Dr_Evil_Mouse

Your optimism is... well, I don't know what to do with optimism. All optimism is premature, if I can be glib and blunt. Way I boil it down, every step forward we take is another turn of the screw of power (bad metaphor, I know). What I mean is that each advancement that we make amounts to a new ratcheting up of power over ourselves and others, and that can only be a recipe for misery. Go back and look at the optimism of the post-Depression age; look at the industrialisation, the vigour, the nationalist spirit... where did that culminate? In the worst mechanised slaughters of peoples that Europe had ever produced since the Crusades. Look at the optimism of the post-WWII period; look at the excitement, the opportunity, the focused scientific minds... where did that lead? To the nuclear arms race, to the delirium of electronic media, to atrocities no major governments felt themselves responsible for ending, but of exploiting for political reasons at home. My point is that the logic of progess is paradoxical at best, at times, in how it promises to move us forward, but in fact pushes us back, but with better and better gadgets for inflicting harm on our fellow humans and other beings, all in the name of control. Nice progress. The same people who brought us mass-produced Aspirin also brought us Zyglon-B. The same kinds of corporations are up to no doubt the same fuckery today. Yet against this stand those voices who are oriented towards the urge for recognition, i.e. who need first to be heard and recognised, and taken, positively, into account. Who is anyone to say, No? I think we agree in this - that things need yet to be made better. Trick is - what are we willing to give up in order that others' lots be made better?

Those are perfectly fine.

Booyeah !! Looking to get a good, hearty SoOn fix! Hopefully the HM set will comprise some good "get off this goddam highway" vibes . Can't wait to see everybody again .

(I just summarised this thread for CJ qua "that bold, italicised thing I get when I drink scotch." On a more sober (!) note - Birdy - I don't think my sense of "identity" quite across. I'm with those folks (e.g., Adorno, Habermas, et al.) who think that thinking in terms of identity is a pathological means of complexity-reduction that begins with science and comes to term in the Holocaust. When I'm finished reading to the kids, I hope to put this across a bit less abstractly .

FUCK!

Because people fuck each other over when they can get away with it, that's why. Civilised society should allow that? Might makes right? Seriously! Maybe North Americans should just go back to, say, restricting public office to white, properties, Protestant, adult males, fer Chrissakes!

- how true!

That is too sad. Seems they had a real axe to grind with this guy. Years ago when we were travelling in Java, CJ and I spent an afternoon climbing a mountain, worked up a hunger/thirst, and, long story short, ended up having milk sold straight from the cow (yes, we were really hungry and thirsty; yes, it was still warm). I think of it now as a "peak milk experience." The rational part of me says adults don't need milk anyway, and the experiential part of me says that I get groggy and tired when I drink it now. Still, I can imagine why people would want untreated (if not untested) milk, and there's something weird about how they came after this guy. I'm not sure where I was going with that....

Welcome! Hope to see/hear you soon.

... except that having Tipper nearer to power would have been cultural very, very damaging. They're still - well, Tipper, at least - evangelical with a big axe to grind.

I find it's always important to remember that "political correctness" was a tag created on the left for the left, to keep people's tendency towards whitewashing language in check. The right, of course, have been the ones to pick up and run with it. As Jello Biafra said, if people want to call themselves, e.g., "womyn", then let them, and respect that, "just out of fucking respect." Equality? I'd say the kind of thing you're talking about has more to do with identity, which is a destructive concept.

Cheap dig . It's more of a "members of my government will agree with me or they don't count" kind of comment.

Happy birthday to ye!

Happy birthdays, messieurs!

I hate "Steve's" freedom.

Ditto....

Gwynne Dyer's made-for-TV doc War, though it was done in the early 1980s, would still be relevant, I'd think (I believe it was nominated for an Oscar, too, fwiw).

No doubt! He gets better when he has to engage people, imo. Re. EvilPodCast - :blush: - I'm actually surprised with how much I can get away with, given that it is a grammar and writing course!

That's what democracy looks like in the early 21st century, I guess. Isn't that sort of what happens in the Harper government, too?

Though if you do slouch, you're in a better position to do just that.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but it sounds from here that it'll be all that I'd have expected. The book seems to have succeeded through a combination of clever insight, sheer luck of the marketplace, and the fact that religious conservatives got all worked up about it (no such thing as bad publicity, as they say). I think that, on balance, it's been a good phenomenon, if only because it opens up all sorts of good conversations. I liked the book because the illustrated version had nice pictures.

Damn, this is going to be good and fine .

Grateful Dead, Cal Expo, 1990-06-08 (sitting in my now-emptied classroom - ah, how it's nice to make it feel like home)

Slouchers unite!

Thanks for all this, good peeps ! It's wonderful how trying to get my head (and body) around this instrument has really been opening up another dimension of the music I listen to and play. (Parenthetically - I always loved that little clip on an episode of WKRP where you catch Les Nesmann delivering the news about a country whose leader promised free elections as soon as every citizen learned to play a musical instrument ).