Free Capitalist
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Posts posted by Free Capitalist
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In ancient Greece during the original era of the Olympiad the athlete had two goals: win and win. The idea of doing ones best for the sake of doing one's best was an attitude promoted by the upper classes during the modern Olympic era.Running for $$$ often brings out the best in us. Going for the buck is an honest and straightforward motive. It also accounts for the now wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs and technologies. Profit and competition produces the best results.
I love the profit motive. It is so ....understandable....
That's a fairly unpleasant thing to say. Money in principle is an honorable thing, but some things, such as personal convictions, aren't for sale. If you reduce everything to the profit motive, then we have a lot more disagreements that I care to go into in this thread. Do you know what the Olympic victors got in the ancient days? A laurel wreath. That's all. No endorsements, no huge chunks of money, no major financial inducements at home. They competed for honor, and simply to have the laurel wreath, that highest badge of excellence, while their competitors got nothing, was the highest indication of honor and personal excellence they ever needed.
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The Olympics is not about "how much the body can accomplish". It is about how much the mind can accomplish using just its body. That's why the original Olympics were performed in the nude.I dont' see where the disagreement is.
So, if you're going to allow external shoes, why not allow internal drugs?Because at the moment they're probably not an egregious violation of the very principle you stated "how much the body can accomplish using just its body. The original Olympics were in the nude or in a loincloth, but when revived by the Victorians they had shoes and shirts. That's simply the standard of the modern competition. If they're improving shoes, it's a small enough change. But once you see shoes with thick springs and pneumatic-action, you bet the Olympic Committee will not like it.
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If someone staged a "Steroid Games," in which all manner of drug use was permitted as part of the rules and where the point was not "excellence" as you seem to use it above but to see how much the human body can accomplish (or some other goal consistent with allowing drug-induced enhancements), would you oppose that?Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions, which are ever-increasing. Of course I wouldn't oppose Steroid Games, but I would question their very purpose. I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!
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I'll address the core of the poster's question. The conflict between natural, and artificial performance helpers is a vexed one. Sure people were special shoes, but it's not like they're going to check every person's shoe, to detect various little springs. People wore shoes since the beginning, and if they're a little bit better now, then I suppose that couldn't be helped. But the point of Olympics and all athletic contests is to measure human excellence, which means excellence of the internal human body. When you tamper with that, you are stepping outside the point of having these competitions in the first place. The point is not "to win", the point is "to be excellent". When you're not "you" when you win, then you can hardly claim to be excellent.
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As every student of history knows, Columbus miscalculated the size of the earthOr so he said. Hmm? The conspiracy grows deeper?
I'm just kidding -
1434 saw the dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore, the city of Florence's cathedral. Those who attended the festivities, however, were unaware that there was a Chinese delegation in their midstLike I said, I wouldn't discount the possibility that there was a Chinese embassy in the first place. It didn't have to be a big parade noticeable to the whole city; we're just talking diplomatic contacts, perhaps a relatively quiet meeting between two nations. I think some papers were discovered in recent years which show that some such contact did take place. This is where "1434" takes off, but that doesn't mean the diplomatic contact wasn't there. Just like "1421" takes off with the fact that a gigantic, and technologically impressive fleet left China and sailed as far as eastern Africa. I can accept that fact, and even appreciate some Chinese ingenuity behind this. Even if it underlies the whole premise of "1421", it seems to be a fact, and I'm comfortable with it. I dispute Menzies on the many particulars. Like I said, clever authors like him always begin with explosively controversial big facts, which inevitably are true. While you waste time denying that such a fleet sailed, the mainstream community will be against you because such a fleet probably did sail. And the criticism of Menzies on where it counts -- on discovery of America, on ocean-worthiness of those 400ft ships -- that all gets swept by the wayside. So I'm fine accepting the big facts. If he starts with them, they're probably true. But where he really seeks to stake his claim is in the small distinctions, and that's where the true falsehood lies,
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The reason I might sound defensive is because you and some others that have spent very limited amounts of time trying to understand proper diet and exercise want to wipe out the totality of my researchI challenge you to have no emotional tie to something you value that much
Also, your recommendations are irrational
Sigh...
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I just perused the comments about this book on Amazon, and from that is sounds like the author just guessed that this Chinese fleet went to Italy? In other words, there is historical evidence for a series of voyages, but no evidence that they went to Italy, let alone ignited the Renaissance. That's pretty bizarre. The comments mentioned an earlier volume claiming the Chinese discovered America in 1421, and a third volume to come about their sending a rocket to Mars. Does he give better sources for the portions of the book that deal with the Italian engineering achievements?The prequel, about how the Chinese discovered America in 1421, is highly controversial. It is not as easy to dismiss it as one might think. Cranks who make it onto a world stage usually have some very good arguments they can fall back on. The facts are, that in 1420 a gigantic fleet shipped out from China, containing some ships that have measured 200+ feet in length, dwarfing Columbus' Santa Maria. That much is pretty certain. Also, at that time China was on a cultural high, not unlike the Muslims. We know this humongous fleet reached at least the eastern coast of Africa, and explored it. Conventional history has it that having performed the exploration, the fleet turned back, its intrepid navigator was imprisoned at home, and detailed records of the voyage were burned by the court eunichs. "1421" argues that what the eunichs burned was this fleet continuing on past Africa, circumnavigating it, then sailing across the Ocean, exploring America, returning to Spain and passing off this knowledge to the Spanish/Portugese, and then sailing home, getting records burnt, etc. One of the pivotal arguments on which this rests are is a pair of highly, highly controversial maps. One of them is a European map from 1450s, showing parts of the American coast, before they ever were supposed to have such knowledge. There's an even more explosive Chinese map, dating from 1418 and again showing parts of America. The original didn't survive, so the proof is a 1700's copy of that map. There's other evidence the book falls on, including some hearsay that the Spanish knew exactly where they were going; and that Columbus wasn't afraid to miss, because supposedly he carried the Chinese maps with him. Like I said, a complicated story, and like all successful pseudo-intellectual works, it is strongly wedded to hard facts, and a few 'maybes' which push the course of history its way.
The "1434" is a sequel to all this. That the way Italians discovered their perspective in painting, built their simply stunning and ingenious machinery, was that this giant fleet stopped in Italy and taught them. I don't know the details, but there supposedly was some sort of a Chinese embassy to Florence in 1434; I don't know enough but I wouldn't discount that fact. Hinging on this, the author sketches how the fairly advanced science of China was generously shared with the Italians, who created the Renaissance. And again, the ostensible factual details all look extremely strong. The book has supposed sketches of machines from 1300, that then find their way to Leonardo's handbooks. There's an image of a Chinese painter employing projection, in the same way that Italians later would in helping them paint perspective. Again, a very involved argument, deeply mired in hard facts and speculative maybes. That's the sort of enemies we're dealing with. No self-respecting scholar will even accept a Renaissance, and the only famous author who does, does it to ascribe the credit to someone else. We need serious, great scholars, like in the day.
Anyway, fine the Chinese may have had surveyors performing projection on a building, like Italians later would. But I have a factual stumbling block this author will never get me across -- the Chinese never invented perspective. Chinese paintings are the flattest things that can ever be found in the pictoral arts. They didn't even understand shadow, let alone perspective. So he can pull out all kinds of arcane Chinese manuscripts which look similar, but the fact is, the Chinese never had that Renaissance. So they couldn't have caused it in others. So there. Having realized that, I let myself sleep untroubled at night.
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Please, I have been hearing that for years and I am sure you will not be the last.Ray, why so defensive. No one is attaching you, geez. No one's made any judgment on the Progressive Method, mainly because few people on the forum have the ability to have experience with it firsthand. So none of the comments apply to you personally. I mean come on, we're all adults here.
Given that, I'm not sure what you meant by your clients losing weight while eating happy and being merry. Are you going to tell me that you don't mind the "McDonalds diet"? That a typical fast-food meal a couple times a week is completely fine, that you're indifferent if your clients pursue it, and that as a health professional you find no problem with this cholesterol and fat content?
I'm not sure what that parenthetical aside was about us as biological creatures 'built' to store fat. Sure, we are. But boy, were those 50s Americans fit and slim. How slim are those Europeans! Our American human nature must've changed.
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Happy birthday!
May I sing Glory Britannia, or are you not into antique anthems?
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Could you elaborate please? How did the 50s cuisine differ from today's foods? I'm curious as to what is the kind of food you consider "innocent."I'm not an expert, though I've been trying to find out precisely for the same reasons as your question. The fact that we used to be a lot slimmer and thinner than we are, and a lot of Europe still is to this day, and there must be some causative fact behind that. I know that the introduction of KFC into a daily meal routine in the 70s perverted the normalcy of proper human diet, since it's delicious, and plainly atrocious in its dietic aspects. Nowadays KFC has found the old frying insufficient, so they double-deep-fry (double-krispy) their chicken if you ask them, for a doubly-quick dose of cholesterol blockage and heart-attacks at 39.
Anyway to get back to my topic, I don't know a lot of 50s diet details (but I know the statistics, so something must've been there). First off, I think they were much more physically fit, and apt to do physical exercises than we are. Second fact, let me admit that I think they did use bacon ("eggs and bacon" stereotype breakfast), so strike that against my point. But on the other hand, I am almost certain that they consumed wheat bread in enormous proportions, while we use mainly white bread now, and it is much worse biologically/chemically-wise. It contains grain particles that have been grinded into sheer powder, while wheat bread contains less-ground grain. As a result, this white bread powder is transformed into energy immediately, from the simple physics of there being more surface area for the digestive juices to work on. This produces an energy rush, and then a down, just like sugar; and since we can't take advantage of so much energy instantly, it's stored into fat. Wheat bread, with less-ground particles, takes considerably more to digest. The input of energy is even and gradual keeping you more energetic throughout the day, and letting you work off the incoming energy before it ends up being stored away.
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Definitely Replace it with another freedom games. It's absolutely preposterous that we have this 'cosmopolitan' mindset nowadays, in the UN, in the Olympics, that we, all of us humanity, are 'in it together', and so let's just join in and sing kum-ba-ya even though back home some live free and others will get tortured shortly after their return. The Olympics in the first place was instituted by free Greek cities, to distinguish the Greeks from the barbarians. And it was brought back in the Victorian Era to revive ideals such as this one. I'm sure that the founders, and the revivers, would be pretty shocked that the Olympics has turned into a muscled Chinese athlete running with utmost strain on the cover of top US magazines, a slave tool of his own country but proud to serve his masters.
It'd be a bit like some Persian king sending a bunch of burly men to compete in the athletics -- it doesn't matter if they were physically adequate, mentally they were not, and would be laughed out.
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For those who think that McDonald's is OK food, I have one question. What constitutes "healthy" food for you? 1900 calories for lunch, 50% from fat is "healthy"? (Big Mac: 50% fat calories, 103 mg cholesterol; chocolate shake: 28% fat calories, 70 mg cholesterol; fries: 47% fat calories. Total calories: 1900). There may be a few who go for coffee or a salad, but that fluff is hardly what supports the McDonald's name.That's exactly right! I myself drop by to eat a salad, maybe a burger once in a while, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But fries, despite taste, are basically just solid cholesterol. It's absolutely horrible what was done to the American cuisine in these last 20 years, when healthy cooked food was displaced by 'cuisine' which has an almost literal ton of cholesterol, and will make your tongue feel good just before it kills you.
Anyway, I guess we can discuss Fast Food in another thread. The point I was trying to make is that most people -- who don't drop by just for a salad like me, like Ray for a split combo, or Jordan for iced coffees -- folks who eat a regular expected portion of McDonalds cuisine, have their life expectancy drop dramatically. Stussy said that if non-organic food was that chemically infested, some lawyers would have already pinpointed it. No lawyers are managing to nail the McDonalds "cholesterol diet", and the best they can do is if someone burns themselves on the coffee. So it is unlikely that lawyers are the final arbiters of whether non-organic food is 'ok' or not.
I'm not a stickler, I mostly eat regular food as well, and maybe will buy some organic Beef Stroganoff simply because it tastes better. But I have been alerted in recent years to the fact that there's a lot of food out there that is simply very bad for me; in contrast with let's say 50s cuisine, where almost everything you'd eat was completely innocent. Or in Italy today, their 'fast food' is comprised of healthy grown and cooked food, which is made fast only because they serve it quickly; but it's prepared over a long period of time. Thus the Italians for instance are very fit people. They cook their pasta halfway, not completely white like we do, and so the carbohydrates don't explode into our body when we digest it. They call it Pasta A la Tempe. There's lots of healthy cuisine that we in the States have simply forgotten how to eat.
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I look at it this way. We are a litigious, highly risk averse culture.So two things suggest to me that organic food cannot be in some way “safer” for people to consume.
First, pesticides have to be licensed usually by some state body.
Second, if any ambulance chasing lawyer could find any pesticide that could be shown to cause harm, he would be suing all and sundry today.
Yeah, but think of it this way -- there's nothing more deadly out there than your friendly neighborhood McDonalds. It literally, if you start eating it more or less regularly, will kill you.
Yet no lawyers are chasing 400-lb people with horrific coronary problems caused by McDonalds food. The best they can get away with is if someone burns themselves on the hot coffee, that's about it.
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I hope people recognized that this was a satire, a fairly vicious and biting one at that.
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Logicism, is a new term. Necessarily it's founded by some yet another incompetent professor trying to coin a new term. The underlying question is -- is rationalism compatible with Objectivism. Objectivism deals with a lot more than just logic and syllogisms, but the logical part of Objectivism takes into great consideration observation, and induction, while putting deductions in a secondary place.
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Every history of the Renaissance that I have found, much to my disappointment, presents the Renaissance out of chronological order by categories such as "The Discovery of the World and of Man" in Jacob Burckhardt or "Science and Philosophy" in Jerry Brotton (a post-modern hack whose book was given as our "textbook" in a class on the Renaissance). This is all fine and dandy if you already understand the context and the general progression of events and ideas during the Renaissance, but it leaves someone with little knowledge of that period (like me) completely befuddled.Is there a decent history of the Renaissance that proceeds in chronological order?
There obviously is not going to be any good, proper history of the Renaissance published in the last 100 years. Ewv's advice just to go in the library will not work; worse, you're likely to pick one of the books fairly respected in the modern scholarly community, such as by Paul Kristellar. If modern scholars would accept the notion of Renassance at all, he would be the one to explain it to them. He's the expert on that period in modern times, and I cannot tell you just how terrible is, and how horrible his ideas are. He's the epitome of the men who twisted young minds into horrific, comprachico proportions.
So -- who else is there then? I think what you're asking is: what are the great Victorian books which were written on the Renaissance. Then people still understood its greatness.
The best book, I've found, is Education in the Age of the Renaissance, by W.H. Woodward. It focuses with an intense light on the early humanists, their Latin Classical education, their deepest values; the transmission of Greek Classics by Crysoloras in the nick of time before the Turks savaged Constantinople; etc. It's not a whole history. It won't give a lot on the great Petrarch who founded the Renaissance, and there's not much in it on art. It just deals with the essentials, and the essential few figures at the core of it -- Guarino who taught Italy, Erasmus who taught France, and Melanchthon who established Classical schools in Germany (which Kepler and Leibnitz were later educated in). This is book is the key to unlocking all of the Renaissance, since education and literature are more fundamental than artistic developments.
But art is important, and what the Renaissance is famous for. To get the best insight into the Renaissance art, from early Florentine efforts to shake off medievalism, to fullest expresions later, there's nothing better than Medici, by G.F. Young.
Both of these were published in the first years of the 20th century, and represent the last (and best, as far as I know) effort to give the Renaissance its due. Burckhardt is not a great Renaissance book.
There was a book published just this month, making huge waves in literary circles: 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. It's an incipid volume all about how the Chinese delegation to Florence in 1434 transmitted to Italy all of China's great inventions, which ignited the marvelous scientific and technical jumps which Italy is signified by in the 15-16th centuries. But I'm going to surprise you by saying that it's actually a fairly great access-point into the amazing Italian engineers, because if you disregard the book's preposterous and horrible thesis, the detail and attention which the author lavishes on the staggering Renaissance engineering is unparalleled anywhere in modern literature. The author puts all of his breath and effort into explaining how the great Renaissance was fueled by (sic) equally great Chinese scientists, while no self-respecting critic today will admit there even was a Renaissance worth talking about. So this horrible book, with a horrible thesis, underneath it all has a good and accessible insight into Italy's engineering and scientific revolution.
That's about all the topics I can help with -- education, Classics and values; then art; then engineering and science.
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Happy Belated one!
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And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.
And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.
From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.
And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.
And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.
From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.
In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.
As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.
And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.
The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.
And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.
Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.
And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.
Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.
But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.
And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.
Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.
On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.
And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle4392846.ece
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I thought the movie was just great.
I also felt like some parts were rushed, but maybe that will pass if I have a second viewing, on Mercury's suggestion.
Warning: There are spoilers about this movie in this post.
Leaving aside the minor praise, or minor complaints, the overarching aspects of the movie -- the theme, the complexity of the main characters -- were just breathtaking. The movie is not so much an episode, as almost a whole lifetime. Characters appear, grow, develop in very plausible ways, take over a whole city with power you never suspected in them at the beginning, etc. I half-expected Two-Face to be a 'hook' as the villain of the next Batman movie, as is commonly done in comic films, most notably Spiderman. Consequently I was surprised by his role, and by the sensitive attention that the film gave to his morality, his development, and his downfall. Dent wasn't a caricature of a villain, he wasn't a 'hook' into any future movie; he wasn't a villain period. He was a man, whose fall from virtue was sensitively and very sympathetically treated. And he died at the end, not as a caricuture or a means to something else, but only a means to demonstrating Dark Knight's theme, and of no other film; the theme of vulnerability of virtue, of its two powerful opposite exponents in Joker and Batman, with Dent perched in the middle. Batman appeared to me much more moral man than in Begins, a man very powerfully concerned with his own morality, in the midst of luxury and beautiful women hanging on his every word. Joker was spectacular, in his own different way -- he surprised by not possessing any gravitas, being almost contemptible, but also undeniably brilliant and powerful in his own way, thus presenting his own brand of a very menacing millain. I simply can't believe how we trace his rise to power, from a small-time crook to a giant villain who took over all of Gotham. It's all breathtaking and larger-than life.
Excellent film.
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Petarch, the father of modern Europe, wrote this. He lived in the Middle Ages.
I despise what melancholy fatehas brought us, wretches, in these evil years.
Long before my birth, time smiled and may again,
for once there was, and yet will be, more joyful days.
But in this middle age time's dregs
sweep around us, and we bend beneath a heavy
load of vice. Genius, virtue, glory now
have gone, leaving chance and sloth to rule.
Shameful vision this! We must awake or die.
He then proceeded to found all of modern Europe.
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I am not the one that started a thread a few months ago about a song that is generally saying "good-bye to America." Give up, I will never give up. I might choose a tactical retreat and rethink my attack, but hell will freeze over before I give up.To briefly reply, I didn't post that
as my own personal statement. Why it's important is that the composer culturally and educationally hails from the very center of intellectual life of New York City, such as it is now. New York liberals, and liberals generally, no longer sing songs about America, or experience heart-string tugs in connection to this country (except with multicultural toleration as the only thing that excuses this country's vices). But Peter Cincotti, clearly from the center of that milieu, surprisingly chooses America as the subject of his highest artistic effort; and delivers it in a lyrical and highly creative fashion. His song even makes strong references to early American history. I mean there's nothing typical about it. To my mind, he, and his culture are the ones saying goodbye to America, a great old sort of men who were once the heroes of American life, and virtue. It's a beautiful testimony to the past, for him it is a goodbye to the future, but for me a resounding defiance in the present.I said some people sometimes fish for the worst news possible because I've seen plenty of it previously (not from you), and you've been inquiring by what standard you can judge if America is finally fallen now. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think in a completely different way. I don't want to know if it's "finally fallen", or by which marks we could know if it has. And in the corner of my mind I have vivid examples of just how truly bad countries were in the past, and how little it stopped them from reaching forward and becoming better. So it's not marks by which I can judge decline, that I seek; but instead concrete steps by which I myself will be able to make the most powerful difference possible.
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Greenspan is a very curious character. He's bad in every way, he's completely sold out his gold standard ideas of the 1960s, endorsed the Fed and rose to even control it.... and then what did he do when at the top of the Fed hierarchy? He told them to follow the price of the gold ounce, religiously. As a result, the US has been under a quasi-gold-standard for two decades from 1980s to 1990s, at what point he relaxed his discipline, caused the great bubble, and retired.
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So, what should a person use as an essential marker to judge that a country only has ups and downs or has fallen? I think an essential that one could use to judge if a country has fallen is when the people accept different fundamentals than those originally stated at the formation of the country.I don't look for an "essential marker", because I don't think essential markers even exist. I mean, unless a country has completely physically disintegrated, or the capacity to act became forbidden, it's never "a fundamentally fallen" country. I mean look, I already gave you the most starkly depressing example -- the Middle Ages. A few enlightened Brits looked at their country, and gasped in disgust, and set on reforming their country's rotten ways and unsightly principles. I mean what does it even give you, psychologically, to classify the US as essentially gone? Does it allow you more options, or open up more possibilities? I don't get why good people sometimes pursue the worst news possible.
To a historically minded person, which you are, it should be clear that countries have been in absolutely more horrible conditions than the US in previous times; again, think Middle Ages!, and yet intransigent men have always come and pulled them out. If you're tired waiting for that ideal man to solve all of our problems, why can't you become him yourself? Learn to speak persuasively, join the city council, advance upwards through your honesty, become a mayor of a city, and then a governor, and before you know it, a good, honest man is leading one of the fifty states in the union.
Self-pity is never useful. Nor is it how intransigent men have solved their crises in the past.
A computer game with a pro-freedom story?
in THE GOOD
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You know, you're right, I'm surprised that the true promise of object-oriented programming hasn't been exploited. I guess each company wants to waste money building all its own chairs and tables, and thereby waste someone like Ray's money. The market should be catching on, there should be people latching on to this ability to make profit by selling a longer-lasting game, but it's not happening as of yet.