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Friday, June 29

Sometimes Advertising Doesn't Suck

Names from the Memoirs of the House of the Dead

Alexander Petrovich i.e.: Dostoevsky
Chekunda "...the dirtiest wench in the world." 39
Korenev "The flesh had gained so much the upper hand over all his mental attributes that you might see from the first glance at his face that there was nothing left in him but but a fierce thirst for bodily pleasure, sensuality, carnal satifaction." 66
baygushi"...some paupers, called by us baygushi, those who had gambled or drunk away all their money or were simply paupers by nature." 69
Yankel"...Gogal's little Jew, Yankel, in Taras Bulba, who, when he undressed to betake himself with his Jewess to some closet for the night , looked dreadfully like a chicken." 78
Aristov "...such complete moral degradation, such absolute corruption, and such brazen vileness, as in Astinov." 90

Monday, June 25

I Have this Album ... Somewhere

In a Box ... Hiding Under My Desk or in a Closet ... Or Something
a1)B.E.F.Groove Thang
2)DevoGoing Under
3)D.A.FDer MussolinI!
4)Fingerprintz (2)The Beat Escape
5)Heaven 17Soul Warfare

b1)Simple MindsLove Song
2)MagazineThe Great Man's Secrets
3)JapanThe Art Of Parties
4)The Human LeagueDo Or Die Dub (Special Edit) n/a

Methods Of Dance | Virgin | Vinyl, LP, Compilation | UK | 1981 | Electronic | New Wave, Synth-pop

Environs Prometheus

“He Received Every New Idea as Perfectly Beautiful”



Sunday, June 24

So Sprach Der Amerikanische Prometheus

...Now, this is not an easy thing, and the point I want to make, the one point I want to hammer home, is what an enormous change in spirit is involved. There are things which we hold very dear, and I think rightly hold very dear; I would say that the word democracy perhaps stood for some of them as well as any other word. There are many parts of the world in which there is no democracy. There are other things which we hold dear, and which we rightly should. And when I speak of a new spirit in international affairs I mean that even to these deepest of things which we cherish, and for which Americans have been willing to die -- and certainly most of us would be willing to die -- even in these deepest things, we realize that there is something more profound than that; namely, the common bond with other men everywhere. It is only if you do that that this makes sense; because if you approach the problem and say, "We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us," then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed, because under those conditions you will not succeed in delegating responsibility for the survival of men. It is a purely unilateral statement; you will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
SPEECH TO THE ASSOCIATION OF LOS ALAMOS SCIENTISTS
Los Alamos, November 2, 1945

Friday, June 22

x = “popper open society plato hexagon octagon circle”

ƒ(x) = google(x)
  1. Plato's approximation of pi? « Division by Zero

    divisbyzero.com/2012/06/20/platos-approximation-of-pi/
    2 days ago – Here's what Popper has to say (this is in his notes to Chapter 6 of The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. 1, pp. ... of this curious fact is that it follows from the fact that the arithmetical mean of the areas of the circumscribed hexagon and the inscribed octagon is a good approximation of the area of the circle.
  2. The Open Society and Its Enemies: The spell of Plato - Google Books Result

    books.google.com/books?isbn=0691019681...Karl Raimund Popper, Sir Karl Raimund Popper - 1971 - Medical - 368 pages
    Karl Raimund Popper, Sir Karl Raimund Popper ... triangles r(VI+V3) The rectangle ABCD has an area exceeding that of the circle by less than 1 J ... of the areas of the circumscribed hexagon and the inscribed octagon is a good approximation ...
  3. Division by Zero

    divisbyzero.com/
    2 days ago – Here's what Popper has to say (this is in his notes to Chapter 6 of The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. 1, pp. ... of this curious fact is that it follows from the fact that the arithmetical mean of the areas of the circumscribed hexagon and the inscribed octagon is a good approximation of the area of the circle.
  4. Numbers - Google Books Result

  5. ¡ℜ» Plato's “House”

    losersreview.blogspot.com/2012/04/platos.html
    Apr 13, 2012 – “The rectangle ABCD has an area exceeding that of the circle by less than 1½ pro mille” ... mean of the areas of the circumscribed hexagon and the inscribed octagon is a ... Karl Popper - The Open Society and Its Enemies ...

Friday, June 15

Punctuating Wills' Bomb Power:

The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

9The War Lords of Washington by Bruce Catton
20Werner Heisenberg
29Henry H. Arnold
59Henry L. Stimson | Office of Strategic Services | William J. Donovan
60Magic (cryptography) and Purple (cipher machine)
70George F. Kennan
George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy by David Mayers
Report, Dialectical Materialism And Russian Objectives by Edward F. Willett
71George Kennan The Sources of Soviet Conduct (1946)
75Executive Order 9835 | George Marshall
76Dean Acheson
The Fifteen Weeks, February 21-June 5, 1947 by Joseph M. Jones

Sunday, June 10

Punctuating Wittgentstein's Poker


9Stephen Toulmin - TheUses of Argument
22Marjorie Perloff - Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary
60GeorgeEdward Moore - Principia Ethica
66"...Liberal cabinet minister Charles Masterman, who created Britain's World War I propaganda unit."
74Adolf Loos, architect
75Lev Bronstein, aka: Trotsky
78Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
81"The Wittgenstein house was one of the preeminentmusical salons in the city [Vienna] of Mahler , Schoenberg , Webern . Berg ,and of course, Brahms ."
82"...Richard Strauss played duets with Ludwig's brother Paul, a concert pianistwho lost his right arm in the First World War and for whom,in 1931, Ravelwrote his Piano Concert in D for the Left Hand. (Paul rejected a work for the left hand he had commissioned from Prokofiev: 'I do not understand a note of it and I shall not play it.' Prokofiev retorted that, musically, Paul belonged in the last century.)"
83"The painter Gustav Klimt called [Wittgenstein's father Karl] 'the minister of fine art' ... "
Thomas Bernard - Wittgenstein's Nephew
86Paul Engelmann, architect, Stonborough House

Tuesday, June 5

“Chapter X The Two Realms”

5. The balance of Power
... There are the hedonists who would withdraw wholly into the realm of existence, to ear, drink, and be merry without the pains and the qualms that go with immortal yearnings. The view of civility has been challenged by the ascetics who would withdraw from the realm of existence, waiting for the end of the world and their own release from mortality. It has been challenged by the primitive Chiliasts, who live in the expectation that the millenium, according to the revelation of Saint john, is near at hand. And it has been challenged by the modern perfectionists who believe that by their own revolutionary acts men can make themselves the Creators of heaven on this earth, In all these views the error stems from the same fundamental disorder. All refuse to recognize that, on the one hand, the two realms cannot be fused, and that. On the other hand, they cannot be separated and isolated—that they must be related by striking, maintaining, redressing a balance between them.

This is a complex arid subtle truth, rather like a surd in mathematics which cannot be expressed in the finite terms of ordinary quantities.

“The Revolution”

... All political parties have some sort of ‘ vested interest ’ in their opponent’s unpopular moves. They live by them and are therefore liable to dwell upon, to emphasize, and even to look forward to them. They may even encourage the political mistakes of their opponents as long as they can do so without becoming involved in the responsibility for them. This, together with Engels’ theory, has led some Marxist parties to look forward to the political moves made by their opponents against democracy. Instead of fighting such moves tooth and nail, they were pleased to tell their followers : ‘ See what these people do. That is what they call democracy. That is what they call freedom and equality !

Saturday, June 2

Just Another Day in the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “dead”
So exposing classified national security information is an act of criminal evil when done by a whistleblower to expose high-level error or abuse, or to a court trying to assess the legality of the President’s actions. But it is an act of great nobility when done to venerate the President as a strong and tough warrior. That’s the manipulative, propagandistic game-playing this administration exploits with its secrecy powers and whistleblower prosecutions.

Reporting from the House of the Dead

“Dog! You have desecrated the Spirit of the Lamp!

RT's Capital Account for May 30, 2012.

See also: Zero Hedge

Friday, June 1

“Piercing” In the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “obstruction of justice”
Oh, let us count the ways, shall we? The Civil Rights Movement was an exercise of political pressure that used for its philosophical underpinnings certain religious themes and rhetoric. (And "the light of the Gospels"? Well, partly, but, in his strategy of nonviolent resistance, which was the actual work of the movement, King was a student of Gandhi, who liked Christ, but didn't trust Christians.) It was dedicated to gaining for African Americans the rights that they already were promised as American citizens, and guaranteed by the Constitution, rights that had been systematically curtailed and eliminated by the secular law. The movement sought to restore rights that already existed, to give back that which has been stolen.

Supplication in the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “reach-around”
When I visited the office of a noted Wall Street gray eminence the day after Paulson accepted the job as treasury secretary, my host said to me, "There’s been a lot of talk about why he did it, and the best explanation I have heard is that he and a lot of the guys he is close to Worry about potential market disruptions that could be big problems if the right guy is not in there with his hand on the tiller. I think he feels like he can really add some value and that he may really be needed? (The mortgage crisis later suggested there may have been some merit to this thesis.)

It is remarkable that there has been a relatively low level of outcry about the steady flow of executives from 55 Broad Street to offices inside the Washington beltway. Vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International Bob Hormats, himself a former senior official, said, "It is fairly unusual. . . I think it is because it has been demonstrated that when Goldman Sachs people get into these jobs, they give no preference to Goldman Sachs. There is no shred of evidence that they use any of[133]their influence on behalf of Goldman Sachs. If there were, just once, given the remarkable activity of Goldman Sachs in the private sector, it would be over. There would be an incredible hue and cry."

Living in the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “prison”
Generally speaking, the whole tribe, with the exception of a few unquenchably cheerful souls, who for that reason enjoyed universal contempt, was sullen, envious, terribly conceited, boastful, touchy, and preoccupied in the highest degree with forms. The capacity not to be surprised by anything was the greatest possible virtue. They were all vitally concerned about one thing: what sort of figure they cut. But not seldom the most arrogant bearing changed with the speed of lightning to the most pitiful. There were a few genuinely strong characters, but they were simple and did not pose. But, strangely enough, some of these really strong people were superlatively, almost morbidly, conceited.