Category: Whatever
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Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State
The revelations of whistle-blowers such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden about government lawlessness and corporate spying provide a new meaning if not a revitalized urgency and relevance to George Orwell’s dystopian fable 1984. Orwell offered his readers an image of the modern state that had become dystopian –…
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Cambodia: Beauty of Angkor Wat
Originally posted on Global Sojourns: Photography & Philosophy: Angkor Wat is famous for a very good reason: it is stunning in its beauty as well as its mystery. The largest religious temple (Hindu) ever built, almost a millennium ago, and hidden from all until just recently. While photo opportunities lie…
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A Vortex of Inspiration in the Depths of Winter
Originally posted on Global Sojourns: Photography & Philosophy: There are those who wake up each morning bathed in a glorious sunrise…steam rising off the hot springs outside their door as they gaze across the sky, admiring a rising sun and the beauty of nature. A beauty whose only rival is…
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Food Friends Family Faith–A Lost Dream
Wonderful little article that reminds us that the American Dream once centered on working less and having the leisure to enjoy the things that actually matter: among them, food, friends, family, and faith. Now that lost dream shows the foresight that could make for a better world. Why did we…
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Playfulness: the Point of Existence
“A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil “To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other…
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Afternoon Memo 20140202
My MEMO Status update on FB: Some caricature metaphysics as the most meaningless of abstractions: e.g. pondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such examples work precisely to say that the “beyond” trumps the now/here for a metaphysician. But really, the true offense arises from…
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Night Vigil 20140201
Night Vigil has been occupied with the issue of anthropocentrism. Of course anthropo– means human and –centric means center. So the term means to place humankind at the center of everything. Knowing how -centric got the usage, however, is very enlightening. Arising through French from a Latin usage, the centrum…
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It Is Expensive to Be Poor – Barbara Ehrenreich – The Atlantic
The Great Recession should have put the victim-blaming theory of poverty to rest. In the space of only a few months, millions of people entered the ranks of the officially poor—not only laid-off blue-collar workers, but also downsized tech workers, managers, lawyers, and other once-comfortable professionals. No one could accuse…
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Capitalism vs. Democracy – NYTimes.com
Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism.Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, does not stop…
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body atlas
Originally posted on coromandal: Happiness and depression are felt all over the body, while anger and pride only in the chest and head. These are images from research on emotion response by a group of scientists from Finland. The researchers used stimuli – words, images, stories – to provoke emotion and…
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Athletics and the Political Ambitions of Young Adults » Sociological Images
The authors suggest that the mediating factor is “an opportunity to develop… a competitive spirit.” Sports, they argue, may build or reinforce the tendency to find pleasure in competition, which may make politics more appealing. via Athletics and the Political Ambitions of Young Adults » Sociological Images.
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planes, trains and automobiles
Originally posted on betacity: From the Regional Plan Association, more evidence all is not what it seems: our governments subsidize all forms of transportation, including cars – (there go our bragging rights): A common theme of U.S. political dialogue is that while highways are sustained by tolls and gas taxes,…
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hither and yon
Originally posted on betacity: Cars are inviolably and inextricably linked to freedom; and, with no less conviction, to solvency. Of course they are: you can hop in anytime and go anywhere you want when you have a car. You can take the top down to let the sun on your…
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Sustaining life is not the good life
Kudos to Andrew Taggart on this new blog entry… “I do not think this move toward the affirmation of ordinary life is warranted, and the reason is that it seems to me a form of ‘passive nihilism’: it can answer the question, ‘How to go on living?,’ yet it cannot…
CALL ME MAGGIE 