Mindblown: culture, urbanism, leadership, technology.
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Mission(s)
“We will lead the unified national effort to secure America. We will prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation. We will ensure safe and secure borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and promote the free-flow of commerce.” “To provide the military forces needed to deter…
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17 Theses of the bit
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The Monopoly on Death.
And will no one comment on the fact that an old man of your age, probably with only a short time to live, should dare to cling so greedily to life, at the price of violating the most stringent laws? Plato, Critias, 53d Plato’s dialogue between Critas and Socrates on the eve of his death,…
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Torture
Torture is a big topic these days in the American political conversation. Senator John McCain has brought forward a proposal to unambiguously disavow all methods of interrogation deemed to be “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” by any agent of the United States, anywhere in the world. The White House has responded by shouting,…
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What are you?
There is a particular practice at the event of meeting another person that, once I became aware of it, and more importantly, found I had not a pleasing or simple reply, seems to me to be quite vulgar and petty. I’m talking of course of the question, “What do you do?” I suppose that this…
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Wouldn’t it be nice if…
the government let people know what data it is holding about them? “The government, whether a State or Tribe or the Federal government, shall disclose the existence of all data bases and information stores and the contained fields, relationships, schema, and data dictionaries whenever that database or information store contains records of Citizens of the…
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ought, may, & can
When speaking of the difference between the meta-artifices of State, Market, and Church, it is proper to say something like the following: in the State the individual is concerned with what one ought; in the Church, with what one may; and in the Market, with what one can. One ought, one may, one can. The…
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Categories of Educated Americans
It appears that a deep class division between Americans is emerging between those who are college educated and those who are not. Within those who have a college education there isn’t a lot of unanimity however, and it caused me to come up with a list of categories:
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oh what a wicked web we weave
So the big news of the day is that a Federal Judge of the 9th Circuit – the one in San Francisco – struck down the addition by Congress in the 1950s of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. This will send fundamentalists into a tizzy and, since it will have to,…
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on hubris
Hubris is a word that has gotten a lot of use in the last two weeks and whenever that happens, its worth taking a look at the meanings of the word. Hubris is fun because it is a purely Greek word that hasn’t been morphologically changed since the days of Sophocles (4th Century B. C.).…