Re: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts
PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 10:18 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts REH wrote: I suspect Hitler would have found his equivelent of Vietnam had he invaded that mountain country filled with violent people just itching to protect their homes. They kind of ^^^ remind me of the Aztecs who destroyed their own homes and left nothing for Cortez the brute. ^ As I tried to explain long ago, there's a difference between violence and defense. With violent people, you can't let everyone have his army assault rifle at home, or it would be one big crime wave. In the same sense, your comparison with Aztecs is also way off the mark. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Those beautiful girls (wasRe: [Futurework] The annals of war :: Louis Kahn in Bangaladesh
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] From my holiday in India and Nepal some five years ago, I will never forget seeing those beautiful girls from Rajasthan who were working on the building sites of Delhi and Khatmandu who had been sold into bonded labour by their parents. I believe the standard term was (is) 10 years. Buy the end of that time, after carrying 16, or sometimes 20, bricks on a mortar board on their heads and climbing up bamboo scaffolding, I imagine that their backbones become compressed and they were fairly unfit for normal life at the end of their bonded time. As I walked into these building sites I began to feel physically afraid for my safety as I notcied the eyes of the foremen upon me. Does it continue? Probably. Is it the Fourth Comandment that commands: Honor thy father and mother. (Odeipus did not want to kill his parents -- he went into voluntary exile to try to keep from hurting them. But Oedipus's parents had hired a hit man to kill *him* -- albeit the man did not fully fulfill the terms of his contract.) \brad mccormidk Keith Alexander the Great died at Babylon, And Louis Kahn died in a men's room in Pennsylvania Station (returning from Bangaladesh). \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Nezahualcoyotl was one of the great poets of the world. Today we only have these few paper shards as a result of the barbarians who couldn't read and destroyed the great libraries of Texcoco and Tenochtitlan. [snip] Yes, they do indeed seem barbaric (and barberic, too: Keep America beautiful, get a haircut, and Muslim men, so the news says, treat themselves to a nice haicut for Ramadan...). They didn't even understand that gold is worth a lot more as jewelry than as bullion. Pearls before swine (which is, of course, an insult to the porcine population). As Elie Wiesel said: Don't compare. All suffering is intolerable. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts -- I learned a new word today: To offshore jobs....
Salvador Sánchez wrote: [snip] I also do not accept as a justification for any failure today what happened 400 years ago (but I recognize the profitability of crying, the negotiation potencial of playing with guilt). Too much time, don't you think so? [snip] You have here summed up a large part of the games people play in America today. But the self-serving propaganda of the tenured professoriat saved remnant of [generally genuinely...] oppressed minority groups probably shouldn't be criticized too harshly, since, after all, Black Studies, Women's Studies, Queer Studies, etc. were invented in a world already informed by Management Science, Criminology, Penology, The Educational Testing Service, Princeton New Jersey, etc. In a world that welcomes hegemonous mythical obfuscations, there should at least be room for the mythical obfuscations of the privileged children of genuinely oppressed social groups, too. I believe Misrosoft has shown us the way: There is room for everything in our social world (e.g., offshoring white collar jobs...) -- there is room for everything except for a couple icon symbols in one little used obscure font in the most recent release of MS Office We are lucky to be living in an age in which perfection of society shall be finally achieved with so little additional effort -- that font is no longer being shipped as part of MS Office, and they will soon have a utility program to enable you to remove it from your personal computer too. IHS. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] My ongoing struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brad, I think that is a fair statement. The wonder is that the system works as well as it does, keeping in mind your observation that the economy is a realm of social relations which are at best not friendly (and which in fact often are in varying degrees positively(sic) unfriendly). I don't think there is any wonder to it. (Maybe I'm missing something?) Throw together any number of competing forces, and they will eventually reach some kind of equilibrium status (or at least the survivors will...). I see it as sort of like that no matter how improbable life is in the universe, and no matter how much more improbable intelligent life is, we wouldn't exist if we did not meet the criteria for existing, i.e., there is entirely no reason for being surprised that we exist, since an a priori condition for our being either surprised or n ot surprised or anything else is that we in fact exist. The thing that would be really surprising is if we didn't exist but knew it. Now *that* would be surprising indeed! Don't get am-Bush-ed! \brad mccormick arthur -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 7:51 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] My ongoing struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists Why doesn't all economics education and inquiry start with the principle: Friends hold all things in common. (--Desiderius Erasmus, and others) ? Since we have markets and such, the first lemma one seems forced to deduce from this principle is that the economy is a realm of social relations which are at best not friendly (and which in fact often are in varying degrees positively(sic) unfriendly). I am being entirely serious here. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] The annals of war :: Louis Kahn in Bangaladesh
One of the many memorable things from the film _My Architect_ (biographical inquiry concerning Louis Kahn, by his son): During the Bangaladesh war for independence, Pakistani fighter pilots did not bomb the partially completed parliament buildings for the Bangaladeshi capitol, because they thought they were ancient ruins. The buildings were actually built by hand (albeit using modern concrete), because the Bangaladeshi did not have heavy machinery, so a large labor force carried concrete on their backs. Alexander the Great died at Babylon, And Louis Kahn died in a men's room in Pennsylvania Station (returning from Bangaladesh). \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] THE ROAD TO HELL HAS BEEN REPAVED!
Today's NYT on the Web says that the Kabul-Kandahar road had been repaved and reopened, cutting the journey from 30ish to 6ish hours -- if, that is, the Taliban don't get you on the way. This is apparently one segment of a ring road the US built in the 1960s. I once worked with a data center operations manager who got remoted to 3rd shift for telling the Vice President, after one of the latter's dumb requests: Anything your want [name withheld]. You tell me to dig a hole, I dig a hole. You tell me to fill it up again, I fil it up again. Anything you want, Sir! \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a for of Economic Governance :: Do neo-cons care about domestic agenda?
Christoph Reuss wrote: Thomas Lunde wrote: One model, that I might suggest you and Keith feel comfortable with is the basic existing model of capitalism as it is practiced in America and Europe. Basically, income is distributed through work and therefore we need more and more work for economies to grow - without any stated goal of when growth shall be achieved. And with this model, more and more people work harder and longer to satisfy the goal of growth. I think my recent comments on heredity, and many earlier postings, made it clear that I am quite critical of, and even opposed to, neo-con capitalism and especially the (quaNTitative) growth ideology. [snip] Tangential: (1) The Christian Science Monitor currently has a Neocon 101 essay, which purports to describe the basics of neocon. I was puzzled: The whole essay was about the neocons' foreign policy agenda (pre-emptively destroy every social force on the planet which tries to interfere with US hegemony). THere was not a single word in the whole essay about any domestic neocon agenda. (2) On the other hand, are European and US capitalism the same? If they are, then I presume all the structurally unemployed from the former East Germany are no longer on welfare, etc. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Political correctness is compaible with economic predation :: Microsoft and the demise of language
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Why did you take the (e) out of the word screw? Were you being politically correct? Hopefully, I was operating in a space of play. But, having worked with computers for so long, I long ago thought that many social functions take the parameter: CYA=yes And, being serious, one apparently can be sent to prison for threatening to send the persons who deprived one of one's livelihood to eternal damnation, even if they originally came from the underworld: A former Global Crossing Ltd. employee was convicted of using a Web site to threaten executives at the now bankrupt telecommunications company... [and] faces up to 30 years in federal prison. Part of the evidence against the defendent was that he wrote in one posting directed at an employee: 'I will personally send you back to the hell from where you came.' (NYT on the Web, Ex - Employee Guilty of Internet Threats, A.P., 05Dec03, Filed at 12:04 p.m. ET) One must conclude that hell really does exist, since one would hardly send a person to jail for a merely fantasy threat. \brad mcormick REH - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 8:58 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Political correctness is compaible with economic predation :: Microsoft and the demise of language Brad, Thank God political correctness came to the rescue of American capitalism when corporations began their substantive race to the bottom for American workers! Wit political corerctness, corporations can both scr-w the workers and at the same time prove how much they respect their dignity, etc. arthur well said. -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 7:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Political correctness is compaible with economic predation :: Microsoft and the demise of language Microsoft has released a press release apologizing for having included a font in their Office product that includes a swastika symbol. They said the font came from a Japanese source. They are providing a program to remove the offending symbol. So how are we to comunicate about evils without labels for them? Microsoft has never in my experience done *anything* as enthusiastically and expediently as removing this symbol. The multinational corporation doth cooperate too hastily? I have not been able to find the symbol. DSoes anyone have the Book Symbol 7 font in their MS Office? If yes I would appreciate a picture of the offending symbol (or the whole font. I would no teven be surprsied if the smybol was the Buddhist not the Nazi symbol (the two are reversed, I believe). Nothing woiuld please me more than for a buddhist to accuse Microsoft of anti-Buddhist discrimination if the symbol they removed was not the Nazi one. Computer programmers and managers and entrepreueurs have sufficiently little culture in genreal that it is entirely plausible they mistook one symbol for the other. Meanwhile,Edward Tufte has pulished a little pamphlet analyzing the negative effects of MS PowerPoint on persons' thinking. Thank God political correctness came to the rescue of American capitalism when corporations began their substantive race to the bottom for American workers! Wit political corerctness, corporations can both scr-w the workers and at the same time prove how much they respect their dignity, etc. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: I enjoyed Taming of the Shrew (was Re: [Futurework] RE: Survivor
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or would translating into modern language remove much of the magic of Shakespeare, much like translating Catholic mass from latin to english or moving the Hebrew prayers into english. Seems to make it too accessible, too plain. Maybe too transparent. [snip] Isn't the problem with semantically decoding Shakespeare's sentences to some extent the spelling? Isn't it easier to understand when one actually watches the play? Of course for students to watch the play removes most of the pedagogical purpose of testing the ability of the students to do pointless drudgery, so that watching the play is not an answer but rather a cop-out. I find most of Shapespeare's plays pretty pointless. Henry the fourth part one, Henry the fourth part 2, Henry the fifth Then there are the comedies, in which I find it exhausting to have to try to keep track of which fairy is which flitting around where -- I've never had the opportunity to flit around for real, so why bother? My two exceptions are: King Lear and Timon of Athens, which deal with issues I can relate to, and which have less noise, i.e., fewer characters in Brownian motion. TImon of Athens is the one Shakespeare play I had no trouble with, and, indeed, found refreshing (no fairies flitting about, etc.). Do people really like watching fairies flit around in Brownian motion? Epilog: Survivor If yes, then, as I previously proposed, America may yet both save and redeem itself, if we get back to out authentic roots and learn once again, in the midst of universal holocaust, to Sing in the rain \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Go West multi-national coporations! Go West
On NPR Marketplace this morning they anounced that IBM is taking several hundrd more jobs from New York and Connecticut USA and replacing them with jobs in China. They specifically said the jobs were being removed from the USA and added in China. Here was a previous story on IBM's Going West! http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/quotes6.html#Q178 To borrow a phrase from George Steiner's essay on the British traitor Sir Anthony Blunt: Damn them. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] How was Saddam captured alive?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Enter Jack Ruby. -Original Message- *From:* Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, December 15, 2003 1:11 AM *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Subject:* [Futurework] How was Saddam captured alive? According to BBC Radio 4 this morning, some are wondering how it was that Saddam was captured alive. M'mm I've wondered about that, too. If the Americans allow him an even half-way fair trial (as, say, with Milosevich in The Hague War Crimes Tribunal) and Saddam decides to defend himself (he's articulate enough for that) it will cause some considerable embarrassment to America in view of former relationship. They would love to have killed him -- and were expecting to, I imagine. All I can think of is that the first soldiers who found him didn't realise he was Saddam and thought he was the house servant or similar. Probably. He sure didn't look like himself. And the news says the troops were just about to throw a hand grenade down the hole when he surrendered. I never understood much physics, but the dynamics of pressure waves created by detonating an explosion in a confined space does seem interesting Does the pressure wave crush the body or just break down cellular structures The increment of news for today that I found especially delicious is that the Iranians want to be part of the trial! -- one of Bushido's Axis of Evil countries, which may have been Saddam's worst victim of all. But, what the Bush? George won't likely personally be at the trial, so he won't have to get into physical propinquity with the Evil Ayatollahs. Also, the fairness of Milosevich's trial seems about to be at least a little compromised becase the U.S. is only going to allow General Clark to testify in secret. I wonder who gets the big gold coin Ahab nailed to the mast? But, as the film _Das Boot_ showed, even if you weather all storms, it's never too late for fate to destroy you in port. \brad mccormick On reflection, just before I posted this, I think that Saddam will die before reaching trial. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree that credentials do cut through the HUGE NUMBERS. But, gosh, sometimes the credential acts to cloak the activities of the person and so the client is so mystified that he/she can't or won't ask questions---even when things go wrong. Of course a great credential can be a fine sheepskin for a wolf (or just an incompetent...) to hide under. But I was talking about a necssary, not a sufficient condition for the coordination of a highly-skill differentiated mass of persons. Transparency surely is a good thing to continually strive for, but, as Louis Kahn said: All the things that are are light that has been spent. And the light casts a shadow, And the shadow belongs to the light. Or, as I like to paraphrase Erving Goffman: Where thre's a system, there's a way to work it. We see objects only because they are opaque. Transparency of the ambient atmosphere is necessary to see anything, but every thing provides an oppoortunity to hide behind. There are no easy solutions, but I do think that increase of population (beyond some golden mean, probably the size of classical Athens, ca. 20,000 souls...) is an independent variable that monotonically increases the level of difficulty. Yes, I know, the solution to all our (and esp. the Japanese since their females are being even more selfish than ours in not producing enough children!) problems is to increase the number of young workers (forever!), i.e., as the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company slogan goes: Cover the earth \brad mccormick No easy solution to this issue. But making more open the workings of the medical, legal, chiropractic, architecural, etc. licensing and governance bodies is a good first step. arthur -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 8:44 AM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Harry, Go back an re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. He makes a strong case for getting rid of a lot of the accreditation in society saying that it just builds enclaves of monopoly power. ie., privilege. [snip] It seems to me that the justification for accreditation lies in the HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE, which prevents persons from verifying the competencies of the persons they need services from by first-person experience of performative evidence. Our doctors, et al., apart from their cdredentials, are mostly pig in a pokes to us. I don't see how this can be changed in the anonymo-city. However, perhaps the credentialling process can be shifted from multiple choice tests to the making and predsentation of masterpieces. This happens to some extent (e.g., for watchmaker trainees). But I think the tendency is away from personal presentation of evidence of mastery toward enhancing Educational Testing Service's services. Anoher problem is that even where supposedly evidence of mastery is the criterion, as in the PhD dissertation process, much of the time the evidence prouced is something that means nothing to the learner but which is of some use as cheap labor to those who already have their credential. I think we need to acknowledge that many graduate students do not yet have any really meaningful interests in their young lives, and we need to find a way to let them do the jobs they are training for without jumping thru hoops. For the mindful god abhors untimely growth. (--Holderlin) Dissertations should be optional productions, which come when the spirit moves a person to have something to say in an honorific sense. Besides making the creenialling process more genuinely reasonable as part of meaningful personal and social life, I think we also ned to tr to minimize the situations which require credentialling. Automobile driving licenses are an obvious example here: The whole instituional establishment of driver licensing only exists because persons cannot walk to the places they need and want to go to in their daily lives. We need to design out of life such regimentation-creating social structures. -- unless, of course, we genuinely enjoy being tested and geting credentialled and failing to get credentialled Daddy, when can I take the SATs? I wanna! I really wanna! When, daddy, PLEASE! Sorry son, but you have to go to kindergarten first. You have to learn to be patient. You'll get your chance to do the fun things grownups do when you are old enough. You just have to have some patience \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED
[Futurework] Political correctness is compaible with economic predation :: Microsoft and the demise of language
Microsoft has released a press release apologizing for having included a font in their Office product that includes a swastika symbol. They said the font came from a Japanese source. They are providing a program to remove the offending symbol. So how are we to comunicate about evils without labels for them? Microsoft has never in my experience done *anything* as enthusiastically and expediently as removing this symbol. The multinational corporation doth cooperate too hastily? I have not been able to find the symbol. DSoes anyone have the Book Symbol 7 font in their MS Office? If yes I would appreciate a picture of the offending symbol (or the whole font. I would no teven be surprsied if the smybol was the Buddhist not the Nazi symbol (the two are reversed, I believe). Nothing woiuld please me more than for a buddhist to accuse Microsoft of anti-Buddhist discrimination if the symbol they removed was not the Nazi one. Computer programmers and managers and entrepreueurs have sufficiently little culture in genreal that it is entirely plausible they mistook one symbol for the other. Meanwhile,Edward Tufte has pulished a little pamphlet analyzing the negative effects of MS PowerPoint on persons' thinking. Thank God political correctness came to the rescue of American capitalism when corporations began their substantive race to the bottom for American workers! Wit political corerctness, corporations can both scr-w the workers and at the same time prove how much they respect their dignity, etc. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Survivor
Keith Hudson wrote: Harry, Keith, What is it you don't like about Survivor? For that matter, Ed, what is it you don't like? Harry I've little idea now what it is I don't like about Survivor because I can't remember it. All I can remember about it is that, during the few minutes I watched it, it filled me with the wish never to see it again. I certainly did/do not like Survivor or any of its mutant progeny. (Elias Canetti, in his book Crowds and Power (which I have recommended more than once...) used the appellation the survivor to refer to the person who survives at any price to any and everyone else. Canetti urges that we recognize the survivor mentality for what it is and that we need to struggle against this mindset.) I think there are a lot of interesting aspects to the Survivor TV show, including the conjured up tribalism and tribal rituals, and, of course, even if the participants are not profesional actors, they are in general a telegenic lot, so that the TV viewers once again get to look up to the doings of their Olympian deities. As the person who founded RCA said: I don't get ulcers; I give them. We do not yet live in an honorifically secular world. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Re: Hobbes
Stephen Straker wrote: Selma Singer wrote: I guess my question has to do with Hobbes's basic sense of human nature. If, as I understand him, he believes that our nature is to act only in our self-interest, and if that self interest has to do only with our physical and material preservation, why would he care to inform us ... about what is in our best interests. That seems to me to be an act that goes beyond self-interest to an interest in general human welfare, or an act that comes from some creative need (?) in Hobbes. ... people who engage in creative work, like writing, are doing something that goes beyond their own self-interest. And I believe strongly that creative work ... defines us much more accurately than does our need to preserve our lives or even our comfort. Hobbes is so interesting to me because he so clearly sets forth right at the beginning all the wonderful and problematic features of our modern age as they continue to effect our lives today, some 350 years later. Hobbes is basically asking: What if Galileo is right? How shall we live? What is the human condition? ... if Galileo is right. [snip] if Galileo is right about *what*? I must have missed the original introduction of this theme in this thread. My impression of Hobbes is that he manages to take away with the left hand what he seemed to give with the right: If he argued that society is a human artfact, he went on to argue that we could only succeed in this creative prodcess if we alienated the creative process to an all-powerful ruler, who would leave us only with the freedom to engage in economic exchange relations (and anything else that would have no political effects, like free speech, and freedom of religion entirely disconneced from having any impact on the all powerful ruler). --- Well, the U.S. forces in Iraq finally caught Moby Dick. George W Bush's life is now fulfilled and he can, like Odysseus, look forward to dying in peace in ripe old age having received his Father's blessing. But dictators are easier to capture than prophets. WHere is Osama? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Harry, Go back an re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. He makes a strong case for getting rid of a lot of the accreditation in society saying that it just builds enclaves of monopoly power. ie., privilege. [snip] It seems to me that the justification for accreditation lies in the HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE, which prevents persons from verifying the competencies of the persons they need services from by first-person experience of performative evidence. Our doctors, et al., apart from their cdredentials, are mostly pig in a pokes to us. I don't see how this can be changed in the anonymo-city. However, perhaps the credentialling process can be shifted from multiple choice tests to the making and predsentation of masterpieces. This happens to some extent (e.g., for watchmaker trainees). But I think the tendency is away from personal presentation of evidence of mastery toward enhancing Educational Testing Service's services. Anoher problem is that even where supposedly evidence of mastery is the criterion, as in the PhD dissertation process, much of the time the evidence prouced is something that means nothing to the learner but which is of some use as cheap labor to those who already have their credential. I think we need to acknowledge that many graduate students do not yet have any really meaningful interests in their young lives, and we need to find a way to let them do the jobs they are training for without jumping thru hoops. For the mindful god abhors untimely growth. (--Holderlin) Dissertations should be optional productions, which come when the spirit moves a person to have something to say in an honorific sense. Besides making the creenialling process more genuinely reasonable as part of meaningful personal and social life, I think we also ned to tr to minimize the situations which require credentialling. Automobile driving licenses are an obvious example here: The whole instituional establishment of driver licensing only exists because persons cannot walk to the places they need and want to go to in their daily lives. We need to design out of life such regimentation-creating social structures. -- unless, of course, we genuinely enjoy being tested and geting credentialled and failing to get credentialled Daddy, when can I take the SATs? I wanna! I really wanna! When, daddy, PLEASE! Sorry son, but you have to go to kindergarten first. You have to learn to be patient. You'll get your chance to do the fun things grownups do when you are old enough. You just have to have some patience \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Symmetry (+ the right pick for Iraq reconstruction manager)
He is a coward. Just like a rat! shouted one man. He looks like a beggar! said another. He is finished! said a third. (--from a NYT on the Web Story) Surely true enough. But I think it well matches tail-gunner George's visit to Baghdad for Thanksgifing on total blackout except that he would not have done it id ther would not have ben any reporters on board. What a shame that we cannot look to a future in which Captain Ahab and Moby Dick die in an embrace which Ahab even if not Moby does not in the least really understand. Speaking of which, now we should have some sense of how safari-hunted big game animals feel, after our jumbo jets have to land and\ take off in fear of being brought down by big game hunters' stinger missiles -- But, back to the pictures of a bearded Saddam who I find hard from a dead Che Guevara: All deposed dictators are the same color in the dark. After they've been hiding long enough, they all look alike to me at least). (N.b.: I have in the past couple of days become increasingly convince that Bush blew it in appointing Bremer the Iraq reconstruction manager. He should have selected Martha Stewart, instead. she could have done the job In Style.) Yours in a mised perecipitation storm \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ ~ broken glass....
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Truth and Beauty, REH - Original Message - *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Cc:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Sunday, December 14, 2003 4:07 PM *Subject:* RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ I have often wondered the same thing and wondered too what would have been the history of the USSR if the western powers had been at least neutral toward the experiment. [snip] A good way to forestall the verification of a theory is to prevent the data from being gathered. I have long wondered how much of the U.S.S.R. was inherent and how much was reaction to the white efforts to expunge the S/soviet experiment from the face of the earth. It is surely accidental, but the name Trotsky has, I seem to recall, at least a sonorous resemblence to the German word for: nonetheless, notwithstanding May I once again adduce my unauthorized reproduction of what I consider to be one of the defining photographs of the 20th century: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/trotsky.html What George Steiner labelled (and I concur): The century of barbed wire \brad mcsormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Ed Weick wrote: Most would say that the USSR was not Communist, aiming toward it perhaps but a brand of socialism. arthur My own take on it is that it was state capitalist. The state owned all of the capital, made all of the important decisions etc. It kept most people happy, up to a point, just like large corporations keep their employees happy. I think it would have continued in that direction had it survived. [snip] This doesn't sound like one of the worse alternatives to me. Happy paternalistic corporation employees in the Free World and happy state workers on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Too good to be true on *either* side \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
Harry Pollard wrote: Arthur, In all ways they are better off. If your boss offered to double your salary even as he increased the managers salary by four times, would you refuse it? I doubt it, for you would know you were better off with a double salary. Wouldnt you? [snip] If somebody ofered to suffocate you in a plastic bag right now or just steal your wallet, whoud you refuse it? I doubt it, or you would know you were better off breathing than suffocating. Why don't you address more of the issues, Harry, e.g., that it's not generally fair for the Zeks to get crumbs while the a--holes get fresh baked bread. And, please dont' get me wrong, I'm sure there are a few managers whom I would feel really deserve on the merits to get 4X what I get. I've worked for 2 (well, 1-1/2...) such managers. But I think you got it right: We have a language problem. I recently orered a book about Erasmus: _Friends have all things in common_ -- that's not what free markets are about, but, yes, given the forced choice, if I cannot live in peer friendship, I'd rather have free markets than be an inmate in Auschwitz or the Gulag. But, of course, I'd much rather have free markets and be a captain of industry than be an hourly employee. So much depends on what person's belly you (i.e., I...) emerged from, for no person has anything to do with where they start out in this world, i.e., whether they stand on the shoulders of giants or under the boots of flunky functionaries. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Harry Pollard wrote: Arthur, Wouldn't you know it? You almost repeated - word for word - what Henry George said in 1878. Great minds think alike! [snip] Is that an empirical assertion or a matter of definition? If only the person who think alike in a certain way are great, then all great minds think alike. But if one considers Newton (or Einstein or von Neumann) and Husserl (or Rabelais or Erasmus) to both be great minds, then clearly they do not think alike, for the questions each addresses have little to do with the questions the other addresses, like a conversation between birds and fishes or whatever the cliche is. Do great minds ever concurrently ask the same or similar questions and come to very incompatible conclusions? And, further, does this ever happen in such a way that the disagreeing parties atually have a meaningful dialog about their disagreement (as opposed to talking past each other)? \brad mccomick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) -- the free market again(?)
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, [snip] In other words, there are all kinds of talents and lack of same. In a just society, which means equality of condition - everyone will be able to earn a reasonable living. Those few who are in desperate straits will be provided for privately -they always have. You mean begging? The coming of the welfare state increases the number who need welfare. Now everyone gets privileges, from the poor who get food stamps to the middleclass who get tax relief on to the rich who enjoy privilege in quantity. [snip] I agree. Whenever people are given a way out of conditions that do not appeal to them, they will take it, just like steam will eacape thru a safety valve, or, in a town where the churcdh offers refuge, all the wanted will be in church. One could call this the Nadir Principle, after Ralph Nadir (spelling intended as written) who said that if Bush got elected that might motivate the liberals to get off their duffs. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Survivor -- FT PR vs. Human Nature (e-Bray?)
Christoph Reuss wrote: Harry Pollard wrote: Thanks for reading carefully, Ray. I wish Chris did. In the flood of Harry's postings with subject lines that are unrelated to the msg content, I don't read each one. Now I went back in the archive and saw that I actually had missed the posting where Harry stated that If the tribe had looked to a longer life, I'm sure they would never have let him go. Anyway, it's rather inconsistent that Harry makes this distinction about a TV show but not about real-life issues such as FT. If the world's people look to a longer life, I'm sure they would never choose FT. (And real referendum votes in CH confirm this -- in other places, people don't even have a choice..). Chris [snip] I think the closest thing to a free market any of us has seen may be e-Bray (as in the noise a donkey is supposed to make). e-Bray is not a bad place to buy Beenie Babies, but, for expensive stuff, e-Bray is like a magnet for frauds. And, of course, however perfect the free exchange is Harry-like on e-Bray, there's the infrastructure of e-Bray itself, which makes money on everything, no matter the outcome for individual buyers and sellers. Harry, how would your perfect markets get buy without any infrastructure, unless they are at most as sophisticated as the markets in the ungovernable territories of NorthEast Pakistan aparently are? I presume you would not be averse to the people having the freedom to buy and sell ground-to-air personal anti-aircraft missiles? -- Different topic: I saw the new biographical film about Louis Kahn today. People in India think he was a guru, and people in Bangaladesh think he is the father of their democracy. Unfortunately, some of his buildings in Balgaladesh looked to me like abstract architectural renderings of vailed women's faces - hopefully that is a wrong impression from the film. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, I suppose this is a linguistic problem. Surely. Not very auspicious, is it, when the Tools are broken and you ned them to fix them? Free markets are part of free association. That should be pretty obvious. No it is not at all obvious to me, for, you see, I don't want to be forced to participate in markets, period (the German word here is, I believe: Uberhaupt, i.e., preeminently in the first place and aove all else...). Jack and Jill were trying to beat each other to the top. That was the sole purpose of the competition. No, I proposed something different: That Jack and Jill needed to fetch a pail of water, but they were both bummed out. The competition distracted them from their aches and pains so that, whoever won, they both would win by getting that damned pail of water that was atainable only with unwelcome effort. (youknow, like distracting a person from the pain they are feeling, somehow or other). In every cometition, whoever wins or loses, the spirit of competition always wins. Like Monday Night Football, they are competing to win, no matter the concussions and broken limbs. Bullshit. They're making a lot of money, and sometimes they have to play football as part of it so they might as well get into it unless the game is rigged, etc. Free market competition has as its purpose the satisfaction of the consumer by supplying higher quality goods at a lower price. Whoever best succeeds will have won the competition. Right, presuming that, in his othe role as producer, his wages do not drop below the minimum level necessary to reproduce individual and species life -- and to buy more products, too, of course. Crescit eundo Interesting is that competing companies in the market may not want to supply better goods at a cheaper price, but they must - or they go broke. If they compete at a cheap enough price they go broke that way, too. Praise the Lord for His infinite Goodness in making for us the best of all possible worlds even if you happen to be living in a Depression (e.g., in a deflationary economy). Or they get the guvmint to protect them from bankruptcy - either by internal regulations, or by import restrictions.. Thus are the corporate monopolies protected from whom? Why, from the 280 million or so Americans, whose wishes are the last to be respected. I think that ordinary people appreciate Social Security even if they can't have Golden Parachutes And good people on this list who no doubt regard themselves as reformers and do-gooders seem eager to support corporate privilege at the expense of ordinary people. I think some of them would disagree, but this gets back to your initial point, with which I agree: we have a language problem, so htere's not much hope of comunicating I feel a bit like Sabatini's Scaramouche: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. He was able to have this perspective because either: (1) He was well provided for and so had the leisure to look down on mortals, or (2) He became a Stoic and was able to entirely disconnect himself from cathexis to his body, i.e., he could be roasting in the Phylarian(sp?) Bull: a big oven the Romans used to bake people they didn't like alive in, and he found the sensations of pain his body was generating as it burned -- interesting examples of psychosomatic phenomena Interestingly, I heard yestrerday that a person I admire for their coolness under presure, and theyare also technically highly skilled -- got fired from their job suposedly because their employer no longer had work suitable for them to do, but more likely because the people above this person probably did not like the person. The person had been in their job for over 5 years and they were a senior technical manager. The solution to envy is destruction of the envied person. \brad mccormick Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 4:13 PM To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, George suggested in his Law of Human Progress that the Progress of Civilization depended on Association in Equality. In my courses I use the more positive term cooperation rather than association but I think association is better. Equality doesn't mean we are all the same, which would be nonsense, but that societal conditions for everyone remain the same. Thus, insomuch as association is diminished and inequality rises, so does civilization decline. Do you think he might have been on to something
Re: Idiosyncracies (was RE: [Futurework] Biography ~ succinctness etc.
badly sought). then my signature and name again, please Best wishes, Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com http://www.handlo.com/ 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Sociopaths, and socio paths (i.e., paths thru and for society)
Harry Pollard wrote: Ray, I fear I understand it better than you. The difference is perhaps that you want special privileges for the arts, while I want to end all privileges. If, as Marshall MLuhan said, artists are the antennae of the species -- or, in George Bush lexicon, the early warning radars -- it seems to me that if the species does not susidize them, it may not have the resources to intelligently (and, beyond intelligence's processing of existing reality: imaginatively know where it wants to go, and, as an IBM motivational slogan from 1978 said: No wind blows in favor of that ship which has no port of destination. Every business has departments which are cost centers, although even these can be looked upon as crucial contributors to the ability to stay in business or a fortiori, make a profit. Since we have division of labor, the eyes and ears of our social world belong to different persons than the arms and legs, etc. Are you in favor of subsidies for fire departments? Of course, the police don't need subsidies if they are permitted to earn their keep thru tickets which, at a certain point, make them seem more like highwaymen than highway patrolmen (The obvious solution is for the artist to be born to inherited wealth,so that he or she doesn't need to ask for explicit subsidies.) \brad mccormick All of them - and as Krugman suggests, it's not just the Republicans. All of Congress are in for the feast. If you saw Bill Moyer's guest the other evening you may remember that he laid the blame squarely on Congress. If you want the the huge profits of the drug companies to end, all you need is a little free trade. Let generics be imported from overseas without restriction. Then HMOs like the Kaiser will be able cheaply to supply their patients. So, would you give up your privileges if others gave up their? Harry ** *Henry George School of Social Science* *of Los Angeles* *Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042* *Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242* *http://haledward.home.comcast.net http://haledward.home.comcast.net/* ** *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Ray Evans Harrell *Sent:* Friday, December 05, 2003 1:45 PM *To:* futurework *Subject:* [Futurework] Sociopaths Harry won't understand it and Keith will but I'm going to post it anyway. I'm still dealing with Reagan's tax program in the arts. This Republican program can reduce us to the point where nothing matters. We will become just as sociopathic as they are. REH --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have solved the production problem but can't seem to deal with the issue of distribution. [snip] Might that be because, in lowering prices (solving the production problem...) we lowered wages to so that the workers can't afford to buy what they make? Didn't Ford pay workers $5 a day back in the 30s, in part, so that they could afford to buy Fords? The law of unintended consequences says that things will go awry in ways we cannot expect (and most certainly do not desire!) except in the economy where he invisible hand sees to it that all unintended consequences are optimal, and that the only way to mess things up is to try to foresee and them and act to prevent the parts we don't want to happen. The way I lok at it, it's kind of like a problem in geometry: You can start here or you can start there, and for each starting point different things will be easy but no matter where you start eventually you hit a wall. The free market and the managed economy each finds some things easy and eventually the road starts going uphill for all (Of course, some alternatives do seem more generally unlikely to succeed, e.g., if you start your trek by shooting yourself in the foot even though absolutely no one and no thing even suggested you do so.) In other words, there are no good alternatives but there most definitely are worser ones. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Currency
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this might be of interest. The Color of Money - How Currency Works http://money.howstuffworks.com/currency.htm When you hear the word currency, you probably think of the stuff in your wallet. But currency is really a very complex, fascinating aspect of human civilization. Especially these days, the value of money is utterly arbitrary -- did you know that there is no currency left that is actually backed by gold? [snip] Even better than gold or silver certificates (or the metal itself either in ingots of coins) may be objects that a person who is knowledgeable recognizes as having value. I have heard from 2 persons whose fathers escaped going to the Nazi death camps by giving a soldier at the embarcation station their Patek Philippe wristwatch. It is something of a cliche that Rolex's are better than currency in places where the highways are watched over by highwaymen. In better times, I remember when I was young and worked in an art museum, attending a party at the home of one of the curators. He surely earned less money than my father, but his home was filled with valuable art which he was able to acquire thru his superior knowledge and connections, whereas my father's house was at about the level of You'll love it at Levitt's and everything he bought immediately lost value The savvy rich purchase tomorrow's vintage masterpieces and get use value out of them while they are appreciating in value; everybody else consumes consumer products (a bit perversely known as goods). This is as it should be in the Christian cosmos, since to those who have, more shall be given. Cheers! \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Biography
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Jude the Obscure still? [snip] This may have been the first real novel I read -- in the 11th grade of prep school. I recall being well impressed by the way the protagonist was fated by his [lack of...] origin to remain a nobody and live a less-than-life and to suffer a lot. What a claustrophic book! Way too close for comfort, esp. since my father -- who generally said little about his past -- several times told me of his best friend from high school, who as a middle- aging adult was working as a real estate agent in a stoire-front office in a slum -- Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross before that movie was conceived of, ~at best~. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Pox Americana update ~
Karen Watters Cole wrote: *U.S. Bars Iraq Contracts for Nations That Opposed War* **By Douglas Jehl, NYT, December 9, 2003, 4:22 pm ET*** * WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States. [snip] One would think that a born again Bush (burning with fervor for Jesus?) would have heard that Judgment is the Lord's Just like, whenI heard the hubristic sh-t at the beginning of the Iraq attack, I thought: Shock and awe are the Lord's. I am at best an agnostic, but I believe that man is not the master of all things, and that each person is a judge of the world not in the sense of carrying out the sentence, but in being able to tell what deserves to exist, even if it does not exist, from what does not deserve to exist, even if it is effectively omnipotent. -- On NPR All Things Considered yesterday, they interviewed journalists who have gone on forays with the Iraq terrorists. These mainstream-U.S. journalists seemed pretty generally convinced that the terorrists were pretty well organized and pretty much able to do whatever they wanted -- including having acquired some chemical (AKA batlefield WMD) munitions. Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld and Chenyburton, have you heard of: Dies irae? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] For Kieth
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Keith, here is a little gift from today's NYTimes science section. REH December 9, 2003 Humanity? Maybe It's in the Wiring [snip] At first I misread this as an anti-Deridda-ean thesis: Humanity? Maybe it's in the writing We see what we want to see, not what is really there confronting us. But our perceptions are corrigible, at least sometimes \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Biography ~ asides
Every person has a biography (born - did - died). Although, to quote Michelet: the little people end up even more dead than the rest because their names are not preserved in history. But, among those who are higher than the low and lower than the high Some have resumes (e.g., computer programmers), while others have curriculum vitae (e.g., college teachers). All perish; few publish. (I once read/heard that 90% of people who get anything published never get a second publication.) Carpe diem (i.e., complain about how your time is stolen by your job or lack of same). I've been rereading a little essay by Hans Blumenberg: Shipwreck with spectator: Paradigm of a metaphor for existence (MIT, 1996) Perhaps the most lasting image from this essay is the idea that the sea effaces the wakes of all ships, big and small, afloat or sunk. Therefore, to speak of a path through life is at best questionable. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Ed Weick wrote: One question that this raises is whether what goes on in the decorated shed is going to become more banal or less. Linda Duxbury, who teaches business at Carleton University, argues that with the impending retirement of the baby boom population, employment will become a sellers market - people who are looking for jobs will be scarcer and will have the upper hand. But one wonders if they really will. Perhaps they will be paid a little more, but have to work longer hours and be run off their feet. Some of the work Duxbury is doing on work/life balance suggests that people in managerial positions are already working at the exhaustion level. Good questions and observations, but a bit diferent from some of the points I was trying to make (which is OK...) We're going to have a lot of aging persons, and relatively few young persons. There probably are different options. We could improve productivity and cut waste (like advertising and competitive duplication of production...) The young persons may be made to work longer hours for less pay to themselves (more of the product of their labor going to support the old people). The old can be made to work until they are physically or mentally unable to work any longer. I.e., retirement will for many persons not be an option. This is the future I think is going to become reality. Women can be coerced and/or cajoled to become more re-productive so that there will be more young persons to provide for the old persons and the earth will become even more conjested by hyper-population. Some persons like this option. It's also possible that life will be better in Europe than here in the U.S., which, as the Chaplin who the army is either prosecuting or persecuting said in the pepers yesterday, he loves America and wants to live here - just in better times. I think the idea of the transparent factory is worth thinking about, even if as something we won't be able to enjoy in our work life because we live in a neocon instead of a social welfare country. Cheers! \brad mccormick Ed Volkswagen is advertising a new factory in Dresden, with the theme of: transparency See: http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ You will probably guess that this idea appeals to me, along with the location of the factory in Dresden (why couldn't they have built it in Newark NJ USA, or maybe even on the site of the former World Trade Center in NYC USA???). I have no idea how far VW is going to carry this theme, but the very words contrast antipodally with the watchword of postmodern architecture (which, to the best of my knowledge, is one of America's contributions to the cultural world of the late 20th century): the decorated shed A decorated shed, in case you don't know what it refers to, is a glitzy veneer facade which covers up a banal lifeworld within. Perhaps the heritage of Universalizing Culture in The West is not so dead in Europe, so that the future may not belong only to the Chinese after all. As a different NYT article recently suggested, the United States is becoming a source of cheap labor for Europe (I posted a little piece of my own experience here, working for Grolier Publisher after the French firm Hachett(sp?) bought the company and in no way provided working conditions similar to France here). As Koffi Anan said about Saddam Husein's Iraq, we need more transparency. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance~ the grim reaper enjoys his job in CDC/INS
Harry Pollard wrote: Ray, You are right. People mustn't be allowed free will. They must be prevented from traveling between countries. All intercourse must be prevented (that will stop aids in its tracks too, No SARS inflicted Canadians must be allowed across the border - but as we don't know when they are infected, that means NO Canadians can enter the US. But stop! SARS is an Eastern North American problem. We must set up barriers along the Mississippi and prevent all movement to the West. Yep! Your way is best. [snip] Enjoy your humor, but From everything I've read, the only thing that kept SARS from spreading all over the world (you know, like the Sherwin Williams Paint Company's logo of the can of paint above the North Pole pouring out red paint all over the Northern Hemisphere: Cover the earth The only thing that kept SARS from becoming ubiquitous were vigorous QUARANTINE measures. THERE WAS NO EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OR PREVENTION! Big joke? Crowds are epidemiologically innocuous? (Here's my joke, on a topic I corrected the NYT about: And you probably think the animal that seems to have caused SARS, the civet cat is a feline, too) We are fortunate you were/are not in a position of power in the Centers for Disease Control. (Unless you want a visit from The Grim Reaper, but, if you do, please don't take him around to meet all the neighbors!) \brad mcormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Soviet America?
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: So, would America be doing such a thing if there was still a cold war and we had to put on a pretty face for the rest of the world compared to the terrible KGB and Soviet detention?We should have seen this coming when the Republicans began to write their House bills in Soviet Agit-prop language.Homeland Security Act no less. Next we will have the Patriotism for nice people only act.Democrats need not apply.I will not forget this and forgiveness will come very hard. I don't know if the word Homeland gives anyone else the creeps. REH December 5, 2003 Guantánamo Chaplain and His Wife Speak Out By SARAH KERSHAW [snip] Many American people came to me and said, `Do not be angry with us,' she said. I cannot blame all the American people. Praise God, I love America and I want to live here, but in better times. [snip] I thought this was eloquent and synoptic when I read it. The times do indeed seem to be a'changing. And I think the best is yet to come, during Dubya's second term \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Volkswagen is advertising a new factory in Dresden, with the theme of: transparency See: http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ You will probably guess that this idea appeals to me, along with the location of the factory in Dresden (why couldn't they have built it in Newark NJ USA, or maybe even on the site of the former World Trade Center in NYC USA???). I have no idea how far VW is going to carry this theme, but the very words contrast antipodally with the watchword of postmodern architecture (which, to the best of my knowledge, is one of America's contributions to the cultural world of the late 20th century): the decorated shed A decorated shed, in case you don't know what it refers to, is a glitzy veneer facade which covers up a banal lifeworld within. Perhaps the heritage of Universalizing Culture in The West is not so dead in Europe, so that the future may not belong only to the Chinese after all. As a different NYT article recently suggested, the United States is becoming a source of cheap labor for Europe (I posted a little piece of my own experience here, working for Grolier Publisher after the French firm Hachett(sp?) bought the company and in no way provided working conditions similar to France here). As Koffi Anan said about Saddam Husein's Iraq, we need more transparency. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, George suggested in his Law of Human Progress that the Progress of Civilization depended on Association in Equality. In my courses I use the more positive term cooperation rather than association but I think association is better. Equality doesn't mean we are all the same, which would be nonsense, but that societal conditions for everyone remain the same. Thus, insomuch as association is diminished and inequality rises, so does civilization decline. Do you think he might have been on to something? [snip] This sounds good to me, but I don't see what it has to do with competition or free markets, except insofar as in any particular situation the cooperating persons may decide that whatever kind and extent of competition would be beneficial to all. Jack and Jill raced each other up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down, but got up again to try to beat Jill to the top even though he broke his crown, and caused Jill to trip up and come tumbling after (she got back up too...). ... So, in the end, they got the pail of water even though, if it was not for the competition, they had both been too tired to get off their respective duffs and so would have gone thirsty. But, in their race to beat each other they completely forgot how tired they had been. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better form of society (Czarism)
Ed Weick wrote: Might I also ask whether the Moscow subway system was built under the saintly Czars or under The Evil Empire 1995 was already the period of free-fall capitalism in the breakdown-products of the former USSR, I believe. \brad mccormick I believe it was built under Stalin in the 1930s. The layout, in terms of getting people from A to B, is highly rational. The stations are grandiose, as befits the Stalinist era. The condition it was in when I rode it in the mid-90s was extremely dubious. I recall hoping many times that the wheel making that godawful noise would not fall off. [snip] I am still trying to figure out how the people over there or at least their Putain leader can be so happy with reverting Leningrad to St. Petersberg. One thing I know for sure and is very sad: The Russian Navy, on its website, has a gallery of pictures of important ships in the Russian navy in its history. Three is a, for me at least, glaring omission. Can you guess? The battleship Potemkin When do you think they'll bring serfdom back officially? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Bush the confidence trickster (was RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] NWith the present sort of satellite photography (down to 6 inches visual resolution) and many years of satellites going overhead, the CIA would know the whereabouts of every single piece of fixed military or industrial technology in the whole country. Not only visual methods, but infra red, X-ray and so forth mean that any sort of significant underground installations would also be a doddle to discover. [snip] There is an article about the David Kelly and the sexed up dossier affair in this week's New Yorker magazine (I haven't finished reading it, so I don't know what it concludes). The article seems to say that the satellites cannot see thru roofs and cave tops. Thus after the inspectors were kicked out of Iraq in 1998, the only source we had for info about what Saddam was doing were the unreliable reports of defectors. It does increasingly seem that the facts were some combination of: (1) Saddam was bluffing, and (2) Saddam was misled by his own scientists who were too afraid to tell him they were not able to produce the weapons he wanted. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, one can only wonder why they killed the goose whose fondest desire was to discover more Saddam WMDs, i.e., Dr. Kelly. Probably they thought he was as banal as they were so that the notion that he might kill himself never crossed their mind because they could never imagine killing THEMSELVES. \brad mcormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance~ the grim reaper enjoys his job
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All the more reason to invest in public health. (and this includes public transit) Do public health service officers and doctors at the CDC really think that crowd events improve the public health? I can well imagine, however, that they don't think too much about such things because subconsciously they know it would not be good for their personal wellbeing. Maybe we need a safe crowding campaign, like safe sex: When you go in a crowd, wear a full-body rubber suit and carry your own oxygen tanks to breathe. I myself would be far less queasy about being in a crowd if I was breathing air from my own oxygen tanks. Unspeakable topics. \brad mccormick -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 7:39 PM To: Ed Weick Cc: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Keith Hudson' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance~ the grim reaper enjoys his job Ed Weick wrote: Public transit is the bus. It gets me downtown in ten minutes and I don't have to pay parking. [snip] Here's the other side: But I do get to breathe in lots of people's germs -- a consideration which may become more interesting to you when treatment-resistent tuberculosis AKA TB) from the breakdown products of the former Soviet Union come to the U.S. for a visit. (Did someone say S-A-R-S???) [snip] -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Blair's curious resignation
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] Here's an extract from the FT of yesterday which I missed while I was house-hunting in the sticks : Lord Hutton has alarmed the government by refusing to send drafts of his report into the death of Dr Kelly to ministers, officials and others, including the BBC, who will be the subject of criticism. His decision, which breaks with normal practice of judicial enquiries, could give Tony Blair only hours to react before the potentially damaging report could be published. It's going to come as a bolt from the blue, one government official told the FT. We're being given no advance warning at all. [snip] This is beautiful, delectible, delicious and more: What the sh-t does Blair expect when he himself said the enemy could launch its WMDs on 45 minutes notice. Now we see the evidence that he was RIGHT after all. He should have got his ABMs quicker to protect hismelf, or at least have already ungraded the early warning radar system at Fylingdales so he would have more warning time! -- I was reading a conservative newsletter today, and, by denying the accusation, they showed me the word I've been looking for since Nov 2000 to describe George W Bush, but I didn't know it (more media manipulation coward \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance~ the grim reaper enjoys his job
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I understand that being in crowds, especially from an early age, helps to build immunity. [snip] As Nietzsche said some time before he lost his mind: What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. I confess that I don't have the guts to walk around with diver's air tanks, and I usually can't hold my breath long enough to get away from the vectors even in an elevator ride of only 7 floors at work. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is judged to be sick and his eye is removed to make him whole. (--me) And I encounter few persons who are so miserly as to begrudge sharing their germs with me. Cheers! \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance
Harry Pollard wrote: Arthur, I don't think we have a point A and point B in Los Angeles. I think I remember riding a bus once several decades ago, but I can't be sure. By the time I walked to the bus stop and waited for the next bus, I could drive into downtown LA. That is if I wanted to go there. By far, the best transportation system for LA is the automobile. Why this is so requires some thought, but thinking seems to be in short supply these days. [snip] I seem to recall having read somewhere that in the 1930s General Motors bought the LA public transit system for the sole purpose of destroying it so that the automobile would be the way to go. (I read that before I realized the importance of the audit trail, so I don't have the source.) Might I also ask whether the Moscow subway system was built under the saintly Czars or under The Evil Empire 1995 was already the period of free-fall capitalism in the breakdown-products of the former USSR, I believe. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] No Legal Cover
Ed Weick wrote: With all due respect, Karen, anyone as big and powerful as the US writes his own rules (masculine intended). Also appreciate that pillage has always been a normal part of conquest. [snip] Well, you'd think we could write our own rules, wouldn't you? But just like a zillionaire who smokes a carton of Gauloises a day is not immune from lung cancer, so too, we are not inmune from 3rd world nobodies blowing holes in our most advanced destroyer warships or knocdking down our biggest skyscrapers with our own planes. Damn those AlQaeda oncogenes! But we aren't even into enlightened pillaging: This week the NYT said that Iraq's oil reserves are becoming increasingly unrecoverable due to the oilfields not being maintained right. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Taxing land - not people (was - E.European Women discover the Joys of Free Trade)
Harry Pollard wrote: Arthur, Let me first define economic rent. It is the extrinsic community created value that attaches to a location. Economic rent is a consequence of the surrounding community. Collecting and giving it back to the community that produced it seems to be a perfectly fair proposition. [snip] This strikes me as interesting and possibly appealing (at least insofar as we still live in an economy of scarcity). Your economic rent loks to me like a constraint on the free market by the collaborative social intelligence of the community. A guided market? Am I wrong in speculating that land may be a METAPHOR (pars pro toto -- a part standing for the whole) for all the things that constitute the commons (ref. Garrett Hardin)? Speaking of which, whatever happened to the person whose website was(still is?) www.dieoff.org??? (You there???) \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] FW: Strategic Implications of the Unsaid ~ Tycho was right
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, I seem to remember that Kepler based his ideas on Tycho Brahe's findings - and Tycho was wrong! [snip] As I understand it, Tycho was wrong mainly in getting his nose cut off (literally). At the time, Tycho's hybrib cosmology was a viable candidate -- big subject not for here Tycho established the first research center in modern Europe: Uraniborg -- which, in itself, would be a great accomplishment. Kepler acquired Tycho's astronomical records -- the documentation of the observations that had been conducted at the research center, which were the best astronomical observations anyone had ever made. According to Hans Blumenberg, Tycho's son managed to prevent Kepler from gaining access to Tycho's astronomical instruments, and, in any case, Kepler had bad eyes (poor vision). Kepler accomplished his great astronomical work solely by trying to find a theory that would fit the data. (In all fairness, I should note I once read that had Tycho's observations been EITHER more OR less accurate, Kepler would not have arrived at his elliptical orbits hypothesis.) Tycho was not wrong, any more than Ptolemy was wrong. From what I have read, one person who was wronger than both of those two was GALILEO. Why do I say this? Because Galileo claimed more for his theories than he offered evidence for. And, in science (Strenge Wissenschaften(sp?)), *being right* is of no more value than winning a horse race. What matters in science is giving arguments in favor of one's hypotheses (AKA claims) which any person who takes the effort to repeat them can confirm for him or her self. Tycho was very right (except about his nose, and, perhaps also, about heeding the call of nature at the dinner table -- for a legend has it that Tycho died of a urinary blockage caused by being too polite to leave the dinner table to take a piss). \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance~ the grim reaper enjoys his job
Ed Weick wrote: Public transit is the bus. It gets me downtown in ten minutes and I don't have to pay parking. [snip] Here's the other side: But I do get to breathe in lots of people's germs -- a consideration which may become more interesting to you when treatment-resistent tuberculosis AKA TB) from the breakdown products of the former Soviet Union come to the U.S. for a visit. (Did someone say S-A-R-S???) If not me, who? If not now, when? (--not a quote from NIH, but it should be)( \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
their situation because nobody is threatening it, etc. Why think that you are bossing people around if you don't have to -- only a few persons realy enjoy having the image of themselves as torturers. But one example of the latter is the person who founded RCA, David Sarnoff, who said: I don't get ulcers; I give them. Do you really think there would be Black Studies programs in our universities if only but all white people were the slaves? Don't you think the people now in the Black Studies depts would then be in the School of Management Science instead? Any response other than blanket incomprehension? \brad mcormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
[snip] I have yet to see where scholars have really answered the question for either China or the classical Greco-Roman world (and late Medieval Islam? and some of the American pre-Columbian cultures?): Why did not these cultures take off scientifically and in engineering, as Europe did aproximately beginning with Galileo? What went wrong? We can blame the decline of Minoan civilization on a massive volcanic eruption, locally equivalent for the Minoans to that meteor that changed global environmental conditions to the detriment of the dinosaurs. If it does not sound prosaic, I think we can understand why the rich and liberal culture of late medieval Islam declined. At about that time, the technological and artistic fruits of China were bursting into Europe, and the Islamic clerics had to take a stance on this because they were mightily afraid of the consequences, particularly the military. A series of /ijtihads/ (learned interpretations of the Koran) by their senior divines, however, caused Islam to turn against western ways. The rich trading culture of Islam all through the Mediterranean and beyond started declining vis-a-vis European merchants declined from then on. Whereas western Europe gained some of the virtues of liberal civilisation, Islam lost them. (At the same time, a parallel series of discussions was going on within the Jewish community but the 'liberal' rabbis -- e.g. Maimonides -- held sway. [snip] Well, Charles Murray proposes an answer anent the classical Greeks in today's NYT Week in Review: The invention of formal deductive logic turned the classical Greeks' heads away from empirical praxis [he probably would not use that word!] to abstracted speculative deduction. And then Newton turned modern Europe toward the reduction of the human world of daily life to physics. BUt all this happened as unintended consequences. Let's assume that Murray is right. The question arises: How could European civilization, for over 2,000 years and continuing almost unabated today, have essentially have lost track of the universal fact that all ratiocination is human *activity* with motivations, aspirations, intentions, etc.? To answer this question and to turn the Juggernaut European humanity, including our universities and research labs, etc. -- to answer this question and turn the Juggernaut around, was Edmund Husserl's lifework, as well as the intention of others who took the other fork in the road to enlightenment at the end of the Middle Ages: Erasmus, Rabelais... and in our time, persons such as Stephen Toulmin. Why doe almost nobody take of the fact that all laws of physics which take the form: If whatever-1 then whatever-2 Really have the form: If we do whatever-1a then we will encounter whatever-b ? It is impossible in principle to show, e.g., that For every action [matter in motion..] there is an equal but opposite reaction [matter in motion...] But it may indeed be possible for us to discover that: Every time we look at matter in motion, we find that when we observe one thing strike another thing in a certain way, we observe that the first thing's speed and direction of motion changes in an equal measure but in the opposite direction of the change we observe in the speed and direction of the second object. AND, furthermore, each time we make such an observation, we do so because we have certain desires which we can describe for ourselves and for others either immediately or thru a process of self-reflection. HENCE, two sciences are elaborated in every experiment we do: (1) Physics, and (2) the interpretation of daily life (See! This science is so little practiced that it does not even have a name that would be generally understood. Certainly Transcendental phenomnology would not make sense to many educatd persons). Why is this almost never done? Or am I a member of some small fraction of the population who have not yet heard the good news? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
. -- to answer this question and turn the Juggernaut around, was Edmund Husserl's lifework, as well as the intention of others who took the other fork in the road to enlightenment at the end of the Middle Ages: Erasmus, Rabelais... and in our time, persons such as Stephen Toulmin. Or the preceding paragraph? Why doe almost nobody take of the fact that typo: doe should be does (my computer is still suffering from the large capachino it drank a few monthe ago) all laws of physics which take the form: If whatever-1 then whatever-2 Really have the form: If we do whatever-1a then we will encounter whatever-b Or the preceding paragraph? It is impossible in principle to show, e.g., that For every action [matter in motion..] there is an equal but opposite reaction [matter in motion...] Or the preceding paragraph? If you understand and disagree with it, I'd like to hear the argument which I presume would make some assertion about something that, on principle, could not be an object in experience and therefore could not be *collaborated* by any experiment since al experiments are human experiences. But it may indeed be possible for us to discover that: Every time we look at matter in motion, we find that when we observe one thing strike another thing in a certain way, we observe that the first thing's speed and direction of motion changes in an equal measure but in the opposite direction of the change we observe in the speed and direction of the second object. AND, furthermore, each time we make such an observation, we do so because we have certain desires which we can describe for ourselves and for others either immediately or thru a process of self-reflection. Or the preceding paragraph? HENCE, two sciences are elaborated in every experiment we do: (1) Physics, and (2) the interpretation of daily life (See! This science is so little practiced that it does not even have a name that would be generally understood. Certainly Transcendental phenomnology would not make sense to many educatd persons). The last sentence in the preceding paragraph asserts that most educated persons would not understand it, and I think your demurral collaborates that hypothesis. The problem is indeed (seems indeed to be...) massive and massively refractory. Why is this almost never done? Or am I a member of some small fraction of the population who have not yet heard the good news? Seems like you have not herad the good news, either, so maybe there indeed ain't none. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] The Burning Bush (redux)
Here's a link to a Washington Post article that argues the far-reaching Constitutional implications of the imminent Appeals Court ruling whether the Government (which, of course, is a euphemism for the Bush putsch...) can prosecute and execute Mr. Moussaoui (the 20th 9/11 hijacker) without allowing him access to witnesses who could provide evidence of his innocence of the crime of which he is charged. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22012-2003Nov29.html One of the benefits of old age, of course, is that one ceases to be eligible for the draft unless the Russians start shooting at us in the streets of Berlin -- Oops, sorry, I meant to say: Unless AlQaeda attacks Rockefeller Center. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] In almost every conceivable way, life in 12th century Hangzhou was incomparably better than life in Ehropean capitals for centuries to come. The only cities that I can think of that come close to it in both commercial prosperity and the arts (they are, of course, closely linked) are Venice and Florence during Renaissance times. /Human Accomplishment/ is a stupendous book, incidentally, and the first attempt to quantify individual genius in the arts and sciences in terms of cultural origina and geographical distribution. [snip] This sounds a bit like Ivan Morris's description of 10th century CE Heian (Kyoto), the Japanese capital at the time, which I have previously mentioned here http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/essays.html#genji Morris's book, however, is quite modest; on the other hand, the way he succinctly situates such cultures historically is imaginatively evocative. And the Heian Japanese were probably far less technologically acomplished than the Chinese. I have yet to see where scholars have really answered the question for either China or the classical Greco-Roman world (and late Medieval Islam? and some of the American pre-Columbian cultures?): Why did not these cultures take off scientifically and in engineering, as Europe did aproximately beginning with Galileo? What went wrong? We can blame the decline of Minoan civilization on a massive volcanic eruption, locally equivalent for the Minoans to that meteor that changed global environmental conditions to the detriment of the dinosaurs. ??? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] FW: Strategic Implications of the Unsaid
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this may be of interest to some. -Original Message- From: Anthony Judge [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 12:31 PM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Subject: Strategic Implications of the Unsaid Global Strategic Implications of the Unsaid I didn't read the whole thing, but it certainly looks constructive. I do wish he the article included a reference to the phenomenon of otherwise highly cultured and educated jewish persons doing ritual circumcision to their male children. Each person should ask themself how much they would be willing to suffer for the truth. (I have read that one person actually rurvived bring tortured on the rack during the [Roman Catholic] Inquisition.) On the other hand I recently came across a description of the relations between Galileo and Kepler, in Hans Blumenberg's _The Genesis of the Copernican World_, which reinforces my impression of Galileo as a pusilanimous almost-egomaniac -- and presents Kepler as decent and even gracious. Galileo could have avoided the Inquisition simply by staying in his tenured profesorship in Venice. Kepler's worst problem, apparently, was to keep his mother from being burned as a witch. One moral I draw from this comparison is that at least sometimes a person can contribute to Enlightenment (the Kantian, not the New-agey kind!) without having to endure being tortured to death. \brad mccormick http://laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/unsaid.php The increasingly globalized communication society is paradoxically characterized by an increasing number of topics on which little or nothing may be publicly said. Whilst many of these zones of the unsaid have existed in the past, their existence becomes all the more felt in an information-rich environment. They might be compared with the astronomical black holes which populate the galaxies. The concern here is at what point an increase in the number of zones of the unsaid may completely undermine conventional hopes for global policy-making, world governance, and the implementation of strategic initiatives in response to global crises. The text comprises three sections. The first offers some examples of the unsaid. The second discusses possible opportunities for navigating a strategic-space with a relatively high density of the unsaid -- and the circumvention of its dysfunctional effects. The third provides clues to further reflection in the light of extensive web resources on the variety of forms of the unsaid. Enjoy Tony ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage
Lawrence DeBivort wrote: Good point, Arthur. What I have never understood, though, is this thing of breathing in AND out. I mean, wouldn't that just cancel everything out? Like, why bother? Well, OK, some argue that we do need oxygen. I can accept that, at least in theory. But then why not just breathe in? You know, do half the work, and therefore live twice as long. Seems to me that that would make lots of sense. [snip] Alas for your lament, lungs are not like gills which, I believe in my ignorance of the Naturwissenschaften (hard sciences), *is* a one way flow-thru process. But my point here is something different: some argue that we do need oxygen. I would propose that all instances of the grammatical construction whoever: self or other(s) needs whatever are really obfuscations of the semantic structure normally specified by: I want whatever. Another instance from the above-cited class of rhetorical ploys is: whoever: self or other(s) should do whatever. Nobody *needs* oxygen -- unless they *want* to live, i.e., the desire to live logically entails acting to procure oxygen. But we know that persons sometimes choose not to live and to forego oxygen in pursuit of their desires, which in such cases often aim to save from dying other persons whose life they wish to preserve. Ultimately, all human relations are grounded in either one or the other or some admixture of coercion and uncoerced cooperation. The ethical realm, it seems to me, is often used to try to trick persons into freely choosing to do something to which, if they realized how the wool was being pulled over their eyes, might say No, thank you. instead -- presuming it was not an offer they could not refuse \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Once again, Bush whacks 'em...
I am once again puzzled how Bush gets away with it. None of the media seems to be impressed with what a pusilanimous show of phony bravado Bush's trip to Iraq was. Anyone who saw the movie Air Force One should be struck by the contrast between the rescue plane changing its call letters ***TO*** Air Force One in the movie, and Bush's real Air Force One lying that its call letters were Gulfstream 5. Had Bush really wanted to be a hero going into the Saddam + Osama bin Lions' den, he could have flown: AWAKE and UNCOMFORTABLE, in on a B2, B1-B or other warplane -- he could even have reactivated an SR-71 to shorten the flight (it would have taken less then 5 hours to get there that way). On the other hand, if major combat operations in Iraq are over, why didn't bUSH fly in in broad daylight and circle Baghdad a few times so the grateful masses could look up and see their Savior in the sky? But no, this wussy SLEPT (Bush sleeps well, we read) most all the way, and then the 747 Bloatmobile landed like a thief in the night -- with all its lights off but not without a Fox news crew aboard. And then they don't announce his BRAVE DEED until Gulfstream 5 is back out of Iraqi airspace. Oh, yes, and when he mouthed his platitudes to the troops, he was wearing an Army jacket with an OLD IRONSIDES patch on it. It should have read: Wuss Since this man can do no wrong, it seems clear that we're in for 4 more years of, to quote frrom a Laurie Anderson song(_America I-IV_, ca. 1983): This is your captain. We are going down. We are all going down together. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Efficiency trumps just about everything in our economy. [snip] I think this hypothesis needs to be hedged in important ways. I would phrase it something like: eficiency in direct costs trump[l'oeil???]s just about everything else regarding the direct object of production. Example: make the car as cheaply as possible. However, generally lots of money is spent on sales costs, golden parachutes, etc. In my first programming job (1972), for an insurance company which has since been twice gobbled up, I formulated the hypothesis: The reason this company is not driven out of business by price competition is that all its competitors do the same stupid things, so they all are racing as hard as they can with similar handicaps. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Washington Post OpEd piece: America source of cheap labor for European corporations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14899-2003Nov25.html I saw this in action when I worked for Grolier publisher, which had then recently had a Hatchet job done on it, i.e., had been bought by the French publiching house Hachett(sp?). When Hachett bought Grolier, the benefits were reduced and the pressure eventually got to the point that I heard after I left that the ultra-hard-ass person who had been assigned to straighten out the mess I was in, themself soon after left. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) -- the free market again(?)
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, I've already told you that you are too good to be anxious about small things. Thank you. But I still think that goodness is its own reward (or as the cliche might go, a cup of coffee regularly costs $1.85 in Starbucks, but it's only $1.85 if you are good). At the end of 20 years, your doctor will probably retire, so you will have to get used to another. My current doctor is younger than I am. He inherited me from a doctor who retired (and who was older than me). Groups of doctors are better than single doctors, for they can fill in for each other. There's always a doctor there when you need him. True enough. My doctor is in a group practice that probably has over 50 doctors on its staff, if not more than twice that many. The difference between entities such as Kaiser and (say) the Canadian National Health Service, is that Kaiser has to compete. If standards go down they will lose members to a competing service. [snip] Maybe here is a place where we can get some traction on the issue of competition. If Kaiser's standards go down and/*or* some other private provider offers better service *or* lower rates (perhaps with worse service), customers may move to the competing service. But who are the customers? Not individual putatively free persons like me (and maybe you?), but corporate entities: businesses, universities, government agencies, etc. for whom individuals work. This is obvious, but doesn't it get to the heart of your idea of competition and free markets? The rich, do indeed have a free market, but not persons below what I have cynically called the Golden Parachute Line. The Canadian Health Service is subject to change, too. The specific mechanism would be different (e.g., the legislature taking action). If you say this kind of institution is [even?] more difficult to change than private institutions like Kaiser, I don't disagree, but aren't we talking in all cases about what social order is legislated and enforced, not whether? But isn't the issue exactly what kinds of institutions with what kinds of external controls will work best for an us which is composed of a very large number of indiviuals who, no matter what shape the institutions take, are not players, customers or whatever one wishes to call the shapers of the institutions, but rather have our choices shaped by external forces, be they private (corporate) or public (i.e., governmental, which we know may be largely a veil for furthering of private interests)? Don't you think that neither socializing not privatizing solves the problem, so that neither the socialists nor the neo-cons can have a simple answer? But I think that, given the forced choice, I would tend to side with the socialists (or, of course, if they exist, the moderates, who may be the best of all...), because the neo-cons and persons like George W Bush seem not to care how much people other than their privileged clique suffer, or how much they themselves wilfully *add* to people's sufferings. Do you really believe that most persons compete on a level playing field, or that the field could be levelled, or even that if it could be that to do so would be desirable? One of the conundrums from Philosophy 101 is -- I forget its name -- the issue of what constitutes justice, since some persons are crippled and some can run a 4 minute mile, etc. Should the 4 minute milers take al and the cripples freeze to death in garbage dumps? Should the con-man cripples take all from the honest athletes, etc.? Best wishes to all! \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Hamer is not an Ambassador (was Re: [Futurework] Has Saddam won?
Ed Weick wrote: Keith, you of all people, have it just a little wrong. I think you are referring to Paul Bremer III, no Hamer. [snip] I understood who Keith was talking about. Nobody's indispensible Bremer today, Hamer tomorrow??? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...)
pete wrote: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Harry Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why do you see the private sector is terrible at healthcare? I've already described the Kaiser-Permanente system, which I would say was the equal of any other in the world - private or government. [snip] First, a personal story: Yesterday at work the head of HR sent around an email saying that as of January 1 the company is changing to a new healthcare provider (Old: Aetna and Oxford; new: Blue Cross/Blue Shild). It was about 1 PM, and I was thinking I might get thru the day without taking an Anti-anxiety pill, but that email raised my anxiety level way up because I worried that my current doctors might not acept the new insurance. I called the medical group I use, and they said they accept BC/BS PPO and Identity plans. I emailed the head of HR and asked if our new insurance was one of these. At first the head of HR replied that I would find out at the enrollment meeting on Nov 20, which did not help calm me down, but a while later I received another email saying that the plan was one the medical group I go to accepts. My anxiety level started going back down. I thanked the head of HR *profusely* for having checked this out for me. Now, some thoughts: The private sector. Technically, or, as I would prefer to say, formally, Kaiser-Permanente, Oxford, BC/BS et al. are private sector. But, from the point of view of me as a patient or my doctor as a member of a medical group which itself may have well over 100 employees, these entities are powerful bureaucracies with which we as individuals interact much the same way as we would interact with a government agency. Functionally (materially), I think that it is misleading to call these non-governmental bureaucratic institutions private sector. My idea of private sector would be the old doctor in individual private practice. I do remember when my dentist worked alone. I think there are at least 3 sectors: (1) Institutional-A (AKA government), (2) Institutional-B (non-government corporate institutions which have powerful influence over the shape of individuals' lives), and (3) Private. Persons should not have to live in fear that they will no longer be able to see the doctor they have been seeing for 20 years (You can always pay out of pocket, fella. Not really, because the fee structure is based on insurance reimbursement rates, not what average working persons could pay out of pocket). I have previously said I think that if our social system really started encouraging healthful life style, and if medical research was oriented more toward high-leverage problems, we could minimize the problem of having to ration health care. (low leverage are things like 50 person team 50 hour operations to try to separate one pair of conjoined twins, etc.). Government or private, we live in a world that requires high levels of social coordination, don't we? Of course that too is something social policies could try to reduce over time. And a stitch in time does often save nine. (Was this worth writing? I hope I did not waste your time.) \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Wal-Mart...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Harry, we are living through the race to the bottom Looks good for a while. Wait until the bottom comes to a place near you. [snip] I can't resist a little terminological demurral. It's probably a race to the bottom for the golden parachute set, but for the/us webelos, I think it's more like a suction vortex. For many, it's a race to keep from being sucked to the bottom. (I think you will not disagree.) \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Our mysterious universe and the toasters in it
Ed Weick wrote: Ray tells me that what did Merton in was a fan, not a toaster. Fans can be deadly when they turn against you. That's one of the inherent costs of celebrity that many famous persons try to avoid paying. \brad mccormick Ed - Original Message - From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ed Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 5:35 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Our mysterious universe and the toasters in it Ed Weick wrote: arthur Life is a crapshoot. Yes, but sometimes the dice may be loaded. Ed - Original Message - *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, November 03, 2003 11:09 AM *Subject:* RE: [Futurework] Our mysterious universe P.S.: Merton met his end in a most ironic of possible ways. He was electrocuted while plugging in an appliance in a hotel room. A great and powerful mind overcome by a toaster. Try to explain that! [snip] Not to be disrespectful, but here is an old Ziegler cartoon from The New Yorker: A man is seated at his kitchen table, pointing a pistol to his head, presumably ready to pull the trigger. The toaster on the table speaks up: You're special. You have a talking toaster. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Our mysterious universe and the toasters in it
Ed Weick wrote: arthur Life is a crapshoot. Yes, but sometimes the dice may be loaded. Ed - Original Message - *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, November 03, 2003 11:09 AM *Subject:* RE: [Futurework] Our mysterious universe P.S.: Merton met his end in a most ironic of possible ways. He was electrocuted while plugging in an appliance in a hotel room. A great and powerful mind overcome by a toaster. Try to explain that! [snip] Not to be disrespectful, but here is an old Ziegler cartoon from The New Yorker: A man is seated at his kitchen table, pointing a pistol to his head, presumably ready to pull the trigger. The toaster on the table speaks up: You're special. You have a talking toaster. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] FW: A.Word.A.Day--Potemkin village
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: seems appropriate to some of the discussion on FW -Original Message- From: Wordsmith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 3, 2003 12:03 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: A.Word.A.Day--Potemkin village potemkin village (po-TEM-kin VIL-ij) noun An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts. [snip] Indeed. This is like postmodern architecture's celeration of the decorated shed (ref. Robert Venturi): a building in which persons do banal things, but with a glitzy facade. These master builders(?) are proud that they do not try to use architecture to redeem man or to save the earth, but only to make beauty.(Arthur Drexler, Intro to _5 Architects_, Oxford). This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a wig on. \brad mcormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] The economics of poppydom
Keith Hudson wrote: It is little stories that appear in the press -- but which you never hear anything more about them -- that give the clues as to some of the big issues that are happening under the surface. [snip] But will there be a limit to drug use in the developed world or will it grow /pari passu /with the growing numbers of the underclass -- those who live in inner city boroughs and suburban hellholes? I'm inclined to think that drug use will steadily grow, as indeed the underclass grows due to the increasing skill divide that is now a feature of the employment structure of developed countries' economies. [snip] Economists and other statistical scientists seem pretty adept at predicting things and calculating the amount of such things as the dark matter in the universe. Surely they should be able to calculate the amount of dark money in the economy from the perturbations of people's observable economic behavior? Kepler needed only [if I remember right] 8 minutes of arc to see that all previous astronomy was wrong, and to propose the universally correct alternative (elliptical vs circular orbits). I agree that drugs should be legalized, and then the persons (including myself) who are concerned about how much they are used and the effect of this on our society, should use the free market to take market share away from drugs and redirect it to things like persons seeking more education, and redesigning work so that persons find satisfaction doing it. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] User interface design example
Where I work, we have a coffee machine where you place a little container of coffee in a slot, close the slot, and water is forced thru the cofee in the little container to make your cup of coffee (Green Mountain). The little container then drops into a bin that has to be emptied every 20 or so cups. Whether by luck or design, the mahine does not tell you the bin is full, until you have inserted your container in the slot and are ready to press START. THis is great User inerface design. You really want the coffee at this point, so you'll empty the bin to get what you want. If the Empty bin light went on *after* the cup that filled the bin, then you might walk by the machine and think: I don't really want a coffee bad enough to empty the bin My late teacher Prof. Louis Forsdale (he taught the more widely known Neil Postman who just died...) used to call such little vignettes: microcommunication observations, and he encouraged his students to practice doing them. The truth is often approaching below our radar \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] The economics of poppydom
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: Or they will put the coke back into Coke. Just do it! (--Nike) \brad mccormick [snip] [snip] But will there be a limit to drug use in the developed world or will it grow /pari passu /with the growing numbers of the underclass -- those who live in inner city boroughs and suburban hellholes? I'm inclined to think that drug use will steadily grow, as indeed the underclass grows due to the increasing skill divide that is now a feature of the employment structure of developed countries' economies. [snip] Economists and other statistical scientists seem pretty adept at predicting things and calculating the amount of such things as the dark matter in the universe. Surely they should be able to calculate the amount of dark money in the economy from the perturbations of people's observable economic behavior? Kepler needed only [if I remember right] 8 minutes of arc to see that all previous astronomy was wrong, and to propose the universally correct alternative (elliptical vs circular orbits). I agree that drugs should be legalized, and then the persons (including myself) who are concerned about how much they are used and the effect of this on our society, should use the free market to take market share away from drugs and redirect it to things like persons seeking more education, and redesigning work so that persons find satisfaction doing it. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science
Christoph Reuss wrote: Brad McCormick wrote: Alas, things are not so simple, since god provides both orgasms and oncogenes. The penile cancer myth has long been debunked -- on the contrary, the circumcision scar can lead to cancer (or kills directly..). See e.g. http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/ I was trying to make a different point, namely, that not all interventions in natural processes are bad. Excising a melanoma is different from cuting of a healthy foreskin. Part of the sorrow and the pity of this kind of crap is that life has enough real problems built into it without society adding new problems that don't otherwise exist. Verily, circumcisions are part of the Gross National Product of goods and services. Meanwhile, over there in the Middle East, and also in Europe, where countries like France have to deal with the problem of Islamic immigrants wanting to carry on their customs in their new country of resience... No people are so poor that they don't have a lot of energy to devote to potlatch and making life harder for themselves. \brad mccormick Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: How would jobs look for people? REH Headhunters. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science
Christoph Reuss wrote: Brad McCormick wrote: At the personal level, I see no difference between J. and I. religions: Both practice ritual genital mutilation of little boys. Something that this atheist doesn't understand: If god wants boys to be circumcised, why the heck doesn't he build them like that from the start?? Alas, things are not so simple, since god provides both orgasms and oncogenes. Natural is not eo ipso better than cultivated, but it seems perverse to me to consider diminishing a person's capacity for pleasure to be perfecting what God did not quite finish -- a phrase applied generally to rippng out little girls' external genitalia. Of course we would amputate a gangrenous arm to save a person, but we don't usually cut off healthy parts for ideological reasons. Consider the irony of a jewish psychoanalyst trying to treat a young person who is a cutter, i.e., who tries to make themselves feel alive by cutting themselves (usually arms and legs). It's a boy! A bris! Patient, why do you cut yourself? What associations come to mind? J-w-h and His pack with Abraham, doctor. Psychoanalyst thinks to self: Not ewxactly what I had in mind I think this will be all for today. \brad mccormick Chris ___ So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. --Bertrand Russell SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (was Re: Vital decisions for Islamic countries)
Christoph Reuss wrote: Keith Hudson wrote: Maimonides had come down firmly on the side of science, saying that so long as it didn't interfere with Talmudic studies and so long as it was studied for the betterment of mankind, then its study was allowable. The issue seems quite unclear, since e.g. some argue that the Talmud clearly says that Jews should be vegetarians (see e.g. Richard Schwartz's Judaism and Vegetarianism), whereas others insist on practicing the worst cruelty to animals (ritual slaughtering) based on the same Talmud, even demanding to be exempt from the strict European animal protection laws. A practice, btw, where the oh-so-civilized Judaism isn't any better than the oh-so-evilbarbaric Islam. (Not to mention the genocidal policies performed by the Jewish state.) At the personal level, I see no difference between J. and I. religions: Both practice ritual genital mutilation of little boys. On the other hand, there is a lot more genital mutilation of females in Islamic societies than in jewish. So, when a jewish boy or man gives thanks to J-w-h that he was not born a woman, I'd say he's in denial -- until he picks up the knife to deprive his own son of part of his potential pleasure in life. Then he should be arrested for sex crime against a minor. Never again! \brad mccormick Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Re: Over and under pop (was More hardwiring)
Selma Singer wrote: [snip] As you may or may not remember from messages I have posted in the very distant past on this list, I worry less about our being overwhelmed with stupid poor people and more about all the geniuses that are lost because simply because they are born into poverty and remain there. [snip] THe ending of Antoine Saint-Exupery's _Wind Sand and Stars_ goes something like this (from faulty memory). He is describing a 3rd class carriage train trip in some third-world country: It is not what we Westerners consider the squalor of their living conditions that is most striking -- people have lived in all sorts of conditions. The tragedy is a little bit of Mozart murdered in each of these people. Annotatedly yours, \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Gay at birth?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Keith, . My complaint about male homosexualtiy is not so much that it exists but that because it has reached such a large and substantial proportion of the population it becomes rationalised as natural when, in fact, because an adolescent ambivalent boy is sucked into such a largish sub-culture he becomes increasingly trapped (as Harry mentioned yesterday). The result of all this is that, today, (compared with the previous examples) the boy never grows up to have hetrosexual experience nor the jopys of long-term hetero relationships. Arthur I agree with this. This would apply to all sorts of things that kids feel or see about them but don't see as normal. Once they are seen as natural then they say why not try it out... This could apply to car theft, heroin or whatever. [snip] May I append some whatevers? Being an employee doing meaningless work in a big depersonalized organization? Being a student who shapes his or her future by their school grades, SATs, etc.? Being a housewife? Being a go-get-em salesperson? Getting married and having more children than one can afford (or perhaps would really want...), and getting mired in debt etc.? Note that none of these things is illegal. Then there are the high-end car-thieves like Mr. Fastow of ENRON fame, who may also be addicted to the drug *power* (I think it is not so important that some fo them also take drugs) I feel that there would be a lot less homosexuality - and, far more important: far fewer perversions!!! -- if each person was raised from infancy in an environment that straightforwardly nurtured their sexuality instead of repressing and trying to sublimate it. It at least seems an experiment worth trying. If man is by nature a curious animal, etc., then I would expect libidinally satisfied individuals to be productive and creative - gracefully, instead of with an admixture of fear and guilt, etc. And let young persons discover their homosexual desires (insofar as they may have any) in decorous social intercourse, rather than in the LOCKER ROOM... \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Gay at birth?
Keith Hudson wrote: Before anybody attempts to shoot me down by quoting the article in today's /New York Times/, all I would say is that I agree with the writer, Nicholas Kristof. There are two few studies involving too small a number of experimental subjects to make any sort of judgement yet. [snip] For my part, I'm prepared to say that the degree of homosexuality we see around us today is probably far greater than at any time in history and this bespeaks something very unusual, such as high stress. (Or it could be the large amount of artificial contraceptive hormones that are being dispensed into our sewage systems and some from thence into our drinking water. [snip] Some people say we should settle gay rights disputes on the basis of the Old Testament. I say we should rely on blinking patterns. [snip] Earlier this year, the journal /Personality and Individual Differences /published an exhaustive review of the literature entitled Born Gay? After reviewing the twin studies, it concluded that 50 to 60 percent of sexual orientation might be genetic. [snip] I like the idea about stress being a factor, since it seems prima facie plausible that stress should lead to a cornucopia of dysfunctional psychological and social phenomena. On the other hand, isn't (wasn't) homosexuality rather prevelant among England's aristocracy? I think Freud's idea of repressed sexual energy as the fuel for civilization is still important (as for several years, I have what I think is the key quote and some commentary at http:/www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/civil.html ). What other reason than to fill up our tanks - not with oil -- but with aim-inhibited homoerotic energy, for contact sports and LOCKER ROOMS in high school? [Gimme some privacy, please! Remember Robert Bork? He asserted there was no constitutional right to privacy] As for the contemporary west being unique, I remember once reading that one of the Taliban's continuing morals problem was keeping the warlords from having sex with young boys. How widespread are such relations in tribal cultures? Have fun; don't hurt anybody (including onself)... \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] The consumer economy terrifies me.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a society we are always encouraged to aim for more, more growth, more consumption. We are never asked to discuss a largely automated future where the production problem has been solved. What would it be like? The particular situation of our market economy seems to discourage such talk. [snip] And since production processes are largely automated already, shouldn't that future already be our background which we can take for granted? The carrot is attached to a stick affixed to the donkey's head. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Lumps of unskilled labour
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The solution to pollution is dilution Brad, I've been thinking about pithy expressions for a line of futurework sweatshirts that we could wear at conferences, or when we hold our seminars, pontificate to the media, ride the subway, visit our accountants, or go for those necessary extended hikes above tree-line or precious hours fly-fishing by the river. If I ever get around to doing anything about the sweatshirt idea, with your permission your exhortation will be one of the first to be emblazoned on the first issues. All proceeds to the worthy cause of the week. But you know this exhortation was received wisdom in America in the 1930s, or so I seem to have read (no citation available). A similar piece of wisdom was that a river cleans itself every 5 miles. No, this is not original with me. At work, last week, I did, however, find that something I do think I originated has gotten around (how much it has sunk in is a different issue): The shortest distance between two points is a good user interface. Somebody posted a cartoon of some techie's idea of a good user interface: all sorts of dials and digital readouts displaying inscrutable readings of various internal components of some system's innards, all crammed together. My other motto at work is more subversive: Do unto programmers and tech support persons as you would have them do to end users. If *that* was taken seriously, we would have some major changes in the technical workplace. I have posted more of my experiences and thoughts from 30 years of being a computer [programmer...] on my website, at: http:/www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/computerAphorisms.html#credo \brad mcormick Cheers / Bob Este / Ph.D candidate / U of Calgary ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Separating the wheat from the chaff, and the end of the future
[snip] Congress, despite questions about the president's postwar policies, agreed there could be no turning back in the Iraqi operation. [snip] This points toward what will likely be Bush's greatest legacy: He took away more options for the future than any other American President. From cutting taxes to prevent Congress from funding social programs, to invading Iraq and Afghanistan to assure that we will be in a state of miasmic war for the unforeseable future, George W Bush has destroyed the future, in any but a chronometric sense (i.e., the way one pulse of the atomic clock at the USNO, next door to the Cheney house, follows the previous tick . . . . . . . . . . ). \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Lumps of unskilled labour
Harry Pollard wrote: Brad, old lad, An answer that is no answer. As far as I know, we can't get down there. Don't you know that a couple Frenchman in a special submarine, the Triests, went to the bottom and returned in the 1950s. By the time in the far future (should we reach a far future) when we might be able to get down there, there won't be much left of anything. Salt water is corrosive. Some 99.9% of radioactivity in the oceans is natural (I can't remember the symbol that extends those 9's). So far! The solution to pollution is dilution? If we dropped all our fuel rods into the Trench, the percentage would be the same. Common sense suggests we just go ahead and drop the lot in the trench, but we are dealing with politicians with whom sense is not so much common as rare. [snip] I still favor Waco. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Lumps of unskilled labour
Harry Pollard wrote: Ed, We should never minimize problems - but we shouldn't maximize them either. Why isn't the Pacific Trench an option? [snip] Because there might be something useful to humanity down there that we don't yet know about. Do I remember rightly that Bush's ranch is near where a bunch of fanatics fought a seige with the Feds? Waco? (What's the connection? How about a new acronym: IBBY, i.e., In Bush's Back Yard.) \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Re: direct democracy // Schwarzenegger
Robert E. Bowd wrote: From the Utne Reader website: [snip] Now, weird things like this do occasionally occur in elections, and the figures, on their own, are not proof of anything except statistical anomalies worthy of further study. But in Georgia there was an extra reason to be suspicious. Last November, the state became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (£33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare. [snip] I done been a computer -- OK, a computer *programmer* -- for over 30 years now. This essay rings true. Over 25 years ago, Joseph Weizenbaum spoke of reality being defined by the behavior of incomprehensible programs (_Computer Power and Human Reason: From judgment to calculation_). And somebody saw the obvious in New York magazine a couple years ago (yes, I have the citation), when he attributed a large part the causation for the advent of the creative accounting in the age of Enron to the way spreadsheet programs turn business planning into a computer game. First do no harm. Amazing how far out of reach such a seemingly seemingly modest hope is. \brad mcormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Over-regulation in France
Keith Hudson wrote: Before the French government legislated to reduce the working week to 35 hours in 1998, various FWers though this was a splendid thing. However, I ventured the opinion on this List that it wouldn't really create any more jobs and, in fact, because it made the unit costs of employing people greater, then small businesses would be heavily penalised. I also wrote much more recently (yesterday, in fact) that France is gradually sinking into an economic morass because of bureaucracy and that it might collapse in future years as spectacularly as Soviet Russia did in 1992. The following article in today's /Sunday Times /bears witness to the problems brought about by regulation in matters that shouldn't concern governments. FRENCH WORK UP ANGST AT 35-HOUR WEEK The French now have more leisure hours but less money to spend. Critics say the 35-hour week is fostering a disdain for work and hastening economic decline Matthew Campbell [snip] Is the straw man a red herring? Let's grant that a police-enforced 35 hour week is not the answer (although it might be less of a problem or even a benefit if other countries all played according to the same rules). How do we protect against the very real problems of persons being expected to work much longer than 40 hours? At least back in the 1980s, Japanese salarymen tried to avoid leaving the office at a normal hour even if thay had no real work to do because those who did not work long hours were stigmatized. And here in the U.S.A., a combination of paid and unpaid overtime (some more or less genuinely voluntary, but a lot involuntary) is expected in many jobs today. How do you suggest we address over-work, and at least here in America today, its uncertainties, which result in persons becoming anxious and depressed as well as being worn out? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] The new solar phase of mankind's survival system
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] However, when we consider that all three main phases of the industrial revolution -- steam, electrification and computerisation -- have all depended on cheap energy, the evidence is that this is going to be extremely expensive in the coming decades. This, by itself, isn't going to alter the character of what we produce and what services we need, but it may limit the overall world production that is possible and strongly suggests that, maybe, the industrial revolution is coming to an end. Perhaps it is time to consider that an entirely new revolution is going to be needed if the whole of mankind is not going to enter a period of prolonged statis and, maybe, steady collapse. [snip] This sounds very good. I have made clear that I think small-group self-management is desirable as far we we can really do it. One thing I see standing in the way of this is overpopulation. Another issue, directly raised here is: Can the production processes which make the solar cells, the computer chips, etc. be small-sized, or do they need to be done in large establishments, like when a company like IBM invests a billion dollars in a chip plant? What do you think? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Ten technologies that deserve to die
Karen Watters Cole wrote: This caught my eye at MIT Technology Review. Here are the first five. *Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die [snip] I am struck by the motliness (if that's a word) of the items in the list. Nuclear weapons and land mines (1 and 5) obviously are bad, but they've got national security going for them (and, of course, the enemy's potential counter-use of them), as a big part of their justification. Coal burning power plants (2) are also obviously bad, but they've got our need for affordable energy (and lots of it), etc. going for them. The internal combustion engine (3) equates to America's addiction to the automobile (SUV...). And real men don't want to drive wussy electric cars. (Bumper sticker I saw yesterday on a small truck: I LOVE ASPHALT But #4 -- the incandescent light bulb -- looks like one that doesn't have any deeply entrenched interests defending it. It seems to me that all we need is some other kind of light bulb that screws into an ordinary socket and isn't terribly expensive, and we might actually be able to get rid of this one, through expectable behavior of masses in markets, i.e., even in our age of Bush kudzu-economics and politics. Alas, #4 may be the least of these What are 6 thru 10? Just one person's thoughts \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Coup d'etat against Bush (was RE: [Futurework] New Iraq: a Model of Free Trade
Keith Hudson wrote: Karen, [snip] After reading what Kristol wrote the other day, I think it's very possible to believe something unbelievable -- that the CIA + State Department + some of the military + some Republican Senators will overthrow Bush/Cheney in a coup on the grounds of mental incompetence. It came close to this in Nixon's time. I really think that as the quagmire becomes deeper and deeper with no way that Bush can struggle out of it and, unless he resigns voiluntarily, that something along the lines of a coup d'etat will take place in that most democratic of all countries (so they say!). [snip] Gosh, I hope your prognostication proves true and either (1) Bush is reborn in statesmanship, or (2) that he revoves himself from the scene before he does much more damage. Starbuck, si! Ahab, no! \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Re: [FW] Ten technologies that deserve to die
Karen Watters Cole wrote: What are 6 thru 10? Brad, the link took you to the rest of the article. I've appended and attached for you here. [snip] I'm starting to be amazed at the things I miss. What link? I didn't see it. Honest But now I've seen 6 thru 10: 6 Manned Spaceflight 7 Prisons 8 Cosmetic Implants 9 Lie detectors 10 DVDs These seem to me more interesting topics than the top 5, which all seem to leave little space for argument (to me at least). -- Manned spaceflight? This is one I might leave to market forces. If and when there is a business case for it, it could happen without having to be paid for by tax levies, couldn't it? Prisons? The article is right that we already live in a society of close to universal surveillance and behavior management, even if enterprise has been deregulated (isn't that an interesting cohabitation: free markets and universal social control in depth? -- isn't this a great topic for this forum?) I read that 600,000 students are taking their SAT tests this morning. Anyone want to call that free range teens? Cosmetic implants? I'm all in favor of more beautiful bodies housing more beautiful minds (Imagine having sex with Socrates? Well, we know that Alcibiades went on to screw Athens, and Mrs. Socrates is not even a footnote to history like Mary Magdelene or somebody). *However*, I have read that, in Brazil, breast *reduction* surgery is far more popular than augmentation, because they think too much is gauche. It should be obvious that we need a WAR against unhealthy lifestyle, just like a WAR against terrorism. If everyone was the best they naturally could be, and it the cream was not skimmed off the milk (i.e., if the beautiful people remained more distributed thruout the general population), this would be a topic that might be revisited with very different perspective than today when Americans are geting so much more obese that the airlines have been told to recalculate their maximum number of passengers on a plane. Lie detectors? Are you now or have you ever been...? But what is so very different between lie detector tests and the SATS (those 600,000, again)? BM: Remember the 600,000. Q: Why? Looks all right to me. DVDs. I find the complaint that DVDs are fragile wussy whining. Remember LP records? I could play one dozens of times and it would still not have any scratches or even fingerprints on it. Can't people take care of things? (Doesn't that sound Republican?) But the Democratic part of me says this is a battle the dems will eventually win because it costs almost nothing to distribute the information that gets put on DVDs via the net -- especially if we don't have our scientists trying to find ways to use more bandwidth that nobody has yet thought of. The question about the information explosion as a whole was asked some time ago by Walter Ong: What is the purpose of acquiring perfect French pronunciation, If the person has nothing of value to say in any language? ** For Futurework, I think the most interesting issue here ** is the relation between free markets and pervasive ** high-technology facilitated and mediated (they don't ** call em media for nuthin...) social control. -- Now. I will once again propose one technology we *need*: The disciplined cultivation and reflective self-study of peer discourse human association. I would call this Political Science if the name had not already been taken for a similar but different discipline of some persons studying how other persons behave but not studying their own work process of studying those other people, etc. Yours in discourse \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Free Trade kills :: Why not :economy games like war games instead of economy like war?
Harry Pollard wrote: Tom, The market is just a device for allowing people to exchange their goods and services. It has no responsibility to anyone nor does anyone have a responsibility to it. I like what Thomas wrote: That society should be first and that the members of the society may choose to use markets when so doing would enhance peace, order, safety, comfort, freedom, and choices offered to every individual. That seems obvious to me, but that may be a view conditioned by a certain cultural background, which does not necessarily make it wrong or undesirable, but does need to be factored into our thoughts. But I still want to try to understand what Harry may be trying to say. So I ask Harry: If you had a free hand to reorganize New York City with its some 8 million or so denizens, what would you do? You have to take into consideration such factors as currency counterfeiters. But I will accept if you answer that your ideas about market freedom cannot work with huge masses or persons crammed into a small geographic area. Then I would ask again, what would you do with New York City? (and don't forget about the commuter suburbs in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey). Best wishes from Chappaqua, which is part of the current hybrid economy of greater New York. \brad mccormick When a market is free, everybody benefits from its use. When everyone uses the market and benefits from its use, then as they are the community, the community benefits from the market as if by an invisible hand. And that is all the invisible hand means. When every member of the community is better off, then the community is better off. Does that make sense? Harry --- Thomas wrote: Ed Weick wrote: Brad, you seem to proposing that the market should be viewed as part of society, responsible to society, and not the other way around. What a radical thought! [snip] Thomas: This is a radical thought that has a lot of truth in it and may answer one usasked question. What is first. The market or society. I would answer - society and society invents and defines the market to serve itself which is comprised of the individuals within that market - in current terms within our national boundries. An enlightened society would choose activities that benefited all members of that society - why because of the benefits of peace, order, safety, comfort, freedom, and choices offered to every individual. Currently we reward and idealize the rich and powerful. Perhaps that explains the defenders of the current society. They either are rich and powerful or aspire to be. A different ethos is possible, the greatest good for everyone and therefore a different activity of supply and demand might make more sense in the process of creating more equality. I don't think I've just drivelled out another obvious romantic platitude, although I didn't give my reference: ...[T]he principle should be Protect the worker, not the industry. Tariffs on steel: George Bush, protectionist: The president's decision to place high tariffs on imports of steel is disgraceful, The Economist, 9-15Mar2002 (page ref. lost). [snip] -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] RE: They were pretty dim
Lawrence DeBivort wrote: On a sad afternoon, thanks for the quip! ' his lips are where, as he said, words go to die' ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Here's where I have the citation information: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/qtarchive2.html#Q66 That was back when he still might be seen as being a bad joke? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] British swallowing of political propaganda
Karen Watters Cole wrote: [snip] Maybe Californians should ask the people of Minnesota what they think of a former wrestler named Jesse after living with him as Governor for four years. [snip] From what little I've read, Jesse Ventura did not acquit himself badly. Perhaps he had good luck not to have the Harpies of Deregulated Energy descend on his dinner table unlike Gray Davis? I'll stand corrected, but I think Jesse Ventura is almost a storybook story of a simple man who believes things are being screwed up by the officially certified experts, trying to show that sanity is posible in politics. I don't think Jesse pretended to know what he didn't, and I think he did believe that some who thought themselves better than himself did. Perhaps post-Enron California (and post-DubyaAmerica) is now in the empirical condition which Heidegger [another Nazi who quit the Party because Hitler refused to learn the true meaning of National Socialism from him, Heidegger...] perhaps meant metaphysically: Only a god can save us. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] More myopia and all that ~ looking thru the tele scope vs looking in the mirror?
Ed Weick wrote: There are things that simply cannot be amended or fixed. Ed [snip] And I think we are doing a very good job of exascerbating them instead of ameliorating them for now and the future. This is obvious, but nonetheless true. While one cannot turn an aircraft carrier going 30 knots around in half a mile, it doesn't help to raise the speed to 32 knots and keep straight on course. -- Something curious happened at my programming workplace today. The programmers can now split up their huge jobs into 2 to 4 smaller pieces that can run concurrently (the computers are 4-CPU systems). So if one programmer is running his or her job, they can get it done in 2 instead of 8 hours. But, of course, if 4 programmers each try to do the same thing, the system gets bogged down in resource shortages. *Furthermore*, if one person notices the overload and runs his or her job as one thread, this person will come out the worst, since the computer tends to give the same amount of resources to each thread. (The hogs get rewarded for their greediness, while virtue remains its own reward.) Now, here's the interesting part: The person who sent out an email about the problem actually said it was another example of the tragedy of the commons! This person is the most educated person in the whole company, so I'm not hoping for anything to top this soon, but it may be the first time in 30 years of programming that I've seen an idea from the world of the Geisteswissenschaften used by a programmer in a programming context. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] More myopia and all that ~ looking thru the tele scope vs looking in the mirror?
Ed Weick wrote: There are things that simply cannot be amended or fixed. Ed [snip] To go out on a limb, I'm willing to predict that humanity is in for some kind of huge disaster in the next three to five thousand years. Some form of plague, perhaps, radiation, perhaps, or some enormous accident. Mark my words, Ray, hang around and see. [snip] I will interpret what you write as saying that the huge disaster may befall any time from 2006 to 7003 (CE, of course), and I agree with that. (As far as computers are concerned, I think there's another Y2k coming up somewhere around 2034, when UNIX timestamps wrap.) \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Waifer-thin survival (was Re: [Futurework] 105. Dumbed-down state education is the real threat
Selma Singer wrote: Keith, Just for the record, I would like to state that there is no absolutely clear evidence from biology, anthropology, or sociology that states unequivocally that it is part of human nature to stive for status to the detriment of others. [snip] I don't think we know how much competitive instinct we have, and if we do have any, probably some persons have more of it than others. But prudence seems to me to suggest that we act conservatively, and assume there is a fair amount of competitive spirit in us. I don't have the citation at hand, but Gregory Bateson described some primitive cultures in which competition was highly prized, and some in which competition was much disparaged. The former societies were, if I remember right, highly unstable; the latter were more conformist than we would like, but they were in no danger of self-destructing. So the anthroplogical evidence seems to suggest that low competition societies can be viable. As for primates, supposedly the bonobos are our closest relatives, and they are peaceful but have a lot of sex. Keith: Are you so sure we are not like the bonobos? I don't think we can eliminate competition from our social life. But I think we, certainly in America, nurture it way too much, to the point that persons have no choice other than to compete (for jobs, etc.), whether they want to or not. I am only arguing against interpersonal competition. I suggested that we mobilize to *FIGHT* our natural enemies and the evils we have created in our social world, e.g., wasteful energy consumption and pollution. I don't cry for the moon of some kind of zombieland (like the movie The Truman Show faked up, e.g.), but for lowering the anxiety/insecurity level of life, and getting more persons more interested in beating AIDS than in beating the Jets (or the Mets or the Wizards or the whatevers). Keith speaks about the buzzards' 1% surplus of energy input vs energy output. But if buzzards survive on such a narow margin, don't they do it in an environment that reached equilibrium long ago? Isn't our environment nowhere near equilibrium? The 20th century has been called the century of total war. WWI, WWII, etc. Clearly peaceful competitive pursuits did not preserve the peace, unless one considers the enormous amount of energy (money, etc.) that went into The Cold War as having been peace, whereas had all those resources gone into what are normally called peaceful pursuits, our world today might almost be a desirable kind of utopia. I'm not an expert, but the social world I find myself living in does not make good sense to me, and I do try to understand it. Lke the old cartoon of the two armies facine each other, and the officer on each side give the order: Fire! -- and the troops on each side do fire: they each shoot their own officer. (This is meant here as a metaphor!) \brad mccormick - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] [snip] Brad, At 08:23 27/09/2003 -0400, you wrote: I think there is time to teach both science and technology to address Keith's concerns, and also for some liberal arts experience -- if we dump the crap, among whcih I would include all forms of interpersonal competition, competition in sports, competition for grades, etc. But why do you keep crying for the moon? We may be primates+, but we are still primates and for several million years, intra-group competition for status and inter-group fighting for dominance has been built into our genes. We can't get rid of these traits. Once we have the wisdom to accept that we can never change these, then we can start to seriously consider what sorts of institutions we need so that these inevitable conflicts are confined to as small a scope as possible. By trying to ignore these predispositions or by trying to overlay them with impossible ideals -- which never succeed, or at least not for long -- we are not tackling the problem, but just waiting for the next big catastrophe or the next big war. [snip] -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Waifer-thin survival (was Re: [Futurework] 105. Dumbed-down state education is the real threat
Keith Hudson wrote: Brad, At 07:49 28/09/2003 -0400, you wrote: Keith speaks about the buzzards' 1% surplus of energy input vs energy output. But if buzzards survive on such a narow margin, don't they do it in an environment that reached equilibrium long ago? Isn't our environment nowhere near equilibrium? Gosh! The penny is dropping at long last! It is precisely because our genetic natures -- forged by an environment of hunter gathering for millions of years -- are very dangerous indeed in modern times, mainly because, in the last 200 years, we have accessed a new source of energy which has totally changed almost every aspects of our lives. This sudden accession of entirely new circumstances is something that has happened to no other species. But instead of ignoring or disparaging our original genetic natures as you seem to want to do, what we should be doing is to devise appropriate socio-political structures that are less dangerous than the ones we now have. The panny dropping presumably means some understanding has occurred? I'm certainly willing to grant that there may be a lot more misunderstanding leading to unnecessary disagreement here than if we were talking face-to-face, preferably at leisure. You didn't say anything about those bonobos or about Bateson's [he had a term for them which I keep forgetting...] peaceful primitive cultures. Bateson called the cltures that encouraged competition: schizmogenic, i.e., tending toward fragmentation. But maybe hypothetical millions of years of genetic selection doesn't matter all that much after powerful present-day cultural selection. Can we agree that high-profile competitive scholastic and profesional athletic programs, if they contribute to making progress on problems like oil dependency, do so in a highly roundabout way? Do you think there is no more direct way, i.e., do you think we have to spend so much to gain what we get from these programs, especially considering that the output of these programs is not just progress on our problems but more fuel for stimulating more competition: a fissile material breeder reactor of human character? The kind of studies that would quantify the full costs of competition probably won't get done and maybe even cannot be done because too many assumptions would need to be made. There is news in today's NYT about a OMB study that found last year that clean air regulations saved about as much as they cost (SU$25 billion), but they found they left out some big factor so now they say the $25 billion cost of the regulations saved more like $120 billion. And, of course, somebody says they've got it wrong this time. Surely you do not mean what it sounds like when you write: This sudden accession of entirely new circumstances is something that has happened to no other species. This is trivial if you mean the *exact* changes involved, and wrong if you mean other species have not experienced radical changes in their environments(Umwelten). That big asteroid 65 million years ago, i.e. But I think you may mean something like I might say: That humans have both individual reflective consciousness and that humans coordinate their reflective consciousness socially. And I would guess this has never happened on earth before, but whether it has or hasn't may be no more important than our biological relation to bonobos, or the existence of non-competitive primitive cultures. The question is what use can we make of this asset? I think it is highly interesting that the way we coordinate our reflective social consciousness is by concocting ever more powerful (and ever more resource-consuming!) competitive systems. A single new model smaller and cheaper nuclear submarine that will supposedly help protect us against rogue nations and terrorist groups costs over US$1 billion. In evolutionary terms, maybe AlQaeda will prove the fittest to survive? I'll try to write about something more specificnext. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Changes the computer revolution is making in work [specific example]
: I'm too frightened to curse much -- partly become I'm becoming superstitious and think the code might attack me even worse than it already has. HOWEVER: On Friday, I figured out one small thing that was wrong. I had plugged away at my detective work for a couple hours, and suddenly I think I've found either the root of the problem or at least a *BIG* part of the problem. So I make my little change to implement the little correction I have figured out. And, when I try my fix and find the function that wasn't working works (remember: It has now just worked once, so I don't know yet if the problem is *fully* fixed!)::: Seeing the code work, I SHOUT: Ya-Hoo!. As previously said, I often shout curses in doing my computer programming work, but I can't remember the last time I gave a positive exclamation -- unless maybe I had found one other such fix, a day or two earlier, in this same task. (When I am not in this stressed condition, and I solve some problem or make big progress, I generally will breath a sign of relief or satisfaction, and maybe walk around the office quietly for a couple minutes [a kind of discreet victory lap to cool down], but I never shout about it. (Oh, yes, I take a backup so I don't lose it!) -- I know I have left out all the details. But have I described the game (ref. Wittgenstein's lauguage games, etc.)? Can I clarify further for you? Does anyone see anything to discuss in this work structure? I think it may be fairly common in the world of computer programming work today, in part because individual work stations tend to chop programming up into programmer-and-workstation symbiot chunks, and also because of the way Object Oriented Programming (OOPS) tends to make code more reusable and therefore give management more of an idea that all the programmer has to do is plug the existing functional units (classes) together in a certain pattern, and maybe add a relatively small amount of new code, and that everything should be prety easy for the programmer to understand, since it's all built from standard units (those classes, again). Any thoughts about this, for work life in our place and time? Anybody out there se any ideas ideas how to do better with my situation? Because it's quite poossible I can't see the obvious. (One suggestion that is not likely helpful: (1) Find a better job -- I am convinced this is a better job. Sure there may be a better job in Boseman Montana, but I'm not likely moving, and, to repeat, I really do think this job is at least 75th percentile, or maybe even 90th.) I hope this has been of some list-related interest. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Waifer-thin survival (was Re: [Futurework] 105. Dumbed-down state education is the real threat
[snip] Yes, a leisurely discussion would be more preferable in our case. I actually think that you and I share a very great deal more than we appear to differ -- something like 90% agreement, I would guess. But certainly in your case, I don't seem to be able to get my views across as well as I would have hoped in this form of communication. Keith Hudson, Bath, England, A large part of this is probably differences in our imaginative horizons (different affective valences on words, different asociations to words and phrases and ideas...). Item: The scientific idea of evolution has very little meaning for me, except the unpleasant thought that Nature is like a research lab with an unlimited budget and researchers who have no ethical committment to anything except to not lying about the results of an experiment. Hey, Angel Joe! Look at this neat tumor I just got going in this here specimen [living human or animal]! And, dammit, Joe, dont' you send any asteroids toward my specimen tank [the earth], because I've got anothere great idea to try after this one (has to do with infecting people with civet cat bodily fluids)! Sure, Angel Kay, I won't disturb your earth -- at least until I'm pretty sure these mini-black holes I'm working on can wander around there like a soap bubble a kid might blow, and then just vanish, instead of sucking up the whole neighborhood Angel Joe! What the infernal regions' use will that be? Dunno, but it sems worth trying \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] More myopia and all that ~ looking thru the telescope vs looking in the mirror?
Barry wrote: Have we all forgotten the Milgrim experiments? (For a really quick refresher, you might try Milgrim http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm (http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm). Enjoy! Barry Ed Weick wrote: From Adolph Eichmanns closing statement: My life's principle, which I was taught very early on, was to desire and to strive to achieve ethical values. From a particular moment on, however, I was prevented by the State from living according to this principle. I had to switch from the unity of ethics to one of multiple morals. I had to yield to the inversion of values which was prescribed by the State. Just doin' my job suh, just doin' my job. It was the boss, suh, not me. I only know about Eichmann what I've read in newspaper articles and such. Eichmann has become a symbol of the person who exculpates themself by saying they were just following orders even though, as in his case, they were relatively highly placed. The quote does not sound to me quite so simple. It sounds to me more like Eichmann was childreared to be good in an environment where goodness was defined in terms of obeying the values of the persons in authority (initially one's parents). Had he been on *our* side, he would, at worst, have had a successful career, and perhaps have received some public recognition of his good service to the values we hold dear. I can posibly imagine Abraham saying something similar when ordered to kill his son Isaac, had he been brought before some tribunal. I don't have a pithy moral to draw from this. And maybe Eichmann really thought Just doin' my job suh, but that is not exactly what the quote seems to me to say. The words say the man believes he has a conscience and that he tried to live acording to it. Well, maybe here's one moral to draw: Darned lucky persons don't often get put in a position similar to Eichmann's. But managers (teachers and other persons in positions of authority) often, I think, do things to those over whom they have power, that are less than decent. I find Eichmann's articulation of his position scary. I also find scary those who are less articulate but not less at risk for doing bad things if put in a bad situation. I also am concerned that, the way articulate discourse is deployed very eloquently and seemingly cogently (or, as in postmodernism, incomprehensibly...) for causes that may not be so good, in our time, it is harderfor us to tell what is good and what is not good than if we didn't do such a good job of defending some pretty bad things in such areas as treatment of employees, students, and other persons in positions of powerlesness. Just like with 911 and similar incidents, I think we should invest a lot of our efforts in seeing how conditions we take to be normal and OK contributed to enabling the catstrophe to happen to us. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] updating address book :: That weird email we are getting from futurework
Have the system administrators where Futurework is hosted been informed of this thing? Darryl and Natalia wrote: Who is Ms. Weems? Or do we have another form of worm? I did not attempt to communicate with the message so maybe nothing happened. If anyone has sent anything re: above, great; if not, any ideas? Darryl I am just discarding them. I, like you, would not DARE open any attachment or even reply. There's only two things it can likely be: spam or a virus/worm. I find it curious that computer programming is very dificult (I've had 30 years of doing it), and yet it is apparently quite simple to unleash one of these destructive things on the Internet. It's as if making a radiation device for destroying cancer tumors was very difficult but anybody could make an atom bomb (and I would not be surprised of someone replies that we're getting there). How much are we living in a metastable world (i.e., a situation where, like a pyramid resting upside down on its top instead of rightside up on its base, things tend to fall over rather than tending to stay put? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] 105. Dumbed-down state education is the real threat
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] There is no future unless a powerful new energy technology is developed in the next 20/30 years or so. And this means a far great emphasis on science and on scientific education in schools. The trend towards dumbing down in Western schools must be reversed if there is to be a future for Europe and America. America has got away with it so far because it has been able to recruit te best scientific brains of Europe during the whole of the last century and the best brains of eastern Asian countries in the latter half. As far as the latter are concerned, this trend is already ending because, despite lower salaries (but only for the time being) the best Asian scientists and students in America are now being attracted back to Asia, particularly China. And, of course, China is now able to retain its own home-educated scientists. [snip] OK: Let's take this idea really seriously. Heres' what I think ti may dictate (Yes, that's a non-laissez faire word). I do not think that going back to any ideal of education from the past will do the job. I think we need education that will inspire young persons to want to solve this problem (and other showstoppers, if this is not the only one), and give them the tools to attack the problem in a focused way. I don't mean teaching them today's technical skills that will be obsolete tomorrow, but teaching them the skills needed to be able scientists, engineers, etc., but with a mission, not because science is interesting, etc., although we need to make it interesting, etc. We need to expend extra effort on helping those who are failing to succeed to the best of their ability so they too can contribute. We need to not let the unfettered market allocate human and material resources. I can imagine a ocntinuation of the Bush regime bringing about some of the bad parts of such a future. I don't see any FDR's around, or the party apparatus to support one if one does appear. I also believe that one way we can protect persons' civil liberties in a time we may need to curtail civil liberties is by including real experience of the liberal arts (Notice I did not use the word: instruction, which reduces everything to a lesson in living in a situation of instructors and instructees!) -- then persons will perhaps acquire some desire for real freedom (peer discourse which shapes itself as persons' daily life situation in all areas, including work, schol, etc.), and also some ability to recognize with they don't have it -- like for most even if not for all, in schol and the workplace ever since anyone can remember (and nto just since George W took office). I think there is time to teach both science and technology to address Keith's concerns, and also for some liberal arts experience -- if we dump the crap, among whcih I would include all forms of interpersonal competition, competition in sports, competition for grades, etc. Do we really ahve time and energy to expend struggling against each other? Is a system which consumes so much energy to produce energy the best way we can motivate persons? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] Myopia
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Seems that many of the 9/11 terrorists came from relatively well off homes, Were not poor at all. Yet they still turned against the infidels/modernity. [snip] Existentialism was not wrong even if it is no longer fashionable. Here's a synopsis of an NYT essay on where Mohammad Atta came from http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/quotes.html#Q85 How do you spell civilizaztion's discontent? a n o m i e But Bush et cie., in working on making more of us poor, may palliate the problem. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] social trends: Profanity
Christoph Reuss wrote: Karen Watters Cole wrote: Arthur, although I have a handful of cuss words in my vocabulary, I try to use them selectively, as one does very hot spices, appropriately and sparingly. ... Profanity has shock value. Thats why its so prevalent on dumbed down television and in music. Profanity has shock value, like hot spices have spicing value: If used in excess over long time, the palate loses sensitivity. That's why the dose has to be increased over time to achieve the same effect (shock value). Hence the trend... Yes. The trend of having to be ever more extreme to feel anything etc. The world of the super-rich, supposedly But don't the paragons of virtue pontificate that you wouldn't appreciate the good things if life was too easy for you? No pain no gain? Be all that as it may: Different day, same shit. need have no shock value to aptly characterize the situation in the workplace. \brad mcormick A person's level of using profanity is often a good indicator of their level of Americanization (which correlates well with level of consumption of these media). Chris ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
