There were scandals a few years ago regarding test-cheating by operators of the US’ strategic missile systems. [nyt] But that’s just cheating. What about “rank incompetence” in the forces that prop up the nihilist triad of ‘mutual assured destruction’?
Voltaire by Houdon
We know of no religion without prayers; even the Jews have them – even though they had no published formulas back in the days when they chanted their canticles in their synagogues, those arrived much later.
I’ve keynoted and attended a lot of conferences in the course of my career. So, naturally, a piece of spam that looks like it’s a conference invitation goes right through my bayesian spam classifier.
The FBI and the US attorney’s office have also joined the investigation as authorities work to determine if it was a hate crime.
Since it’s OK to say hate-filled things, here:
During the “Arab Spring” (what a loathsome, patronizing, attitude we express!) the US Government repeatedly socialized ideas about how Twitter, etc, were important to helping anti-government protests, i.e.:
The Obama administration, while insisting it is not meddling in Iran, yesterday confirmed it had asked Twitter to remain open to help anti-government protesters. [guardian]
In an earlier posting I describe a fun word-game in which the word “pants” is substituted into quotes or lyrics of sentences. We used to play it at a company I started back in 1997, and I always thought we were the inventors of it (alcohol was involved!) We had another game that we played, which was the elaborate retelling of Official Jokes. There were 3 (the lion hunter joke, the parrot in the fridge joke, and the kennedy assassination joke) and since we all knew them, for some reason it was screamingly funny to hear someone trying to tell an old joke in a new way.
Jean Meslier
Philosophers, in all ages, have taken the part that seemed destined for the ministers of religion. The hatred of the latter for philosophy was never more than professional jealousy. All men accustomed to think, instead of seeking to injure each other, should unite their efforts in combating errors, in seeking truth, and especially in dispelling the prejudices from which the sovereigns and subjects suffer alike, and whose upholders themselves finish, sooner or later, by becoming the victims.
I grew up reading feats of military derring-do, and watching films like “Seven Samurai” and “Harakiri” – books and movies about martial glory and the character of the warrior. I noticed early on that a big piece of military glory and heroism is the stand against great odds – the acceptance that one’s mission will probably cost one’s life, but that’s a secondary concern: doing the right thing matters more. I read a lot about the samurai and bushido, and I always deeply felt the distinction between katsujin ken (the life-giving sword) and setsunin-to (the life-taking sword). Somehow it all ties together in my formative anarchy as part of something basically anti-authoritarian, because the authority and the establishment usually are the “powers that be” against which the life-giving sword must work.
“People want to de-legitimize my American-ness, and then April 15 rolls around and suddenly I’m American.” – Roxane Gay