Post #34,203
4/2/02 4:28:24 PM
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"Into the Buzzsaw"
Book of essays by 18 journalists who have all been ostracized the orgs they once worked for. Any single one is dismissable as the work of a conspiracy theorist. All 18 crazy in exactly the same way? Looks like a good read.
Review [link|http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12753|here]
The best scale for an experimental design is ten millimeters to the centimeter.
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Post #34,303
4/3/02 3:57:49 PM
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This will be a surprise only to those who imagine that
The Murican Free Press is not an oxymoron; those who cheerfully buffer the fact of the growing concentration and homogenization of most-all the meeja - into the control of the same old same-old Corporate owners.
These are the folk who will ever point to this and that niche, subscriber-supported org. or another and say, "see? tolyaso - there's Lots o'freepress outthere". Qualitatively this is true, of course. Now as to the daily drumbeat of standard newsfotainment..
But could it be any other way? When $$ represents always Who Owns the Press, and the same owners also pay for the reelection of their "representatives" - how could it be different? Recursion is such a beautiful thing, in math.. if not in society.
Ashton
ie Let's have the Legislators decide how their reelection funding shall be 'governed' shall we? Ahh: the USSC shall make sure that they're honest !. Three branches of government, they told us in civics class (back when there were civics classes).
I see.
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Post #34,313
4/3/02 5:38:14 PM
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Why?
Why in the presence of ever increasing evidence that corporate interests run almost exclusively counter to the interests and well-being of average Muricans, do those average Muricans fail to see/believe it?
Back in my younger days I wanted to teach middle school mathematics. I believed then, and am still unsure of the inaccuracy of this assessment, that all social problems in Murica stem from the average Murican's inability to follow a modus ponens argument. I thought, "If only they'd learn a little, just a tiny little bit about deductive reasoning, we'd never be faced with this again."
I'll admit I've lost hope. Not in validity of my thinking back then, but in the promise that a majority of Muricans will ever be able to follow a modus ponens argument.
bcnu,
Mikem
-I think I'll head to the pub now.
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Post #34,315
4/3/02 5:56:51 PM
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Maybe it's about what they didn't tell us tykes
~ that, however elegant our deductive intellectual processes, the "emotional center" / heart whatever - learns by a different process and few of us develop much communication betweeen these er centers (some metaphors are better than others ;-) I believe the word 'Reason' indicates that rarity: use of both mind & heart - not just $$.
When Success becomes defined as accumulation of lots of stuff and especially: More than anyone else nearby! that's an emotional center infantile drive being pandered to. Many work in those Corps, however little they share of the humongous profits of the 3% (ditto often for even the so-called stockholders, who also abrogate their at least conceivable.. sway over the idiotic CIEIO salaries and other self-serving Parachutes) So it's not obvious that the root cause of the overall nonsense derives ~from the same Corp as nanny / and as actual Owner-run government of all. Hell, many still believe there's such a thing as a er "free market"! (usually spelled Market" - as in a Deity). Can ya believe That ??
So I suppose you're describing a now ingrained cultural affliction whereby, many who 'know' better - operate just day-to-day.. just trying to feel-good: Gawd knows there's enough stuff to be bought to feed That illusion. Ergo.. it seems True: Knowing is NOT Enough!
Sadly.
Ashton
Yeah I used to think that, too. Seemed so unarguable an idea, y'know? :(
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Post #34,358
4/3/02 10:25:18 PM
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The answer isn't that hard
When most of a country's population has enough income for food, clothing and housing and is able to afford luxuries beyond those necessities, why complain? Until hunger becomes the norm, I doubt you will see any realistic opposition to the corporate state that the US has become. Of course it is possible to be better. It's just that the definition of "better" isn't affected by the minority who are not well fed, adequetly clothed and living in decent housing.
The best scale for an experimental design is ten millimeters to the centimeter.
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Post #34,462
4/4/02 8:09:55 PM
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There is the rub.
>> When most of a country's population has enough income for food,...
You never see revolution until the majority of people are hungry. We, owing to the farm belt, are the breadbasket to the world. That, more than any other reason, is why we will never see revolution here. And it would take a revolution to alter this beast.
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Post #34,493
4/5/02 4:21:57 AM
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Well.. ____there is another kind of 'malnutrition'
and we may find out what it's cost is, after a certain point: a kind of malnutrition? of the ingredients of an authentic life; one not-based upon ever-increasing consumption of stuff.
Of course, no one has had to face the consequences of consumption on this scale, before ('course too, that word used to mean "a kind of wasting disease" - and we have a pretty Big one of those rampant now).
So just possibly, "hunger for bread" may not be the only kind as leads to.. a desire for 'change'. Y'know?
Could happen.
Ashton
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Post #34,535
4/5/02 2:59:49 PM
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Case in point:
The U.S. revolutionary war.
As far as I know, people weren't starving in the U.S...
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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