Re: The Blind Swordsman Zatoichi
First, the character in Wait Until Dark was anything but pitiful: the story was about how she gains self-confidence by defending herself against a murderer. Second, Kung Fu had a blind character who was one of the masters. When a Western man says, I may have trouble on the road. I am sixty-one, the chief of the temple replies, then take master so-and-so [the blind master]. He is eighty-three. They obviously had different ideas about age. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/28/04 11:42 AM In Hollywood, the blind are represented in film either as pitiful victims, such as in Wait Until Dark, or as comic figures like Mr. Muckle, who tears apart W. C. Fields's shop in It's a Gift. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with somebody like Zatoichi, the blind master swordsman who was played by the beloved Shintaro Katsu in 26 films between 1962 and 1989, as well as 100 television episodes based on the character. . check out 'zatoichi meets the one armed swordsman' (71 or 72) directed by kimiyoshi yasuda who directed several zatoichi films... the one armed swordsman of film is jimmy wang yu from chang cheh's 67 film of same name, here's what lisa odham stokes and i write about chang's film in _city on fire_: Chang Cheh's One Armed Swordsman (1967) is generally acknowledged as the movie that launched the 1970s' martial arts phenomenon [in hong kong]. While the film's title announces that this is a swordplay movie - nothing new in itself - the hero's disability (his sifu's jealous daughter has chopped off his right arm) produces a different type of character. Forced to undergo a strict and tough rehabilitative training program, the protagonist (Jimmy Wang Yu) becomes a 'lean mean fighting machine' with a blade. Notably brutal for its time, Chang's picture ushered in an era of the self-reliant individualist that according to [noted hk film critic] Sek Kei, simultaneously destroyed the image of the weak Chinese male by featuring 'beefcake heroes in adventure and violence.' (p. 91) in 'zatoichi meets the one armed swordsman, wang yu's character travels to japan where he intervenes to prevent a young boy's execution and has a bounty placed upoin him, meanwhile, the young boy's dying father's last wish is for shintaro katsu's blind swordsman to care for his son, communication difficulties between the two swordsmen lead to them fighting one another... trivia: tsui hark's 'the blade (95) is a remake of chang's 'one armed swordsman' by way of a detour through wong kar-wai's 'ashes of time (94) in which tony leung ka-fai plays a blind swordsman... finally: blind swordsman films inspired 71 entitled 'deaf mute heroine' directed by wu ma, one of number of hk martial arts films featuring women... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Hawking black hole
If I sent a note to the American Economic Association and said 'I have solved the neoclassical autism problem and I want to talk about it' do you think they'd buy it, and just go on my reputation? Guess not. NewScientist.com Hawking cracks black hole paradox 19:00 14 July 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox. It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This Hawking radiation contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this fuzzball does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). Big reputation Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it', says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation. Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution, says Gibbons. But I think you have to say the jury is still out. Forever hidden At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed. Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet, Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice from which information can be recovered at will. Jenny Hogan
Re: The Chicago smirk
All the time. I suspect that the Sowell thread is exhausting itself into repetition, but he did make me think about the program that Doug did with Bhagwhati. Each time this renowned economist gave a simplistic answer to Doug's question, he would giggle. His giggles gave me the same sort of feeling that Chicago economists evoke when they smirk after they give a simplistic answer. These smirks and giggles seem to say look how clever I am -- as with Sowell saying, .You see if you raise the price of labor you create unemployment.. Have others encountered the Chicago smirk or is it just me? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: The presidential election and the Supreme Court
I thought only Congress can declare war. It's in the Constitution. (One of the main excuses of the ABB crowd for backing the pro-war, DLC, Joe Lieberman wannabe John Kerry is that we need to reverse the rightward drift of the Supreme Court. Leaving aside the question of John Kerry announcing that he is amenable to the nomination of ultraconservative judges, this rather startling landmark decision should make you think twice about all this.) LA Times, June 29, 2004 SUPREME COURT / DETAINEES' RIGHTS Wartime President Is Again Outflanked By Doyle McManus, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists seized four jetliners and caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, President Bush has declared that the United States is at war and in wartime, presidents assume emergency powers they would not claim in times of peace. Bush and his aides said they had a right to imprison suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, without court hearings. They asserted a prerogative to keep more secrets than before from Congress, the media and the public. And at one point, the Justice Department claimed the president could ignore laws prohibiting torture, under his inherent authority as commander in chief. But in an unusual series of reversals in recent weeks, the Supreme Court, Congress and public opinion all have intervened to draw new limits on the president's wartime authority. On Monday, the court ruled that the federal government could not hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without allowing them to challenge their detention in legal hearings, a significant setback for the administration. Earlier this month, the administration was embarrassed by a 2003 memo that claimed a presidential right to override laws regulating torture or, for that matter, any other military conduct. The White House, facing a public-opinion storm, promptly disavowed the policy. Before that, the administration sought to withhold documents and witnesses from a congressionally created commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, claiming they were sheltered by the right of executive privilege. But after protests from members of both parties in Congress, the administration backed down. For a year after 9/11, the executive branch got the benefit of the doubt, said Norman J. Ornstein, a political scientist at the predominantly conservative American Enterprise Institute. That was the case, for example, when Congress voted to authorize the war in Iraq. But it's not the case anymore. Part of it is time passing since the terrorist attacks, he added. I couldn't say the court's decisions would have been different if it were, say, three months after 9/11, but they very well might have been. Douglas W. Kmiec, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who is now at Pepperdine Law School, agreed. It would have been interesting to know how different the outcome would have been if we had more recently suffered an attack on the homeland, he said. I do think the 9/11 commission and the furor over the administration's decision-making on interrogation policy affected the court's judgment. Kmiec said the decisions were an appropriate reminder of the importance of civil liberties, even in wartime. Earlier presidents also claimed emergency powers in wartime. The Supreme Court has rarely intervened and then, only after the combat was over, Kmiec noted. full: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess29jun29,1,5997448.story?coll=la-home-headlines -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: American flags
We can either reject an important symbol for all sorts of intellectual reasons, or embrace it and tap into the emotions of a majority of the population. If the flag has been used against the left so effectively, why insist on letting the right keep using it? My Navajo friend, a well-educated former Catholic priest, tells me that his family's stories include many in which his ancestors were led to believe that if they stand around the flagpole when the federal troops come in they would be safe. A ploy, of course, to get them all in one place where they could be easy targets. The flurry of flags after 9/11 struck me as belligerant, Pavlovian and rude -- if not commercial. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon as military targets aren't necessarily the American people, are they? In many ways the American people are innocent, dumbfounded bystanders, rallying around a flag believing there's some safety in it. Proyect's remarking about flag pins stopping conversations makes me wonder if the peace pin on my own lapel halts conversations the same way. I wear it because I think it's important that people see something other than flags, that there's another side. Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Re: demo fervor
1. Heteroskedastic? What is that? Not in my concise OED. It means the trend gets weirder after some point in time than before. The problem is that concepts like heteroskedasticity refer to samples and how well they reflect the total population. Here we have the total population of US presidential elections, so we do not need statistical inference. Pleasure, dms - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:26 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor dms: But the trend since 1980 has been pretty consistenly down. And the trend is your friend. But that data are clearly heteroskedastic. You cannot reach a conclusion like that about the trend since 1980 just by eyeballing. Best, Sabri
Re: Democratic Party?
I seem to remember George I hitting hard at the press early on and caving in to the religious right on the convention platform. That shored up his support from the extreme right. His acceptance speech attacked the Democrats but also mentioned the thousand points of light, showing in that cheap way conservatives do that he sympathizes with the poor and downtrodden without actually doing any significant work for them. His campaign after the convention attacked Dukakiss personality but went easy on rightist rhetoric. Time magazine after the election described how he shored up his rightwing base and then moved left to capture the middle of the electorate. They stressed that Dukakis did not do the same with the Rainbow Coalition, who sat out the election in many cases, giving George I the election. George II made his speech at Bob Jones University on the way to the convention, which also shored up his relations with the right. Then somewhere along the way he made noises about compassionate conservatism to soothe the middle and convince the press to see him as a moderate. All the while of course, his campaign was smearing Gore all over the place, so to speak. He almost won the election this way. (I stand corrected on my slip of the tongue -- keyboard -- saying he actually won it.) All this is standard public-choice theory, developed by right-wing economists to undermine legitimate democracy. But this particular model, based on the idea of the median voter in a single left-right continuum of issues, is not particularly antidemocratic. Please tell me how either Bush moved to the left to win a nomination and then moved left again to win an election, ignoring for the moment, the self-contradiction between your first paragraph Bush was not elected, and your description of how both Bush's won their elections. dms - Original Message - From: Robert Scott Gassler [EMAIL PROTECTED] George W. Bush in the 2000 election. George W. Bush was not elected in 2000. Gore was. Bush took the presidency using his family friends in the Supreme Court. Both Bushes did the same thing on the right to get elected: they pretended to be more right-wing than they really were, then moved to the left to get the nomination, and further to the left to win the election. That's the way elections are won. Once in power however, Bush Jr moved back to his core constituency and is right-wing again. Kerry could do the same.
Re: my new book
Dear Jim: The book is about how us economic theory to study noneconomic phenomena. Mostly micro. Here is all the information from the publisher's web site: Beyond Profit And Self-interest Economics with a Broader Scope Robert Scott Gassler, Professor of Economics, Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Here is the book Léon Walras should have written, or would have written if he had also been Kenneth Bouldings student. It is ingenious in content and wholesome in attitude. It combines neoclassical economics, departures arguably within neoclassicism, and varieties of heterodox economics, within the ambit of systems theory. It is only one of many possible combinations but it is rich and open-ended. Its attitude is especially striking. Gassler departs from the trap of unbending defense of the neoclassical hard core versus its equally unbending critique. He departs, too, from seeing orthodoxy and heterodoxy as either alternatives or supplements; he constructs a model that permits all to survive as tools in the art of economics. It enables economists to escape from many of their current impasses. The book needs to be widely read. Warren Samuels, Michigan State University, US This book attempts to reformulate existing orthodox economic theory in order to improve its conversation with disciplines that have traditionally been seen as the domain of political scientists, sociologists, psychologists and even biologists, and to fit economics into the broader scheme of social science theory. Drawing on general systems theory, Robert Scott Gassler applies economic analysis to a wide range of social phenomena that incorporate motives other than profit or self-interest, such as altruism and non-profit organisations. He debates in depth the means, problems and advantages of adapting economic theory to new sets of assumptions, and of communicating this theory intelligibly to those in related fields. This book should not only be read by political and social economists, but is also accessible to those in the fields of education, health and non-profit administration, public affairs, and urban planning to name but a few. This book attempts to reformulate existing orthodox economic theory in order to improve its conversation with disciplines that have traditionally been seen as the domain of political scientists, sociologists, psychologists and even biologists, and to fit economics into the broader scheme of social science theory. Contents: Preface Part I: Theory 1. Scope 2. Method 3. Foundations 4. Taxonomy 5. Theory Part II: Applications 6. Individuals 7. Interactions 8. Organizations 9. Nonprofits 10. Processes 11. Sectors 12. Societies 13. Planets Part III: Summary and Conclusion 14. Conclusion Bibliography Index Now back to me: In addition to altruism and nonprofits, examples include gift-giving, cooperatives, evolutionary and institutional economics, exit and voice, the internet, transition and development economics, Lenin's theory of imperialism, feminist economics, and ecology. Most heterodox approaches are woven into the fabric of the analysis. Scott what's the book about, exactly? macro? micro? what is one of its major theses? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Robert Scott Gassler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 8:30 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] my new book Dear PEN-L: You might be interested in my new book from Elgar: Robert Scott Gassler. Beyond Profit and Self-Interest: Economics with a Broader Scope. It is out in Europe and will be out in the US in February (I guess that's next week). Without a trace of modesty I'll reproduce the publisher's blurb Here is the book Leon Walras should have written, or would have written if he had also been Kenneth Boulding's student. It is ingenious in content and wholesome in attitude. It combines neoclassical economics, departures arguably within neoclassicism, and varieties of heterodox economics, within the ambit of systems theory. It is only one of many possible combinations but it is rich and open-ended. Its attitude is especially striking. Gassler departs from the trap of unbending defense of the neoclassical hard core versus its equally unbending critique.He departs, too, from seeing othodoxy and heterodoxy as either alternatives or supplements; he constructs a model that permits all to survive as tools in the art of economics. It enables economists to escape from many of their current impasses. The book needs to be widely read. -- Warren J. Samuels Thanks. Scott Robert Scott Gassler Professor of Economics Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 B-1050 Brussels Belgium 32.2.629.27.15
re:Re: re:am i wrong in recalling conservative mantra from pastabout gov't deficits causing (or resulting in)
Oops. They did not RISE. Thanks. Gassler Robert wrote: The fact is that interest rates did not fall. Why not? Because starting in 1982 the Fed was lowering them through its monetary policy. Typo here? Because the Fed was lowering rates the rates did _not_ lower Carrol
re:am i wrong in recalling conservative mantra from past about gov't deficits causing (or resulting in)
You are not wrong. Before Reagan the Democrats said deficits were okay since the deficit was falling as percent of GNP, and the Republicans cried about crowding out. Government deficits increase the demand for loans, raising interest rates, reducing the amount of borrowing firms can do for their new factories and equipment. It is easiest to show on a supply-and-demand diagram with loans as the quantity and interest rates as the price. Reagan increased the deficity enormously; later analysis showed that at least 2/3 of it was tax cuts and spending increases, not the recession (which was the biggest since the 1930s). Democrats started worrying because the deficit was rising as a percent of GDP, and Republicans were told by the Reagan Administration to stop complaining about the deficit. They did, except for Martin Feldstein, who got into trouble. The fact is that interest rates did not fall. Why not? Because starting in 1982 the Fed was lowering them through its monetary policy. The new partisan attitude toward deficits dates from that time. Hope that helps. Scott Gassler am i wrong in recalling conservative mantra from past about gov't deficits causing (or resulting in) high interest rates because feds crowd out private sector (or something like that), white house people are saying there is no relation between deficit size and interest rates and are pooh-poohing 'fiscally responsible' dem criticisms... michael hoover
re:EU Schlerorsis
I teach at a college in Europe with students from 50 different countries. I offer my students a free A to anyone who can find a country where the government gives them a choice between working and sitting home collecting money. No one ever wins, to the great surprise of the students. When they mention labor market inflexibility, I tell them about the professor here who was fired in the middle of the semester without warning, without a reason, without full severence pay, and in a manner which, if there had been witnesses, would have been declared abusive. Laws on the books are not always enforced. Scott Gassler Several times in recent days Ian and other have posted articles about the abject failure of the EU to deal with its economic problems (and also similar articles about Japan). Many of the posted articles end up referring to the failure of Europe -- and particularly Germany -- to deal with 'labour market inflexibility.' By posting these articles, without comment, gives the impression that 'labour market inflexibility' is the cause of the Euro disease. This is CRAP and mearly repeats the OECD neoliberal ideology that is being peddled by the OECD, IMF, etc -- the same crap that is being peddled by the IMF, WB etc -- AND HAS BEEN DENOUNCED BY STIGLITZ in his keynote address to the ILO last year. It has also been demonstrated in econometric analysis by Tom Palley in his study posted on the Levy Institute web site. So why do we keep posting this crap? There is no labour market rigidity in Europe that causes unemployment. Palley demonstrates that empirically. Stiglitz shows that theoretically. Lets cut that crap and put the blame where it really belongs -- on the monetarist stupidities that dominate the ECB and the EMU. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
re:Re: Re: RE: Re: PK endorses populism?
According to the original message, it was the Sweden of 1980. From the 1950s or so to about 1990, according to the World Development Report of 1992, the Swedish economy grew at almost exactly the same rate as the US economy. Not impressive, but very ironic considering the attacks on the welfare state by rightists in the US. Then Carl Bilt was elected, and he did a Reaganomics. By the mid-1990's columnists and others were asking what unique features of Viking culture made their economy so sluggish. Duh: Bilt had cut the automatic stabilizers, so the Swedish economy's recession was longer and larger than the others'. What Sweden are we talking about? Sweden has been beset by liberal reforms for more than a decade. Changes in the health care system are very much towards a more quasi market system and exhibit the same penchant for privatization cost-offloading through user fees etc.etc as other regimes. The Sweden of the Third Way is long gone, the old social democratic paradigm with an extensive welfare state and co-opeative planning between labor industry and government is gone swept away in the neo-liberal tide. That is why Canada is looking towards Sweden for reform of our health care system. People still think of the Swedish system as progressive when in actuality the progressive features have been flushed down the sewer for the most part. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 8:56 AM Subject: [PEN-L:29660] Re: RE: Re: PK endorses populism? Max B. Sawicky wrote: Sweden is the liberal mainstream ideal because it is viewed as a place with relatively little market-distorting policy and a reliance on tax and transfer mechanisms to uphold social welfare. But they seriously interefere(d) with the labor market and created one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. A high-wage policy forced companies to invest more than they would have otherwise. The ideology was one of solidarity and decommodification. That's all well beyond standard-issue liberalism, no? Doug
