the defeatists!

Truth as something impossible to deconstruct

New post at the Veterans Today Daily Report. Some silliness but also a plea for workplace tolerance and the return of four letter words. 

We really do not appreciate the elegance of variances of "fuck" and "motherfucker" as universal pronouns, nouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and exclamations. As brevity, simplicity, and compatibility go, these words can rule conversations. 

It might be worth it to develop grammatical rules for them. Worth considering as a doctoral dissertation topic for someone do theory of knowledge and semantics, perhaps. 

They are somewhat impossible to deconstruct. 

 

Everything that is fun is bad for you...and we can make it worse!

The news that there is a link between oral sex and tonsil cancer is really intriguing...since somebody decided that those vestigal organs that primarily act as sacks to hold dormant infections like strep should be nutured instead of removed at the first opportunity, we now have this threat. Tonsilectomies are safe, quick to recover from and have the side effect of not being a place where you can have cancer if you don't have the place. Also, and more to the point, another reason to have women vaccinated against human pampolona virus. Maybe the sexist twits in Texas who opposed it because not worrying about cervical cancer would make their teenage daughters more sexually promiscuous will get in line with reality since they now have some self-interest here.

Not sure about alternatives -- tongue condoms?

Soon, at a city near you...Is Dick Armey the Republican Ernst Rohem?

When Bachmann-Palin-Overdrive top the charts... Moral laxity? Really?

 

Sometimes the blind pig finds a goddamn truffle...

Seriously, I was screwing around looking for some guitar tabs and a link to Plan 9 from Outer Space to torment the assorted Defeatists and Malcontents when I discovered this...The Internet Archive.
Links to tons of material including things like this concert by the Derek Trucks Band with Susan Tedeschi. With download capability. Tons of material, including films, books, broadsheets and tons of other things. There are some drawbacks, of course -- copyrighted material is in scant supply. But, if you want to scan a collection of Lincoln's sayings and speeches, well, check this... Or want to watch a cheesy film with a gal with bazookas, try this, The Outlaw by auteur Howard Hughes.

Just so we're clear...(Update!)

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson 

Texas  is the second biggest state, and most of the people there are at least as rational as the folks in Santa Fe, Philadelphia, Boston, Baton Rouge, Tucson and Seattle. However, there is a texture to the state's politics that is frightening because it's sort of a Right Wing Christian Taliban approach governed by the desires of Big Oil and Big Agriculture. As a result, John Calvin is replacing Thomas Jefferson in the high school system...Jesus, not being a Calvinist, would weep. Jefferson would mutter, in much the way he is muttering metaphysically about his words being high-jacked while his thought ignored by the tea party movement. Which now has an admirer in the wife of Clarence Thomas...I had thought she put on some weight as we all age, from her loving spouse role in his nomination hearings. Now, I guess she has -- in her head. But, focus, AXE...Texas high schools.

For a change, we should be happy that our kids isn't learning. Since Texas is the home of bad school law due to bad facts, the School Board's decision to teach American History along the lines of Creationism is not too terribly surprising. What is surprising is that the entire establishment in Texas isn't worried about being laughingstocks. And, since it's not, I guess that they either are so ignorant at Oxford on the Brazos (TAMU, the killer university) that the state that gave a sense of contrarian  thought as to the meaning of facts is now determined to be contrarian on facts, and that's ok with these guys.

One thing that has the good folks on the left in a bit of an uproar is the decision of the School Board to not require the teaching of the doctrine of separation of Church and State. Since Texas has a large born again community, the possibility does exist that they may in fact establish the Billy Bob Church of Foot Washing Snake Handling Tongue Talking Two-Steppers as the official religion. Right after they secede. Given the ascendancy of the Tea Party movement, perhaps they might get away with it...although Scalia has admitted that there is no right to secede. However, Texas is rapidly becoming a state with at least a Hispanic plurality; and, the Czech and German areas are pretty Catholic. I could picture Catholicism becoming the state religion; maybe we'd have to see the place split up, based on plurality, and become something like Germany, where the Evangelical Church is pretty much the established church in the north and the Catholics rule the south. The old east zone is pretty much confused by this...

As are most people -- why should we care? Well, California is too broke to buy schoolbooks, so the books that are going to be available to buy in the next few years to educate high school kids nationwide will be written IAW the Texas School Board decisions on curriculum. I can't wait for Jesus-Calculus...

I've been trying to not raise my blood pressure, but...

This goddamn woman is going to kill me.

 I kept thinking I should comment on the speech in Oslo, but I couldn't think of much to say.  I pretty much agreed with Obama, who pretty much agreed with everybody except the occasional mad pacifist-philosopher on the just war argument. From Aristotle through Ricoeur, the just war argument gets restated and retitled, but rarely changes -- there is evil and you have the right as a person/group/nation to defend yourself and the responsibility to try and prevent it from eating you and the rest of the world alive. Broughhahahaha about Toby Keith aside, 9/11 provided the justification for Afghanistan and possibly the necessity. Sorry. Bridge in the song sucks, but it was still an honest statement. And, Toby Keith is a moderate Democrat, so go figure.

So since my brothers are finding ways to plug Gary Busey's face onto everything imaginable and the world is turning as per normal, I gotta say, I was doing really well. Staying calm...and then, I read this bit of absolute bullshit and degradation of the sacred by the illiterate/insane/and deranged crone from Minnesota, Michelle "I can see aliens from my house" Bachmann. Tiffany call her home!

Bachmann's argument is fallacious and stupid -- everyone tried in the United States, its territories and possessions including all the ships at sea, military bases, military tribunals and in captivity by a board of court martial in a POW camp is entitled to a fair trial. Including the little green men who obviously have taken over Michelle's mind and body. I mean, Minnesota has excellent public schools. I know she's from Lake Woebegone country, but still they have fantastic schools. She has to have taken civics...I think.

More to the point, Crusader AXE believes in American Exceptionalism. Although Ronald Reagan was a 30 year disaster for this country through his influence on law, thought, foreign policy, his reference to the beacon like a city on a hill from John Winthrop's sermon to the Massachusetts Bay Colony has always struck a note with me. Winthrop more than Ronnie, but then, I was better educated than Ronnie, or for that matter, Michelle Bachmann. Anyway, America is special not because of the water and our superior body fluids, but because of the idea of America. Truth, Justice and the American Way. Bachmann is supposedly a Christian, although we all know that in itself means nothing. But, we have a big statue in New York harbor that celebrates the American idea. The door is open to anyone. Goering got a goddamn fair trial! Jesus...didn't this woman swear to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies domestic and foreign? I did. Anyone who ever served in the military, the Federal Service, and any of a number of state agencies has done the same thing. She was sworn into office in the Capitol.

I know that politicians don't have to know how to read and certainly there is no requirement that they know how to use logic. But, the Amanda Knox trial ought to give Bachmann pause. The gal is guaranteed a lot of time in prison because people don't like America as much in Italy, and all the things that occurred in that trial, from never cautioning the jury, to allowing hearsay, to letting the goddamn jurors give interview during the trial are contradictory to the very concept of a fair trial. Under the Napoleonic code. Where Ms. Knox and her attorneys face the duty of proving the negative...which cannot be proven. Guilty until proven innocent, so that the state and the "homeland" are protected first, and then the Rights of the Individual. The goddamn Napoleonic code is a heritage of tyranny in much of Europe. We are a common law nation, and along with the British Commonwealth, have other expectations.

Then, the fact that she refers to the Bill of Rights as "perks," that only Americans have just makes me cringe. They are rights and responsibilities. As a member of Congress, she has a special responsibility to "preserve, protect and defend" those rights. Instead, she giggles and fingers her erroneous zone lasciviously.

So, this menopausal bimbo who shouldn't be allowed to be on a goddamn zoning panel or school board -- damn, especially a school board --has a bully pulpit and adoring fans. Yet, she is truly ignorant, and truly anti-American. Seriously, I can picture Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Hamilton staring at her, bemused, taking a pinch of snuff and then walking away sadly. Especially if their shades still walk...

Where's Mario Savio when you need him?

Police arrested 52 students protesting a tuition hike Thursday at the University of California-Davis and held them in jail overnight without food. One was reportedly beaten by police, a source close to the incident tells Raw Story...The incident took place in the midst of widespread protests at several University of California campuses, in response to the Board of Regents' decision this week to hike tuition fees by 32 percent starting next academic year.

Yeah, I know...Mario who? Lanza? The Nintendo guy? Well, back in the early 60s, prior to Vietnam and Freedom Marchers, Berkeley had something called a Free Speech Movement and Mario was the best known of the leaders.  I read something by the then Chancellor of the University System years ago, and I wanted to bitchslap the guy even though he was dead. Mario appears to have cared a lot, and died 36 years after coming to prominence. Of heart failure.

Fast foward to today. California is tanking, as we all know; the universities are headed down the old clockwise rotating clusterbowl along with just about everything else. They decided to raise the cost of tuition by 36% -- really? I suspect costs have risen at least 36% over the last ten years or so, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the average loan load for students graduating is $23K, up 10 grand since 1996. Bear in mind, that includes ALL THE STUDENT DEBT for tuition, books, room and board and so on. Most students work, most borrow, most are twitching in fear that their parents will lose their jobs or have lost their jobs, and are all living with feelings of impending doom and dread. Well as they should; the journal goes all supply and demand a bit later, speculating that the availability of loans contributes to the costs, as students compete for seats. Charging outrageous prices for something is the best way of rationing it.

The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government's National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.

On the other hand, Crusader AXE has in fact argued pretty strongly that an elementary knowledge of math is required for informed comment. While the imbalance between rich and poor is growing, most of the folks borrowing a lot of the money are not poor, but middle class. If you're really poor and smart enough, the money is there in the form of scholarships, need-based financial aid, and more heavily subsidized loans. If you're rich, shit...who cares. It's the "middle class" that's getting hit...instead of aspiring to go to UCAL Davis, a worker's daughter will be dreaming of going to Barstow Community College; the kid who could have gone to Harvey Mudd will be siting around at Davis. Supply, demand and cost...very cold calculus. Unless you bitchslap the sytem and make fundamental changes.

There have been discussions over the years about the difference between the student movement in the 60s in the US and in France. Well, as with quality of life in general, France's student movement did in fact result in changes. In the US, we elected Richard Nixon as a backlash; in France, Charles de Gaulle was forced to resign. There's something about a level of passion when something hits viscerally as opposed to intellectually. Pocketbooks and mortgaging the future for forever are pretty visceral. We'll see how this turns out, but my guess is that the bottom rung will suffer severely indeed.  Poorer students will be forced out, smaller schools may be shuttered. And, we'll import more folks with degrees from places like Mobai and Guangzhou. The middle class will become more of an afterthought and we'll see what happens next. Looks in a lot of ways though to this old Hegelian that the Universal Spirit is unfolding itself dialectically and headed for the next stage. Or, to use Marxist language, capitalism is revealing it's contradictions and we're headed for a clash between the American Dream or the American ideology and economic reality; a new omelet will be created, and eggs will be broken.

Took several months back in the early 60s for the cops to break out the teargas. This time, happened basically the same day. We'll see what's next...

Like Bible Camp, only without the hope...

Tiffany, smite this motherfucker. Smite, Smite, Smite. Have nutria invade his underpants...

This is what's wrong with intellectuals as a general class of asses. Just what kids need more of -- regimented time and thought. This dweeb is about as much of a totalitarian as Benny the Rat, only without the Gemutlicheit...

That's just profoundly...nonsensical. Next thing, you'll be wanting these things to be merit based!

Oxford does it. Cambridge does it. Trinity College, Dublin does it. Why not ?

"It will not be easy to produce a low-cost, high-quality three-year curriculum for a college degree, but now is the time to try," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former education secretary and a past president of the University of Tennessee, told a group of educators this year. "Today's economic crisis and tight budgets are the best time to innovate and change."

Passing over the fact that a lot of people still work during the summers to pay tuition and expenses, and on and on and on, there is a huge difference between Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College and Party School U or Ginormous State University someplace. Literacy and relevance. I know a lot of Americans who graduated in three years--they were very bright, had a clue as to what they wanted and had the money for all those extra courses and summer sessions. They were focused, and didn't care that much about booze, broads, bridge and bullshit. They're all drones now, of course, but they got done in three years.

Have you talked to an American kid lately? They're terrified of graduating because of the debt burden and 10% unemployment. The newest "doing the right thing" commercial from Liberty Mutual (not Liberty U, which should probably lose it's tax exempt status over the latest madness, but what the hell? Why not suppress speech and argument. Do you need to be able to logically debate the issues and pay attention when you're swinging a viper around to show how much you trust Jesus? Do you?You talking to me?(AXE, ...calm down. This is not about Zombies worshipping Zombies...and, if Jesuah ben Joseph was really a Maccabee, he'd definitely been down with barring people you don't agree with. Hell, he'd probably have been done with killing them. Falwell's university is not true to the true Jesus...whatever the hell the guy actually said. Seriously...)

There, I'm better. Education, not bad sense. That's what I'm wondering about. The latest Liberty Mutual doing the right thing is telling your kid you're going get laid off, he's going to have to drop out of school and be a fucking migrant farm worker and sex slave, and the kid says, "Shit pops. I'll just join the Air Force..."

But critics said they fear that an undergraduate's academic and social experience would be compromised by shortening it to three years. College would tilt more toward job training and away from the broad-based education many U.S. schools have offered."Most high governmental officials who speak of education policy seem to conceive of education in this light -- as a way to ensure economic competitiveness and continued economic growth," said Derek Bok, president emeritus of Harvard University. "I strongly disagree with this approach."

Well, of course. Let's face a few facts -- most curriculums are more like job training. Always have been. Why aren't you in an engineering school? A business program? Pre-law? Pre-med? Pull your pants up, get a haircut and maybe you'll meet more girls. Shit...HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY THESE LOANS BACK! So you have a degree in liberal arts? How does that work?

There is some truth to that. As a guy with an undergraduate degree in philosophy with a cute little gold key that opens nothing and a guilt feeling because I never did get that degree allowing me to pontificate at Amherst to a crowd of rich young twits every year about Sarter, Schopenhauer and Pop Culture, education doesn't guarantee anything. It does guarantee the ability to frame a situation. But, if you want a good job, get a degree in math and a MBA.

The thing about Harvard and Yale and Oxford and Cambridge is that deep down, they are upper class schools with a lot of rich kids. I agree that as a human being, the socialization of the undergraduate experience is probably just as important as the education. Where else would I have been able to live in a hothouse environment, and focuse on...booze, broads, bridge, guitars and poltics? But, there is a difference between what education is and what people think it is. Remember, the mantra is not "to be a better person" or "to be a whole person," or "to live a full life..." it's "to get a good job, get a good education." Mine got me a rifle, a rucksack, and a guy from Georgia with no teeth cursing me while I was crawling through mud. It got Agi a cubicle. It got El Serracho a cubicle. It got IOZ a job with a nonprofit, but of the various left-libertarian-anarcho-syndicalist types that I virtually hang around with, IOZ has the most genteel background. Of course, he's the most radical of the group by far, and he makes full use of his education and his life experience. It got Mr Fun a job watching the river flow for unbearable assholes. But, even though we may not have the greatest jobs, we are able to look up through the bars of our prison and see stars. Of course, we question their reason for existing, make snarky remarks about their sexual identities and call them motherfuckers, but still...

An awful lot of kids in colleges would be better off with what the Brits call a "polytechnic..." a trades school. A lot more would be better off in an "Arts School..." Richard Hammond of Top Gear , Keith Richard  and lots of other folks went to those things. But, since nobody makes things and god help us if anyone actually pays attention to the arts, those alternatives are limited. Jagger, of course, went to the London School of Economics...

So, without four year college educations where would we be? Where would folks like me get to learn how to play LouieLouie in Latin, or sheltered teenage girls get to experiment with their sexuality and undergraduates explore Satanism or concoct plans like carving Obama's name in their chest...upside down...to get McCain elected? I guess I don't know...but, I do know this. Lamar Alexander is a dickhead. Everytime someone complains about needing to add innovation and efficiency to an institution, whether it's the American League or the College of Cardinals or the Stanford Cardinal, bad things happen.

Ah, England...actually Wales, but WTF!

Bonnie Raitt-Burning Down the House
by SFBA4me

Now, in the US when a princpal installs cameras in the Girl's Bathroom, we call it voyeurism. In England, where the IRA gave them the gift of 24/7 Closed Circuit TV Coverage of everygoddamnthing imaginable, it's just the next step in securing the state. From itself. For itself. God save the Queens...