"""""The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.""""" (pre-19th Amendment HL Mencken)
""""Most people know Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed the dire poverty of the Irish, and offered a solution: sell the children as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”
O.K., these days it’s not the landlords, it’s the bankers — and they’re just impoverishing the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist — and one with a very savage pen — could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.
The Irish story began with a genuine economic miracle. But eventually this gave way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks, largely from banks in other European nations. ....""""
""Looking now at the second element of the refutation-anthropological field work- we see that what is anathema here (and for very good reasons) is still a fundamental principle for the contemporary representatives of the philosophy of the Vienna Circle. According to Carnap, Feigl, Nagel, and others the terms of a theory receive their interpretation, in an indirect fashion, by being related to a different conceptual system which is either an older theory, or an observation language. Older theories, or observation languages are adopted not because of their theoretical excellence (they cannot possibly be: the older theories are usually refuted). They are adopted because they are `used by a certain language community as a means of communication'. ""
Honderich--
""What is the tradition of conservatism's answer to the question of what is fair in a society? Its answers abound. Resisting change, being for so-called reforms, being against mere theory, respecting human nature, being for self-serving freedoms, less democratic government, the organic society, being against equality -- and for the pretence of indubitable economics, wholly spurious necessities.
None of those ideas and no bundle of them, examined in itself or considered in terms of the history of conservatism, is in sight of being an articulable and consistent candidate for a general principle of fairness. No book on conservatism since Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France comes near to doing anything to improve on the vacuity which Burke fills only with social condescension to barbers and with pomp in support of his 'natural aristocracy'.
No Conservative thinking, to take a step against the cant of this moment, and to name the actual subject in hand, has offered a general principle of what is right in society that is worth attention. There are only pieces of public relations. Mill's verdict on conservatism as the stupid party or perhaps the stupidest party was not merely abuse but comprehensible. ""
""""The story of Abraham has bequeathed a moral legacy in which we have been taught not to question the authority of "fathers," even though, in the process, we betray children. Contemporary realities illustrate the ways in which the sacrifice and betrayal of children has been institutionalized. One can point to the dreadful conditions in which most children in the world are living. Children are abused at the hands of their parents, most frequently fathers or their surrogates, and by priests—the very "fathers" who stand in for God and whose mission it is to protect children. One can also include war and point out that "children" are sent off to fight old men's battles and that the U.S. military budget vastly exceeds that of welfare. The recent welfare debate itself shows how the "fathers" (of state) exercised their power to determine the fate of a whole generation of children.
The story of Abraham is not causative in any direct sense. But because it exemplifies and legitimates a hierarchical structure of authority, a specific form of family, definitions of gender, and the value of obedience that are simultaneously the fountainhead of faith and the bedrock of society, it has created an environment that has made it seem sacrilegious to question these issues.
""""... [T]he government's plan to measure happiness raises a further and perhaps more profound philosophical question: regardless of whether this is possible in practice, is it the best way of thinking, even in principle, about what it is to live a good human life? A clue to this idea can be found in the way a term like "utilitarian" is sometimes used disparagingly. When, for example, a course of action is described as "merely utilitarian", this implies that something important has been overlooked. But what might this be?
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger can help us to answer this question. In his work both before and after the second world war, he came to focus increasingly on the issue of modern technology. He argued that technological devices such as machines and gadgets were symptoms of a deeper phenomenon that could be traced back through centuries of western culture. "Technology" in this deep sense refers not to this or that item of equipment, but to a fundamental way of thinking, and of being, that shapes everything we do.""""
""""A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby — and how long they've been there.
Halfway around the globe in a underground laboratory in El Segundo, Raytheon Co. engineers who helped develop the cameras and sensors for the pilotless spy plane are now working on even more powerful devices that are revolutionizing the way the military gathers intelligence.
The new sensors enable flying drones to "listen in" on cellphone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even "smell" the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.""""
Peace: it's bad for bidness.
""""Zizek has been hailed as one of the world’s greatest public intellectuals, a leading postmodern, or “post-Marxist” philosopher and an “Elvis of cultural theory.” He is sought after for visiting faculty positions in both Europe and the US and has a loyal following, particularly among a layer of academics and would-be academics who were well represented in his largely homogenous New York City audience.
This narrow social layer is Zizek’s universe and his comic spiels are tailored to provoke, titillate and amuse them.
Philosophically, Zizek is not an original or innovative thinker. While one academic commentator has claimed that Hegel and Marx are among his core influences, that is a false genealogy.
Zizek is an outgrowth of a reactionary anti-Marxist and anti-materialist tradition that descends from the irrationalism of Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. He eclectically draws on the neo-Nietzschean and neo-Heideggerian thought of 1960s French post-structuralism, having adopted the ideas of its leading intellectuals—especially the post-Heideggerian psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan—when he was a graduate student.""""
""""As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail.***
And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. .......
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz just agreed. As Stiglitz told Yahoo’s Daily Finance on October 20th:
This is a really important point to understand from the point of view of our society. The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding. And that’s really the problem that’s going on....."
The Pentagon Tuesday said it was trying to determine if a missile was launched Monday off the coast of Southern California and who might have launched it.
Spokesmen for the Navy, Air Force, Defense Department and North American Aerospace Defense Command said they were looking into a video posted on the CBS News website that appears to show a rocket or some other object shooting up into the sky and leaving a large contrail over the Pacific Ocean.
The video was shot by a CBS affiliate KCBS' helicopter, the station said Tuesday.
"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."
