CALL ME MAGGIE

Category: Control

  • Wall Street Banks Seeking to Confuse Democratic Networks

    This is a very important bit of investigative journalism coming out of TruthOut.org right now. Let me attempt again to make the basic facts clear.  Third Way is not a “liberal think tank.”  It does not take “a centrist approach.”  It is not run by “fellow progressives.”  It is not…

  • Class, Race, & Economic Discipline

    As always, a nice find by my good brother Carl Sachs. Very interesting. Notwithstanding slavery, segregation and today’s covert racism, the Southern system has always been based on economics, not race.  Its rulers have always seen the comparative advantage of the South as arising from the South’s character as a…

  • Rigorous Quantification and Disciplinary Rigidity

    Rigorous Quantification and Disciplinary Rigidity

    Epistemology can be translated as the study of how we know or an account of how we know. In the article I link to below, UT PhD candidate Mark Coddington does a nice job delineating the different situations which generate the epistemological orientations of political journalists vs. that of social…

  • Poll Quants & the Book of Life

    Poll Quants & the Book of Life

    I’ve been unpacking my notions about the Society of Control a lot in the last few months. Primarily of late, this centers on developing the notion that control is about accounting… we use a mathematical model to translate the Life-World into the Book of Life. Among the methodological tools for…

  • The Antidote to Ayn Rand < Truthout.org

    The last word of Ayn Rand’s dystopian novella Anthem is “EGO.” Grasping the significance of this forbidden word is a kind of divine revelation for the novel’s protagonist, signaling his emancipation from the benighted, collectivist society into which he was born. I read Anthem in the 8th grade and, like…

  • Kanye West – Who Will survive in America « Whitezine

    Kanye West – Who Will survive in America « Whitezine

    Really bad ass unofficial video for Kanye West’s “Who will survive in a America…” Kanye West – Who Will survive in America « Whitezine | Design Graphic & Photography Inspirations.

  • A Boon of Dandelions 5

    Creatures of emotion. & passion… reason is not our better power but our guiding power, our focus & adjustment. To sense, to cognize,  to remember, to imagine, to judge, to believe: these are all ways that we reason. Brought together in mindfulness honed by decisive purpose, our emotions ground us…

  • How do we Shape Souls Without Longing?

    Nice looking backward at Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. Deneen correctly locates the import of the text in its prescient concern with the dis-ease of indifference. Today we live in a different age, one that so worried Bloom—an age of indifference. Institutions of higher learning have almost completely abandoned…

  • The Book of Life

    The Book of Life

    A recent Truthout.org article speaks to our living in an impoverished age. The issue with our impoverishment arises from not comprehending how the “plutocracy” is a conceptual weapon, not only against the 99% but against themselves as well. One thing addressed in the article is how getting an education no…

  • Human “Enhancement” vs Environmental Reformation

    When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall. The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder…

  • Combatting Knowledge with Opinion (and some Prayers)

    This is a nice follow up piece for the earlier link I posted today on why we are not ENTITLED to throw our opinions around without evidence and/or expectation of being challenged by those with broader knowledge: It is more than a little scary when you realize that objective data…

  • Schumpeter: The magic of good service | The Economist

    An interesting development within the Society of Control‘s turn from “productivism” to “solutionism.” A new book helps explain why this is happening. In “Outside In”, Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine of Forrester Research, a consultancy, observe that customers are growing more powerful. The internet makes it easier to shop around…

  • Unpacking More of the Long Con…

    What Republicans in red states who are spending their evening defending Romney need to realize is that Mitt Romney was talking about YOU! Republicans will no doubt continue to feed the myth that Obama is the food stamp president who has created an army of minorities who are waiting for…

  • Makers & Takers: More of the Long Con

    A lot of my “everyday” existential philosophizing takes the form of asking people to be aware of the Long Con or the Big Sting… that is where you become your own mark in the long con game of bad faith or pseudo-authenticity. This is “wising up the mark.” While all…

  • TechnoScience & the New Pedagogy

    In the past, the suggestion of getting a college degree without ever cracking a book meant paying a degree mill. It meant the degree was in name only, reflecting neither learning nor effort. Then distance learning meant correspondence courses, perhaps combined with some coordinated telecasts. Technology has already changed all…

  • An Empty Chair, Dirty Harry, and Moses

    I watched what little bit of Clint Eastwood’s RNC improv that I could. I was incredibly embarrassed for the man. As Obama says, a good actor & a great director. But also kind of a weird choice to be introducing Mitt Romney who has such a gap between him and his…

  • Chasing the swing vote – Salon.com

    This year’s Republican Convention wins the prize for most conflicted message. Half the time, the convention was devoted to assuring those elusive swing voters — who needed assurance that Republicans really aren’t all angry old white men who hate women and minorities and would close your plant in a blink…

  • How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

    Well, I will tell you what interests me, what I consider important. I can’t claim to be an authority on anything, but I can honestly say that certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about them all the time. The two basic topics which fascinate me are “What…