8/3/11

Direct nonviolent action to recover our democracy


Silent peoples' vigils everywhere
Nonviolent no speeches just be there
Let it be known you'll vote for what is fair
Begin the vigils now show millions care


Why The Automobile is Moribund


The automobile is moribund because they dictate the design of our environment and our environment is unsustainable
We need to move toward greater concentrations of population living economically in secure environments that are mainly walkable
Work and home need not be in the same place but should be within the boundaries of  living area
Today's zoning is sadly subservient to the car
The cost of cars and fuel will become prohibitive
Motor vehicle casualties and deaths worldwide compete with wars and epidemics but are largely ignored
Car free communities could come into existence with little effort but would generate many new jobs and industries
Car free communities could be the basis of a huge global economy as the oil runs out or becomes prohibitively expensive

Until our people rise as in Tahrir

Until our people rise as in Tahrir
We'll hear the daunting laughs of billionaires
Their mindless minions cry out liberty
As they dismantle our democracy

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Why do we not consider wholesale but doable measures to reduce the need for oil

Why do we  not consider wholesale but doable measures to reduce the need for oil
And the answer is that such things as car-free towns and cities would dislocate the economy
 Matrix based eco-construction would up end the current construction (sprawl) industry
 Braudel noted the conservatism of capitalism 
Yet revolutions have occurred precisely when a self-evident (costly oil not getting any cheaper) becomes a basis for seeing the profit in the alternative

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The language of freedom has been appropriated by those who would do us in

Let me be specific
The killers in Somalia who are preventing the exit of dying people
The inflexible people in our own Congress who somehow managed to hijack both narrative and agenda
The Koch spawn who explicitly regard themselves as messengers of liberty
The reason they would do us in is that in every case it is my way or the highway
And when that is true liberty is a sham
Liberty requires tolerance and a commitment to democracy
It can never be perfect because it is the product of compromises in all relationships
The forces mentioned in the first lines above are oblivious to these values
They are therefore inimical to liberty and are in fact trying to do us in
Why
Because liberty is life itself and - as our liberty is threatened  - so too is life itself
The picture on the front page of yesterday's NYT is the sign that we must read in order to gird ourselves against the forces representing not freedom but tyranny

 
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Mitt Romney Liberality Index

Aristotle's Virtues Applied to Mitt Romney - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com:

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Liberality - This is a tough one. He was reasonably free with the goodies back in the Commonwealth but as he moved West he became more parsimonious. We sense a trend downward here, if not a free fall. No ratings. Too volatile.

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Mitt RomneyTemperance Rating

Aristotle's Virtues Applied to Mitt Romney - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com:

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Temperance - We have encouraging news here. If temperance is more or less your even keel, neither hot nor cold sort of thing, we give Mitt a solid B+ with a Honor Rating of, oh, say Six.

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Mitt Romney Courage Index

Aristotle's Virtues Applied to Mitt Romney - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com:

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"Courage - We give him a 4.5 on this one. One never knows. But recent performances are not encouraging. All embracing Honor Rating Minus"

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John Boehner has a lot of nerve

John Boehner Sings a Drinking Song - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com

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Yo ho ho Obama must go/ Fill my coffers high/ I'll bring the booze/ We can't looooooooze -- / I doubt he'll even try

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Of course bees have feelings

Do Bees Have Feelings?: Scientific American: "We should take seriously the possibility that it feels like something to be an insect."

Are there any left?


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Peirce was a realist as opposed to an idealist

‘Real’ things or characters, in Peirce's logic, are those which are what they are independently of anyone's belief about them. Peirce was a realist as opposed to an idealist in that he supposed that some of our ideas truly represent realities which do not depend on our minds for their being—although our
cognition of them does depend on our minds, of course.


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Peirce and Semiotics

gnoxic Sourcenet: "is a very broadly based discipline first named by John Locke, but first developed in its current form by C.S. Peirce, who identified it with logic as the science of thinking, learning and knowing."

Another gateway.

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Gateway to detailed exposition of Peirce's signs

About Minute Semeiotic | Minute Semeiotic: "A sound and detailed extension of Peirce’s analysis of signs to his full set of ten divisions and sixty-six classes is perhaps the most pressing problem for Peircean semioticians. What is needed first of all is a well motivated rationale for the ordering of Peirce’s ten divisions of signs."

This is only one page of an extensive project which will fascinate some, I warrant. It will take you some time to ferret out everything.

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With this sentence I quibble a bit

Peirce: selections and summaries:

"Peirce's work is very systematic and does not lend itself to being quoted out of context."

That Peirce has a system is clear. That statements of Peirce can do what they do standing alone is obviously true as well. I would rather have them do thus than not, It might be Peircean to say that thinking in signs no statement is what it becomes in itself. And never is. Time is always in motion.

A Way into C. S. Peirce

Peirce: selections and summaries

Always nice to find someone who knows more than I do about a subject of endless fascination - the largely ignored progenitor of the age we live in. Let's say, if the prior age was the age of Aristotle, this is the age of Peirce. It will take three centuries or so for this to sink in.

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Americans inspired the Norway killer

About Robert Spencer - Jihad Watch

And this one got the most citations in his copious hate manifesto.

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Obama Never Caved

Obama Hammer in Next Debt Battle With GOP May Be Bush Tax Cuts - The Daily Beast: "Obama is perceived to have lost to Republicans in the debt deal, but the expiring Bush tax cuts could give him the upper hand in round two of the negotiations, says Patricia Murphy."

Obama does what he can do. Democrats always had the option of supporting him. Republicans always had the option of cooperating and acknowledging his as an American. Repeat Obama does what he can do. Boehner yelled in vain.

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Jon Stewart becomes a spoiled brat Obama believes in democracy (Video)

Jon Stewart on the debt deal: ‘So, the Democrats got hosed’ | Raw Replay

I thought Jon was a little brighter than this, but boys will be boys.

In 2010, after Obama was skewered by the right for two years while Democrats cringed, the people voted in the toxic GOP we have now. In 2012, we can reverse our massive 2010 misjudgment and even pray that Obama will win the support of his party. Until then, it is Jon's best approach to suck it up and see things as they are, not as what will get laughs based on erroneous premises. We create the basis for the solutions we get. The President does not change in what he says or what he eventually achieves pending the proper functioning of democracy.

Surely this must be an exaggeration

Catholic Church child protection chief caught with 4,000 child porn pictures - Digg

The poor fellow was no doubt a hoarder as well as a repressed pervert. Seriously, it is such stories that force Maureen Dowd to come up with justifications of the zillions of priests out there who have no porn pictures whatsoever. It is a losing battle. We are at the point in culture when we universally give people a pass on porn unless they happen to be public figures or known religionists. My recipe: See the porn as a tacky substitute for what can be obtained in other ways without cluttering up space with thousands of images.


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Take Care

Man Finds Suspicious White Powder in Florida Keys, Decides to Snort It, and Dies - Digg

Take Care entered our vernacular in the wake of Cat Stevens Wild World which was also the point at which the post-WW2 definition of the American Dream began to sour into the American Drug Adventure, which continues to the point that folk have evidently neglected the once-ominous mantra of our minor dark age.

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"Social science should not have control or prediction as its aim"

The Charles Sanders Peirce Daily - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com

Headline and following in quotes are from A Thief of Peirce, Jackson, 1995, 280-281.

"It's object should be to increase our understanding of social realities ... No one who desires dictatorial control over other persons can be a scientist."

The ultimate or ontological values common to all protect against the dictatorial urge. Democracy mediates among interests. Tolerance is strong in the face of provocation. Helpfulness motivates awareness of universal aspirations. And non-idolatry modifies the regal impulse.

Thought for the day: Celebrate Veblenian iconoclasm.


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Crummy Commercials

Commercial Complaints - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: "I don't know about you, but when I am watching television I either want to think or relax or both. Good television draws me in, intrigues me, sometimes inspires me,sometimes hypnotizes me...and then I am rudely interrupted by commercials for funeral homes, hospices, insurance, lawyers, various medicines, and smoking cessation helplines."

I love the ones that suggest reasons you could die from using a product. This is not intrusion. It's mind rape.

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RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press