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DVDTalk chats with William Friedkin and Emile Hirsch

Nearly 50 years after his directorial debut, Academy Award-winning filmmaker William Friedkin is still at it. Director of such classics as The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer, he teamed up with playwright Tracy Letts in 2006 for Bug, an...




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Indy Neidell from The Great War YouTube Channel

The Great War is a channel on YouTube that covers the 1914-18 conflict that engulfed a large part of the planet.  A unique documentary with a massive scale that is filled with video clips and still images taken at the...




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J.M. DeMatteis, writer of "Constantine: City of Demons" interview

New York Comic Con 2018: Constantine: City of Demons At the 2018 New York Comic Con, DVDTalk’s Francis Rizzo III sat down with the cast and crew of the new feature-length animated film Constantine: City if Demons, due out...




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Interview with We Hate Movies, including the Spooktacular!

We Hate Movies entered it's ninth season earlier this year and is mid-way through its annual October Spooktacular, as of this writing. Far more than another "bad movie podcast," the gang includes film programmer for the Jacob Burns performing arts...




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The Creators and Actors of "Batman: The Animated Series"

New York Comic Con 2018: Batman: The Animated Series At the 2018 New York Comic Con, DVDTalk’s Francis Rizzo III sat down with Batman: The Animated Series creators Bruce Time and Eric Radomski, and actors Kevin Conroy, Loren Lester,...




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2002 Renault Laguna Hatchback - Expression from Croatia

Avoid




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Heart Attack (Myocardial Infarction)

Title: Heart Attack (Myocardial Infarction)
Category: Diseases and Conditions
Created: 12/31/1997 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 5/12/2022 12:00:00 AM




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Martin Habersaat: Schulstatistik 2023/24 - Unterrichtsausfall und befristete Verträge




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Anette Röttger: Den Reformationstag als Mutmacher-Tag feiern




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Schleswig-Holsteinischer Landtag stärkt die nordische Zusammenarbeit - Jahrestreffen des Nordischen Rates auf Island




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SPD-Fraktion: Serpil Midyatli mit großer Mehrheit als Oppositionsführerin wiedergewählt




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Beate Raudies: Die schwarz-grüne Sparpolitik ist zum Scheitern verurteilt




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Schleswig-Holsteinischer Bürgerpreis 2024: Neun Projekte in den Kategorien "Alltagshelden" und "U27" nominiert!




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Serpil Midyatli: SPD-Fraktionsvorsitzende lehnen Gerichtsstrukturreform ab




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Serpil Midyatli und Thomas Hölck: FSG-Nobiskrug: Die Werften brauchen einen Neuanfang ohne Windhorst




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Serpil Midyatli und Kianusch Stender: Schwarz-Grün muss ihre Hausaufgaben erledigen




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Serpil Midyatli: Die Günther-Regierung trägt bei der A20 eine besondere Verantwortung




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Reihenfolge der Beratung der 27. Tagung




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The Coral Reefer Band to perform in Atlantic City

Keep the Party Going – A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett featuring The Coral Reefer Band. Thrilled to be able to announce that the The Coral Reefer Band will be playing at the Hard Rock Hotel’s …

The post The Coral Reefer Band to perform in Atlantic City first appeared on BuffettNews.com.




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Pre-Sale for the new Margaritaville license plate

From WFLA: Here’s how many Floridians have ordered the new Jimmy Buffett license plate TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida lawmakers this year approved a new Jimmy Buffett-inspired specialty license plate to honor the late musician. …

The post Pre-Sale for the new Margaritaville license plate first appeared on BuffettNews.com.





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North side of Crystal Pier is my latest habit. I’ve gotten applause for a ride once. Been hooked on my flippers by a fisherman twice. Been told I was thought to be a seal once. That’s so far this year. Different years, different adventures.

from Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DB48I-gSloZ/ via IFTTT




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What is the impact of a blog?

James’ post The long view of a blog is a terrific first read of the day for me today. New month. New week. New day. New UTC time offset. And it’s about one of my favorite questions, “what does my website mean to me?” The modality and presentation of content is part of the long view of...




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Revisiting neveragain.tech 8 years later.

If history is going to rhyme, then I’m going to remember the prior verses. One of them was http://neveragain.tech which I signed as a matter of conscience 8 years ago. I am still in strong agreement with the aims of that pledge I signed. And it is my duty to spread the word to my...




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That was a helluva week

What a week. I can’t capture the totality of the current moment. In times like this I appreciate being able to read the thoughts of Mark Evanier. He’s a reliable attendee of San Diego Comic-Con. I remember seeing him host panels back when SDCC was held at the San Diego Civic Center at First and...





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New Spring Silver: It’s Imperative

Video: Spring Silver – “It’s Imperative”

From Don’t You Think It’s Strange?, out now.

I don’t know anything about this artist but I somehow stumbled across this song and it’s too great to keep it to myself. Their little bandcamp bio says they’re from Silver Spring, Maryland and that the album was “written, performed, produced, and mixed by K Nkanza.” Well alright. What more do you need to know? They also offer thanks “to Mom for letting me record at her house.” It’s nice to see kids be grateful to their parents!

I see you all
Etched in the vertical tiles of an office building
I see you all
Trapped in the virtual squares of an application.

Sounds like somebody’s sick of zoom meetings!

Spring Silver: web, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Read more at Glorious Noise...




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Bad Day at the Office

This is never what you want to see in your inbox:

Today will be a tough day, and by 9pm ET you will have heard if your job is affected. Your leaders and the People team will provide you with all the important details. We are committed to helping those impacted through this with the utmost respect, and supporting them with a runway during the transition.

To break that down:

  • It will be a “tough day” for the recipients.
  • While there is something to be said for a time certain (“by 9pm ET”), it is also a potential axe hanging oh-so precariously over one’s head, with the rope fraying strand-by-strand.
  • Any organization that calls HR “the People team” wants to make it seem as though one would never receive an emailed message of this nature.
  • What is “helping. . .with the utmost respect”? It may sound good. Does this mean there will be no judgment as “We” help pack the corrugated cardboard boxes?
  • And “a runway during the transition” is a prime example of trying to obfuscate what will be absolutely obvious to those who will be affected.

Read more at Glorious Noise...




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Would You Like Fries with That?

Once McDonald’s fries were something that plenty of people enjoyed, even if they were a bit dubious about the hamburgers, to say nothing of the McRib (if there ever was an item on the franchise’s menu that the term “mystery meat” could apply to, that’s the one), which apparently will soon be coming back to an Arches outlet near you.

But last week Lamb Weston, the largest french fry producer in the U.S., announced it has closed a plant in Washington state because people are opting for small fries, not medium or large.

According to McDonald’s:

“Everyone wants to know why McDonald’s French Fries taste so good—it’s a simple answer. McDonald’s World Famous Fries® are made with premium potatoes such as the Russet Burbank and the Shepody. With 0g of trans fat per labeled serving, these epic fries are crispy and golden on the outside and fluffy on the inside.”

Evidently the notation about the lack of trans fats isn’t enough to convince people that the 480 calories of a large order is something they want to eat, premium potatoes notwithstanding. (A bag of small fries is 230 calories.)

Time change, and with it things that were once familiar.

Read more at Glorious Noise...




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Absence of Attentiveness

From 1989 to 1994 there was a show with a prescient title and approach, a show that gave rise to people including Jon Stewart and Marc Maron: “Short Attention Span Theater.” It presented bits and clips, standup and skits. Quick takes in keeping with the short attention spans that were existing then and arguably shrinking even more so now.

Market research firm MIDiA has recently conducted its annual survey of independent labels and distributors to create what it describes as “the definitive view of the independent music economy.” Modesty notwithstanding, it has sliced, diced and riced data from 5,500 companies in that space—which represents $10.6-billion of recorded music revenue—so its assessment is undoubtedly substantive, especially as it adds in financials from major labels and artist distribution platforms, thereby achieving, it claims, 93% of all recorded music revenue on a global basis.

The big labels, of course, make big money. Universal Music Group reported its Q3 2024 earnings last week, which has it that for the first nine months of 2024 the company had revenues of €8,396 million, which is a 6.3% increase over the same period in 2023. Focusing just on the Recorded Music category, the revenues were €6,335 million, up 4.9% year-over-year—and last year wasn’t at all bad.

Read more at Glorious Noise...




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The Bio-Chemical Matrix - The Myths of Matrix Science

by Jon Rappoport www.nomorefakenews.com The medical system kills 225,000 people a year. (Starfield, JAMA, July 26, 2000, "Is US health really the best in the world?") "In principle, gene therapy is a medical miracle waiting to happen ... after 17 years of trying, scientists are still struggling to make gene therapy work. Complications include rejection of DNA carriers ... [and] new genes end up where they shouldn't, or behave unpredictably." ("Gene Therapy: Is Death and Acceptable Risk?", Wired, Brandon Keim, August 30, 2007) MARCH 28, 2012 - In discussing Matrix Science, I'm reminded of Philip Dick's sensational novel, Lies, Inc. It proposes an invention that can teleport humans light-years to a planet where a better way of life exists. The author then spends the rest of the book deconstructing this utopian legend and revealing the truth and the titanic power-grab that sit behind it. Then there is HG Well's 1933 classic novel, The Shape of Things to Come, in which a world exhausted by war and economic collapse turns to a Global State as the only possible solution, after all other solutions have historically failed. This new ruling authority is based on Science. All religions are crushed. Education is designed to teach every child how to become a genius/global citizen. Eventually, the State withers away and is of course replaced by a spontaneous Utopia. Science/technology: the final all-encompassing answer. A significant aspect of Matrix propaganda revolves around myths about how human behavior can be transformed. Transformed through advances in biology and chemistry. Populations are being trained to expect these momentous changes. A major selling point: no effort is required. Just ingest this tablet. Accept this new gene. All will be done for you by experts. Technocrats will design the future so you will fit into it happily. The technocratic wing of Globalism has clout. It promises management of the planet through science, and who can argue with science? Central Planning will ensure proper benefits for all. My late friend and colleague, hypnotherapist Jack True, once told me in an interview:...




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Missing folate genes and AIDS - treat hypomethylation with nutrients, not toxic drugs!

This is another installment of research into the biochemistry of HIV and Aids by Cal Crilly, an Australian who finds himself fascinated with the intricacies of biology. Crilly analyzes the seemingly unconnected studies that show the biochemical changes that accompany the presence of numerous retroviruses - one of them called HIV - in humans. The mechanism that makes retroviruses appear is hypomethylation, and it is the same mechanism that accompanies pregnancy and inflammation. Those retroviruses are produced in the course of normal biological activity and they are not infectious. There are many different types (ever heard of HIV 'mutating'?). As an aside, we declare pregnant mothers to be "HIV positive" as pregnancy causes the presence of retroviruses in the course of normal biological activity, and those harmless endogenous retroviruses react with what's generally called an "HIV" test. Certain basic nutrients - Selenium, Folate, B12, B6, Choline are the most important - counteract hypomethylation of the cells and thereby calm the production of human endogenous retroviruses. The toxic Aids drug AZT causes hypermethylation but it is so destructive of normal cell processes that most patients die. The 'life prolonging' effect of HAART, the drug cocktail that is prescribed to Aids patients today is due to a sharp decrease in the dosage of deadly AZT in the cocktail. Cal demonstrates those facts and more with reference to studies you can find as well, if you're interested in the details. Meanwhile we continue to treat immune compromised people with drugs that further compromise the immune system and - in many cases - kill the patient. When is medicine going to start treating those people by insisting on better eating and supplementation supplying the correct nutrients? How long will it take until the toxic drugs are phased out in favor of real prevention?...




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Vaccine damage in Great Britain: The consequences of Dr Wakefield’s trials

More and more evidence is coming to light that Dr. Wakefield was on the right track when he researched the connection between the MMR vaccine and intestinal inflammation in the vaccinated children. Was Dr. Andrew Wakefield Right After All? Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism But how did Dr. Wakefield first get into the sights of the UK vaccine industry and how was the campaign against him mounted? Martin Walker, the author of "Dirty Medicine" and a number of other books on health, closely followed the case that eventually resulted in Dr. Wakefield's exile from the UK. He describes how it all happened and how the vaccine manufacturers were able to bring down the full weight of government and the courts against both Wakefield and the many parents who were suing for recognition of the damage vaccines had done to their children. "As a campaigner of 40 years, I think that what surprises me most about Dr Wakefield’s case, is how easily and how completely we were defeated by the pharmaceutical companies, how over a thousand parents and children were written out of history together with their adverse drug reactions. Part of this defeat for the parents, the children and the doctors concerned was grounded in an unfortunate understanding that pharmaceutical company executives were decent people and humanitarians. In fact the pharmaceutical companies, their corporate structure and their relentless pursuit of profit, their fraudulent practices represent one of the last remaining shibboleths, in our society which need to be completely reformed, democratised, divested of vested interests and made public from top to bottom." We do learn from experience. That is why we should pay attention to how this case went so wrong and why the campaign to ruin those researchers and to leave the damaged children by the wayside was mounted in the first place. So it won't happen again. Here is Martin Walker's essay....




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Multiple sclerosis is Lyme disease: Anatomy of a cover-up

Multiple sclerosis is curable if recognised as Lyme disease. The cause is a cyst-forming bacterium, Borrelia Burgdorferi, which causes lesions that degrade brain and spinal cord tissue.




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Philosophical Investigations

As promised, quotations from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are now available. Again, both German and English versions of each are reproduced, though the task was made considerably easier than in other cases by the fact that the edition I used was a dual-language edition.

I (like, I suspect, many others) find Wittgenstein simultaneously fascinating and annoying. On the one hand, he makes interesting and insightful observations on all sorts of phenomena; on the other, he never really synthesizes those observations into a single, coherent argument. For example, when he says that “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination” (I§6) or that “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language” (I§109) or that “The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to define it” (I§79) I find myself saying “Right on!”; but I also find myself frustrated by the fact that he can’t even decide on what, exactly, his purpose in writing this all down is. For example, at one point Wittgenstein claims that his “aim in philosophy” is “To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (I§309), while elsewhere he says: “My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense” (I§464) and still elsewhere he suggests that he’s merely making obvious remarks that presumably everybody already knows:

What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities, however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (I§415)

As I say, this can be frustrating, but, in a way, is also understandable. In one sense, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to provide answers, but rather to show that there aren’t really any problems (as he says in Philosophical Grammar: “While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems.”). And why aren’t there any problems? Because “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday” (I§38); our problems derive from an inability to properly express ourselves.

(INTERPOLATION: This isn’t stated very well, so I want to expand just a bit. The idea, as I understand it, is that we ask too much of language; that is, we ignore the fact that “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (I§1), that, as quoted below, “language itself cannot be explained”, but, rather, that it can only be understood by its use. In failing to recognize this, we find ourselves unable to express the explanations we seek.)

Within this context, I think Wittgenstein’s thesis (to the extent that he even has one) boils down to the following:

What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday language-game, and to note false accounts of the matter as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected. (II.xi)

Or, from a different direction:

“So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?”—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. (I§241)

Viewed from this perspective, then, it is, perhaps, not so surprising that Wittgenstein has a tendency to be frustratingly vague at times; after all, as he himself says, “What is most difficult here is to put this indefiniteness, correctly and unfalsified, into words” (II.xi). Personally, I find his perspective compelling, but I can understand why some might find it rather superficial, especially since it can lead to seemingly-trivial statements like: “One wants to say: a significant sentence is one which one can not merely say, but also think” (I§511).

All this aside, though, there are two other things I really like about Wittgenstein. First, the fact that he has a real sense of humor and isn’t afraid to deploy it. For example, I couldn’t help laughing aloud at reading this:

Think of a picture of a landscape, an imaginary landscape with a house in it.—Someone asks “Whose house is that?”—The answer, by the way, might be “It belongs to the farmer who is sitting on the bench in front of it”. But then he cannot for example enter his house. (I§398)

Of course, it probably helps that his sense of humor has that bone-dry, literalistic bent that is characteristic of mathematicians (if you don’t see the humor in the above, re-read the last two sentences like a died-in-the-wool literalist). Which brings me to the second appeal Wittgenstein has for me: he has at least some understanding and awareness of mathematics. And, of course, I can’t help but be excited when someone seems to agree with my own quasi-Intuitionist perspective:

Of course, in one sense mathematics is a branch of knowledge,—but still it is also an activity. And ‘false moves’ can only exist as the exception. For if what we now call by that name became the rule, the game in which they were false moves would have been abrogated. (II.xi)

And, though it doesn’t explicitly refer to mathematics, Wittgenstein’s initial (or final, depending on how you look at it) conclusion has a distinctly mathematical feel to it (especially within the context of Russell’s paradox):

What is spoken can only be explained in language, and so in this sense language itself cannot be explained.

Language must speak for itself.

(Actually from Philosophical Grammar, but echoed throughout Philosophical Investigations)

Okay, enough book-reviewing; check out the quotations.




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Einstein and Gödel, at the Königsberg café

About a month ago I wrote this entry which was, I think, somewhat misunderstood, at least by the one confirmed reader of it. In it I tried to argue that there are some fundamental problems involved in conceptualizing time which, in my mind, appear intractable, and hence its existence as a concept contradictory, impossible. To which it was replied that of course time has an existence, as a social convention, a mental framework. Of that I have no doubt-it would be impossible for me to refute even if I wanted to. My point was about metaphysics, not sociology, and in that regard I don’t think it was that much different from that expressed by St. Augustine regarding time: “if no one asks me what it is I know what it is, but if someone asks me I don’t know.” Or, even more notably, Kant, who regarded time, in addition to space, not as an entity, process, or property of the physical world, but as a filter of percpetion, the mental framework which orders our experience of the world.

Which brings me back to science. I just finished reading The Evolution of Physics, by Einstein and Leopold Infeld. Of course Einstein is justly famed for, among many other things, pioneering the idea of space-time. However, I was quite intrigued to discover, while perusing the science section at the National Library in Paris, that Gödel claimed that his late work on relativity and physics, upon which I touched in my earlier post, was inspired by an intense study of Kant. Now, assuming such a dour man as Gödel was not simply being facetious, the implications of this are immediate. In the (apparent) somewhat paradoxical act of tearing down the structure of Einstein’s work while bringing some of its deepest tendencies to fruition, he was working under the influence of a theory which denies the type of external, property-based existence which Einstein implicitly ascribes to time (and space)! As I understand special relativity (always a dubious premise, I grant you), it holds that space and time, as properties of the universe, are perceived differently at every point of view, or coordinate system, as he calls them. But for me it seems a question of the simplest explanation: if everyone is in a relative frame of reference with respect to space and time, is it simpler and more likely that time and space are real properties which are different at every point in the universe, or simply that they are perceived differently by each observer? It seems to me that if one takes Kant’s idea of space and time as elements perception and not of external reality, none of these problems come up, although there may of course be others. Again, it’s hard for me to say what Gödel’s interpretation of all of this is, since no one seems to have engaged and propogated his work on this subject much, but if he was following in the line of Kant’s thinking as well as the tradition of relativity, it would be interesting to see the resuscitation, by “a commodius vicus of recirculation,” of a very powerful and cogent point of view which has nonetheless been largely dismissed by scientists as non-pertinently metaphysical. Perhaps interesting also to note that, in dealing with Kant last year, I protested against his classification of space as a perceptual framework, and even managed to convince my philosophy professor that it is rather the fundamental visual property, before reversing myself and concluding that light is actually the fundamental visible property. Light is also in some ways the fundamental property in Einstein’s system, or at least the one constant in all of the warping of space-time, which somehow doesn’t seem so surprising now…

p.s. For all of those intersted in Spanish literature (which at this point probably composes nearly 100% of our readership), I also came across this article with the following sub-headline: “It is the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote, a more important work than all of Einstein’s theories.” To the extent that the article follows up on this point, I think the claim about the inevitability of scientific discovery is at the very least highly disputable (and even if Cervantes’ work is more inimitable, that does not in itself mean that it is more “important”), but nonetheless a provocative idea, and gratifying to my humanities-leaning heart.




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The abuse of a college education

“Perhaps you’re familiar with “the tragedy of the commons,” a social dilemma outlined by the late biologist Garrett Hardin in a famous 1968 essay of the same name. The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. (Pollution is the most familiar example.) Such thinking has fallen out of fashion amid President Bush’s talk of an “ownership society,” but its logic is unassailable.”

That response seems like a pretty damn obtuse interpretation of the essay, simply because the essay is nothing if not a plea for the creation of property rights. Furthermore, while it is true that Hardin claims that pursuing individual gain leads to group catastrophe, the word “when” in the paragraph above implies that there are times when the individual doesn’t, whereas Hardin claims that individuals basically always pursue their own interest, which is the problem in high-density situations where some amout of coordination is necessary. However, upon re-reading it, I realize that for Hardin property rights only forms a part of a wished-for imposition of coercive measures which will prevent individuals from pursuing personal gain at the expense of their environment. Which makes sense, because property rights, for all this may get lost in the ceaseless ideological wrangling today, are themselves forms of state-imposed coercion. Dismiss the semi-metaphysical nonsense in Locke and Kant about gaining “just propriety” over an object by making a visible mark on it. Think about it: animals control exactly as much “property” as they can defend; cheetahs peeing on trees only works because they will fight to defend what they have claimed. By contrast, think about who adjudicates the (in theory) incontestable property rights: the authorities, i.e. in our society, the State. The corollary of this, of course, is that nationalized or federal property is not “public property,” in the sense of property owned by the public—quite the contrary. The dichotomy between it and “private property” is spurious. “Public property” is simply property owned by the government. This no doubt seems obvious and intuitive, but based on the foolishness I cited above, it bears repeating that property rights, whether granted to others by the government or to itself, are not opposed to coercive state power but are in fact the very essence of it. That fact is perhaps more apparent in regards to so-called “intellectual property.”

As a marginal note, Hardin’s essay, despite the pithiness of its central analogy, is rather dispiriting insofar as it takes Hegel’s statement that “Freedom lies in the recognition of necessity” as its motto and guiding spirit. That formulation is, as I believe I have said before, perfectly monstruous. Freedom means nothing if it is not the absence of restriction, and it is perhaps a sign of the evasive confusion of priorities in Western culture that one would pretend to celebrate this value in such a way while in fact describing its opposite. Freedom is not an act or a thought, but rather a set of conditions under which action and thought occur. This is the same idealistic debasement of the language that has turned love into a deed: making love.




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But what about the antiquarians?

"Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." This is good advice, especially for democracies, which tend (as even Plato and Thucydides noted) to have short-term attention spans. But we shouldn't forget an equally important lesson, articulated most forcefully by Nietzsche: The health of a person and a people also depends vitally on the capacity to forget. Forgetting is necessary to free ourselves from imperfectly understood "lessons of history," so that we can see the challenges ahead clearly, without preconceptions or prejudice. Forgetting is also the better part of forgiving, and there are whole domains of political controversy -- indeed, whole regions of the world -- where a little less history could be of service in this respect.
--Eliot Noyes, Getting Past the Past




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Okay, so you won the argument. So what?

Over at Catallarchy, Micha Ghertner discusses “How To Tell You’ve Won An Argument;” namely, when your opponent concedes that his position is less coherent than your own, you’ve won. Now, I don’t want to dispute his point, but rather to question how relevant it is. I’ve touched on this before, but I’m a bit dubious of the notion that the “correct” position is the one that wins arguments between advocates of two different positions.

Obviously, in the first place, there’s nothing to prevent both arguers from being wrong; the relative lack of coherence of one of their positions means, at best, that the other’s position is “less” wrong (assuming that even makes sense and assuming that coherence is a measure of correctness).1 But this is somewhat superficial (and besides, already mentioned and acknowledged in the comments to Ghertner’s post); more importantly, I want to cast doubts upon the parenthetical assumption I made above, that coherence is some sort of infallible metric for measuring correctness/validity.

In fact, Ghertner (perhaps unconsciously) alludes to this very issue when he quotes Wittgenstein’s famous seventh proposition from the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Within the context of the Tractatus (as an attempt to construct or at least describe a perfect language), this supports the notion that being right and being coherent are synonymous, but Wittgenstein himself later rejects this perspective and, to me, the more apropos quotation is: “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (Philosophical Investigations, I§1). That is, no argument (and certainly none about abstract principles) is completely coherent; we always run up against that whereof we cannot speak and therefore must be silent. The question is simply at what stage in the investigation we enter the realm of unsupported assertion.

And even if we scale back our expectations and choose to embrace the position that manages to maintain coherence as far back as possible, there’s still no guarantee that we’re on the right track. Although much of the world can apparently be explained without the need to stipulate a deity, this doesn’t really make it any less likely that theism is right. In the words of Chuck Klosterman:

Math [or, perhaps more fittingly in this context, logic] is the antireligion, because it splinters the gravity of life’s only imperative equation: Either something is true, or it isn’t.

In fact, if we really want to get all Wittgensteinian about this (not that we necessarily should), we might even begin to question those positions which do appear to be coherent:

In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. (PI, I§426)

Anyway, getting back to whatever semblance of a point I was trying to make, when someone admits that their position is incoherent, that does indeed mean that they’ve lost the argument, but I just wonder how important that really is. Giving up your high-paying job and live-in girlfriend to go back home and take care of your sick mother isn’t going to win a lot of arguments if we’re taking logical coherence as the criterion of victory (seriously, think about it), but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean that coherence is totally irrelevant to what is right/correct, either (and, I should point out, in the above example helping your sick mom isn’t necessarily the right thing to do; as is almost always true, it depends on the circumstances), but let’s not give argument-winning more importance than it merits. Or, as some smarmy new-age intellectual might put it, in the pursuit of knowledge, our goal shouldn’t be to win arguments, but, rather, to discover truth.


1. Since I’m quoting Wittgenstein anyway, I might as well include the relevant quote for this as well:

The law of the excluded middle says here: It must either look like this, or like that. So it really—and this is a truism—says nothing at all, but gives us a picture. And the problem ought now to be: does reality accord with the picture or not? And this picture seems to determine what we have to do, what to look for, and how—but it does not do so, just because we do not know how it is to be applied. Here saying “There is no third possibility” or “But there can’t be a third possibility!”—expresses our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture: a picture which looks as if it must already contain both the problem and its solution, while all the time we feel that it is not so. (PI I§352)




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Parteiverrat




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Nicht jedes Wohnhaus ist so privat wie es erscheint

Auch im Regierungsbezirk Detmold ist der Kalte Krieg vorbei, so dass die Bezirksregierung die früher mit öffentlichen Zuschüssen geförderten Schutzräume in Privathäusern nicht mehr für notwendig hält. Das (teilweise) Verbot, solche Räume baulich zu verändern, hat sie daher neulich durch eine




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WhatsApp 2.2444.5.0 (Freeware)

WhatsApp is an extension to the mobile WhatsApp app that allows you to send and receive messages from the comfort of your desktop. Simply install WhatsApp on your computer an....




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Waterfox 6.5.1 (Freeware)

Waterfox is a 64-bit variant of the Firefox platform that has been built with and Intel compiler, optimized for speed and performance on Windows systems. Waterfox does not ad....




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Spybot Search and Destroy Update November 13, 2024

The Spybot Search and Destroy Update is intended for updating your detections without the need for the included WebUpdate. To update you need to download and double-click spybotsd_includes.exe, choose the folder that Spybot is installed to, click OK and close when completed. [License: Freeware | Requires: 11|10|8|7 | Size: 8 MB ]




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WhatsApp for Android 2.24.23.72

WhatsApp Messenger for Android is a messaging app that uses your phone's Internet connection (4G/3G/2G/EDGE or Wi-Fi, as available) to message and call friends and family. [License: Freeware | Requires: Android | Size: Size Varies ]




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Bush Administration Immune from Whistleblowers...

Posted without comment for your consternation:

On Labor Day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release whose title summarizes its contents all too neatly: Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees. Here's some of it:

Washington, DC - The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.


The rest of the post on the terrific blog Effect Measure




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Shake Rattle And Roll!

We spent the second quarter of 2006 testing the original "beta" concept site for the Personal Bee. We spent the summer implementing everything we had learned. Now we are ready and have released the Bee to the world.

http://www.personalbee.com


You Can Be A Media Mogul

The idea is simple. Anyone one the world can create their own news site. You choose the topic. You choose the content sources. You brand your site. You decide which stories are important and which to remove... You are the master of your topic domain and can build a base of subscribers into a media empire.

Enjoy the Bee. Send your comments and suggestions!

Ted Shelton, CEO
The Personal Bee, Inc.
tshelton @ personalbee.com




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Duration/Term of Copyright

In the case of original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, the duration of copyright is the lifetime of the author or artist, and 60 years counted from the year following the death of the author.

In the case of cinematograph films, sound recordings, photographs, posthumous publications, anonymous and pseudonymous publications, works of government and works of international organizations are protected for a period of 60 years which is counted from the year following the date of publication.

www.mondaq.com




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use cheat instead of man

wget github.com

gunzip cheat-linux-arm64.gz

chmod 770 cheat-linux-arm64

./cheat-linux-arm64

mv cheat-linux-arm64 /usr/local/bin/cheat

#use cheat tar or cheat wget to get more info




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Activate IAM Access

To activate the Activate IAM Access setting, you must log in to your AWS account using the root user credentials, and then select the setting in the My Account page.

console.aws.amazon.com

select the check box that says "Activate IAM Access" in the section "IAM User and Role Access to Billing Information".