Henry Rollins had a bit in one of his spoken word performances, in which he ridiculed a pentagon spokesperson for talking about “the bunker buster bomb.” Rollins said it quickly, like “BunkerBusterBomb” and exposed the idea of calling a deadly weapon something so silly; pentagon brass sound like kids talking about putting dog shit in a paper bag and throwing it at eachother.
Authoritarians are not used to having to justify their actions; usually they’ll just follow the shortest path between “what I want” and how to make it happen. So, like most human beings who think I’ve been simultaneously baffled and horrified by Trump’s imbecilic attempts to trigger an “obamagate” scandal.
I’m looking at you, Barack and Joe. From Howard Zinn’s speech on “The Southern Influence in Politics” (1963)
Coronavirus can be thought of as a dry run for how well organized human civilization responds to a global natural disaster. I’m not counting WWI and WWII as “natural disasters” – in fact, they were more like dry runs, too; another chance for concerted and sensible human response to a crisis and another opportunity lost.
I was amazed by how quickly Congress was able to jack open the nation’s checkbook and write a ginormous rubber check with the “Pay To: _________” part left blank.
Someday I want to do a series of posts, attempting to unpack how free market capitalist ideology evolved. There are some interesting characters who have stepped forward and said things about markets that seem just flat-out goofy, to me – such as Hayek’s unsupported insisting that any regulation of capitalism results in totalitarian “serfdom” for the people.
The google word significance score is always a fun tool to play with. I’m glad it’s not part of my profession, though, because I’d insist on something better and I’d want to know more about how the metric is generated.
The New York Stock Exchange trading room floor is a flurry of activity from the minute the bell rings until the second it closes. People are running everywhere, jammed together, in a single large room.
Andreas Avester is having to deal with someone stealing his art and using it as a commercial logo. [http://blamscoon.e-monsite.com/] What’s sad is that they could have commissioned a logo from Andreas, like I did, and gotten a superb piece of art that they could use without headaches. But, people are just ignorant about copyright and, thanks to Google, youtube, Instagram, etc., it’s a huge problem for artists.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – a complicated and irritating man, but one of the enlightenment philosophers who helped justify the state’s authority. Nowadays, he’s mostly known for the social contract, which was his work that established a basis for a possibly legitimate government.