Re: lol
My niece, a wonderful single mother, supporting her child by
running a day-care program that works with other working
mother's children, sent me this little story. Her parents work
two jobs as teachers and work in the civil service while they
have put their four children through school and two through
college with a third in college at present. The entire family
helps each other with the parents supporting children and
grandchildren in their endeavors. This little story
seemed
more like "black humour" when I thought of how hard they
actually work in this "paradise." So I took it seriously
and
wrote a reply. I hope it is not too serious.
REH
Dawn Beam wrote:
I've been feeling very tired lately. I've been blaming
it
on iron poor blood, lack of vitamins, dieting and a dozen
other maladies. But now I found out the real reason. I'm
tired because I'm overworked!
The population of this country is 237 million. 104 million
are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work.
There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to
do the work.
Of this, there are 29 million employed by the federal
government. This leaves 19 million to do the work.
Four million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves
15 million to do the work.
Take out the 14,800,000 people who work for the state and
city governments, and that leaves 200,000 to do the work.
There are 188,000 in hospitals, so that leaves 12,000 to do
the work.
With 11,998 people in prisons now, that leaves just two
people to do the work. You and me. And you're sitting
there reading e-mail!
Dawn,
Thanks for the lightness, but it masks a serious question.
First of all there are more people than you said, probably 300
million and over 100 times as many in prison, most being minorities.
I know, however that your joke is not so funny when it expresses real
frustration. I also know you are overworked and
a wonderful
mother and granddaughter as well.
The one question you aren't asking is how much work is there
that is significant and how much is just tiring busy work?
Busy work makes one feel ignorant and useless while significant
work makes one feel energized. The number of significant
and
community oriented jobs i.e. jobs where people work in teams for
long periods of time, are slowly being devoured by what is called
the "Lean and Mean" industrial strategy. In short it means
down size
labor and replace with machines and computers.
Give labor jobs that have little permanence and make them individually
supply
their own health-care, disability, family health retirement.
Unlike your
father's inadequate government job which just pays too little for a
family of
four children with college, "Lean Mean" is a deliberate strategy
to get the
average worker to accept less and lower their expectations.
In order
to cover this up you must distract them (like you do with children
when
they complain about doing something you want) with:
1. games like the stock market (gambling
and usury)
2. complexity like taking money
out of medicine and education
and giving it to a third party (stockholders) and
calling the resultant
lower amount available for the actual task "efficiency."
Less effort
for the company and more tasks for families working
two jobs already.
(Reagan's Law: "Overworked people don't have
the energy to protest
societal and environmental abuses!")
3. an enemy: in Europe it was
Jews and Gypsies (they are still
sticking it to the Gypsies ), in the
U.S.A today it is your neighbor who doesn't agree
with you about
abortion or who isn't the same religion, or who
is elderly, or retired
after a long work life in the same job (and whose
retirement funds is
the basis for capital that makes the market prosperous).
Great
targets for envy but these retired skilled folks
would make ideal allies
if the current youth could find a way to enlist
them as such.
There is a word for all of this and it can be looked up on the Internet.
It is called AGILE Manufacturing and is the code word for temporary,
flexible jobs that require people to have flexible mobility
(be willing to
move anywhere and the family be damned!), no loyalty to anything
in
work except the temporary task at hand (how much money, is the
supreme indicator of personal value, i.e. your "worth.") the
slow
withering
away of the democratic government in favor of the stockholder
controlled
corporation, ("the big government is 'corrupt' while the 'competition'
of the
market keeps people honest.")
Well Dawn,
Dad taught me that the most important thing was to tell the
truth, even if no one else did. But to balance the harshness
of that light
with the reality of your community and to try to live together in peace.
If
your neighbors are constantly moving that is hard to do and truth becomes
just one more irritant in your life. I still try to live
the way Dad taught me
and as he said "God gave me eyes, ears and a mind to help me
decide
what was right for me and my family." That was what both
he and mother
taught me even
Re: Blaming the victors
I wonder if it doesn't start in our families. I have a lot of successful relatives who have made it through hard work and connections with the fundamentalist Christian groups. They are convinced that large sectors of the world are evil and find no problem with doing evil to them. On the other hand they are family. Do I make myself anymore of an outsider than I am already by challenging the hatred against Gays and others. Or by their cataloguing anyone who believes that abortion is a family issue, that must be decided sensitively for the living, as a murderer. All the while supporting polluting industries and anyone who practices population control through mechanical means as being against their god's population policy. Or that teaching their children that the world is older than 10,000 years, even though they made their fortune in the pursuit of geological wealth, is also a sin against their god or that those who teach sexuality as a need are also against their god even while they eat themselves to death and get prostate cancer from too little pleasurable activities while the women gets cancer from too much after menopause. So when you talk to them about David and Bathsheba or Leonard Bernstein or scattering one's seed, where do you draw the line? It is certain that there is little prostate cancer within the rape and pillage community, even if we are talking about the market, as long as it isn't metaphor. But is it right? No, but neither is dying from cancer. Perhaps there is a third way? When does it mean that choosing life means one leaves one's family, community or the religion of their recent family? Because not to do so means to choose one's untimely demise? So how does this relate to bureaucracy? And the choices that one makes while working within one? I don't know, I have chosen not to work within one all of my life and have paid for it but have been free to choose my own creative path. It is much harder for me with family because I love them and am tied to them by springs deep within my soul. But they are wrong, as wrong as they believe me to be. I have learned simply by getting older, of the foolishness of their ways. Come on in the water's fine. REH "Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COME" wrote: Yup. I tell my colleagues that the most profound form of censorship in our workplace is self-censorship. One reply I get, though, is that the only faultless move a bureaucrat can make is to do nothing!! Arthur Cordell -- From: Timework Web To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Blaming the victors Date: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 1:39PM The scum is in ourselves, not in our stars, methinks. It would be much easier to "do something" about the injustice in the world than most of us admit, either to ourselves or to others. It seems to me that the self-censorship I encounter in people at the middle levels is far in excess of what people need for their personal and career survival. I can only understand it as a defense against getting so committed that they would then overstep the actual taboos. And I'm talking about self-censorship from people who are self-identified as political progressives. Tom Walker
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
Since I already answered your current post in one you supposedly commented on (see below) I won't say more about that. However, I would suggest that those in love with the private school system go teach in it for awhile. I have, as has my sister. She finally joined the hierarchical Catholic School system because she was getting older and needed a medical plan and a retirement with four kids and her husband working three jobs. 19th century solutions are as irrelevant to education as they are to the Information Era. As for the farms, have you done it? My family has farmed, worked in private business, as do I, taught in the schools, been anti-Union city managers and business leaders. As my grandfather used to say, liberal Democrats are those who are trying to make it while Conservative Republicans are those who have and are trying to hold the other's back. The startling history of the rise of African-Americans in a single generation after the fall of segregation, certainly makes a fool and a liar out of all of those who blamed them for their failure in segregated society. Any group that has become so successful in areas where they are truly allowed to compete would indicate superiority rather than the reverse but logic and reason are not the tools here although they are claimed by the descendants of those early slave owners. I'm a very practical man Harry. I'm only interested in what works and what has happened in those places where people tried the theories. Agitprop is nothing but annoying to me. Did it work and where is the data? America and European culture has done some very fine things in the world, mostly for themselves and against others but the Art of Europe is the one contribution to world life that has no drawbacks. Everything else has been used to violate other peoples. In each world group there have been things that they have done that benefits us all. J.S. Bach needed German Paternalism to raise his 20 kids while he wrote his music and Palestrina's patron murdered millions who didn't agree or who were old with a bad case of acne, but the art didn't validate the patron anymore than the art was an expression of the patron's murderous impulses. I give credit for the art and I am grateful. Any system held too long or grown too big is ridiculous and serves as a dam that will eventually be swept away by the environment. I believe that we must have the good sense and critical judgment to get beyond the doctrinaire and to see as much of the whole of things as is possible while creating a humane and tolerant culture, environment and future. I have little time for those who explain away the failures of their system and Messiahs, wherever they have been tried, with the excuse that it was poorly executed and that trying harder is the answer. For example, think we should accept that there were good things that came from Stalin as well as murder. Today there is plenty of murder and oppression in Russian prisons worse than under Communism but blame is spread around with no one villain to focus on. That doesn't make it right, just convenient and easy to exploit by pathological individuals. It is not surprising that those who know the territory, i.e. former communists, are the best exploiters. If State Communism had existed in a vacuum and lasted as long as the other Western International Universalistic theories, they would have lied about their past, just as America, the church and all of the others have lied about theirs, pointed to their ideals and become the "saviors" of the world. Doesn't mean it was true anymore than for the Christians, Moslems or the European version of Democracy. Communism failed because it couldn't compete with an older more advanced system existing in a more comfortable ecological niche in an encreasingly technological age where they couldn't hide behind their curtin of weapons. America succeeded because it was more seperated age and the Brits couldn't intervene to stop the ethnic cleansing here in the way that Clinton did in Kosovo and Bosnia. George Washington's name amongst the Iroquois means "Destroyer of Villages." The invention of the murderous Hunter/Gatherer pillager comes from Lewis Cass, Thomas Jefferson's apologist and Andrew Jackson's Secretary of War. It is an invention of his experience and a projection of his imagination. "They may have been great once but they are now degenerate and deserve to die." A sentiment echoed by "Wizard of Oz" author L. Frank Baum fifty years later in his comment on his approval of the massacre at Wounded Knee even as he lamented the loss of life amongst the soldiers who murdered the women and children on Christmas. All of which is to say once more. If you control the history and define the information that may enter the argument, then you can prove anything. Ask President Bob Jones of Bob Jones University. His world is complete. But completely wrong. REH Harry Pollard wrote: Ray, You are quite right, Ray. Government run American
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
Wrong Harry, don't you know that a woozy feeling generated by an MD's prescription isn't being "stoned" but is a "side effect"? How come you can see through that statement but are so rigorous in your defense of doctrine over data? Just thought I'd ask.I understand that you believe the only capital is land based but that just won't work in competition against those states like Japan who don't. And if you don't believe that we are all predators, in the state sense, then I certainly fear for the life of your followers. More than likely success would change them, just like it does ill-prepared R R "artists". You know Harry, I was always taught to be non confrontational, but it really is fun over here on the dark side. You just have to make sure that your off-spring are as plenteous as the leaves on the trees. REH Harry Pollard wrote: Ray E. Harrell wrote: My apologies to the list for not being able to punch the spellcheck button on the last two posts. It's the Neurontin. Makes me woozy but fun. Ray, I've already said you write well. You write even better when you are stoned! But, get off it as soon as you can. Harry
Re: NY POST on US Statistics ruse
Good to see you back. Ray Steve Kurtz wrote: I couldn't quickly determine which date this appeared, but it seems recent. Steve CPI REPORT DID NOT INCLUDE ENERGY COSTS By JOHN CRUDELE NY POST Did Washington eliminate the rising price of oil from the last Consumer Price Index? If you have a car, you know that the price of gasoline has beaten up the family budget in recent months. Homeowners who heat with oil haven't missed that point either. In fact, the fear is that every industry from airlines to the makers of widgets will try to pass on their energy-cost increases to consumers in the months ahead. [snip] See the rest at http://www.nypost.com/business/25545.htm
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
Well, it had to come to this when the road was taken by the West that relations with an object as a physical extension of the slave was the meaning of life rather than the growth of consciousness. Poor Maslow got the credit due to the fact that his Western readers saw his diagram as steps rather than concentric circles in time.So Mr. Gates is just the latest version of work for objects sake rather than for the evolution of the mind and soul. I'm sure that he considers his work as worthwhile as any you might devise. The problem is that real personal work (work for its own sake) is considered play while the manipulation of the environment is the only "work" there is. As long as you believe that you deserve Gates and the rest. Maybe we should call it the "Future of Play". REH Christoph Reuss wrote: Tom Walker quoted MR. GATES: Well, part of the lesson of economics is that there are infinite demands for jobs out there, as long as you want class sizes to be smaller, or entertainment services to be better, there's not a lump of labor where there's a finite demand for a certain number of jobs. And so, as efficiency changes, such as in food production, the jobs shifted to manufacturing. As efficiencies were gained there, those jobs moved into services. In fact, there's no shortage of things that can be done. So, it's not like we're going to run out of jobs here. ^ Yes, indeed the "qualities" of M$ products are maximising the amount of work for PC supporters, network administrators, technical writers (vast manuals!), PC course teachers, hardware manufacturers (HW "arms race" to cope with the SW's resource wasting), and most of all, "end users". How all this _surplus_ work (that would be UNnecessary with decent software) should be _paid_, is a different question (especially for the "end users"!), and this question doesn't seem to bother Mr. Gates (as in the quote above). The statement that "there's no shortage of things that can be done" is trivial and quite crucial in the field of environmental work, but the "multi-million dollar question" is always: How can it be funded ? How sad that all the billions that are being wasted for inefficient M$ products and its bugs/viruses/crashes are lacking in environmental work that would be so much more urgent. Chris "The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying." -- John Dvorak, PC Magazine
Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]
Thanks and sorry Brad, it was fun and I must let it stand as the last word, although you misread my comment on Castaneda. I find him simple and a probable fraud but he opened the popular contemporary door to the monstrosity of the West's philosophical lies about the people's of America. For the Cherokee Athens refer to the Cherokee Renascence In the New Republic by the late historian William G. McLoughlin and the follow up tells about the movement of that to Oklahoma "After the Trail of Tears, The Cherokees' Struggle For Sovereignty." My father's old school chum, and Jimmy Carter Medal of Freedom winner, Angie Debo's classic And Still The Waters Run, The Betrayal Of The Five Civilized Tribes (PHD thesis censored by Oklahoma Univ. until it became a national best seller in the 1940s and published by Princeton) is still a brutal, gripping read with no holds barred on any side. I would recommend them all as an antidote to the controlled press. All and many others are available from Amazon.com Regards, REH "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote: "Ray E. Harrell" wrote: > > It is because I admire Brad that I continue this and he > may answer what I say but I can speak only from my own > perceptions in my work and life and the experience of > those perceptions. So here goes but I cannot continue > the discussion beyond this post. > > Ray > > "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote: > > > (snip) If Ray is disturbed by my denigration of > > unreflected life in all its forms (what I > > intentionally provocatively call: "ethnic formations"), (snip) > > Actually I am disturbed by what you expressed. > As the poet Jerome Rothenberg has said on many > occasions, "there is no culture or people that has > survived by twiddling their thumbs and speaking > in half-formed thoughts." A good case can be made > for that belief as a left over piece of 19th century > Utilitarian thought that was used to justify aggression. I at first misread you and saw: "Unitarian". What a relief to see that is not the word you wrote! > > Edward T. Hall had to train that attitude out of the American > Diplomats and businessmen because they were in > danger of failure in both areas. The multi-linguistic > future on the internet puts us all in danger if we see > ourselves "above" ethnicity rather than a part of it. Maybe there are two Edward Halls, or one Edward Hall with MPD? Hall's _The Silent Language_ is one of my favorite sources for anti-ethnicity argument/rhetoric (the other being Allan Resinous' film "Moon Once d'Amerique"). > > > > I can only say that I hope I made it clear that my > > > critique is not aimed at "primitive peoples" > > > but at everything which is *primitive* (i.e., > > not radically grounded in self-accountable > > reflective reconstruction of all that which > > merely is given) -- wherever it occurs. (snip) > > Nothing is primitive in that sense. Just relative to > its place in time/space and its growth structure. > Primitive more accurately means Primal but to > me it is a fake issue. I never met a primitive but > I have met provincials and ignorance. I have no problem with the hypothesis that there are persons in solaced "primitive" cultures who are more ethnological advanced than many First World MBAs and PhDs, etc. -- not to mention such "Europeans" as my own parents and grandparents (my paternal grandfather may have been a Neanderthal and nobody recognized his zoological value -- but to say that would be to denigrate the Neanderthal species without good evidence. Fortunate the child who grows up in a civil[ized] and culture*d* family!). > > > > Neither will it do to reply to this that: "Everyone makes > > mistakes." Galilean natural science, Hegelian dialectic > > and Husserlian phenomenological reflection are all > > self-grounding projects for [albeit iteratively and > > asymptotically] overcoming error in every aspect > > of life. > > The books of C. Castenada caused a stir a while back > because no one wanted to admit that the people, he > claimed taught him, existed. I believe there are serious questions as to Castanedas' authenticity. My college roommate because an expert in Mexican Indian culture, and he told me Casanedas was a fake -- I have no more hard evidence for this than for Americans having landed on the moon 30 years ago, however > Don Juan was compared > to Husserl and as one scientist said to me, "If these > people exist then we have committed a monstrous > three hundred years." Well I believe the books are > fake but the beginning of any young Shaman's instruction > is "be observant!" and "put your feet where no one e
Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]
It is because I admire Brad that I continue this and he may answer what I say but I can speak only from my own perceptions in my work and life and the experience of those perceptions. So here goes but I cannot continue the discussion beyond this post. Ray "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote: (snip) If Ray is disturbed by my denigration of unreflected life in all its forms (what I intentionally provocatively call: "ethnic formations"), (snip) Actually I am disturbed by what you expressed. As the poet Jerome Rothenberg has said on many occasions, "there is no culture or people that has survived by twiddling their thumbs and speaking in half-formed thoughts." A good case can be made for that belief as a left over piece of 19th century Utilitarian thought that was used to justify aggression. Edward T. Hall had to train that attitude out of the American Diplomats and businessmen because they were in danger of failure in both areas. The multi-linguistic future on the internet puts us all in danger if we see ourselves "above" ethnicity rather than a part of it. I can only say that I hope I made it clear that my critique is not aimed at "primitive peoples" but at everything which is *primitive* (i.e., not radically grounded in self-accountable reflective reconstruction of all that which merely is given) -- wherever it occurs. (snip) Nothing is primitive in that sense. Just relative to its place in time/space and its growth structure. Primitive more accurately means Primal but to me it is a fake issue. I never met a primitive but I have met provincials and ignorance. Neither will it do to reply to this that: "Everyone makes mistakes." Galilean natural science, Hegelian dialectic and Husserlian phenomenological reflection are all self-grounding projects for [albeit iteratively and asymptotically] overcoming error in every aspect of life. The books of C. Castenada caused a stir a while back because no one wanted to admit that the people, he claimed taught him, existed. Don Juan was compared to Husserl and as one scientist said to me, "If these people exist then we have committed a monstrous three hundred years." Well I believe the books are fake but the beginning of any young Shaman's instruction is "be observant!" and "put your feet where no one else has stepped." My teachers were far more reflective, artistic and outrageous than Castenada's stories. They also dealt with some of the nation's greatest scientists both Newtonian and Quantum from a place of equals. They were neither afraid of science nor worshiped it. They also had a healthy believe in the evolution of consciousness but in much too complicated a way to consider one cultural universe more important than another. That the 17th Century Chinese recognized in Galilean natural science "something new, because true for everyone who took the effort to learn it", and not just true for those childreared to believe it (--Joseph Needham), seems to me to lead to one of two possibilities: (1) The Chinese understood that *their own limited form of life* was superseded by the Universality of Science, or (2) That the Chinese are just like "The West" and so their admiration for Science just proves they aren't "real peoples" any more than the Jesuits who brought Galilean science to them Jerome Rothenberg spent several years with the Iroquois studying the poetry contained within their everyday life and the ceremonials. From that point on he concluded that most of the Indigenous people's he worked with were "Technicians of the Sacred" and far more subtle and complicated than the Jesuits whose rigidity made science seem both universal and profound. How could you compare the Chinese language with its tones and subtleties as well as the calligraphy to such "limited" forms as most Western languages and science? Europe has its genius and science is just another adolescent in its history. Its genius is in its art. More about that later. Finally, there is Margaret Mead's _New Lives for Old_, and a recent report in the NYT of one traditional culture in Africa, where the elders have undertaken a thoroughgoing inventory of their traditional culture, to see what parts of it are still viable and which are not worth preserving (e.g., ritual genital mutilation of children). Another shamanic rule is that one must always know the past while living in the present and manifesting the future. It's in the language. (check out Benjamin Lee Whorf and his exploration of the Pueblo verbs). Of course we are not all the same. Cherokees were wonderful at language, science and business in the 19th century. It was our success that created the envy that destroyed what writers at the time were calling an "American Athens." I don't know much about Africa, they have little problem speaking for themselves these days. I see these developments as somewhat similar to our recently having taught some apes to speak (ASL, etc.): I'm not sure where you are going here but I'm not aware of any humans that can
Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]
"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote: (snip) .) Robert Musil's vision of a world in which "mystical experience" would be rescued from the muddled hocus-pocus of fuzzy feelings and [what *would* Musil have thought of these folks?!] new-Age-ers, et al., etc. -- and "the mystical" realized by each of us at the center of the most exact technological work (which thereby would at last discover its *heart*) is only one of the great "dreams" (I am referring here esp. to Husserl's sad statement from the late "30s"...) of the 20th century, which is "over" only in the sense that we have not yet even begun to take it up, and, in trying to realize it, to *test it out*. (snip) The most advanced sectors of "The West" still, in my estimation, remain largely in the thralldon of unreflected ethnicity. The Egyptean elevator operator says his traditional prayer to Allah the merciful. A Harvard or Wharton Tech. diplomate investment banker says his equally traditional prayers to "commercial paper" and Professional Football. And then there is the following article about the rest of we ethnics whose practicality is buried so deep that the rest of the world considers it superstition and screws it up in the argument about the future without understanding the past. Might the elevator operator and the banker be both "Johnny Come Latelys" in the world praying to an image of their own reflection. To bad Freud didn't really have the guts to get it beyond his own Viennese prejudice. Narcissism and Idolatry are sisters except he was too embarrassed by his tradition and desire to be accepted in a racist society, to say so. Don't throw away the old until you understand it and have something better to put in its place. Meanwhile I'm listening to someone who didn't blow it but understood the Viennese better than they did themselves. Gustav Mahler and his Resurrection Symphony conducted by another Jewish fellow who was also Gay. Leonard Bernstein. But the fundamentalists of every ilk would put him in jail and some would have never had him be born. Bernstein said that Tchaikovsky was forced to drink the poison water by an aristocrat who was insulted by his making a pass at him. Well the Mahler is great and it took him one afternoon to do his analysis with Freud. Today it takes people years. Don't give up chromatic harmony for rock and roll, it can cost you millions in psycho- analysis. Know the old before you dream the future. I have a wonderful mezzo Darcy Dunn who is going to perform the Mahler alto solos here in NYCity. (4th movement Urlicht) O Roeschen rot! Der Mensch liegt in Groesster Not! Der Mensch liegt in groesster Pein! Je lieber Moecht ich im Himmel sein! Da kam ich aug einen breiten Weg; Da kam ein Engelein und wollt mich abweisen. Ach nein! ich liess mich nicht abweisen! Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott! Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben, Wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben! What a pity that so many mistake their own teachers and arrogance for Der liebe Gott. If it works, it all fits together. If not then someone is wrong somewhere. The mirror is a pretty good place to begin. January 30, 2000 NYTimes Week in Review Now the Ancient Ways Are Less Mysterious By HENRY FOUNTAIN Each June for at least the last four centuries, farmers in 12 mountain villages in Peru and Bolivia follow a ritual that Westerners might think odd, if not crazy. Late each night for about a week, the farmers observe the stars in the Pleiades constellation, which is low on the horizon to the northeast. If they appear big and bright, the farmers know to plant their potato crop at the usual time four months later. But if the stars are dim, the usual planting will be delayed for several weeks. Now Western researchers have applied the scientific method to this seeming madness. Poring over reams of satellite data on cloud cover and water vapor, Professor Benjamin Orlove, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, and colleagues have discovered that these star-gazing farmers are accurate long-range weather forecasters. High wisps of cirrus clouds dim the stars in El Nino years, which brings reduced rainfall to that part of the Andes. In such drought conditions, it makes sense to plant potatoes as late as possible. Orlove's work, which was reported in January in the British journal Nature, is just the latest example of indigenous or traditional knowledge that has been found to have a sound scientific basis. In agriculture, nutrition, medicine and other fields, modern research is showing why people maintain their traditions. Take the Masai of East Africa, who are famous for the kind of high-fat diet, rich in meat and milk, that would make a cardiologist swoon. Timothy Johns, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment, has long studied the Masai to determine how they stay healthy. The Masai add the roots and barks of
Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]
Ramble or Bramble? "If it works it must all fit together." Globalization from the top down is like politics and religion from the top down, the brutality is often the only thing that makes it work. Sort of like the gravediggers who smash coffins to make them fit in concrete crypts to "protect" the bodies of the loved ones. I remember J. Paul Getty micro-managing his museum until he died at which point the workers dropped his and his son's bodies all over the ground while the people he had infantalized turned their heads. So what is the answer? What is the question? Globalization without sensitivity and insight is just another form of Imperialism? Catholic (in the Universal process sense) dogmas are over simplistic and basically are meant to be just another way to break up the wealth of the "haves" while lining the pockets of the "clever." Harry might like that if we are only speaking of catholic Communists, but I'm not. Meanwhile Vonnegutt almost burned himself up trying to put out a fire in his office, where he "doesn't write anymore," caused by a cigarette left burning while he left the room. You have to tend the flame. So what constitutes an "employable job skill" and why should we pay for it? As composer Gunther Schuller told me many years ago, "if it doesn't create a universe that 'works' then it isn't any good." But if the universe you dream doesn't have compassion and sensitivity then it is immoral, which brings us back to that elevator operator and his fear. If it is the universe of a "work of art", something the elevator operator would have trouble with, then it may "work" but it is without grace in which case who cares? Yes grace was amazing long before the year one. If you are going to image-ine the future of work then you must have the time, resources and integrity or else it is bad Godmanship. REH "Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COM" wrote: Agree with Brad. Thomas Friedman's writing has deteriorated as he embraces everything and anything associated with globalization and trade. Arthur Cordell -- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. To: Michael Gurstein Cc: futurework Subject: Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...] Date: Sunday, January 30, 2000 8:21AM Michael Gurstein wrote: > > -- Original Message - > From: John Hibbs [EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 7:55 AM > Subject: One Country Two worlds > > > == > > Since the theme for GLD2000 may well be "Bridging the Gap", I thought it > > worthwhile to enclose this entire Thomas Friedman editorial found at: > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/012800frie.html > > > > CAIRO -- I just had an interesting experience. I did an author's tour of > > Egypt, meeting with students at Cairo University, journalists at > > Egyptian newspapers and the Chambers of Commerce of Cairo and Alexandria > > to talk about the Arabic edition of a book I did on globalization. > > Two images stand out from this trip. The first was riding the train from > > Cairo to Alexandria in a car full of middle- and upper-class Egyptians. [snip] > > The other image was visiting Yousef Boutrous-Ghali, Egypt's > > M.I.T.-trained minister of economy. When I arrived at his building the > > elevator operator, an Egyptian peasant, was waiting for me at the > > elevator, which he operated with a key. Before he turned it on, though, > > to take me up to the minister's office, he whispered the Koranic verse > > "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate." To a Westerner, > > it is unnerving to hear your elevator operator utter a prayer before he > > closes the door, but for him this was a cultural habit, rooted deep in > > his tradition. [snip] > > After enough such conversations I realized that most Egyptians -- > > understandably -- were approaching globalization out of a combination of > > despair and necessity, not out of any sense of opportunity. > > Globalization meant adapting to a threat coming from the outside, not > > increasing their own freedoms. I also realized that their previous > > ideologies -- Arab nationalism, Socialism, Fascism or Communism -- while > > they may have made no economic sense, had a certain inspirational power. > > But globalism totally lacks this. When you tell a traditional society it > > has to streamline, downsize and get with the Internet, it is a challenge > > that is devoid of any redemptive or inspirational force. > > And that is why, for all of globalization's obvious power to elevate > > living standards, it is going to be a tough, tough sell to all those > > millions who still say a prayer before they ride the elevator. [snip] (1) Perhaps globalization *shall* elevate living standards for Egypt's poorest -- if they can find any employable job skills with which to engage themselves into the world market --, since they are presumably *below* the world-competiton "normalized" average wage. Though the valley may be
Re: capitalism and health care quality
I think this goes a little deeper. Medicine like charity, theoretical art, scientific research and space exploration have a problem with profit. The physical "worth" of the marketplace rarely accrues to the creator, discoverer or practitioner of the profession. An exception being surgeons in the current situation. The economist William Baumol has been doing work on this problem and has not arrived at any solution in the current free market. It is the Achilles Heel of Economie of Scale and eventually leads to a revolution where the creative practitioners are forced to destroy the system just to keep creativity flowing. If something is highly needed like surgery or practical, like the current technology for the information revolution then it works for a while but eventually the middle money men take over and the process repeats. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a humorous piece on it in the 19th century with a name something like the "Strange Case of Dr. Tarr and Mr. Feather" and likened it to a mental asylum. REH Christoph Reuss wrote: On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Harry Pollard wrote: > Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet Union and > for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital doing, I > suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to operate and > save lives. I remember one comment from a US doctor. He couldn't believe > that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow hospital got a salary of $7 a > week - about the same as a bus driver. A sure way to attract the best > people into medicine. Harry obviously said this last sentence in jest, but it's actually true: Giving doctors a small salary will attract the best people into medicine -- those who become doctors to help and heal people, instead of those who are "in it for the money" (as in the West). The still-increasing excesses of the medical-industrial complex in the West illustrate quite "well" that public health and profit-making is rather *inversely* related... Chris To quote from an earlier posting on this list: > > Report Says Profit-Making Health Plans Damage Care > > July 14, 1999 > WASHINGTON -- Patients enrolled in profit-making health insurance plans > are significantly less likely to receive the basics of good medical care -- > including childhood immunizations, routine mammograms, pap smears, > prenatal care, and lifesaving drugs after a heart attack -- than > those in not-for-profit plans, says a new study that concludes that the > free market is "compromising the quality of care." > The research, conducted by a team from Harvard University and Public > Citizen, an advocacy group in Washington, is the first comprehensive > comparison of investor-owned and nonprofit plans. The authors found that > on every one of 14 quality-of-care indicators, the for-profits scored worse. > "The market is destroying our health care system," Dr. David U. Himmelstein, > associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School [...]
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
Good point. I believe that Mike Hollinshead was the first to point this out to me. I think that it will take a correlation of all of the external factors with requisite comparisons before serious conclusions can be drawn. Of course if you define the parameters you can prove almost anything by virtue of what you leave out. One of the things that is often left out of the Com/Cap comparison between the U.S. and the old Soviet Empire is the weather. They didn't suffer for want of oil but it was a hell of a lot easier to get it out of almost any of our fields than it is out of Siberia. Agriculture is another point. lf your growing season is short you need tremendous amounts of land to compete with those who can plant many crops in a small amount of land.And on and on. My point is that in areas where we are roughly equivalent like education, we have gotten our behinds whipped. The Arts are another area even though the official dogma is that they were pampered, anyone who knows their refugees finds the opposite is true although they are magnificently trained and have far superior work experience since they did have work before the collapse of the Soviet. American graduates who paid for their own education have an average full time employment of 2%. They also lose out to the émigrés because of the superior work experience that they bring to America. That makes the competitive advantage overwhelming in their ability to be creative, improvise and invent new models. If you have no work experience, your creativity is profoundly impaired as most of America's performing artists have discovered. Those who have succeeded usually have European experience to replace America's cultural poverty. William Bradford Ward wrote: HARRY: Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet Union and for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital doing, I suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to operate and save lives. I remember one comment from a US doctor. He couldn't believe that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow hospital got a salary of $7 a week - about the same as a bus driver. A sure way to attract the best people into medicine. I couldn't let Harry's comment go unnoticed although I really am not interested in the communist/capitalist argument but do have problems with people who use irrelevant arguments to make their point. At a meeting of the American Heart Association one year a bunch of cardiovascular surgeons said that the reason that there had been a 30% drop in cardiovascular deaths in the previous ten years was that open heart surgery was up 30% in the same period. A biostatistician friend of mine got up after that and showed that beer consumption was up 30% in the same period and said that it was truly the increase in beer drinking. By the way, no one has ever been able to show any relationship between health services in the US [except for immunizations] and improvement in health [except for the health of health care workers]. --- Bill Ward, MA, MPH, DrPH Research Director Arthritis Research Institute of America [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:32:24 Harry Pollard wrote: Victor wrote: I am by no means a communist or socialist, but this looks like propaganda-sriven tunnel vision to me. Comments follow. I rarely find a genuine communist or socialist. Lots of waffling liberals, but hardly any genuinely philosophic communists, or socialists. It's a shame. Meantime, you did not answer a single point in my post. You said: VICTOR: "There were most certainly inequities with high party officials living in luxury and ordinary people living very humbly in crowded apartments. (By the way what's the difference in life-style between a US senator and your average Washington, DC resident?)" HARRY: The Ukraine after the separation was landed with a dacha of a high party official. The story appeared in the newspapers because they were trying to get rid of it. They couldn't afford the $300,000 a year it cost to maintain it. Yep! There certainly were inequities. But the USSR was a classless society - remember? The "to each" and "from each" nonsense - remember? Meantime, Senators like other politicians all over the world lead the good life as they "serve us". VICTOR: "However, medical care was universally available and pensioners could live without financial anxiety. This is not the case after a decade of US-driven free enterprise in Russia. For another communist country, Cuba, I read recently that the infant mortality rates are less than in the USA." HARRY: Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet Union and for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital doing, I suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to operate and save lives. I remember one comment from a US doctor. He couldn't believe that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
I know this is yours Victor but: Also Sally where is my post where I answered point counterpoint Harry's questions? Meanwhile--- Harry Pollard wrote: Victor wrote: >I am by no means a communist or socialist, but this looks like >propaganda-sriven tunnel vision to me. Comments follow. I rarely find a genuine communist or socialist. Lots of waffling liberals, but hardly any genuinely philosophic communists, or socialists. It's a shame. Meantime, you did not answer a single point in my post. Yes he did Harry, he answered the two that he chose to answer. VICTOR: "There were most certainly inequities with high party officials living in luxury and ordinary people living very humbly in crowded apartments. (By the way what's the difference in life-style between a US senator and your average Washington, DC resident?)" HARRY: The Ukraine after the separation was landed with a dacha of a high party official. The story appeared in the newspapers because they were trying to get rid of it. They couldn't afford the $300,000 a year it cost to maintain it. Yep! There certainly were inequities. The problem Harry is that you wish to set the rules of engagement and they are loaded in your favor. You have your anecdotes and all we do is trade anecdotes from our own experience. You are selling Georgism as your business and that shapes your point of view. Nothing wrong with that but you have not thus far dealt with the practicalities and you sound more like a common run of the mill neo libertarian conservative to me. Or if it was in the time of George you would have been called a Moss-back Liberal the kind that claimed the Cherokees were Georgists and broke the contracts, destroyed our government, decided how much land each of us should have then opened what was left (most of it) to a huge land rush where the whites could stake out as much as they could before the day was over, (certainly more than the 160 acres they gave us.) But here is the problem. Nothing stands still, the terms constantly shift and Republicans today sound like Jackson and Democrats sound like Lincoln, and as Klugman pointed out in today's NYTimes, Clinton has acted like a supply side economist. How very liberal of him. The point seems to be that liberality means that one can move and that conservative means that one is stuck in the mud. Tough! But the USSR was a classless society - remember? The "to each" and "from each" nonsense - remember? Meantime, Senators like other politicians all over the world lead the good life as they "serve us". But the crucial difference ala my lost post, is that they could not pass their wealth on to their children. Where is Eva when we need her? Is this silence her "Marxist revenge"? HARRY: Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet Union and for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital doing, I suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to operate and save lives. Ah the old triage story. Perhaps you should talk to Paul Robeson or at least read his experience with the two medical systems. I had a teacher who also had a good experience when she had a medical issue in Moscow. And then there are all of those stories about Western Medicine from the point of view of all of the other medical practices of the world. It seems everyone wants to be on top. Missionaries every one of them. What a bore! Meanwhile they can't deal with Chronic Fatigue except to deny its existance and send you to the psychiatrist. You should have heard the story about that building Sloan Kettering owns where everyone was coming down with Chronic Fatique. They called them (bugga bugga) sick buildings but denied the people were sick just the buildings. People have to work you know, otherwise they are welfare cheats. (said in jest) I remember one comment from a US doctor. He couldn't believe that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow hospital got a salary of $7 a week - about the same as a bus driver. A sure way to attract the best people into medicine. Right and the only reason anyone excels is their salary? How about curiosity and the desire to accomplish things? Did those Doctors have food, clothing and shelter? How about laboratories and other research facilities? They were poor in US machines but the US has been terrible in preventive health as well. Something the Russians have shown many Americans how to do well. Yes Harry the top paid profession in the US is the Medical profession whether their patient dies or lives. No wonder they are lobbying against keeping a government data base on success and failure in the hospital system. "But she NEEDED that hysterectomy!" I also wonder whether the millions of "officials" in the communist hierarchy used that hospital - or perhaps they had an inequity somewhere, fully over-staffed and without the problems the common folk suffered. I don't know, they sure complained about the lost time spent in having to ride public tranportation. Our military doesn't use
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
My apologies to the list for not being able to punch the spellcheck button on the last two posts. It's the Neurontin. Makes me woozy but fun. Ray
Re: FW: Breeding, was: Re: FW: The structure of future work...
Harry Pollard wrote: One major warning! Socialism and Communism and their spin-offs have proven themselves to be hopeless at increasing production. The international conferences to "solve the problems" are loaded who want to "provide proper services". Hello Harry, Long time no read but you are still beating the same horse. Actually the refugees from the former communist countries are so well trained that they are doing just fine once they were allowed to take their training and intellectual capital and run away to the older and more advanced economies. But all is not well here. USA Today pointed out last Wednesday on their front page that America's computer companies are creating their own Berlin walls around their hired and company trained help. Sound familiar? "Mr. Gates tear down that wall!" Like the stores filled with communist fashions on 34th street in NYCity, fashions that were considered junk when the old Soviet Union existed are now high fashion. It's all just politics, hypocrisy and whoever has the media and money. Communism, like Capitalism has huge problems but the problems bear little resemblance to either side's rhetoric. Otherwise American business and Republican Congressman wouldn't be sounding like apparatchiks when it comes to facing the same problems that an ulcerous Berlin was in the 1950s before their bloody wall. Do I think that American businesses would do the same (with guards and all) if they could, you bet. Read how Truman applied the same person and process to the Indian problem as had worked with the Japanese in world war II in Chief Wilma Mankiller's biography. America didn't win the cold war we just spent the East's young nations broke and now are in the process of being locked out by the intellectual capital of their refugees. And then there is their so called "non creative" artists. Anyone who believes that should get a life, that crap will just make them seem foolish before their children who will be taught by the refugees in every school from k-conservatory. My daughter's favorite acting teacher (who is Russian Jewish ) is taking his most proficient students to Russia next year to study Stanislavsky techniques. What most people complain about in both Communism and Capitalism is really culture and convention and is older than both systems. One should sit down and have a read in literature that pre-dates both. Discussions about "interest" for example in Roman Catholic literature of the middle ages. Or have a read in the Nicene and Anti-Nicene Fathers. There is little that is new in the present. Digitalized libraries and decent search engines will be the real revolution of the 21st century. It will decimate the book industry as old rehashed ideas in new form are considered the banal trash that they are. Politicans will be shown to have switched sides many times and ignorance and banality will be shown for what it is, mere commercial entertainment. That will be the real test of Capitalism. What constitutes real change and expansion? We had better learn that the stories of the last 150 years here and 70 years in the Eastern bloc were mostly hype and that a nation filled with good weather and a huge reservoir of natural resources with 200 years of stability against a group of nations that were barely seven decades old coming from below third world status was never a fair contest. That it was a contest at all speaks very highly for these 20th century systems. That they were violent, murderous and lied constantly is not something that I would consider new. The lead pollution that I carry in my bones and the problems experienced by the children on my reservation even today show the hypocrisy of both sides and the foolish resistance of those who are being ignored, and exploited, to demanding recompense. If America doesn't learn to read and be honest about their history, the rest of the world will (as scholars at Oxford are doing about pre-columbian forest technology in America) and show us for the provencial fools that we are turning out to be. REH
Re: 2. Re: FW: The structure of future work and itsconsequences
Keith Hudson wrote: I disagree here. If you were selecting for resourcefulness alone, yes. But the basic elements of a techno-culture, like all culture, is laid down so early in a child's life, that street kids wouldn't have a chance of establishing a toehold in a high-tech society. However, if our increasingly high-tech society collapses -- and that's always a possibility to bear in mind -- then the 'other' population of highly resourceful people (if it then existed) would certainly have a better chance of surviving. I disagree on this issue. Take my Steinway piano for example. I bought 100 shares of stock in a company at two dollars a share and sold them six years later, added $5,000 of my Mother's money to the $10,000 from the stock and bought a "slightly used" Steinway which the company told me was fine. It wasn't and after two years of haggling and four pianos I ended up with a new $30,000 piano as settlement for my trouble. The company valued its reputation and dealt with me as a part of their consumer capital. But it was not the IQ folks in the company who knew how to deal with their consumer base. It was the artists and technicians who came from all walks of life but mostly, like Beethoven, from the lower and lower middle classes. Why did I buy the stock? The President was a Jewish friend of mine who was making optical parts for the space program. I say Jewish because his father, in a small village in Russia, fell on his son to protect him as the Nazis shot them. My friend, who was five years old, crawled out and escaped into the winter forest. From that time till the end of the war he was a child resistance fighter carrying a 38 pistol and living in the forest. After the war he and the other wild children were shipped to Israel where the Jewish authorities cared for them. Emphasize cared. The taught them that they were the future of Judiasm and that they must live and become but they did not take their guns away. Eventually, when they felt safe, they gave them up. They were re-united with the remnants of their families, in my friends case, his mother and brother, and they moved to NYCity. My friend worked the streets and learned English in the movies. He also studied hard and earned a PHD in physics from City College. He made mistakes but eventually this former Jewish countryboy turned freedom fighter, made one of the most significant scientific discoveries, having to do with Time, of the space program. I don't mention his name because he has never been a public soul and I will respect that. But let me say this. The most significant people that I know have come from the lower middle and lower classes and still do. As for British schools, perhaps the problem is their curriculum and its practicallity. That is a rather common problem for "Education of Scale." That is also the reason for a successful "home school" movement in the USA. Unfortunately the social skills necessary for networking are not learned in private lessons but need the "banging of heads" that is only found in the school environment. I suspect that it is a lot like singing. I never met a voice I couldn't train. There are many who claim "tone-deaf" disabilities but if the time, money and desire is there anyone can learn to sing and read. But that does not mean that anyone can learn to sing in a chorus. "Mass produced music" requires that the learning already have taken place and the using ready to begin. Being able to sing changes one's life. If it doesn't then the growth stops and the limitations of the singer's mentality destroys the talent. We call it having the "fire in the belly." Most don't, but sometimes societies suffer from the same loss of heart or visceral intelligence as well. Like the "end of government" folks who would give up their freedom and vote to a TNC. IMHO it all depends on the society's courage, tenacity and willingness to put up with the changes that takes place when education is successful. Real education tears down the weak and the unprepared even in educational institutions. It also doesn't tolerate rigid fools. But most of all it costs much more than can ever be planned or budgeted. It is rare that there is the courage to practice it even though the survival of a society and culture is what's at stake. I notice that the "well schooled" are better at networking than the lower classes and the poor but this could be laid to more resource capital in their own class. What I don't see in this upper IQ group, is a committment to genuine freedom and unique discoveries unless it is found in an institution. I didn't learn much about institutions on the Indian reservation but I did learn that freedom can be lost and uniqueness is a value above all monetary "worth." So I never was and still am not a very institutional soul although many of my more civilized upper class colleagues are. I don't escribe utlimate value to one or the other although I do believe that my way is more correct for me. What I don't accept is
Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China]
You're welcome Ed. Just a few further thoughts. Ray Ed Goertzen wrote: ==Ed G said: Many thanks to Ray for his detailed answer. (snip) Ed said; I have to agree with Kazantzakis. In an excellent book by David Astle "Babalonian Woe" (Copyright 1975) he traces the causes of conflicts from the time of Summerian dominance and attributes them to the infectious anomaly of monetary systems. I tend to think that it had more to do with literacy. Literacy freed the memory and allowed for communication over distances in a general fashion. This created the first "information of scale" if I may paraphrase the economists. Ed continued: =The jacket quote is enlightening. "The intellectual faculties however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of physical force, the direction and combination of which are wholly at the disp[oasal of money, that mighty spring by which the total force of human energies is set in motion. [Augustus Boeckh; Translated: The Public Economy of Athens, P, 7; Book 1, London 1828. Money as a symbol or substitute for an object or effort was and is tied to literacy. I said: Einstein made the same point, more politely, in his essay. I think you could ask what "needs" the Europeans "had" that made them finally use the printing press, an earlier import that sat for a good while before Europe broke forth with books for the common man. You could also remember the problem with the first Millennium being that the Spanish Catholics didn't understand zero or Al Jabaar until they had expelled the Moors and the Jews just prior to the 1500s and translated their books. Ed replied: I would question the "needs" to which Einstein refers. My contention continues to be that, while the printing press "sat for a good while" it was only when its use as a means of excercising power over peoples minds, thereby "moving" them, was realised, that it came into popular usage. (i.e. it obtained the financial backing that popularised it employment.) That is not my understanding. I believe it was tied to the trauma of the loss of oral information through the plagues and the fragility of the existing libraries written by hand and subject to fire. Even in the 20th century the Steinway Piano company used the same logic to build the manual from the information contained in the minds of their individual craftsmen. Two generations later, the families of those craftsmen are still pissed off about the theft of their grandfather secret knowledge. Value went from people to process and the people were then downgraded to hired hands from irreplaceable experts. The piano has never been the same since certain information simply is not literary. But the printing press and later the computer did protect the written information by dissemination. Ray continues: After expelling the above there was ample reason to get these violent and disruptive folks out of the country and into some safe activity like murdering the Inca for gold to cover the ballrooms of Europe. But, I think it is a mistake to mislabel the intent as profit. No one wanted Cortez or Pizarro around in Spain. Ed answers:I see that as making my point. It is not neccessarily the invention that is either good or bad for humanity. It is the (profit) purpose to which the invention (new idea etc.) can be put in terms of geopolitics. I tend to think that culture and the external world shapes our perceptions and options but I think we can control those through manipulation of the external. I agree that something can be either good or bad but my examples were of two very violent and pathological personalities who anti-social acts made their own countries glad to have them abroad. (snip) As I pointed out: The violence behind the ethnic cleansing, that had taken 700 years of constant warfare, lent itself to conquest and Empire. The bankers were the economic structure of choice but certainly not the motivation or the intent for all of that murder and pillage that spread around the world, including China, by the Hunter/Gatherers from the Europe of the time. (See the NYReview of Books URL mentioned later.) Ed continues: Without trade we could not have progressed beyond the family stage into the extended and tribal stage of social organization. (in fact, even within families trade takes place, albeit without the monetary accounting practices.) At the time of Summerian acendance "money" as an intrinsic value for purposes of trade already was well established within and between city states. There was trade in the Americas from the tip of Tierra del fuego to the arctic but various things were used instead of "money" i.e. cacao beans, wampum, quetzal feathers etc. The market in Tenochtitlan was the largest in the world at the time. They were also a violent people but it had little to do with money, profit or capital in the sense that we think of it today. Cortez remarked that they had "thought him a God" but after the fought to the
Re: FW: The structure of future work and its consequences
It ain't necessarily so! REH Keith Hudson wrote: Happy New Year to all FWers. (I'm assuming that Futurework is operational now!) Here's something I wrote over the break and which will appear in a new type of Internet encyclopedia starting in about a month (www.calus.org) - THE STRUCTURE OF FUTURE WORK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Keith Hudson The structure of future employment will not be compatible with the distribution of talent -- In human history there have been four distinctly different types of economies, each requiring different working structures, or intellectual inputs. The four phases are: 1. Hunter-Gatherer; 2. Peasant Agriculture; 3. Manufacturing Industry; 4. Post-industrial Service Society. 1. Hunter-gatherer. Homo sapiens emerged from primate origins several million years ago and became indistinguishably human at about 50,000 years ago. Most of man's food was collected by the females, but topped up with animal protein from the hunting expeditions of the males. Their daily life was perilous because predators could easily attack their primitive camps and hunting groups, and the unintelligent or incapable would be easily culled. By definition, the normal genetic distribution of abilities that man's predecessors had evolved over millions of years precisely matched the 'job structure' of early man. For our purposes, this genetic distribution may be considered to be a diamond shape in which the abilities of the broad mass of the population lie across the widest part of the diamond, with decreasingly fewer people of much higher or lower abilities occupying the top and and bottom parts of the shape. 2. Peasant Agriculture: From the time when man had finally extinguished most slow-moving large game at around 10,000BC, he had to resort increasingly to settled agriculture. Generally, this required far less intelligence than hunting. However, the ability to store cereals and the development of metal products (including coinage) which then followed meant that wealth could be passed on within families and, from then onwards, society became dynastic and intensely hierarchical. The various civil and religious authorites ensured that the peasantry were well and truly conditioned to accept their role and not to develop their inborn abilities. While suppresion of this sort could be maintained for quite a long time within a hierarchical society it could not be maintained for ever. The bad fit between the distribution of abilities and the nature of work/opportunities and the subsequent tensions have been the cause of repeated strife and savagery in every agricultural civilisation from about 5,000BC until the present day. 3. Manufacturing Industry. The first successful long-term development of manufacturing industry from about 1700 onwards in Europe meant that the uneducated peasants were forced off the land and into the factories. Here, a higher skill level was necessary and many new skills had to be acquired. In addition, the industrial society required a considerable extension in the number of professional and academic jobs, and there were huge opportunities for able and enterprising individuals. The pyramidal structure of jobs of the previous agricultural era would no longer do. The requirements of industrial society were much more akin to the diamond-shaped distribution of abilities and, generally speaking, industrial societies have been somewhat more peaceful than the wars and revolutions that characterise peasant societies. 4. Post-Industrial Service society. Since about the middle of the 20th century, the types of industry which needed large numbers of workers of average abilities have seriously declined. Automation, plus an even faster growth of brand new service occupations, means that people with high abilities are at a premium. At the same time, there is a considerable dumbing down of many traditional service jobs. The job structure in the developed countries is thus rapidly becoming more akin to an hourglass rather than a pyramid or a diamond. The shape of an hour-glass is very different from that of the diamond. The mismatch betwen abilities and requirements will undoubtedly lead to renewed civil problems in developed countries and, as some aver, a widening gulf between two parts of the human population. Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Microsoft cooperates with Scientology
Chris, Are you serious about this?There are a lot of Scientologists in the arts and I don't find them anymore of a problem than the regular church groups with calls for public support in sending the poor to parochial schools.Can Scientology be any worse than church abused orphans of a generation ago in Quebec?Abuse where technology meant for the insane was used on sane orphans to keep them in line? If you want to complain about any one group with an agenda then you have to, IMO, do the same about the rest as well.It is good to point it out but I'm sure the NSA knows already and is in the business of making everyone more paranoid about each other.So the point here is to tell the story and remember that each group is busy trying to do the other under. The trick is to get out of the way of both elephants and hyenas. REH Christoph Reuss wrote: Microsoft cooperates with Scientology Experts suspect Trojan Horse in Windows 2000 (Summary of an article in the renowned German computer magazine "c't", full article at http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/25/058/ ) An integrated operating system component of Microsoft Windows 2000, the defragmentation program "Diskeeper", is made by a Scientology company. German data protection and security officials have expressed concerns that once Windows 2000 will be shipped, "Diskeeper" will have access to all data on the harddisks of government agencies, companies and citizens worldwide. The psycho cult Scientology is known for attempts to infiltrate key positions in industry and government, and has been involved in espionage cases. Replying to concerns, Microsoft wrote that it is not a Microsoft-specific problem if somebody can obtain access to the system [yeah, all virus programmers know this], and that customers could remove Diskeeper at any time by manually deleting its files and registry entries. However, computer experts found out that when a user tries to delete Diskeeper, another component of Windows 2000 immediately restores Diskeeper by using a cached copy. In other words, the Scientology component cannot be removed from Windows 2000. Since they don't intend to financially support Scientology and have their data snooped, German churches and government agencies now consider to boycott Windows 2000. __ Scared of M$ ? Lighten up at http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/exploder.pdf
Re: Not moving on very fast.
Been away at my Mother's funeral and had the opportunity to sit down and read this conversation almost from beginning to end. Yes Tim there is an excellent archive very easily accessed. I followed each post with a kind of admiration for the various positions but basically it seems in my opinion to boil down to one premise. A premise that is as true of "posts" as it was about my first sexual experience. Over forty years ago an Elder told me the old "saw" about how many people were going to be in bed together on that first encounter. She stated that there were six. The person I thought I was, the person I thought my mate to be and the person I really was. The same was true of my mate as well. Since that time I have, in my own work, determined that for every word there are at least three denotative and four connotative meanings. In a seven word sentence that makes the possible numbers of interpretations run seven to the seventh power and some say more. Given my reservation math I can't dispute either way. But it all does seem quiet amazing that anything being written can be truly interpreted without constant redefining by the original writer as he is questioned about what he meant to say. That any of us did not "get it" is not a reflection on anything other than the fact that we do not share his/her brain or experience and thus their unique expressivity. That makes questioning necessary unless we are going to be reduced to simple pre-judgement.At another time we might discuss the root of stereotype and convention as positives rather than as rhetoric but not tonight. You may be just having "fun" but fun can sometimes be like putting graffiti on windows and then breaking them just to bust up the various group's reason for a convention. Then again you may be being severely misunderstood. But either way it us up to you to say that, just as Ed did when you interpreted him with one of the several thousand possible meanings of his various combinations of morphemes. Which brings up another cogent question written earlier by Arthur Cordell: Is writing up to expressing what is truly meant without the added elements of tone, inflection, body language and rhythm that makes a singular interpretation reasonable most of the time? I don't know. But I am sure that given the various cultural and linguistic perspectives brought to this list, it can become hopeless chaos if reduced to chatting. We each have to admit that the only person who knows what Ed meant or even said is Ed himself. Then it follows that we can demand the same respect for ourselves.Tit for Tat games are often played in academic circles and happens here as well. The list knows I'm guilty, but zero/sum thought is not worth much. It just causes the list to stop for a while and is very unsatisfying. Primarily because it is not up to describing much of anything. I apologize for going on about this but the word for "chat" is related, in my background, to "chatpile" which is a pile of "tailings" from the lead and zinc mines that is so chemically contaminated as to be useless for much of anything. So when one wants to "chat" and when I use the word it has a visceral meaning in my life experience, since today I suffer from the results of that pollution (gained in childhood play) in my lungs and life expectancy.But who would know that was what I meant unless I told them my specific connotation? In short, the "word" for me is respect BEFORE you attack AND have the ability to ask questions clearly and with intelligence in order to ascertain correct meaning. That then can be examined and might even cause change and growth. I gave you the respect of reading all of the various interactions before I entered this discussion.I am still unclear about your intent.It seems about "winning" rather than examining. Lord knows I've gotten into it with Ed before but this time I don't get your point.How can what you have said bring change?Do you wish a confession of the accuracy of your reading from the original author? He has said that what you read and what he meant was in conflict as have many others.It seems to me that he is the authority on what he wrote. It also seems to me that his denial of your judgement means that either A) he didn't say it well or B) he is lying by his denial. Neither seems correct because in A) the rest of the list didn't get your reading and B) since they got his "reading" a simple "no that is not what I said or meant" should be sufficient.Once that is said you should get on with the "meat" of the discussion and help the list in its learning. I believe that organizations (including lists) have the ability to grow as a consensus evolves.In fact the believe in that growth is only possible reason I can ascertain for writing to this or any other list at this time in my life. Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble Inc. [EMAIL
Re: FW: Re: torn
This has been a wonderful conversation. I would like to add my two cents which is not much different but is some. Esther Dyson on that URL that I posted earlier, makes a point about value that is very much in keeping with the mentality of TV and the defense industries. Because we cannot truly fund creativity, it makes more sense to give it away and to fund the truly banal activities that everyone believes they need, like advertising for example or $500 toilet seats on military aircraft. Since the bidding process makes them undervalue what is truly valuable and necessary they charge for the common things or hide the charges in those areas. Hence the Congressional "expose's" that appear from time to time. Dyson states the theory very neatly as she restates it for the internet and especially computer software. The only problem lies in the equation that says that value = financial worth, and the reverse. Such an equation elevates the banal and diminishes the truly unique aspects of humanity. Humanity is not to be found in banking or wall street but in the great soaring work of the human spirit. But that work is easily enjoyed by all when accomplished. It is difficult to charge a ticket for its enjoyment and have its remuneration equal its cost. Almost anyone can free ride on the public welfare in these projects. The internet as well as a mediocre product like a TV Sitcom suffers from this same productivity problem. It is advertisement that is valuable while the "drama" is a vehicle and thus less valuable. The Internet is supplied by the government but no one wants to admit such a thing and thus claims that it is paid for by the servers which is nonsense since without the government it would collapse or be taken over by the TNCs and made impossible for people like you and I. All of this chatter is no more in their self interest than free lawyers for the poor were prior to Reagan's cutback of such. That is why we get this letter about individual telephone charges for e-mail on a regular basis. We know that it will happen if they have the power to cut us off. So if you raise the value of the banal and diminish the value of the truly valuable then what you get is an irrelevancy and decadence. Which is what we saw with the IMF in Yugoslavia and other places and what we are seeing with the singular dominance of the linear reality of pure cash.Artists made the same mistake when they raised the value of the "culture of the rich to themselves" for the purpose of funding unprofitable art in the 1880s. That led to a century of elitism and a collapse of real artistic creativity. What we got was Art as the precursor to targeted advertising. The middle and lower classes got sitcoms while the rich got symphonies. Both served as advertisement for something beyond itself and its real value. Capitalism and Western religion has screwed it up in the last century. We are now responsible for the results. I would recommend a read in the Dyson article even though she is a grazer and advocates such. IMO the issue of value is the core issue from which all of these problems spring and I don't see economics or any other profession having come close to dealing with it. Regards REH Dennis Paull wrote: Hi all, I think it very important to separate the economic issues from the political ones. In my mind, the major down side of the WTO is the abrogation of government powers to specifically non-democratic, greed oriented international bodies with no recourse to any counterbalancing judicial body. Those who are willing to give up control by the masses for short term gain are truly a threat to democracy world-wide. Granted there are important economic issues too such as have been mentioned. But we can work these out in ways that benefit large populations. But when we regress back to robber barons and monarchic non-accountability, we are truly risking much of the benefits that the western world has obtained over the last century. Dennis Paull Silicon Valley, CA At 11:54 PM 12/3/1999 , you wrote: To comment on just one sentence in Andrew's contribution: In my opinion, after listening to the many distinguished voices on this list, we are in a period of turbulence which will last for some time--perhaps another 20 years? Yes, I agree, but I think the turbulence will last for much longer than 20 years--probably at least another two or three generations. It won't really stop until the whole world has arrived at similar standards of living. I follow with my summary of a recent article from The Independent by Hamish McRae. This condensation will be one of many short articles that will appear in a new type of Web site that will start life in the next few weeks. 3. FIVE NIGGLES ABOUT FREE TRADE Keith Hudson On balance, and over the longer term, free trade is immensely beneficial but, over the short to medium term, there are understandable worries and these
Re: FW: Re: torn
http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/Esther_Dyson/ip_on_the_net.article Mark R Measday wrote: (from the futurework list) Mr Harrell, Do you have the relevant URL? "Ray E. Harrell" wrote:on that URL that I posted earlier, makes a point about value that is very much in keeping with the mentality of TV and the defense industries. Because we cannot truly fund creativity, it makes more sense to give it away and to fund the truly banal activities that everyone believes they need, like advertising for example or $500 toilet seats on military aircraft.
Interesting test
http://www.selectsmart.com/ Here is a little site that tests your views on political issues. Check it out. REH
Re: Fw: NYT on the Future
Tom, Thanks for your compliments. I would like to point out a couple of things from my own discipline. There is such a thing as stylistic convention. French Style is a coherency that is different from German or Italian. Before the abuse of "convention" and its subversion into a primitive scientific provenciality now called racism, people understood that groups, eras, ages and even human stages were good ways to comprehend reality and make some order of it. The trick was to understand that it was a convention and not applicable to the exception. Also the "convention" was something that could be described but basically fit no one exactly because it was based upon a general view. It was in that spirit that I made my comment about adolescents. We might consider that one of the elements of adolescence is heightened perceptions within a limited life experience. We might also consider that they are in the process of growing which makes that task subvert almost everything else to the achievement of its goals. This is not a crazy time but it can become so if it is not controled by wisdom and experience. It is also not criminal although criminals tend to have the same self absorbtion but at later times in their lives. It is not criminal but can become so, as in the murders in American schools of late.I tend to believe that children and adolescents need to be given the greatest latitude while being protected from their lack of knowledge and the experience that real knowledge is built upon.I also know that "latitude" depends upon the ability of the parent to exercise the kind of protective control within an attitude of benevolence and wisdom. It is not wrong for 16 year olds to be 16 and adolescent. It is normal. You can take any portion of my post and create your own world but that is not the world that I responded to and from. Consider: To rephrase what I said, the problem is with adults operating from the same limited experience or use of experience (that fits adolescence) that we are faced with the delemma that "widens worlds and rips minds." Consciousness is the only process that has any hope of manifesting a humane future. What we do that limits consciousness, and its evolution within the individual, is like what happens in the limited view of the adolescent whose intractibility can create a life threatening situation due to inexperience and an unwillingness to be take advice. That is why I brought the spiritual folks in at the end of my post. They seem to be particularly effected with the "way the truth and the life" and are convinced that their local knowledge will save the world and if the world rejects it then they can just "go to hell."But that choice makes the rejector a murderer and worse and therefore deserving of any punishment the locals wish to inflict. Sounds adolescent to me. THE world only began with the writing of their book. Not THEIR world but THE world began a few thousand years ago. I think neither they nor the local adolescent deserves to be followed as long as they manifest such provenciality. Do you? Regards, REH Tom Karnofsky wrote: Ray, I've been lurking on future-work for years, and love and often agree with your thought provoking and passionate posts. In regards to this one, though, I would like to point our that there is no such thing as a "typical 16 year old adolescent", any more than there is such thing as a typical southerner, African-American, or Mainer. Prejudice against young people, and its expression, seems to be acceptable even among "sophisticated" persons but should be no more so than prejudice against any group of people. A good consciousness raising book on the topic of adolescent prejudice, and its destructive results, is Scapegoat Generation- America's War on Adolescents, by Mike Males, 1996, Common Courage Press. Tom Karnofsky Sounds like your typical 16 year old adolescent. Any parent who has gone through that should be willing to grow up themselves or quit complaining when their kid explains the world to them.Whether it is my kid or the local minister, rabbi, mulah, REH My complete post: REH It seems that it still comes down to whether the chip in the brain to record all of life's experiences constitutes consciousness. Since I do not believe that it does, it follows that nothing put into any linear pattern can ever describe or encapsulate reality. What does this have to do with the future and future writers, thinkers, etc. ? We are still only thinking as far as our hands and literate minds function. That is inadaquate for a serious discussion or exploration of the universe, world society, the environment, any world culture, a family or even an individual. Seems that the mechanistic theories are alive and well and as destructive as ever. We can blame bureacracy but the problem is the linear rule of science and Western thought. As a musician, the rules of thermodynamics
Re: Knowledge - The New Frontier ( for exploitation ! )
John, You make a very good case for not paying composers, painters, movie directors and other artists.Which is what has happened in the U.S William Baumol has a paper on the NYU Economics site about the problem of "spillovers" which means that the person who comes up with an idea does not get the full financial benefit of his R D. Of course you make the case that his discovery is meaningless since it was all out there to begin with. Sort of "A cow is of a bovine ilk one end is moo the other milk." And we all have the right to graze to our heart's content. What is that cow on the internet's name? You know the one. She grazes for her ideas and then makes money without compensating the poor fools who wanted recognition so bad they wrote it all down on the net. She is their visable partner or is that parasite? What about "externalities"? Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as private property? Or is only physical property capable of being private or capital?What about money? Is it physical property? Should all "intellectual capital" folks make their living teaching in Universities and compose, philosophize, research etc. for fun? Is this the root of all of that half-hearted, poorly thought out education in the Universities these days?Of course if you have a really hard-nosed composer like a Wagner or a Strauss you might find him selling his soul to the local devil just to be able to compose full time.This happened in 1938 with most of the musicians and university staff of Germany when they elected to follow full employment in their professions into the Nazi party. They were tired of governmental and societal activities that imposed uncompensated costs upon themselves even thought their work was being used and forced them to make a living in other than their expertise. (negative externalities).They were forced to either give up their professions or to create benefits for people who didn't pay for those benefits. (positive externalities) In other words the "free riders" in the society created the climate which produced a monster and murdered the most convenient and affluent group in order to solve a job population problem. The best the local Georgists or others can seem to come up with is scarcity. Make it scarce enough and it will grow in value and make compensation happen. Of course it didn't and doesn't work that way with intellectual capital. Scarcity just means your consumers grow dumb and don't know the difference between having it and not.Same problem with software. So find a way to charge for everything or nothing seems to be the only solution by the intellectually barren. In artistic styles you can usually forecast the end of an era by the complexity and brownian movement required to accomplish formerly simple tasks.I suspect that we are approaching the "North" in our economics and that something new is in the works. Something less linear and more able to integrate the idea of linkage and networking that the Internet is now teaching the formerly linear business world. As has been said often on this list. It may be the very nature of work itself as well as the concept of value. I don't work for money and I know few artists who do. But we all must eat, live and propagate or make war. Artists, as I noted earlier, make the best propagandists, for Tyrants, in the business. So maybe the issue here is a more mature grown-up attitude about work itself. Perhaps people should work to accomplish goals within the work itself rather than for money. It finally just took too much to keep Copernicus afloat. Are we approaching that same situation with the economic theory of markets?They try to claim that they are ultimately simple and yet the language and theories are convoluted and resemble artistic (art for its own sake) formulas more than practical ways of keeping a society afloat. And they lie. Consider the sublime duality that even permeates so liberal an institution as this list itself. On the one hand you have the commons and on the other you have the individualists. Why must we be hung on the cross of these two alternatives? The one thing about a cross is that it isn't one unless you have both sides at once. But a cross is not a circle, except in one dimension, and so only signifies a tremendous lack of imagination in problem solving that infects those who can only see two sides. The individual and the commons are just two pendulum swings on the circle and should be acknowledged as two vital parts but only two. Can we get beyond the Barron's Business Review Series for a discussion on these issues crucial for the Future of Work? Or should we say that there is a bottom line bibliography for serious discussion of any of these problems? Regards Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here is a "reasonable" defense of grazing by the Queen
Re: Knowledge - The New Frontier ( for exploitation ! )
"Ray E. Harrell" wrote: Correction paragraph five should read: They were tired of governmental and societal activities that imposed uncompensated costs upon themselves even though their work was being used and forced them to make a living in other than their expertise. (negative externalities). They were forced to either give up their professions or to create benefits for people who didn't pay for those benefits. (positive externalities) In other words the "free riders" in the society created the climate which produced a monster and murdered the most convenient and affluent group in order to solve a job population problem. Here is a "reasonable" defense of grazing by the Queen herself. I post it since grazing on her seems to be what she wants. http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/Esther_Dyson/ip_on_the_net.article
Re: God save us from .pdf files!
Why? You seem to have a lot to say. In fact reading more in the form of some extended writing or a graphic or two seems reasonable. Junk mail should be junked and I do. I never open an attachment from someone that I do not know. I don't like bugs. But the limitations of my lists often reduce serious discussions to sound bites. I just returned from the Eddie Adams Workshop for photographers in the Catskills. From the greatest war photographers on the planet and many of the best artists. They were teaching a select group of younger photographers in the business. As I attended the lectures and watched these people who will form our images in the future I was surprised at 1. their morality and social activism 2. their sense of power in their profession 3. their professionalism 4. the sense of their value as the eyes of the world. They asked serious questions about the effects of their work on the future of society. Questions that would have put most religious moralizing to shame. And it is hard not admire a man or women who leaves his/her comfort and goes to a well-known unjust area of the planet to photograph its roots and prejudices only to return home to the same issues in their own streets. To be changed and made more complicated in their artistic questions and of both situations. So I would say make more and better attachments! Ray Evans Harrell Colin Stark wrote: God save us from .pdf files! \brad mccormick God save us from attachments! Colin Stark
Re: God save us from .pdf files!
I believe this list has ban on attachments. As for web sites, I rarely look since I find the content is often more out of context than a dialogue on list. An attachment is to me, a footnote which may or may not be opened.I often do not open it if the person has convinced me that they are doctrinaire or predictable in their answers.I make a distinction between repetition and predictable because repetition can be quite surprising and interesting as the minimal soho composers like Reich and Glass have shown. I also find that web sites often take so much energy that others don't converse much about their work. I don't even give out my web site since I think it is doctrinaire and is just plain unsuccessful.It just sits there like a lump with a couple of innocuous graphics . Just a thought, Ray Evans Harrell Christoph Reuss wrote: So I would say make more and better attachments! REH, no point in argueing about this: Sending attachments to a list violates the official Netiquette, is a waste of bandwidth and clutters up the harddisks of hundreds of users, many of which can't decode the attachment anyway and/or don't even have a clue how to locate/delete the clutter from their harddisk. If someone *needs* to visualize content, then put it on a website and send the URL to the list. Chris
Re: Constitutional Differences? In practice or by intention ? (Was Re: Germaine Greer on N.Y. and Ottawa)
Hi Mike, Are the Germans still buying up Nova Scotia? REH Michael Spencer wrote: "john courtneidge" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One ?significant? comparison between the US and Canada lies inthe Constitutions: * The US focus on "Life, liberty and the pusuit of happiness." As compared to: * The Canadian focus on "Peace, order and good government." The former is the personal agenda, the second relates to our social needs The American phrase is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution: WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness The Declaration *recognizes* a putatively self-evident state of affairs. I think the impeachment of the Creator and His replacement with Biology leaves the Declaration's observation unchanged. But the authors wouldn't have suggested that people are innately endowed with a right to "good government", as they go on to make explicit: -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, Good government is an artifact which we have to exert ourselves to create and maintain through the exercise of the aforementioned rights. The US Constitution goes on, over a decade later, to institute a "new Government" and is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. So far as I've been able to see over the last 30 years and from the sidelines, Canada is ahead on points on the "good government" scale but it might do even better with a stronger dose of "Consent of the Governed". Of course, that would require a rather larger portion of the Governed to get off our butts and make our consent -- or the withholding thereof -- a force to be reckoned with. - Mike
Re: Constitutional Differences? In practice or by intention ? (Was Re: Germaine Greer on N.Y. and Ottawa)
Well Jolly Roger. I love New York and enjoyed Canada. The point should be made that Germaine Greer lives and has worked in Tulsa for years. I kiss the ground every time I get off the plane from the narrow focused fundamentalism of my home state and I graduated from the school where Greer now teaches. I wouldn't imagine that anyone who enjoys that conservative atmosphere could stand the multiplicities of New York.To many of us that is liberating. REH john courtneidge wrote: Dear Friends I snip, then comment below. -- From: Melanie Milanich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Germaine Greer on N.Y. and Ottawa Date: Wed, Sep 29, 1999, 2:02 pm Melanie Milanich wrote: The Globe and Mail, Saturday Sept. 25, 1999, p. D2 Dreary as Ottawa was, it was in the end a better place than New York by Germaine Greer snip Though I love New York, I disapprove of it. Dreary as Ottawa was, it was in the end a better place than New York. Canadians believe that happiness is living in a just society; they will not sing the Yankee song that capitalism is happiness, capitalism is freedom. Canadians have a lively sense of decency and human dignity. Though no Canadian can afford freshly squeezed orange juice, every Canddian can have juice made from concentrate. Thae lack of luxury is meant to coincide with the absence of misery. It doesn't work altogether, but the idea is worth defending. ** It's flattering that Germaine Greer sees more dignity and social justice in Canadian society..but along comes the new right and the Harris government rushing blindly to push us into the same thing --- I worked in Ottawa for two years and love it to pieces. One ?significant? comparison between the US and Canada lies inthe Constitutions: * The US focus on "Life, liberty and the pusuit of happiness." As compared to: * The Canadian focus on "Peace, order and good government." The former is the personal agenda, the second relates to our social needs (I've an essay about this, but i know that I speak and post too much already.) Whether this comparison over-rides (or perhaps? underpins) action-in-legislation I don't know, but the culture of the two countries is as marked as might be (perhaps the results of different banking systems/ethoses - is the plural of ethos ethoses?) Dance well, friends, j ***
Re: workfare
It all sounds to me like a bunch of Easter Islanders arguing over the value of a statue while the wood diminishes. REH Christoph Reuss wrote: Franklin Wayne Poley asked: Two questions: (1) In Switzerland do workfare recipients have as much choice in their workfare situations as other people have in selecting pre-employment, education or employment? No, but I think this applies to all countries... Basically, they can select the work together with their advisor, who of course will take their individual abilities, preferences and possibilities into account. (2) What is the GDP contribution of those welfare recipients before and after workfare? (ie the volunteer work done before workfare may exceed the forced work done after workfare). I would estimate their GDP contribution is below 0.1%. But as we all know, the GDP is an inappropriate metric for these kinds of work, which are of little economical value but of significant social and environmental value. (Also, these activities must not compete with commercial services.) This is a good opportunity (esp. for NGOs) to get things done that couldn't be done with 'regular' jobs, e.g. guarded bike parkings, free bike rentals, recycling of various stuff, restoring old buildings, cleaning up the environment, etc. One new service that my program introduced is a free E-bicycle courier for shoppers, so mothers and the elderly can go shopping without a car and without carrying heavy loads. Victor Milne calculated: If a workfare participant works 8 hours each working day (22 workdays in the average month) for his welfare benefit of $520 a month, then he is being paid $2.95 an hour. Over here, the 'wage' is about 2-3 times higher. Considering that the workfare work is very easy work that can't be compared with the stressing work in private companies, and that it basically helps the candidates to maintain a regular activity (and possibly to find a 'real' job), I think this wage isn't too bad... Chris
Re: workfare
As far as I'm concerned Cook got what he deserved. So why not learn how to balance books instead of destroy in order to consume? Learn the meaning of the wheel of balance instead of nailing yourself to it. REH Christoph Reuss wrote: It all sounds to me like a bunch of Easter Islanders arguing over the value of a statue while the wood diminishes. (REH) Chris answers: All right, Captain Cook, so what do you suggest ? Chris
Re: workfare
I just watched a racist piece this morning at the American Theater Alliance about Indian killers of "White Children."The crowd wept as the pregnant Mother escaped the savages and swam the raging torrent to find her husband. But then there is this post which seems to say that the benevolent loving pioneer's descendants have screwed it up. Or have they? Maybe it just goes to show you how Western spiritual practices "work."As Red Jacket a Seneca chief said after being told by a minister about the superiority of his book over RJ's way of his ancestors, "I am impressed by both your book and your words. Now we will take a little time and see about your actions, what kind of neighbors and friends you turn out to be."The preacher left without even shaking his hand. The more things change the more they stay. REH from the NYCity res. just watching. Melanie Milanich wrote: Actually for the $520 monthly "workfare" in Ontario a person is expected to work 17 hours per week--supposedly using the rest of the time to apply for more permanent work. But even before it was implemented the recipient had to provide a list of places, with names of personel directors, that (s)he applied to. I think 10 were required per week. Which one would think is a fulltime "job" Today the CBC interviewed a grandmother who has legal custody of her five grandchildren. She was forced to obtain workfare. She leaves home early and does not get back until after they have left school, and two of the children have serious problems with school and the law but she is now not able to attend to their problems. I have one "workfare", person renting a room in my house. He is in training courses. But since I charge him $300 a month for rent, transit fare is $88 per month, and he has a phone for $29 per month--his $520 does not stretch for food, clothes, personal care, let alone books, newspapers, postage stamps, vitamins, entertainment or socializing (he washes his clothes with bars of soap in my bathtub and hangs them in his window and I won't tell you what he uses for toilet paper) and his religion requires him to give 10 percent of income to the mosque. There was a program on the radio this morning about the increase in evictions since the province enacted the "Tenants Protection Act" allowing landhoards to evict tenants and convert to condominiums and charge more. With the increase in evictions are increasing numbers of single mothers in homeless shelters and living on the streets. They represent the group with the largest increase in numbers of homeless. And to top it off, the newly appointed federal Minister of Homelessness has announced that she has finished her "research" and will shortly present to cabinet her information. She is quoted in the newspapers to the effect that she doesn't know if they will do anything about it, but she will give them the information that she gathered! john courtneidge wrote: Dear Friends I snip and then comment. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christoph Reuss) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: workfare Date: Mon, Sep 27, 1999, 3:00 pm Victor Milne calculated: If a workfare participant works 8 hours each working day (22 workdays in the average month) for his welfare benefit of $520 a month, then he is being paid $2.95 an hour. Over here, the 'wage' is about 2-3 times higher. Considering that the workfare work is very easy work that can't be compared with the stressing work in private companies, and that it basically helps the candidates to maintain a regular activity (and possibly to find a 'real' job), I think this wage isn't too bad... Chris One intriguing aspect of wages under capitalism is that the people who do the crap jobs get the crap money. Given that, as income (and wealth) inequality grows, ill-health also grows (Richard Wilkinson's book) then we *have* to work out how to close the present, obscene factors of income inequality. Any ideas? j
Re: request for resouces
Anne, These communities, like my home community, were not originally single industry communities but were made so by the loss of the children to the cities and the tendency for companies like Phillips Petroleum (in my case) to eliminate the competition to reduce costs. I would suggest your studying the farm communities of the 19th century before the rise of the mass production models that lured the children away. What does it take to make a community. Economics are often the by product of a deeper motivation to band together. If that deeper motivation is missing, the economics won't work, in my opinion. I believe you must first know the history of something before you can understand how it must work in the present or project a plan for the future.That is just my opinion. Ray Evans Harrell Anne Miller wrote: Hello I'm an adult educator following a graduate program in Community Economic Development at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. I'm hoping to hear some thoughts on good literature to help me address a question I'm posing. My question is grounded in rural communities in transition. The economies of small rural communities are often based upon single industries, which of late, have been collapsing in record numbers. These communities, struggling for survival, are eager to change their traditional livelihoods to something that promises to be more viable. CED interventions demonstrate that this transition from one economy to another [or others] has had varied success. CED strategies and models in themselves are not enough to ensure that an intervention will be successful. My question then is: What critical issues, factors and questions must be considered at this time of transition to enable a small rural community to make a successful transition to a new economy? If anyone has any ideas about particular resources- books, journals, articles, and resource people - I would appreciate hearing about them. Anne Miller
Stock Market as Casino
For those who find themselves opposed to Indian Gaming but support the idea of the Stock Market I would suggest a read at the following site. http://www.health-and-freedom.com/sg/ REH
Students Seek Some Reality Amind the Math of Economics.
To the list: Here is an article that confirms what I have been saying on the list about the impracticality of modern economic theory and the cultural chaos that surrounds it. But first as a prologue. In his discussion of evolution Dr. Leonard Schlain points out the reason for the primacy of culture and the minimization of genetic instinct in humans as opposed to other species.Here are some statements about the evolution of genders that eventually ended in a dumber baby but a more intelligent child through the tools of culture. 1. Hominids were originally scavengers who followed the big cats. 2. Upright throwing created the first ability for hominids to become a competitor with those they had previously been parasites upon. 3. By freeing the hands through upright walking they become hunters; as a result brain size increased in response to the new needs of predation. 4. Bigger brains meant longer childhoods and the necessity for greater childcare.This made the fathers hunters while the mothers nurtured the helpless infant. 5. The female of the hominid species became the first mother of any animal species who could not easily take care of herself in the postpartum period. Food sharing, a trait of the hominid line with its collateral attributes--altruism, kindness, generosity, and cooperation--also increased. 6. As a result, the bigger brain needed greater quantities of energy, with the mother needing up to two years for nursing and the necessity of an adequate diet for the nursing survival of the young, hunters were forced to resist the urge to consume game immediately and drag the food home over many miles for the survival of the species. Females, especially in the less tropical areas, are iron poor without exception of meat. 7. The disappearance of estrus in the hominid line reduced the necessity for monarchies, (alpha male). In such societies the interest of the male wanes as the female leaves estrus. Without estrus, the possibility of sex is no longer periodic and creates a "sexuality of scale" that makes females available to all of the males whether "alpha" or not. Sex becomes a bargaining chip for iron, i.e. meat. The disappearance of estrus in the hominid line made it possible for a lower male in the hierarchy to secure sexual access to a female without challenging the alpha male. (Mike Hollinshead has made the point that English society reverted to this alpha male system when economic stress reduced the family's ability to support children of younger brothers and sisters, thus creating bachelor uncles and spinster aunts.) 8. Hunting is associated with danger and pride while gathering is not. Hunting possesses an erotic overtone: "meat as an aphrodisiac."In general, the men hunted, and the women gathered. 9. As estrus disappears from hominid females a new sexual feature, menses, becomes prominent. A quicker menses means a great loss of iron amongst females. Consider the following from author Schlain a medical doctor: "Other large mammals experience infrequent periods of estrus and minimal menstrual flow. They conserve iron by repeatedly licking themselves when they bleed, an anatomically impossible task for the human female. Human menstrual flow, by far the heaviest amongst all mammals, predisposes females to iron deficiency anemia, which in turn can lead to lack of vigor, and increased susceptibility to all diseases...infants of iron deficient mothers are sickly from birth and are less likely to surviveiron rich plants in winter are problematic while the only food consistently rich in iron is meat...Males have no particular need for iron, but females absolutely must have it. If sex- for-meat was the unspoken exchange that rewired the female's physiologic responses, then her appetite for iron would motivate her to be ever more sexy...thus increasing the value of meat to the male. (Loss of estrus was also responsible for the disturbing fact that among mammals rape is common only in our species and orangutans.) ...the male's sexual drive would goad him into taking greater risks to kill game in order to impress the female he desired." (Think of Jesse Ventura, REH) "Menses was the prod that inspired males to become audacious hunters. The pair bonding we now call marriage has its taproot sunk into this primitive transaction." 10. It is commonly considered by the social scientists that the female hip size and walk common to humans (and not other primates) evolved as an attractor for males. Schlain makes a more practical and common sense suggestion for this. He finds the root in the need for larger brains in children who are not covered with fur or possess fangs or claws. (a point found in native myths and legends as well). He is suggesting dance, (or a type of dance/walk) just as belly dancing evolved from birth rituals, as having a practical purpose in the evolution of our bodies. Babies with bigger heads needed a different birth canal
Re: FW Reminder about searchable archives
S. Lerner wrote: Searchable archives for the Futurework list are available at http://www.mail-archive.com/futurework%40dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca/ Wow! did I have a good time. These are great. I followed a thread that had answers that I had never read because.. This is really wonderful Sally. Thanks to both you and Arthur for all of your great work. Question: Is this a new Hyper-mail or some other program? REH
Re: Work on work (Futurework and @Work)
To the list, I agree about making the archives more usable. I have found the hyper-mail functions of the Learning Org. list to be very handy when researching or keeping a thought going. It also saves me space on my hard drive. However there is one drawback. Britton's comments about intelligence are correct but easy access to the archives would shoot his comments about our lack of contentiousness all to hell. Consider the following: As for the other two issues 1. the issue of sustainable work in today's society and 2. the issue of unions and their relevance. 1. I find very little willingness on the part of any of these lists to discuss anything more than the old industrial system's models cast in the guise of the Information Era. Not to be disagreeable but I think that the new IE has been discussed rather well by such people as William Greider, Hedrick Smith and Fortune Mag. columnist Thomas A. Stewart for the general public. What I don't understand on these lists, is how a continual repetition of Industrial Era models proves their value. If Greider, Smith and Stewart writing for the layman can articulate why the old models don't work then why can't we hear it? Britton refers to the continual high level of discussion at FW and I agree. He also says that we are civil with one another and on that I would say that we operate on a level of democratic rigor that is built on practical experience and less on political formula. We do have a very low BS tolerance with the deft hands of Arthur and Sally making a point without being obvious enough to stir resistance or counter-transference. Their rigor and our unwillingness to be exposed in our foolishness serves as a governor on our word processing. As for the other lists on the nature of work that I have visited: As I stated above too often their new models are not really new at all. Even their information models are the models of the Art's and Entertainment Industries cast in the mode of "re-something or other." e.g. In the arts we often barter, use other models to substitute for cash exchange, thrive on linkage (connections) and drive ourselves to finish a project no matter what the fiscal, emotional, familial or physical cost. As I have pointed out and documented for a couple of years now on this list, this new Information work world IS brave AND has many problems already demonstrated in the pioneer world of the Arts and Entertainment Industry. That does not mean that we can reference past Industrial models as an answer for a hyper- democratized world built around a plethora of information. The past is not the answer and the futurist models potential "success" can be seen in the ruined lives of the Arts and Entertainment industry pioneers. There is no COMMON on the planet that exists like the COMMON of the world of the musical ensemble. They make all of the mistakes that could bankrupt the planet if the rest of the work sector follows suit. (And it seems to be!) In addition their use of Unions creates work for a few but is largely impotent at the kind of creative work that builds the industry. What Hedrick Smith calls the need for "constant learning, constant technological change and constant self-improvement as the engines of long term success" is largely impossible in Union companies. The most creative work being done, the R D of the music world is being done in small high pressure companies that are self-funded by the artists themselves. This is what the composer Charles Ives observed 80 years ago when he said that true creativity was impossible in the "professional" musical world. He opted to earn his money in insurance and write and fund whatever he pleased. (We have basically done the same.) Musical ensembles are pure learning organizations built around the exploration of the values of abstract aural formal information. They even define the abstract thought of whole nations and cultures by translating the deepest psycho-physical intentions of the time into visual, theatrical and aural art forms. They give aid, comfort and even create a meaningful life when practiced by amateurs, but when the models are "professional" in the Union worker sense, they are often an unmitigated disaster for the creative life of most of their "workers." The music business is a microcosm of the world at large with the upper one to two percent making most of the money with the rest forced to subsist out of love and work at other jobs. Not unlike that NYTimes article on wealth that I posted yesterday. Lest one complain that this is too complicated for the average person, I would point to the great amateur Concert Bands of the coal miners in England which fostered the tradition of the greatest brass players in the Western world or the choruses of Wales which even in their dying has recently given us magnificent Bryn Terfel or the new orchestra at Hewlett Packard. The first two built the finest Instrumental and choral organizations on
Re: FW: [Co-opNet] Co-operative work, Linux and the future of computing (fwd)
Hi Brad, Just a couple of points. 1. Like Christians, I basically judged systems not by their theories but the people of practice them as well as how much they were left alone in the world at vital times for their development. i.e. you can't stomp the corn when it is a bud and blame for tasting bad. 2. The people at IBM years ago referred to thier system as corporate socialism. I suspect that is what this current system is since someone IS paying the bill somewhere. REH Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: Ray E. Harrell wrote: Just a question. Who pays the salaries for all of these folks doing free things and giving up their ideas for nothing? [snip] someone always pays the bill. People do have to eat. Very good question. Sounds to me like a good research project for some sociologists! Also the first post that ascribed this to communism seems strange since that involves committees. It seems more accurately to be a Democratic process, not unlike the cultures of many pre-Columbian societies here. [snip] Two points here: (1) Ray's definition of "communism" seems to be oriented to what came out of the Bolschevik revolution and *called* itself "Communist" while *being* more fascist, etc. If we're willing to give up the word "communism" to the Right-wingers, then how about: "anarcho-syndicalism"? (2) Whatever one wishes to call a *material* democratic process in which the workers are also the policy makers, I wonder how such a process applies to a bunch of *computer programmers*, who, in my experience, have a vision of human social interaction limited by *science fiction*, which, for the most part, seems to be very existentially "thin" and to have an ideal of a rebirth of feudalism in flying fortresses (Star Wars, etc.). My guess is that many of the "free software" programmers have little notion of any social process, and that their vision of a "free software community" is merely an epiphenomenon of whatever *real* social system provides them with computers and pizza (yes, even programmers have to eat...). The present Global Capitalism probably suits many of them just fine (Joseph Weizenbaum argued that the computer has been one of the most powerful forces for social reaction in the 20th Century). I would like to see technical workers develop a richer sense of what it means to be human (including what it means to do computer programming), and to thematize the political nature of what they do (whatever it is). For, as Sartre said: To not choose is to choose [for what will happen if persons don't do anything to change it]. And, to quote from imperfect memory, Joseph Weizenbaum: I hope that, as the discipline of computer science matures, its practitioners will mature also, and that, whatever thsy do, they will think about it, so that those who come after them will not wish they had not done it. \brad mccormick -- Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: FW: [Co-opNet] Co-operative work, Linux and the future of computing (fwd)
Just a question. Who pays the salaries for all of these folks doing free things and giving up their ideas for nothing? We give $123,000 in scholarship awards to worthy students and art projects but someone always pays the bill. People do have to eat. Also the first post that ascribed this to communism seems strange since that involves committees. It seems more accurately to be a Democratic process, not unlike the cultures of many pre-Columbian societies here. But there was a social safety net built into the religion and family structure to protect those who "gave away". By the way the word for a process that ascribes more value to giving away that to accrual is called a "potlatch."Maybe they should call the answer to Inktomi, (the Lakota word for the spider trickster) potlatch. REH Michael Gurstein wrote: more... M -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 17:22:43 +1000 (EST) From: Ian Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: john courtneidge [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: econ-lets [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: FW: [Co-opNet] Co-operative work, Linux and the future of computing On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, john courtneidge wrote: To: "Quakers (Britain Yearly Meeting) online meeting place" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: econ-lets [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Response trimmed to econ-lets only. If you wish to post it back to the other lists to which I'm not subscribed, please feel free) Friends, all - for your entertainment/astonishment/whatever Hi John. This is indeed an interesting post, with which I rather agree on a level of sentiment, but I feel I must respond to a couple of issues of fact, perception, and projection, raised by its author: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (heiko) [..] and is suddenly valued at $6.4 Billion. All Red Hat have done is package Linux, the free and open source software programmes made by volunteers across the world and charged for it. What does this signify? In part it signifies that many people would rather pay someone to box up a set of CDROMS, than spend maybe a hundred hours on the net downloading the latest 'free' distribution :) and in another part it signifies that the current insane prices for stocks with 'e-' or 'i-' in front of their names is merely a huge bubble, just waiting to be pricked. For those who don't know, Linux is an operating system that works by providing all the "source codes" for all programmes that run on it, so there are no secrets, errors can be corrected immediately and development has no limits. Unlike private copyrighted source codes of commercial companies. In a word Linux can be made to run any computer operation you can imagine, and an infinite variety you cannot yet thing of, AND IT IS FREE. As are FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD, other open-source UNIX-like operating systems that are based on a (once) free public release of the University of California at Berkeley's source code. Linux is getting all the press admittedly, in fact it's the only one that most media people know about. The Financial Times carried a major article today August 13 1999, p 14 asking whether co-operative made software can defeat Microsoft, and concludes yes..! According to the United Nations Human Development Report 1999 Linux "Apache" programme on servers now runs over 50% of all web servers world-wide, and the FT reports 70% of e-mail is sent on Linux "Send Mail". This is just misleading. Apache was not developed by, for or on Linux; it's an open collaboration alright, but was developed for UNIX systems in general, and has been 'ported' to many Unices, plus OS/2 and others. And Sendmail has been moving most of the world's email for at least twice as long as Linux has existed, or was even thought of; it too runs on all UNIX-like systems. The statement above suggests that Linux is the operating system used by these 50% of web servers running Apache, and the 70% of mail servers running sendmail, which is patently untrue. This is not to denigrate Linux in any way, it's one of a number of fine open-source operating systems, but serves to illustrate the massive hype surrounding Linux that has been generated by ignorant mainstream media, and if you've represented the UN report accurately, ignorant UN people :) In other words the Internet is being run by co-operative endeavour, nay by the communist ideals that Marx spoke of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". To invoke Marx here is to draw a very long bow indeed. Familiarity with open source communities suggests a more sanguine approach to guessing at peoples' motivations for being involved with open source development. There's an element of community, for sure, but there's plenty of ego and oneupmanship involved too. And software developers, as a 'class' are far from a left-wing sort of mob. Most are, it must be remembered, rich people
Re: y2k bug urgent request
An interesting post Chris, I feel like the average driver who wants his "dictulena" car to get him to and from work while talking to a race car mechanic about his problems with General Motors. I believe it is General Motor's purpose to build a universe where their products are the simplest and works the best for their consumers. It doesn't concern them that Ford's parts don't work within their universe. Unfortunately for us, the computer universe is all connected in ways that no other industry has to be. As for Gates and Cato, I could see it coming on the bias of MSNBC news.Some of the scuzziest people in the country including racists, a genocidal psycho-path host and a man who could bring back the anti-Roman bias with his stereo-typical culture bound ideas. And then there is the Jewish Puerto Rican Libertarian who has a good heart but is personally confused. They got rid of the only artist they had. He was too tricky. I wish I was a composer, I could write some great works with these strange characters. If you want to read a couple of interesting articles check the Sunday NYTimes Books in Review.One article is called Performance Art and is on Emerson and the other is The First Squillion Years, a review of a book on cosmology. When they do it right the NYTimes is a good read and these two are that. Ray Christoph Reuss wrote: REH wrote: Most of the people that I talk to about this says much the same about Gates and Micro-soft. However, for the record I was not speaking of Gates only but the Libertarian Party cell that inhabits almost all of silicone valley. They fund anti community initiatives all over the country and one of their crew just did in fair minority hiring practices in California as "socialist." Generally they are followers of Ayn Rand ... Their scholar's think tank is funded by that nutty Koch family from Kansas and calls itself the Cato Institute which shows how the media will kiss any body part that smells of money. Yup. See http://cato.org/gatesvisit.html for a weird example of Gates whining about the bad bad Justice Dept. going after this poor innocent victim of a socialist conspiracy. On the other hand it could be just money and built in obsolescence. Something that has been done often in the past by big business selling individual products toconsumers. You've guessed it. So everyone will **have to** buy Windows2000. The concept is total dependence. M$ also isn't interested in "hyper individuality" on the user's part -- quite on the contrary, total "assimilation" to the "industry standard" (yeah, incompatible with itself) is the goal, with nobody but Gates calling the shots. You mean mass production which is the only productive way to go. No, I meant diversity and the degree of "customizability" of the software, which is very low in M$ products. M$ doesn't want creative users, but assimilated conformists. "Where do you want to go today?" is a rhetorical question: You can't go anywhere else, only where M$ will let you go. But you are confusing the dynamics of the net with the PC itself. My point is still that they have to inhabit the role of the "Trickster" with such a massive commune like entity as the Internet. It is literally vulnerable to anyone. That's why it's so important that users have bug-free and useful software so they know what they're doing/sending and don't mess up mailing lists with wrong-dated (by their insidious OS!) postings. The only way I can see the net working is if there is standardization of structure with individuation of the process. The "standardization of structure" already exists (W3C etc.), but unfortunately, M$ changes such standards (in the infamous "embrace and extend" style) and inserts bugs, messing up the whole structure (and process). Dennis Paull wrote: First, much of the Y2k difficulties will come from embedded microchips buried in products most of us don't think of as computers. Examples are traffic lights, medical and other scientific equipment and industrial control systems such as safety systems on refineries and power generators. ... But there is another, difficult problem, that of legacy systems running COBOL programs on main frames. Can't blame Big Bill for that either. I didn't blame Big Bill for either; "only" for the PC software problems that some listmembers are now experiencing. (Embedded microchips and COBOL mainframes aren't programmed by M$, so it couldn't mess these up too.) Chris "I think anybody who is savvy about this market knows that Microsoft is getting away with stuff it probably shouldn't get away with." -- GEOFFREY MOORE, Marketing Guru
Re: y2k bug urgent request -- If Microsoft Built Cars...
Christoph Reuss wrote: (snip) Then again, the basic idea of the Internet was to enable *all* computers and OS's (from different manufacturers) to work together -- if they *adopt* the common standards, instead of "embraceextend"ing them in order to *hijack* (aka proprietarize) these standards... Meanwhile the French can't get along with the Brits, theIrish Catholics and Protestants have been fighting for 400 years, the Spanish had a 700 year war with the Moors who taught them how to count (an early example of Freud's teacher/father hatred) The only true Internationalists, the Jews and the Gypsies are the despised of the West, the Jews still see Philistines when they talk to the Arabs and the Arabs are still trying to prove the superiority of their recently acquired brand of monotheism. Except the Bahais have usurped the "most recent" title and that makes them the scum of the earth to Islam. Then there are the Croatian Catholics and the Serbian Orthodox and the Bosnian and Albanian Moslems. And get this, they are all cousins. They look more alike than Cherokees and the Sioux! So tell me Chris, how can these folks even imagine linkage on an information Internet? The moment the world gets connected it will be germ warfare all over again. This is no recipe for the future.Like Germany's Schmidt put it, "The market is filled with psychopaths!"So what do we call the silicone CEOs with the culture of college dropouts?How about Idiot Savants? You forwarded: If Microsoft Built Cars... == The Top 13 ways things would be different if Microsoft built cars: 1. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until after that year, instead of before. No they would put out the same model in a different skin, on time andat a higher price. 2. It would be completely acceptable to have new cars stop in the middle of a road for no apparent reason, forcing the driver to shut the car off, restart it, and continue driving. And they would require that everyone else wait until they couldplay again. 3. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light. Already done. I rent cars living in New York City. Whenwas the last time you saw an oil or heat gauge? 4. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other brands for years. This is not new. This is the consumer society! They've been playing such a game for at least 100 years. Fake newness is the only way that modern manufacturing can guarantee productivity. The economists lie about creativity. It barely exists. True R D is too expensive to be profitable. The same crowd that used to lie about it on the left are now neo-s on the right. Their styles and even words are the same socialist realism crap. The only advantage is that they are no longer so involved with the schools. It was horrible when I went to school and they were the left wing. 5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car... Wait a second, it's that way now! You're getting it now. 6. You would have to take driving lessons every year, because the traffic rules are changing regularly -- special traffic rules would apply to Microsoft cars. You couldn't do this with cars so they invented Y2K as acomputer version of "Chicken." The lives of the banal, involved in insignificance, too simple for the art of living, must become involved instead in the art of death. Eros and Thanatos. 7. You'd have to switch to Microsoft Gas(TM). You weren't around when the auto manufacturers lostthe right to choose their own fuel due to its extreme polluting properties. A section of my family was involved with Ford at the time and you should have heard them scream. They lost the potential to do what no. 7 describes and they realized the billions that it cost them. 8. You could only have one person at a time in your car, unless you bought a car NT, but then you'd have to buy more seats. This is what I call the hotrod mentality. Just another wayof making those of us who stupidly threw away our typewriters, and don't care "sh...t" about the new computers but just want to do the real work of the world, experience computer rage. 9. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt. Already done. Chiropractors are making a fortune withtheir new car seats and the adjustments that go with them. 10. Sun Motorsystems would make a car that was solar powered, twice as reliable, 5 times as fast, but only ran on 5% of the roads. Are you talking about the Delorian? 11. The US government would be getting subsidies from an automaker, instead of giving them. I don't get this? 12. Car radio manufacturers would go out of business because
A PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THE FUTURE + article.
Barry Brooks wrote: (SNIP) Speculators, bandits, and other short-term thinkers and hyper-active bean-counters should not be allowed to run the country. Fortunately or unfortunately in the Western world sincethe Spanish kicked out the Moors and absorbed Al Jabar, only that which could be quantified was considered to exist and still is true today. That is why the NEA's most important function has not been the support of Artists but the numerical proof of what we accomplish in the society compared to the rest of the professions. Consider that without the numbers we in New York would never realize how much the rest of the country is taking from us in taxes with a sixteen billion dollar balance of payments deficit. It is the only protection, the numbers that are stuffed down the throats of the wealthy families out of state who live in municipalities that have a balance of payments surplus received from the federal government compared to the taxes they actually pay. These are usually the one's who complain the most about paying too much taxes. Numbers or beans have their purposes. The whole industrial world knows that good government can't be run like a business or by people who are interested in personal wealth without inviting total corruption. The reverse is also true. Where the people do not pay a living wage consonant with the value and complexity of the job then people tend to "moonlight" to make up the difference. Most legislatures are filled with such "moonlighters" including the U.S. Congress. Better to have a wage that is correct and to put them in jail when they betray the people's trust. To do the latter without the former puts them in an adversarial position to the general population and thus vulnerable in their victimization. I consider Clinton for example to be a very strong personality considering his dearth of funds and his great legal bills while he, a Rhodes Scholar and career politician receives the same amount as Bill Gates, a college drop out and idiot savant, blows off in a day or two. All he did was have foreplay with an employee who pursued him, others would have stuffed their pockets with future jobs and cash and much more. It need not be that way. Consider the following article in today's NYTimes about the way the French are involving the population in the objects that will identify them as French in the future. Instead of leaving it to families, the lowest market bidders or state employees, they are placing the materials out in the open for all to see and judge. Maybe the French know more about Democracy than anyone else other than the Iroquois. Come to think of it, Rousseau knew a little about the Iroquois himself. REH August 8, 1999 CELEBRATING AN ARCHITECT, HAILING AN ARTIST By ALAN RIDING PARIS -- Architects who consider themselves artists are understandably delighted when their work is featured in museums, but Richard Meier, the designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, has special reason to feel honored. The Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris has chosen Meier, an American, as the subject of its first-ever architectural exhibition. And in doing so, it has set out to reinforce the notion that architecture is art. True, for Paris, this is not exactly a revolutionary idea. Parisians, and indeed foreigners, have long regarded this city as an exquisite urban sculpture. When the government began a daring program of Grands Travaux, or Great Works, in the 1980s, it invited "artistic" architects to participate in design competitions. Parisians in turn judged the results primarily for their esthetic worth -- and they remembered the names of the architects responsible for both the good and the bad. Yet even the French are not accustomed to studying buildings through photographs, drawings and models. So "Richard Meier Architect," which runs through Sept. 26, is something of an experiment. Until now, architectural shows held in the Georges Pompidou Center have drawn mainly specialists. But with a new Cite de l'Architecture being planned for Paris in 2002, the Jeu de Paume, on the Place de la Concorde, is a good place to gauge general interest in architecture. The show opened on July 13, and the public response has been encouraging. Architects and architectural students were to be expected to stop by, but museum officials said many people were visiting out of sheer curiosity and then lingering as the show caught their attention. "People like models," Meier had predicted with a mischievous smile. The exhibition is certainly people friendly. Three naturally-lighted upper galleries display detailed models of 24 of Meier's buildings. The first room presents his corporate and public-sector projects, including a stunning representation of a proposal (ultimately rejected) for a Madison Square Garden site redevelopment. The plan envisioned three high-rise office blocks, which would have been Meier's first-ever skyscrapers. The second gallery is dedicated
Re: Co-stupidity
Douglas P. Wilson wrote: (snip) It might help if I use (and abuse) a metaphor from the days of logical positivism. Let us imagine our society (and system) as a boat floating in the middle of the ocean. I would prefer thinking of it as a body that contains all of thepersonalities that are the sum total of its experiences. At the present it is in the process of trying to negotiate the meaning of and perpetuation of its physical health.The boat is dead, the body is alive. I find the consideration of a relationship between an alive system and the entities within that system a more realistic metaphor for my imagining. Actually requirements analysis should precede designing or planning, (viz. http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/requirements.html) but that's another issue. True for a bridge but again, I believe the problem is the belief inthe very objectivity which you seem to strive for. Am I wrong? Plans always go before that which is known. But the future is more appropriately explored as an unknown with history to keep us from being totally blind. But what Mr. Atlee has is (apparently) a resolve, or resolution, or firm intention to plan things very well -- it is not itself a plan for anything. That's why I said I couldn't actually detect any idea in Mr. Atlee's prose -- all I saw were good intentions. What I saw was a critique with an implication. I could well be wrong about that -- I'm wrong about lots of things, though I never admit it. Perhaps there is some idea there that I've missed. Me too. As for the comments of Thomas Lunde, I am sure I have missed something in what he wrote, because I just didn't understand much of it. Try the formula "Structure determines the form of the processes" in which structure is a defined state. ... Tom is capable of speaking for himself but I read it asa statement of simple classicism. In the Classical style of Western music (like Mozart, Haydn, etc. ) "Structure determines the form of the processes." or we could use terms like Mies Van der Rohe in architecture "form defines content" or "less (content) is more." Have you ever read Process and Reality, by Alfred North Whitehead? Ah, I didn't think so -- I don't think anybody has. I've read some of Whitehead and liked him but not the above.My favorite was a little practical book called "The Aims of Education" and I once slogged a little of his and Russell's Principia (how's that for name dropping?). To the best of my knowledge he is saying "Process determines the form of the structures", but I've never figured out what that means, either. That is "Romantic" within the same artistic structure.Emerson in America with Lord Byron, Marx, Darwin, Freud and Wagner in Europe. An interesting deviant from this is Ives and Frank Lloyd Wright, both of whom insisted that form defined content but that each form was the content of a greater form. Generally Romanticism says that the form is the "skin" of content and exists as a kind of limit to the process that is going on within the content of the form. In art they are not polar opposites but exist as a dual symbolization of the whole. They are synergistic and also a conception of the human mind meant solely to make the incomprehensible useful. First Nations peoples generally consider that there are not two but seven. Each as aspects of time/space which is a unity. On the other hand you might also consider it with the Greeks Dionysian (you and Whitehead) or Apollonian (Tom Lunde). Representative Democracy is in my opinion a structure for political goverance selection. ... I'd be happy calling it either a system or a process, not a structure. But the words don't really matter. I think the problem here is the way English mixes time andplace. Systems generally refer to time while structure refers to place. But you would not call a Sonata Allegro a system even though it is a form in time. Instead it is called a structure, i.e. one of the structures of music. Process is analogous with system because they are both time rather than space but even that is not really true. English is not Latin. It flows and becomes an objectified structure when needed or a system and process when that is required needed.Music provides the reverse phonetic of speech while nouns become verbs, adjectives become nouns, etc. and the reverse based upon need. The process here is a Gestalt one. The first person to define the reality being discussed is the one followed no matter what you believe unless you wish to destroy them with a withering criticism. That is the realm of Thesis committees and Ivy league academics.So I find you picky on this one but not convincing. What matter is that Representative Democracy isn't a very good (whatever it is). I think of it as technology, a tool or technique for making government work. Something we invented. A long time ago. Before we really knew what we were doing. I often
Re: y2k bug urgent request
Christoph Reuss wrote: REH wrote: We all notice the immense contradiction between people greedily taking everything they can, declaring that everyone is only responsible to themselves while building an internet of sites where the "butterfly effect" is more the rule than their hyper individuality. For the record: The Internet wasn't built by Gates and his Y2K-bug gang (just as little as it was invented by Al Gore..) -- in fact, M$ "slept" over the Internet for years and then copied the technology developed by Netscape et al. Let's state this clearly: The Y2K problems which various members of this list are now experiencing are due to the Micro$oft dumbware they are using. Hi Chris, Most of the people that I talk to about this says much the same about Gates and Micro-soft. However, for the record I was not speaking of Gates only but the Libertarian Party cell that inhabits almost all of silicone valley. They fund anti community initiatives all over the country and one of their crew just did in fair minority hiring practices in California as "socialist." Generally they are followers of Ayn Rand and follow the new term of "Dynamists" as opposed to the rest of us which they have coined "Stasists".Actually their history is confused and their philosophy is a mongrel mix of romantic and classical 19th century artistic cultural styles. The mix shows that they understand neither. I suspect that the mix of digital mechanics that they use in programming really is what they say, an ignorant mistake based upon a two dimensional view of the world. Their scholar's think tank is funded by that nutty Koch family from Kansas and calls itself the Cato Institute which shows how the media will kiss any body part that smells of money. The Internet was the government's invention based upon a need for scientists to communicate, or so the myth goes. I suspect that they all had something to do with it, Al Gore, Gates, the Army Band and all of the other connected folks. My point was how they are rabidly anti community (Gore excepted) in their politics and how that would make them truly awful when trying to work from network integrated systems when they don't believe in them. The key word is "believe."I would call this a giant double bind for such conflicted folks. They're not using mainframes from the 1970ies, they are using PCs with OSs from the 1990ies, but unfortunately, Gates has "migrated" the Y2K bug to the PC, ALTHOUGH there would have been plenty of storage space and upgrade changes to work with "complete" date formats -- as the MacOS did from the start. On the other hand it could be just money and built in obsolescence. Something that has been done often in the past by big business selling individual products toconsumers. The PC is a lot cheaper than an automobile. M$ also isn't interested in "hyper individuality" on the user's part -- quite on the contrary, total "assimilation" to the "industry standard" (yeah, incompatible with itself) is the goal, with nobody but Gates calling the shots. You mean mass production which is the only productive way togo. But you are confusing the dynamics of the net with the PC itself. My point is still that they have to inhabit the role of the "Trickster" with such a massive commune like entity as the Internet. It is literally vulnerable to anyone. Imagine what it would be like for everyone to be able to change the traffic lights in New York's traffic grid simply by running the clock forward on their car and you get the linkage problem. The only way I can see the net working is if there is standardization of structure with individuation of the process.Those who still think like process when they are responsible for structure are like someone walking into another linguistic culture and speaking only their own language while demanding that the others grow up and speak his language which doesn't fit their culture or personal lives. Dump the M$ crap and get yourself REAL software! Chris This all reminds me of the Cherokee word for automobile, obviously of recent invention. It is dicktulena. If you say the word enough you will get the image of some drunk dick driving down a two lane road, which means to us "watch out!" I'm sure we could come up with some comparable word for this beast. REH ___ "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody." -- BILL GATES, 1981 [just like 8 characters for filenames...]
Re: y2k bug urgent request
Robert, I'm sure there are many people testing their machines. What I am doing now is to be sure that my clock registers the correct time and date, no matter what, if I am sending an e-mail. Like any disease, finding the beginning of it is interesting but not much practical use other than as a lesson. Being connected to each other is a very difficult problem for people on many levels. It has to do with what stops the negotiations on futures situations, like Ed's dealing with the indigenous peoples, and it has to do with the extreme libertarian positions of people in silicone valley who should know better. We all notice the immense contradiction between people greedily taking everything they can, declaring that everyone is only responsible to themselves while building an internet of sites where the "butterfly effect" is more the rule than their hyper individuality. From the impotent cry of the virus maker to the businessman (or woman) trying to adjust their world to the new information reality while swimming in a sea of sharks, we all are extremely vulnerable to each other's welfare. It is no less so as we listen to the government committee that is supposed to arrive at solutions to this rapidly growing, out of control organism careening towards a creator imposed wall set to hit on the millennium. Does anyone ask why the inventors imposed such a limit? Well, yes, but when you do you just get the "aw shucks we're just human and incompetent" explanation. The same people who advocate the negation of all regulations and the incorporation of contracts enforceable only by the most wealthy as the "wave of the future." Who will make business on the illness of computers? This medical model is currently at work in the HMOs in the U.S. and proves that you are only healthy of you can afford a wife to do your home corporation or if you do so little in your business that you can do it yourself or if medicine or computers IS your business, or if you have a major educational institution conning their students into supporting your "research" as long as it is published. Like that great Amateur Charles Ives said before the first great crash of the 20th century. "If you want to do it right then it has to be something other than your job." Ives followed his own advice as he made millions and shaped the Insurance Industry in the 20th century. At night he wrote music at a furious pace, tossing the pages over his shoulder to land in a heap on the floor. In the morning his wife Melody would dutifully gather up the leaves, (kind of like the tons of e-mail that we now write) and place them in a cabinet never to be opened until Ives death and his biographers Braunstien and Smith tried to put the unnumbered pages in order. Ives had a heart attack, from the pace, in his forties at which point he only did insurance until his death in his eighties. He once heard a bit of Bernstein's performance of his second symphony at which point the ringing in his ears drove him away from the radio. His only comment was "It sounded like I thought" and America's only great composer died in a fit of forty year's rage rather than creativity. He knew the logical positivists and he knew intimately the sell out that the artists made to the rich giving up their connection to the "masses" that contained the wisdom that was dribbling away during his day. The same baronic rich, who needed the classical artists to validate their faked aristocracy today, continue their "hero's journey" in silicone valley led by people who wouldn't have a musical thought if it hit them in the face. As they earned their cultural validation with cash, they gave up any type of learning that doing the real thing might bring. It is said that music can kill cancer, in a new book by an MD from New York Hospital. No doubt it should be locked away lest this cancer be healed and the silicone gang lose their key to our pocketbooks. REH Neunteufel Robert wrote: Could it be, that the mails on future-work with wrong dates are disturbing my mail system? I am working with Netscape 3.0 under Windows 3.11. When loadinng down the wrongdated mails Netscape crashed. So I had to uninstall and install Netscape twice. Now I have removed all the mails from the last two month. Netscape seems to work again. What is going on? Are we - is anyone - testing the y2k bug? Could you please tell me how to handle the problem. With best wishes, Robert Neunteufel
Re: Ideological bullshit:[CPI-UA] The Dane and the Wes
According to the Danish therapists that I once shared a therapy supervision group with, "Bullshit" means something different to Danes than to Americans. Their quality of swearing was more calm, usual and commonplace than the American therapists in the group, myself included. I noted the "linguistic difference" and we did some very interesting transcultural "work" on the issues of what expletives meant to the originators as opposed to the translators. For example I wouldn't have any idea how to inflect the French word "merde" which is used with such color by native French speakers. Although the English shit feels closer to the German Sheissen due probably to the connection of "Shiten" of middle English. Close enough for my feeling comfortable substituting Sheistkopf (of Joseph Heller fame) for Shithead when I want to seem effete. But generally we might say that in English the Bull is used metaphorically in the sense of dangerous arrogance, while the Shit, actually could be translated beyond simple body doo and moved to the level of societal garbage. So we might say that the use of the term is not simply an obscene reference to nonsense but moves almost (but not quiet) to the realm of the mythological. In America's multi-cultural and fundamentalist religious atmosphere the use of the term translates from the lower case "nonsense" into the upper case "Arrogant Garbage." In short, old generation Americans, sensitive to the distinctions that language bestows on the various cultural classes, don't take the use of "Bullshit" lightly. Oh yes, if you wish you may use the Lakota word which I am told is "Tatanka Huckapuck" if you wish to seem effete but you should check about the order, I'm not sure which end the Sioux put first. REH John Graversgaard wrote: Dear futureworkers, This illusionary talk about Internet being the future agenda for the fighting poor and workers in a deregulated world with no governing states to intervene in the global market economy, is smart and many people will believe it. In the neo-liberalistic ideology there is only subjects and corporations.the ultimate reign of freedomthe capitalist state is no threat to this project, but supporting transnational capital.unions and workers parties, the defendants of the working population, is offered only a marginal role! It is a fist in the eye of fighting unionists and workers parties, which are fighting against neo-liberalism and unfettered capitalism. Thomas Friedman is cynical person and spokesman for the US imperialism and Doug Henwood calls him precisely "the pop theoretician of the era"where : "Market freedom is implicitly equated with freedom itself, and free competition among monads given an egalitarian spin"(see Dougs article in Monthly Review, july/august 1999). This Thomas Friedman is also the person responsible for the words about the hidden hand of the market that will never work without a hidden fist...McDonald`s cannot flourish without McDonnellDouglas, the designer of the F-15. What is needed is a renewed discussion on reform/revolution, not ideological bullshit from an arrrogant academic from his privileged and paid position at New York Times. John Graversgaard, labour inspector and psychologist Aarhus, Denmark homepage: http://hjem.get2net.dk/graversgaard Michael Gurstein wrote: Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 23:26:55 + From: Kerry Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CPI-UA] The Internet Solution for Workers' Rights Occasionally Tom Friedman gets the picture: http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/073099frie.html July 30, 1999 FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN The New Human Rights In this post-totalitarian world, the human rights debate needs an update. While Americans are focusing on issues of free speech, elections and the right to write an op-ed piece, people in the developing world are increasingly focused on workers' rights, jobs, the right to organize and the right to have decent working conditions. Quite simply, for many workers around the world the oppression of the unchecked commissars has been replaced by the oppression of the unregulated capitalists, who move their manufacturing from country to country, constantly in search of those who will work for the lowest wages and lowest standards. To some, the Nike swoosh is now as scary as the hammer and sickle. These workers need practical help from the West, not the usual moral grandstanding. To address their needs, the human rights community needs to retool in this post-cold-war world, every bit as much as the old arms makers have had to learn how to make subway cars and toasters instead of tanks. "In the cold war," says Michael Posner, head of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, "the main issue was how do you hold governments accountable when they violate laws and norms. Today the emerging issue is how do you hold private companies accountable for the treatment of their workers at a time when
Y2K
I've been listening to the government on Y2K committee. Maybe Nostra what's his name had something. The don't have any idea and they are doing nothing. REH
Re: Canadian Indian Claims
I said: First, it is NOT the issue you are describing. It is the abrogation of legal contracts that were ignored by looters and brigands who found their way into the government. Many of those people's children today are living off of the fruits of that theft. Brad replied: Opening up Pandora's box (snip) The issues here seem to me complex, but simply punishing Nazis' children or people who bought houses on putative former Indian territory, thinking they had clear title, doesn't seem to me to be the answer. Nor do I. But the Germans evidently disagree since they have paid reparations to survivors families. They obviously agree with Kant or maybe he was just clearly within the best ideals of their culture. But the best we get from the Christians is an "Oops, it was bad and we're sorry about that." I believe the answer to be found in Governments protecting their citizens by paying their debts. In the case of the Black Hills which is more to the Lakota than Jerusalem is to the Jews, I think there is only one answer and that is to become Hitler or to get out and let them have their sacred lands. They are just as stubborn as the Spanish. The Lakota have the only Amnesty International recognized political prisoner in American Prisons. And the government is turning him into a poet and a Mandela. Self destructive. They one the only war against the U.S. then the government took the Lakota General Red Cloud to the East Coast and showed him the masses of populations. His response was like an American when China entered the war in Korea. "They are like the leaves on the Trees." It broke him but not the Nation's spirit. Poor they are but not of spirit. It will ultimately be the American people who lose that one. It always seems that the war is hopeless. Although when my Grandfather bought a mountain top in Tennessee and started a Cherokee community there, where the people spoke Cherokee and functioned like a small corporation, there was a lot of resistance from the locals. It was illegal to practice our religion until 1978 when Congress wrote the Freedom of Religion Act for Native Americans, but my Grandfather had found a way around it by forming and incorporating a church called the "Temple of the Great Spirit." From Tennessee he spread it out to the seven surrounding states and made it possible for all Indian people to use the structure as a legal protection from the law. (What's in a name?) But this is a much longer story so let me just say that the family of a local powerful Senator in Tennessee connected to the Railroad "discovered" coal on that mountain and also discovered an older title to the land that my Grandfather's legal title search had not. Of course they simply strip mined everything and my Grandfather lost his community, his home and his business. He had a store and restaurant along the local highway. He was a Master Chef who had been one of the chefs for the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. He lost that too to the lawyers in the fight. So my point here Brad is that the system is not challenged when a White Man loses his land to such a thing. They just say that the right to private property and deeds is supreme. And it is too bad for the individual. That was what they said also about my Grandfather. But when it is an Indian claiming an older deed that is different. You should read the front page articles, I'm sure they are still searchable on this year's NYTimes about the mineral royalties owed to our people in Oklahoma. They pay out five bucks a month for a working oil well on Indian property because the oil companies can lobby the government or they just drive their trucks up to the spicket and steal it. So your complaints ring more than a little hollow to me. Brad said: If one wishes to enlist the aid of the children of the exploiters in helping bring about conditions of more *universal* justice, it seems to me that they [the children of the exploiters] need to see themselves as benefitting from the solution, *as well as* helping the victims. And, again, I think the ultimately nihilistic notion of *blood feud* (and related consepts) is relevant here. Blood feud is between individuals, families or clans not governments. This is an issue of sovereign governments. When in the government it is called "rule of law." Brad said on jobs: It seems to me that the issue is how to minimize the cases of *anybody* losing a job to anybody else. The only problem I see here is similar to that of two [wo]men lusting after one [wo]man: In thos cases where a job can only be done by one person, then some people will necessarily be disappointed (astronomers may face this problem in "getting time" on the best telescopes, e.g.). Corporate jobs are notoriously over-staffed and inefficient. I have had people working for corporations spend many hours on projects that they sold to me, using the corporation's own technology, and were still
Re: Canadian Indian Claims
Victor, I think I answered all of this in my post to Brad. I think that it is strange for economists to mix responsibility for felonies up with financial responsibility for illegality in the observance of valid contracts between large political and corporate entitites. Even an artist such as myself can separate the two.If someone comes afterwards and joins a company that has committed and benefitted from an illegal act then the company still owes the debt and if that late comer is a part of the company and is benefitting from that relationship they also owe a part of that debt. Why is that so hard to understand? It feels a little slippery when one flows so easily between corporate and individual responsibilities. It is the government's responsibility to repay their citizens for any loss due to their illegality at another time, not the people who were victims of that illegality. Valid contracts also have nothing to do with old battles and wars won and lost although the Irish have been fighting that one out for 400 years and as I told Brad, Columbus was able to come to America because the Spanish resisted the Moors and others for 700 years until they were finally strong enough to reclaim their rights and land. Victor, it just makes more sense to me for us to deal with these issues in a way that doesn't create a 700 year wound that will eventually destroy what has been built. What makes you think that we have any shorter memories than the Spanish? Spain was a multi-cultural society much like the U.S. before the Castillians kicked out the Moors. The Basques are still alive and fighting the Spaniards over things that the Spanish did to them that was as stupid as the Moor's and Jews mistakes in Spain. And today the Jews are fighting the same issues in Israel that happened to them. It just has to stop someplace and ignoring the debts is not the way you do it IMHO. Ray. Victor Milne wrote: If any value including justice is made an absolute with no limitations, we end up with a mess of insoluble complications, and much of what is ultimately solvable benefits the lawyers far more than the victims, as Ed Weick notes. Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Are all whites legally liable to compensate all Indians for the undoubted injustices? Or do we sort it out on the basis of family history? Ed makes a good case that his Central European ancestors had nothing to do with exploiting the first nations. I suppose I could do the same. My German great-grandfather was certainly not a very successful exploiter; in the mid 1870's he was in the workhouse (Victorian workfare) at Berlin [Kitchener], Ontario, and so poor that he literally sold my three-year-old grandfather to a prosperous merchant who wanted to adopt him. Even if we go with collective guilt, we find messy situations that cannot be sorted out. Do we prosecute the descendants of Danes for the extirpation of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the eighth century, which same Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were founded by driving out the Celts? Do the modern Italians have to make reparations for the damn near successful Roman genocide against the Jews under Vespasian (68 A.D.)? Do the modern Jews have to make reparations (and to whom?) for the multiple genocides against Palestinian tribes in the Old Testament period? To cite just one example of many, God is presented as ordering King Saul (ca. 1010 B.C.E.) to commit a genocide against the Amalekites: "This is what the Lord Almighty says, '...Now go attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3) As is well known, the Old Testament records that God deposed Saul because he failed to carry out this order to the letter. However, the genocide was completed in the expansionist reign of King Hezekiah (720-692 B.C.E.) "They [families from the clan of Simeon] killed the remaining Amalekites who had escaped, and they have lived there to this day." All this is NOT meant to suggest that we can ignore Indian land claims or the claims arising out of the World War II Holocaust. It is meant to suggest that striving for absolute justice creates more problems than it solves. In justice as in medicine we need to do a kind of triage, ignoring the cases which are past help, dealing first with the most serious cases which can be remediated (but probably not fully healed) and leaving to the end the minor cases. Victor - Original Message - From: Robert Rosenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: July 29, 1999 10:13 PM Subject: Re: Canadian Indian Claims | If there is no such thing as obligations to past generations, then the | idea of History is nullified. If an action such as a genocide has no | force after a given number of years, then as long as one can get away | with it for the requisite
Re: Canadian Indian Claims
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: Permit me to insert, in medias res, a concern I have: Ed Weick wrote: REH not Ed wrote this Too bad they can't assess liability for lost families, intellectual capital, land use ideas etc. It seems to me that you are using the rules of a divorce without separating. Better you start with the ideas of justice and the rule of law as defined by both groups. The truth is that one group has the power, ED was snipped [snip] How to provide reparations to persons whose lives have been adversely impacted by the exploiters, *without* in turn doing injustice to the persons (such as most of ourselves) who are associated with the exploiting classes but have not themselves done significant exploiting? First, it is not the issue you are describing. It isthe abrogation of legal contracts that were ignored by looters and brigands who found their way into the government. Many of those people's children today are living off of the fruits of that theft. I don't know of any private institution that could not demand recompense, the same as the Jews and the Swiss banks, with compensation for lost earnings and wasted lives.It seems to me that you are not believing in your own system. If not then what? This is, of course, an old problem (reverse discrimination due to "affirmative action", etc.). I have had no problem giving jobs up to people whowere qualified and connected. Whether that connection was family, or friends. Work depends upon belief, loyalty and integrity. As I said I have no trouble losing a job to a person who is qualified, and connected. That includes minorities and women who are now connected. Over the years I have seen plenty of incompetent majority folks getting jobs for no reason other than their connections. I've even trained a few when they found themselves overwhelmed at what their BS had accomplished. I do find them lazy and prone to commit the cardinal sin in the performing arts, they are not dependable. Programs are cast sometimes four years away, with millions lost if not delivered. I would hire a martian that was both dependable and could do the work. I see no reason to hire an incompetent simply because they belong to the majority. But then the Arts like the sports world are a no BS tough assed profession. But let me put it pointedly: What motivation should a person have to help others when there is nothing in it for the person him or herself? For, if *that kind of life* is good for some, then (applying Kant's universalizing logic) it should be good for all, and, therefore, we should help the exploited -- not to have reparations, but to have more deprivation. Could you be more clear here. I am reading twocontradictory messages. I do remember a quote from Kant that said something like "You can never give a gift until you have paid your bills first, anything else is theft." Of course there is the issue of Usury as well which relates to the lack of integrity within the spiritual systems of the majority which makes them dis-loyal and undependable. "Who cares who their mother is if they can't shoot the basketball." Or maybe they should come do some of that high metal work with the Mohawks. We'll see how good they really are 54 stories up with no safety rope. And then there is Y2K. I ran my computer ahead and if it is any indication we have been given a blow by the over-complexed that will cost lots of money and give lots of jobs to those who are not paying. Another popular idea I find dubious is providing reparations to the living for the harms done to the dead. Should a [black, indian, etc.] M.D., lawyer, university professor, etc. be paid reparations for the harm done to his or her ancestors, who, being dead, are presumably beyond the ability of earthly things to affect them any more? Legal contracts don't stop at death unless theysay so. The contracts with Indian people in the U.S. said as long as the water flows and the grass grows. And you and I are both legally responsible for those contracts whether we were born or not. But the spiritual issue of the country's identity as a good force in the world or at least in our citizen's eyes is more important to me. Other wise I have to teach my children their country is a sleazebag. Brad, is there not a civil contract to have a society that works?Making such a talented minority as the Blacks, in spite of the racist rhetoric from the bully class, mad as hell and holding them back seems guaranteed to put them in the same place as the Italians, the Irish, the Jews who resorted to organized crime. The Blacks are too many to be held down for long and it is to the advantage of our European brothers who have been patronizers for the last 100 years to help out the Black class. Class warfare just doesn't work in the U.S., there is that sticky constitution that is pretty rickety as it is. I can see the French and others delighting in
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors -- Free Trade nurtures Culture
Hi Brad, Thanks for your post. I'm working on my return but it will be a little while. As for monoculture I would say that it is not so much that they had corn soup but that the culture of McDonald's may or may not be close to the Japanese and the issue is whether the Japanese can absorb McDonalds and allow it to be a flower on the Japanese trunk or whether it is toxic to the whole. I suspect that the Japanese are flexible enough to make a McDonald's "Japanese" and still enjoy their own considerable appetite for their own fast food. But I don't know the answer to that. The Japanese in music are kind of like the Italians. They have the same intensity and belief in their own answers as the bel canto has in its. Also like the Italians they have a rather bad history with the giants next door. We could relate the rape of Nanking to the Roman Church's relationship with the Albagensians when real travel became efficient and safe enough for the Pope's Armies to control the minds of what are now the French. Ultimately the French culture triumphed and Roman Catholicism in France is French and not Italian. However, they still don't tolerate Christian diversity very well, or so my Baptist Missionary cousins tell me. McDonald's in France is another issue. The French cuisine has begun to heal my daughter along with the Doctor's herbs which are coordinated with her diet. He is a five star french chef himself. McDonald's and all fast food is totally at odds with the French methods of food combining and with what they call "eating to live" rather than "living to eat". ( They have the same attitude about work.) He is teaching her to "eat to live" so that she is watchful of whether the chemistry of the nutrients work together or not. He says most of this fast food is like pissing into your gas tank on your car. And yet that is exactly the food that American Private Enterprise sells our schools. It would be more easy if my daughter were orthodox Jewish and ate only kosher food than eating lots of vegetables with the proper relationship to carbohydrates, etc.. in her current "fast food" school. The TV actress Suzanne Summers has written a couple of books about food combining that she learned in France after the standard gym health food diet went to her stomach once she past fifty, and wouldn't go away. Food combining became necessary if she was to continue to work as an actress. They wouldn't hire her with the weight gain. But most of all the diet just makes you feel better. Now the issue for McDonald's is not does it taste good and is it easy but does it work in your fast paced life of "living to work" in this world, as the energy supply, or does it just gum up the works. Like the cigarette manufacturers of a generation ago using Doctors to sell poison, the fast food entrepreneurs are trying to get our children hooked early by selling in the schools under the old fashioned "American diet" rules. A diet that I met once again in the hospital but is generally discredited. Not by the scientists but by the HIV community that has had to eat properly to live longer once they got the bug. This is like the MDs who claimed that Alexander and other somatic methods were fads until their million dollar athlete customers began to break down more quickly than the ones trained by practitioners who worked with dancers. Suddenly you met all of the MDs at Pilates and in the Alexander Center. They had to change because their million dollar athletes sued a couple of them for incompetence. I found that the great American diet was alive and well the other day with my dietition at the hospital. The turning point for me was when my company was doing some very complicated rehearsals. At five o:clock they all took a short break and went to McDonalds in order to be back rehearsing at six. It was strange, they simply couldn't do the work after eating there. After that they brought their own food. The clincher was when I had a wonderful rehearsal with a Bach cantata and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble. Took a liesurely burger at the local fast food restaurant and had NO voice when I returned. Something in it caused my cords to swell. It was the first and last time that I ever did that. Well I guess you have to beware if you are going to be a buyer in this barbaric free market society. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: May I for once be openly cynical? Christoph Reuss wrote: On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. [snip] The above notion that "picturesque customs" come and go, and always did so, ignores what's fundamentally new in the current
Re: Canadian Indian Claims
Too bad they can't assess liability for lost families, intellectual capital, land use ideas etc. It seems to me that you are using the rules of a divorce without separating. Better you start with the ideas of justice and the rule of law as defined by both groups. The truth is that one group has the power, just as with the Kurds or the Bahais in Iran, and the other group doesn't even exist except as a continuing image and a tumor in the empathy of those who continue to benefit from the injustice. The problem with such tumors is that they either make the person inhumane or they eat at the identity until something terrible happens that releases the toxin. Something like a Holocaust, a Nuclear war or a plague to give the dominant population the same experience. Often such unconscious functions are masked by contemporary economic, religious or political myths and the prove tenacious and impossible to stop even when the conscious story is removed. The unconscious is rarely probed for a whole culture. I've always felt that the story of Noah was an example of a culture doing that. Noah of course was furious for some deep unknown reason. A reason so deep that he had to spend some time back in the water contemplating the meaning of his unconscious connections with his spirituality. At one point Jesus said that someone would have to go back inside his mother's belly (the water) before he could change those motivations. But after the catharsis, plague, war or whatever things change. After that they go on, just as the Romans did with the Etruscans. The Christians have a history of absorbing groups like this and maintaining certain images. That is not unlike the Iroquois who rescued a nation that they had defeated and nearly destroyed. The took in the survivors and incorporated their ceremonials into their own tradition. That kept them from feeling bad I guess. It worked for the Church with the Mithrians and the Italians with the Etruscans. The Pope's hat is Mithric and the bull fight is the old ceremony to kill the bull which they then hung above the door to let everyone walk under while they received the power in the blood from the slain bull. The Spanish and the French have kept the fight but I think the French no longer kill the bull. Regards, REH Ed Weick wrote: In a posting yesterday, I made the point that in Canada "we've tried to deal with it via an Aboriginal claims process which is intended to define and make explicit the Aboriginal rights entrenched in our Constitution as these apply to particular groups. This is not a fully satisfactory process since it applies mainly to Aboriginal people who did not come under treaty during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and whose rights have not therefore been defined. These people are considered to have 'outstanding claims'." This is known as the "comprehensive claims process". I should have mentioned that there is a parallel process for Indian people who have treaties but can make the case that certain provisions of their treaties have not been honored or have been violated. This is the "specific claims process", One specific claims case with which I have some familiarity deals with lands in Saskatchewan. The Indian Bands of Saskatchewan signed treaties in the 1870s well before Saskatchewan became a province in 1905. Lands and resources were not transferred from the federal government to the Government of Saskatchewan until the 1930s. They were transferred on condition that the Province fulfill all outstanding land-related treaty obligations. The Province did not do so. The result is a recent, and I would surmise, still continuing step-by-step, band-by-band, process of determining how much additional land the Indian people are entitled to and how much monetary compensation this might require in lieu of land. Ed Weick
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors second of II
This is a long document. If you are not up for it, then accept my apologies and skip it. REH Well Ed and Keith, if I don't answer these things then people believe they are true. And there is a lot of just plain old economic paternalism in your post. Consider how there is very little systematic consistency in economic thought. When systems are consistent within themselves that is the beginning of their usefulness. Of course too much consistency makes "stale" also. But an inner coherency is the beginning of knowing whether a system will be coherent with reality. The wars of the 20th century have been between competing economic systems. I believe when "conversion" is the only solution, (sort of a philosophical monopoly as the only answer), then the system is immature. There is an inner insecurity and inconsistencies within the system itself. Capitalism's biggest nightmare was when the "simplicity of Communism as the only competitor" gave way to "terrorist" complexity. Once again we are in the merchant wars of the 18th century with the same language being used as was justification for defeating the Chinese Emperor and making opium addicts of millions of Chinese. Keith, what I hear you saying, applied to the Chinese situation, would be that destroying China's sovereignty in order to open their market to opium was all right in the ultimate scheme of things. Is that correct? I would say when systems are so immature that they must convert other systems, to the monopoly of their idea, they have a very low probability of non-destructive, holistically wise action. (after reading Ed's most recent post) Yes Ed, the Aztecs worshipped those same destructive Gods also. And their Pochtecas (export businessmen) didn't function all that differantly from ours, while Huitchilopoctli and Tlaloc were the gods paralleling both Darwin and agriculture. They did abuse their neighbors, as you pointed out, in their immaturity and their neighbors did march against them but it is a mistake to say that was what turned the tide against them. It is also a mistake to believe that the brutality of the Aztecs appalled the Spanish Christians. You can't put tongues in cheeks on paper. The "night of tears" proved the Spanish and their allies could not win the war by military means. It was what William McNeill pointed out about the 98% number for smallpox that swung the balance in the direction of the Spanish.When the warriors met for healing in public ceremony, unarmed, the four hundred Spaniards slaughtered them as they had done earlier with the Cholulans. Because they were sick they couldn't fight back. They were not as weak normally as the priests of Cholula but the illness destroyed the entire infra- structure of the city. One should never forget that You are speaking of people who would run to the coast for fresh fish, would fast for nine days without food or water (I know its hard to believe but again it is well documented). A people whose soldiers, (not the ones who fasted), could run anyplace in the entire empire in a couple of days. So there has been a lot more research done since your sources put the pen to paper. For example, much has been made, in the past of their failure to use wheels and their lack of an animal to pull a cart if they did. That this held the Aztecs back technologically. They knew of both the Llama and a cousin that could have served. The people of Mexico refused to use the Llama because it had hooves that tore up the soil. They didn't use wheels for anything but toys for the same reason. The soil was and is sandy and very thin top-soil but when the Spanish arrived they saw a virtual paradise. It is only since the horse and wheel became a part of that environment and the church banned the Aztec farming methods with plants like Amaranth that the system collapsed and much of it is desert today. I would also say that in the "stories" about the farming methods of the forest dwellers (called "slash and burn") they also have been ignorantly maligned. You never read about the way that the fields are returned to the forest over a fifteen year period with deliberate plantings of forest healing plants that will feed and heal the hunters at a later time. Villages are moved every fifteen years. No one talks about the farming methods of the peoples of highland Peru either where the Science Times of the NYTimes pointed out several years ago that their canal method of raised fields enriched by fisheries in the canals had the greatest yield per acre and per worker of any fields in the world . But it is hard to do and does not fit well with Western cultural beliefs. The same reason commercial wild rice is so awful. They insist on cutting the stalks when they harvest it and so it never matures. The French "raised fields" use some of the same methods. Since the Iroquois have traditionally used the same I would be interested in knowing whether the French learned it from them or
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors ed keith
First: Ed Weick wrote: Ray, I do accept your point, but I was not concerned with the arts when I used the term 'romanticize'. I simply meant that one must avoid portraying aboriginal Americans, or any people, as having a special wisdom or nobility -- as being "the noble savage". The Noble Savage was a philosophy of Rousseau. He was primarily talking about the educational practices of the Iroquois which was far superior to the European practices which considered the child as a little adult with a vindictive spirit which had to be broken in order to become civil. That is now emerging again because they have that dualism virus. Saints or sinners, virgins or whores and all that rot. Rousseau who was a composer/violinist , writer, and a terrible parent himself, changed the educational practices of Europe from caning to what it is today. Maybe out of guilt for his own children abandoned to the foundling home? (see Mike Hollinshead's latest book) Meanwhile in America the European practice of sending children to prison is reviving. That is not Indian and has always been an anathema to us. The "Law of Blood" the traditional law of the Southeastern peoples is more just but also includes familial responsibility more than current law. An interesting read in this law thing is Rupert Ross's "Returning to the Teachings, Exploring Aboriginal Justice" (Canadian) or "Fire and the Spirits, Cherokee Law from Clan to Court" by the Oklahoma Cherokee Rennard Strickland. As the current dominant culture here slowly erodes justice into litigeousness, the Law of Blood is re-emerging and groups of private cultural police are becoming more viable. This happened with the Italians, and the Hispanics and is happening now with us. I view this with alarm, because it is a breakdown of the social contract. The dominant culture has used the police to batter and abuse our people and today holds Leonard Peltier, a Lakota man illegally brought from Canada with fraudulent FBI documents and tried by crooked government agents simply because they had to "settle the score" when two of the agents abusing the traditional elders were killed as a result of their actions. Amnesty International lists Peltier as the only political prisoner in America. I don't agree that he is the only one but he certainly is one of the reasons for the breakdown of authority amongst minorities in this country. Our people have very long memories. Life seems to mean more to us than most since we don't forgive and forget. We believe that theft of children, land, mineral rights, religion and opportunities are not forgiven when a man's children or grandchildren still benefit from the original theft with no recompense to the victims. Even the German government and now the Swiss banks are paying the descendants of the Holocaust. That is an honorable Cherokee thing to do. But if I may be allowed to say this once more: 1. There was nothing noble about the child rearing practices of Europe compared to the Americas. The real expert on this is Mike Hollinshead on this list. He has done marvelous research on this and has written about it. 2. The same is true of city and private sanitation practices. When the Nova Scotia reconstructed old Louisburg they included the smells and the poor sanitation. The Micmacs refused to stay overnight in the original town because it made them sick. Also no self respecting deer would come within a hundred miles of that smell. So the Micmacs could starve if they absorbed that "human" smell. 3. Indian farming practices have changed the way the world looks at food. That food freed the beast in the European breast to move large armies while being able to feed them. It was the potato that traveled with the armies of Europe. The potato and the discovery of canning was what made it possible for Napoleon to reach Moscow. Without it they would have had to pillage their way there and such practices were what so destroyed the countryside that armies in the past were never helped by the peasants. The potato changed all of that. The Incas developed over 200 varieties of potatoes in their agricultural science. I've already mentioned long fiber cotton which before the Aztecs was considered the clothing of Kings in Europe. After Cortez, the common soldier could wear a cotton shirt. Much lighter and less abrasive between the legs than wool. Could march further. 4. Indians had a whole life just the same as Europeans but you make a basic mistake. If I may put it into another more artistic context. In the 19th century there were thousands of opera houses and companies across America, grounded in their communities and supporting both local talent and touring companies. Today there are a few hundred who only present two to three productions a year where there were formerly thousands of vital full time ones. Only now, as a result of a change in the way historians look at what is valued, is that information about
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors I of II
Ed, Your comments about romantic are confusing to me as an artist. Romanticism has a highly specific meaning to me. Emerson for example was a romantic, does that mean that his observations are untrue or untrustworthy? The root of the word in Art goes back to the Greek duality of Dionysus vs. Apollo. Dionysus defined form from content while Apollo defined content from form. Frank Lloyd Wright who developed an organic architecture, build from the ground where it sat, allowed the form to proceed from the meanings of the surroundings. In Japan, the surrounding content of an earthquake prone area demanded a new form built upon the specific needs of that area. The building survived the earthquakes of the region because Wright was a romantic. He paid attention to the content and let the form flow from its needs. Sometimes he failed, like at Falling Water where it seems he didn't put in enough steel in the cantilever but on the other hand the contractor added steel and made Wright's design heavier so who knows? But in the Johnson's Wax building and the Price Tower as well as the Imperial Hotel, he succeeded brilliantly.Not bad for a romantic. Romanticism appreciates the power of nature and its basis as the root of all human creativity. The Environmental movement is a Romantic movement with the economic monetarists being a classical one. Beethoven was the beginning of romanticism in music and was followed by Brahms, Wagner, Wolf, Schubert, Schumann. "One of a kind" those folks. Ives was a Romantic as well. Romantics consider tradition to be a part of the scene that the art must spring from. Phillip Johnson is a romantic while Mies Van der Rohe was not. A romantic can appreciate both Johnson and Mies while it is difficult for that to flow the other way around. So I love Mozart although I find him a little tight assed at times. I would prefer a little more complexity but then I have Schoenberg and Puccini for that. As well as the southern drum but more about that in a post that I have spent time thinking about. Henry Ford was a classicist. He made his functions to fit his forms. They had to be simple clean and elegant like a production line. The real point here is that mass production and economies of scale are classicist while a one of a kind masterwork is romantic in impulse even if it is classicist in form. Artists body form forth from perception of the beat of the world and the shapes of the environment for their own sake. The meaning of that form found in its use is secondary to the truth and exceptional quality of that moment in time and space. That is at its root romantic even if the result is "form defining meaning." So the gist of all of this is that Dionysus without Apollo is like a body with only one hand. The reverse is true as well. So perhaps it would be good to have a romantic economist or two to fill out the synergy. That is a pretty good definition of the natives whose language speaks the opposite of English. Lame Deer said the only Europeans who could understand us were their artists. I tend to agree but add those others who have built the discipline to think like artists. Artists, like traditional Indian Peoples are concerned with mirroring first the balance of the world. I don't mind being called a romantic although I'm pretty good with form as well. That is why I am a teacher and have both company and students with success. I have taken students the classicists have said were too "damaged" to sing and presented them in the great halls with successful careers. My art master was a great black voice teacher who taught Paul Robeson and many of the greatest singers in America. Roberta Flack was his last success before he was murdered. He was a romantic. I feel honored to be considered in the tradition of seers that he represented. The rest of this post is from a friend on another list. lt presents an interesting form. REH === If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, (both north and South) 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read
Re: US Naval War College Y2K
Most interesting. Sounds like an old artist's maxim, "you either can do it or you can't." Now how do you learn to do it? Is it the small bits of information like numbers, writing or other academic standards arrived at through the necessity to teach mass education to massive groups of people? Or is it the large synergistically derived experiences from the kind of ensemble processes that take members of small groups into a greater universe in their thought? I suspect the most massive failure, of which Hubbell's flaw was the harbinger and Y2K is the most inclusive effect, is in the education of the business disciplines. The perceived truth is and was that the market was like a machine that is self regulating if you remove external regulations. Warfield's discussion of the cause of the Savings Loan scandal was the failure of economists, political theorists, self-serving businessmen and both Reagan and the U.S. Congress to COMPREHEND the results of their actions. A failure of competence. Now one will say that economics is an exact science but cutting that mirror for Hubbell was. What could have possessed the businessmen and scientists involved in that process to believe that they could get away with putting such a flawed mirror into orbit? One could also say that NOT putting it into orbit could have scuttled the whole project but that is just the politics of funding. It does not address the issue of why the mistake was made and why they didn't rectify it with the second mirror that had been cut as a back-up to the first. Incompetence and greed. So much for competence rising to the surface of competition. That is obviously too complicated a situation to be so simply explained. There is such a thing as incompetence and there is, in spite of western science's love of simplicity (they call it "elegant") such a thing as "over simple." Which brings us to Y2K. The report says that it will demand the kind of excellence in thought that is required of a concert pianist or a member of the Super 300 International Opera Ensemble. Considering that it is considerably easier for almost anyone to finish a physics degree( when compared to the millions who train and apply for that group of 300 chosen from worldwide competition and judged by the openness of public performance) one would think there would be more American physicists. But Americans have found that physics is too hard for a people whose role in the world is to create consumption and we are now hiring Chinese and Russian physicists and pretending surprise when others have the bomb as a result. I think this is the reason that Clinton let it go on for so long. How surprising to find himself once more blamed for doing what TJ Rogers and the other genius businessmen of silicone valley had been urging all along. Now they are super-funding the governor from TEXAS! They didn't want American physicists, they were too expensive, better to have a leaky Russian or Chinese. Better still to have a Democrat to blame that on before you flood the market with Russian immigrants. (By the way, it is only the Russian scientists who come cheap. Their artists are hard bargainers and many have priced themselves out of the market to the American Singers good fortune.) So I find the Naval report to be too optimistic. I think the seductive power of cafe talk on the web and a general impulse to laziness portends something much more serious than just incompetence. Instead I think it smacks of a "Doctor making his patients sick with medicines meant to cure them so his practice will continue." That for me is the gist of most of this future of work talk. I don't think much of the intent of most human endeavor. Especially the "free" market. So I believe that the money will continue to define the difference between classes and that psychology and political intrigue, politely called connections, will have a great deal more to do with the future than just not knowing how to stop mistakes. (Remember it is only poor Indians whose mother's drank that have fetal alcohol syndrome. The NY City elite and their group all admit to drinking themselves silly while Diana was pregnant and yet their children write books and work in business and academia. That probably is because Indians were "less immune to European alcohol" or it means that we have mentally compromised folks running the country because of family ties. Will it change? Not as long as the "French drink.") But I hope the report is true, however I fear that it is just another instance of military projections. Wars are easy, they destroy things to make it necessary for their replacement and stimulation of jobs. Sort of like building your hospital in the middle of Tornado Alley like Oral Roberts has done in Tulsa. Sooner or later probability will overcome hope and wishful thinking. It probably comes from not having to earn all of those donations that built his school and teaching hospital in the
Re: On being snotty
Hey guys, You did get the context of Ed's statement right? I've been giving Ed a lot of guff about his economic theories effecting how he reads history apart from the facts but I would never see him as an arch-conservative neo-fascist. Or a Clintonian political thermometer. Ed, you were not speaking for yourself but for the workfare folks right?If that is the case I agree with you about them. They belong to the same people that Brad spoke about in the African village except they were the ones who wanted to keep the mutilation "because it is traditional, builds strength in the women and keeps down their hyper sexuality leaving we men time to tell our stories and drink beer."* *Shakespeare In The Bush" by Laura Bohanan NY Mus. of Nat Hist. pub. See Ed, how much more fun it is when you have a reference for your statement. It takes away the damned simplicity of this typewriter and allows you once more to get credit for something other than the "brain of a sheep."** **Heyomist Storm: Sheep are "beings who know only one place at a time." from "Song of the Heyoka" Harper Row REH "All the world's a Synergy, you just have to be willing to get out on the Supra-Limbic." Ilana Rubenfeld (in case anyone wants to know, this is the way we Cherokees talk to one another, REH) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: Richard Mochelle wrote: The day of letting those snotty little welfare cheats take our hard earned tax dollars without pretending to work is over. Ed Weick Don't we loathe the freeriders!! Racehorse breeders, stockmarket jockeys, golf champions, boardroom junkies, etc. a vast army of snotty little welfare cheats (if we read welfare as meaning the immeasurable benefits of global cooperation, technological heritage and ecological providence). Let's not kid ourselves that all moneymakers and taxpayers are 'in truth' working, let alone working 'hard'. [snip] This reminds me of a little vignette from my child-rearing (which, by now, you all surely have tired of hearing me elaborate on how "bad" it was...). One day, when I was in the back seat of our 195x Ford middle-of-the-line model 4 door sedan, driving somewhere, I referred to something as being: "lousy". My parents in the front seat immediately instructed me that I was never to use that word. Over the years, I increasingly came to appreciate that the reason my calling some indifferent external object "lousy" upset them so much was that, "subconsciously", they all too well knew how easy it would be to change the referent of that word from that indifferent external object to their whole form of life: indeed, they may have even intuited that the "indifferent external object" was really a stand-in for *them*, already -- that, like the chicken pecking at the ground, I was calling [whatever indifferent external object] "lousy" BECAUSE I was not free to call them and their whole "world": lousy. \brad mccormick -- Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors
How's your library Keith? The issue with all of this is that it is inaccurate. I grew up in an indigenous community. My sister is Aleut and an actress with the likes of Peter Brook, Andre Serban etc. has played Clytemnestra with them, helped bring a Aleut Antigone from Upik to New York City and critical acclaim. There is a lot of misery and most of it has to do with the private sector of non-indian society. They preach and sell laziness. It is easier to live in a pre-fab house than to deal with snow but it is not necessarily smarter. It is also easier to become an addicted consumer surrounded by a culture that raises buying to a sacred act. We have a wonderful piece from Alaska written by the winner of the Lerner and Lowe Award on Broadway from a prize winning book about the Inuit on a rock in the Bering Sea called King Island. They had made both Christmas and the Native Religion a part of their lives and one year they carried their long boat over the thousand foot rock to the other side of the Island to save Christmas. It was threatened by the ship bringing the Priest and supplies being cut off by the ice. David Friedman and Deborah Brevoort wrote the book and music and presented it to a group of Broadway folks. One person found great problems with the fact that there was so much positiveness in the work and thus no "conflict." I caught her at the elevator and explained that the Inuit consider positiveness as essential to keeping the blood flowing so the body won't freeze. There is a famous song of the Inuit sailor cut off from the land by a 100 mile iceberg broken away and pushing him out to sea. It begins with "The great sea has cast me adrift" and describes the situation and ends with "and fills my heart with joy." His discipline would not allow him to take the negative route. She informed me that she knew better because her husband had spent a couple of weeks in Alaska. What could I say? REH Keith Hudson wrote: Regarding Ed Weick's latest contribution: What is sad about 'progress', or whatever one wants to call it, is that something is gained but something is also lost. Some fifty years ago, the Inuit of northern Canada still lived migratory lives on the land. An anthropologist friend told me that on northern Baffin Island, where he spent a year among them, they had some seventy different words for snow. Inuit now live in fixed villages. They still venture out in hunting parties, but do not spend nearly as much time on the land as they once did. Many young Inuit can barely speak their language, let alone name snow in seventy different ways. In our Indian villages, I've seen old grannies scold children in the native language, which the children no longer understand, and besides, it's alright to ignore old grannies now. At one time, it was strictly taboo. The gains have been many. The ill-mannered children stand a much greater chance of survival to a ripe old age, being educated (as we understand education) and earning a good living than their ancestors of even a generation ago. Yet much that is irreplaceable has also been lost. That is the price people pay, usually without knowing it, for something they think we are getting without any real idea of what it is. I'm not so sure about all this. I used to think the same as Ed. I think, now, that this point of view romanticises our ancestors. I rather think that if their society had been as natural/stable/satisfying as is often implied then it would have been a great deal more robust when faced with modern society. True, in many places, indigenous society and modern settlers both needed the same land and couldn't possibly co-exist, but in many other places the original culture could have survived more or less intact if they'd wanted it to. Instead, when faced with all the gewgaws and temptations (including strong liquor) that modern man had to offer, then most indigenous societies folded up quite quickly -- voluntarily, as it were. For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. In England during the last couple of centuries the typical medieval village has entirely disappeared and there has been much wailing and nashing of teeth about its demise. But in its place today a vigorous and attractive new type of village is emerging -- together with modern equivalents of ancient customs. The important features of man and society are not the customs and ceremonials but the fact that we are at one and the same time a creature that is capable of being both viciously cruel and selfish but also helpful and altruistic (a form of sensible long-term selfishness). Given a
Re: War, Confucious and the CBD
Ed, I am a private entrepreneur who must examine everything in order to survive, however you could help on this if when you say: Hi Ray, I won't comment on Marx or Keynes except to say that your library book has wronged them both. 1. you explained what you meant about the economists(Marx and Keynes) since you are one. I realize how arrogant it is of me to do this but please accept a civilian's questions. What form of massive government spending is sustainable over a number of years at great cost to the average citizen and yet remains popular? A defensive war perhaps? Keynes = government spending and where does the government spend more? in a war that demands life and death loyalty or prison? Not many would be as blatant or passionate in their questions as we civilians, but perhaps there is a bit of peasant good sense at work here. yes? 2. on the other hand, I want to share a story I was taught in college. My music history course in college taught us that all music began in monody (single melody) evolved through a parallel melody called parallel organum and became counterpoint and then melody and harmony. It began with church chants and ended with symphony orchestras moving out of tonality and into the brave new world of complicated atonality. It makes perfect sense if the world is only Western and began to sing 1500 years ago. Out of one million years of human music and expression, no body questioned that this history made ancient music out of music that was less than one thousand years old.But then the world got smaller and all of those communist universities began to explore the lead of Bela Bartok who became an expert in Hungarian "folk" music and wrote his own modern music around aesthetic ideas found in the folk music. These same ideas were atonal and polytonal and thoroughly up to date but they were truly ancient. The communist universities went out into the back country and listened to peasant women singing and improvising atonal music while they cut the hay in the fields. They played games that were as sophisticated as the most sophisticated modern music and they had been doing it for God only knows how long. But the point here is that although the official story made sense in the limited context of Europe and the church, it was inaccurate. They didn't even acknowledge the gift from the Gypsies with music that traveled with the Jews and blossomed into some of the 19th centuries most interesting and complicated scores. No, instead you got the simplistic jargon that ultimately made both Jews and Gypsies simpletons and parasites on the "true" aryan musical tree. But that wasn't true either. In fact they found those original church chants being sung in Yemen by Jews that had been separated from the rest of the world since before 2,000 years ago. So the chants were Jewish!After WW II the Jews became the excepted international group in the West while the Gypsies were outcasts. (They had to register with the police in New Jersey simply to travel and their banks were constantly raided and robbed by the police in the U.S., see the "Romany against the city of Spokane" over this and other issues of prejudice) Even though the Gypsies lost 75% of their population in Dachau, there is only one Gypsy representative to the Holocaust museum in Washington and they had to fight for that. On the other hand, although many of the original Communists were Jewish in Russia, the Russians embraced the Gypsies and made outcasts of the Jews. Gypsies had their theaters and were found in all of the performing arts organizations. They also were able to travel freely from one country to another while the Jews were actually prisoners in their own homes if they wanted to leave the country. My point to this story is that it was based upon models in the minds of people in the East and West and very little of it is based upon historical fact. Wish, but not fact. Now let us take your economic story. I can give you a lot of facts on this because I found that my research didn't match the official stories and so I had to dig. Both Lawrence W. Levine and Richard Crawford have written studies on much of this and I would recommend them for their erudition into the social contract that has created the current mess. I don't have time to fill it out and they have done it better than I anyway. Levine's Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard are called "Highbrow/Lowbrow, The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy In America" Harvard pub. and Crawford's work is described in the latest issue of the NEH Humanities magazine. He is editor for the NEH for the forty volume series of Music in America and is just finishing an earthshaking new American musical history textbook for University use. It will churn the butter. What I, of course like, is that he has documented the same discoveries that I have also made, but not from the place of the performer but of the scholar. You
Re: War, Confucious and the CBD
Robert, My library book on Keynsian economics says basically the same thing. If your economy is in trouble start a war. (I can hear the apologist's keyboards rattle, "Marx wasn't an economist and Keynes didn't mean it.") One of the things that no one would consider (because it doesn't fit, into the "exploiters as progressives" mode), would be to return to the greatest use of Iron in the 19th century. Turn those swords and old automobiles into piano frames! We have such "ideas" about giving (or not) money away to that 40% or so of the population, that will not have the regular (exploitation and pollute) jobs, that we would rather argue about the meaning of drudge work than to come up with work that delights the eye, caresses the ear and makes the idea of tearing an eye from the socket or an arm from the shoulder acceptable only in a play. Better crime in the street from abused populations or war to lower that population and offer puberty rites than to have a play and self reflection on that brutality. Better to have a burial then have Wilfred Owen rise at the end of his poems and take a bow. Yes Brad, these are sacrifices that are like the ones you deplore. But the real sacrifice would have been to have this poet home writing about culture in the way he wrote about war. He could have written the 20th century version of Blake's economic observations: "Where are thy father mother? say? They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil'd among the winters snow: They clothed me in the clothes of death. And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy, dance sing. They think they have done me no injury" And are gone to praise God and his Priest King Who make a heaven of our misery." == Brutality is not legislated away or solved by repression in children. It should be played out on the stage, not the stage of life, but the stage where people, both professional and amateur, can act the great lessons of life and explore the meanings of the composers and poets, the great ideals of their history, their present and their dreams. Since no one seemed to like my last post on this, I will let it go. I have much to do but I find this all very discouraging and more than a little cowardly on the part of those who are at present doing the "naming of the valuables" in society. So I go into lurking with a little Chinese wisdom from a dialogue with that great futurist Confucius: If it happens that one entrusts you with the government, what would you do first? "I would begin with correct definitions!" But that is far afield, Why should the Government bother? "When the names are not correct, then the language does not fit. When the language does not fit, then the actions will not be complete. When the actions are not complete, then civility does not blossom. When civility does not blossom, then authority falters. And when authority falters then the people do not know were to put their hands and feet. Therefore the wise scholar gives names such that language becomes possible, And uses language in such a way that wise action becomes possible. " == "Giving meaning to words is a creative act leading to manifestations in the real world" Winfried Dressler == A public leader needs to be 1. ...in possession of the cultural inheritance. and needs to be qualified to 2. ...participate in the contemporary world. 3. ...contribute to the civilization of the future. John Warfield === As for Michael's Brain Drain, (CBD) America is currently filled with Canadian Culture and performing artists bringing millions of dollars back into the economy of Toronto in particular and Canada generally.It has worked for America's balance of trade payments, I suspect that a smaller country and a smaller population will benefit even more. However Canada has decided to go on the same "profit as the only value" binge that is currently infecting America's heart and brain. So the Canada Council, that jewel of North America, is probably on the way out, in which case you had better be prepared to compete with the giant to your south in the entertainment market place. Remember what happened to that wonderful Canadian "share the profits between projects" producer Garth Drabinsky. He met American "profit is the only value" shareholders and they crashed his empire. It isn't pretty. There are a lot more of your people working in Nova Scotia and around your country in the culture industries than ours are here, primarily because of what was an enlighted attitude on the part of the Canadian people. Where America gives less than a dollar per person to subsidize the arts, the last time I looked, Canada gave several dollars per person and Hollywood and the
Re: Charles Leadbetter -- the End of Unemployment
Chris, that's not cynicism, that's business. One of the reasons they can downsize so easily is because of the excess they hire. All of these exercises with numbers, hours, and work weeks are just more of the same. The size of the company separates you so much from those who truly control the tasks that waste is rampant. After a 13 year experience with academia, I decided not to trust my work to anyone other than myself and my own close colleagues. My wife on the other hand worked both as a manager and as an expert flexible for several of the world's larger companies. I was amazed at how little she really needed to do to complete her job. She loved it however and always gave more than the system required and ultimately cared about having. I'm glad that she is now my GM. I'll take all I can get. REH Christoph Reuss wrote: Brad McCormick wrote: I worked on a big educational website (just a lot of HTML an Javascript -- pretty "simple" stuff, as computer programming goes!), where, every time Netscape came out with a new "maintenance release" of their web browser, it was time for me to find out how it would cause my application to break "this time", so that I'd expect to spend from a few hours to a few days getting back to where I had been before. Well, that's how the guild of programmers makes sure they'll _never_ run out of work. Micro$oft is the master of this particular "art" of "creating" work (and income!). I know of a big corporation that first migrated all their applications from DOS to Unix, and a few years later "back" from Unix to Windows. Some "smart" programmers got really rich of this back-and-forth (or rather, forth-and-back!), without "creating" anything -- just migrating the same applications. Another big company is now desperately looking for some "genius" to "sidegrade" their 600 PCs from Windows 95 to Windows NT (talk about "industry standard"!) -- to later "backgrade" to Windows 00, probably. If other industries would finally "learn" this art, it could be the end of unemployment. ;-) (Who will *pay* this idling nonsense is a different question, of course.) Cynically yours, Chris ___ CORPORATION, n. -- A miniature totalitarian state governed by an unelected hierarchy of officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies. --==(The Cynic's Dictionary)==--
Re: Rifkin, The End of Work/The End of Jobs
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote:
Ray E. Harrell wrote:
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote:
Ray E. Harrell wrote:
[snip]
I'm reminded of a friend doing research on fish behaviorat the New York
Museum of Natural History. He is a
psychologist and quit the team because he said that he
had no way of knowing what the intent of the behavior
was that he had been given to document. How the team
believed they knew but had no way of truly knowing.
Psychologists in general miss the *one subject they could validly
study*: Each of them doing a case study on whatever he or she
happened to be doing at the moment. That could simply be
breathing (or belching), or it could be being-in-the-
middle-of-a-multi-million-dollar-grant-funded-project-to-study-some-
aspect-of-[whoever's: e.g., welfare recipients, school children,
clerical workers, etc.]-behavior. *Not*: Studying the
welfare recipients, school children, clerical workers, *per se*,
but studying the activities in which the psychologist is
here-and-now engaged in, in the lived experience of "studying".
But the historians have not, thank God. That great scholarLawrence W. Levine
wrote a whole book answer to Allan
Bloom's inept but popular polemic "The Closing of the
American Mind". The future will record Levine's superior
documentation but the present is closed to his facts. The
University of Chicago has this great reputation for punctilious
scholarship, but what Levine documents is a riot of opinion
and anecdote with very little genuine scholarship.
I wonder Brad, has anyone ever done a study on all of
this Chicago scholarship as a "second city sibling envy"
expression? Or maybe it fits more the anger of the good
child who did not leave home. Leo Strauss gravitated to
its environment and Bloom said:
"When I was fifteen years old I saw the University
of Chicago for the first time and somehow sensed
that I had discovered my life The longing for
I knew not what suddenly found a response in
the world outside."
In my opinion, this may be the greatest *intellectual* (as
opposed to *material*!) tragedy of
the 20th Century. Edmund Husserl clearly set forth the
problem and the path to its solution, ca. 1935, in his
_The Crisis of European Sciences..._ (Northwestern Univ. Press,
1970), and there are numerous others who have made more
or less the same point, more or less well (Susanne
Langer, Gregory Bateson, C. Wright Mills, the
best "industrial sociologists" such as Philip
Kraft..., Robert Lynd...).
I like Bateson and some Langer but have never been muchdrawn to Husserl.
(snip)
Alas likely also little what *both* makes them feel good *and* does good
for others ("win-win" behavior)! I am not a "fan" of
*sacrifice*! (snip)
Well Brad, in my work "sacrifice" means to make sacred
and only that which is truly sacred would keep us in this
wonderful creative profession and economist damaged
business.
REH
Re: Rifkin - some final words
LEADERSHIP AND COMPETENCY I have typed in portions of an article by the complexity scholar John Warfield with his permission to share. I think it bears on the pedagogy of the first part of leadership, the ability to see the levels of complication connected to the team's incompetencies including a statistical tool for grading levels of complexity and the likelihood of success given the make-up of a team. I also believe this is essential in any discussion on the future of work, including my profession. Warfield comments on the value of accurate data and the wise use of such in this paper on "The Great University." He says that the Great University should be concerned with three things: 1. Putting the learner in possession of the cultural inheritance. 2. Qualifying the learner to participate in the contemporary world. 3. Qualifying the learner to contribute to the civilization of the future. I believe that these are essential to any discussion of the future of work, jobs or anything that moves forward in time and space. I'm typing in a section of this excellent work for your examination. From "THE GREAT UNIVERSITY" 1995 by John N. Warfield, Institute for Advanced Study in the Integrative Sciences George Mason University, Va. "This leads me to the thought that whenever someone makes a generalization, (intended to apply to a broad subspectrum of life), its validity is likely to depend on its space-time span. If I say something that has been valid for most of ... 36 normal lifetimes, it carries some weight, even if it has not been valid for a few recent years. And if I say something that has been valid largely for the western world, it carries some weight, even if it is not valid for the Orient, or for other parts of the earth. And yet we seldom bother to attach space-time spans to our utterances. These ideas introduce my first theme, an Information Scale Proposition (P1): Importance of Scale. SCALE IS IMPORTANT IN DEALING WITH INFORMATION (P1) If something has been valid for 36 lifetimes, it is reasonable to suppose that we have incorporated beliefs and habits drawn from that period of time. But at the same time, it can well be that if we look at the past few decades, i.e., at less than one lifetime, those beliefs and habits have been superseded by new possibilities, even if we are not tuned up to recognize them. And there is another aspect of this Information Scale Proposition. If the information goods with which we deal are constantly constrained by the necessity to package them into a small space-time scale, e.g., pages 8 1/2 x 11 inches in dimension, or into a time interval of 50 minutes, or onto an electronic monitor with a screen 14 inches in diagonal, or in a one-page memo for management (which is all they normally want to examine, no matter what the topic may be, assigning equal weight to corporate-survival material and rest-room keys), or in a 2 minute news flash, we must raise the question as to what is inherently being divorced from our purview by the iterative presence of hundreds or thousands of small-scale events. This brings us to a second Information Scale Proposition (P2) Miscalibration: BECAUSE EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES IGNORE SCALE, INDIVIDUALS BECOME SERIOUSLY MISCALIBRATED IN TERMS OF INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCE. (P2) Repetitive exposure to severely limited information scale; accompanied by repetitive reinforcement of human performance at that scale; engenders gross miscalibration of human self-competence and produces gross, ingrained insensitivity to the impact of information scale; accompanied by a bias in favor of small-scale packages. In simple English, this is what I am saying: in education, students are exposed hundreds of times to small-scale information packets; and they are tested hundreds or thousands of times on their ability to repond to or reproduce such small-scale packets, or inferences based on a few of those small-scale packets; and if they do well in most of these instances, they begin to build and to internalize as habitual behavior the idea that everything they encounter in life is encompassed in packets of that size. They become totally insensitive to the idea that some things that they encounter are well beyond the range of their experience and capacity. They are totally unequipped to know that those large- scale phenomena which they encounter lie far beyond their individual, life-trajectory-llimited, span-of-immediate-recall- limited experience and capacity." == Warfield gives several examples, I will limit it to one due to the time pressure on you and my typing. REH. == "Some of you are sensitive to financial disasters. The recent savings and loan crisis in the U.S., which was precipitated by foolish large-scale legislation enacted by Congress in 1986, is a prominent example showing the impact on taxpayers of enacting legislation that dealt with a situation beyond the natural span of individual mastery,
Re: Rifkin, The End of Work/The End of Jobs
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote:
Ray E. Harrell wrote:
[snip]
Rowe's comments about the ivory tower of economics
resonated well with me because I belong to an "illegitimate"
profession
[snip]
I think Foucault pretty well exposed the nature of professional
"legitimacy" in such books as _Discipline and Punish_, where
he observed that the growth of the social sciences, unlike the
exact sciences of nature (physics, etc.) is not due to their
revealing powerful facts about unalterable reality, but due to their
*creating* lots of powerful social arti-facts, like SAT testing
(to pick one *relatively* innocuous example). By measuring
the reality they have created, they create ever more and
"deeper" of it, and make it seem ever more "natural" to everyone.
This ties in with the Susan George article which documents theculture
that I have known both in Oklahoma and New York
City.
Note that the conservative Congress would rather be known as
fools and provincial louts around artistic sophistication than
give up what the National Endowment of the Arts here in the U.S.
really is up to and means.Numbers are the great contemporary
artifacts and both education and the arts have been crunching,
documenting and publishing the numbers that go counter to the
conservative orthodoxy that George writes about.
Whether it is a President who worked his way from Arkansas to
Oxford and is not only a "great communicator" but a smart one,
or whether it is the numbers that Historian Lawrence W. Levine
notes in his analysis of Allan Bloom's (Closing of the American
Mind) fakery or the fact that so-called private enterprise
conservative magazines have to receive million dollar grants
to survive while arts institutions stimulate 11 dollars for every
dollar raised in fundraising.
These folks don't want a great communicator who "tacks with
the wind" but knows what he wants, anymore than they want
proof of their own inefficiency and lack of imagination being
documented by government agencies. These agencies become
the enemy, representatives of the Liberal Left according to
their story.
Many of the "legitimate" professions are nothing more
than "management science", which definitely manages
people (the object -- a.k.a.: "subject" -- populations),
but is not scientific, and in a way knows this, by making
a point of the objects ("subjects") *not being aware of
wht is being done to them*. Tell a billiard ball the
laws of physics, and its behavior will not change one
iota. Tell a human guinea pig what the purpose of the
experiment is, and they may do all sorts of things which
spoil it.
I'm reminded of a friend doing research on fish behaviorat the New York
Museum of Natural History. He is a
psychologist and quit the team because he said that he
had no way of knowing what the intent of the behavior
was that he had been given to document. How the team
believed they knew but had no way of truly knowing.
[snip]
The only thing we read about the Italian government in our press
is that they change alot and allowed an elected female
prostitute to urinate in Parliment.
I have not heard about this. Do you have details?
I can't remember her name but she was very popular andserved the role of
the jester in a parliament that needed
ridiculous comic relief. Can you imagine our Calvinists
having the good humour to be amused by such a thing?
The Italians have strippers we have Jesse Ventura, the
fake wrestler but the form is the same. Except the media
totally misrepresented the Italians but now elevate Ventura.
Frankly I relate more to the woman.
I do recall that once when I was in Tokyo, there was
a news item about the Prime Minister urinating against
the wall of the Parliament ("Diet") building. It wasn't
really a "big deal" (certainly nothing to censure him for),
and I think Japanese professional men relieve themselves thus
in semi-public fairly often.
[snip]
Instead I would suggest that Frederick Jackson Turner was
on to something with his Frontier theory as motivation, but
that his imagination was too limited. Space, for instance,
can be a tremendous frontier to challenge the human spirit.
[snip]
I believe I have previously reported my observation
about the imaginative horizon of many PhD computer
scientists being bounded by the latest eposode
of Star Trek. No "peregrinatio in stabilitate" for
these couch potatos! Although I also remember one of
the people I worked with at IBM Research posting the
following on his office door (as best I cah
remember):
Three things are not possible:
The desire of the rich for always more,
There is very little sacrifice or creativity to come from theoffspring
of this group.
The desire of the sick for something different,
What would the Doctors do for a living?
And the desire
Re: FW Clinto poverty tour - comments (fwd)
Having grown up on the reservation which was the number one toxic waste dump in America (Super-fund), where the houses just dropped into cave-ins with people in them and where the largest Indian nation West of the Mississippi River and who had owned the state of Arkansas (correct pronunciation Oogapah) was down to 200 people with four language speakers left on the earth, I have a feeling for Clinton or any President visiting Pine Ridge. Since the Oogapah are Southern Sioux, what they called the River Sioux, it is appropriate that Clinton raised and nurtured in the land of the ancient Oogapah should visit the small country where their Northern relatives are still held in a ghetto prison. (Yes I can hear it now: "They don't have to stay, they could move into the city ghetto and really be alone." Right!) Pine Ridge is a place where Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is rampant and where they die young or end up on death row (as in California). Unlike the Fetal Alcohol Syndromes from the last generation in New York who now teaches in the nations colleges and inhabit the board rooms of the family corporations. "Yes dahling, Diana and Lional did drink themselves silly while she was pregnant but only the poor children deserve to be labeled and subject to the 'rule of law.' After all why should we care when THOSE STATES in New England have so MUCH incest. They just ahre that way you know!" (No, it doesn't make sense, why should it?) So I was grateful that this pragmatist who was abused because he didn't share the rigid orthodoxy of the Milton Friedman Kulture Revolution. A man who knew how to "tack" as they say in sailing or "switchback" if you are a climber, finally had the political power to visit Pine Ridge. I do not consider him to blame for the legal bills of his underlings or his playmate. I do not consider their treatment moral and frankly blame those who weat the label of cultural rigidity and bear the subpoenas. The people who complain about the Sioux have never been there and have on more than one occasion expressed to me the opinion that they (the Sioux) deserve what has happened to them. An opinion worthy of Julius Streicher. But that is just my opinion. REH S. Lerner wrote: Excerpt from The Jobs Letter (with permission). So subscription info below V O I C E S -- ON THE CLINTON POVERTY TOUR " In a recent speech, Clinton compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt. Both of them, he said, were "people who were progressive, people who try to change things, people who keep pushing the envelope. "The difference is that Roosevelt was acting at the start of his presidency in a time of economic crisis, and was almost entirely willing to try any means that worked to achieve his ends. Clinton, by contrast, is acting at the end of his presidency in a period almost bereft of economic crisis, and will only try those means that pass muster with the stock markets..." -- Martin Kettle, Washington Diary, The Guardian "It's positive, and long overdue, that Clinton is addressing these issues, but to be saying that you want to deal with poverty while you're calling welfare 'reform' a success is rather disingenuous. While the US welfare rolls have dropped sharply, studies indicate that many have simply joined the ranks of the working poor. They now have jobs that are paying below poverty wages, without benefits or affordable child care; moreover, states have been 'forgetting' to tell them that they are still eligible for Medicaid and food stamps ..." -- Mimi Abramovitz, Professor at the School of Social Work at Hunter College and author of "Regulating the Lives of Women" "It is good that Clinton is going out and calling attention to these issues, but some of the suggestions are flawed. If you build a base of incomes and social and physical infrastructure, then business activity develops, but if you throw business activity in a region where that does not exist, then you have a sweatshop phenomenon. What is needed is housing assistance, public services, money to improve schools and the environment, and income support such as through the earned income tax credit and a higher minimum wage." -- James K. Galbraith, professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, "If it wasn't for NAFTA, hundreds of thousands of jobs would not have left the U.S., creating more poverty. If there were minimal protections for migrant workers, then we wouldn't have the depth of poverty that we have. If North Carolina, where I live, wasn't a 'right to work' state, people could do collective bargaining and have the guarantee of organized workplaces. As it is, they can be fired at will. What you have now are people who are afraid of losing jobs, so they don't push for better conditions and safety at their workplaces..." -- George Friday, a member of the Grassroots Policy Project and a low-income activist. "What the president's tour highlights is that
Ian Richie
Report from the NYTimes 7/14/99 Report Says Profit-Making Health Plans Damage Care July 14, 1999 Related Articles Issue in Depth: Health Care Forum Join a Discussion on Health Care Reform By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG WASHINGTON -- Patients enrolled in profit-making health insurance plans are significantly less likely to receive the basics of good medical care -- including childhood immunizations, routine mammograms, pap smears, prenatal care, and lifesaving drugs after a heart attack -- than those in not-for-profit plans, says a new study that concludes that the free market is "compromising the quality of care." The research, conducted by a team from Harvard University and Public Citizen, an advocacy group in Washington, is the first comprehensive comparison of investor-owned and nonprofit plans. The authors found that on every one of 14 quality-of-care indicators, the for-profits scored worse. But because the researchers favor national health insurance, some questioned their findings. "The market is destroying our health care system," Dr. David U. Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School and the study's lead author, said in a telephone interview. "We have had a decade or more of policies aimed at making health care a business, and they have failed." Investor-owned health plans, which are typically made up of loose networks of doctors, have come to dominate the American medical landscape in recent years. These plans, offered by companies like Aetna, U.S. Healthcare and Cigna Healthcare, last year covered 62 percent of all patients in HMOs, as compared to 26 percent in 1985. Yet most research on quality of care in HMOs has focused on traditional nonprofits, among them Kaiser Permanente, in California, and HIP, based in New York. The new study, which appears this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed quality-of-care data from 248 investor-owned and 81 not-for-profit plans in 45 states and the District of Columbia. These plans provided coverage to 56 percent of all Americans enrolled in HMOs in 1996, the year from which the patient information was drawn. Among the findings: In profit-making HMOs just 63.9 percent of 2-year-olds were fully immunized, as compared to 72.3 percent in nonprofits. Lifesaving beta-blocker drugs were given to 59.2 percent of heart attack patients in for-profit plans, but 70.6 percent of patients in nonprofits got the drugs. Diabetes patients were less likely to receive annual eye exams to prevent blindness in profit-making plans; the figure was 35.1 percent, as against 47.9 percent in nonprofits. The investor-owned plans fared worse, the authors said, even when all other factors, like location of the plan, and whether the doctors were employees or members of networks, were taken into account. While the study had certain limitations -- it did not examine patient outcomes, for instance -- the authors, who paid for the research themselves, said the data were the best available. The study is being published just as the Senate is embroiled in a divisive debate over how to protect patients' rights and regulate HMOs. While the authors say the timing is coincidental, the work is already influencing the discussion. In a statement released Tuesday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who is pushing for HMO regulation, said the research "contains strong new support for HMO reform." But representatives of the insurance industry, which opposes regulation, argue just the opposite. They say the study demonstrates that, even at their worst, health maintenance organizations provide better care to patients than fee-for-service arrangements that were common 10 years ago. "The best conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that managed care is improving the quality of health care for those Americans that are covered by health plans," said Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Health Plans, which represents both for-profit and nonprofit plans. Ms. Pisano also accused the authors of confusing "analysis and ideology." Himmelstein did not dispute that he has a bias. "My bias is that for-profit HMOs kill people," he said. But Eli Ginzberg, a health care
Ian Richie 2.
Objective history, that grand imagined jewel of the Western literary world was given a lesson in Oklahoma last month when the Thunderbeings sent 78 tornados to remind we informationed folks that new is "great." That only the mountains last forever and that the development of individual and community knowledge is the only possible real meaning of life. I asked my Aunt about Morris, the little town where my grandparents are buried and where 98% of the town was lost to the thunderers a few years back. She said, its sooo beautiful.Everything is new now. But will America be comfortable when everything is lost. What will be the carrier of the knowledge now that the songs are banal and the singers are so fragile? REH TECHNOLOGY History: We're Losing It They told us digital data would last forever. They lied. How do we save the past before it all disappears? By Arlyn Tobias Gajilan First-time parents Michele and Steve Brigham of New York can't imagine life without their 6-year-old daughter, Courtney or the family camcorder and camera. Like millions of other parents, the Brighams have videotaped and photographed their daughter's first breaths, first steps, first birthday and dozens of other events in a rapidly growing library of more than 1,800 minutes of videotape and 3,000 photographs. "It may seem excessive," admits Michele. "But I think Courtney will appreciate it all when she grows up." Unfortunately, she might have nothing to look at. By the time Courtney turns 30, sunlight may have faded most of her color childhood photos, and in the off chance that the tiny VHS-C videotapes featuring her many firsts survive decades of heat and humidity, there probably won't be a machine to play them back on. Home videos and snapshots aren't all that are at risk. Librarians and archivists warn we're losing vast amounts of important scientific and historical material because of disintegration or obsolescence. Already gone is up to 20 percent of the data collected on Jet Propulsion Laboratory computers during NASA's 1976 Viking mission to Mars. Also at risk are 4,000 reels of census data stored in a form at so obscure that archivists doubt they'll be able to recover it. By next year, 75 percent of federal government records will be in electronic form, and no one is sure how much of it will be readable in as little as 10 years. "The more technologically advanced we get, the more fragile we become," says Abby Smith of the Council on Library and Information Resources. For years, computer scientists said the ones and zeros of digital data would stick around forever. They were wrong. Tests by the National Media Lab, a Minnesota-based government and industry consortium, found that magnetic tapes might last only a decade, depending on storage conditions. The fate of floppy disks, videotape and hard drives is just as bleak. Even the CD-ROM, once touted as indestructible, is proving vulnerable to stray magnetic fields, oxidation, humidity and material decay. The fragility of electronic media isn't the only problem. Much of the hardware and software configurations needed to tease intelligible information from preserved disks and tapes are disappearing in the name of progress. "Technology is moving too quickly," says Charlie Mayn, who runs the Special Media Preservation lab at the National Archives. He speaks from experience. In the 1980s, the Archives t ransferred some 200,000 documents and images onto optical disks, which are in danger of becoming indecipherable because the system archivists used is no longer on the market. "Any technology can go the way of eight-track and Betamax," says Smith, whose own dissertation is trapped on an obsolete 5e-inch floppy. "Information doesn't have much of a chance, unless you keep a museum of tape players and PCs around." That may not be such a farfetched idea. Mayn's temperature- controlled lab in the bowels of the National Archives houses many machines once used to record history. In one room, archivists are resurrecting the 1948 whistle-stop oratory of President Harry Truman; the give-'em-hell speeches were recorded on spools of thin steel wire, an ancestor of reel-to- reel tape recordings. Though some of the wires have rusted and snap during playback, Mayn and his team are busy "migrating," or transferring, what they're able to recover onto more stable modern media. Unfortunately, migration isn't a perfect solution. "Sometimes not all the data makes the trip," says Smith. Recently the Food and Drug Administration said that some pharmaceutical companies were finding errors as they transferred drug-testing data from Unix to Windows NT operating systems. In some instances, the errors resulted in blood-pressure numbers that were randomly off by up to eight digits. So what's to be done? "That's a question no one really has an answer for," says Smith. A good way to start is to separate the inconsequential from the historic, and save on simple formats. Making those decisions
Re: Media / Oral Literacy
Brad, I too suspect that we are closer on these issues then it seems. Rather a matter of syllabic emphasis. Your's is more academic with mine seeming at least to be more from the practical practice. I don't appoint a hierarchy to either nor do I mean to say that I'm not academic or you are impractical. Instead I feel it to be a point of emphasis.. Consider, Ray E. Harrell wrote: I've been away so I'm not sure whether this is old turf or not on this issue. (Ditto) 1. As a performing artist who deals with the meaning of words on the stage I find literacy useful in three ways. a. as a substitute for a poor memory b. as a way of transmitting rudimentary information over a distance or hiding information from an "enemy." c. as a separate art form that contains its own rules apart from every day life and emotion. I put the internet in this last catagory. These are, of course, contentious issues. The argument has been strongly put forward that literacy changes persons' mode of oral behavior and the inner experience thereof (see, e.g.: Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24) Albert Bates Lord / Paperback / Published 1981 -- I've used the book for years in my teaching but the book beginsnot with the analysis of literature but a discussion of performers and performance. The act of per-form-ing is a synergistic dialogue that transcends the particulate linearity of literacy. Most societies that developed literacy, especially the glyphic ones, did not want to develop forgetfulness or lose the holistic nature of verbal performance dialogue. Just as we still teach arithmetic to children instead of simply using calculators, they had rules for what was written down and what was only committed to memory. Plagues and Diasporas elevated literacy because of the fragility of the lives of the rememberers. I come from a society that brought out that process only in the 1830s due to the pressure of European society on our culture. We did not want to lose everything. So we wrote it down but in a new syllabury that not everyone could read. I confess to not having read this book but only reading *about* it in Walter Ong's writings). When literacy "infects" a society, the craft of the poet changes radically. One might consider the poems of Robert Lowell on theone side with e.e. cummings on the other. Previously, his tales (e.g., the Iliad) were the encyclopedia of the people, and the integrity of this information was protected by long apprenticeship and complex mettical (etc.) patterning of the material. An interesting metaphor. I'm not really sure what it meantto the Greeks. Now the people have an encyclopedia, and it's not "cost effctive" for people to either learn the craft or listen to its practice. I don't understand this either. The theater, movies, operasare all alive. The issue is not the "encyclopedia" (creative material) but the performance of such. Live versus "canned." Movies are productive in the economic value sense, while operas are not. Small rock ensembles can play to big crowds with technological enhancements. That makes money, symphony orchestras do not. It seems much more about economics than the value of the encyclopedia. Anyway it is not the same in Europe. They still perform the encyclopedia live and on stage. They used to hire America's performers to perform their works after WW II. Even Germany. Now they have grown their own and American performers have no place to go to perfect their craft. Another point (among many): Literacy brings the advent of "objective history". Nonsense!Where? Texts change much less fluidly than oral culture, So do scientific ideal states, but they don't exist in reality. That does not however, keep them from being useful. I suggest the same for written language. False but useful. and, in a primary oral culture, one did no9t need a Stalin to rewrite history, because the poets always knew which way the wind was blowing, and anything that dropped out of the poetry the poets sang was irretrievably gone. Ets. In Tenochtitlan, they didn't hesitate to change the writtentext but if you changed a word or missed a pitch or rhythm in the performance, you were fodder for the Gods. They took their verbal history seriously. You seem to be equating reality with Europe. A problem with literacy. As far as information is concerned there is a different connotation for every single word that is stressed by the voice in a sentence. Of course, and I will agree with you that a lot of people who know how to read and write don't pay attention to these crucial aspects of our comunicative life. In my experience with students and professionalperformers, there is little preparation in the schools for something as simple as defining the distinctions between word stresses. I was p
Re: Digital Monoculture
Hi Tom, Sitting here with a computer that more resembles a "Hot Rod" and that makes me very sorry not to have taken the auto mechanics course that my mother insisted upon and I resisted. Sitting here with a machine that is not made by a big monopoly or with a decent warrenty. A machine that the small businessman, who sold it to me at an inflated price and then went bankrupt, had promised service and quality for four years. A machine that I must now spend time learning how to be an electrician, a mechanic and a programmer. A machine that takes more time then I can spend working on it. I never worked on "hot rods" I bought new cheap cars so that I could spend time with my dates or traveling the country rather than sitting in the shop. The question today is whether developing new art is more important than learning the inner workings of this mongrel. So next time I will buy Dell or Gateway or some other big company product that has a more "economie of scale" attitude and will take less of my time. Those Russian airplanes are coming in at half the price and have a lot of goodies on them with less attitude. Does it work? That should be the answer before, will it sell? up with monoculture! REH Thomas Lunde wrote: What to me is surprising is the failure to recognize that the natural structure of capitalism is towards monopoly. Monopoly is attained and maintained by the concept of profit. Mergers, stock ownership, credit, all fall to those who have been the beneficiaries of large consistent profits which give them the surplus to absorb more of any given market area or product area or as in the case of stocks, holding massive amounts of wealth, much like a cow that can continually be milked. There is no social benefit to this, no moral value that can be extrapolated from this, it just is a nice byproduct of a system design. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde -- From: "Cordell, Arthur: DPP" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FW: Digital Monoculture Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 2:01 PM While not directly related to FW, this seems sufficiently interesting to pass along FYI -- From: Gary Chapman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: L.A. Times column, 7/5/99 Date: Monday, July 05, 1999 10:30AM Friends, Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, July 5, 1999. As usual, please feel free to pass this around, but please retain the copyright notice. -- If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), you are subscribed to the listserv that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other published articles. If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], leave the subject line blank, and put "Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message. If you received this message from a source other than me and would like to subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing are at the end of the message. -- Monday, July 5, 1999 DIGITAL NATION Troubling Implications of Internet's Ubiquity By Gary Chapman Copyright 1999, The Los Angeles Times Early last month, institutions around the world were crippled for several days by a new computer virus called the ExploreZip Trojan horse. A Trojan horse, in computer jargon, is a nasty software program that hides inside a file a user is likely to want to see or open. The ExploreZip virus -- more accurately, a computer "worm," which spreads more automatically than a virus -- affected machines running Microsoft's Windows operating system and Windows application software. Computers throughout the world were shut down, including some at Microsoft and other large corporations as well as the Pentagon. The ExploreZip worm was a more debilitating version of the Melissa virus that struck Windows machines earlier this year. Because of the apparent vulnerability of Windows-based machines, some computer experts have started to use the metaphor of a "monoculture" to describe our current computing predicament. The word "monoculture" comes from ecology and biology, another example of the merging of biological terms with computer jargon, like "virus" and "worm." In ecology, monoculture refers to the dominance or exclusive prevalence of a single species or genetic type in an ecological system -- a state typically regarded as pathological and dangerous. Agricultural monocultures, for example, are highly susceptible to blight, soil depletion, disease and other disasters. In computing, the recent use of the term has referred to the widespread dominance of Microsoft products. But we may want to extend the metaphor further and contemplate whether we're developing a universal digital monoculture, one with a troubling potential for
Re: Media / Oral Literacy
I've been away so I'm not sure whether this is old turf or not on this issue. 1. As a performing artist who deals with the meaning of words on the stage I find literacy useful in three ways. a. as a substitute for a poor memory b. as a way of transmitting rudimentary information over a distance or hiding information from an "enemy." c. as a separate art form that contains its own rules apart from every day life and emotion. I put the internet in this last catagory. As far as information is concerned there is a different connotation for every single word that is stressed by the voice in a sentence. Writing as it is currently defined is hopeless. English "grammar" is not built upon the stress values of English but is left over from the archaic study of Latin. Without a serious grammar that is more inclusive English writing is a poor substitute for sound. In otherwords I find Brad's comment about the place of non-literate people to be hopelessly literacy bound. Has anyone brought up Leonard Schlain's book on this titled "The Alphabet Versus The Goddess" Viking Press? Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble of New York, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: Thomas Lunde wrote: -- From: Robert Rosenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that the thrust of all this, if it continues, is away from a society in which everybody is (should be) reading and writing literate to one in which the overwhelming majority will be culturally-content with their daily entertainments (movies, sitcoms, music videos, award shows, specials), and manufactured news bits. In such a situation, there will be a privatization of knowledge, owned by the few and used for the benefit of the few - which is almost the situation, now. Thomas: A couple of thoughts on the above paragraph. Most listening, watching technologies are time specific. But not all. Your can freeze-frame and replay as often as you wish a VCR or audio tape, or, a fortiori, a laser disk. Though you have mentioned several times the attribute of being able to listen while doing something else, I would comment that retention, reflection and musing get lost as the data stream continues uninterruped. The minute you take your attention from the TV, radio or other media, there is no going back to catch what was missed. It is much like riding on a train. As long as you sit at the window looking out, you can see the current scenery, but you can't replay that which has just went past, nor recapture that which happened while you glanced away or left your seat for a minute. The strength of reading as learning information medium is that you can go back and re-read or compare with other information and reflect on the juxtaposition of thought that has been presented. Similarly, with speaking. It is a spontaneous event, unless speaking from something memorized. For most people, speaking is not prethought, it is just a reflex action and the speaker is often surprised or delighted or ashamed of what came out of his mouth as is the listener. Also, speaking limits vocabulary to approx 5000 common words in the language. This may be true in a primary oral society, but literate persons should be able to deploy their larger vocabulary in secondary orality. While writing allows a greater vocabulary and language more specifically used. Writing, focus's the communicator specifically on his message, allows complex themes to be developed, fosters rational thought and specificity rather than the generalizations commonly used when speaking. Yes, but Consider the architect or engineer designing something. Words, whether spoken or written, would be hard pressed to substitute for "mechanical drawing" and/or freehand drawing, etc. (See William Ivins, _Prints and Visual Communication_, MIT Press) A large part of this is dealt with in great depth by Marshal McLuhan and his observations that TV and radio represent a sensory change from visual (reading and writing) to an oral society, which most of prehistory and history up until Guttenburg operated in. Oral societies are often tribal, ruled by emotion and passion, foster different lifestyles and focus on different aspects of reality than a visual society. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that persons in primary oral cultures live in a *different reality* (See, e.g, Julian Jaynes, _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_, Houghton Mifflin). I think it is an open question the extent to which primary oral persons *are* persons in the way educated literate persons -- esp. after Descartes, Kant, etc. -- conceive of ourselves. Speculation: primary oral "people" may have a form of existence somewhere between that of higher apes and us. The ancient Greek notion that the line demarcating the human from
Re: temps get postive court decision
When the regular business organizations and wall street became involved in Not-for-profit companies, in this case recording projects a few years back, for the purpose of having a business write-off as well as hiding funds, the Congress passed a law which made such practices illegal. It hurt all of the regular artists who had been able to save a little money for project capital by having a Not- for-profit designation. A NFP company designation cost for incorporation went from between 100 to 200 dollars to 1800 dollars while a for profit company was under five hundred. All because the purpose of a "for profit" company is to find ways to use the law to avoid paying taxes and having the mental attitude that such a practice is not irresponsibility but responsibility to company and shareholders. This Micro-soft issue will probably drive more Entertainment companies abroad to do their work. As noted in the NYTimes article you posted. Edward Deming's lectures published in 1995 stated that the Arts and Entertainment business in the U.S. was the highest export sales of any American business. One out of the five largest Entertainment Media companies in the world is American owned while only three out of the seven largest movie companies are American owned. Much is made of the fact that American Entertainment spans the globe and American culture is considered a big threat in many places. So abroad, American media is considered big tough business while at home it is considered a threat to the "real Judeo-Christian" culture of America. Meanwhile, American business can't wait to imitate its use of "flexibles" and the free lance situation that all of us in the performing arts have to struggle with. The situation that makes the average actor make $5,000 a year in his profession and the average musician (trained practically from birth with his family's private money) $15,000 a year.Most of the trained artists do not even qualify to be listed as such by the U.S. Department of labor because they make most of their income waiting tables, working in bookstores or teaching school even though their talents, training and mastery is in the performing arts but they don't have "jobs"! This is then exacerbated by the influx of State trained and State developed performers from the old Soviet Empire. The spotty training and limited experience of most Americans is not competitive with such high quality instruction and experience. As a teacher I have directly experienced the difference in the quality of professionals who come for coaching. This is also the dream of Cypress Semi-conductor's CEO T.J. Rogers who wants to undercut American trained computer program workers by hiring directly from the former Soviet Empire in the same way that American artists are unprotected. The official word is that American's are not hired because they are inferior. Much like the story that says the Arts are so poorly supported here because they are not popular as if "like" had nothing to do with ignorance. So we have a lousy situation, but America and the courts will make the free lance situation for us even less tenable by making Bill Gates and other's immoral stance in a factory venue illegal. That in turn will probably make the TRULY Virtual companies that come into existance for a single project and then fold, the movie business, act as if they were permanent. That will drive up costs so radically that there will be NO movie work for any American in the United States. Terrific! considering that we do not use up natural resources and create nothing but pleasure and a raising of consciousness in the population. Dumb! How about some genuine conversation on these kinds of issues? Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble of New York, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cordell, Arthur: DPP wrote: This could have postitive implicaitons. COURT SAYS TEMPS DESERVE EMPLOYEE BENEFITS A federal court of appeals has ruled that about 10,000 temporary workers at Microsoft are entitled to take part in the discounted stock-option plan the company offers to regular employees. Industry analyst Rob Enderle says, "This is a broad decision, and it applies to all businesses. If you've got a temp worker putting in 20-plus hours a week, you better start considering him or her like you would a part-time worker" -- and provide employee benefits. The ruling indicated that a temporary worker can be considered a "common-law employee" if the person's work was controlled not by the placement agency but by the company for which the work was being done. Microsoft plans to appeal. (New York Times 14 May 99) http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/14soft.html
Re: The Jobs Letter No.99 (14 May 1999)
S. Lerner wrote: From: "vivian Hutchinson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] (snip) FROM JOB TO PROFESSION by Andrew Kimbrell *The word job in English originally meant a criminal or demeaning action. (We retain this meaning when we call a bank robbery a "bank job.") After the industrial revolution took hold in 18th-century England, the first generations of factory workers felt that wage work was humiliating and undignified. Angry about being driven from their traditional work on the land or in crafts, they applied the word job to factory labour as a way of expressing their disgust. *Even today many of us avoid the word job, preferring more upscale terms like occupation or career to describe what we do for 40-plus hours each week. Yet the older meaning of these words also reveals something about the nature of work. Occupation originally meant to seize or capture. (It is still used in this sense when, for instance, we speak of the German occupation of France during World War II.) What an apt description of how jobs take over our lives, subjecting us to the demands of outside rulers. The original meaning of career fits well with the role we play in the speeded-up global economic rat race. In the 19th century, career meant "racing course" or "rapid and unrestrained" activity. *In searching for ways to put meaning back into our work, we might want to revive the term vocation (from the Latin for "voice" or "calling"). Today, however, "having a vocation" or "answering a calling" usually means embarking upon a religious life--an unfortunate narrowing of the concept. We all deserve to be involved in work to which we have been called by our passions and beliefs. Following a vocation can lead to a profession--literally, a "public declaration" of what we believe and who we are. A profession is what our work should be, but so rarely is ... This and the excellent follow-up employment statistics posted by Sally is a heartening development in that it understands the importance of language in these issues. I wrote an article to the FW list about these same definitions based upon my dictionary library that traced the history quoted above and suggested the same need to deal from a place of vocation rather than jobs in the discussions on this list. I am often told by economists that I should just change jobs if I wish to have more capital, a good health plan, education for my child and a retirement. As the above states, a vocation is a calling based upon who one is with the "doing" flowing from that being. The whole set of concepts, on an inter-personal level, that underlie today's economic structures are against the idea of vocation. Instead we are dealing from a place similar to roles in a movie where a director picks characters, who may or may not be trained actors, for their "type" as a person rather than their skill in a vocation. "Types" can be developed quickly and with the help of a behavioral type of acting class and a good therapist (to help in accepting not quality, as in elevated skill, but "quality" as in a set of personal characteristics) a person can market their person as a product of a certain type. If they are not successful, the answer is not to develop new characteristics under their product name but to rename themselves under another set of characteristics. Possible until public recognition becomes too developed in which case they are marketed as advancement in their skills when all it is really is the imagination of another director who sees them differently. They are the quintessential short term employees (AGILE) or flexibles.A movie, a play or a performance in a bar is still called a "job" and is treated by the American society as temporary employment, which it is. Movies pay well, while bars pay poorly but thinking in systems will show that the formula is the same and is the same formula being used by UPS for a large portion of their workforce as well as Micro-Soft. The whole idea of re-engineering is an entertainment industry model. That also throws into question the figures on employment since such short term employment only tells whether someone is being paid for work at that particular moment in time casting doubt on the relevance of job figures from month to month much less year to year. But I've said this before as has Mike Hollinshead. Anyway, I'm glad to see that the New Zealanders are alive, well and asking what I consider to be pertinent questions about the future of their work. I'm also delighted that Sally has forwarded the post. REH
Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
Christoph Reuss wrote: Ed Weick replied: How beautifully smug! I understand that your bankers made quite a lot of money from the gold and jewelry that the Nazis took from death-camp victims. Europe, if you read its history, was a cesspool of wars, repressions and mass exterminations. And it was Europeans who brought diseases and enslavement to the Americas, accounting for the destruction of civilizations and the deaths of perhaps 100 million people. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get into this one, but on reading the above self-congratulatory puffery, I just couldn't help it. But perhaps I misunderstood. Perhaps you intent was some form of comic irony. Basically my smug description of Europe was a parody of Ray's smug description of America (or vice-versa for the negative descriptions). I have no idea how you could see anything that I have written as defending the history of European Americans on this continent past present andI am quite cynical about the future as well. The gist of my post was threefold:1. I stated that an issue (such as the one described by the Yugoslaveconomist from Toronto) which is "listed" , "described' and "understood" rarely creates change and is not an answer too whatever the problem is. It is simply an inadequate process in my opinion. I said: So you have to come up with a better script than "Describe the history", "list the atrocities" and everyone will "understand" and thus change! 2. The problem that economist Chussudovsky mentioned is not new but is a common process that springs from the belief that financial, i.e. economic value, constitutes real value in the world. In that sense every economist who preaches economic value above community morality or the growth of the human consciousness or spirit is a collaborator in what Chussodovsky is complaining about. I simply do not believe that this value system can end in anything other than human conflict and death. I used Wagner as an example because his own continual harassment by bankers and others who refused to pay him royalties (an Intellectual Capital issue) while reducing him to a pauper in relation to his need for Physical Capital both for common needs and the productions of his work has been used and abused by people on all sides of the political, religious and cultural spectrum. The greatest composer and theoretical mind of the 19th century was forced into prison and ran from country to country while writing his greatest works. There were 3 and 1/2 million refugees washing across the face of Europe as the economists and aristocracy played their games. The king of Bavaria said that he would have executed Wagner for his philosophical support of the Democracy movement in Dresden where he was being paid a pittance for masterworks and conducting as well. All to say this is not new. Nor is it old for people like my sister to be abducted by a government and sent thousands of miles from family, friends and culture to a school to drive the Indian out. Or for Gypsy children, like the Bolshoi ballerina studying with me at present, to be abducted by the Swiss government and put with Gadje families who were supposed to drive out the culture from their genetics as well. Luckily for the ballerina she was first in Russia and later Denmark where her talent was honored and she received exceptional instruction rather than being put in jail for "stealing children" or some other lie. I said: Don't you know all of those Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler songs dealing with the European people on the other side of those bankers? 3. And finally I said: Goodness is not cultural and neither is greed or evil. (I wrote about the church in my last post so I don't consider it to be an answer either.) But the issue of living together is one that we must solve and doing it creatively must also happen or we are doomed to be replaced. (by another species.) Then again, your above criticism misses the point as it talks of the (distant) past, whereas my comparisions referred to the present (according to Ray's appeal to "live in the present"). Not a bad idea, "truly living in the present" although I can't findthe phrase in that post. Perhaps you could post what you are referencing as I am in this case. That would make it simpler. [And much could be said about the role of US bankers in nazi/other wars.] I agree and you could list Henry Ford as well. Lest you believe that I am against Europeans or the Swiss in particular, I would say that it may be true that a Swiss person saying what I have said would be expressing those feelings. However, in my case as I have said over the years on this list that you should not mistake passion for a curse. I have taught voice to wonderful Swiss students and one of my favorite teachers sang in Zurich at the opera for many years. I seek only solutions and discussion. I do not have the answers but I do have many questions and history with
Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
To Futurework, Sally, Arthur, you can cut this if you wish but I have decided that a serious talk from the heart and from our lives about the future life and death issues that face us, all provide an opportunity that should not be missed. Michel's posts to me have convinced me that, for me, it would constitute fiddling while Rome burned, so to speak.His post is readily available on the net and if you need the address it is: On Kosovo: http://www.transnational.org/features/crimefinansed.html On the break-up of Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html So Michel, This is a very old story. My people were much richer and obviously (from your description) smarter then these you describe and yet the same scam was worked on them in the 1830s by the European Americans. The same scam as run by the economist banker running Serbia. The same story with the Jews and Gypsies during Hitlers reign and when Hitler said that he was following a Western European script used in the U.S., everyone ignored him. And then there are the kulaks. So what is the answer? You keep mentioning Ponzi schemes but the market itself must continually expand or collapse, that is a type of Ponzi Scheme on a much grander scale. i.e. if no one bought stocks and bonds then the market would collapse and the last one to buy just before the stocks contract is always left holding the bag. Also your terming what seems to be a family type "crony" business structure as "organized crime" seems suspicious. How does this relate to their traditional societal structures?Crime is always a relative term. Think of England and America in the Boxer rebellion when the West was using. well you know the story. So you have to come up with a better script than "Describe the history", "list the atrocities" and everyone will "understand" and thus change! There is very little to suggest that this didactic approach has ever worked out side of the dictatorship of the guru or master teacher.And I don't think that the messiahs or master teachers can help much here.Too many adults. So what are you suggesting? How about the Albanians and Serbians make a decision to live together and support each other?Don't take any garbage from the outside and like France after W.W.II declare a moratorium on national debts and build their infrastructure so that they have the power to rule their own lives? Again like the French. This is not Rome, it is both less brutal and no one is going to take them to Hollywood to be fed to Arnold Swartzenegger's pet lion. One point in all of this is that as an immigrant New Yorker I am prone to cynicism around the ability of Europeans to live together, (one war every 25 years for the past 1000 years). e.g. From the usefulness of the window shutters in Geneva, with the guns and one month food supply required by law in the basement, to the doors on new apartments in Milan that are made of steel with steel rod bolts going in four directions to keep out marauding armies. You see I live in NYCity and we take a rather jaundiced look at people who gather together to kill their neighbors or steal their homes. We know that bankers and economists have been figuring out ways to do just that ever since those first banks in Portugal that funded opera off of the pillaging of the Hunter/Gatherer Spaniards and Italians financed by Lisbon bankers. Of course the English were later but worse. So what is new in all of this? Why are you surprised? I am shocked that you are surprised when you are European and this is your history. Don't you know all of those Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler songs dealing with the European people on the other side of those bankers? Wagner was thrown in debtors jail and barely escaped with his life. He thought the bankers were Jewish and wrote nasty things about Jews but the real power didn't stand in front of the tanks like the Jews, they hid and blended into the crowd with the other white faces. But Wagner too wrote plenty about the economists in his Ring of the Niebelungen, he was mistaken and simple minded in believing that this was cultural. So are the Serbs who use "culture" as proof of their correctness. As a matter of fact Wagner's music always fits uncomfortably with the kind of macho rape and pillage of all warfare. When the Narragansetts watched the Puritans (their allies) burn to death the Pequots, (their enemies) they turned away wondering out loud what the point of such carnage was even on enemies. Although pre-Wagner's Walkyries I can just hear their howls above the men, women, children and even dogs that burned to death in complete silence. A silence so intense that it was said that the killers cried. Goodness is not cultural and neither is greed or evil. (I wrote about the church in my last post so I don't consider it to be an answer either.) But the issue of living together is one that we must solve and doing it creatively must
The triumph of science
I intended to post the article about the movies running to Canada
but Arthur beat me to the punch, so how about this article about
how logical and scientific we are and how up to date out
blessed institutions happen to be. Several years ago it was
noted in the NYTimes that the head of major companies who
graduated from Ivy league schools had a very high rate
of racisim in their ranks.
REH
New York Times
May 11, 1999, Tuesday National Desk
A New Turn in Defense of Affirmative Action
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
All over the campus of the University of Michigan, the signs of a
racially
and ethnically eclectic student body abound.
The student union is home to the Asubuhi (''morning'' in Swahili)
Multicultural Lounge. The bulletin board outside lists 49 ethnic
organizations. In the cafeteria, Pedro Cox-Alomar, a black Hispanic
junior
from San Juan, P.R., shares breakfast with his buddy Karl Benkert,
white,
from rural Michigan.
The university's officials say it is no accident that racial and
ethnic
minorities account for more than 25 percent of its 36,000 students,
a
statistic that makes this the most diverse of any large institution
of
higher learning in the Midwest. The mix results from aggressive
recruitment
of minorities and, in some cases, advantages to black and Hispanic
applicants in the highly competitive admissions process.
Disproportionate advantages, contend some critics, who note that
for
example, the admissions point system gives more weight to being
black or
Hispanic than to getting a perfect score on the Scholastic
Assessment Test.
(The university points out that far greater weight is given to high
school
grades than to either of those factors.)
The institution's policy is now the target of two lawsuits by a
total of
three rejected white applicants, all turned down, they say, because
of
their race. So has the University of Michigan become yet another
front in
the war over affirmative action, following the rollback of
race-conscious
admissions policies at universities in California and Texas.
But what distinguishes the Michigan case is the university's
full-throated
counteroffensive: the marshaling of statistical evidence of the
benefits of
racial diversity.
Unlike California and Texas, which defended their policies with
only
anecdotal evidence, Michigan has compiled data, on its own students
and
others, showing that among other things, people who were exposed to
a
diverse student body while in college are more likely five years
after
graduation to work in integrated settings, live in integrated
neighborhoods
and have friends of another race.
Patricia Gurin, a professor of psychology and women's studies at
the
university, concluded in one report that five years after
graduation,
whites who had attended colleges with the most diverse student
bodies
experienced the greatest growth in active thinking processes, in
motivation
to achieve and in intellectual self-confidence.
''Our research confirms what we have experienced firsthand as
educators:
that diversity enhances learning,'' said Lee Bollinger, the
university's
president. ''Encountering those who are different allows our
students to
learn about each other's similarities and differences and to
destroy
stereotypes.''
The nature of Michigan's defense stems from an emerging strategy by
affirmative action's supporters to make an empirical case for it,
rather
than a purely anecdotal or intuitive one. The university's research
follows
a survey issued last fall by two former Ivy League presidents,
William G.
Bowen of Princeton and Derek Bok of Harvard, that was based on the
records
and experiences of 45,000 students over 20 years at 28 elite
colleges
around the country. The Bowen-Bok research concluded that
affirmative
action policies at those colleges had created the backbone of the
black
middle class and taught white classmates the value of integration.
Lawyers for the Michigan plaintiffs maintain that however noble the
idea of
creating a diverse university, Michigan is blatantly discriminating
against
whites to achieve it. They allege violation of the Constitution's
equal-protection guarantees, among other protections.
''I think that discrimination always hurts someone,'' said one
plaintiff,
Barbara Grutter, a 45-year-old mother of two who was rejected by
Michigan's
law school in 1997. ''I don't know how we can have a country that
says
discrimination is wrong and yet have all these exceptions.''
The suits -- one against the law school, the other against the
undergraduate college -- were filed in the Federal District Court
in
Detroit and will be argued in the fall. They have drawn the
attention of
civil rights groups, opponents of racial preferences, hundreds of
colleges
and universities, and the Clinton Administration, which has filed a
court
brief defending Michigan's admissions policies.
The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Individual Rights,
a
Washington law firm that got a Federal appeals court to overturn an
Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
Chris you said: Greetings from a multi-cultural European country that had _2_ short (defense) wars in the last 500 years (but I guess this can't be read in your informative NYT), What country is that? Where does it get it's wealth? Do they immigrate people to America? If so, why? Does any of my tax money pay for their education or settlement? What are the various cultures? REH
Re: Creating Community Wealth
So I bought a computer through a local business, (across the street). Paid much more, expecting good service but his service turned out to be more expensive than Gateway or Dell and the computer has defective parts. I leased it (bought it on time) and in four years will have paid more than I used to pay for a Plymouth. The computer store went out of business after fifteen years due to the impossibility of servicing his debts (translate didn't pay the rent). The service contract is moot while the warranty guaranteed by his dealer turned out to be a Chinese firm that conveniently doesn't speak English and refuses to return my calls. Address? P.O Box. So what does all of this mean. Economie of Scale? Well maybe not, I should tell you about my Emerson Air Conditioner sold by a super store. (don't ask) So my point is simply that things are more complicated than the pseudo scientific (translate economic) theoretical structures allow for in their stories. I'm reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonia" which turned out to be a slum while his great cantilevered Masterpiece at "Falling Water" is now falling down because he didn't put enough steel inside the cement. So you can't beat competence and you always pay for it and ideals are just that, ideals and not reality. First, a small town is not a city. My anecdotes happened in a neighborhood in NYCity ten times the size of my hometown in population. Wright was wrong about small towns and wealthy folks in the forest. In my anecdotes the population is largely rental and so is very mobile with little personal capital to make people behave economically as opposed to owning a house in a small town. But "economics" is rarely equipped to take such personal issues as "community size interactions" into account" (of course they always register size differences but their sophistication is put to shame next to the product analysis and consumer targeting of today's businesses). As I think about the last statement I am reminded that business has a conflict of interest in stimulating such sophistication from government and thus claims that academia and the government "can't" do it. "If you want the job done wrong just ask the government" is the operative script, however they are right since neither academia or government is willing to show a sophistication as to the practical basics of the issues. Both government, academia and business simply act like capitalists and communists and argue that the two are so exclusive as to be impossible together. The Chinese will probably make fools of them all. But if we may consider the small community and if I am once more delve into personal anecdote illustrate the points. Communists talk cities while Capitalists talk towns but both are lying through their teeth and both is just rhetoric. So mcgl I should tell you about your ideals which were my Fathers. They are not bad but they demand someone with political power overseeing the workings of the system. My Father did it because he was Superintendent of Schools and considered that what was good for the community was essential to the funding of the schools. Unlike your ideal community we were on an Indian Reserve where there were no local taxes to support the schools. Everything came from the state and national governments. But that contribution from the state was dependent upon population and so his job was dependent upon the health of the community, as for the federal government, you had to know how to "work" them. So he did a lot of volunteer work (translate pro bono) outside of his regular job description. He was active politically he built the town park from contributions that he solicited from the local "Lion's Club" were he was a member. He taught valuing tradition through such little things as building the park on the sand lot where Yankee star Mickey Mantle had gotten his start. He strengthened the local vocational programs in the schools and gave the students jobs on the custodial staff while having them do community R D (mapping housing subdivisions for the future) for grades, (they were paid for the custodial work). He developed a sense of community pride and volunteerism in all of the graduates. All of this on a reservation determined by the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection as the number one Super Fund Toxic Waste site in the country (worse even than "Love Canal" which instigated the super fund concept). It was thoroughly undermined by lead and zinc mining. He used a partnership between the government (schools) and the town businessmen within the bounds and balance of good sense.His stress was upon the cooperation between individuals and the belief that everyone gained from meaningful work and that they deserved to do it and be paid for it. But "in kind" services were the oil that greased the community and kept people strong on pride and belief in their ability to succeed. His job, the leadership role, was a 24 hour a
Re: Lawyers charge NATO Leaders
Michel, I have written you in the past about my admiration for your IMF analysis of the Yugoslav breakup but since that time have spoken with my Slovenian relatives. They are not upset. They are quite happy to be separate from it all. They also seem happy to give up their universal health care in order to become Entrepreneurs. I think that's nuts but they haven't lived under the chaos here as of yet. As for your statement about war crimes consider the following anecdote.A student of mine has a Romanian hairdresser. She is very upset about the bombing and blames the U.S. that now gives her a home. She admits to lying about atrocities in Romania in order to get asylum here. In Romania she did not have a great selection at the super market and her husband beat her while she had no recourse to divorce. She also couldn't complain about the government without retribution. I learned the same during the Vietnam war working in the Army in Washington, D.C. I have also learned the same here in many places when atrocities have been pointed out to the local constabulary. Not to be comparing their fear to mine but hunger can cause a great deal of fear and I certainly don't consider America's poor to be free. She would have been poorer and just as married in Italy for example. On the other the Romanian claims that she had a better apartment than I have in NYCity and a steady salary which no artist has here, also universal health care and was educated. But she lied about her "terrible life" as a professional in order to come here and become a hair dresser and leg waxer free to complain about the government. I am confused. She is no different from the Yugoslavs around Dayton or Youngstown. They complain and complain to get here and then when we believe them and act on their complaints then our representatives are war criminals. Should they simply be returned because they lied? Should they be stripped of their possessions to pay for the lost lives and the cost of following up their advice? The most visably hawkish of American government officials have come from the Balkans and Poland in the last generation or so. Belonging to a religion (traditional Native American) that has been persecuted by every type of Christian over the last five hundred years I have little sympathy for those who will not live with their neighbors in an atmosphere of tolerance. If history is to judge, the Moslems have had their Jihads but they also practiced religious tolerance in many more of their societies than the Christians. The only light in this century that has come from the Christians has been Black and South African. It was the Sioux Holy Man who went to Bosnia with the Sacred Calf Pipe to pray for peace. We waited many years for the great religious leaders of Europe in the last century. They never came. It was also an artist who took his Cello and played in the middle of the sniper's nest and shamed the world in Bosnia. I am proud to be Native and an artist. Both my people and profession have taken their stand for both peace and forgiveness. You are an economist. I have read all of your posts and admired much that you write but I do not see a way out in them. Only blame. If that is the case, then why are you here? What right do you have to this land. Your home is elsewhere. Were you run out?The only ones who belong here are the ones who create significant hope. Litigious hokum is no substitute. I am confused about this, could you suggest what to do with the immigrant and non-immigrant Albanians in Kosovo? The complaints about language coming from the Serbs could be the same complaints made here against hispanics or the language wars conducted that eradicated most of the Native languages in America. Kosovo could be Quebec if Canada had acted like the Serbs in Bosnia and now Kosovo. We all have our Jerusalems and as a member of the First Nations here, you are living in mine and you are living on my land. Does that give me the right to hate you at all costs? Maybe, but it seems like a useless thing. A waste of the genius that we all carry within us. An insult to the Creator of us all. Perhaps you misread the unconscious hate carried within the breasts of Americans who fought and died in the last two world wars that began in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. They may very well be saying simply "not again, let's stop the Bastards before they do it again." I'm not saying that it is so but it makes about as much sense as any of the rest of the rhetoric that I hear these days. Ray Evans Harrell, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michel Chossudovsky wrote: PRESS RELEASE MAY 7, 1999 LAWYERS CHARGE NATO LEADERS BEFORE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL A group of lawyers from several countries has laid a formal complaint with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia against all of the individual leaders of the NATO countries and officials of NATO itself. The group, lead by
Re: [n5m3-debates] Let's Bomb Turkey, A Modest Proposal (fwd)
Franklin Wayne Poley wrote: Good questions and the ones parliamentarians are paid to talk about. I'm not sure if I agree with the use of Canadian Forces or not in Yugoslavia. How could I decide except on some very basic emotional level unless we are told by Parliament what the PRINCIPLES are in this and related issues? Any guesses as to why they avoid such a discussion? FWP. For the same reason that most commercial art is crap. It's dangerous and you could lose your constituency. We are doing a show about Women of Spirit at a Catholic college here and they have a very interesting menu for the conference. The head of the school said that we should speak the truth and so four of our women artists searched their souls and are telling their stories through words and music. It is very moving and very strong and one of the women is a lesbian who was forced to become Episcopalian. She is a wonderful artist and her story is poignant. I'm not sure whether any one will be offended and I hope not but the point is as you said: "what the PRINCIPLES are in this and related issues..." Another is a black woman with a white Englishman who was her father and a black mother and the singer is a Jewish convert. She also happens to be a Wagnerian soprano who must deal with Wagner's anti-Semitism and racism. She says that the Creator made her voice and that she will not allow Wagner to keep his genius for his racist, anti-semitic buttocks. Genius is neither individual or cultural but is from the Creator and belongs to all. So this mixed blood African American Jewish woman rescues the Creator's gifts from a bigot who should have learned from his own potential. The other two are less exotic but just as powerful as they explore what it means to be a Mother and a Diva with the other dealing with the rejection for telling the truth about what the feminine perspective is often really about in this world these days. As she sings, "We all live on borrowed time." So why should we expect politicians in this world to go hungry or miss all of those wealthy parties? If they did that, they wouldn't be politicians but artists! Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: charging you more for the internet]
I just talked to my Congressman's office and they said that it wasn't true, that there was no bill or plans for one to do such. Where did this come from?Who is this webmaster?Are we encountering another piece of libertarian nonsense meant to disrupt the flow of information in triviality? For a smaller population than the Green party in the U.S. they get almost as much coverage as the regular Republican Party. Like the candidate Huffington they are almost totally a cyber party. Virtual nonsense. REH Rob Robinson wrote: Subject: Re: charging you more for the internet Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 11:28:26 -0800 From: Rik [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Pacific Bell Internet Services To: Allison Saviano [EMAIL PROTECTED], Anne Stockman [EMAIL PROTECTED], Anneliesel LaFlamme [EMAIL PROTECTED], "[EMAIL PROTECTED] Dakota" [EMAIL PROTECTED], Beth Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED], Caroline Caldwell [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chaz Bowie [EMAIL PROTECTED], East West Printing [EMAIL PROTECTED], Express Litho/Jimmy-Mike [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gloria Rusch [EMAIL PROTECTED], GrunonGazette john chandler/peter brooks [EMAIL PROTECTED], Harry Prongue [EMAIL PROTECTED], herb Jung [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jewish Com Cron/Los Altos Neighbor [EMAIL PROTECTED], John Novello [EMAIL PROTECTED], kingprinting [EMAIL PROTECTED], LA Times Ads Lisa [EMAIL PROTECTED], Larry/David Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED], LB biz journal direct to printer [EMAIL PROTECTED], Lisa Pat Mead [EMAIL PROTECTED], Long beach Biz Journal [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Marcelina S Stockman (Aunt Mary" [EMAIL PROTECTED], Mike Riley Metacreations [EMAIL PROTECTED], Mike Stockman [EMAIL PROTECTED], Musical Theatre West [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nancy Franzon [EMAIL PROTECTED], NEW LA Times eric [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Nita, Sam, Angie" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "O.C. Register Ads Sharon" [EMAIL PROTECTED], Press Telegram [EMAIL PROTECTED], Randy the Mosi [EMAIL PROTECTED], Rob Fainberg [EMAIL PROTECTED], Rob Robison [EMAIL PROTECTED], StacyLauren laurendesign [EMAIL PROTECTED], Steve Halley Carpenter Center [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tony Copolillo [EMAIL PROTECTED], Uncle Jack Aunt Jane Stockman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do something Quickly, write! Date: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 5:01 PM Subject: Internet Access Charge! In a message dated 3/17/99 11:40:14 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CNN reported that in the next two weeks, Congress is going to vote on allowing telephone companies to charge for Internet access. That means, every time we make a long distance e-mail we will receive a long distance charge. This will get costly. Please visit the following web site AND Complain to your Congressman. Don't allow this http://www.house.gov/writerep Pass this on to your friends. It is urgent! I hope all of you will pass this on to all your friends and family. All of us have an interest in this one. PLEASE FORWARD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW TODAY BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!! Please Help and don't let this happen. WEBMASTER DARKSINS [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ# 22445383
Re: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.
A little fun from one of my favorite writers on science, life and attitudes. REH Questioning the calendar A skeptic confronts the millennium By Stephen Jay Gould Feb. 26 We have a false impression, buttressed by some famously exaggerated testimony, that the universe runs with the regularity of an ideal clock, and that God must therefore be a consummate mathematician. GALILEO DESCRIBED THE COSMOS as a grand book written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures. The Scottish biologist Darcy Thompson, one of my earliest intellectual heroes and author of the incomparably well-written Growth and Form, (first published in 1917 and still vigorously in print, the latest edition with a preface by yours truly) stated that the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. THE DIVINE MATHEMATICIAN Many scientists have invoked this mathematical regularity to argue, speaking metaphorically at least, that any creating God must be a mathematician of the Pythagorean school. For example, the celebrated physicist James Jeans wrote: From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. This impression has also seeped into popular thought and artistic proclamation. In a lecture delivered in 1930, James Joyce defined the universe as pure thought, the thought of what, for want of a better term, we must describe as a mathematical thinker. MYSTERIES OF THE CALENDAR Why do we base calendars on cycles at all? Why do we recognize a thousand-year interval with no tie to any natural cycle? If these paeans and effusions were invariably true, I could compose my own lyrical version of the consensus. For I have arrived at the last great domain for millennial questions calendrics. I need to ask why calendrical issues have so fascinated people throughout the ages, and why so many scholars and mathematicians have spent so much time devising calendars and engaging in endless debates about proper versus improper, elegantly simple versus overly elaborate, natural versus contrived systems for counting seconds, minutes, hours days, weeks, months, lunation, years, decades, centuries and millennia, tuns and baktuns, thirish and karanas, ides and nones. SIGNIFICANCE OF 1,000 Our culturally contingent decision to recognize millennia and to impose divisions by 1,000 upon a solar system that includes no such natural cycle, adds an important ingredient to this maelstrom of calendrical debate. If God were Pythagoras in Galileos universe, calendrics would never have become an intellectual subject at all. The relevant cycles for natural timekeeping would all be nice, crisp easy multiples of each other and any fool could simply count. We might have a year (earth around sun) with exactly ten months (moon around earth) and with precisely one hundred days (earth around itself) to the umpteenth and ultimate decimal point of conceivable rigor in measurement. But God, thank goodness, includes both Loki and Odin, the comedian and the scholar, the jester and the saint. God did not fashion a very regular universe after all. And we poor sods of his image are therefore condemned to struggle with calendrical questions till the cows come home, and Christ comes round again to inaugurate the millennium. NATURES SYMMETRY Oh, I dont deny that some corners of truly stunning mathematical regularity grace the cosmos in domains both large and small. The cells of a honeybees hive, the basalt pillars of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland make pretty fair and regular hexagons. Many laws of nature can be written in an astonishingly simple and elegant mathematical form. Who would have thought that E=mc2 could describe the unleashing of the prodigious energy in an atom? But we have been oversold on natures mathematical regularity and my opening quotations in this essay stand among the worst offenders. If anything, nature is infinitely diverse and constantly surprising in J.B.S. Haldanes famous words, not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. BLOODY-MINDED NATURE I call this bloody-minded nature because I wish to specify the two opposite domains of natures abject refusal to be mathematically simple for meaningful reasons. The second domain forces every complex society as all have independently done, from Egypt to China to Mesoamerica to struggle with calendar-making as a difficult and confusing subject, not a simple matter of counting. Many questions about the millennium Why do we base calendars on cycles at all? Why do we recognize a thousand-year interval with no tie to any natural cycle? arise directly from these imposed complexities. Any adequate account of our current millennial madness therefore requires that we understand
Re: Democracy sociocybernetics
Hi Mike, This is a very interesting post. I find it the most interesting in how you are traversing the path of traditional Native American Plain's Myth in your forms. The net for example is the traditional form of Spider Woman and is considered essentially feminine in nature. Amongst the Plains Peoples, powers are not hierarchical in the order sense but singular centers of expertise given by the Great Mystery to individuals. Otherwise everything is the same for everyone. Everyone is a teacher, artist, hunter, planter etc. although there are certain areas that relate to talent or gender because of the principle of parallel images. i.e. if someone seems to embody more an external process then common sense would seem to say that they have more potential expertise in it. You have also defined the structure of war and art in Plains Indian societies.Structures that have more to do with power and games in their societies, than death and destruction.They are, like virtual AGILE companies, temporary and task oriented. Michael Spencer wrote: Steve Kurtz wrote: I argue...that hierarchies...have always existed and will most likely continue to do so despite any structural changes invented applied. To which Victor Milne replied: I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple matter of dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing. and Steve wrote again: Who ever said anything about "simple" or "model"? Forget "simple". I think the issue is whether or not hierarchy is some kind of underlying principle that structures things as they are, more or less in the way that, say, electromagnetism is such a principle. The wolf pack is and that is the reason that the Wolf was the dominant focus for the form of a war party in almost all of our societies. It is not something that you put on or take off easily. Amongst some more urban organized societies the Wolf Clan is the war clan that takes over when a war is imminent. I could make a case for Churchill being the Chief of the War Clan in English WW II government. When the war came, the peace government was replaced by the war one and when it was over Churchill was unceremoniously defeated to get back to the peace government. Amongst my people that was called the Red (war) and the White (peace) governments and they existed simultaneously with one being out while the other was in. Only a warrior woman could call the Red government into being, but this is more specific then I should be and you probably are interested in, but the parallels are interesting and may very well be primal human in form and function. I don't think it is. Hierarchy is a way in which we structure artifacts -- things, such as computer programs or navies, that we create in order to simplify the management of them. It's also a way in which we structure or ideas about things, our intuitive or formal models, because it makes things easier to keep track of. By this last statement are you referring to expertise or what is popularly called "complexity theory" these days? There's an interesting 1945 paper by Warren McCulloch entitled "A Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets." It notes that there are experimental observations along this line: given A, B and C, if these are presented pairwise -- AB, BC, CA -- a subject will often choose A over B, B over C and C over A. I don't understand this. Is the subject human? If so, does this not relate to the original alphabetical pattern contained in the memory of the subject? That would make the form subjective would it not?For example: When Sequoia invented the Cherokee syllabury, being an Indian scholar rather than a European, he included some European Alphabet symbols in his system but gave them different sounds and orders. That meant that any child learning the system would not relate it to a European intellectual space but to a Cherokee cultural space. In their case I doubt that the relationships WM described between A B in a European sense would be asserted in the Cherokee system. It seems that the issue is learned order that is then related in the above fashion.Do you see this differently? McCulloch, a polymath whose main interest was in trying to figure out how it is that a few pounds of neurons can engender mind, described how such heterarchical preference was immanent or implicit in neural structure. Seems learned to me, unless he is saying that all knowledge is learned with no genetic talent element. Even if so, I don't understand why he would say something so obvious.He seems to be comparing the structure of mind to the structure of a crystal, but a learned one in the human sense. i.e. learning or education is the implicit "order" of the human neurons.I would agree with that in both meanings of the word "order".Still seems obvious although we do say that enlightenment is the meaning of all traditional
Re: Democracy sociocybernetics
Me too. I used to breed dogs. I had Collies first then Shelties, Miniature Schnauzers and Bichon Frises. Many times the behavior of an animal can be traced to an owner and the environment he created but this is not always the case. Especially with the smaller inbred species there have both physical and behavioral problems that come from the stress placed on the genetic history just from normal life. I find cultures placed in unusually stressful situations to often be the same. I may not know the cultural cues of some people but that doesn't mean that they are wrong for having them.That also means that it can be dangerous for me at times if I don't know those cues and vice/versa. The Russians that lived where I used to have a cabin had a real thing about lines.There was never a line invented that they couldn't crash.There, we would wait in line for up to an hour and someone would walk in and step to the front when I wasn't watching. They of course knew to watch. I learned quickly and I also had to do it with an attitude that would have been the grounds for a gunfight in Oklahoma. Communism had nothing to do with it as a system except the fabled commissary lines might have.Things are not always as simple as they seem on paper or in theory. Stay strong and be observant, REH Victor Milne wrote: Just a comment on animal behaviour. I am not an ethologist, but we have a herd of 18 horses. I don't see animal behaviour as being such a simple matter of dominance and hierarchy as people are supposing. The most aggressive animal in our herd is the shortest, a 13.2 hh pony gelding (with a very massive frame). However, he never bothers the old herd leader, who at age 30 spends most of his time dozing in the sun and just growls a bit if the "kids" in the herd crowd in when he goes to the feeder. Curiously the very aggressive pony can be totally cowed by a certain small mare, two inches taller than him but much slighter. In turn a usually gentle Arab gelding succeeds in bullying the small mare, but the Arab is totally intimidated by the pony, so we have a strange dominance triangle. The biggest animal in the herd--my 16.1 thoroughbred gelding which I use for long distance competitive riding--is also the biggest wimp of all. All the males are gelded, so I presume that testosterone levels are about equal. My point is that if a simple model of dominance does not apply very well to equine behaviour, it's certainly a mistake to extend it to human behaviour. Live long and prosper Victor Milne Pat Gottlieb FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/ LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/ -Original Message- From: Steve Kurtz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: list futurework [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: February 25, 1999 6:02 PM Subject: Re: Democracy sociocybernetics Eva Durant wrote: The bully tend to be the biggest puppy, the one with the most expendable energy. Even in dogs, aggressivity is "taught" by the human who replaced the role of the alpha. Above is another example of internal inconsistency. The bully pup is aggressive independently of human interaction; and aggressiveness, dominance, hierarchy exist apart from domestication. Even bull-terriers in a strong-controlled but peaceful environment tend to grow up docile. I've no data, but my personal experience agrees - within a range, of course. You say we should not attempt democracy because no animals live that way? Strawman. I never said or implied that. I argue, like Ed does, that hierarchies and ranges of human ( other) behavior have always existed and will most likely continue to do so despite any structural changes invented applied. It makes democracy somewhat irregular at best. But I'm not advocating dictatorship, just realistic expectations if humans plan to peacefully narrow the gap between rich poor. [snip]
Re: Democracy(TM)
To the list: I tried sending a picture but obviously that doesn't work. I guess it's just "too big", I mean too much memory for the list or servers.Anyone who wants one just ask and I will try sending it to you. Eva, did you get the picture? Now as for Eva, Ed, Jay, Arthur, Sally, Mike and the rest, The problem with this for me is the same as Paul Robeson. I worked with one of his teachers and he was a great man. One of the great artists and heroes of the 20th century.It was not his politics that was so much the problem, anymore than was Picasso's, but the whole concept of " intellectual value" abroad in the society in his time and this time still. A best selling book by a female judge says it best: "Beauty fades, dumb is forever." But what constitutes smart?A scientist on the basketball court with professional players would make dumb moves as would the reverse. Robeson was a great singer and a great political hero for an America that was brutal, crude and banal but he failed to see the same in the Soviets and the relatives of his intellectual friends in Moscow who were murdered by Stalin, never forgave him. The split between Jews and Blacks began there but the Black collaborationists who abandoned Robeson in the U.S. maintained the fragile coalition for a time longer until more progress could be made. The Crow Priest "Plenty Coups" had done the same sixty years earlier when he also signed a loyalty oath while "Crazy Horse" was murdered for being intractable.So who was right?The hero Robenson, under illegal "house arrest" in the U.S. for seven years protesting the lynchings and apartheid refusing to sign an unconstitutional loyalty oath so that he could perform around the world, or the men who cooperated with Macarthy?We have a similiar issue with Elia Kazan and the Oscars. And they love to call this a Judeo-Christian society. If I were either I would protest or certainly not admit to it. It is said that the CIA gave Robeson a drug, that causes paranoia, at a party in Moscow and the effect was that he slit his wrists effectively stopping his world tour of socialist countries and not embarrassing the U.S. powers. The Russians cooperated by giving him shock treatments and practically destroying the man. Beauty is fragile but dumbness is cantagious.All of this was on Television tonight.This great artist was a national treasure but dummies who stumble over diamonds and can only use them to kill rabbits were emulated in the last couple of centuries and are emulated still. Yes those same bunny killers are the ones who call us Hunter/Gatherers and even finally got it into the Am. Her. II American Dictionary. There is a problem with "knowledge" especially when you can simply define your competitor out of existence.Only the latest is real because there is a problem with remembering. In tomorrow's NYTimes there is an article about the scientist businessmen in Silicone Valley using their technical expertise and money to effect the political landscape in California for the Libertarians. Most are young and beautiful but their causes will outlast them and are truly dumb. Even the article quotes them as having very short attentions spans. (Cocaine can cause that also.) So the left is dumb and the right is dumb. Jay there had better be more than just right or left or this ship WILL sink. Robeson was trapped.White America patted themselves on the back for "letting" him become who he was but did not ask why they were not up to his standard. It also never occurred to them that this world class artist could have happened anywhere at any time. America had nothing to do with it.It just destroyed his health and ultimately killed him.The country that criticized the KGB even monitored his medical charts in the hospital with the FBI. What should worry the folks here is that the Black folks are not forgetting this stuff. Even Harry Belafonte came across like a historian tonight.They were an impressive group of people. On Nightline tonight there was a program about a study in how the White medical establishment treats blacks differently even when they are middle class, have good health insurance and are productive. In effect they were saying that the Black community is being robbed of its productive members by poor medical care in major hospitals all because of Doctor's attitudes about who they value. (Yes we've seen this before!) The study will be in the New England Medical Journal for those of you who believe this is hokum. I'm only reporting. ( It took an act of Congress to get the secret sterilization's of Indian women stopped in Government hospitals in 1977. The month the bill was passed there were 1,600 done anyway. So it's not all that much hokum or maybe hohokum either. ) Koppel on Nightline didn't ascribe the inferior care to a belief in White Supremacy by the Doctors but in simple
Re: How hard is it to change opinions?
I wrote to my friend John: The problem of health, commodities, the left vs. the right, or the mental models that we bring to these discussions seems to be making people angry everywhere .The future of work is an interesting thought except everyone only seems to want to discuss the future of their work or their favorite philosopher/economist. Is there any hope for a discussion on what work means and what kind of multiplicity there must be to create a humane, happy future together?Well probably not, but maybe the following will be of interest. Durant wrote: You can work out your futurework aims real well, but if you don't pay attention to the social/economical conditions that are able to supply your noble aims, you might as well don't bother. Eva, this is obvious. Why would you think that those of us who have worked with people in both public and private sectors all of our lives, including as private impresarios, would not pay attention to "social/economical" and cultural issues?We would have starved long ago here, unlike the musicians who have state jobs in the socialist countries.I have experienced that as well when I was a singer in the White House Army Chorus where we were paid salaries. It was a regular six year job. Nice, but I prefer creating my own work and developing my own audiences even though I don't have the health care or retirement plan and my daughter will go to school as I did, paying her way and earning scholarships. I said: John you assume a hell of alot about their ability to understand, don't you think? After all there were all of those circles on "Another World" in the Soaps of the 1950s-60s and they didn't get it then. If it's too hard for the soap operas to teach then what hope is there on the net? Eva said: nothing teaches better than a good helping of experience... people are able to get understanding in 24 hours as they did in a lot of historical events. I believe that experience is the only developer of real knowledge. Do you all have soap operas on the television in the UK? How about "Another World" with all of the inter-connected circles opening the program? I said: I'm having a terrible discussion with a H C who lives in England on another list. You would think she was a right winger or something. No practicality anywhere, just "make work" to prove that the lack of a need of workers is not real. Anyway, you are one smart fellow and much more optimistic than myself in this instance.I couldn't even bring myself to reply to At on the last post and that must mean I'm depressed. Eva surmised: I hope you are not describing me here, I have never argued for "make work" and I am immensely practical... I have observed that people both on the left and right politically on these lists advocate "make work." Most work in the private sectors in Capitalism is like the fat on a good sirloin. On the other hand I believe Jay's complaint about Democratic Socialism being bureaucratic is accurate as well. I think the problem has to do with an addiction to competition and speed in the workplace. Rather than high quality workmanship in either case we often get shoddy products that are merely acceptable and use up precious resources. There is a problem in the practical workings of all of the human systems thus far with quality and creativity. Neither Capitalism, the world religions, the various Socialisms, or even Science are very comfortable with radical change. I will give you an example from my own background. I was a researcher for an educational library being developed for the teaching of children. We were far more capable of developing radical educational procedures, with their requisite materials, than the teachers, parents, publishers and administrations could absorb. They wanted stability that they could feel comfortable with, we were interested in pedagogical progress. The students loved what we did, and were highly successful in the performance of it, but we were terminated by the University because we were too aggressive in our enthusiasm and because they couldn't afford to change the publishing on a yearly basis as well as train the teachers to teach the new material.The head teacher/researcher moved out into the community and started a school with 300 students the next year. She has been very successful but now does not recommend that students study the piano as a living. She feels that the society is uncomfortable with the Arts and that their lives would be miserable so she teaches them for their growth and enjoyment but does not encourage them in it as a vocation. The society claims to be interested in change but is locked in the mud while she taught change and the children became alienated from their parents. The same is true with children who are computer hackers. These highly innovative children
Re: competition/contradiction
Durant wrote: I asked for a contribution in the above themes from a friend of mine who happens to be hungarian, married to an English chap and a socialist, quite like me... Be sure - there are more useful work-related information here that in a lot of other posts! For some reason she started in Hungarian, my english summary follows these first paragraphs. Eva (snip the Hungarian but it was fun to say) Öszi délben, öszi délben,Oh be nehéz kacagni a leá nyokra.REH: Just a point about the way that I write since there is always an issue of whether you got the "gist" of it or not. I am an oral person so my words are more easily understood if you say them out loud. I never have appreciated the simplicity of literacy.This was quite a journey. I thank you both and for anyone who has a short attention span just delete.As for me I enjoyed the thinking. Julianna said and Eva translated:. (Ofcourse there is no link with moral norms. The contradiction is based on the working class producing the goods, but the employers only paying back as much as the workers need to survive. REHThe workers transformed the material into something that may or may not have been good and useful.I don't find that separation into "exploiters" and "exploited" serves much purpose in our situation, unless the exploited are artists but everyone exploits us. Such thoughts in economics considers orchestras to be "workers" and from there they go to being the same as plumbers.This is a grim situation: Hallotátok már? Öszszel, amikor kavarog a köd, Az éjszakában valami nyöszörög. Julianna continued: This is the wage; only pays for the worker, not for the work done. The amount of the wage depends from the markets, from the strength of the unions, from the level of unemployment, etc, etc, but never from the value produced. REHDefine "value." Value according to most economists is money.According to many of the Scots it was "usefulness." What is it according to your system of thought? Value of course to an artist is quite another thing and has to do with truth and beauty. Valami dobban. Valaki minden jajt öszszelopott, Julianna continued: This is never returned, as then the employer would have no profit and would have to close the workplace.) REHAre you saying that the employer deserves no pay for his/her investment as well as her/his labor? == more long lovely Hungarian phrases but with no umlauts or accents? Very few words that are familiar to me but does Hungarian not use the (e) following a letter that has an umlaut that cannot be written on your computer?For example in English Krüger would be written Krueger but pronounced the same. For example would özszelopott be written on the computer as oeszelopott? == (snip) perhaps you might translate for us these lovely phrases: Valaki korhadt, vén deszkákon kopog. Julianna via Eva: (One of the most basic contradiction is, that if the worker only gets back a very small portion of the value he produced, than he has not enough money to buy the necessities to live, sold by the owners of the factories etc, so these owners cannot make the profits and have to close down.) REHSounds like a dumb owner and herd like workers. Now I like the New York Philharmonic as a group of workers. They can scare the b'geezis out of anyone who would take advantage of them. And 802 the Musician's Union is formidable. They can even get a producer to hire musicians based not upon the orchestration but how many musicians the pit will hold. So if they only need eight musicians to play in a sixteen piece pit, the other eight musicians are hired to stand in the wings and watch.Then there is the Stage Workers contract for the Kennedy Center in Washington. Your poor dumb beasts are nothing like these smart workers. But the best of all is the movies. Julianna, you should come to the big city and see how the Screen Actors Guild negotiates with producers. The modern "virtual company" founded upon the movie company model is really a "Model T" flexible contract when compared to movie salaries. What I see is incompetence all around. Your statements are hopelessly old fashioned and most of the companies of the world are as well. For many years America's greatest exports have been in the Arts and Entertainments areas primarily the movies. They can fake a Nike plant in Hong Kong or Thailand but not a movie.That is the biggest area of battle these days between the UK and the American Unions. The UK salaries are inadequate but the U.S. is restraining trade through their labor practices. On the other hand where America will hire a "British accent" easily due to the multi-ethnic society, the UK will only cast Americans in American parts which means that there are few jobs for Americans in the UK even though the
Re: How hard is it to change opinions?
The problem of health, commodities, the left vs. the right, or the mental models that we bring to these discussions seems to be making people angry everywhere .The future of work is an interesting thought except everyone only seems to want to discuss the future of their work or their favorite philosopher/economist. (At this point I would prefer Peter Senge) I wrote a letter to a friend last night and thought I would share it because he seems to be encountering the same issues of those wanting not to explore but to conquer. The boys mentioned are his two sons who he also had to rescue from the system. Is there any hope for a discussion on what work means and what kind of multiplicity there must be to create a humane, happy future together?Well probably not, but maybe the following will be of interest. John wrote: Which brings us back to the first point. I used a simple declaritive 'common man/common sense' construction, Fred, to demonstrate how far from useful some of our dialogues have come. You see, I put down my pen as a theoretical linguist back in the '70s when I realized that language is the tool man uses to describe the universe and that for each man or woman in that universe, there is a separate universe. In order to completely understand meaning, (in the way in which you and AT are trying to understand it in this thread) we would have to first understand each of these separate universes in terms of our own, and then, we would need to change our own understanding because of it. We would then be in search of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Would wisdom ever come? John you assume a hell of alot about their ability to understand, don't you think? After all there were all of those circles on "Another World" in the Soaps of the 1950s-60s and they didn't get it then. If it's too hard for the soap operas to teach then what hope is there on the net? I'm having a terrible discussion with a H C who lives in England on another list. You would think she was a right winger or something. No practicality anywhere, just "make work" to prove that the lack of a need of workers is not real. Anyway, you are one smart fellow and much more optimistic than myself in this instance.I couldn't even bring myself to reply to At on the last post and that must mean I'm depressed. How are the boys? My daughter's doing great, now. I just worked on some Stanislavsky theory with her this weekend and realized how difficult it is compared to the academics. Now I understand why they don't teach performance theory in most high schools, much less music theory and those contrapuntal fugues. If they can't deal with the three Rs or History then this is impossibly abstract. Abstract, what music is, is a dirty word to most of these folks. She's been out of school for a semester with a medical and pesticide issue. (The NYTimes documented what her homeopath stated, in Friday's paper, only to be removed from their net site immediately.) We sent her to MRIs, Neurologists, Gastrointestinal folks, every kind of blood test possible etc. and they all came back negative and healthy (within "acceptable" levels) except that she couldn't perform much less stop her nose bleeds, headaches, nausea, dizziness and fainting spells, chronic red throats or thrush on the tongue and very little memory.I know it sounds adolescent but it was much more. She was a mess, so I took her to an Internist MD trained in France and registered here as a homeopath and nutritionist. I took her because he had helped so many students of mine who had chronic issues as well.You can't perform on the stage if you are chronically ill and if you don't work you don't eat. So they tend to go to people who help. "The show must go on!" The Doctor ordered another battery of tests and then said that she had little wrong except for her digestive issues. He taught her food mixing and put her on a diet to detox for pesticides and no micro-wave. The symptoms are gone except for the throat which he now controls with herbs. He insists that she eat properly and must scrub any non "organically grown" produce as well as cleanse it in a solution he gives her. Some things are also peeled and many things are avoided completely. He encourages the total use of organically grown foods where possible.The change has been radical. She's back in school, happy and working hard It coincides completely with the NYTimes article on pesticide toxicity in Friday's NYTImes from Consumer Reports: "A spokesman for the agency (EPA) said it was 'in the process of implementing the Food Quality Protection Act.'...In addition to choosing foods with lower levels of toxicity, pesticide exposure can be reduced by peeling produce and by buying organically grown fruits and vegetables.'There are plenty of ways parents can get healthy foods into kids without exposing them to high risk stuff.' Nancy Metcalf of
Re: FW: Re ethanol
Just be sure you don't heat it.As I found out heat or micro-waves kill enzymes. REH pete wrote: Michael Spencer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Um, this is straying kinda far off topic, but when Pete Vincent wrote: As to "cellulosic biomass", that is protein,... I hope you were making a thinko/typo. I suppose any aggregate biomass contains some protein but cellulose is a polysaccharide -- a sugar polymer -- not protein -- amino acid polymer. If you bust cellulose up, you get glucose. Raw wood contains a bunch of other stuff, particularly lignin, but it's around 60% cellulose. Ack. Clearly a major brain lapse on my part. Don't know where it came from, but fortunately I never have to make any claims that I'm a chemist. OK, so presumably we can cook up a good broth of enzymes and biomass and get out glucose, which then allows the fermentation process to proceed. This doesn't answer my other questions, though... -Pete Vincent
[Fwd: Laissez Faire City Times - is not FREE forever.]
Lazy Fare is not always going to be free but today they can't give it away.They've been putting the Rupert Murdoch NYPost sleaze rag on my doorstep for over a month now and I have told them that it embarrasses me in front of the neighbors but they just won't stop. Now they're putting the same garbage on the net. REH Since you have been a valued reader to the Laissez Faire City Times, we wanted to reward you with a FREE two year subscription. As you know, high quality Net publications will not remain free forever. New pay-per-page-view systems will be soon be the norm. So that you will not have to pay, we are awarding you NOW with a two year subscription FREE. This is your first "New Issue Notice." To remove your name from this FREE subscription list just RESPOND with 'REMOVE' typed into the Subject: line. -- In the Current Issue: Slick Skating on Thin Ice, by Ace http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/thinice.html Dodge Ball, DC Style, by Sunni Maravillosa http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/dodgeBall.html Bill and Hillary Clinton as Borderline Psychotics, by Robert L. Kocher http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/psychotics.html Spectacle of Farm Socialism, by Michael R. Allen http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/farm_social.html Freedom of Approved Speech, by Peter Topolewski http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/freespeech.html A Verdict Against Guns by Don L. Tiggre http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.7/gunverdict.html --- Plus ... in the 'Net Gems' Section: The Last Word .. by Rep. Lindsey Graham http://zolatimes.com/aLindsey.html Dr. Quigley and the Network Protecting Bill Clinton http://www.zolatimes.com/aQuig.html Paranoid Readers Respond Rebuttal by Zola http://www.zolatimes.com/v2.27/jbellth.html Rep. Lindsey Graham's Contact with Broaddrick http://www.zolatimes.com/ALone.html -- Laissez Faire City Times Title: Laissez Faire City Times - http://www.zolatimes.com Bookmark Now - Quality is Hard to Find Last Updated at 11:24 PM [MST] 2/14/99 It Won't be FREE forever! Click Now for Free 2 Year Subscription === Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an official organ of the city or its founding trust. Just as the New York Times is unaffiliated with the city of New York, the City Times is only one of what may be several news publications located in, or domiciled at, Laissez Faire City proper. For information about LFC, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: expand/steady-state mkt. economy
Thanks for the reply Eva Durant wrote: Religious people believe in a god, whether it is a literal one with beard or an abstract one that supposed to be symbolising some sort of human feeling/thinking/valuing. There is nothing abstract about Ultimate Concern withthat which is Ultimate in the person's life. It could be an automobile, a book or even another person or pet. We put it a different way, we said: "When we die, so do our Gods." You said: Well, I am thankfully free of all this, so I don't know what sort of opinions you have alotted as mine. I say:Put yourself in my place. That is what, as an actor, I do with you.Then I have a conversation knowing that the dialogue is with myself on an inadaquate machine. I can only stir the things you already know within yourself and you within me. Neither one of us is Mime or Wotan and so we don't have to worry about only asking that which we already know. That is all there is anyway.That is also what I was trying to say to you about translation but you have a different thought attached to me on that one. You said: Yes, there is an underlying human concern with finding our place, finding our role in life, but as there is no evidence for anything "ultimate". I say:Glad to know that you don't believe in a hierarchy of needs. You said: I have no reason to think any of it has anything to do with a fair description of our reality. I say:See the Gardner article or see the earlier post I wrote on Arts and Crafts. You said: There is enough wonder around in the form of all that ended up existing temporarily as a result of chains of random coincidences to fill our lives, especially if we also have an ambition to make the best of the short period of consciousness we have for ourselves therefore for everybody else. I say:1. I'm all for "wonder".2. There is no more proof that it is random than that it is not. One might compare it to the randomness of the Internet except there are all of those links. I tend to believe more in the interconnectedness of all reality and that it is a conscious as I am but different. 3. I to wish to make the best for my short period of life in this place but I have no idea about before or after and I must find a balance between enlightened self-interest and the rest of the world. Are you saying, along with Ayn Rand, that if you are truly selfish with your brief period that it will be good for everyone else as well? You say: If you think that all of it is here to please you or your god, you are wrong, I say:Actually that is a paper tiger but how do you know that it is wrong. I thinkthat is as much an area of "belief" as the "faith" of the people you deride. I'm not speaking of faith as "ultimate concern" but as "belief in that which cannot be proven." You say: but you should let me criticise peacefully yours ... it is just an other aspect of life one has to puzzle about... I say;I agree and you can. You said: As for languages and people - they exist to pass on meanings. If there is no content, there is no point in language or communication. I said;Every word in every language can contain at least seven meanings.Meaninglessness is the concept of the Barbarian gibberish that the Greeks claimed everyone else spoke but them.They meant that foreign languages were gibberish. I find it quaint that you seem to be asserting that in the 20th century.But it feels like something else. It feels like you are using it for a purpose other than the Greeks ethnocentricity.But I don't know.This is still a one dimensional machine. But: It feels like you are using my words to allow you an opportunity to pass judgment on my being and intent. Is that true? If so, Why? I have attempted to convey respect about your first language, including going to the trouble to check my translations and your couplet even after I said that I didn't speak your language. But I have studied it enough to make those beautiful songs available to our audiences here. But next to a native speaker I am no more than a tourist. But that being said: I have made my living on the International Arts scene in New York City for the last thirty years both with myself, my professional students and my company. During that time we have placed our expertise and artistry on the line before world critics and in venues including the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala and others as well as on premiere recordings.So I find your judgments interesting in that no one is perfect or above learning. At the same time I find that carefully worded sections and passages rethought to mean exactly what I am thinking in the moment are just "put down" ignored or skipped. The key to what a professional singer does is words and words are almost God in that we are very nearly ultimately concerned with them. I like a great deal of what you say and I am delighted to read a genuine Marxist rather than the
Re: an empirical observation Re: the end of 'wage slavery'
Durant wrote: REH Never having lived in Marxist Communism I am sure that is true however: Here we go again... Ray, nobody yet lived in Marxist Communism, what's more, not one of the pseudo-socialist countries/ex-leaders claimed that their countries were Marxist Communist. Not even Castro or Baby Kim. (snip) Eva, Thanks for all of the work. You were very articulate and I enjoyed the read. If your premise is correct then the rest of that post is unnecessary. There are those in every movement who state that the original premise has been betrayed.I think the Free Marketeers would say the same about their ideas. They certainly would argue with you about genuine Capitalism ever being tried in the world. I am aware of the specifics of what you were speaking but it was not the subject of my questions. I would contend that the teacher (apart from a school which is a kind of "education of scale") IS responsible for the success of their product. They are also responsible for the failure. If they do not wish to be known as such, then they should not accept the job of teaching that particular student. Or should forgo writing the book. I certainly do hold the founders of the various schools of religious, political and economic thought responsible for the chaos expressed in their names. I contend that without the original seed, the genetics stop there.Responsibility is, in my culture, one of the primal ideas. That is why we burn anything that has not been sold or given away by the dead. If you wish to go the route of Marx as founding the idea that "economics is the bottom of all human life and interactions" then I would have another, actually harsher set of questions since I consider it a statement not grounded in all of the facts of human civilization. In short, it is 19th century "romantic idealized thought." Thought from a time that had no idea of the foolishness implications inherent in their arguments. As I pointed out with the Hammerklavier fugue, even in the system of 18th and 19th century harmonic theory, there is the issue of time. When the system has been achieved it is replaced by another with different rules. In the 19th century they believed in A system, A morality, A religion, A universal theory of economics (their own), A Universal Art based upon European principles. The absurdity of this should be apparent to anyone who has studied the various languages of the world.But from Johnson's Dictionary up through Marx's era it was the common belief that Latin grammar was the basis of all advanced languages. This lasted until modern psycho-linguists had to admit that it didn't fit English all that well either.Like the Sioux skull to the Phrenologists. But you can't keep claiming that the theory is OK when it keeps coming up with failed applications based upon excuses. I find idealism a useful tool but only a tool. It has to be balanced with truthfulness. What do you know? Truth and Beauty.Why don't we try that for awhile? When you think about truthful practice plus an evolving, humane, respectful idealism, most civilizations work. I would suggest, as I have to libertarian members of this list and others, that the best way to prove your point is to form a community of like minded people willing to work within the discipline of your principles. Show with your intelligence, humanity, culture and prosperity the value of your principles and their implications. Otherwise I would place all of these writings that we have discussed along with the "Republic" and Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonia" as fantasy writing. Although they have been tried, adjusting them to the real human condition has been a failure. Even the beautiful houses of Frank Lloyd Wright became a dull landscape in Usonia.Personally I would prefer New York's urban clutter to any of the ugly inhumanity that I have seen in Greenbelt or Columbia Maryland or in the attempts to create the worker's paradise. Year's ago I read the Bible and worked in Churches for awhile (13 years) building artistic music programs.After a while I had to admit that the book was being betrayed by the people. Were the people wrong? No, I found later in Synagogues, the context for the book and the people that it came from. That taught me that religion, like art, is time/space specific. It springs from a context and meets the needs of a group. Often the context changes within a few years and the book, although filled with beauty and wisdom, is no longer applicable to the new situation. My people were both Democratic and Communitarian. They succeeded because they were family, but the outside world tore them apart. Life tore us apart.I've heard the same said about Bologna. Italy is beautiful and Bologna is unique.But the Libertarian can always find someone in Little Italy in New York who escaped the "terrible lack of freedom" in Bologna while others are freed
Re: Perhaps a stupid couple of questions
Victor Milne wrote: I heard one programmer discussing it on radio several months ago, and he said that often when they find a date field, it's difficult to understand how the routine containing it interacts with other parts of the program. The work has been automated to some extent by software that will search for date fields, but it still has to be checked manually. What wonderful thought. Computer programers going through the same problems that I've had with their creations. Do you think it might make them less arrogant? REH
Re: an empirical observation Re: the end of 'wage slavery'
Christoph Reuss wrote:
Yeah, we creative types really dream of the end of 'wage slavery' !
I could spend years and years only with creative hobbies, NGO volunteering
and the Net, but alas, the 'job' work gets in the way most of the time.
However, in a part of the NGO work I got to know a different kind of
persons: When I created a social programme for unemployed people, I naively
thought they could be put to a (low-level, low-intensity) task and simply do
the work all day, or even find own ideas to work something useful. Wrong.
90% of them did nothing (except reading the newspaper, chatting/arguing,
and other nonsense), unless someone advised them "every move" all the time.
I offered them a variety of opportunities, even a computer system to work
with, and individual courses on it. But they ended up with playing computer
games. They didn't ask me for new projects, but for new games after they
got bored of the old ones. You may say: "See, you're not a social worker..".
But the 'managers' of other similar programmes confirmed the attitude of
the participants. Note: The official purpose of those programmes is to
give the unemployed a structure to increase their chances to get back into
the working mill err process.
Now, I don't put the blame on those individuals. Rather, I think it was
"the system" that made them like that. Actually, at least in 'lower'
positions, corporations don't seem to want employees with "own brains", but
they want "wage slaves". It will take huge educational and psycho-social
efforts to prepare these people for the Basic Income society, or they will
end up in even more boredom, despair and drugs.
Chris,
I spent an entire year shooting pool and watching the TV in the Army because they
had lost my papers. Had I pointed this out I might have been dead in Vietnam.
But I didn't "do drugs" and wasn't bored, (I read a lot.) I also read that
both Veblen and Keynes wrote their first masterpieces when they were "loafing"
(Heilbroner's word, not mine) on the job.
I have experienced on all levels the hostility of those above to people
"improvising" with their jobs at lower levels. They only want to know that you
are there when they ask. Sort of like Butlers. (the Blue Team)
That is one of the reasons that I find Capitalism and the Market to be so
incredibly poor at efficiency with too much redundancy. On the other hand when
the Master Capitalists took over in the Gingrich Revolution they cut their staffs
to the bone and then couldn't deal with the business of the offices.
No, I don't think that 19th century Socialism and Communism with its base in out
of date "scientific" theories is any better. These may as well base their
theories on Phrenology for all of the sense they make. They were all trying to
find their individuality by killing their Fathers. ("I'm sure I can write a
better Bible than that!)
Remember, what "did the Phrenologists in" was not science but racism. They found
the Lakota had the most ideal, large skulls, bigger and better brains, and their
theories never recovered. Of course along the way they operated a huge trade in
human skeletons ($600 per, they said the stench of boiling human flesh around the
Army posts was unbelievable,) that made the Lakota more valuable dead than alive.
That is the reason that I do my own work and am my own boss.I miss the
"safety" and am considered irresponsible by some for not having more of an
inheritance for my offspring, but it seems you can't have both in this
society. Sometimes it's better just to stay out of the way of those "economies
of scale."
REH
Re: Perhaps a stupid couple of questions
Thomas Lunde wrote: (snip) As I look at the ads of training schools, I do not see an offers for training to become a Y2K correction specialist and most courses in their outlines do not even mention the need to become expert in Y2K problems. Second question - what is going on in the training field to supply those capable enough to work on this problem. I would appreciate some thoughts on these questions. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde Denial Tom, That cigarette won't give you Cancer, just the other guy. REH
Re: microwave ovens (was Re: FW A very thought-provoking paper)
Christoph Reuss wrote: Let's analyze this (it does fit together): Conventional ovens heat the food from outside to inside, so the pathogens INside ground meat survive if you don't cook it long enough. Microwave ovens heat the food from inside to outside, so the pathogens on the _surface_ survive if you don't cook it long enough (and on most food _except_ ground meats, most of the pathogens are on the surface, hence my point 1). Thus, it does make sense to PRE-cook ground meats in the microwave (killing the pathogens INside) and then cook it regularly. See, "the devil is in the details"... ;-) Like you say, but all of the foods that I have in my kitchen and thedirections in the Micro-wave states that food should be left for a few minutes, before removing. It seems that the heat comes to the outside. But the main issue for me was with meat that has the pathogens ground into the center. I've learned to be afraid of pink hamburger. Something that is pointed out in Dr. Michael Arnott's book on Breast Cancer is that cooking in the oven or on the stove creates carcinogens that contribute to breast cancer in women. Not the case in the Micro-wave. So choose your poison.I still prefer fresh, organic tasty food. The Micro- wave doesn't deliver on that one.And my daughter is much improved, in school, doing three hour a night homework assignments and happy. Hey what's wrong with that? (snip) Well, it's an open secret that "mainstream" docs have virtually no idea of nutrition and prevention. This is a structural problem in their education. No it's a structural problem with the double-blind testing method and theprivate enterprise system that is only rewarded AFTER you get sick. They have an investment in your being ill! Your criticism of the medical system is perfectly valid on that account. However, your homeopath seemed to imply that enzymes survive in conventional cooking but not in microwave cooking, which was a wrong interpretation. Well, he is a five-star French chef. Maybe there was something lost in thetranslation. I'll check it out with him. But even my stomach doesn't enjoy the food from the Micro-wave either. Kind of like cooking in old grease at the stomach level. I keep the Zantac close by. I've heard similar stories on homeopaths being wrong in the explanations but right in the results (well, sometimes). That's how homeopaths work, after all. ;-) I once had a heart surgeon tell me that 800 IUs of vitamin E was bad for me and could harm my internal organs. (note that they now recommend that amount and above for healthy hearts). I asked my heart surgeon of the time about the right amount and he said he would check with a specialist but he knew that I was wrong. The issue of healing one's self and taking care by practicing healthy prevention practices seems to be the only answer given the future of medical work in these times. Especially for folks like myself without personal medical coverage.I draw attention to Brian's post for the rest. But this issue of the medical Doctor's needing to be a businessman, according to Wall Street, and having a vested interest in creating a market by making you sick in order to need him is a little wierd, don't you think? You don't believe me? Remember it was business that came up with the idea of "planned obsolescence." And yes I do believe that it is on topic. It's all work and definitely a problem of the future. Economically, I wish the economists on the list would explain the economics of being a Doctor given the current climate both in the U.S. and Canada. It don't make sense! (idiomatic Oklahoma speech with a nasel twang like Garth.) REH
Re: FW A very thought-provoking paper
Brian McAndrews wrote: (snip) I remember reading an article where a leading researcher in chemotherapy developed cancer and chose not to go through the standard chemo process. He said he knew too much. Education's a B__! as they say here on the streets of NYCity.Thanks for the Hillerman. That is what I was taught ceremonies are about. I'm not superstitious, I'm just a Priest. Our way of saying your Wittgenstein quote is "Walk in Beauty." REH Tony Hillerman has a beautiful section in one of his Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn Navaho mystery novels. Chee tells a white friend that he would be doing a healing ceremony over the weekend for an old Navaho women who was dying. The white friend inquires on the following Monday if the healing ceremony had been successful. Chee says yes. The white friend, somewhat bewildered, asks if she wasn't going to die. Chee replies of course she is. The healing ceremony was 'successful' because the old woman and her family found peace and acceptance through the sacred ritual. Helps me with Wittgenstein's aphorism: 'Ethics and Aesthetics are one' ** * Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator* * Faculty of Education, Queen's University * * Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 * * FAX:(613) 533-6307 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937* * e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * "Ethics and aesthetics are one"* * Wittgenstein * ** ** **
Re: different language games (corrected)
Sorry folks, I reread this post and had to correct the multiple errors. This is the corrected version. REH Brian McAndrews wrote: Hi Ray, I learned a very important lesson from 4 Mohawk women who I was privileged to teach a few years ago. They told me that in their culture, when a person is asked a question, the answer might come hours or weeks later. The answer might also be in the form of a story that might not immediately seem to connect with the question. This made for a very interesting course. Schools tend to want answers within seconds; like the way many on FW fire back responses. I hear it as the difference between the way the arts (perfect project orientation) as opposed to the academics (time clock orientation) are taught. What is the discipline being taught in each case? So I've thought a lot about beginning to respond to your response. Here is my beginning: Thanks! Try reading Wittgenstein's writing as aphorisms. He firmly believed that 'philosophy ought to be written only as a poetic composition.' Wittgenstein used physics and oracles as symbols. Each representing a different way of meaning making. Oracle is the symbol for prophet, mystic, shaman, medicine man, angel, vision quester, mediator, seer, dreamer - Actually, I tend to read everything as "expression" limited by time and space. In this way you have two types of meaning that is layered. The initial type is Denotative (dictionary culturally agreed specific meaning) and is one to three layers deep, the second is Connotative and can be as much as four layers deep. We tend to like sevens. I remember the final paragraph of your News Years message to FW: -- "Being both a pagan and a priest, this might seem strange to some that I would suggest a possible answer within such a thought but nonetheless I am offering the thought. It is said that meditation is the highest form of prayer amongst my people. I would suggest a meditation on the balance of things for this new year. Meditate on your neighbors, not from the standpoint of conversion to your way of thought, but with the idea that a healthy neighbor is less likely to be a destructive one. If you pray for the balance of human societies, the health of their children and the development of their potential as humans, and then you do the same for the rest of life on the earth and the earth itself, then at least within yourself you will grow more aware.And who knows what will happen if we all grow more aware and less anesthetized by both the pace and demands of the world that we have decided to dream into place up until the present? Happy New Year!" --- I would put what you wrote above under the oracle symbol. There are two kinds of compliments here. I acknowledge both of them. Thank you. What I wrote is about a process that is built around the health of a system as a result of awareness processes asserted by the whole person in solving the problems of that system. In some ways it is what the Management people from MIT Sloan school are using and calling "Learning Organizations." The late Donald Schoen called it "Reflective Practice." Amongst our people, for serious issues we examine a problem in a "ritual fashion" with specified steps that include the use of "taboo" or as F.M. Alexander terms "conscious inhibition" in developing focus within a short, intense time frame. A short process can contain as few as seven steps with a longer process involving physical and emotional fasting within a group process that takes many days and can involve literally thousands of "steps" in meditating on the problem. In a group, each person is acknowledged as a universe that is different from all others.That provides, in some cases, tens of thousands of possibilities in examining the answers to problems. Rather than "oracles" most native councils are termed "bureaucratic" by the outside, because they refuse to announce a decision before the processes have been completed. This is why councils chosen by "white" election processes are usually boycotted by traditionals. Their processes are considered expedient, self serving and shallow when compared to the older consensual explorative forms. At the end of each time period, the people discuss the problem from a non-protagonist position. Each person simply reports with the belief that every position reported will eventually form a coherent whole that will allow for a group action that is without conflict.This is the "Democracy" of the American Indian processes that I was taught. The process finishes only when there is a consensus on the action to be taken. As for Newtonian physics, I'm not interested. I am, however, very interested in NEWTON's physics and the other matters that informed his thought. Newton wrote literally a
Re: FW: Re fwd - How science is really done
Eva Durant wrote:
reality is a word symbol for what we believe is out there.
no, it was/is/will be there whether we believe it or not.
By reality I mean the physical world and all it's past
present and future variable permutations.
We have different perceptions and beliefs, but
as we are getting better at communication,
the overlapping bits are approximating the
real thing better and better.
When we die does
that universe we believe continue or does the "out there" that may or may
not be what we believe continue? If you call that reality then you must
call what you believe it to be something else, right?
Never occured to me to call reality all the
different beliefs people have, though hopefully
these converge to the reality I defined above
with time.
Eva
Thanks Eva,
well said,
just a few things stirred by your words.
Sounds to me like you are saying "your 'word' and 'reality' are 'one' and the
'word' is eternal."
We say "the 'word' was the beginning for human consciousness and all words are
human, including the word and concept 'reality'." What we call "reality" is
a construct of the human consciousness to try to make some kind of system of
that which seems external to us according to our senses.
The word "reality" for me is the same as Plato's Cave.When we come out of
the Cave we construct whole civilizations in "ideas" like clouds but the
remnant from the Cave (the belief in objectivity) keeps us from being
comfortable living in the clouds.
The Christians construct a Heaven in the Clouds but then make it out of
concrete. But the metaphor of the clouds speaks for a different state of
being than the word "reality" defines. In that "reality" there is "object"
relations.
Amongst my people, life is a relationship that is not (human life vs. object)
but (alive-alive) with different states of 'aliveness.' Each being master of
their own consciousness. If you plant a human in the earth, like a carrot,
the human dies but we call a carrot an object without consciousness because it
can't talk. One of the problems I have on this list, sometimes, is that it
feels like everyone is expected to be "carrots."
For me, the whole concept of "objectivity" only has meaning as a transitional
phase of pedagogy when humans break things apart to articulate them before they
put them back together again. We do the same with the so-called "systems" of
anatomy in the body when in "reality" (there's that word again) they are not
separate and in fact the lymph system is so contrary even to the idea of
systems that we ignore it's rules at our peril being much more comfortable with
systems that stay in their own channels and don't mix. Of course apprentice
Doctors make their mistakes on cadavers while apprentice economists practice on
us. (As my pedagogy instructor said in college, "An MD's failures are left on
the table while your's meets you in the streets, you had better learn your
craft and succeed at it!")
I think all we can say about what you seem to be calling "eternal reality" is
that it seems, according to all human consciousness and exploration to "exist"
i.e. that it "is."But beyond that everything is "up for grabs." I tend to
accept the belief that the only way that existence can be described is
metaphorically because anything you say about it is ultimately both true and
untrue.
So where does that put science? Truths are what you all have built your lives
upon from your traditions. Truths are how you define your reality, (not
necessarily the same as mine). Truths can be changed but must be moved slowly
and with great respect. They are the "legs" for the stage where you dance your
life. Balance is crucial.Truth is the realm of the Sacred. (The English
word "Sacred" comes from the same root as "Sacrifice.") It is the struggle
and the sacrifice that makes human life have growth and meaning and is
intensely personal i.e. individual. It is this "will to grow and have
meaning" that is the way we participate in the Sacred, a relationship, a dance
if you will.
Religion is not the same as the Sacred but constitutes a mass production
('scale' for all you economists) of individual facts so that groups can
participate on the Truth level.However, there is an inherent oxymoron in
the words Sacred Theology.That is why I love the Iroquois "Great Law."
It begins by everyone admitting that this theology is an agreement between the
people as to a group approach to the Sacred.This is where I believe
Westerners with their Creeds ("This I believe") miss the boat. It is another
Oxymoron. Group belief is not eternal but the Sacred or the Great Mystery is.
There are many words for the Sacred, the Great Mystery, and we each
participate, both as individuals and as groups through traditions that go back
to the beginning of time (truths). This is a relationship that is highly
significant in our individual and group paths, but ultimately
Re: democracy
Well, I usually find myself agreeing with Arthur but coming from that group that you all are lionizing, I would have to respectfully disagree. The issue for me is life experience, education and professionalism.The issue with U.S. politicians is one of time. American Politicians are elected at different intervals and in some cases are term limited. The governments don't fall if an Executive loses a vote as in the Parliamentary systems. In the near future we will see how the two systems compete in handling the competition between a United Europe that is basically parliamentary and the United States which is not. Also the issues of wisdom are not IMO really the point. Buckley exists in a very small group of wealthy and super-wealthy who are insular and very uncomfortable with the products of general elections. They so mistrust professionalism among politicians that they believe their only class protection is an impotent government and term limits that couldn't possibly allow the building of a serious professionalism amongst those elected. In the last few years I have seen life experience amongst politicians demeaned by the wealthy, to the point that a long elected history means that the person is "not able to get a job in the 'real' world" and is almost on "welfare." The fact that they are so miserably underpaid and so little controlled by the wealthy just makes it all that much worse as far as the Buckley crowd is concerned. Imagine the CEO of ITT only receiving $275,000 a year in salary. What kind of CEO would be willing to take such a low salary for twenty-four hour a day work? You may add in a "house" that when the job is terminated goes to the next CEO with a job limit of 8 years and a review every four. The fact that the local 100 names of the Boston telephone directory believes that this will get them committed professional public servants (and they do) casts great doubt in my mind on their wisdom and sophistication. How about our letting them be responsible for the budget of the country instead and treat highly trained professional economists in the same fashion as politicians?I wouldn't even support that and you realize how often economists have taken hits from me on this list. I believe in the value of life experience, education and professionalism. The problem for me is the "Jude the Obscure" issue. How to recognize and reward the person who against overwhelming odds develops their own expertise and who breaks the bonds of the normal systems to achieve a breakthrough. It has often been stated that Rodin's "Thinker" was destroyed by the establishment and that van Gogh never sold a painting except to a relative. That is used as a reason for not respecting traditional knowledge and education. But when you destroy traditional context what you get is a lack of loyalty and a rise in chaos. So for me the problem is how to develop the normal person to their highest potential while avoiding the "Peter Principle" and yet make room for the genius or the breakthrough. Those to me are not problems that can be solved by systems but must be solved by culture and a heightened sophistication of the entire culture. REH Cordell, Arthur: DPP wrote: I agree. Many years ago William Buckley, the right wing editor of the right wing National Review made a statement that I was surprised to find myself agreeing to then, and even more so today. He said something like the following, "I would sooner have the first 100 names from the Boston phone book than the 100 elected US senators making decisions on my behalf" I have met many Harold's, people of commonsense, and have met many high IQ types, whizz-kids. Guess who I am going to look for for ideas during the next ice storm, or y2k disaster-- or just plain ideas on governance. arthur cordell -- From: Victor Milne To: futurework Subject: Re:democracy Date: Saturday, January 30, 1999 11:27AM As I recall, this thread got started with a comment about many of the voters seeming to be neither intelligent nor well-informed. I'm sure from many of his postings that Ed Weick did not mean this in an elitist sense. I don't think lack of intelligence is really the problem. I also do not think that intelligence in any easily definable sense is really relevant. The core of the issue is really personal values. I work in a factory and my best friend there is a spot-welder named Harold. I don't think Harold could have pursued all the academic education I obtained before my foot slipped off the career ladder. However, Harold's heart is in the right place and he has a great deal of common sense (in the original meaning of that phrase, not in the debased meaning popularized by the right-wing government of Ontario). When you promote the notion of governance based on intelligence, you have no guiding values to select those people. Although I have successfully completed 10 years of post-secondary education (English
