July 2011
4 posts
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Modelled
nudecency:
To make sense of the tumult in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Washington establishment has made for the safe harbour of analogies. Obama applauded the transformation in the region in his May 19 speech at the State Department and then announced a $2 billion aid package to revive the region’s stalled economies. The parallel Obama drew was instructive: the new Enterprise...
"Retromania"
renurenu:
Total recall: why retromania is all the rage | Music | Simon Reynolds | The Guardian
… if we look at what’s happening in the music scene, for instance, it’s hard to escape the view that the past is what’s “in” in so many different genres. there’s hardly anything really innovating going on. …
Taking a longer view of history might make...
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noam-chomsky:
“Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.” — Profit Over People - Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky did not write this. It was written by Robert McChesney as noted previously.
(See also: misattribution tag)
June 2011
4 posts
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sisterzion:
The Islam-sanctioned treatment of gays:
http://images41.fotki.com/v1253/photos/1/1222605/5440024/publichanging-vi.jpg
(These men were hanged in Iran for “Homosexuality”)
There’s a serious problem with this post. It’s not clear at all that the photo is what it is claimed to be. Posting photos of serious trauma without accurate contextual information (source, date,...
May 2011
17 posts
2 tags
"it says a great deal about the complacent and...
A guy named Ellis Sharp wrote this in an excellent article (Bob Dylan’s Racist Song) in 2005.
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thenoobyorker:
Five Spectacular Jerk Moves by Ayn Rand cognitivedissonance:
Oh yes. Ayn Rand was an asshole.
5. Based the Hero of a Novel on a Real Child Killer 4. Made Alan Greenspan Her Bitch 3. Pussywhipped Her Husband, Her Lover, and Her Lover’s Wife Simultaneously 2. Instituted Mandatory Cigarette Smoking 1. A Six-Foot Floral Dollar Sign Was Placed Near Her Casket at Her Funeral
Yep....
Can I say I kind of HATE when people say that 9/11...
radmax:
4si4:
radmax:
Because that’s total bullshit. I know people who were suddenly seen as the furthest thing from an American after those attacks.
Nothing good came from those attacks. Nothing.
Why replace one etiquette of political speech with another? Of course 9/11 did not unite “all Americans.” But it’s also ridiculous to say “nothing good came from those attacks.” In reality, and...
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7 reasons to post once a day or less:
1. You are not a content-distribution machine. You are a human who needs time to develop your ideas.
2. The more carefully you post, the more unique your site becomes. You’re not just like everyone else but it takes a little time and effort to figure out your own thoughts and your own style. Posting carefully helps you learn to focus.
3. A lower number of posts makes it less time...
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nuked:
Roxanne Shante 1992
(clean)
4 tags
kari-shma:
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” — Abraham Lincoln
Obviously this is a dumb and immoral attitude, but some of the context is funny. The statement is first of all a slight misquotation of words attributed to Lincoln by the early self-help author Orison Swett Marden in a 1917 book called How to Get What You Want. Marden was part of a movement espousing the...
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wordsuperfluous:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense....
“Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”
– Psalm 137:9 (The Bible)
(See also: link)
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wetbehindthears:
“Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to remember Who You Are. And to remember who everyone else is.” — Neale Donald Walsch
1. It’s a good idea to try and learn things. 2. Contrary to the foolish suggestion that we “already know” everything, there is a lot that is unknown. 3. Inability to remember one’s own...
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Can I say I kind of HATE when people say that 9/11...
radmax:
Because that’s total bullshit. I know people who were suddenly seen as the furthest thing from an American after those attacks.
Nothing good came from those attacks. Nothing.
Why replace one etiquette of political speech with another? Of course 9/11 did not unite “all Americans.” But it’s also ridiculous to say “nothing good came from those attacks.” In...
April 2011
19 posts
1 tag
What I learned in Philosophy today.
krishss:
withthewordsofalovesong-:
How to tell if an ad is pornographic:
Can you switch out the woman in the ad for a man without the man looking ridiculous? If not, the ad is pornographic because it demeans and degrades the role and expectations of women in society.
So, technically, women shaving their legs is pornographic, because if a man did it he would look ridiculous.
I love the...
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laliberty:
“State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another…in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.” — John Stuart Mill (via laliberty)
… Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not...
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laliberty:
“There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn’t so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so.” — Søren Kierkegaard
This is a very trivial observation.
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caraobrien:
“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.” — Elie Wiesel (via 117elevenseven)
Elie Wiesel says, for example, that African Americans are not grateful enough (to Jews):
“I feel sorry for blacks. There is one thing they should learn from us and that is...
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wetbehindthears:
“Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be.” — Lactantius
Obviously false (for reasons mentioned here).
Note: Lactantius was an advisor to Constantine and partly responsible in that capacity for the destruction of pagan religions and the imperial corruption of Christianity. He also wrote with scorn against people propagating the “ridiculous” idea “that the...
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Goodbye to All That (Reprise)
nudecency:
“No more well-meaning ignorance, no more cooptation, no more assuming that this thing we’re all fighting for is the same; one revolution under man, with liberty and justice for all. No more. Let’s run it down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet…”1 “[w]hite women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone...
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octagon-surgeon:
Whores
The word pornography, derived from the ancient Greek pornē and graphos, means “writing about whores.” Pornē means “whore,” …Graphos means “writing, etching, or drawing.” The word pornography does not mean “writing about sex” or “depictions of the erotic” or “depictions of sexual acts” or “depictions of nude bodies” or “sexual representations” or any other such...
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Version 3
deepwater:
“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!” — Hermann Hesse (via oceanofmind)
Hermann came up with this idea on his way up the basement stairs.
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Version 2
deepwater:
“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!” — Hermann Hesse (via oceanofmind)
… said the German orientalist to the bombed city.
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deepwater:
“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!” — Hermann Hesse (via oceanofmind)
False. Fear is a natural response to perceptions of significant danger, perceptions which are sometimes accurate.
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Your thoughts on US attacks on Libya?
abudai: 1. What is “The West”? A lot of the rhetoric surrounding this side of the debate operates under the perception of The West as a monolithic giant, a collective of unchanging governments independent of the people running them or the society they govern. When we accuse the collective West of being incapable of handling a foreign humanitarian crisis with grace and goodwill we’re committing...
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canisfamiliaris:
One day, Benjamin Franklin, whose birthday is today (17 Jan 1706), was dining with friends in Paris.
A fellow diner posed this question for discussion:
“What condition of man most deserves pity?”
Each guest suggested an example.
But, as usual, Benjamin Franklin was very perceptive. His answer?
“A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.”
BTW, in 1731,...
March 2011
52 posts
1 tag
being-happy-is-basic-peace-work:
“The universe is the stage on which you dance, guided by your heart.” — Yogi Bhajan (via oceanofmind)
This is either a self-aggrandizing fantasy or an underestimate of the size of the universe.
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missroory: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
In almost all cases this is false. The vast majority of problems have limited causes and limited solutions. For example when a house is on fire it’s safe to say that firemen are part of the solution. But people who are sound asleep on the other side of the world are neither a part of the solution nor part of the...
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Amy Tan opens her Joy Luck Club with a fake Chinese fairy tale about a duck that wants to be a swan and a mother who dreams of her daughter being born in America, where she’ll grow up speaking perfect English and no one will laugh at her and where a “woman’s worth is [not] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch.” The fairy tale is not Chinese but white racist. It is not...
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