Friday, December 21, 2007
 

Friday Photography: Christmas Tree

click to enlarge
Daryl Samuel

Location: New York Botanical Garden
The Bronx, New York City

Previous: Photos posted in 2006 / 2007: Pagoda / Ferry / Sand Tracks / General Store / Taverna Tables / Finger Piano / Bridge at Sunset / Snowfall in Cambridge / Boats / Grandma in Motion / Museum Silhouette / Brooklyn Bridge / Seascape / City Hall / Santa Fe Hotel / Lunch Break / Low Rider / Giant Crab Invades Boston! / East Meets West / Building Reflections / Flatiron Spring / Hands With Glasses / Fishing Net / Steps / Oil and Vinegar / Gas Station / Brooklyn Bridge in Sepia / Windmill on the Paralia / Santa Fe Art / Island Time / Battleship Rock / Copper Mine / Slide! / Playing Piano / Underground Cistern / Broken Windmill / Forked River / Manhattan Bridge / Hot Air Balloon / Island Engine / Park Reflections / Sultan Ahmed Mosque / Clasped Hands / Washing the Boat / Central Park Bridge / Lake Reflections / Greek Church Silhouette / Copper Mine Fly-By / Van Winkle in Autumn / Western Ave. Bridge

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/21/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Sociology as alchemy

Skeptic magazine
1970) The problem with sociology's neglect of biology and evolution is not faulty logic but rejection of the data and theory of the natural sciences. Alchemy was condemned to remain a mysterious art driven by mixed goals until some exponents accepted as fact the idea that the building blocks of all chemical compounds are immutable elements such as hydrogen, sulphur, lead, and gold. The founding doctrine of chemistry, concerning the nature of the elements, banished as unscientific the quest for gold out of lead by chemical processes. Similarly, despite the great flexibility attainable through learning, it is certain that there are essentially immutable properties of humans not erasable by short-term, social intervention. Sociologists' quest for gold [...] overlooks the leaden human material that would be transformed. The quest will remain at best a protoscience, and at worst pseudoscience, until their methods and theories are disciplined by knowledge of the neo-Darwinian paradigm.
Frank Salter
"Sociology as Alchemy"
Skeptic (v4 n1, 1996)

1971) The growth of science over the last 400 years had provided thinkers with a large (and growing) reservoir of true assumptions on which to base their reasoning. The empirical resource in the natural sciences is so wide-ranging that it is ignored at the peril of reaching false conclusions. Indeed, scientific knowledge in many areas is so well developed that acceptance of it as a starting point can be taken as a criterion of rationality. Accordingly, we can treat a denial of the factual authority of the natural sciences as a whole as a case of empirical irrationality, the denial of well-verified facts.
Frank Salter
"Sociology as Alchemy"
Skeptic (v4 n1, 1996)

1972) [S]ociologists, for the most past, parasitize data collected by others, aggregate these data into abstracted categories, subject these aggregated data to countless statistical manipulations, and intercorrelate variables that are at least half-a-dozen steps remote from actual behavior. And those are the sociologists who claim to be empiricists. The remainder practice armchair social philosophy, endlessly rehash the ideas of other sociologists in tedious textbooks, or become engrossed in statistical gimmicry. [...] Sociology's claim to scientific status can no longer be upheld primarily through a facade of quantitative methodology. It must be anchored in a theoretical paradigm that satisfies scientific canons. Such a theoretical paradigm sociology signally failed to produce in over a century of self-conscious existence. The main reason for that failure is that sociology turned its back on the one theory that was overwhelmingly successful in explaining change and variation in life forms on this planet: evolution by natural selection.
Pierre van den Berghe
"Why Most Sociologists Don't (and Won't)
Think Evolutionarily"
Sociological Forums (5:173-85)
quoted by Frank Salter in
"Sociology as Alchemy"
Skeptic (v4 n1, 1996)

1973) [A] significant portion of sociology rejects established biological facts even when they bear directly on phenomena under study. Thus one hallmark of the scientific revolution - that theoretical disputes came to be resolved through controlled observation - has not yet reached sociology as a whole. A school of thought does not qualify as a science merely by including natural-scientific approaches in its endless "debates." To qualify as a science the scientific faction must prevail.
Frank Salter
"Sociology as Alchemy"
Skeptic (v4 n1, 1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 395 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/21/2007 03:04:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Thursday, December 20, 2007
 

(3089/898) Quickly...

Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh
1959)
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Stevie Wonder
"Superstition" (song, 1972)
Talking Book (lp, 1972)

1960)
Most people think
Great God will come from the sky
And take away everything
And make everybody fell high

But if you know what life is worth
You will look for yours on Earth
Now you've seen the light
You gotta stand up for your rights

Get up, stand up
Stand up for your rights.
Bob Marley and Peter Tosh
"Get Up Stand Up" (song, 1973)
The Wailers, Burnin' (lp, 1973)

1961) Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. End of story.
advertisement for Johnnie Walker Red Label
seen in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (9/11/1996)

1962) Apocalypse always sells. It sells like lipstick. Because it flatters our vanity.
Bruce Sterling
"The Future? You Don't Want to Know"
Wired Scenarios 1.01 (9/1995)

1963) What I really want to know is: are things getting better, or are they getting worse?
Laurie Anderson
"Same Time Tomorrow" (song, 1994)
Bright Red (cd, 1994)
quoted by Stewart Brand in
"Two Questions"
Wired Scenarios 1.01 (9/1995)

1964) Do we have free will, or is everything determined? I don't have an answer I'm sure of, but I am convinced that people behave better when they think they have free will. They take responsibility more, and they think about their choices more. So I believe in free will.
Herman Kahn
quoted by Stewart Brand in
"Two Questions"
Wired Scenarios 1.01 (9/1995)

Herman Kahn, Tip O'Neill, John Kenneth Galbraith
1965) Think globally, act locally.
unknown
quoted by Stewart Brand in
"Two Questions"
Wired Scenarios 1.01 (9/1995)
[Note: Brand attributed this quote to Rene Dubos, who is said to have coined it as an advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. It has also been attributed to David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, as a slogan coined in 1969 for that organization. [WP]]
1966) All politics is local.
Thomas O'Neill, Sr.
[Note: Most often attributed to former Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., O'Neill himself credited his father in his 1987 autobiography Man of the House.]
1967) Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Paul Valery
Tel quel (1943) [WHO]

1968) All politics [...] are based on the indifference of the majority.
James Reston
New York Times (6/12/1968) [OM]

1969) Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
letter to President Kennedy (3/2/62) [CQ]
Ambassador’s Journal (1969) [ODQ]
[Note: Galbraith is referring to Otto von Bismarck's remark to Meyer von Waldeck that Politics is the art of the possible. (8/11/1867) [WQ]]
Sources

[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[OM] - Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991)
[ODQ] - Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[WHO] - Who Said What (1993)
[WP] - Wikipedia
[WQ] - Wikiquote


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 396 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/20/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Equality, morality - Rawls, Sen, de Waal

1957) The fundamental equality in social arrangements that [John] Rawls [in A Theory of Justice] deduces [...] is an equal distribution of primary goods, which include, among other things, incomes, wealth, opportunities, and the social basis of self-respect. Rawls modifies this equality in only two important ways. He allows an unequal distribution when it benefits everyone - perhaps we have to reward doctors with more income and status in order to get people to slave through medical school. And his famous "difference principle" give special attention to the neediest. The moralist in [Amartya] Sen makes him urge [in Inequality Reexamined] that equal distribution of primary goods does not go to the core of human needs and aspirations. We should be equally placed to fulfill our potentials as nearly as possible, and we should be equally free to choose the goals for which we might strive. [...]

[F]our [...] observations about equality are worth close attention. First, despite the stirring words at the start of the Declaration of Independence, it makes no sense to say that two persons, or all men, are equal, period, or are created equal, period. Sen's central question is always "equality of what?" This is a point of logic, not of economics or ethics. Things are equal only in some respect or other (2+3 equals 5, yes, but only because we have an implicit criterion of identity for numbers). More than a few English words resemble "equal" in this respect. The word "resemble," for example. Nothing is just two, it must be two of some kind. [...] In political economy we must ask, equality of what? Income? Rights? Opportunity?

In these reactionary times, equality has become, for different reasons, unpopular, among both the strong and the weak. Sen observes that when you examine positions that question equality you will find that they oppose one measure or another that mitigates inequality - welfare, minimum support for the homeless, or better education for the poor. But it makes literal sense, in English, to oppose equality only if you oppose equality in some particular respect or other. This is not some deep fact of political science but a bald point of logic. It leads to a substantive thesis, which Sen states in two ways. First, as a matter of history, virtually all theories that are about how rightly to order a society are, he writes, "egalitarian in some significant way." All the theories we know of argue "resolutely for equality of something which everyone should have, and which is crucial to their own particular approach." Libertarians want equality of rights, welfarists want equal welfare, free marketers want equal access to the market. It is a little mischievous of Sen to say that libertarians are "egalitarian" - a word commonly used to describe programs or attitudes that advocate aspirations, in the socialist tradition, for the political, social and economic equality of all human beings. The intention of his mischief is to wake us up. Those who see political confrontations as between those who favor and those who oppose equality are bound to "miss something central to the subject."

Quite aside from history, Sen asserts that any economic or political theory that can be plausibly defended today must resort to proposals for equality of something or other.
Ian Hacking
"In Pursuit of Fairness" in
New York Review of Books (9/19/1996)
[review of Inequality Reexamined (1996)
by Amrtya Sen]

1958) [In Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, Frans] de Waal adduces a strong body of evidence that humans and other animals share the following tendencies and capacities: sympathy as expressed in succor, special treatment of the disadvantaged, and cognitive empathy; norms exemplified in both prescriptive and proscriptive social rules; reciprocity embodied positively in the exchange of services and balanced negatively by the punishment of violators; and concern for community, which finds its expression in peacemaking and negotiating. Summed up in this way, the above suite of demonstrated qualities sounds moral indeed.
William C. McGrew
"Moral Kin?" in
Scientific American (9/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 396 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/20/2007 02:59:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Wednesday, December 19, 2007
 

(3089/898) Marcus: The Dustbin of History

Greil Marcus: The Dustbin of History
1946) In 1960, CBS radio ran a series called The Hidden Revolution [...] The idea was that, since the end of the Second World War, the world had been put through profound upheavals, which were paradoxically so quiet and, in a way, secret - with atomizing cities replacing smaller communities, increased hierarchy in everyday affairs, growing distrust of business and government from ordinary people, the removal of centers of information and power from democratic control or indeed any kind of public accountability - that these drastic changes were felt rather than understood. This was "The Hidden Revolution," which produced "The Cool Rebellion" [of the Beats] - a withdrawal, a refusal, a small, then growing band of exiles in their own country. [...] The struggle [...] is about materialism and soullessness, empty abundance and the need to create, the monolith and the self: "the battle for survival [...] of the individual personality in a tragic century."
Greil Marcus
"The Bob McFadden Experience"
Puncture (Spring 1993)
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1947) [Some schools of history assert] that all "facts" claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, there is no clear difference between fact and faction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely essential. We cannot invent our facts. Either Elvis Presley is dead or he isn't. The question can be answered unambiguously on the basis of evidence, insofar as reliable evidence is available, which is sometimes the case. Either the present Turkish government, which denies the attempted genocide of the Armenians in 1915, is right or it is not.
Eric Hobsbawm
"The New Threat to History" in
New York Review of Books (12/16/1993)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1948) History will be what we say it is, the newspapers impl[y] - if only we could agree.

The legend we use for history is more resistant than that - and that is why the most contrived, nonsensical counter-legend can cast a spell the most scrupulous narrative may never match. The legend we use for history is a master-narrative, a narrative that cannot be easily interrupted, revised, or seized, but can only, in certain moments, be replaced. The insertion into that master-narrative - which is America is a tale of equality, individualism, virtue, and success - of the so-called contributions of people previously excluded from the narrative (African Americans, women, Asian Americans, and so on) will not necessarily change the narrative in any way.Greil Marcus

Such insertions may only initiate those one excluded by the master-narrative into its untruth.

Any society's master-narrative is by definition an untruth. It is an interested construction rather than a literal, all-seeing account of what really happened (as if such a thing were possible) - and this may actually be its justification. Cultural awakening comes not when one learns the contours of the master-narrative, but when one realizes - thanks to a teacher, a book, or the disruptions of the unpredicted historical fact - that what one has always been told is incomplete, backward, false, a lie. There is nothing more liberating, there is nothing that leads more surely to the need to question whatever is presented as fixed, certain, inevitable. And it makes sense that the means to such a liberation are not always where one has been taught to look for them.
Greil Marcus
"History Lesson"
Threepenny Review (Summer 1992)
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1949) How much history can be communicated by pressure on a guitar string?
Robert Palmer
Deep Blues (1981)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1950) Culture is elusive. It passes secretly, often silently, telepathically, between a parent and a child who does not even realize she has been looking on or listening until years later, when she somehow discovers what she has learned and can now do herself; it ripens, unintended, often unconsciously, in dreams, suddenly and unexpectedly to reveal itself in an expression or a turn of phrase, in a way of relating to one's children or one's spouse, or, at another level, in our musical or pictorial preferences, in the narratives we construct about ourselves and others and to which we turn for understanding. It may arise by accident, from a half-remembered memory, from fingers or hands idling with instruments and tools. Or it may simply persist, with a peculiar life of its own, in a circuitous transit over several centuries, from courtly to commercial to domestic culture and back again.
Robert Cantwell
Ethnomimesis: Folklore and the
Representation of Culture
(1993)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1951) You're not going to have enough locks on the doors or police in the street to protect you from a generation of people who are not part of the mainstream of American life.
Congressman Thomas Downey
before the House Subcommittee on Human Resources (c.1996), commenting on the growing disparity
between the incomes of the rich and the poor
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

Kirk Anderson; click for full cartoon
1952) Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses sought to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving the masses not their right [to change property relations] but instead a chance to express themselves. [...] The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into politics.
Walter Benjamin
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936)
in Reflections (1971)
Peter Demetz, ed.
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1953) The good thing about American crime films is that sometimes 20 people die during that film, and you're not sorry. You're not sorry for any one of them!
Mikhail Gorbachev
interviewed by Alan Cranston
"The World According to Gorby"
Rolling Stone (8/25/1990)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1954) There are four kinds of people in this world [...] cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics. [...] Cretins are of no interest to [publishers]. They never come to publishers' offices [...] Fools don't interest us either. They're never creative, their talent is all second-hand, so they don't submit manuscripts to publishers. [Unlike cretins, fools] don't claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everybody else is talking about dogs. [...] [Morons] get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, and therefore cats bark [...] A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn't know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idee fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration [...]
Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)

1955) In bad times, I did not abandon the city; in good times, I had no private interests; in desperate times, I feared nothing.
unknown
quoted by Guy Debord in
Panegyric (1993)
quoted by Greil Marcus in
The Dustbin of History (1996)
The Dustbin of History
1956) [T]here are times when saying no - to one's society, culture, to one's civilization as a whole - is to say yes to one's audience: to take the easy way out, to ask the easy questions and provide the easiest answers, to offer the safest and most shallow satisfactions.
Greil Marcus
"Happy Endings"
Village Voice (8/4/1975)
The Dustbin of History (1996)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 397 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/19/2007 04:25:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Tuesday, December 18, 2007
 

(3089/898) Delusions and refusals

1943) It is a very sorry commentary on the state of our society that, as we have become more and more dependent on scientific advances in computers, medicine, communications and other areas, a large segment of the population has correspondingly embraced what has been termed the "flight from reason" and believes in the garbage of pseudo science. [...] [A]lmost half the population believes in ESP and more than half believes that it has had a psychic experience.

At first glance, parapsychology might seem to offer more attractive explanations than traditional science for some phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. However, detailed scientific analyses will invariably show that the real world and real explanations for complex phenomena are much more interesting than anything parapsychology has to offer.
Arthur J. L. Cooper
Research Professor, Cornell University Medical College
letter to the editor
New York Times Magazine (9/8/1996)
[commenting on the article
"They Laughed At Galileo, Too"
by Chip Brown (8/11/1996)]

1944) Consider [...] the enormous number of Americans who rage against taxes. The complaint is as old as the country, but the rage is not, and it ought to be unsettling. It is not that taxes are too high, or that people wish at least their property or their whiskey could be spared. Rather, it seems to many a transparent offense that there should be taxes at all.

Politicians, who cannot escape knowing better, only in rare instances have refrained from wheedling with this delusive style of resentment. They go along with the grievances because they want to be good siblings. In the years of the cold war, when money saved out of taxes might have helped buy a bomb shelter and a shotgun to keep out the neighbors, nobody grudged the payments to support decently functioning police and fire departments, public schools and public parks. It would have been thought a low boast, the sign of a shady character, to be heard congratulating yourself about how cleverly you cheated the government. That kind of talk was for mob lawyers. Today the fact that a rule or a request or a protocol emanates from established authority is enough to warrant any brutality of abuse in the fight against it.
David Bromwich
"The Young Republic" in
The New Republic (9/16/1996)
[review of The Sibling Society
by Robert Bly]

1945) [P]eople in authority today, especially people in their 30s and 40s, have an extraordinarily hard time saying no. They have a hard and endless time with cases that prove a genuine test - turning down an honest plea or disappointing a party with a quasi-official entitlement for pleading. Negotiation postpones the final no and changes its meaning, and when the authorities do say it at last, they often show a visible reluctance with a bending of the head, knees or voice. The refusal is of the serial kind that lays the ground for a future request.
David Bromwich
"The Young Republic" in
The New Republic (9/16/1996)
[review of The Sibling Society
by Robert Bly]

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 398 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/18/2007 11:15:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Miscellany: politics, science, art

1934) There's an old saying that every geek thinks that the circus couldn't run without him. In the political circus recently, the geeks have started writing books in which they describe exactly how they bit the heads off the live chicken and how this makes them indispensable. Inadvertently, they also make it clear we'd all be better if that circus never came to town.
Donald E. Westlake
"Tough Guys Don't Shut Up" in
New York Times Book Review (8/23/1996)
[review of Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms
by Ed Rollins with Tom DeFrank]
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
1935) [T]he general public - in modern countries, the electorate - doesn't spend much time thinking about politics, so that the nation's hopes, traditions, and myths tend to live on. Capital cities, by contrast, are humid cultures for the intensive, tropical growth of political forces, schemes, bureaucracies, parasites, and interests - and for greed and institutional corruption.
Kevin Phillips
Arrogant Capital (1994)

1936) We may say with truth and meaning that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
letter to John Taylor (5/28/1816)
Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers
of Thomas Jefferson, v.4

Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ed., (1829) [WQ]
quoted (in part) by Kevin Phillips in
Arrogant Capital (1994)

1937) When irrational terror takes to itself the fiat of moral goodness somebody has to die. [...] No man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion.
Arthur Miller
"It Could Happen Here - And Did"
New York Times (4/30/1967)
The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1996)
quoted (in part) by Victor Navasky in
Naming Names (1980), and in
"The Demons of Salem, With Us Still" in
New York Times Arts and Leisure Section (9/8/1996)
Moral Panic: click for larger view1938) [S]ome of [us] have completely lost sight of the fact that we are responsible for our choices. We are not automatic mechanisms. Regardless of the stimulus, except for low level reflexes, we always have a choice of response.
Ron Robertson
posted on the Court TV
Elements of Crime discussion board (7/13/1996)

1939) Americans visit one another's homes and join civic associations less than in any era on record. Alone at the end of the cul-de-sac, we watch murder, mayhem and assorted social pathologies on television. Bereft of community, we have become suspicious of immigrants, of shared social responsibility - and even of human potential itself. Racist arguments like [co-author of The Bell Curve] Charles Murray's conform to this mindset" they offer "scientific" evidence that the poor are inferior and therefore a hopeless case. The press is culpable too, transmitting the idea with barely a skeptical question.
Brent Staples
"Zeal of A Convert" in
New York Times Books Review (8/4/1996)
[review of Up From Conservatism (1996)
by Michael Lind, and citing ideas from the essay
- later book - "Bowling Alone" (1994)
by Robert Putnam]

1940) If [the] natural sciences lead to anything, they are apt to make the belief that there is such a thing as the "meaning" of the universe die out at its very roots.
Max Weber
"Science As A Vocation"
quoted by Richard Wolin in
"Liberalism As A Vocation" in
The New Republic (9/2/1996)
[review of Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy
by John Patrick Diggins]

1941) We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances [...]
Francis Bacon
New Atlantis (1627)
quoted by Paul D. Miller
(aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) in
"Algorithms, Erasures {and the Art of} Memory",
an excerpt from "Flow My Blood the DJ Said", in
liner notes, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (cd, 1996)
by DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid

1942) I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.
D.H. Lawrence
letter (4/15/1908)
Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1979),
edited by James T. Boulton [CQ]

Sources

[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[WQ] - Wikiquote



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 398 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/18/2007 10:17:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Gould: Mismeasure of Man (2)


1928) When a book garners as much attention as The Bell Curve has received, we wish to know the causes. One might expect content itself - a startling new idea, or an old suspicion now verified by persuasive data - but the reason might well be social acceptability, or just plain hype. The Bell Curve contains no new arguments and presents no compelling new data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism. I must therefore conclude that its initial success in winning such attention must reflect the depressing temper of our time - a historical moment of unprecedented ungenerosity, when a mood for slashing social programs can be so abetted by an argument that beneficiaries cannot be aided due to inborn cognitive limits expressed as low IQ scores.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Critique of The Bell Curve"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)
[Note: See #362 Gould, #1914-1927 Gould, and below for more from The Mismeasure of Man.]
1929) Is intellectual ability a bank account, on which we can draw for any desired purpose, or is it rather a bundle of separate drafts, each drawn for a specific purpose and inconvertible?
Lewis M. Therman
quoted by Stephen Jay Gould in
"Critique of The Bell Curve"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1930) We are not all equal in endowment, and we do not enter the world as blank slates, but most deficiencies can be mediated to a considerable degree, and the palling effect of biological determinism defines its greatest tragedy - for if we give up (because we accept the doctrine of immutable inborn limits), but could have helped, then we have committed the most grevious error of chaining the human spirit.

Why must we follow the fallacious and dichotomous model of pitting a supposedly fixed and inborn biology against the flexibility or training - or nature vs. nurture in the mellifluous pairing of words that so fixes this false opposition in the public mind? Biology is not inevitable destiny; education is not an assault upon biological limits. Rather, our extensive capacity for educational improvement records a genetic uniqueness vouchsafed only to humans among animals.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Critique of The Bell Curve"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1931) An old tradition in science proclaims that changes in theory must be driven by observation. Since most scientists believe this simplistic formula, they assume that their own shifts in interpretation only record their better understanding of newly discovered facts. Scientists therefore tend to be unaware of their own mental impositions upon the world's messy and ambiguous factuality. Such mental impositions arise from a variety of sources, including psychological predisposition and social context.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Three Centuries' Perspectives"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1932) If I choose to impose individual blame for all past social ills, there will be no one left to like in some of the most fascinating periods of four history. For example, and speaking personally, if I place every Victorian anti-Semite beyond the pale of my attention, my compass of available music and literature will be pitifully small. Though I hold no shred of sympathy for active persecutors, I cannot excoriate individuals who acquiesced passively in a standard societal judgment. Rail instead against the judgment, and try to understand what motivates men of decent will.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Three Centuries' Perspectives"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1933) Those who look tenderly at the slave owner and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children - those objects which nature urges even the salve to call his own - being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
Charles Darwin
Voyage of the Beagle (1836)
quoted by Stephen Jay Gould in
"Three Centuries' Perspectives"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 398 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/18/2007 06:00:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Gould: Mismeasure of Man (1)

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
1914) [T]he remarkable lack of genetic differentiation among human groups - a major biological basis for debunking determinism - is a contingent fact of evolutionary history, not an a priori or necessary truth. The world might have been ordered differently. [...] Homo sapiens [...] might have included a set of subspecies (races) with meaningfully different genetic capacities. If our species were millions of years old (many are), and if its races had been geographically separated for most of this time without significant genetic interchange, then large genetic differences might have slowly accumulated between groups. But Homo sapiens is, at most, a few hundred thousand years old, and all modern human races probably split from a common ancestral stock only about a hundred thousand years ago. A few outstanding traits of external appearance lead to our subjective judgment of important differences. But biologists have recently affirmed - as long suspected - that the overall genetic differences among human races are astonishingly small. Although frequencies for different states of a gene differ among races, we have found no "race genes" - that is, states fixed in certain races and absent from all others. [...] As [Richard] Lewontin remarked [...] if the holocaust comes and a small tribe in the New Guinea forests are the only survivors, almost all the genetic variation now expressed among the innumerable groups of our five billion people will be preserved.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)
[Note: See #362 Gould, #1928-1933 Gould, and below for more from The Mismeasure of Man.]
1915) Human uniqueness resides primarily in our brains. It is expressed in the culture built upon our intelligence and the power it gives us to manipulate the world. Human societies change by cultural evolution, not as a result of biological alteration. [...] All that we have done since [the appearance of Homo sapiens in the fossil record] - the greatest transformation in the shortest time that our planet has experienced since its crust solidified nearly four billion years ago - is the product of cultural evolution. [...] Whatever one generation learns, it can pass on to the next by writing, instruction, inculcation, ritual, tradition, and a host of methods that humans have developed to assure continuity in culture. [...] The classical arguments of biological determinism fail because the features they invoke to make distinctions among groups are usually the products of cultural evolution.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1916) Cultural evolution is not only rapid; it is readily reversible because its products are not coded in our genes.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1917) Working scientists are generally good at analyzing data. We are trained to spot fallacies of argument and, especially, to be hypercritical of supporting data. We scrutinize charts and look at every dot on a graph. Science moves forward as much by critiquing the conclusions of others as by making novel discoveries.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

Stephen Jay Gould1918) Most scientists don't care a fig about history; my colleagues may not quite follow Henry Ford's dictum that history is bunk, but they do regard the past as a mere repository of error - at beast a source of moral instruction in pitfalls along paths to progress.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1919) [Biological determinism is linked to] some of the oldest issues and errors of our philosophical traditions [...] reductionism, or the desire to explain partly random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena by deterministic behavior of smallest constituent parts (physical objects by atoms in motion, mental functioning by inherited amount of a central stuff); reification, or the propensity to convert an abstract concept (like intelligence) into a hard entity (like an amount of quantifiable brain stuff); dichotimization, or the desire to parse complex and continuous reality into divisions by two (smart and stupid, black and white(; and hierarchy, or our inclination to order items by ranking them in a linear series of increasing worth (grades of innate intelligence [...], then often broken up into a twofold division by our urges to dichotomize, as in normal vs. feeble-minded, to use the favored terminology of early days in IQ testing.

When we join our tendencies to commit these general error with the sociopolitical reality of a xenophobia that so often (and so sadly) regulates our attitudes to "others" judged inferior, we grasp the potency of biological determinism as a social weapon - for "others" will thereby be demeaned, and their lower socioeconomic status validated as a scientific consequence of their innate ineptitude rather than society's unfair choices. May I therefore repeat Darwin's great line: "If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."Charles Darwin at 40
Stephen Jay Gould
"Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)
quoting Charles Darwin from
Voyage of the Beagle (1836)

1920) [R]esurgences of biological determinism correlate with episodes of political retrenchment, particularly with campaigns for reduced government spending on social programs, or at times of fear among ruling elites, when disadvantaged groups sow serious social unrest or even threaten to usurp power. What argument against social change could be more chillingly effective than the claim that established orders, with some groups on top and others at the bottom, exist as an accurate reflection of the innate and unchangeable intellectual capacities of people so ranked?

Why struggle and spend to raise the unboostable IQ of races or social classes at the bottom of the economic ladder; better simply to accept nature's unfortunate dictates and save a passel of federal funds; (we can them more easily sustain tax breaks for the wealthy!)? Why bother yourself about underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups in your honored and remunerative baliwick if such absence records the diminished ability or general immorality, biologically imposed, of most members in the rejected group, and not the legacy or current reality of social prejudice? (The groups so stigmatized may be races, classes, sexes, behavioral propensities, religions, or national origins. Biological determinism is a general theory, and particular bearers of current disparagement act as surrogates for all others subject to similar prejudice at different times and places. [...])
Stephen Jay Gould
"Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1921) Impartiality (even if desirable) is unattainable by human beings with inevitable backgrounds, needs, beliefs, and desires. It is dangerous for a scholar even to imagine that he might attain complete neutrality, for then one stops being vigilant about personal preferences and their influences - and then one truly falls victim to the dictates of prejudice.

Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference. Moreover, one needs to understand and acknowledge inevitable preferences in order to know their influence - so that fair treatment of data and arguments can be obtained! No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools. [...] The best form of objectivity lies in explicitly identifying preferences so that their influence can be recognized and countermanded.
Stephen Jay Gould
"Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition"
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1923) The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality. Much of the fascination with statistics lies embedded in our gut feeling - and never trust a gut feeling - that abstract measures summarizing large tables of data must express something more real and fundamental than the data themselves. (Much professional training in statistics involves a conscious effort to counteract this gut feeling.) The technique of correlation has been particularly subject to such misuse because it seems to provide a path for inferences about causality (and indeed it does, sometimes - but only sometimes.)

Correlation assesses the tendency of one measure to vary in concert with another. As a child grows, for example, both its arms and legs get longer; this joint tendency to change in the same direction is called a positive correlation. Not all parts of the body display such positive correlation during growth. Teeth, for example, do not grow after they erupt. The relationship between first incisor length and leg length from, say, age ten to adulthood would represent zero correlation - lets would get longer while teeth changed not at all. Other correlations can be negative - one measure increases while the other decreases. We begin to lose neurons at a distressingly early age, and they are not replaced. Thus, the relationship between leg length and number of neurons after mid-childhood represents negative correlation - leg length increases while number of neurons decreases. Notice that I have said nothing about causality. We do not know why these correlations do or do not exist, only that they are present or not present. [...] Arm and leg length are tightly correlated because they are both partial measures of an underlying biological phenomenon, namely growth itself.

Yet, lest anyone become too hopeful that correlation represents a magic method for the unambiguous indentification of cause, consider the relationship between my age and the price of gasoline during the past ten years. The correlation is nearly perfect, but no one would suggest any assignment of cause. The fact of correlation implies nothing about cause. It is not even true that intense correlations are more likely to represent cause than weak ones, for the correlation of my age with the price of gasoline is nearly 1.0. I spoke of cause for arm and leg lengths not because their correlation was high, but because I know something about the biology of the situation. The inference of cause must come from somewhere else, not from the simple fact of correlation - though an unexpected correlation may lead us to search for causes so long as we remember that we may not find them. The vast majority of correlations in our world are, without a doubt, noncausal. Anything that has been increasing steadily during the past few years will be strongly correlated with the distance between the earth and Halley's comet (which has also been increasing as of late) - but even the most dedicated astrologer would not discern causality in most of these relationships. The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1924) Copernicus's heliocentric theory can be viewed as a purely mathematical hypothesis, offering a simpler representation for the same astronomical data that Ptolemy had explained by putting the earth at the center of things. Indeed, Copernicus's cautious and practical supporters [...] urged such a pragmatic course in a world populated with inquisitions and indices of forbidden books. But Copernicus's theory eventually produced a furor when its supporters, led by Galileo, insisted upon viewing it as a statement about the real organization of the heavens, not merely as a simpler numerical representation of planetary motion.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1925) In the absence of corroborative evidence from biology for one scheme or the other, how can one decide? Ultimately, however much a scientists hates to admit it, the decision become a matter of taste, or of prior preference based on personal or cultural bias.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1926) The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical base...John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829)
by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)
(partly) quoted by Stephen Jay Gould in
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)

1927) The popular impression that disproof represents a negative side of science arises from a common, but erroneous, view of history. The idea of unilinear progress [...] suggests a false concept of how science develops. In this view, science begins in the nothingness of ignorance and moves toward truth by gathering more and more information, constructing theories as facts accumulate. In such a world, debunking would be primarily negative, for it would only such some rotten apples from the barrel of accumulating knowledge. But the barrel of theory is always full; sciences work with elaborated contexts for explaining facts from the very outset. [...] Science advances primarily by replacement, not by addition. If the barrel is always full, then the rotten apples must be discarded before better ones can be added.

Scientists do not debunk only to cleanse and purge. They refute older ideas in the light of a different view about the nature of things.
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (rev. & exp. ed., 1996)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 398 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/18/2007 12:54:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Sunday, December 16, 2007
 

(3089/898) Sokal's Hoax

1906) A physicist friend of mine once said that in facing death, he drew some consolation that he would never again have to look up the word "hermeneutics" in the dictionary.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)
["Sokal's Hoax" refers to Alan Sokal's article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", in the journal Social Text (Spring/Summer 1996), and his description of the hoax in "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies" in the journal Lingua Franca (May 1996).

For more on Sokal's Hoax, see #1801 Rothstein.]
1907) I suppose it might be argued that articles in physics journals are [...] incomprehensible to the uninitiated. But physicists are forced to use a technical language, the language of mathematics. Within this limitation, we try to be clear, and when we fail we do not expect our readers to confuse obscurity with profundity. [...] In contrast, [Jacques] Derrida and other postmoderns do not seem to be saying anything that requires a special technical language, and they do not seem to be trying very hard to be clear.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

Alan Sokal; Steven Weinberg

1908) Those who seek extrascientific messages in what they think they understand about modern physics are digging dry wells. In my view, with two large exceptions, the results of research in physics (as opposed, say, to psychology) have no legitimate implications whatever for culture or politics or philosophy. (I am not talking here about the technological applications of physics, which of course do have a huge effect on our culture, or about its use as metaphor, but about the direct logical implications of purely scientific discoveries themselves. The discoveries of physics may become relevant to philosophy and culture when we learn the origin of the universe or the final laws of nature, but no for the present.

The first of my exceptions to this statement is jurisdictional: discoveries in science sometimes reveal that topics like matter, space, and time, which had been thought to be proper subjects for philosophical argument, actually belong in the province of ordinary science. The other, more important exception to my statement is the profound cultural effect of the discover, going back to the work of Newton, that nature is strictly governed by impersonal mathematical laws. Of course, it still remains for us to get the laws right, and to understand the range of their validity; but as far as culture or philosophy is concerned, the difference between Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravitation or between classical and quantum
mechanics is immaterial.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

1909) What are the implications for science of its cultural and social context? Here scientists [...] find themselves in opposition to many sociologists, historians and philosophers as well as post-modern literary theorists. In this debate, the two sides often seem to be talking past each other. For instance, the sociologists and historians sometimes write as if scientists had not learned anything about the scientific method since the days of Francis Bacon, while of course we know very well how complicated the relation is between theory and experiment, and how much the work of science depends on an appropriate social and economic setting. On the other hand, scientists sometimes accuse others of taking a completely relativist view, of not believing in objective reality. [Alan] Sokal's hoax cites "revisionist studies in history and philosophy of science" as casting doubt on the post-Enlightenment dogma that "there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole." The trouble with the satire of this passage is that most of Sokal's targets deny that they have any doubt about the existence of an external world. [...]

I don't mean to say that this part of Sokal's satire was unjustified. His targets often take positions that seem to be (and I gather to Sokal) to make no sense if there is an objective reality. To put it simply, if scientists are talking about something real, then what they say is either true or false. If it is true, then how can it depend on the social environment of the scientist? If it is false, how can it help to liberate us? The choice of scientific question and the method of approach may depend on all sorts of extrascientific influences, but the correct answer when we find it is what it is because that is the way the world is.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

1910) When I was an undergraduate at Cornell I heard a lecture by a professor of philosophy (probably Max Born) who explained that whenever anyone asked him whether something was real, he always gave the same answer. The answer was "Yes." The tooth fairy is real, the laws of physics are real, the rules of baseball are real, and the rocks in the fields are real. But they are real in different ways. What I mean when I say that the laws of physics are real is that they are real in pretty much the same sense (whatever that is) as the rocks in the fields, and not in the same sense [...] as the rules of baseball. We did not create the laws of physics or the rocks in the fields, and we sometimes unhappily find out that we have been wrong about them, as when we stub our toe on an unnoticed rock, or when we find we make a mistake (as most physicists have) about some physical law. But the languages in which we describe rocks or in which we state physical laws are certainly created socially, so I am making an implicit assumption (which in everyday life we make about rocks) that our statements about the laws of physics are in a one-to-one correspondence with aspects of objective reality. To put it another way, if we ever discover intelligent creature on some distant planet and translate their scientific works, we will find that we and they have discovered the same laws.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

1911) Although natural science is intellectually hegemonic, in the sense that we have a clear idea of what it means for a theory to be true or false, its operations are not socially hegemonic - authority counts for very little.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

1912) What Herbert Butterfield called the Whig interpretation of history is legitimate in the history of science in a way that it is not in the history of politics or culture, because science is cumulative, and permits definite judgments of success or failure.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

1913) If we think that scientific laws are flexible enough to be affected by the social setting of their discovery, then some might be tempted to press scientists to discover laws that are more proletarian or feminine or American or religious or Aryan or whatever else it is they want. This is a dangerous path, and more is at stake in the controversy over it than just the health of science. [...] We will need to confirm and strengthen the vision of a rationally understandable world if we are to protect ourselves from the irrational tendencies that still beset humanity.
Steven Weinberg
"Sokal's Hoax" in
New York Review of Books (8/8/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 400 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/16/2007 11:22:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







by

Ed Fitzgerald

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am...
site feed
2008 rules of thumb
Progressive populism!
Economic insecurity is key
Restore the balance
Cast the candidate
Persona is important
Calm,calming,assured,reassuring
Iraq, not "national security"
Prefer governors over senators
recent posts
bush countdown
oblique strategies
recent comments
some links
baseball
storm watch
(click for larger image,
refresh page to update)


topics
a progressive slogan
Fairness, progress and prosperity, because we're all in this together.

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
(Alex Gregory - The New Yorker)
new york city
another progressive slogan
The greatest good for the greatest number, with dignity for all.
reference & fact check
iraq
write me
reciprocity
evolution v. creationism
humanism, skepticism
& progressive religiosity
more links
election prediction
HOUSE
Democrats 230 (+27) - Republicans 205

Actual:
Democrats 233 (+30) - Republicans 201 - TBD 1 [FL-13]

SENATE
Democrats 50 (+5) - Republicans 50

Actual:
Democrats 51 (+6) - Republicans 49

ELECTION PROJECTIONS SURVEY
netroots candidates
unfutz
awards and nominations
Never a bridesmaid...

...and never a bride, either!!

what I've been reading
Martin van Creveld - The Transformation of War

Jay Feldman - When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Martin van Creveld - The Rise and Decline of the State

Alfred W. Crosby - America's Forgotten Pandemic (1989)
bush & company are...
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed

Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
Island in the Sky (1952)

Robot Chicken

The Family Guy

House M.D. (2004-7)
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz


"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)


Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:




Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
Smash Mouth - Summer Girl

Poulenc - Piano Music

Pop Ambient 2007
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
archives
08/31/2003 - 09/07/2003
09/07/2003 - 09/14/2003
09/14/2003 - 09/21/2003
09/21/2003 - 09/28/2003
09/28/2003 - 10/05/2003
10/05/2003 - 10/12/2003
10/12/2003 - 10/19/2003
10/19/2003 - 10/26/2003
11/02/2003 - 11/09/2003
11/09/2003 - 11/16/2003
11/16/2003 - 11/23/2003
11/23/2003 - 11/30/2003
12/07/2003 - 12/14/2003
12/14/2003 - 12/21/2003
12/21/2003 - 12/28/2003
01/11/2004 - 01/18/2004
01/18/2004 - 01/25/2004
01/25/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 02/08/2004
02/08/2004 - 02/15/2004
02/15/2004 - 02/22/2004
02/22/2004 - 02/29/2004
02/29/2004 - 03/07/2004
03/07/2004 - 03/14/2004
03/14/2004 - 03/21/2004
03/21/2004 - 03/28/2004
03/28/2004 - 04/04/2004
04/04/2004 - 04/11/2004
04/11/2004 - 04/18/2004
04/18/2004 - 04/25/2004
04/25/2004 - 05/02/2004
05/02/2004 - 05/09/2004
05/09/2004 - 05/16/2004
05/16/2004 - 05/23/2004
05/23/2004 - 05/30/2004
05/30/2004 - 06/06/2004
06/06/2004 - 06/13/2004
06/13/2004 - 06/20/2004
06/20/2004 - 06/27/2004
06/27/2004 - 07/04/2004
07/04/2004 - 07/11/2004
07/18/2004 - 07/25/2004
07/25/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/08/2004
08/08/2004 - 08/15/2004
08/15/2004 - 08/22/2004
08/22/2004 - 08/29/2004
08/29/2004 - 09/05/2004
09/05/2004 - 09/12/2004
09/12/2004 - 09/19/2004
09/19/2004 - 09/26/2004
09/26/2004 - 10/03/2004
10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004
10/10/2004 - 10/17/2004
10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004
10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004
10/31/2004 - 11/07/2004
11/07/2004 - 11/14/2004
11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004
11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004
11/28/2004 - 12/05/2004
12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004
12/12/2004 - 12/19/2004
12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004
12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005
01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005
01/09/2005 - 01/16/2005
01/16/2005 - 01/23/2005
01/23/2005 - 01/30/2005
01/30/2005 - 02/06/2005
02/06/2005 - 02/13/2005
02/13/2005 - 02/20/2005
02/20/2005 - 02/27/2005
02/27/2005 - 03/06/2005
03/06/2005 - 03/13/2005
03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005
03/20/2005 - 03/27/2005
03/27/2005 - 04/03/2005
04/03/2005 - 04/10/2005
04/10/2005 - 04/17/2005
04/17/2005 - 04/24/2005
04/24/2005 - 05/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 05/08/2005
05/08/2005 - 05/15/2005
05/15/2005 - 05/22/2005
05/22/2005 - 05/29/2005
05/29/2005 - 06/05/2005
06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005
06/12/2005 - 06/19/2005
06/19/2005 - 06/26/2005
06/26/2005 - 07/03/2005
07/10/2005 - 07/17/2005
07/17/2005 - 07/24/2005
07/24/2005 - 07/31/2005
07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005
08/07/2005 - 08/14/2005
08/14/2005 - 08/21/2005
08/21/2005 - 08/28/2005
08/28/2005 - 09/04/2005
09/04/2005 - 09/11/2005
09/11/2005 - 09/18/2005
09/18/2005 - 09/25/2005
09/25/2005 - 10/02/2005
10/02/2005 - 10/09/2005
10/09/2005 - 10/16/2005
10/16/2005 - 10/23/2005
10/23/2005 - 10/30/2005
10/30/2005 - 11/06/2005
11/06/2005 - 11/13/2005
11/13/2005 - 11/20/2005
11/20/2005 - 11/27/2005
11/27/2005 - 12/04/2005
12/04/2005 - 12/11/2005
12/11/2005 - 12/18/2005
12/18/2005 - 12/25/2005
12/25/2005 - 01/01/2006
01/01/2006 - 01/08/2006
01/08/2006 - 01/15/2006
01/15/2006 - 01/22/2006
01/22/2006 - 01/29/2006
01/29/2006 - 02/05/2006
02/05/2006 - 02/12/2006
02/12/2006 - 02/19/2006
02/19/2006 - 02/26/2006
02/26/2006 - 03/05/2006
03/05/2006 - 03/12/2006
03/26/2006 - 04/02/2006
04/02/2006 - 04/09/2006
04/09/2006 - 04/16/2006
04/16/2006 - 04/23/2006
04/23/2006 - 04/30/2006
04/30/2006 - 05/07/2006
05/07/2006 - 05/14/2006
05/14/2006 - 05/21/2006
05/21/2006 - 05/28/2006
05/28/2006 - 06/04/2006
06/04/2006 - 06/11/2006
06/11/2006 - 06/18/2006
06/18/2006 - 06/25/2006
06/25/2006 - 07/02/2006
07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006
07/09/2006 - 07/16/2006
07/16/2006 - 07/23/2006
07/23/2006 - 07/30/2006
08/06/2006 - 08/13/2006
08/13/2006 - 08/20/2006
08/20/2006 - 08/27/2006
08/27/2006 - 09/03/2006
09/03/2006 - 09/10/2006
09/10/2006 - 09/17/2006
09/17/2006 - 09/24/2006
09/24/2006 - 10/01/2006
10/01/2006 - 10/08/2006
10/08/2006 - 10/15/2006
10/15/2006 - 10/22/2006
10/22/2006 - 10/29/2006
10/29/2006 - 11/05/2006
11/05/2006 - 11/12/2006
11/12/2006 - 11/19/2006
11/19/2006 - 11/26/2006
11/26/2006 - 12/03/2006
12/03/2006 - 12/10/2006
12/10/2006 - 12/17/2006
12/17/2006 - 12/24/2006
12/24/2006 - 12/31/2006
12/31/2006 - 01/07/2007
01/07/2007 - 01/14/2007
01/14/2007 - 01/21/2007
01/21/2007 - 01/28/2007
01/28/2007 - 02/04/2007
02/04/2007 - 02/11/2007
02/11/2007 - 02/18/2007
02/18/2007 - 02/25/2007
02/25/2007 - 03/04/2007
03/04/2007 - 03/11/2007
03/11/2007 - 03/18/2007
03/18/2007 - 03/25/2007
03/25/2007 - 04/01/2007
04/01/2007 - 04/08/2007
04/08/2007 - 04/15/2007
04/15/2007 - 04/22/2007
04/22/2007 - 04/29/2007
04/29/2007 - 05/06/2007
05/13/2007 - 05/20/2007
05/20/2007 - 05/27/2007
05/27/2007 - 06/03/2007
06/03/2007 - 06/10/2007
06/10/2007 - 06/17/2007
06/17/2007 - 06/24/2007
06/24/2007 - 07/01/2007
07/01/2007 - 07/08/2007
07/08/2007 - 07/15/2007
07/29/2007 - 08/05/2007
08/05/2007 - 08/12/2007
08/12/2007 - 08/19/2007
08/19/2007 - 08/26/2007
08/26/2007 - 09/02/2007
09/02/2007 - 09/09/2007
09/09/2007 - 09/16/2007
09/16/2007 - 09/23/2007
09/23/2007 - 09/30/2007
09/30/2007 - 10/07/2007
10/07/2007 - 10/14/2007
10/14/2007 - 10/21/2007
10/21/2007 - 10/28/2007
10/28/2007 - 11/04/2007
11/04/2007 - 11/11/2007
11/11/2007 - 11/18/2007
11/18/2007 - 11/25/2007
11/25/2007 - 12/02/2007
12/02/2007 - 12/09/2007
12/09/2007 - 12/16/2007
12/16/2007 - 12/23/2007
12/23/2007 - 12/30/2007
12/30/2007 - 01/06/2008
01/06/2008 - 01/13/2008
01/13/2008 - 01/20/2008
01/20/2008 - 01/27/2008
01/27/2008 - 02/03/2008
02/03/2008 - 02/10/2008
02/10/2008 - 02/17/2008
02/17/2008 - 02/24/2008
02/24/2008 - 03/02/2008
03/09/2008 - 03/16/2008
03/16/2008 - 03/23/2008
03/23/2008 - 03/30/2008
03/30/2008 - 04/06/2008
06/01/2008 - 06/08/2008
09/21/2008 - 09/28/2008
search

search websearch unfutz

policies
Comments
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.

Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.

I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.


E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.

Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.

Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.

Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
2005 koufax awards

BEST BLOG (NON-PRO)

Bradblog
Carpetbagger Report
*Crooks and Liars*
Eschaton
Firedoglake
Hullabaloo
Majikthise
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Progressive Blog Digest

BEST BLOG (PRO)

AmericaBlog
Daou Report
Media Matters
Orcinus
Political Animal
Sirotablog
*Talking Points Memo*
Think Progress
James Wolcott

*Winners*
2004 koufax winners
2003 koufax award
"best blog" nominees
r.i.p.
the proud unfutz guarantee
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.

original content
© 2003-2008
Ed Fitzgerald

=o=

take all you want
but credit all you take.



Creative Commons License



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Buzzflash Bushisms Democratic Underground Impeach Bush Coalition