Re: bike light optics

Catrike Ryder <Soloman@old.bikers.org> writes:

On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:53:38 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>

On 4/8/2024 10:42 AM, Zen Cycle wrote:

On 4/7/2024 5:11 PM, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/7/2024 3:35 PM, zen cycle wrote:

On 4/7/2024 1:26 PM, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/7/2024 11:54 AM, Catrike Ryder wrote:

On Sun, 7 Apr 2024 12:25:03 -0400, zen cycle
<funkmasterxx@hotmail.com> wrote:
>

bullshit. Constitutional originalists  - those
claiming _such_ things as
"original Constitution had a better ethos" come up
empty when reminded
that racism and misogyny were quite literally written
into the original
version. Sure, when asked about the 3/5ths compromise
they say 'oh,
yeah, except for that', then when asked about giving
women the right to
vote they say 'oh, yeah, except for that'.

>
Only fools believe the 3/5th compromise was a racist
thing.  What it
was an attempt by the non-slave states to reduce the
politcal power of
the slave holding states, who wanted to count all the
slaves.
>
Yeah, the slave states wanted to count them all.

>
Exactly, as anyone who has read in the period knows.

>
Maybe you should try reading in the period then.
>
from The Federalist papers, #54
"The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great
propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them
in the mixed character of persons and of property. This
is in fact their true character. It is the character
bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and
it will not be denied, that these are the proper
criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the
laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of
property, that a place is disputed them in the
computation of numbers; and it is admitted, that if the
laws were to restore the rights which have been taken
away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal
share of representation with the other inhabitants."
>
yeah....that's not about race at all.
>
You should know better than to follow the lead of a
willfully ignorant dumbass.
>

>
Ditto Hammurabi's 'An eye for an eye'. That was not a
call to mayhem but rather a groundbreaking call for
mercy and limited reprisal.

>
>

>
Thank you , yes I've read The Federalist a few times,
years apart. It's always a good read and I must say
generally underappreciated.
>
Avoiding presentism, the issue at hand was a seemingly
insurmountable barrier to union. Union being considered of
exceptional even existential import, something was
desperately needed to bring resolution.
>
Nowhere on earth were slaves*, at that time or before,
voting in general elections. Note that our Constitution
even precedes William Wilberforce's eventually successful
campaign in the British Empire.
>
The distorted Southern economies relied on bondage (that
reliance only increased after the Founding) but preferred
to count 'all persons' for Congressional seats.  The
Southern leaders had probably never heard of an irony
meter but if there was one it would shoot off the end at
that proposition.
>
For both economic but also moral reasons the northern
states did not generally allow bondage (Pennsylvania
formally outlawed it in 1780, well before our
Constitution, before Wilberforce, before anywhere else on
earth AFAIK.) and were firm on not bumping the number of
Southern representatives in the Congress.
>
Even before the now mostly misunderstood 3/5 rule, several
of the Framers including Jefferson privately wrote that
the practice would necessarily have to end, albeit as St.
Augustine pleaded, "not yet".
>
p.s. Although the general practice in the Americas at that
time was of black slavery, there were black freemen
(including early patriot fatality Crispus Attucks) and
there were not-black slaves. Still, I agree with you that
this was and is inherently race tainted to our greater
loss, then and now. It is also critically viewed as a rift
between universal liberty and its selective denial, a
fundamental conflict then and now, here and everywhere. 
Humans are imperfect but the Framers set up a system
incontrovertibly aligned to destroy the chattel system
well before anyone else on earth had considered it.

 
?...As far as I know, international African slave trade and
the practice of holding african slaves was generally banned
by every nation which had practiced it well before the US
did, while the US not only maintained slavery as an
institution, but passed at least two laws - fugitive slave
acts - as late as 1850 that reinforced the institution.
Further to that, the Fugitive Slave acts were abused by
domestic slave traders such that free blacks - either
emancipated or born free - were abducted and sold into
slavery in the south.
 
"The historian Carol Wilson documented 300 such cases in
Freedom at Risk (1994) and estimated there were likely
thousands of others"
 
https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Risk-Kidnapping-America-1780-1865/dp/0813192978
 
Then there's Solomon Northrup:
 
"born free around 1808 to Mintus Northup and his wife in
Essex County, New York state.....In 1841, Northup was
tricked into going to Washington, DC, where slavery was
legal. He was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, and
he was held as a slave in Louisiana for 12 years. One of the
very few to regain freedom under such circumstances, he
later sued the slave traders involved in Washington, DC. Its
law prohibited Northup from testifying against the white men
because he was black and so he lost the case."
 
Northrup published his Memoir "12 Years a Slave"on the
experience.
 
 
  Then

2 generations later the nation sacrificed 3/4 million of
her citizens to end it. Not the first instance on earth,
but early to the change.
>
>
>
*Of all descriptions, none in greater numbers at that time
than the mostly Balkan/Slavic slaves within the Caliphate.

 

>
And of the American sailors enslaved by the Barbary moslems,
many were killed, half the survivors were castrated.
History, ours and everyone's, is full of violence injustice
and general savagery.  Who could dispute that?

>
It seems that higher a species sits on the evolutionary pyramid, the
more inclined he is to have individualistic selfish motivation instead
of just the simple need to survive. I note that in some species, lions
and bears, for instance, a male will kill a mother's babies so she'll
come in heat.
>
Thank goodness we humans aren't inclined to do that, but it's clear to
me that our climb to the top of the food chain was fueled by self
interest, not the utterly ridiculous Spock nonsense about the needs of
the many...

It's pretty clear that humans *are* inclined to do that.  Stepchildren are
a famously underprivileged category for a reason.

Mankind established social groups and clans because it was/is in his
self interest to do so.

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