Monday, May 31, 2010

Quotation - Max Frisch

"Technology ... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."

Max Frisch, Swiss writer

Poor innocent Max.  He wrote that in 1959.
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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Memorial Day May 30 1960



Besides my self, there is only one other person alive today who knows the significant association of this date with the song.
The video, by the way,  is a clever blend of Sinatra singing mixed with a scene from the 1956 film High Society.
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The 'Science' of Economics

From U. S. News of April 30, 2010:


"...economists think many of the 8.4 million jobs lost during the recession are gone for good.
"There's a global paradigm shift going on", said Mohammed El-Arian, CEO of the huge investment firm PIMCO, at a recent conference in Los Angeles.  "There's always a recognition lag.  People hold onto the old paradigm until the evidence of a new paradigm is overwhelming."


So, we, the people, are supposed to understand that the financial meltdown was the result of some inexorable tectonic forces deep in the substructure of economics.  And it's our fault if we can't let it go and catch up with the latest ideas in chaos theory. 

What pompous puffery!   "Paradigm shift' is a fancy euphemism for system failure.
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Saturday, May 8, 2010

Sometimes...

I wish that people who speak approvingly of the 'intelligent design' of the earth were equally ready to approve the intelligent 'use' of it.
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Friday, May 7, 2010

H L Mencken on Bad Writing

"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered.  It reminds me of a string of wet sponges;  it reminds me of tattered washing on the line;  it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.  It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.  It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh.  It is rumble and bumble.  It is flap and doodle.  It is balder and dash."

Reading this always gives me a chuckle.
The "He..." was a reference to Warren G. Harding.
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