You might as well crawl back under the covers now.
To cheer you up, I offer the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.
To cheer me up, I cite from the Wiki article on Clarence Darrow
In an effort at comity, blockquoted section deleted.
Speaking of Altgeld, Labor Day 1894 from Brad DeLong. Long DeLong. A section of Slouching Towards Utopia
Wait, Urple? Is this a reversion to an old pseud, or an accidental reversion, or someone new who didn't know we used to have an Urple? Or has Urple's current identity (which, just in case something weird's going on, which it usually is, let's not mention explicitly) suffered a head injury due to acute food poisoning, and he's forgotten the last three or four years?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/05-0
6:By golly, I think I have been topped. That is the nastiest and most pessimistic analysis I have ever read, and I read Kunstler.
I am trying to be optimistic or neutral today, ttaM, dammit.
Goolsbee is another neoliberal. He has a few tweaks some of the other members of Team Obama don't have but at core he is very much more of the same. His selection puts someone even less liberal than Romer in at the CEA...."Hugh" in FDL Pres News Conf
But Goolsbee isn't that much worse than Romer. Okay, maybe he is. Whatever.
6 is nastier than Kunstler because JHK is a) funny, b) metaphorical, and c) deterministic
6 actually dares to impute agency
Just over the top
I found 6 a refreshing read: he seems to think the damage will be limited to third world countries and the US.
*Sigh*.
The Kochs.
This is maybe a weird issue to have with them, but what bothers me most is that they're trained as engineers. Both of them. It would be one thing if I could believe they were true believer kool-aid drinkers and they honestly believed they were helping the country, and the ends justified the means and all that. But...they're engineers, with more than a passing familiarity with complex systems, and in all of those the single most important factor determining outcome is the set of initial conditions (or the value of the underlying, or whatever you call it in the given context). I can't quite work out how you go from that basic knowledge (acknowledging that outcomes of human lives are, at best, imperfectly modeled, but whatever) to their apparent view of social justice.
"I worked really hard, and then my father left me 300 million dollars. Hahaha."
They're just *assholes*.
10:
There was a claim floating around for a while that if a creationist claimed to have scientific credentials, it usually turns out that they are an engineer. This may have even been elevated to the status of a law, like Godwin's law.
A couple of different explanations were floated for this alleged phenomenon. A lot of the time, instances of this phenomena simply activated the typical disdain "real" scientists have for engineers. Some people postulated, though, that engineers are used to looking at things in terms of design, and thus are naturally drawn to the argument from design.
Something similar might go on with market fundamentalism. If you are used to thinking in terms of design, then the random behaviors of the market look like they serve a purpose, perhaps even a good one.
That....actually make a whole lot of sense. Not totally drawn to the theory of complex interactions, so much as "what can we do about it."
Ok.
Still, though: assholes.
I hope I'm not the only one who watched the video in 1 and thought: "LET'S GO LIVONIA!!!!"
I know I've said I didn't like humor involving embarrassment, but apparently my capacity for empathy in this case is much smaller than I'd suspected.
In related links,I also found the "perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere" line hilarious.
"LET'S GO LIVONIA!!!!"
HA! I didn't, but I should have.
Something similar might go on with market fundamentalism. If you are used to thinking in terms of design, then the random behaviors of the market look like they serve a purpose, perhaps even a good one.
Quite Whig-ish, don't you think?
10: In my experience, engineers are dumb as rocks, and yet are convinced they are brilliant because they once solved a differential equation ten years ago.
completely rehabilitated
I walked past a large poster today advertising a speech by F.W. de Klerk. I know he won the Nobel prize, but something in me flinched to see him out making money on the lecture circuit.
Hm, the version i heard also included muslim jihadiis, and didn't have to do with design so much as just general craziness. something to do with belief that just following rules gives you a right answer (which might be more true of non-senior engineer)
It's called engineer's disease: every nutter or conspiracy loon on Usenet turned out to be some sort of engineer. Opinions differ on which flavour of engineer are the worst, but my bet is on computer engineers...
My theory is that these are usually people who are quite capable in their own field smart enough to see through the "lies to children" about evolution or whatever, but not smart enough to realise they don't know enough to get to the real truth. This makes them vulnerable to plausible looking bullshit. Usually got quite an ego as well, which doesn't help.
Scientists are not invulnerable to this either, but have slightly less of a bedrock convinction that what _they_ know _must_ be the truth.
Lawyers just don't care that much.
Martin!!!!! We dont like those kind of attacks here at Unfogged!
Can we have some more Koch jokes here.
I keep seeing the post title as 'things that hurt read.' Bleed over from another thread, I guess.
From this week's NYT Magazine: Engineering Terror.
WaPo today has an article in which right wingers bitch about George Soros spending money to influence judicial elections. Very funny indeed if you are aware of the Kochtopus.
uh, wasn't it already a post? the one right here?