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This is the Century when We Need to Consider Ending War

2012-05-28T14:30:00.001-04:00

Not as Some Utopian Fantasy but as Sane Means of Avoiding Global Suicide

War is said to be a cross-cultural universal that has no remedies.

Before Jericho (ca. 7500 B.C.) to Afghanistan and other places where war continues to rage, the causes have been many but the conduct has crossed every line of demarcation

Few have held out hope of altering the grim trajectory of war.

But there is some possibility hope now the notion of moral evolution. Especially when combined with impressive evidence that the alternative is universal suicide.

I do not anticipate war on anything like the scale of past wars. I do anticipate struggles where the end is less than lethal. And incidents like that of the Norway killer.
But the lines of demarcation are ending. The world is melding. A democratic and spiritual global revolution is afoot. So let's not be too quick to give up hope.
War has to end sometime. It may as well be now. War is tacky. War is also hell. There are other ways to fight.

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Let This Be a Memorial to War and Let War Rest in Peace - Free Verse

2012-05-28T14:02:00.001-04:00

Let this be a memorial to war

Let war rest in peace

And all its crimes with it

And never walk the face of earth again

Let war be buried here and now

Defense become defense

And be the new doctrine of

Whatever word we use

When we stop saying war

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We Are Already Doomed to Future Nuke Meltdowns

2012-05-26T15:50:00.000-04:00

Nuke Regulators' Cozy Industry Ties - The Daily Beast: "Here's something to think about as Japan continues working to fix its stricken reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now criticized as being extremely close to the industry, routinely postponing requiring maintenance until crises develop, and even then usually delivering only a slap on the wrist. The agency puts up with violations, says critic David Lochbaum, because "Otherwise, nearly all the U.S. reactors would have to shut down.""

What else is new under our fading sun? This is the sort of thing that reinforces self-creep, the phenomenon of withdrawal from participation in anything.

Nuclear plants are a lethal time bomb. Nuclear plants have no place in a new world of sustainability and enhanced living. Nuclear plants are not economically viable. The countries that say no to nuclear will build toward a sustainable energy future. Nuclear plants are the signature of an era of destruction.

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Jonathan's Wake - a Personal Reflection

2012-05-26T15:20:00.001-04:00

Jonathan's Wake was a Movement Whose Aim was Largely Misunderstood Because of the Massive Discontents of the Late 1960s. The Aim is the Same Now as Then

Here is part of a small collection designed to recall a time when some of us engaged in direct action to achieve renewal and reform of mainline Protestant churches in the United States. The specific effort that I helped create was called Jonathan's Wake. I am tagging items Jonathan's Wake and will put what I have found up as time permits.

This item was posted by Richard L.York.

Jonathan's Wake Stirs Late Awakening

I remember Dick along with Steve Richardson, Tony Nugent and other members of the Berkeley Free Church from Detroit and a later trip I made to Berkeley. This group was in some respect the most visible part of the Jonathan's Wake aggregation that showed up at the Hotel Tuller in Detroit in December, 1969, and turned the National Council of Churches' General Assembly at Cobo Hall into a confrontational event whose resonance continues to be felt.

I suppose the main feeling would be a growing sense that we were onto something and a parallel knowledge that there was vastly more resistance to change in the denominations than we believed at the time. One of the most interesting indicators of this resistance was a simple study I did soon after Detroit for my friend Bob Lynn when he was at the Lilly Endowment.

I wrote every head of the major denominations and asked if they thought there would be church union within 10 years. All said yes save one. The one was correct. And his reason was correct. This correspondence is archived here.

I also have noted Jonathan's Wake in a more personal way in the page My Books.

My sense then and now is that the participants in Jonathan's Wake not only combined different styles, but also differing agendas. These generally overlapped to the point that there was general support for most of the actions and objectives.

More

More

More on Berkeley Free Church

ADDENDUM

I will confine the following to my own specific memories of a reparations struggle which began in the spring of 1969 and culminated in an extended demonstration at a General Assembly of the National Council of Churches at Cobo Hall in Detroit in December of that year. As far as I can find, this small but important effort to change the course of ecumenism in mainline American Protestantism has been forgotten or repressed or simply lost.

When my alma mater, Union Theological Seminary, held a symposium on reparations recently, there was no mention of this incident. Today the mainline denominations, who were at the time involved in negotiations to unify under the banner of the Consultation on Church Union, are each plying an autonomous course. I think their palpable resistance to change in 1969 prefigured their current, predictable decline in numbers and influence.

I was a Presbyterian delegate to the Consultation on Church Union and joined others in Atlanta in the spring of 1969 to discuss uniting the mainline denominations. At the meeting, Oscar McCloud, a classmate from Union, suggested he and I hold a public meeting to discuss issues of mutual concern, by which we meant how all this unity talk related to racial justice.

At that meeting I, spontaneously proposed that the Black community seek reparations from the white denominations. And that the white denominations pay them. I had, prior to this time, concluded that the then-large endowments of the various churches were a liability in terms of achieving church union and that they ought to be given away. And I had by that time written The Grass Roots Church in which I proposed a radical restructuring of churches at the local level, a restructuring that assumed the effective replacement of denominational by ecumenical structures.

The immediate reaction to this proposal was a speech by a Black clergyman named Mance Jackson, saying that I as a white person was not qualified to be proposing an agenda for Black persons. I felt I was being hung out to dry. No one rose to my defense. I thought Jackson's logic was understandable in terms of the anger of the time, but nonsensical in terms of the actual issue under discussion.

A week later in Detroit, Jim Forman made national headlines by proposing exactly what I had proposed the week before. Here s Google's page referencing Jim Forman and the Reparations Struggle of 1969.

On April 26, 1969, in Detroit, Michigan, Forman presented the Black Manifesto at the National Black Economic Development Conference. Sponsored by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations, the conference adopted a manifesto that demanded Protestant and Jewish organizations pay $500 million in reparations to the African American community. In his speech, Forman called upon blacks to join in a black-socialist-led armed struggle to overthrow the United States government.

A month later, Forman interrupted services at New York City's Riverside Church to demand that the congregation pay reparations for the past damage inflicted upon people of color by white America. According to Larry Neal in The Black Seventies, this act not only made national front-page news, but marked "one of the high points of nonviolent action" during the conservative years of U.S. president Richard M. Nixon's administration.

SOURCE

The only existing references to my efforts are my own short biography at the Civil Rights Veterans site and what I have posted here.

After the Forman move, which was highly publicized, I decided to keep organizing my own effort to achieve church unity via the transfer of resources from the denominations, to be used as reparations as Forman proposed.

My main impulse was two-fold:

1. To prepare the way for a viable ecumenism and

2. To forward the cause of racial justice.

Since I was then living in Stockbridge, MA, where Jonathan Edwards had been an exile, I decided to call the little movement I organized Jonathan's Wake.

In the fall of 1969, I announced that a movement called Jonathan's Wake would go to Detroit in Devember to the National Council of Churches General Assembly in Cobo Hall to press an agenda for church renewal and ecumenism that would involve the transfer of endowments from the denominations to the Black Economic Development Conference for use in achieving justice in impoverished Black communities.

With the help of a friend, Fred Lord, and the support of my colleague of many years, Will Campbell, we showed up in Detroit with a contingent of from 50 to 100 persons, depending on how you counted other groups that were sympathetic. We headquartered in the Hotel Tuller downtown. It was a more reasonable place to stay than the Pontchartrain Hotel where most of the church delegates were housed.

We had considerable publicity at the time. But it soon became apparent to me that very few really understood the purpose or reasoning I was pushing. I really did see the financial wealth of the individual denominations as the main reason they would cling to their identities and avoid true local ecumenical engagement.

But most people had other agendas, the most prominent being opposition to the Vietnam War. This helps explain why my own opposition to Johnson and the Vietnam War was based in large part on the war's preemption of the promise of the 1960s, the beloved community and the visions of Dr. King.

The Jonathan's Wake protest turned out not to be a reasoned effort to get the church folk to consider the implications of their denominational finances for ecumenism, but a series of dramatic interventions on the floor of the meeting.

The most dramatic was the action of folk from California who poured something like blood on the rostrum. I did not see it but it grabbed the attention.

Finally, we managed to propose a condition that came to a vote, far from what I had sought. It had to do with not asking the state (police) to intervene in church disputes. The measure passed on a majority vote and was defeated when William Thompson, head of the Presbyterian group, won a two-thirds vote on a point of order.

At this point I considered everything lost, the concept, the effort to sway the denominations, and most likely my own future as a person concerned with renewing the church. I ran through the hall yelling Crucify me now.

Here is a sonnet I wrote recounting this a few years ago:

When I ran crying crucify me now
Across the floor of Detroit's Cobo Hall
Excessive legalism took a bow
Denominations sidestepped one more call
None dared say Jesus complex but the thought
Could not have been too far from many minds
But all it was was me just feeling caught
Like one condemned when time finally unwinds
I think I cared about a unity
That no one wanted and few want today
I think I cared about a harmony
Whose price few have the least desire to pay
I'm twice the age that Christ was when he died
Still railing at the temple he defied

Immediately after, I ended up consoling a young woman who came up in tears and said she understood for the first time that denominations were the problem. That is as close to understanding why I was there as anything.

In retrospect, reparations as a legal or moral issue was secondary to my concern for church renewal. If I had to judge now, I would say that some equivalence to reparations is always required in the face of continuing injustices toward one group by another. It really amounts to figuring out when both sides can agree that things are square.

In retrospect, my caring about church union and ecumenism has transformed into the religionless Christianity that I think Bonhoeffer prefigured without exactly embracing. It goes without saying that I would love to see the churches take seriously the understandings in mu book "The Grass Roots Church", even now. But I have few illusions that the denominations, battered by predictable attrition and ongoing internal culture wars, will willingly cede even a radically shrinking power.

Who is killing the church? Might it be G-d?

I see the unfolding Obama era as a chance to forge and develop a secular spirituality based partly on the implementation of his non-proselytizing notion of local ministries sponsored under religious auspices. This could be huge and that would make Barack the achiever of a renewal that churches were unwilling or unable to bring about by decisive acts of their own.

For Charles Sanders Peirce language is a subspecies of of semiosis

2012-05-26T10:03:00.003-04:00

Gene Halton: "In the Peircean perspective, language, if you mean by that linguistic language, is but a subspecies of the inferential and communicative process of semiosis, even within human communication. Two examples: “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture,” as Thelonius Monk once said to quiet a critic’s question. Or as the great modern dancer Isadore Duncan said, “If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.” Or consider felt, wordless empathic communication. Or this: Someone I know who studied with a Native American wise man told me that the man gathered all of his students, former and current, to spend a month with him for his last teaching. His last teaching he gave to them was his death, as it unfolded over that month."

ADDENDUM

Peirce: “Nor must any synechist say, 'I am altogether myself, and not at all you.' If you embrace synechism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarist delusion of vanity.”

From the Peirce list

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An Approach to Torture that Goes Past the Question of Whether it Works

2012-05-26T09:39:00.003-04:00

When I am dissatisfied with search results I have to dig and dig and dig. If your objective is to find some reliable information about torture, be my guest. Here are some helpful starting points.

A pragmaticist argument will link the metaphysical and logical to the scientifically demonstrable. One might argue that when the metaphysical and logical are ranged squarely against torture and the scientific observations are generally but not always in apparent agreement, the benefit of the doubt - or the abduction - should be that torture indeed does not work. And that if there are exceptions they are not worth the other results of engaging in torture as a national policy.

Here is the most celebrated modern text on the subject.

My Thoughts Are Free: MARK TWAIN ON TORTURE: "'I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if you tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that spoke and not I.'"

Move to the realm of observation.

When there is no unanimity, this does not mean that torture is a good idea. It means that in absolutely every case it cannot be shown that torture will not work. At which point the argument becomes, given the preponderance of evidence that torture does not work, it makes little sense to practice it as if in every case it did work, which is false.

And it calls investigation and proof of when a respectful effort to extract information has been efficacious. Such evidence is mounting.

Neuroscience:Torture Doesn't Work and Here's Why - Newsweek: "Shane O'Mara of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin explains in a paper in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciencecalled 'Torturing the Brain,' 'the use of such techniques appears motivated by a folk psychology that is demonstrably incorrect. Solid scientific evidence on how repeated and extreme stress and pain affect memory and executive functions (such as planning or forming intentions) suggests these techniques are unlikely to do anything other than the opposite of that intended by coercive or 'enhanced' interrogation.'"

Torture is not too swift in the battle to win people's hearts and minds.

Robert Fisk: Torture does not work, as history shows - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent: "Grafton's conclusion is unanswerable. Torture does not obtain truth. It will make most ordinary people say anything the torturer wants. Why, who knows if the men under the CIA's 'waterboarding' did not confess that they could fly to meet the devil. And who knows if the CIA did not end up believing him."

We may well end terror by talking respectfully with the opposition in the wake of the death of Bin Laden.

Would that we were also on the verge of framing an effective argument to end the rampant militarism that hobbles the US in the effort to achieve social equity and overcome environmental challenges.

Ex-Interrogator: Torture Doesn't Work: "'It's extremely ineffective, and it's counterproductive to what we're trying to accomplish,' he told reporters. 'When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve,' Alexander explained. 'The information that you get is unreliable ... And even if you do get reliable information, you're able to stop a terrorist attack, Al-Qaeda's then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.' Alexander says torture techniques used in Iraq consistently failed to produce actionable intelligence and that methods outlined in the US Army Field Manual, which rest on confidence building, consistently worked and gave the interrogators access to critical information"
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The Lee Arthur Hester Case is Not Closed Annals of Injustice

2012-05-26T08:47:00.001-04:00

The Pdf file below is a 400 page document that should be read by anyone who cares about justice, civil rights, children and our American justice system.

Oddly enough I was at the Hester trial in the courtroom of Judge Alexander Napoli day after day as the injstice was done. I wrote at the time, to no interest, of the fact that the murderer most probably was a deranged worker at the school Lee attended, a truth suppressed in court but made eminently clear in the narrative linked to below..

I made efforts when the Web came into being to find out what had happened and eventually contacted people who were indeed working on the case more than four decades later.

I have the original article I did on Lee somewhere and may post it in time, but the piece below is so riveting, so thorough and so damning that I do not want to waste a minute in helping to alert anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see that an injustice was done long ago in Chicago and needs to be properly resolved now.

"This article tells the untold story of Lee Arthur Hester and his case, raises questions about Hester's guilt, and takes the Supreme Court to task for failing to use Hester's case to provide greater protections to juvenile suspects during police interrogations." SOURCE

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A Modest Platform

2012-05-26T08:21:00.000-04:00

Stop building nuclear plants

Stop relying on fossil fuels

Use free sources of energy in non lethal ways

Use human beings as the primary generators of energy

Move from growth to sustainable economies.

Move beyond the hypocrisies connected to work

Give everyone tenure at birth

Practice tolerance helpfulness democracy and non-idolatry

Engage in daily meditation on the

prayer Jesus taught the whole world to say

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Catching up on Pattern Language

2012-05-26T08:10:00.001-04:00

This brief history of pattern language is a salient description of what Christopher Alexander intended in A Pattern Language.

The concepts of Alexander have been applied to almost everything but his own magnificent goal of renewing human habitation of the world.

When Alexander's ideas are fused with a cyber-community approach, a way is opened for a grass roots effort to morph what we have into car free communities capable of spawning local economies.

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Market forces may inspire investment in communities that are post automobile

2012-05-26T07:32:00.002-04:00

The actual risks of continued reliance

on cars and oil include wars

death to oceans

and vehicle deaths

and injuries

worldwide

It is anticipated that these vehicle deaths

will be the fifth leading cause of all dying

in the year 2020 around the whole world

There will be more oil deaths than HIV/AIDS deaths

by 2020 the UN concludes

The oil and car businesses can show reductions in deaths

but these do nothing to vitiate the assumptions of the UN

The most at risk are not the most well-to-do

As knowledge of the actual risks are understood

the oil and car response will be to do anything legal or not

to maintain the precedence of oil as a fuel

and of the private car as the lead product of the auto industry

1 The world has clearly accepted oil and car

as the self evident basis of all planning.

2 The brute reality is resistance of the economy

to the pressures created by this commitment

Not only will oil eventually run out

It will become more expensive as populations mount

and competition to buy it increases

Market forces

may inspire investment in communities

that are post automobile

creating a gradual transition to a new form of society

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Thorstein Veblen is happily to be found on the Web.

2012-05-25T12:50:00.000-04:00

Thorstein Veblen is happily to be found on the Web. Thorstein Veblen was the most acerbic and salient economist of our history. That's an opinion. Once fashionable, Thorstein Veblen has stood the test of time and emerged a true prophet of consumer culture and its huge internal contradictions.

Here's a selection of sites that provide access to the thought this most stringent analyst of American (Western) culture and economics. Veblen's thought, like Nietzsche's, remains relevant to the present and future. It calls out for attention.

The Web is the future of words, of texts, of discourse. This page is a sample of the sorts of guideposts I find useful.

In general I have been subjective in my selection of Thorstein Veblem gems, delving deep into search results. I try not to feature sites that require downloads, or registration. I ignore sites that are too busy and seem hard to use.

I have not closed selections to critics of Thorstein Veblen. Please leave a comment if you wish to suggest a link or flag a non-working link.

I have placed the initial few sentences of each work linked to below to give a flavor of Thorstein Veblen's style and focus.

Text of The Theory of The Liesure Class

The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance in these class differences is the distinction maintained between the employments proper to the several classes. The upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour attaches.

Böhm-Bawerk's Definition of Capital and the Source of Wages

In his exposition of the term "capital" Professor Böhm-Bawerk briefly touches on the wages-fund doctrine, so far as to reject summarily the proposition that the means of subsistence of productive laborers is drawn from the capital of the community, although, from the point of view of the employer, these "real wages" are to be regarded as drawn from his private capital. With the distinction which the discussion establishes between social capital and private capital, this position is, of course, in itself perfectly consistent.

Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science

M.G. de Lapouge recently said, "Anthropology is destined to revolutionise the political and the social sciences as radically as bacteriology has revolutionised the science of medicine." In so far as he speaks of economics, the eminent anthropologist is not alone in his conviction that the science stands in need of rehabilitation.

The Beginning of Ownership

In the accepted economic theories the ground of ownership is commonly conceived to be the productive labor of the owner. This is taken, without reflection or question, to be the legitimate basis of property; he who has produced a useful thing should

possess and enjoy it.

The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor

It is one of the commonplaces of the received economic theory that work is irksome. Many a discussion proceeds on this axiom that, so far as regards economic matters, men desire above all things to get the goods produced by labor and to avoid the labor

by which the goods are produced.

The Barbarian Status of Women

It seems altogether probable that in the primitive groups of mankind, when the race first took to a systematic use of tools and so emerged upon the properly human plane of life, there was but the very slightest beginning of a system of status, with little of invidious distinction between classes and little of a corresponding division of employments.

Another Site with The Theory of The Liesure Class Text

The Preconceptions of Economic Science 1

In an earlier paper the view has been expressed that the economics handed down by the great writers of a past generation is substantially a taxonomic science. A view of much the same purport, so far as concerns the point here immediately in question, is presented in an admirably lucid and cogent way by Professor Clark in a recent number of this journal.

The Preconceptions of Economic Science 2

ADAM SMITH'S animistic bent asserts itself more plainly and more effectually in the general trend and aim of his discussion than in the details of theory ... Both in the Theory of the Moral Sentiments and in the Wealth of Nations there are many passages that testify to his abiding conviction that there is a wholesome trend in the natural course of things, and the characteristically optimistic tone in which he speaks for natural liberty is but an expression of this conviction. An extreme resort to this animistic ground occurs in his plea for freedom of investment.

The Preconceptions of Economic Science 3

IN what has already been said, it has appeared that the changes which have supervened in the preconceptions of the earlier economists constitute a somewhat orderly succession. The feature of chief interest in this development has been a gradual change in the received grounds of finality to which the successive generations of economists have brought their theoretical output, on which they have been content to rest their conclusions, and beyond which they have not been moved to push their analysis of events or their scrutiny of phenomena.

The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers 1

The system of doctrines worked out by Marx is characterized by a certain boldness of conception and a great logical consistency. Taken in detail, the constituent elements of the system are neither novel nor iconoclastic, nor does Marx at any point claim

to have discovered previously hidden facts or to have invented recondite formulations of facts already known; but the system as a whole has an air of originality and initiative such as is rarely met with among the sciences that deal with any phase of

human culture.

The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers 2

Marx worked out his system of theory in the main during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. He came to the work from the standpoint given him by his early training in German thought, such as the most advanced and aggressive German thinking was through the middle period of the century, and he added to this German standpoint the further premises given him by an exceptionally close contact with and alert observation of the English situation.

Fisher's Capital and Income

The Nature of Capital and Income is of that class of books that have kept the guild of theoretical economists content to do nothing toward "the increase and diffusion of knowledge" during the past quarter of a century. Of this class Mr Fisher's work is of the best -- thoughtful, painstaking, sagacious, exhaustive, lucid, and tenaciously logical. What it lacks is the breath of life; and this lack it shares with the many theoretical productions of the Austrian diversion as well as of the economists of more strictly classical antecedents.

Fisher's Rate of Interest

There is less novelty, either in the course of the argument or in the results achieved, in the Rate of Interest than in Mr Fisher's earlier volume on the Nature of Capital and Income. Substantially the whole of it lies within the accustomed lines of that marginal-utility school of economics for which its author has so often and so convincingly spoken.

Limitations of Marginal Utility

The limitations of the marginal-utility economics are sharp and characteristic. It is from first to last a doctrine of value,and in point of form and method it is a theory of valuation.

The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men

It is something more than a dozen years since the following observations on American academic life were first assembled in written form. In the meantime changes of one kind and another have occurred, although not such as to alter the course of policy

which has guided American universities.

The Vested Interests and the Common Man

As is true of any other point of view that may be characteristic of any other period of history, so also the modern point of view is a matter of habit. It is common to the modern civilised peoples only in so far as these peoples have come through substantially the same historical experience and have thereby acquired substantially the same habits of thought and have fallen into somewhat the same prevalent frame of mind.

Review of John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace

It is now something like a year since this book was written.And much of its argument is in the nature of forecast which has in great part been overtaken by the recipitate run of events during these past months.

Brief Veblen Biography

Thorstein Veblen is to economics what Jonathan Swift is to English literature: a master of the art of satire. Is is essential to effective satire that its message be ambiguous: the reader should never be sure whether the author is absolutely serious or just pulling his or her leg

The Veblenite -- A Substantial Project

Thorstein Veblen ... was arguably the most original and penetrating economist and social critic that the United States has produced" (Rick Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891-1963; Princeton: Princeton UP., 1992, p. ix.). He was one of the first academics to examine the complex relationship between consumption and wealth in society.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

Thorstein Veblen was odd man out in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American economics. His position on the fringe started early.

University of Chicago Veblen Reference

As unconventional in his personal life as in his academic career, Thorstein Veblen always seemed to stand outside of his social and intellectual environment. In 1906, after fourteen years at the University of Chicago, some of which he had spent as a research fellow and instructor, he had risen only to the rank of assistant professor.

Description of Veblen

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Veblen -- A Footnote

It is the author's contention that F. Scott Fitgerald's novel The Great Gatsby which was set in the 1920's was "not original with Fitzgerald, but reflects the influence, both directly and indirectly, of the earlier adversary of conspicous consumption and pecuniary emulation, Thorstein Veblen."

John G. Wright, Thorstein Veblen, Sociologist (January 1935)

Veblen cannot be indiscriminately lumped with the common run of American academicians. Compared to the academic fossils of his time he was indeed one of the few outstanding original thinkers in America.

Wikipedia Entry on Veblen

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 - August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist. Educated at Carleton College, Johns Hopkins University and Yale University, his most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) is a biting satire directed at the leisure class. He coined the widely used phrases "conspicuous consumption" and "pecuniary emulation".

Veblen Link Page

Veblen Bibliography

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Jesus Out-criticized Hitchens and Dawkins

2012-05-25T09:19:00.003-04:00

Jesus

attacked religion

more effectively than

Hitchens or Dawkins

Jesus skewered priestly power
and said Abba is here

on this side of the veil

and that this can be proved out

in simple

human experience

Millions do so every day

Abba is universal

Jesus unveiled values that

when willed can build

the realm of Abba on this planet

Ignored discounted and misunderstood

Jesus is the critic

whose values propel history

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William Shakespeare sonnets that may be found and conveniently read online

2012-05-25T09:02:00.004-04:00

The Publicly Accessable Version of All Shakespeare Sonnets

All Shakespeare Works Online

Visit the Shakespeare Resource Center

Shakespeare for Kids

And should you yourself write sonnets that speak your heart

do not be afraid to submit them to the

Rhymezone Forum

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If You Think Unions Are Declining Wait for the Rest of Society

2012-05-25T08:57:00.001-04:00

The decline of union power is merely part of a move that will soon engulf our entire society The entire fabric of education is due for what can only be seen as a sea changeone that will shake universities to the root and most likely send them the way of newspapersWebward
Imagine the computer as a Model T We are about ten years past the introduction of the model TWe are moving toward the end of the automobile era nowIts first herald other than a few seers in the 1960s was the emergence of the Web
By the year 2000 the Web was showing every sign of growing into the next iteration of our working society.
The current gadget stage will eventually lead to changes that transform houses and schools and the current structure and salary scale of commuter businesses.
Everything now is in the process of adjusting to the obsolescence of the world that oil-sprawl-growth has created It is a world no longer affordableIt is a world in dire need of replacement..
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The short form is an alluring phrase that has, as yet, no real meaning

2012-05-25T08:40:00.000-04:00

The short form is an alluring phrase that has, as yet, no real meaning except what one regards as short. Some say 2000 words, others three and there is, of course, Twitter's 140 characters limit.

Still, the Web is driving a move toward short form writing. Here is a selection of approaches to the short form that struck me as well-presented. At this point, such writing can be whatever you say.

Why Short Form Copy is Where the Money's at: "What are some well-paying, short-form copywriting projects you may wish to look into? Here are a few suggestions:"

Well worth a look if you have an interest in such writing.

Short Forms of Poetry - There are some easy-to-write short forms. Some of those follow....: "

Many will know of haiku but there are other options. Including what you make up yourself.

Writing Tall Tales in Short Form: "Flash fiction stories, also known as Immediate Fiction, can be difficult to write. Knowing a little bit about topics of persuasive writing can help you get your point across in succinct style."

A good introduction to what it is with examples.

Mastering Short Forms of Writing: "A trend toward shorter forms of writing benefits writers, publishers, website designers, and audiences. The short form exists in almost every genre, from drama to fiction, from poetry to prose. Shorter forms of writing are not only easily squeezed in among longer features, but they cater to the increasingly short attention span of information and entertainment consumers."

This gets to the point. Are we evolving in the direction of absorbing the information we need in forms that require massive abbreviation from what we're used to?

The final entry is from the Twitter meister himself. There is more on the page. It's worth a look.

140 Characters: "The amazing thing about this particular protocol is that it's being defined daily. By you. Twitter was inspired by the concepts of immediacy, transparency, and approachability, and created by the guiding principles of simplicity, constraint, and craftsmanship."

Constraint is the take away word here. Enough said.

Short Form Writing From Twitter to poems to stories to copy writing, this survey shows that the short form is not yet written in stone.
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Jesus was the champion of human rights

2012-05-25T08:20:00.001-04:00

Jesus was the champion of human rights

Equality the first shall be the last

Do unto others sacrifice hold fast

Love universally keep heaven in your sights

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Biblical hermeneutics is an impossible subject - 8 salient sites

2012-05-25T07:31:00.002-04:00

Biblical hermeneutics is an impossible subject because it is dominated by fundamentalists on one side and a balkanized plethora of modernist and post-modern interpreters on the other.

Moreover, when we come to sites on biblical hermeneutics, we are lost in pdf files, curricula links and pages designed to sell this or that book. As you will see below, the best link I found was buried in the back of the Google results, meaning that what may be good for SEO is not very good for actually helping folk to find what's useful.

Fancy term

Hermeneutics is a fancy term for interpretation of texts. Biblical hermeneutics has been locked in the very culture war that we all know and love. The Chicago Statement noted below is an example of the comprehensive fundamentalist attack on anything that smacks at a denial of the divine inerrancy of the text of the Bible.

Into this wall bump many modernist and post-modern efforts to mess with the canon, if I may cadge a cavil from my bedside-mentor Harold Bloom. I throw my hands up. I would last one minute or less in a catechism conducted by fundamentalists.

But this exercise forces me to own up to my own hermaneutic, even though it will never be honored or taught. So as not to bore, my hermeneutic says that the Pentateuch is mainly about blaming YHWH for everything, that the high prophets and Job taken together veer directly into the mind of Jesus and that Jesus himself is done in in the New Testament by the good efforts of persons so unaware of what he was about that they turned him into the very thing he did not want to be turned into.

As Rem says, I've said too much.

Here, in any case, with a few descriptive emendations, are my candidates for the 8 Best Biblical Hermaneutics sites.

Web Directory: Biblical Interpretation (Hermeneutics) A useful and substantial collection of links on the subject of Biblical interpretation and hermeneutics buried in the back of Google results. I give it a first position.

Feminist Hermeneutics and The Bible: "However, if the exegete can expose contemporary abuse and prejudice in the use of the texts, revealing that the consequences of the Fall have perpetuated the oppression of women even by means of the Word itself, then she may serve the cause of Feminism within the bounds of faithfulness to scripture."

biblical literature :: Types of biblical hermeneutics -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Biblical Hermeneutics: "Biblical Hermeneutics in Relation to Conventions of Language Use in Africa"

Interpretation of the Bible - Theopedia

Biblical Hermeneutics -- Milton S. Terry Exhaustive, detailed, interesting.

Hermeneutics - Bible study interpretation Shows the difficulties of arriving at an agreed interpretation.

Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics Fundamentalist
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Spiritual journey websites are many but they are a mixed bag.

2012-05-25T07:20:00.002-04:00

Spiritual journey websites are many but they are a mixed bag. Many are simply promotions for books or organizations. They do not have immediate relevant content on spiritual journeys.

Admittedly any personal effort to pick and choose is subjective. But I found the following, in over ten pages of Google results, to be at least of interest. They loaded fast and while I was there did not assault me with surprise ads and other no no's.

These are in no particular order They are all meant to be read online. I merely found them in a quagmire of results.

Start your spiritual journey

A Strange-But-True Spiritual Journey

TheTrueLight.Net - My Spiritual Journey

Spiritual Awakening Blog

Days of Deepening Friendship - An Online Spiritual Journey

J. Pittman McGehee: The Spiritual Journey from Biography To Autobiography - changing one's mind...

Spiritual Journey | Spiritual Enlightenment | Chopra Center

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Christian Thinkers Ponder Nietzsche

2012-05-25T07:02:00.001-04:00

Visit Religion Online

From:

A Christian Scholar's Dialogue with Muslims by Hans Kung

Second. in the process of secularization, modern Christianity has had negative as well as positive experiences which Islam in its unavoidable modernization quite possibly might also have lying before it. That is particularly true in regard to dealing with the modern critique of religion, as, for example, by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.

From:

A Political Vision for the Organic Model by Robert W. Hoffert

Both politics and personality would be reinvested with a wholeness they have lost in countless ways: in Marx's economic determinism, in Nietzsche's nihilism, and in Dahl's socioeconomic statistics.

From:

A Whiteheadian Chaosmos: Process Philosophy from a Deleuzean Perspective by Tim Clark

As it was with Nietzsche, so it is with the pagan Deleuze.

From:

A Worried America by Gunnar Myrdal

We could, and did, indulge in the pessimism of a Schopenhauer or in the aggressive egocentricity of a Nietzsche,

From:

An Interview with David Tracy by Lois Malcolm

I agree with Nietzsche: our souls are too small.

From:

Anselm Kiefer: Art as Atonement by Ronald Goetz

Because Nietzsche's thought was appropriated by Hitler and Nazism (however legitimately or illegitimately the Nazis understood that self-contradictory philosopher -- and the jury is forever out on that question), Nietzsche came under a cloud in Germany immediately after World War II.

But such an eclipse could not be expected to last, and at present Germany is experiencing a Nietzschian revival, Kiefer is plainly indebted, as were his early 20-century German expressionist predecessors, to elements within the Nietzschian mind-set.

From:

Has Europe Become Theologically Barren? by John B. Cobb, Jr.

When we read the neo-Kantians against the background of Nietzsche's critique, they seem somewhat superficial. As knowledge of other religious traditions became more important, the easy affirmation of Christian superiority was harder to maintain. I think here, especially, of Ernst Troeltsch, and his giving up of the claim to the absoluteness of Christianity.

From:

Whitehead and Nietzsche: Overcoming the Evil of Time by Strachan Donnelley

Whitehead and Nietzsche, indefatigable process philosophers, march to decidedly different philosophic drums. Yet at a striking junction, they cross paths.

Both find human life and the temporal world of becoming plagued by an ultimate evil that is deeply involved with the nature of time -- in particular, with the essential passage of time and the temporal dimension of the past. Time threatens to devour human significance and the humanly good life.

From:

Whitehead and the Dualism of Mind and Nature by Philip Michael Rose

His [Nietzsche's] naturalistic approach removes the veil of completeness and order which reason brings to the world and reveals instead a world which is essentially incomplete -- an open-ended, chaotic world of pure contingency.

Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophy -- Attitudes Toward Sourced attitudes toward Nietzsche and his philosophy from Religion Online.
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The 'Obama spending binge' Is Another GOP Lie

2012-05-24T21:15:00.001-04:00

The 'Obama spending binge': Fact or fiction? - The Week:

"The Obama binge is pure fiction: The "big surge in federal spending" started before Obama stepped into the Oval Office, says blogger Meteor Blades at Daily Kos. Obama did add $140 billion in stimulus spending that year, but over the four years that Obama actively shaped the budget, spending is on track to go from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion. Adjusting for inflation, that amounts to an average 1.4 percent annual decrease. That should burst the GOP "propaganda balloon."

"An Obama spending spree? Hardly" "

'via Blog this'

It is getting hard to believe that the LIAR label

Will not be so affixed to the GOP by their convention

that they will simply look morosely at each other and concede

A Romney nomination will be a disaster

The GOP already is a disaster

Obama was going to remove all their lies in 2007

when he propounded a reformist centrist agenda

Even in the face of criminal GOP violations of tradition

(they are supposed to compromise)

Obama has stuck to his thrifty ways

Lies won't cut it when the truth is crystal clear

In 1964 LBJ lied his way to a landslide

In 2012 the GOP is lying itself to oblivion

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"Sto Perigiali" One of the Surpassingly Best Tunes Theodorakis Has Written

2012-05-24T16:37:00.003-04:00

A Setting for a Poem "Denial" Beloved by the Greek People by the Nobel Prize Winning Poet Giorgos Seferis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhk0ckaCxDI

The remarkable video at the link above is of a performance of "Sto perigiali" Mario Frangoulis and Mikis Theodorakis in 2001.

Frangoulis and Theodorakis are joined by musicians, including two bouzouki players, and a very large audience that is completely familiar with the words. The audience joins in at Frangoulis' prompt.

This is my very favorite Theodorakis melody. Those who know Theodorakis only for his "Zorba" music are in for a treat. When I was in Athens in 1966, for a short period of study with Constantinos Doxiadis, I knew nothing of Theodorakis. But about five years later, my friend Irene Vassos sang "Sto perigiali" to us. I have never gotten the tune out of my mind.

Later, when Irene joined our group to form a travelling company performing "New Rain", I learned to pick out a few notes on the bouzouki.

The English translation of the poem to which "Sto perigiali" is set reads as follows:

DENIAL

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life: a mistake!
So we changed our life...

- Giorgos Seferis

Thanks to the music of Mikis Theodorakis, "Sto perigiali" has become one of the best-known and beloved poem-lyrics in Greece. Giorgos Seferis was a Nobel laureate and one of Greece's best loved poets.

"Sto perigiali" performed by Mario Frangoulis and Mikis Theodorakis One of the surpassingly best tunes Theodorakis has written -- a setting for a poem beloved by the Greek people by the Nobel prize winning poet Giorgos Seferis.

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Nietzsche in English and Online

2012-05-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

Critical Directory of Useful and Usable Sites

To my best knowledge the sites below are accessible,

have no thinly veiled subscription requirements,

and have accurately presented what they claim to present.

Many of the "comprehensive" pages out there

lead to nonexistent sites or to sites

which have various access requirements.

Or else they have obtrusive ads.

This is a work in progress.

GENERAL

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY -- COMPREHENSIVE AND USABLE NIETZCHE SURVEY

COMPREHENSIVE INTRODUCTORY NIETZSCHE PAGES -- PHOTOS -- LINKS -- ETC.

STANFORD -- NIETZSCHE BIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY AND LINKS

FRIEDRICH NIETZCHE -- BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE INFLUENCE OF NIETZSCHE

BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

SELECTED NIETZSCHE BIBLIOGRAPHY - UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

STUDENT NIETZSCHE BIBLIOGRAPHY

A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON NIETZSCHE

NIETZSCHE BIBLIOGRAPHY INCLUDING CORRESPONDENCE

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS NIETZSCHE BIBLIOGRAPHY

GRINNELL COLLEGE -- EXTENSIVE LIST OF ARTICLES IN ENGLISH

ONLINE TEXTS IN ENGLISH BY NIETZSCHE:

An Extensive Collection

Thus Spake Zarathustra (Thomas Common Translation)

ONLINE TEXTS IN ENGLISH ABOUT NIETZSCHE:

Nietzsche and The Machine -- Derrida Interview Excerpt

Nietzsche by Paul Elmer More

Nietzsche Online Some Pertinent Destinations

2012-05-24T14:07:00.003-04:00

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The GOP Has Betrayed the President for a Mess of Pottage

2012-05-24T13:10:00.003-04:00

And for for this reason and many others Barack Obama will be a two term president We should build monument to the consistency of Barack Obama in the face of one of the most shameful assaults in our history The GOP listened to Limbaugh and decided to stonewall him as though he was a pariah and worse
A lesser man would have become resentful Obama remained cool His program remains centristAnd this time aroundthe Democrats who hang backCan see the writing on the wall
GOP Betrayalis the heart of the narrativeAn Obama Victory in Novemberis its just and deserved conclusion
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The Not So Great Society - A Note to The President

2012-05-24T11:50:00.002-04:00

I wrote this a while back.

When you were just a little boy Sir

We made us a compact

To stratify by race

And look

And class

We used the Great Society

To befog the reality

And then we renamed charity

As organized community

Our tokenism breathed easy

As we moved outward from the city

Built more prisons

Elected mayors

And patted ourselves on the back

And shook our heads in private

Yes we left the bulk of poverty

Moved on to great careers

You know the drill

And now the chickens barely mumble Sir

Malcolm-like and honestly

And Rome remains unburned Sir

For the nonce

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