when the status quo frustrates.

Education, Schooling, and John Gatto

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

“We want one class to have a liberal education.  We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson

Education and school have been the subject, direct or tangential, of a number of posts lately.  Most notably this fantastic, honest piece about Antigone’s school experience.  Government schooling is an emotionally charged subject since most of us attended school every non-summer weekday for 12+ years.  Many of us are sending or planning to send our children to this institution for the same duration.

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07.05.2009 Punkass!, A million ways to mortgage the future, sharing the awesome 30 Comments

Following Orders from Things that Don’t Exist has Negative Results

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Thank you Pew Research Center for doing the legwork to confirm things that we already knew: in this case, the inverse relationship between human decency and church attendance.

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03.05.2009 Punkass!, A million ways to mortgage the future, Godbaggery 14 Comments

The Passion of Ayn Rand

Monday, April 27th, 2009

That is the title of her biography, written by one of her ex-adherents who also happened to be the wife of a man Ayn had a long-term affair with–given all that, one would expect the tone of the book to be rather more unsympathetic than otherwise. However, that’s not really the case. I read it over a decade ago for a college class–the one and only women studies course I ever took required us to choose and write an in-depth paper about an influential woman of the first half of the twentieth century. I chose Ayn Rand, for three reasons: first, because she fit the criteria as presented; second, because I have a rebellious streak and knew full well that we were expected to choose a feminist, regardless of what the criteria explicitly stated; and third, because I was genuinely interested in the woman behind Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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27.04.2009 A million ways to mortgage the future, Big Business, Books, Brilliant Ideas, Celebrity, Culture, Economy Blues, Governmental Failures, Lick My Jackboots of Love, Mutterings Of The Disturbed, Philosophisizining, Shame on you for not being rich white and privileged, She's (or he's) crafty, capitalism 19 Comments

Teaching the Controversy

Monday, March 30th, 2009

“A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners and that recognize the matchless value of every life.

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids; and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

Human life is a gift from our creator, and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.”

Former president George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31, 2006

I’ve always liked that quote, especially the part about creating human-animal hybrids. I’ve been facilitating the mass production of human-animal hybrids since 2000–thousands of pounds of them at this point. But others are way ahead of me–the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, for example, has been pumping ‘em out at the commercial scale since I was in grade school. But I don’t think that former president Dubya really understood that when he made the above remarks. I don’t think he really understands what “human-animal hybrids” are. I suspect he meant he’d been reading too much science fiction and got really emotionally involved in one of those stories where innocent humans are force-fed wolf genes as part of a secret government plot to create super-soldiers. I figure Dubya has no problem suspending his disbelief when it comes to the idea of the government doing stuff behind its citizen’s backs in the name of national security. It seems likely that he’s absolutely unaware that all the insulin, for instance, that has been distributed in the United States since 2006 has been derived from human-animal hybrids, and was the majority of it for a long time before that.

The reason I’m contemplating this fairly old quote anew is the most recent installment via the Texas Board of Education of the ongoing drama that is the attempt to teach only science theories in science classrooms. People like Dubya really can’t cope with science at all. In the majority of cases, and certainly in his case, that’s because they haven’t taken a single science class since whatever general crap they were forced to sign up for in high school to obtain the absolute minimum number of science credits required in their state to graduate, or possibly they copped into one of those “Physics is Phun!” courses that fulfill similiar minimum science credit graduation requirements in college. (I am so not making up that course name, by the way.) But that’s not always or exclusively the case.

Back to Texas:

Dueling theories of how the universe was created got a split decision Friday night from the Texas Board of Education, which required examination of “all sides of scientific evidence” in new science standards, but rejected language requiring teachers to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories.

The debate pitted proponents of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution against supporters of religion-based theories of intelligent design, or creationism.

“Science loses. Texas loses, and the kids lose because of this,” board chairman Don McLeroy, a creationist, told the Dallas Morning News.

“A creationist.” Is that some kind of career, now..? A small bit of Googling reveals that Creationist McLeroy is actually Dr. McLeroy, a dentist, and got a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Texas A&M. Now, I don’t know what’s changed exactly in the past several decades since he attended college, but while electrical engineering degrees are not pure-sciences heavy, they do require a bit of college-level science courses, namely some freshman- and sophomore-level physics and chemistry. So we can’t really assume in his case a lack of real exposure to the knowledge that the world, not to mention the rest of the universe, isn’t made of magic and senseless acts of beauty. (Maybe that scared him off the electrical engineering track and onto dentistry, though–that’d make sense.)

But really, I can sort of empathize. The clear thread running through the anti-teaching-science-only-in-science-class camp is that knowing too much about the world and all the things in it from a science standpoint destroys the mystical and terrifying awe of what could possibly be the cause of rainbows, tsunamis and how a real live baby pops out of a woman’s body nine months after a man shoots some stuff from the pee hole in his penis that resembles nothing more than papier-mache glue into her vagina. The more you learn about how and why things work, first at the macroscopic level and then the microscopic level and even beyond, the less mysteriously gorgeous those little everyday miracles start to look. In other words, the less and less likely you are to believe the explanations and rationales for these things provided by the Holy Bible instead.

And in our public schools? Religion doesn’t get taught. Only, for example, biology gets taught. One might adopt the line of reasoning that, since public schools are required by law to remain silent about religion, then the only input that children receive on the subject is from their parents, whereas the school’s version of biology has no such monopoly–parents are free to instruct their children in biology as well as religion. However, the fact that the deck is already stacked in religion’s favor this way doesn’t sway these folks–they don’t want their children being taught biology in school at all if the answers that biology provides about the world around us disagree with the ones the Bible does. Since they usually can’t swing quite that, they strive to have the gaps and unsureties, no matter how major or minor, in scientific theories dwelt on and debated in the biology classroom. This, they say, is teaching the controversy.

You know, I’m willing to buy into this. Really, I am. I would absolutely go for this, if we get to do the same thing with Intelligent Design, which huge swathes of the folks of McLeroy’s ilk swear up and down isn’t religion and therefore, should not be a problem in public schools. I recommend we institute a mandatory new class for all high schoolers, that must be taken before they can graduate, and call it Evolution and Intelligent Design: Teaching the Controversy! The theory of evolution would be thoroughly explored, what it can explain as well as what it can’t…and the idea of an Intelligent Designer would also be explored, and what it can explain as well as what it can’t. The two course textbooks could be Of Pandas and People for the evolution controversy side, and The Blind Watchmaker for the intelligent design controversy si—

…yeah, like any of those people would ever let their kids anywhere near that book.

But if they’re willing to deal, I am. :D

I leave you with this thought from our beloved Onion: The Theory of Intelligent Falling

30.03.2009 "Science", A million ways to mortgage the future, Godbaggery, HUH!? 3 Comments

The market for half-assed theories is always strong

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

In times of economic uncertainty, whose advice should you heed? If you said an “instigator of several nationally televised PR stunts” you fail, and deserve what you get:

With a brutal wave of U.S. layoffs, and the single greatest number of job losses since 1974, one controversial media expert is encouraging more people to quit their jobs preemptively.

David Seaman, author of Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz and instigator of several nationally televised PR stunts, says that quitting today is the answer for millions of workers caught in limbo.

Seaman’s plan is that you preemptively quit your job on the basis that “I quit before I was fired” has magic properties that will make you seem like a god among men at the temp agency. This is a great plan, hampered only by its immense stupidity. For example, complete the following fantasy:

Picture this, you are waiting in line with thirty other candidates in an employment office for an interview. When you get to talk to the HR guy he asks, “So you lost your job like the other hundred people I have seen today?” You can honestly say, “No, I had a good job and I was promoted but I quit because I can do better and I am highly sought after”.

In my mind, the interview ends like this:

“So you quit before you even had any interviews for a new job? Were they not giving even token severance packages? Seriously, did you think that through at all? Have you even glanced at the news lately?”
“Ummm, errr….”

The other problem is that if enough people did this, your interview would actually go like this:
“So did you lose your job like the other hundred people I saw today, or are you one of those dumbasses who quit without a plan before they could be laid off?”

But hey, it’s not David Seaman’s problem. With more than 11,000 views on CNN’s iReport and the consequent television facetime he can milk those views for, he’s prolly doing all right. But there’s no reason to just sit there hating him when you can let him inspire you: in tough times, the unscrupulous can always prey upon the desperate or the stupid, and with a 24 hour news day that has to be filled with something cheap and new every day the opportunity has never been better! So just don’t quit your dayjob until you know what your schtick for FOX news is.

10.02.2009 A million ways to mortgage the future, Work 1 Comment

Contemplating Obama and Economic Recovery

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

While I don’t agree with everything he has to say in the column he wrote today for the Washington Post, I can’t help but admire his obvious literacy. It’s funny how one falls into habits of thought without realizing it–I’d really come to view the President of the United States as merely a symbol for a specific ideology, not as an individual who acted upon national matters after giving them in-depth and intelligent thought specific to their particular circumstances and concerns.

I’ve had the same mental whiplash lately with feminist issues–I had subconsciously come to accept that women were going to be irrevocably second-class citizens where the national government (and most state governments) were concerned; the fight was to move the populace as much as possible to limit the powers of governance that naturally adhered to this ideal. The notion of “top-down” changes in women’s status had completely left me as something that actually came to mind as a possible solution. All directives coming from the “top” were going to be anti-woman; the only workable strategies were going to have to come from we-the-masses.

But, back to the economic stimulus package–I’ve been really hesitant to weigh in because economics is not my area of expertise, especially on the macroscopic scale. I never feel qualified to make pronouncements about what will and will not work to help repair our national economy; however, I will go ahead and venture my tentative opinions here; I’d love to hear from others with better knowledge than me of how macroeconomics work (and who are not simply quoting a party line, from either side of the aisle).

The Prez writes, in his WaPo article:

Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.

Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.

Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.

And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.

From which I distill the following*:

(*If I’m partially or completely off-base with any of these, definitely let me know! Like I said, this whole area of understanding is not really my forte.)

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05.02.2009 A million ways to mortgage the future, Brilliant Ideas, Economy Blues, Obamarama, Politics 3 Comments

Looking Forward to More Epicycles, Space Ether and Laetrile

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

Clearly I’ve been feeling a little sensitive lately on the subject of, er, “science.” Er, “science” is defined as the stuff put forth by various ideologues and media hacks that contains science-y sounding words in an attempt by them to impress whatever hair they’ve gotten up their ass at that particular moment into other people’s brains.

So when I stumbled across this article yesterday, my interest was definitely piqued–it begins thusly:

The job of science reporters is to take complicated subjects and translate them for readers who are not scientifically sophisticated. Critics say that the news media oversimplify and aren’t skeptical enough of financing by special interests.

Somebody else has noticed this problematic trend! I am thrilled. Seriously. The main difference between the article author’s take on the situation and mine is that she seems to feel that said oversimplification and credulity are more accidental than not. I think that some of it goes beyond oversimplification into outright agenda-oriented slanting and that the credulity is, at the minimum, blindly wilful. Or maybe I just don’t want to believe that so many people could really be THAT stupid…she does have some great advice for those who are screwing up science for public consumption out of well-meaning ignorance, though.

-Look for the evidence. News organizations should give weight to scientific evidence, whether it is about global warming or what the medical establishment says about Lyme disease.

Post science reporter David Brown, who is also a physician, talked about this in a recent speech at the University of Iowa. It will be published next year. “In science, there is a natural tension between evidence and opinion, and evidence always wins. What authority figures have to say about anything in science is ultimately irrelevant.

That’s just beautiful. (sniff!)

-Look for context. Are the results preliminary? Does the research conflict with or confirm earlier work? Has it been published in a reputable science journal or been presented at a science meeting?

Put more plainly: No matter how beautifully some crackpot shit dovetails with your personal preconceptions, you don’t get to jump upon it like a starving tiger shrieking to the world that you’ve found “scientific proof of–!” unless it meets the above criteria.

-Look beyond the lead paragraph and headline. Remember that antioxidants were touted to prevent all sorts of disease; research proved that not to be true. One recent Page 1 story, by veteran Post science reporter Rob Stein, attracted comment and criticism. Stein wrote that a study produced “powerful evidence” that a blood test designed to monitor inflammation could identify “seemingly healthy people who are at increased risk for a heart attack or stroke” and that a widely used statin drug offered “potent protection against the nation’s leading killers.” The story quoted the study’s author and other prominent experts as calling the findings a “breakthrough,” a “blockbuster” and “absolutely paradigm-shifting.”

The Foundation for Integrative AIDS Research (FIAR) — which has a stake in the issue because AIDS drugs can raise “bad” cholesterol levels — said stories about the study reflected “shoddy boosterism for the pharmaceutical industry rather than a careful and balanced analysis.”

and

-”Marcia Angell, a physician and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine who is now a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, said journalists can write “overly dramatic” stories for “gullible” readers. “Everyone has an interest in hyping news of medical research — the researcher, the institution, reporters. Readers should be very skeptical of new findings. Newspapers are in the business of telling you the news, which needs to be startling or counterintuitive or flies in the face of what we knew. By definition these stories are less likely to be accurate.”

Don J. Melnick, professor of conservation biology at Columbia University, said that if a story “doesn’t sound newsworthy or front page-worthy, it will be buried or not printed at all. That tends to promote people hyping the research. They have to convince their editors to put it in the paper.”

In other words: “Buyer beware.”

In related news, via PZ at Pharyngula:

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Mediabistro’s TVNewser broke the story.

“We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” said CNN spokesperson Barbara Levin. “Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise, which is produced by the Anderson Cooper 360 program, there is no need for a separate unit.”

I’m a little startled by the assertion here that environmental science news is the overwhelming bulk of all science reporting out there and once you’ve got some dude covering that, you don’t really NEED anybody else to cover any other science-y topic, b’Gad!

No, I will not immediately assume that the pooled IQ of the general editorial structure is twenty points lower than that of the previous science, technology and environmental news staff, nor make any snarky remarks of any other description. I will just regard it as yet another sign of the coming apocalypse, like when I found out that Ann Coulter was going to pointlessly destroy another crop of innocent young trees by putting out yet another book.*

*The suggested titles in the linked article are awesome and now that the super-secret book title has been revealed, surprisingly on target. Or perhaps not surprisingly.

07.12.2008 "Science", A million ways to mortgage the future, Media, book larnin' 4 Comments

Did anybody else follow this?

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

This is Slate’s series of articles, structured as back-and-forth letters between a group of conservative “thinkers,” that began the day after Election Day and ran through the following Friday. I found it rather fascinating, in the dust mite sense.

Just in case you haven’t read it, and don’t have time to wade through all fourteen full-length pages of it, I have summarized the meat of each entry below:

Jim Manzi, chairman of an applied artificial-intelligence software company and contributing editor of National Review: It’s finally happened. The middle class has figured out that voting Republican is voting against their own economic interests. The Reagan mantra appears to be losing its hypnotic effect. We must find a new chant to bamboozle them with. Hey, I know–let’s resegregate public schools, start shooting illegal immigrants on sight and concentrate on recruiting the whitest foreign nationals we can find to fill our immigration quotas instead!

Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University: Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan reborn. Also, could we stop obsessing on abortion?

Ross Douthat, author of Grand New Party and a blogger for the Atlantic: No.

Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and author of It’s My Party, Too: I refuse to believe that the middle class figured that out. Issues, schmissues– to all those people the election was just a popularity contest! and Barack Obama, unfortunately, is much hotter than Bush. All we have to do is make sure they don’t associate Bush with us from now on.

Tucker Carlson, author and commentator for MSNBC and The Daily Beast: I agree that it’s all a popularity contest, Christine–it’s not enough to dissociate ourselves from him, though, we need to find somebody even cooler than Obama to be our frontman. Also, we need to give the middle class a new strawman to hate–that was so effective during the Cold War. Our efforts to replace “Communists” with “Islamofascists” appears to have lost a lot of its oomph.

Ross Douthat: ABORTION, hello?? Abortion!

Douglas Kmiec: Reagan was a god. I really think that Obama is his second coming.

Jim Manzi: You’re probably right, Christine; and Douglas, if you think a single damn one of us is going to do anything other than flatly oppose every last line of Obama’s liberal pinko agenda with our dying breaths, you’re quite mistaken.

Kathleen Parker, author and syndicated columnist who also blogs for the Washington Post: I agree with Christine too and I’ll go even further and say that the deciding popularity factor wasn’t even Bush’s lack of cool or Obama’s abundance of it, but McCain’s horrid, stupid, winking, redneck of a MILF vice-presidential candidate. And no, it’s not fucking elitist of me to say so!

Douglas Kmiec: Ross, Obama is my hero. And I’m pro-choice. Here, let me kiss your ass vigorously to make it up to you in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

Tucker Carlson: Doug, you sound like a woman, and there is no worse insult I could possibly lob at you than that.

Ross Douthat: Well, I loved Sarah Palin because she at least was willing to call out abortion for the baby-murdering slut-enabling conspiracy that it is. But I agree with Tucker that we need to find a man who can compete with Obama for sheer coolness, though I must say that I personally thought Bill Clinton was cooler. McCain? L-O-S-E-R!

Christine Todd Whitman: Maybe if I address this post to everybody, Ross won’t realize I’m speaking directly to him?–look, the abortion bullshit is no longer a winning strategy. The only people who can’t get over it are the Jesus freaks, and clearly, they’re not a majority voting bloc, so screw them. Back to the important topic here–how do we repackage Reaganomics so that the middle class will buy it all over again? Honestly, I’m just praying that the Democrats screw up so badly that every last one of the middle class ends up completely bankrupt. They’ll come running back to us then!

Douglas Kmiec: God, I miss Reagan. Have I said that already?

18.11.2008 A million ways to mortgage the future, Brilliant Ideas, Economy Blues, Filtered Propaganda, Looks like someone needs an intervention, Politics, Wingnuts, Ze Goggles! Zey Do Nothing! 12 Comments

Wall Street’s Shadow Market

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008


Watch CBS Videos Online

(Hat tip: Synikal)

07.10.2008 A million ways to mortgage the future, Economy Blues No Comments

Are they trying to make the Democrats LOSE???

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

(Now updated below the fold)

So tell me again why taking a principled stand and threatening to withhold your vote (and meaning it) is just a meaningless symbolic gesture, and could never, ever in a million years affect a politician’s stance on anything?

I just received an e-mail from Democrats.com, quite obviously a group as partisan as they come. Here’s part of it:

Friday: Last Chance to Stop Paulson’s Plunder

(1) Call your Representative at 800-473-6711 or 800-828-0498 or 202-224-3121 and say “No Bailout!”
(2) Find or Organize a “No Bailout” protest near you:
http://bailoutmainstreet.com/
(3) Visit your Representative’s local office

The Senate’s 74-25 vote for Paulson’s Plunder came as no surprise, since the Senate is run by and for millionaires. So now it’s back to the House of Representatives, where we shocked those millionaires on Monday by defeating their bailout bill by 228-205.

A terrified army of corporate lobbyists is working around the clock to switch 13 votes, but only 7 have switched so far – Jim Ramstad (R-MN), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) and John Lewis (D- GA). Other possible switches include Pat Tiberi (R-OH), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), John Yarmouth (D-KY), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Steve Rothman (D-NJ), Lee Terry (R-NE), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Tim Murphy (R-PA), Jason Altmire (D-PA), and Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). But others may switch from Yes to No, including Ed Markey (D-MA), Charlie Melancon (D-LA), and Spencer Bachus (R-AL).

…

(1) Call your Representative today!
First check how your Representative voted on Monday (and note switches above): http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll674.xml

If (s)he voted NO, say “Thank you for helping stop the Bailout on Monday. Don’t betray us now by voting YES on Friday, or I will vote NO against you on Election Day.”

If (s)he voted YES, say “I’m outraged that you supported the Bailout on Monday, and I will remember on Election Day. If you want my vote on Election Day, you must vote NO on Friday.”

Now maybe I’m reading it wrong, but it looks to me like Democrats.com is claiming that any success they had on Monday, and any success they might have today, is because a nation of energized progressives threatened to withhold their votes from Democrats (AND Republicans) unless they agreed to enact a progressive agenda.

A plan of action I fully endorse, by the way.

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03.10.2008 Punkass!, A million ways to mortgage the future, Filtered Propaganda, Politics, Remember November 4 Comments

Number 9… Number 9… Number 9…

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

In a recent thread I’ve been finding very stimulating, Amanda wrote:

I was swept up in Naderite thinking in my wayward youth, and for me, it was an impatience. I just knew there had to be a tool to force Democrats to move to the left in one, swift blow. But then I came around to realizing that if I wanted to learn effective politics, I needed to be willing to look at who practices them, and what they do right. You know who has? The far right in America. And did they take over the Republican party by declaring that they were no different than Democrats, and threatening them and taking symbolic but ultimately useless stands like 3rd party voting? Nope.

What they did was they changed the public, and that changed the party. They built think tanks and worked their asses off taking over and creating a non-profit and opinion-making infrastructure. They worked on getting their candidates elected into smaller offices, slowly moving up the chain of leadership. They pushed forward slowly but surely. And the tortoise won that race. Now John McCain can’t wipe his ass without phoning Grover Norquist first and then James Dobson.

If you want to be a Norquist/Dobson to the Democrats, then I highly recommend looking at what they did right.

I’m not sure that I would want to be a Norquist/Dobson to the Democrats; I’ve been starting to feel like the Democrats are too calcified in their institutionalized anti-progressivism to change any more. Yes, yes, I know, “But what other options do we HAVE???”

I actually never was a Naderite– not now, either– but I’m impressed that Amanda was. I wish I had had the same strength of conviction when I was younger.

Nonetheless, by chance I recently happened to come across a wonderful speech given by Peter Camejo (Nader’s running mate in 2004) way back in 1969, called “How to Make A Revolution in the United States”. (via) Here’s one short clip:

The key to victory is moving the masses. Any concept, any struggle that eliminates this will only end in disaster. Unfortunately, the ultraleft idea that you can go around the masses, or make the revolution without them, is one that is creeping into the thinking of many students and young people today. But there will be a reaction to this. One of the troubles with ultraleftism is, of course, that when people react against it, they sometimes react against militancy in general, and flip over to become opportunists. In fact, you’re going to see people who were opportunists yesterday going over to being ultraleft today, and the ultralefts of today flipping over to become opportunists. Because all of them are looking for the same thing — a shortcut. And there is no shortcut to change the system.

It takes a long time. You have to have a perspective of fighting for 10, 20 or even more years. Just like the Vietnamese say they will fight 10, 20, or 40 years — whatever is necessary. You can’t walk into the YSA and say: “I want a guarantee that the revolution will happen in five years because after that I have other plans.” The revolution doesn’t work that way.

Does this sound at all familiar? He’s talking about building a people’s movement to enact a progressive agenda. The left has been trying all along to build a long-term movement. The right wingers weren’t the only ones with this plan. So why, 40 years on, have they had more success than the left?

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02.10.2008 A million ways to mortgage the future, Liberal Democrats, Politics 10 Comments

Shit.

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

I kinda hate talking about capitalist economics. I am also not an economist, so I’m usually talking out my ass. In this case, that’s appropriate. Here’s a question, wrapped in a story:

Let’s say that about a year ago there was a booming market in some commodity. And purely for the sake of this example, let’s suppose this commodity was, say, human excrement.

(more…)

30.09.2008 Punkass!, A million ways to mortgage the future 4 Comments

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