I have a lot of open tabs devoted to possible OT content or inspiration, as well as an ever growing stash of same in pocket and other places. A lot as in I'm drowining in them. The time has come to clean some out, though I'm nowhere near ready to do full fledged expository columns on any of them yet. That brings us to today's bifurcated column, wherein I shall throw some metaphorical paint upon the wall and allow you folks to make such art of it as only you can.

John Rawls:

I ran across an article from The New Republic By JEDEDIAH BRITTON-PURDY published October 29, 2019. The Title and sub-title are What John Rawls Missed - Are his principles for a just society enough today? I considered recommending that everybody go and read it for themselves, but stopped short of so doing. Should you feel like so doing I found it here: https://newrepublic.com/article/155294/john-rawls-missed-create-just-soc...

It is a review and analysis of a book about said John Rawl's philosophy as expounded in his own book "A Theory of Justice" and does cover a lot of ground. There were two bits that jumped out me as stand alone food for thought and or discussion:

John Rawls, who died in 2002, was the most influential American philosopher of the twentieth century. His great work, A Theory of Justice, appeared in 1971 and defined the field of political philosophy for generations. It set out standards for a just society in the form of two principles. First, a just society would protect the strongest set of civil liberties and personal rights compatible with everyone else having the same rights. Second, it would tolerate economic inequalities only if they improved the situation of the poorest and most marginalized (for example, by paying doctors well to encourage people to enter a socially necessary profession).

I suspect that nobody who reads the stuff I write has any illusions about the fact that we do not live in a just society, so this is, as to that, simply a bit more fuel for the raging inferno, but the simple framework it lays out is worthy of some thought and analysis as to how complete it is or isn't, whether or not it is possible for such a system to exist, whether it could be brought about today, and, if so, how.

Rawls proposed a technique for doing this, a thought experiment that he called the “original position.” It invites us to imagine a situation in which people are to choose the world in which they will live. The key is that they choose behind a “veil of ignorance,” that is, they do not know where they would fall in the distribution of privilege and vulnerability in the societies they imagine. Would you choose to live in the United States today if you didn’t know whether you would be Elon Musk or an undocumented immigrant?

This, IMHO, harkens back to Kant's Categorical Imperative. This would clearly be one method of visualizing and determining whether or not the maxim of one's action(s) should be a universal rule or law. It seems to also be a viable and potentially useful tool for analyzing proposed legislation and regulation, zoning ordinances, development plans and much else that has both societal and individual impacts.

While you're considering that, I thought I's throw a few more rocks at the idiocy that is

Disastrously Stupid Timefiddling

First up, The Globe and Mail weighs in with Turn back the clock on Daylight Savings: Why Standard Time all year round is the healthy choice by NICOLAS CERMAKIAN, PATRICIA LAKIN-THOMAS AND TAMI MARTINO. The authors are all university professors in elevant fields who wre writing on behalf of the Canadian Society for Chronobiology. Their opening salvo is as follows:.

Changing our clocks twice a year has little benefit, economic or otherwise, so isn’t it time to stop this antiquated practice? The good news is that some provincial legislatures agree and are currently considering bills to adopt permanent time. As experts on biological rhythms, we support the switch to a permanent time. However, in doing so, we must adopt Standard Time (ST), not Daylight Savings Time (DST, or “summer time”).

There is general agreement that getting rid of the time switch twice a year would be a good idea. After time switches, particularly the “spring forward,” there are increased rates of car accidents, heart attacks, strokes and workplace injuries. So why does it matter whether we adopt permanent DST or permanent ST?

They then continue to argue that, as a matter of biology, psychology and medicine, it is healthier and better for humankind to stick with standard time. This position is based on both analysis and data from disparate fields or equally from the umbrella of chronobiology. The idea is that things run more smoothly when our official, sociopolitical time is more closely in sync with our circadian rhythms. It seems obvious, then that, having evolved to sync to the sun, we should all be on a time system that permits the closest approximation thereto. That would mean mean solar time. (I just love that type of spelcheck confounding word doubling grammaticism.)

And, piling on, is UC, one of the globes pre-eminent university systems: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/daylight-saving-time-saves-n... . They even throw in a video:

The take away from the video is:

You may already know that lack of sleep is linked to high blood pressure, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, heart attack or stroke, and obesity. What Ben Simon has also found is when we don’t sleep, we become antisocial and drive others away.

That one hour flip twice per year doesn't just derange us for a night or dy, it upsets most peoples sleep cycles for several days up to a week or so, so why not just get rid of it.

Not John Rawls

Title Image is Philosophy

It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours
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