I've never heard this allegedly Southern expression, "acting brand new." I can't vouch for anyone ever having said that. However, I find this article very helpful.
He's spoken off the cuff about race relations on a widely circulated podcast (even using the n-word) and then eloquently followed that with what can only be described as a sermon on race relations in America before breaking into song. He's challenged America to go deeper in its support of equality than retiring symbols of slavery (such as the Confederate flag) and impolitic words (such as the n-word).
While eulogizing a slain minister and state lawmaker allegedly killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C., he outlined a whole raft of ways in which discrimination remains and inequality continues to grow. And now, in the span of two weeks, he has announced two major reform packages — housing last week and criminal justice on Tuesday — that could, if ultimately implemented, be of particular benefit to people of color in the United States.
Here's the thing: This Obama might look or sound "brand new" to some Americans. He might even sound a little something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for).
We've been strongly critical of the President and his administration on very many points. None of these, however, have come up as criticisms of him. In fact, in general we've supported all of these things -- prison reform, courtesy, with some regret the retirement of the Confederate flag from the war memorial at the South Carolina statehouse as a show of support for black Americans. Housing is the only one in which I suspect there's any strong disagreement lurking, and that simply because the most of you are pretty opposed to government interference in markets of any sort.
She goes on to point out that he spoke to the NAACP. Well, of course he did. The NAACP's call this week to sand blast the monument off Stone Mountain ought to be opposed for the same reason we oppose ISIS or the Taliban when they destroy artistic symbols of the world before Islam. But I don't think the NAACP is a "hate group" because of it. (Oddly enough, that's the kind of rhetoric long-time NAACP-supporter the Southern Poverty Law Center uses.) We understand there's a painful history, and oppose the rhetoric and the idea without thinking they are haters for expressing their anger and bitterness.
The differences ultimately aren't about race. They're about America, about liberty, about sovereignty, about the Constitution and about duty. Those are the things that divide us from this President. The things he does that point to race are the main things that don't bother us.
Because contemporary ethical systems are bad. The two leading ethical systems are utilitarianism and deontology. Utilitarianism is really just a modern form of hedonism, i.e., an ethical system that takes pleasure and the avoidance of pain as its ground for "the good." Quite sophisticated versions of this philosophy have been known for millennia -- Socrates tries out a version towards the end of the Protagoras. It doesn't work because "to be good" doesn't align with "to cause pleasure and not pain."
This is true even if, as Socrates attempts, you suggest a model in which we're talking about 'the most' pleasure, so that minor pleasures now that cause worse pains later are not considered good. Sacrificing your life for your children may not bring any pleasure and only pain, but it might still be the ethical choice. Utilitarians try to avoid this problem by shifting to a kind of aggregate pleasure/pain as experienced by the whole society, but it still doesn't get it right. It still can't say just why it is more obvious for a parent to sacrifice his or her life for their own particular child, but extraordinarily excellent for a stranger to lay down his life to save the child. At worst, the movement to aggregate pleasure as the standard for utilitarianism can end up saying that we ought to sacrifice the child, especially if the death of the child can mean increased aggregate pleasure for the community -- witness the Planned Parenthood atrocities currently under discussion.
So, naturally ethicists who are utilitarians won't be especially excellent people. It's not just (as the article alleges) that they don't follow their own rules. It's that their system is pointed to the wrong ends.
Deontology attempts to establish duties. It's healthier than utilitarianism, but it still has the problem of rooting its ultimate standard for goodness. Does your duty come from reason? Kant makes an argument that it can't come from anywhere else: it is only reason that allows us to make choices that are more than actions from animal instinct. Reason must therefore be the standard for ethics. If ethics comes from reason, well, rationality is the same for all of us. Thus, we will all naturally agree about what is right and wrong. Kant thought this was so obvious that there really could only be one moral philosophy.
Empirical evidence demonstrates conclusively that Kant was not right about that. The problem, I think, is this:
1) Reason applies most perfectly to logical/mathematical objects;
2) Logical objects are like physical objects only by analogy;
3) Analogies always break at some point.
Thus, it turns out that rather than discovering laws of reason that ought to govern all human situations, we end up discovering that no two situations are really alike. We reason by analogy to previous situations, and to general working rules-of-thumb, but we can't come up with rational laws for human behavior of the sort the early moderns hoped to find. Ethicists who do state that they've found such laws and try to apply them end up doing injustice by trying to force square pegs into round holes (because the hole looks at least a little bit like a square, and certainly more like a square than a triangle).
So of course ethicists are bad people. They have devoted their lives to trying to make the world comply with bad systems. Naturally, at some point, the frustration leads them to tend to give up hope and just do what they want.
Still waiting for any reliable information. All the news knows for now is that one police officer and two Marines were injured, but not how badly. The shooter is reportedly dead, but no information about who he was has been revealed as yet.
The Mojomatics, out of Venice.
This stuff amuses me no end. If I heard this on the radio, I'd be thinking "hey, a new alt-country rock band, like the Old '97s." But no. They got the style down.
It is right and proper to be angry right now. I am myself furious. Just the last month or so has been one heavy blow after another for the country I grew up in and love. This Iran deal, which appears to cede everything to Iran in return for nothing, empowering, enriching, and arming a power that has been the world leader in state sponsored terrorism. The inversion of religious freedom, which has gone from being a point of bipartisan agreement to the next target for elimination by the courts and activists. The assault on Southern culture and history, which went from a bipartisan agreement to do something to show love and respect for our fellow citizens in the wake of a vicious murder to the destruction and defacing of memorials to the dead and calls to sand-blast Stone Mountain. The way in which the two parties have colluded to sell out our sovereignty to foreign courts via the massive TPP and T-TIP deals. Failure theater from the Republican "opposition." Failure theater from the Left, too, where those trade deals are concerned. Of course the political class' absolute determination to foist "comprehensive immigration reform" on us, in spite of endless promises to focus on security. The clear proof, from Lois Lerner and the IRS to Hillary Clinton's emails, that the law will not be enforced to control the powerful. I could go on. These are just stories from the last few weeks. You know them as well as I do.
So yes, anger is right and appropriate. Andrew Klaven is right, though, that we cannot afford to be stupid. We need to be cunning. We need to think and act strategically. The ordinary means of politics have failed. Winning elections isn't enough. Opposition will have to take a new strength from other means -- legal means always, to be sure, but means of resistance to rather than cooperation with authority. This does not come naturally for many conservatives, whose hearts are loyal and who have good reason to think of many expressions of authority -- especially the military and police -- as beloved institutions involving many personal friends. I suggest we remember that this shift is necessary to protect them. It is to protect them from being asked to do things that are violations of their oath, but it is also just to protect them: Iran has already killed many of them, and our government is now acting to empower that nation further. It is in the interest of all our sheepdogs that we resist the current powers that be. We have to save the country from its government.
Here, then, is Klavan's advice, which I think good.
You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard. Poverty programs are misguided, not because the poor are undeserving criminals, but because dependency on government breeds dysfunction and more poverty. Guns save lives and protect liberty. Property rights guarantee liberty. Religious rights are essential to liberty. Without liberty we are equal only in misery.
These things are true. They’re true for white people and black people, male people and female people, straight people and gay people. We should support the smartest, most proven, most statesmanlike candidate who best represents those principles. And we should do it out of — dare I say the word? — love. Love for our neighbors, our fellow citizens, white and black, male and female, straight and gay.
“Perfect love casts out fear.”
We must proceed without fear, without hate, but with complete commitment and trust in the providence of heaven.
Hillary Clinton and the State Department defend the withholding of a September 29, 2012, email discussing the Benghazi talking points as a "deliberative privilege"--even though it seems that what they were deliberating was the cover-up they were engaged in.
While getting the link I noticed that Project Gutenberg has a warning up,which I'll reproduce here:
Beware of the TPP!
Project Gutenberg is concerned about a new secret international treaty,
the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This will extend copyright term
protection worldwide, thus halting the growth of the public domain. To
learn more, and join Project Gutenberg in speaking out against this
treaty, visit The Internet Archive.
I don't know about you, Jacques, but I'm getting tired of a certain privileged class of folk trying to run our lives.
Until I started reading through this material, I really didn't understand how fully the executive branch had authority over the sanctions. Most of the sanctions depend on executive orders, and even the legislation that has passed on this gives the president broad authority.
I think this solves a mystery for me. A month or two ago, someone posted a rant at Ace's or Hot Air (or both?) accusing Sen. Bob Corker and the Republicans of effectively guaranteeing that whatever deal Obama struck with the Iranians would be automatically accepted by giving Congress a normal vote on it (which Democrats could block and would not be veto-proof) instead of insisting on a 2/3s majority vote in the Senate as the Constitution requires. However, this appears to ignore the fact that sanctions against Iran have always depended primarily on executive authority, not treaty powers or legislation. So, I may actually defend Corker and the Republicans on this.
The use of psychotherapy as a political discipline was characteristic of Maoists and Stalinists. This is the most alarming thing I've seen in... well, the day includes the Iran deal, so not really all that long.
In my experience, Iraqi forces do better on the offense than defense. They can't hold a position in the face of artillery or superior maneuver, but they can take defended ground as long as you don't expect them to hold it later. Since what we all want most is dead ISIS members, that will suffice.
The president of a think tank that arranged a conference call Monday between the White House and progressive activist organizations in which participants discussed how to coordinate public defense of President Obama’s pending Iran deal has another ultimate target in mind.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, wants Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, arguing such a move will ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program and will help to create a Mideast nuclear-free zone.
2) I thought we were supposed to believe that this wonderful new Iran deal was going to "halt Iran's illicit nuclear program." Now the concept is this deal requires Israeli disarmament to ensure Iranian good behavior? Sounds like the deal's promised oversight of Iran isn't as solid as it's being portrayed.
You know those guys who get tattoos of Chinese characters that really don't end up meaning what they thought? There's an Asian version of that problem. When I lived in China, a few times I had to gently caution someone about a t-shirt they'd bought with an inappropriate English phrase on it, one that would make them terribly ashamed to wear if they'd understood what it meant. More often, I'd see horrible mistranslations like these.
The lesson, I suppose, is to stick to your own language unless you're really quite fluent.
... and some of the girls, too. This video is best watched full-screen and sound blasting. Some profanity, though.
Groups of players in EVE Online are organized into corporations (corp / corps - yes, the plural is pronounced "corpse" - maybe Obama plays?). Many (though not all) corporations focus on fleet combat -- training players, building the right ships for their missions and tactics, and then running them. Fleet commanders have to recruit volunteers to fight, organize fleets around a particular type of mission, employ scouts to find enemy ships, fleets, or installations, consider logistics such as fleet composition, travel time, solar system features like asteroid belts and other stellar "terrain," repair and re-arming mid-fleet, and of course be good at (virtual) combat command and control.
Each fleet role -- commander, scout, tackler (focused on grabbing and tying down enemy ships), damage dealer, logistics ship, etc. -- has particular player skill, in-game character skill, and ship requirements. Different corporations develop different strategies and tactics depending on their goals. The deadly corporation Rooks and Kings, for example, developed the famous "pipe bomb" tactic which we see near the end of the video.
Besides combat, though, EVE has a more or less complete economy which is about as free market as it gets. The raw components for the ships we fight in are mined from asteroid belts, planets, and moons by players, then sold to other players who build the ships, then sold to other players who transport them to trade systems, then sold to yet other players who sell them to me to go blow up. Prices constantly shift based on supply and demand, and a lot of players pay for their ships by playing the market. Speaking of markets:
Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is just that economist. Working for the Icelandic company CCP Games, he oversees the virtual economy of the massively multiplayer video game Eve Online. Within this world, players build their own spaceships and traverse a galaxy of 7,500 star systems. They buy and sell raw materials, creating their own fluctuating markets. They speculate on commodities. They form trade coalitions and banks.
It’s a sprawling economy, with more than 400,000 players participating in its virtual market — more people, in fact, than live in Iceland. Inflation, deflation and even recessions can occur.
...
In Eve Online, Guðmundsson oversees an economy that can fluctuate wildly — he says it expanded 42 percent between February 2011 and February 2012, then contracted 15 percent by the summer. His team will periodically have to address imbalances in the money supply. For instance, they can curb inflation by introducing a new type of weapon, say, to absorb virtual currency — not unlike the way a central bank might sell bonds to shrink the money supply. (In theory, Eve Online’s currency has real-world value — the highest-level spaceships, the Titans, are worth the equivalent of $5,000 to $8,000.)
...
“We’ve even seen large alliances trying to manipulate aspects of the market to control the supply and affect prices,” Guðmundsson says. “It’s a lot like OPEC.”
In some ways, the economy of Eve Online is a libertarian experiment on a grand scale. There are few overarching rules. Labor markets quickly bounce back from recession because there’s no minimum wage. Players can voluntarily band together to create all sorts of innovative arrangements, including corporations, trade alliances and financial institutions.
Eve Online’s banks aren’t supported by a central bank or lender of last resort. Much like Ron Paul has proposed for the United States, there’s no fractional reserve banking, in which banks need to keep only a portion of their deposits on hand at any time and can lend the rest out freely.
“That increases the burden on banks to be diligent and efficient,” Guðmundsson says. On the downside, the financial system is sometimes ripe for abuse — one large bank, EBank, collapsed in 2009 when its founder seized its virtual funds and traded them for real-life cash on the black market. ...
The article ends with some interesting speculations about applications in real life.
Need to know your corp's fleet doctrines for the ships you fly? Join Fleet-Up. Need to keep track of markets around the universe? Eve-Central. Want to quickly play around with different module fittings on a ship to maximize its performance for a particular mission and your character's particular skillset? EFT. Need voice communications for fleet action? Mumble. Want to keep track of who's killing who? Try your corp killboard. Scouting for a fleet and need quick maps of regions and systems, with recent data on kills, jumps, and players in system? Dotlan. Just spent two hours in Jita shopping for good deals on interceptors, then planning and executing a supply run only to get ambushed and incinerated by a pirate fleet three jumps out from home, losing the ships, modules and ammo you'd planned to fly over the weekend, and need to chill out? Try some EVE music videos:
What's the value of all this? Besides fun, I don't know. I do know that fleet planning makes one really think about logistics, that commanding a fleet of volunteers in virtual battle is like directing a mass cat attack, and that the whole thing reeks of free market economics. Kinda cool.
But it looks like the terms of the agreement are even more strict than what they rejected in their popular referendum.
Well, it seems that being completely out of money will do wonderful things to focus the desire to make a deal. In reality, the Greek government had no choice. They could accept the deal and keep themselves afloat a while longer (until this money also inevitably runs out) and deal with the consequences of having to tell the Greek people "yeah, about that referendum..." later, or not take the bailout and simply collapse now. It is still my considered opinion that by continuing to kick the can down the road, they're just making the (inevitable) collapse worse. But those in power in Greece wish to remain in power for as long as they can. But mark my words, they're finished one way or the other. The people who elected and supported them will see this as a rank betrayal (and honestly, rightly so; you can't claim to run on rejecting austerity measures only to accept even harsher ones without consequence), and the ones who didn't support them in the first place are certainly not going to suddenly change their mind in favor of saying "I told you so."
So having turned to the far-left and having them fold, I now expect the Greeks to turn to the far-right, who will fare no better, but will at least give the people a scapegoat of Jews and foreigners to blame. And that will pretty much end as it always does. So, we still have that phase of this tragedy to look forward to.
