tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64821275078352820322024-03-14T00:00:56.079-07:00Squeezing the HourglassTime, Metal, MoreDDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.comBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-48338664259979962492023-11-12T10:53:00.000-08:002023-11-12T11:18:41.364-08:00Return of the Magi<p>Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around us, still barely percolating to the surface. Storms loom.</p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://neuromagick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/spell-casting-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="653" height="451" src="https://neuromagick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/spell-casting-1.jpg" width="368" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>Plus, a bunch of weird coincidences keep happening to me.</p><p>For a long time, one of my sayings has been that intelligence is common, wisdom is rare.</p><p><i>"It has yet to be proved that intelligence has real survival value."</i></p><p><i>-Arthur C. Clarke </i></p><p>That's much better.<b><br /></b></p><p>God, Christ. Magic. 42. Spirituality. You can hike mountains for it, catch a groove playing music, see it in an equation or in supplication to Y*weh. Spells of the moon and alignment of the planets - all of them call you softly at first. This energy, whatever YOU call it, has been growing.<br /></p><p>The drumbeat to feel instead of think is getting louder. Submit to the flow. Submit to the obvious flow. Submit to your God, and feel the winds whipping outside, knowing that magic is returning. <br /></p><p>I know it's not just me. I don't just see this happening. In fact, I don't see it at all. <br /></p><p>I taste the change. I can feel it in my feet.You do too. You hear pumping in your blood. There's a rumbling deep within whatever you call God, and it's building. The lifting of a lid, beyond understanding; a wildness sparking everywhere. The terrifying sense of obligation, of calling, of reckoning, of being called to face the truth that is getting louder.</p><p>It's not that the veil is lifting. We aren't MORE clear about what to do. Or what is happening. On the contrary, the confidence and certitude of youth are slipping away as we enter the dark woods of our culture's first test of mortality. The first test of less. The first step to death. Here there be dragons.<br /></p><section class="section--reading">
<header class="reading__header">
<h2 class="reading__header__headline h5"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">First Reading </span></span></i></h2><h2 class="reading__header__headline h5"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sunday, November 12th</span></span></i></h2>
<p class="reading__header__source" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.source"><i>Wisdom 6:12‐16</i></p>
</header>
<div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><div style="margin-left: 3em; margin-top: 0.8em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>Wisdom is bright, and does not grow dim.</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>By those who love her she is readily seen,</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>and found by those who look for her.</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them.</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>Watch for her early and you will have no trouble;</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>you will find her sitting at your gates.</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>Even to think about her is understanding fully grown;</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>be on the alert for her and anxiety will quickly leave you.</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>She herself walks about looking for those who are worthy of her</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>and graciously shows herself to them as they go,</i></div><div style="margin-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;"><i>in every thought of theirs coming to meet them.</i></div><br /> <br />The collective Me, the We, is a thing I am inextricably tied up in despite my petulant protests. And that We, that Us, is leaving it's teenage years behind and entering the cold world a very foolish and unprepared young man.</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Leaving-Home-1-768x461.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="768" height="324" src="https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Leaving-Home-1-768x461.jpg" width="539" /></a></div><br /><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><br /></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><br /></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">This is no particular indictment of Us, of me, of you. This is always the way, and We were spoiled in many ways, soft hands from soft times, through no fault of our own. Summer turns to fall, and this is Mother Earth's power, not ours. Her domain, and we are merely her children. We don't change the seasons, or the way we react to them. The magic is us, and the foolishness and hope of spring is a delight to be treasured, not a sin to be scolded.</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"> </div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">We can only change from being a silly teenage boy as a culture by getting our ass handed to us by the Universe. By God. By Fall. Whether we end up redeemed or not.</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><br /></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><i>[A] 2011 study in <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21639628/">Emotion</a>,
based on four experiments, found that focusing on feelings versus
simply focusing on details can actually lead to “superior objective and
subjective decision quality for complex decisions.” As a result, the
study concludes that “affective decision strategies may be more
effective relative to deliberative strategies for certain complex
decisions.” </i></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"> </div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">How do you live a good life? Can it be planned, thought through? Or do you need to dive in with raw passion, leaving it to God and following the stream where it takes you?</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><br /><i>The witch knows, though the initiate does not, that she will get three times what she gave, so she does not strike hard.</i></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"><i> </i></div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">To push on the universe is to claim magic as your own. Is it even possible to leave the spells to the gods?<br /><br /><br />Sources</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text"> </div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">https://catholicmassreadings.com/</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Three_(Wicca)</div><div class="reading__content" id="Universalis_Mass_R1.text">https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/on-the-move/ <br /> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/11/survive/<br /><br /><br /><br /></div></section><p><br /></p>DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-6220666309224744052021-12-20T00:24:00.000-08:002021-12-20T00:24:00.196-08:00A Decade Ago, I figured you'd enjoy these...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Scheduled December 20th 2011. Godspeed blogpost, carry my musings into the future.<br />
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DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-81699377213023154022020-06-16T07:57:00.000-07:002020-06-16T07:57:06.577-07:00Rock and a Hard Place<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
In this way, the radical democracy strategy becomes an inversion of
the nationalist strategy. Both the radical democrats and the
nationalists would create a situation in which the nation-state cannot
meaningfully be blamed for the consequences of the liberal order.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
The
nationalists accomplish this by blaming the order, performing subversion
while continuing to obey. The radical democrats accomplish this by
creating new institutions that make the people themselves feel
responsible for their own situations. They attempt to ‘responsibilise’
ordinary voters.<br />
<br />
The nationalist strategy’s weakness is that it
maintains the liberal order by condemning it, undermining the very thing
it maintains.<br />
<br />
The radical democrats completely divert attention from
the order by making politics about the local level – about <em>you</em>. You become the one responsible for the order, for the flows, and for any instability those flows bring to your community.<br />
<br />
These
local institutions, however, cannot actually alter the flows. This
responsibility is built on lies and misdirection. It functions as an
elaborate way of forcing the citizens to internalise the political
system’s failures as their own. Radical democrats would give citizens
the appearance of direct power without the fact of it, obscuring where
the real power lies – with the liberal order.<br />
<br />
That would suit the order
just fine. But radical democracy wouldn’t deal with the substance of the
grievances that have led so many voters to grow frustrated. It would
enable the order to continue disappointing people by convincing them
that they are the ones disappointing themselves.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://aeon.co/essays/can-the-liberal-order-be-transformed-by-global-government" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-4575703646187906752020-01-31T13:15:00.001-08:002020-01-31T13:19:19.119-08:00Efficiency Is The Opposite, or, A Walk In The Woods<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<i>efficient</i></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="one-click-content css-1p89gle e1q3nk1v4" data-linkid="nn1ov4" data-term="usually">utilizing a particular commodity or product with the least waste of resources or effort (usually used in combination): <span class="luna-example italic" data-linkid="nn1ov4" data-term="engine">a fuel-efficient engine.</span></span></i></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<span class="one-click-content css-1p89gle e1q3nk1v4" data-linkid="nn1ov4" data-term="usually"><span class="luna-example italic" data-linkid="nn1ov4" data-term="engine"> </span></span> </h4>
Along with other dramatic life changes, I've been doing an inordinate amount of backpacking this past year. I've spent most of my time in the greater Klamath Mountain Ranges, trekking through the Marble Mountains, Trinity Alps, Siskiyous, Russian and a few others.<br />
<br />
Anyway, on one of my solo hikes in the Trinity Alps, I ran into a couple brothers who had a mule team bring up their "80 pounds each of ultralight gear," as I gently chided them.<br />
<br />
One was in finance and one was in Medical Technology, as the money guy. Smart, socially conscious, moderate Democrats interested in the debates, clearly solid family guys.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://winapps.umt.edu/winapps/media2/wilderness/images/NWPS/lib/thumbID250/2499.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="313" src="https://winapps.umt.edu/winapps/media2/wilderness/images/NWPS/lib/thumbID250/2499.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Anyway, we get to talking about politics and the economy, as you do when you see another human for the first time in a day and have time and a little whiskey with you.<br />
<br />
The medical brother was discussing the efficiency of producing their products in Asia, and I made some reasonable rebuttal about the corrosive nature of wage arbitrage, but it wasn't quite right.<br />
<br />
So as I walked silently through the wilderness for the next seven hours, I really pondered what bothered me about the efficiency argument.<br />
<br />
It brought me back a memory of an old article from <a href="https://subrealism.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Cnu's Sewing Circle</a> about money as an illusion, a literally not real thing we choose to collectively accept - with a long history of this acceptance failing when it stops matching reality.<br />
<br />
Here's what the people who run the world mean when they talk about efficiency. They mean that we will burn the planet to the ground for a few extra pennies. I'm not being dramatic.<br />
<br />
Let's say you have a WIDGET, made in America. It costs $15 to make; $2 for overhead, $2 for materials, $3 for energy and shipping, $8 for labor. Sells for $20, $5 profit.<br />
<br />
Here's the sick, universally accepted version of efficiency:<br />
<br />
$2 for overhead, $2 for materials, $8 for energy and shipping, $2 for labor (non-US). Sells for $20, $6 profit.<br />
<br />
What we have done is allow a 20% increase in profits for the owners, Elimination of jobs (and spending) in the US, and a 166% increase in literally burning up the atmosphere and our finite oil supply.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://grist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/cargo-ship-c-shutterstock.jpg?w=1024&h=576&crop=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://grist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/cargo-ship-c-shutterstock.jpg?w=1024&h=576&crop=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Except my example is unfortunately too generous. It's really done for fractions of these results, like this:<br />
<br />
$2 for overhead, $2 for materials, $8.95 for energy and shipping, $2 for labor (non-US). Sells for $19.99, $5.04 profit.<br />
<br />
This is considered a necessary "efficiency." We rely on tenuous supply lines, eliminate the vast majority of income and spending power at home, and triple our carbon footprint to enrich a minority of asset owners to make fractional gains. Since they are leveraging their money by many multiples, these 1% "efficiency" increases still have the desired 30% return.<br />
<br />
Nice guys, but we were deep in the woods, and even I needed a few more hours of hiking to get there.<br />
<br />
<br />
"efficiency" should revert to a more classical meaning in our thoughts and actions.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-69895585827515767972018-12-06T10:11:00.002-08:002018-12-06T10:11:56.046-08:00Shared Sacrifice Demands Shared Culture, It's Always Imposed the Same Way<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Who is "us" and who is "them?"<br />
<br />
<br />
What cohesive unit do we decide to represent? And can we look beyond our own politics to see the larger issues? Is this a problem to be solved, or a correction for earlier hubris? Better a member of a losing tribe in an eternal war, or forever locked into your caste in a peaceful world?<br />
<br />
My oldest is 10, and our progressive public school has decided to start sex ed at this age. Unfortunately, the material is politicized, full of poor english ('they' when referring to an individual) and active declaration that gender and sex are separate entities, with explicit language to be used: "keep in mind, not all females identify as girls."<br />
<br />
It is not science or health, it's politics. Even where I agree that all people, including transgender people, be treated with kindness and compassion, their beliefs do not need to be normalized, and should not be taught under a scientific rubric.<br />
<br />
This is, to my mind, extremely unfortunate. We will be opting out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_2Q2NUkDz2pRLfX9uligO5mWbUaaNlRtcE7fmIHzAQlDphnp25uxQdaFZJ0ey3S7E71BbHY_tQFYAnwcGIAbAXR4DLAkjuZfLQnl5EkPVDAKsJ3kA3mzAmpIjDkVDVnL-uhxwmqg6r8B/s1600/gustav.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1325" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_2Q2NUkDz2pRLfX9uligO5mWbUaaNlRtcE7fmIHzAQlDphnp25uxQdaFZJ0ey3S7E71BbHY_tQFYAnwcGIAbAXR4DLAkjuZfLQnl5EkPVDAKsJ3kA3mzAmpIjDkVDVnL-uhxwmqg6r8B/s320/gustav.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<br />
...Sweden’s longest economic expansion in at least four decades has done
little to win the government more support, polls show. Immigrants have
played a large part in the boom, stepping in to fill a growing labor
shortage. Foreign-born workers accounted for the entire job growth in
the industrial sector last year and filled 90 percent of the new
positions in welfare.<br />
<br />
Sweden also typically does well in global
surveys on life satisfaction and economic competitiveness. And it enjoys
a healthy budget surplus...<br />
<br />
<br />
<aside class="inline-newsletter" data-state="ready"></aside>Akesson
has managed to entice voters from both sides of the political spectrum
with a message of more welfare, lower taxes and savings based on
immigration cuts.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/-i-m-not-a-racist-but-sweden-faces-historic-upset-in-election" target="_blank">Source.</a><br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
In 1397, the Kalmar Union was formed, with the three Scandinavian
countries under a single monarch. However, the union (1397–1523) was
scarred by internal conflicts that culminated in the ‘Stockholm
Bloodbath’ in 1520, when 80 Swedish nobles were executed at the
instigation of the Danish union king, Kristian II. The act provoked a
rebellion, which in 1521 led to the deposition of Kristian II and the
seizure of power by a Swedish nobleman, Gustav Vasa, who was elected
king of Sweden in 1523.
<br />
<br />
The Vasa period<br />
<br />
The foundations of the Swedish state were laid during the reign of
Gustav Vasa (1523–60). The church was nationalised, its estates
confiscated by the crown, and the Protestant Reformation was introduced.
Power was concentrated in the hands of the king and hereditary monarchy
came into force in 1544.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sweden.se/society/history-of-sweden/" target="_blank"> Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-55779421332032166432018-05-05T11:39:00.001-07:002018-05-05T11:39:33.250-07:00Seeing Inside Is Gruesome But Enlightening<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Been working a few political campaigns lately, mostly localized issues around housing and unions. It's interesting, actually being the guy in the proverbial smoke-filled back room, making the political deals away from the public eye. Weird life, you just never know where you're going to end up, or what you view as right and wrong the more you learn how the world actually works.<br />
<br />
--<br />
Born in 1785 in Lebanon, Connecticut, William Beaumont was the son of
a thriving farmer and veteran of the Revolutionary War. After declining
an offer by his father of a nearby farm, Beaumont left home in 1806 at
age 22 with a horse and sleigh, a barrel of cider, and $100. He settled
in Champlain, New York, near the Canadian border, and taught school for 3
years. In 1810, at age 25, Beaumont entered a preceptorship under
Benjamin Chandler in St. Albans, Vermont, living in Chandler's home for 2
years as an apprentice. He learned medicine primarily through
observation of patients rather than through study of books, and recorded
cases and his thoughts in notebooks, a habit he continued throughout
his life.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
...He participated in the capture of York in
1813 and the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814, and resigned when the Treaty
of Ghent ended the war in 1815.<br />
After 4 years of private practice
in Plattsburgh, Beaumont reenlisted in the army in 1819 at age 35 and
was ordered to Fort Michilimackinac in the Michigan territory. Built by
the British in 1780 on an island, Fort Mackinac was adjacent to a
village inhabited by about 500 French Canadians and Indians employed by
the American Fur Company. In June and July, however, Mackinac swelled
with 5000 traders bearing their winter catch.<br />
<br />
...Beaumont
was the only physician on the island in June 1822 when Alexis St.
Martin, a 19-year-old French Canadian, was accidentally shot by a gun in
the store of the American Fur Company. Beaumont's record of the event
follows:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>I was called to him immediately after the
accident. Found a portion of the Lungs as large as a turkey's egg
protruding through the external wound, lacerated and burnt, and below
this another protrusion resembling a portion of the Stomach, what at
first view I could not believe possible to be that organ in that
situation with the subject surviving, but on closer examination I found
it to be actually the Stomach, with a puncture in the protruding portion
large enough to receive my fore-finger, and through which a portion of
his food that he had taken for breakfast had come out and lodged among
his apparel. In this dilemma I considered my attempt to save his life
entirely useless. (<a class="bk_pop" data-bk-pop-href="#A2692" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459/#" role="button">Myers, 1912</a>)</i></blockquote>
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459/" target="_blank">Source.</a><br />
--<br />
So he cleanses the wound as best he can, clips off a bit of a rib
with his penknife to ease the lung back inside, then applies a poultice.
<br />
A day later, the voyageur is struggling for his life, pneumonia and
fever have set in. Beaumont bleeds the voyageur, then administers a
cathartic, which spills out the hole in his stomach. Since attempts to
feed the patient have the same result, St. Martin is fed through anal
injections for two weeks, until the wound is healed enough for the hole
to be bandaged. At least the voyageur can eat.<br />
By December, St. Martin is, miraculously, on the mend, with one
exception. The hole in the stomach has not closed—and defies all
Beaumont’s attempts to seal it. Instead, the tissue around the opening
attaches itself to the tissue in St. Martin’s side, creating a gastric
fistula, a permanent opening. A disturbing development for St. Martin,
because unless the hole is covered, his last meal leaks out. But for
Beaumont, the hole presents an opportunity for his curious medical mind:
He can look through the shilling-sized cavity, into a living human
stomach. Fascinated, Beaumont spoons in food, then siphons it out again.
He attaches meat to a string, dangles it through the hole and pulls it
out for observation.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://mynorth.com/2017/05/the-gruesome-medical-breakthrough-of-dr-william-beaumont-on-mackinac-island/" target="_blank">Source.</a> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-38938624821973526362017-08-03T17:38:00.001-07:002017-08-03T18:06:26.823-07:00Effusive Errata<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think often on my years as an altar boy. I must have been eight or nine when I was first plucked from the pew by the priest and asked to fill in, beginning my 3 or 4 years of service.<br />
<br />
I still remember how seriously I took it, and how much my left-wing Catholic upbringing shaped who I am as a man, now almost 30 years later.<br />
<br />
Of course, by twelve or thirteen I had gone from credulous earnestness to refusing confirmation and deciding there was no God. I was, of course, wrong.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfREN7f8XPXPq7s8ehyor1MVgvVVwz2H8cMCVtW1O6dG0mgoch5sVs0nXlGx2SgpcvXNKDQ3gawury8aaFTJhL9xgt8GbJi7mXyMd4P8kO3McTO-M6PvjuKi2PNU31aXxTYGTpsp3UvDZE/s1600/8e0680ce4f0516f3a19e58db9fadf8aa--catholic-art-religious-art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="236" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfREN7f8XPXPq7s8ehyor1MVgvVVwz2H8cMCVtW1O6dG0mgoch5sVs0nXlGx2SgpcvXNKDQ3gawury8aaFTJhL9xgt8GbJi7mXyMd4P8kO3McTO-M6PvjuKi2PNU31aXxTYGTpsp3UvDZE/s320/8e0680ce4f0516f3a19e58db9fadf8aa--catholic-art-religious-art.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
My nine year old, raised in what I would say is a moral and rules based home, has not been raised religiously, aside from a quick grace at dinner. Even that solitary prayer is interrupted by deities only briefly with a "Dear Lord..." invocation, followed by standard tropes of gratitude, and a context-free "Amen."<br />
<br />
Anyway, recently, she told me and her mother that she "did not believe in God."<br />
<br />
Not angrily or defiantly, because there was no real weight to it.<br />
<br />
We both (somewhat to my surprise) objected strenuously, and more or less told her she is wrong.<br />
<br />
She's smart, you see. The conception of God she is able to form in her mind is, of course, very much not God. This is a problem many adults seem to face as well.<br />
<br />
An inability to understand, or even properly conceive of the concept of God is definitional. The term should be understood as meaning beyond comprehension or understanding. That's why concepts like the trinity even exist--it's a koan, designed to take you past your understanding to a metaphysical place of wonder, and awe.<br />
<br />
Lucky for us, she is nine, and still not infected with a strong sense of self, apart from others.<br />
<br />
She is Us still, not really a separate entity.<br />
<br />
I think that helps maintain a peace with not knowing, not controlling everything, not understanding all ideas or rules while still being able to accept them.<br />
<br />
Her and I have been to mass together, once. Just a random Sunday. It didn't take. I don't want to give of myself to that entity any more, don't want to be used up, or serve the wrong master, or be exploited.<br />
<br />
Can the heart exploit the hands? Can the mind abuse the lungs? Does the fascia serve the muscle? At what level do we exist most richly? Better to be a man alone, or the sole of a foot, forever trampled?<br />
<br />
Of course, any reader of this era immediately assigns a Voltron-like form to this thought experiment, assigning one as the head/brain archetype, and others as the lowly feet.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Wrso_8CR1s80yLfysQSDrU8Ujmt8jIHbB66Tj1T4qOptIFxC-mZ6TUs5yDCCBtsOMY8BMP3Uc6gWI9J4sWtGtYatmfgdLjfdq5AEWBkKIUEO4W1sdALG-HTyX36UwETgVHgP2Wvx5zeM/s1600/voltron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="448" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Wrso_8CR1s80yLfysQSDrU8Ujmt8jIHbB66Tj1T4qOptIFxC-mZ6TUs5yDCCBtsOMY8BMP3Uc6gWI9J4sWtGtYatmfgdLjfdq5AEWBkKIUEO4W1sdALG-HTyX36UwETgVHgP2Wvx5zeM/s320/voltron.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Maybe it's better to ask if the oxygen resents the hydrogen in water.<br />
<br />
Weird hierarchical brains.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-4783258768753983002017-05-18T17:54:00.003-07:002017-05-18T18:00:57.028-07:00Emphatically immoral<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
‘When some people think of empathy, they think of kindness. I think of war...’<br />
<br />
In <i>Against Empathy</i>, Bloom provides a thoughtful,
considered, empirically-grounded case which challenges many notions that
we often accept as good without really thinking them through.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/myths-legends-creation_myth-creation_story-empathy-empathise-empathising-ctrn70_low.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/myths-legends-creation_myth-creation_story-empathy-empathise-empathising-ctrn70_low.jpg" height="320" width="270" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
We live in an age in which, Bloom observes, reason is constantly
deprecated and emotions celebrated. Social psychologists and
neuroscientists insist that humans are irrational creatures. Many
philosophers and sociologists claim that the appeal to reason is
Eurocentric; Bloom writes of a sociology professor who ‘gently told me
that my emphasis on reason expressed a particularly Western white male
viewpoint...’<br />
<br />
...Reason is what ‘makes us distinctively human, and it gives
us the potential to be better to one another, to create a world with
less suffering and more flourishing and happiness.’ Empathy, on the
other hand, is ‘a poor moral guide’ in almost all realms of life,
whether that be public policy, private charity or interpersonal
relationships...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsiIP40vtZSmdk5JsTgD14OIXm0SB73Ad1wqEg23TBpXJd-90Hr5HBQXflJMMmQX9YJvG1HwmW_IIKP712vNZwOyisrcaX-zMlCZaFLCWfnfwjXp4bXRCtPSOjIR8G8GDbawthMBLSKRxq/s1600/41pEgdPhESL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsiIP40vtZSmdk5JsTgD14OIXm0SB73Ad1wqEg23TBpXJd-90Hr5HBQXflJMMmQX9YJvG1HwmW_IIKP712vNZwOyisrcaX-zMlCZaFLCWfnfwjXp4bXRCtPSOjIR8G8GDbawthMBLSKRxq/s320/41pEgdPhESL.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
By ‘empathy’, Bloom means something highly specific. He is not
talking about general sympathy for, or identification with, another’s
plight. He refers rather to ‘the act of feeling what you believe other
people feel – experiencing what they experience.’<br />
<br />
So, what is the problem with such empathy? Bloom has a long
checklist. First, empathy is like a spotlight that focuses on certain
people, making us care more about them but leaving us insensitive to
long-term consequences of our acts, <b>and blind to the suffering of those
we do not or cannot empathise with.</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2017/05/18/a-world-with-too-little-empathy-or-too-much/" target="_blank">Source.</a> Emphasis mine </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-58075965662814839032017-05-15T20:40:00.001-07:002017-05-15T20:40:18.970-07:00Days of our Lives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
[H]ow old do you suppose the
hourglass is: two thousand years? Four thousand
years?<br />
<br />
...Oddly enough, it
came into use at almost exactly the same time as
the first mechanical clocks. The hourglass is only
about seven hundred years old.<br />
<br />
...Hourglasses found their place in setting off blocks
of time. The time between canonical hours in a
monastery, or between watches on shipboard. They
ran neither long enough nor accurately enough to be
of much use in marine navigation. They were a poor
person's timepiece -- a kind of clock for everyman.<br />
<br />
Both the mechanical clock and the hourglass found
powerful symbolic roles during the Renaissance. The
complex mechanical clock with its rotary gears
became a metaphor for the heavenly spheres or for
the wheel of fortune. But the hourglass, whose
sands run out, was a thing of this base earth. It
became a metaphor for the running-out-of-sands we
all inevitably face. It became, and it remains, a
universal symbol of <i>death.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://www.sprksam.com/i/2017/04/hourglass-wallpapers-images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://www.sprksam.com/i/2017/04/hourglass-wallpapers-images.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div>
<br />
<i> </i>
<br />
Two technologies, one
simple, one complex, running side by side -- the
clock making a continuum of time, the hourglass
segmenting it -- the clock speaking of
timelessness, the hourglass showing us finality --
the clock evoking things celestial, the hourglass
reminding us of base earth. They are <i>Yin</i> and
<i>Yang.</i>
<br />
<br />
...The clock and the hourglass create
technological parity. Either, without the other,
would provide an unbalanced metaphor, and that
subtle fact can be far more important than it might
seem.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1469.htm" target="_blank">Source. </a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-56590010814484945752017-05-10T21:18:00.002-07:002017-05-10T21:30:05.798-07:00Discernment or Discrimination, how fine a line we think we can see<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In modern American English, a <b>shibboleth </b>also has a wider meaning, referring to any "in-group" word or phrase that can distinguish members of a group from outsiders – even when not used by a hostile other group...<br />
<br />
The term shibboleth can also be extended, as in the discipline of semiotics, to describe non-linguistic elements of culture such as diet, fashion and cultural values.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Cultural touchstones and shared experience can also be shibboleths of a sort.<br />
<br />
Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. <br />
<br />
The legend goes that before the Battle of the Golden Spurs in May 1302, the Flemish slaughtered every Frenchman they could find in the city of Bruges... They identified Frenchmen based on their inability to pronounce the Flemish phrase schilt ende vriend (shield and friend)...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Dapperheidgrotepier.jpg/220px-Dapperheidgrotepier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Dapperheidgrotepier.jpg/220px-Dapperheidgrotepier.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
"Butter, rye bread and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is not a genuine Frisian" was used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion (1515–1523). Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not were beheaded by Donia himself.<br />
<br />
The Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as a shibboleth to tell Germans from the Dutch...<br />
<br />
In October 1937 the Spanish word for parsley, perejil, was used as a shibboleth to identify Haitian immigrants living along the border in the Dominican Republic. The president of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, ordered the execution of these people. It is alleged that between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals were murdered within a few days in the Parsley Massacre...<br />
<br />
During the Black July riots of Sri Lanka in 1983 many Tamils were massacred by Sinhalese youths. In many cases these massacres took the form of boarding buses and getting the passengers to pronounce words that had hard BAs at the start of the word (like "Baldiya" - bucket) and executing the people who found it difficult.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://highvocab.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/shibboleth-yall-vs-you.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://highvocab.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/shibboleth-yall-vs-you.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
During World War II, some United States soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R or confuse Rs with Ls; the word is also an American colloquialism that even a foreign person fairly well-versed in American English would probably mispronounce or be unfamiliar with...<br />
<br />
During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, use of the name Derry or Londonderry for the province's second-largest city was often taken as an indication of the speaker's political stance...[t]he pronunciation of the letter H is a related shibboleth, with Catholics and Protestants often pronouncing the letter differently.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth" target="_blank">Source</a>, with some light editing by me. </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-68431644904973600552017-01-16T16:28:00.002-08:002017-01-16T16:28:22.402-08:00Post Partisan Performance Review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Maybe not perfect, but the best I've seen:<br /><br />In a sense, great leaders transcend the good and the bad. Every good thing they do affects millions, and every mistake can cost hundreds of thousands of lives. In this way, judging legacy is reduced to sifting consequential leaders from inconsequential ones. We try to determine whether those consequences were good or bad for us, in historic terms. But here is where it gets dark.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />By ending World War II President Truman was among those who saved western democracy. To do so he ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed over 130,000 people within four days. Likewise, no appraisal of Obama is complete without considering the near existential threat to world stability that the Syria crisis and its related rise of ISIS unleashed. And it is here that Obama’s “lead from behind” legacy will suffer terribly.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/15/obama-s-legacy-the-imperial-presidency-that-he-passes-on-to-trump.html" target="_blank">Source</a>. </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-50972118848184482942016-11-09T11:07:00.000-08:002016-11-09T11:07:00.646-08:00Take my ball and go home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I read this book when it came out in 2007. Interesting premise, and the main thrust is that the rich secede from the poor. There is already a plan for California to secede.<br />
-- <br />
<br />
Can a country be like a marriage that has run out of cash and steam,
resulting in the inevitable frank discussions about just who is pulling
his or her own weight? Eventually, even those who love each other
sometimes conclude they cannot stay together.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-untied-states-of-america/9780307237521_custom-9f503056e2380776689601aec3bd30528c7148c6-s200-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-untied-states-of-america/9780307237521_custom-9f503056e2380776689601aec3bd30528c7148c6-s200-c85.jpg" height="320" width="193" /></a></div>
<br /><br />Juan Enriquez’s
unique insights into the financial, political, and cultural issues we
face will provoke shock and surprise and lead you to ask the question no
one has yet put on the table: Could “becoming untied” ever happen here?
It’s a question made especially relevant when we are faced with such
unpromising facts as:<br /><br />• At no other time have we had the
unwelcome convergence in which the three key sectors of business,
government, and consumers are so tapped out due to debt that each lacks
the financial wherewithal to come to the rescue of the others. <br /><br />•
Most assets are not being used for productive purposes but for
speculation, resulting in people lacking incentives to create real
wealth, focusing instead on buying, selling, and flipping real estate.<br /> <br />•
As religion starts to mix with politics, we have a culture that allows
us to fall behind what were previously third world nations, because we
are now treating science the way we did sex in the 1950s, banning or
burying evolution theories and research into promising lifesaving areas
such as stem-cell research.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i37.tinypic.com/2jea15.jpghttp://i37.tinypic.com/2jea15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i37.tinypic.com/2jea15.jpghttp://i37.tinypic.com/2jea15.jpg" height="207" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />When the enemy was outside—for
example, the threat perceived when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and
people feared America would lose the brain race—we rallied. Now the
enemy is within, and we polarize. Defaming the legitimacy of people on
the “other” side becomes the currency of the day, where people in blue
states are seen as godless liberal elitists and those in red states are
seen as, well, rednecks.<br /><br />Citizenship, Enriquez says, is like
buying into a national brand. If the brand promises one thing and
delivers another, could it then have the same fate as a tired product on
a supermarket shelf, eroding, losing support, even disappearing?
Countries, even one as powerful and successful as America, live on fault
lines. When a fault line splits, it’s near impossible to put things
back together again. What America will look like in fifty years depends
on what we do today to act on the issues raised in The Untied States of
America.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001334J3W/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1" target="_blank">Source</a>. </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-84946267456529770852016-11-08T07:55:00.002-08:002016-11-08T07:55:37.717-08:00Paper losses, or, elections matter if you're rich<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Elections are for deciding whether to fold the blankets in squares or rectangles. Means you have a blanket.<br />
--<br />
<br />
...The country, to put it mildly, was different back then. Life was
harder, and in places like the Texas hinterland – which today forms the
big beating heart of the state’s Republican base – it was a close
approximation of 14th-century European peasant hell. The vast majority
of rural Texans lived without electric power, which meant no
refrigeration, no water pumps, no indoor plumbing, no furnaces, no
electric stoves, no incandescent lights, no motors to power machines for
milking or shearing. <br />
Even for those of us only one or two generations removed from the
farm, it’s almost impossible to conceive just how different life was,
although the phrase “nasty, brutish, and short” comes to mind.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e323c5894e50f07ed060f0d13ddc2cf8fa99452a/0_77_3498_2098/master/3498.jpg?w=1920&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=3bd2e88ca8d3abbe157bfa3a14a8dd42" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e323c5894e50f07ed060f0d13ddc2cf8fa99452a/0_77_3498_2098/master/3498.jpg?w=1920&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=3bd2e88ca8d3abbe157bfa3a14a8dd42" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Among the
best guides to that time is “The Sad Irons” chapter of The Path to
Power, the first volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson,
which delivers a harrowing portrait of life as a medieval slog plunked
down in the middle of 20th-century America. To take just one aspect of
the slog: water. “Packing water” from the source – a stream or a well –
to the house was a daily beatdown that often fell to the farm wife. As
Caro writes:<br />
<blockquote class="quoted">
<span class="inline-quote inline-icon ">
<svg class="inline-quote__svg inline-icon__svg" height="10" viewbox="0 0 33 20" width="17">
<path d="M9.002 20c3.85.068 6.932-3.104 7-6.994.068-3.892-3.15-6.937-7-7.006-2.016-.036-3.59.694-4.888 2.053A9.968 9.968 0 0 1 4.001 6.5C4.064 2.97 7.414.937 11.003 1l-1-1C3.98 0 .098 4.447.002 10.006c-.097 5.557 3.35 9.892 9 9.994zm17 0c3.85.068 6.932-3.104 7-6.994.068-3.892-3.15-6.937-7-7.006-2.016-.036-3.59.694-4.888 2.053a9.968 9.968 0 0 1-.113-1.553c.063-3.53 3.413-5.563 7.002-5.5l-1-1c-6.022 0-9.904 4.447-10 10.006-.097 5.557 3.35 9.892 9 9.994z"></path>
</svg> </span>
<div class="quoted__contents">
A federal study of nearly half a million farm families … would show
that, on the average, a person living on a farm used 40 gallons of water
every day. Since the average farm family was five persons, the family
used 200 gallons, or four-fifths of a ton, of water each day – 73,000
gallons, or almost 300 tons, in a year. The study showed that, on the
average, the well was located 253 feet from the house – and that to pump
by hand and carry to the house 73,000 gallons of water a year would
require someone to put in during that year 63 eight-hour days, and walk
1,750 miles.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/the-big-con-what-is-really-at-stake-on-election-day" target="_blank">Source. </a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-39112758348269520922016-10-14T13:25:00.002-07:002016-10-14T13:26:36.707-07:00Keeping up appearances<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
...MacArthur understood that for the
transition to be smooth, the imperial rule must persist. Yet, he didn’t
make the customary call to the palace; instead, he waited for the
emperor to make the first contact. On 27th September <i>(1945)</i>, Hirohito finally
crossed the palace moat to reach MacArthur’s headquarters...<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5419" height="140" src="https://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/macarthur.jpg?w=700&h=247" style="border: 0px none;" title="macarthur" width="400" /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Faillace was given one shot, but he spoke
up and asked for three. Faillace also adviced MacArthur against a
seated picture on a soft couch. First two photos were less than ideal —
their eyes were closed in one, and the Emperor’s mouth was gaping open
in the other. But even the perfect, final shot posed its own problems:
at this juncture, Hirohito was still <i>akitsumikami</i> or manifest
deity (he would not renounce his divinity before the coming New Year’s
Day), and everyone was supposed to avert eyes from the veiled imperial
portraits in government buildings.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Thus, printing the photo was
deemed sacrilegious, not least because of the general’s extremely casual
attire and his even more pointed body language. MacArthur’s office
itself had to intervene to Japanese censors to have it printed...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrfsGGSle4z5Xs3pKPbalYdw7n6Q_BULbzK9c71oV3C2C6qUtpUIZd3QpcqkzXRLF-79PWYnNc8FSxc35qdt64XRGr5c4p3uyA9WwOBL0v16YsNgjf2y8CA7rJRsPX62NomIcijWtKUI4S/s1600/CuwQ-UaXYAEjLZL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrfsGGSle4z5Xs3pKPbalYdw7n6Q_BULbzK9c71oV3C2C6qUtpUIZd3QpcqkzXRLF-79PWYnNc8FSxc35qdt64XRGr5c4p3uyA9WwOBL0v16YsNgjf2y8CA7rJRsPX62NomIcijWtKUI4S/s640/CuwQ-UaXYAEjLZL.jpg" width="518" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Outside Japan, too, the general’s informal appearance shocked many. Even <i>Life</i>
clutched its pearls and wrote, “MacArthur did not trouble to put on a
tie for the occasion”... </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The general
never paid a return call to the palace.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/when-macarthur-met-the-emperor/" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
</div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-43131389559191262242016-10-06T10:20:00.002-07:002016-10-06T10:20:25.501-07:00Binary brains in a multivalent world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I was reading last week's <a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-coming-of-postliberal-era.html" target="_blank">Archdruid Report</a> and he touched on the whole morality debate in an interesting way.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>In the same way, there’s no evidence that anybody in the
Constitutional Convention agonized about the ethical dimensions of the
notorious provision that defined each slave as being 3/5ths of a person. I
doubt the ethical side of the matter ever crossed any of their minds, because
politics was not about ethics or any other expression of values—it was about
interests—and the issue was simply one of finding a compromise that allowed
each state to feel that its interests would be adequately represented in
Congress.<b> Values, in the thought of the time, belonged to church and to the
private conscience of the individual; politics was about interests pure and simple. </b></i><br />
<br />
Emphasis mine.<br />
<br />
So I would use these two concepts, interests and values, and apply them to our definition of morality as such.<br />
<i><b> </b></i><br />
Morality, at it's extremes, is a submission of interests to values. In other words, giving until it hurts.<br />
<br />
So, how is morality applied in our actual societies? As a weapon against our enemies of course! When you consider morality, it's a hilariously hypocritical thing that we seem to, as a species, take exact opposite perspectives on morality depending on whom we are viewing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcRaCcDAsirjWKS9Xbe9OkicWqGJm36igpVq900iQAakr6osu8V-VTu6vBWqFVjKopLaR_d9Mj8TTjDSRbYUjRJChqkEN4owNZU2STsyW52EUvcxgFWV5p_XhoX8rIQgCGU0dEuUC-Smy7/s1600/3920865745_23a876658b.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcRaCcDAsirjWKS9Xbe9OkicWqGJm36igpVq900iQAakr6osu8V-VTu6vBWqFVjKopLaR_d9Mj8TTjDSRbYUjRJChqkEN4owNZU2STsyW52EUvcxgFWV5p_XhoX8rIQgCGU0dEuUC-Smy7/s320/3920865745_23a876658b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
When we look at "Us," we see what we can do better and praise ourselves for attempting it. When we look at "Them," we see what they could do better and condemn them for not having completed it.<br />
<br />
Doesn't it seem like our subconscious minds assign Us and Them according to our interests? Only through VERY conscious thought do we allow for the transference or dissolution of the two groups into a ranking of Us and Them according to our values.<br />
<br />
And when you do it, you realize you are surrounded by your enemies, who can and quite reasonably will destroy you. Best to keep your head down. The last several dudes who came along and said we should all love each other in too public a way were swiftly and publicly killed. Meritocracy assumes there's no merit in smashing a geeks head in because he wants to take your stuff. Again, these values are pretty fungible.<br />
<br />
Surviving physically is actually pretty easy. Surviving culturally is really quite hard, especially maintaining our status within our class or caste. The effort required to maintain one's place requires you to be able to do immoral things while feeling good about yourself. It's important to stay motivated, and righteousness is a mighty motivator.<i><b></b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-12491358199594178412016-09-27T09:11:00.001-07:002016-09-27T09:11:06.610-07:00Impossible is merely difficult, or, a Lack of Imagination isn't the same as a lack of options<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>
I can scarcely think of a way I’d less rather die than having a sword
run through my abdomen. Yet Dutchman Mirin Dajo did it every day.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Mirin_Dajo_promotional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Mirin_Dajo_promotional.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In the 1940’s, Dajo was known for his stage performances, in which
he’d stand barechested while his assistant would take fencing foils, and
one by one, run him through.<br />
<br />
The show was appalling and horrible to
watch, but Dajo never flinched, never showed the slightest pain. The
curious were invited to watch as closely as they liked, and to examine
the blades even while they were stuck through him.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wj6Drp7hWhY/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wj6Drp7hWhY?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.skepticblog.org/2010/05/13/the-mysterious-case-of-mirin-dajo-the-human-pincushion/" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-17087400433222370262016-08-29T22:28:00.000-07:002016-08-29T22:39:37.481-07:00Morality is Reality, or, what it is is how it feels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Many parents who grew up playing outdoors with friends, walking alone to the park or to school, and enjoying other moments of independent play are now raising children in a world with very different norms.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c5/94/3b/c5943b89655f0b8b7f4d16a7d1ef35f7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c5/94/3b/c5943b89655f0b8b7f4d16a7d1ef35f7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
In the United States today, leaving children unsupervised is grounds for moral outrage and can lead to criminal charges. <br />
<br />
What's changed?<br />
<br />
<br />
...It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in
moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be
that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving
children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's
judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk...<br />
<br />
..."When Barbara and I first started talking about this project, the case that really stood out to me was the one about Debra Harrell
— the McDonald's worker who let her 9-year-old daughter play in a busy
public park for several hours during the day while she (Harrell) was at
work. The daughter had a key to her home (which was a six-minute walk
away from the park) and a cellphone. But when the girl mentioned to an
adult in the park that her mother was at work, the adult called the
police, who arrested and jailed Harrell and put the daughter in state
custody. I thought, here's a single mother who works for low wages for a
corporation that doesn't provide child care, and she was treated as a
criminal for letting her daughter do something that is relatively safe.
It seemed like people were angry at this woman for not being a full-time
mom — for not fulfilling the unrealistic expectation that mothers
should be with their children at all times.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://static.youcaring.com/api/uploads/fundraisers/204837/9d17d427-ce69-43d1-a8ab-1a3d2f6c23fd_profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://static.youcaring.com/api/uploads/fundraisers/204837/9d17d427-ce69-43d1-a8ab-1a3d2f6c23fd_profile.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Those are moral judgments,
but people weren't talking about it in moral terms. Instead, they were
using the language of risk and danger — saying that Harrell was
criminally negligent because she had left her daughter in a dangerous
situation. <span style="color: red;"><u><b>So we started thinking about how people's estimates of risk
might not be about risk at all, but about moral judgment.</b></u></span>" <br />
<br />
..."I think what surprised me most were the results of two modifications we
tried. In the first, we asked subjects to make an explicit moral
judgment about the parent in addition to a judgment about risk. The idea
was that if people had a different way to express their moral
disapproval, this might lower the pressure to use risk judgments as a
way of condemning the parents. In fact, <b>asking subjects to make a moral
judgment about the parents as well made their moral judgments influence
their judgments about risk even more, not less.</b> The second modification
was to ask subjects to actually list the concrete things they thought
might happen while the parent was gone. We expected that forcing
subjects to explicitly consider what dangers are faced by the child
would reduce the influence of moral judgment on risk judgment. But
adding this manipulation did not change anything."<br />
<br />
..."Right now, in many situations, if a social worker or police officer
thinks the child is in danger, they can intervene and take the child,
arrest the parents, etc. But <u><b>what our data suggest is that when people
think they are judging danger to a child, much of what they are actually
doing is imposing a moral judgment on the child's parents.</b></u>"<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk" target="_blank">Source.</a><br />
<br />
Emphasis mine. </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-66050565201974015992016-07-14T11:15:00.001-07:002016-07-14T11:15:53.865-07:00Thursday Thought Walk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
So much trouble in the world<br />
<br />
-Bob Marley<br />
<br />
<br />[E]ach group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior,
exists in its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.<br />
<br />
-William Sumner<br />
<br />
<br />
Any political decision, about any but the most trivial subject,
brings benefits and has costs, and far more often than not the people who get
the benefits and the people who carry the costs are not the same.<br />
<br />
-John Michael Greer<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://celebratingdrseuss.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sneetches1-192scyr.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://celebratingdrseuss.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sneetches1-192scyr.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /><br />When the Star-Belly Sneetches had frankfurter roasts <br />Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts, <br />They never invited the Plain-Belly Sneetches. <br />They left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches. <br />They kept them away. Never let them come near. And that’s how they treated them year after year. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
-Dr. Seuss<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
Like other norms, social norms are standards of behavior. These norms
apply to the function individuals have in the group. Norms can include a
dress code, standards of conduct, or admissions standards. Norms tend
to keep a group working better together as long as the norms are
uniformly enforced. Selectively ignoring norms tends to result in
disciplinary measures for group members. <b>If the group as a whole ignores
norms, cohesion could be weakened</b> by a feeling of apathy toward the
norms and group as a whole. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-social-cohesion-definition-theory-quiz.html" target="_blank">Source</a>.<br />
<br />
Emphasis mine.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2013/07/FT_Diversity_Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2013/07/FT_Diversity_Map.png" height="307" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Indonesia has 1128 ethnics and 746 local languages and dialects
(Official Government Statistics Data). Each provinces, regions, and
islands in Indonesia has their own unique cultures. And in one
provinces, you can find many different cultures, languages, dialects and
many sub-ethnics. I don’t talk about racism, but i want t<span class="">o
share to you that Indonesia has diverse faces and skin characteristics.
From Sabang to Merauke, Very Diverse. From White, Yellow, Tan, and
Black. Indonesian face also not just like another Asian face. Because
the Geography, there are many types of face in Indonesia such as
Oriental, Melayu (Indonesian Malay), Melanesian, and ect. Javanese face
is different with Sumatran face. Kalimantan face (Indonesian Borneo)
face also different with Sulawesi face. Flores face is different with
Irian (Indonesian New Guinea) Face.Those ethnics are native Indonesians.
And Indonesia is one of the Largest country that has Culturally Diverse
by Natives. We Live together in peace with Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity
in Diversity) as our Motto.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="">-</span><span class="author">Aulsid Wijaya</span><br />
<span class=""><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/18/the-most-and-least-culturally-diverse-countries-in-the-world/" target="_blank">Source. </a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
It is said that the well-known Buddha and Shiva are two different substances.<br /> They are indeed different, yet how is it possible to recognise their difference in a glance,<br /> since the truth of Jina and the truth of Shiva is one.<br /> They are indeed different, but they are of the same kind, as there is no duality in Truth.<span class=""> </span><br />
<span class=""><br /></span>
<span class="">excerpt from<i> Kakawin Sutasoma</i></span><br />
<br />
<span class=""><i> </i></span></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-48369450773045348992016-02-21T20:18:00.002-08:002016-02-21T20:18:14.238-08:00Kochtopus dropping bombs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Charlie is doing the thing, man:<br />
<br />This is the one issue where Bernie Sanders is right<div class="pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column">
<span class="pb-byline" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <span itemprop="name">Charles G. Koch</span></span> <span class="pb-timestamp" content="2016-02-18T05:44-500" itemprop="datePublished">February 18</span></div>
<div class="pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column">
<span class="pb-timestamp" content="2016-02-18T05:44-500" itemprop="datePublished"> </span> </div>
<div class="intro">
<i>Charles G. Koch is chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries. </i><br />
<i> </i> <br />
</div>
<div id="U1020697153822xEB">
As he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) often sounds like he’s running as much against me as he is the other candidates. I have never met the senator, but I know from listening to him that we disagree on plenty when it comes to public policy.<br /><br /> </div>
Even so, I see benefits in searching for common
ground and greater civility during this overly negative campaign season.
That’s why, in spite of the fact that he often misrepresents where I
stand on issues, the senator should know that we do agree on at least
one — an issue that resonates with people who feel that hard work and
making a contribution will no longer enable them to succeed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/08/02/National-Politics/Images/GOP_2016_Koch_Brothers_-01f8b.jpg?uuid=e6tZHjkKEeWcLe2ZHYSMSA" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/08/02/National-Politics/Images/GOP_2016_Koch_Brothers_-01f8b.jpg?uuid=e6tZHjkKEeWcLe2ZHYSMSA" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few
at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He
believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms
millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He
thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while
ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.<br />
<br />
I agree with him.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-koch-this-is-the-one-issue-where-bernie-sanders-is-right/2016/02/18/cdd2c228-d5c1-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html" target="_blank">Source. </a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-45386674741700892402016-02-11T11:30:00.002-08:002016-02-11T11:30:43.532-08:00The riches of His kindness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Belief in an all-seeing punitive god motivates people to be more
charitable towards strangers outside their own family and community,
particularly to those of similar beliefs, researchers have found.<br />
A study, published Wednesday in <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature16980">Nature</a>,
suggests religiosity may contribute to greater cooperation and
collaboration despite geographic separation.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://consciouslyenlightened.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/fire-rain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://consciouslyenlightened.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/fire-rain.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
“People may trust in, cooperate with and interact fairly within
wider social circles, partly because they believe that knowing gods
will punish them if they do not,” the study’s authors wrote.<br />
The Internet is a great tool to connect with others and learn new
things. Is it also killing religion? Laci discusses how the rise in
Web use might be causing people to lose their religion.<br />
<br />
“Moreover, the social radius within which people are willing to
engage in behaviors that benefit others at a cost to themselves may
enlarge as gods’ powers to monitor and punish increase...”<br />
...The researchers found people who believed in a more punitive,
all-knowing god ended up giving more money to distant people who
shared the same religious belief.<br />
<br />
Lead author Benjamin Purzycki said the results suggested people of
the belief that one’s actions are monitored, judged and punished by
a deity were more likely to play fair than to play favorites.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://news.discovery.com/history/religion/fear-of-vengeful-gods-may-have-helped-societies-expand-160211.htm" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-25401819808124580962015-11-14T09:11:00.002-08:002015-11-14T09:11:32.572-08:00Probably quite a few racists, but they won't be offending anyone at Yale<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
...[A] plague gripping the isolated, fading towns dotting this part of
Appalachia. Frontier communities steeped in the myth of self-reliance
are now blighted by addiction to opioids – “hillbilly heroin” to those
who use them. It’s a dependency bound up with economic despair and
financed in part by the same welfare system that is staving off economic
collapse across much of eastern Kentucky. It’s a crisis that crosses
generations...<br />
<br />
...Steve Mays, Lee County’s de facto mayor, is a Republican. He has a
picture of McConnell on the shelf behind his desk. “I like Mitch. He’s
very supportive of me when I need grants or something. He always tries
to come through for me,” said Mays.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/678be062db086653d8d057cfa65b95fc2b07991b/0_0_5976_3992/master/5976.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=f2059f04ec3e06007fa1f05b68f510ef" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/678be062db086653d8d057cfa65b95fc2b07991b/0_0_5976_3992/master/5976.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=f2059f04ec3e06007fa1f05b68f510ef" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
But just a few months earlier, McConnell had claimed “massive
numbers” of people were receiving food stamps “who probably shouldn’t”
and described the programme as “making it excessively easy to be
non-productive”.<br />
<br />
This put Mays in a bind. His party routinely demonises people who
receive welfare – but many of his voters rely on it. Mays said he
regarded welfare as “a trap”, but acknowledged that without it the town
would die.<br />
<br />
...[H]e acknowledged the seeming contradiction of people voting for
a party that was so scornful of the government assistance their town
survived on.<br />
“You’re right, Republicans are against that. But that’s not why
people around here are registered Republican. It’s because of local
candidates or family history. My dad was Republican. I’m raised a
Republican and voting Republican. That’s just the way it is,” he said.<br />
This is routinely, and sometimes sneeringly, characterised by
Democrats in other parts of America as poor white people voting against
their own interests. It’s a view that exasperates Davis. <br />
<aside class="element element-rich-link element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded" data-component="rich-link" data-link-name="rich-link-2 | 2">
<div class="rich-link tone-feature--item ">
<div class="rich-link__container">
<br /></div>
</div>
</aside>
“They say, why aren’t these people voting their self-interest? <b>People
always vote their self-interest if they can see it.</b> If they believe the
government doesn’t work, <b>if they believe that the Democrats don’t
really give a shit about people like them, don’t want to be in the same
room with them, they want their vote but don’t want to hang out with
them, then as they see it they’re voting their self-interest,</b>” he said. <br />
<br />
<br />
Emphasis mine.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns" target="_blank"> Source.</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-53445792121047720382015-09-19T10:25:00.004-07:002015-09-19T10:25:34.844-07:00Ninnys<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Let’s go back to </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">451,</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> which
I found myself re-reading recently. It begins with Guy Montag burning a
house that contained books. Why? How did it come to be that fireman </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">burned </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">books instead of putting out fires as they always had?</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Image002Guy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Image002Guy.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The fireman have been doing it for so long they have no idea. Most of
them have never even read a book. Except one fireman—Captain Beatty—who
has been around long enough to remember what life was like before. As
Montag begins to doubt his profession—going as far as to hide a book in
his house—he is subjected to a speech from Beatty. In it Beatty explains
that it wasn’t the government that decided that books were a threat. It
was his fellow citizens.<br />
<br />
“It didn’t come from the government down,” he tells him. “There was
no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!”<br />
In fact, it was something rather simple—something that should sound
very familiar. It was a desire not to offend—of an earnest notion to
literally have “everyone made equal.” And it’s at the end of this speech
that we get the killer passage:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">“You must understand that
our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and
stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People
want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Little Black Sambo</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.
Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs?
The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag.
Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">And before </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">you</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">
get offended, let’s clarify what Bradbury means by minorities. He’s not
talking about race. He’s talking about it in the same way that Madison
and Hamilton did in the Federalist Papers. He’s speaking about small,
interested groups who try to force the rest of the majority to adhere to
the minority’s set of beliefs...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;">...In the 50th anniversary edition,
Bradbury includes a short afterword where he gives his thoughts on
current culture. Almost as if he is speaking directly about the events
above, he wrote: </span><b><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”</span></b><br />
<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://observer.com/2015/09/the-real-reason-we-need-to-stop-trying-to-protect-everyones-feelings/" target="_blank">Source.</a><br />
<br />
Emphasis mine. </div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-30368561128489996452015-09-01T08:22:00.000-07:002015-09-01T08:22:00.880-07:00Elemental Expenditure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/endangered.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/endangered.png" height="282" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-7040070021205283272015-08-23T07:55:00.003-07:002015-08-23T07:55:44.730-07:00Hops, the Original War on Drugs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
...<span class="lettre2">T</span>he Protestant reformists were joined by merchants and competing royals
desiring to break the brewing monopoly of the church. The result was,
ultimately, the end of a many-thousand-year tradition of herbal beer
making in Europe and the narrowing of beer and ale into one limited
expression of beer production, that of hopped ales or what we today call
beer.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.gruitale.com/fichiers/mluther.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.gruitale.com/fichiers/mluther.jpg" height="320" width="193" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The majority of historical beer writers insist that this was only
because (after some 10,000 years) our ancestors accidentally discovered
that hops was antiseptic enough to preserve beer. Our ancestors were
neither that blind nor narrow in their empiricism. Hops kept the beer
from spoiling, yes, however a number of other herbs possess strong
antibacterial properties and can help beer "keep."<br />
<br />
Many of those herbs
were commonly used in ale, for instance wormwood and juniper. But h<b>ops
possesses two characteristics notably different than the herbs it
replaced - it causes the drinker to become drowsy and it diminishes
sexual desire.</b> Protestant literature of the time, denoting the
"problems" associated with the gruit herbs, contradict contemporary beer
historians and are in actuality <b>some of the first drug control
manifestos on record. </b><br />
<br />
Emphasis mine. I had a local gruit yesterday and it was delicious, like a bloody mary made love to a lager.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.gruitale.com/art_fall_of_gruit.htm" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6482127507835282032.post-19180049516971769262015-08-08T16:38:00.001-07:002015-08-08T16:38:32.110-07:00Horrible hormones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Like a mindless zombie controlled by a menacing overlord, the spider
scampers back and forth, reinforcing its silky web. Not long from now,
the subservient arachnid will be dead, its web transformed into a
shelter for the spawn of the creature that once controlled it, according
to a new study.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/077/642/original/larva-kills-spider.png?1438811758" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/077/642/original/larva-kills-spider.png?1438811758" height="233" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
No, this isn't science fiction; it's the somewhat terrifying (but very real) tale of the orb-weaving spider <i>Cyclosa argenteoalba</i> and the parasitic wasp <i>Reclinervellus nielseni</i>, two species that carry out a strange relationship in Hyogo prefecture, Japan.<br />
Together,
the wasp and the spider provide a perfect example of host manipulation
-- an ecological process in which one species (the parasite) and its
young (the parasitoids) manipulate the behaviors of another species (the
host) to their advantage.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wasp-turns-spider-into-web-building-zombie-slave-before-killing-it/" target="_blank">Source.</a></div>
DDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12936013880621794157noreply@blogger.com2