| David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|05:51 pm] |
Hi essay from 2008 in the Village Voice.
"For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests....
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long. Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms."
|
|
|
| From "A Narrower Atlantic" |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|11:58 am] |
"...consider the extent to which no Europeans, however otherwise politically correct, can be shaken in their conviction that the Roma really are shifty and thieving. Having a transatlantic whipping boy is convenient and serves politically useful purposes, especially if there is little else that you can agree on. The purveyors of anti-Americanism in Europe appear to have rediscovered the truism that nothing unites like a common enemy. And the Bush administration played into their hands by serving up caricatures by the spadeful. It will be interesting to see how the European pundits deal with Obama once he does something they do not like. While Bush could be portrayed as an ignorant cowboy, which of the available stereotypes will they dare lambast Obama with?"
Peter Baldwin writing in the Atlantic.www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php |
|
|
| Message in What We Buy, but Nobody’s Listening |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|10:05 am] |
If marketers (or their customers) understood biologists’ new calculations about animals’ “costly signaling,” Dr. Miller says, they’d see that Harvard diplomas and iPhones send the same kind of signal as the ornate tail of a peacock.
...
Suppose, during a date, you casually say, “The sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term.” Here’s what you’re signaling, as translated by Dr. Miller: “My S.A.T. scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my I.Q. is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.” |
|
|
| Я не тяну не то что на Махатму Ганди, Я и на дедушку Мазая не тяну... (Тимур Шаов) |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|03:31 pm] |
Цитаты из Ганди:
"I want you to fight Nazism without arms or ... with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them ... I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty's Government, should they consider them of any practical use in advancing the object of my appeal." - Gandi, To Every Briton, 1940.
"If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British." - Gandi in his speech June 16, 1947, as quoted in Mahatma Gandhi : The Last Phase. |
|
|
| Откуда есть пошел кризис недвижимости в США. |
[May. 8th, 2009|04:31 pm] |
Obsessive Housing Disorder
"Changing notions of fairness and equity also cloud policymakers’ minds. Our praiseworthy initial efforts—to eliminate housing discrimination and provide all Americans an equal opportunity to buy a home—were eventually turned on their heads by advocates and politicians, who instead tried to ensure equality of outcomes. And so, for instance, when elected officials learned that under 50 percent of Hispanic households in America owned homes, Latino politicians sponsored a campaign to raise ownership. Yet the lower rate was perfectly understandable, given the lower educational levels, lower household incomes, and shorter tenure in the country of Latinos, compared with the average American household." |
|
|
| Interesting article on Israel in, of all places, The Australian. |
[May. 8th, 2009|02:50 pm] |
Israel still looks good, warts and all
"...In 1975 the UN passed an infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism. More than 15 years later this was rescinded. Now, Israel is frequently called an apartheid state. The foundational basis of Israel is argued to be illegitimate.
But this, surely, is remarkable. Nobody declares Saudi Arabia an illegitimate state because it has no democracy or human rights, and its doctrinaire Wahhabi Sunni establishment rules over a marginalised Shia minority. Nobody declares Turkey an illegitimate state because it has a disgruntled Kurdish minority, some of whom certainly aspire to statehood. Even North Korea, the most extreme Stalinist gulag on earth, is constantly reassured that the West accepts not only the legitimacy of its state, but does not even seek regime change. Only the legitimacy of Israel is routinely questioned: a special standard for the Jewish state.
Similarly, a malign Zionist or Jewish influence in the media is frequently asserted, even though the Western media is full of criticism of Israel. " |
|
|
| Для поклонников Малколма Гладвелла. |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|08:56 am] |
Mister Lucky
"This [Gladwell's Outliers] is a motivational manual. It is larded with inspirational stories, and with interactive games to capture the reader's attention--with handy charts and portentous graphs. Its language puts one in mind of, say, Tony Robbins. (On his blog Gladwell recently referred to two speaking engagements on his book tour as "shows.") We are in guru-land here. [...] Occasionally he tells the reader to write things down. Sometimes he preaches hope: "The world could be so much richer than the world we have settled for." Si, se puede. His stories display the mild melodrama of all inspirational books: they are either uplifting or tragic (and therefore also uplifting). One subject's tale is called "heartbreaking" three times in less than six pages."
"Unfortunately it is buried beneath more claims about society. "We think that, say, Nobel Prize winners in science must have the highest IQ scores imaginable, " Gladwell flatly states, before going on to patiently explain that many Nobel Prize winners do not go to Harvard. In a footnote, he admits that in fact Harvard "produces more Nobel Prize winners than any other school." Finally, he adds: "But wouldn't you expect schools like Harvard to win more Nobels than they do?" Here is the Gladwell method nicely on display: a questionable assumption, a partial walk-back of an earlier claim, and finally another questionable assumption synthesizing the half-reversal. The upshot is the mundane observation that Harvard produces more Nobel winners than anyone else, but not too many more. Gladwell wants to be provocative and inoffensive. It is, in fact, his special gift."
(The New Republic) |
|
|
| Fish Theology. |
[Jan. 12th, 2009|05:48 pm] |
2 goldfish were discussing Theology.
The discussion ended when a goldfish replied:
"There MUST be a God, who changes the water?" |
|
|
| Power of the Human Mind. |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|09:17 am] |
"I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|09:28 am] |
"Do not ever call a child a Muslim child or a Christian child – that is a form of child abuse because a young child is too young to know what its views are about the cosmos or morality. It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse. I wouldn't want to teach a young child, a terrifyingly young child, about hell when he dies, as it's as bad as many forms of physical abuse."
Richard Dawkins, via The Telegraph. |
|
|
| Finlandization. |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|10:55 am] |
"The art of bowing to the East so carefully that it could not be considered mooning the West." - Kari Suomalainen |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zapiens's journal
