helping me to clarify the problem.

Hi, I have recently been going to the meetup group in my area, but I have found it very difficult to get to the freedomainradio meetup site. I basically can only access it by first coming to this website and going through the 'meetup' link under the 'community' section. In other words, the meetup is not searchable through the main meetup site. Even when I type 'freedomain radio' in the meetup.com search, it tells me that it doesn't find anything in my area. I wonder if this could be one of the reasons we are having issues getting people to show up. Is this intentional? Can someone explain the rationale if so? As I see it, it might be nice if our meetup showed up when people searched for related terms like 'philosophy' or 'anarcho-capitalism', so that even people who have never heard of FDR could find it and learn more.

For all but the most abstract examples, you are absolutely correct. Most people are willing to accept simple exchanges without a signed contract. What I am thinking about is a bit more abstract. In a free society, you are only allowed to use force in self defense. The question I have been mulling over stems from this- it does not seem justifiable to call it 'self-defense' to rough up a guy for not paying for a meal, or to kidnap him for not paying, or whatever other types of force we use to punish transgressors in today's society, since there is not some explicitly defined agreement between the restaurant and the customer. After mulling over this for a while, I would like to propose a solution that uses the DRO / insurance model to solve this problem peacefully. Suppose you own a restaurant, and you are concerned about how to get people to pay for the food. To address this, you pay for 'dine and dash' insurance- insurance that would cover the meal cost of anyone who walks out. The insurance company now has an incentive to stop people from walking out on their meal checks, and so it gets together with the DRO companies and brands those who walk out without paying as being bad customers, which flags them whenever they try to go to another restaurant and allows you (or other restaurant owners) to deny service to them. Or, a simpler solution could be to demand payment in advance. I guess what I am trying to get at here is the practical aspect of implicit contracts. I have no issue with the fact that it is wrong to walk out without paying, but if it happens, then how does a free society deal with it- while simultaneously respecting the non aggression principle?

I agree that, in principle, to go to a restaurant, sit down and look at a menu with prices listed, and order something comes with the implicit expectation that you will pay for the food. What I am confused about is this- what recourse does the restaurant have if I don't pay, and how can that be reasonably enforced with respect to the non-aggression principle if we never agreed on a means of dispute resolution before the transaction took place?

I suppose I was thinking of a contract as being an agreement where the terms, conditions, and means of arbitrating any disputes are negotiated in advance. The difference is that, in the restaurant example, the terms are not spelled out (even though they are pretty simple), and more importantly, the means of arbitration in the event of a dispute are not agreed upon. If, for example, we sign a contract to build a house, we can agree on who will arbitrate disputes over the costs, penalties, etc before we get started. If I walk into a restaurant, sit down, order food, and they bring it to me, how is it that there is something binding me to pay for that food? Or, put differently, can the restaurant owner decide that 'because I didn't pay, the terms of his implicit contract are that I must become a slave in his kitchen until the balance is paid'? The dispute resolution is the sticking point for me on the whole idea of implicit contracts.

Hi all, I was recently arguing with someone on the internet about the social contract, and he brought up the idea that 'when you eat at a restaurant, you are entering into an implicit contract with the restaurant owner- that he will bring food and you will pay for it.' His argument was that, you don't sign a contract at a restaurant, yet you are subject to the implicit contract with the restaurant owner, therefore implicit contracts exist, the social contract is implicit, and is therefore valid. That line of reasoning is flawed for many reasons which we can discuss, but setting aside the social contract argument, what I am really interested in talking about is whether or not the very idea of an 'implicit contract' is valid. It seems to me that, in a free society, it would not necessarily be explicitly wrong to walk out without paying for a meal (assuming you didn't sign an explicit contract)- but at the same time it would not be wrong for the restaurant to refuse you service the next time you come in, as well as for the restaurant owner to warn other restaurants about you not paying. This circumvents a need for an explicit contract in every minute economic interaction, while also not imposing the idea of an implicit contract on someone involuntarily. These are just my preliminary thoughts on the issue.

I'm not really the best equipped to make the anarchist / voluntarist case for no government, so I will just ask if you have watched any of the stuff that Stefan has put out about the DRO model? It seems to me that if there is a way to do justice and defense without resorting to using force, then we are obligated to use said system on an ethical grounds, no matter how inefficient it is. As for games, I have played a few of the ones you mentioned. I love Settlers, and have also played Axis & Allies. Betrayal at the House on the Hill is one of my favorite Halloween games as well. I have been playing a pretty wide array of games lately, and the ones I would recommend would be Alhambra, Dominion, Dixit, Hive, 7 Wonders, and Power Grid. I have a boardgamegeek account, which has a listing of all the games I own- all of which I would recommend (username is jcs09 - http://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/jcs09?own=1&subtype=boardgame&ff=1). I mentioned the ones above because they seem like they would suit your tastes in games- they have less casual mechanics and are good for people who have been gaming a while.

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/05/06/terrafugia-unveils-new-tf-x-project-talks-future-of-flying-cars/?single_page=true One can only hope.

Welcome Phil As a minarchist, what parts of government do you find necessary and how did you reach that conclusion? On a lighter note, what is your favorite board game? (I am an avid collector).

Welcome Sam, I for one am glad to see people from the military showing up in the freedom / voluntarist movement. Now that you see the government for what it is, you can start taking your life into your own hands and moving towards the peaceful, moral and free society that you talked about, even if only in very small ways. Besides the friend who introduced you, is there anyone else in your circles who shares the ideas of voluntarism? I'm sure they must be few and far between on a military base.

Welcome Neo, congrats on taking the red pill Sorry to hear about your troubles, hope we can at least lend you an ear if not more.