Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Gerard links to a most excellent essay that is a diary entry from Ben Stein:
Thursday
I AWOKE STILL feeling shaky about the bees. I slept very late, then slept some more, just laying in bed listening to Mr. Buffett’s trains and thinking about Mr. Obama’s tirades against inequality and about the need for the rich to pay more taxes…
:
It’s great to talk about equality, but hardly any of us really wants to be just “equal.” The blacks want preferences in schools and jobs and they get them. The poor want to be rich. The rich want to stay rich. “Equality” is a code word for “take away something from someone else and give it to me.”Equality at the starting gate? Yes, absolutely. Equal justice under law? For sure. But rejiggering government policy to make lazy, shiftless people better off and take away from hard-working, clever people operating within the law? What’s so great about that except satisfying the envy of the poor and ordinary?
Of course, raise taxes on the rich if the government really needs the money for basics like defense. But take it away just to satisfy envy? Take away incentives to create, to produce? Why would we want to do that?
:
“‘Equality,’ I spoke the words, as if a wedding vow, ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” So sang Bob Dylan long ago. How clever he was. No, I don’t know what it means. I do know that equality is like “infrastructure,” “post-racial,” and “fixing education.” Just sales talk. Just sales talk to fool people into thinking that politicians do much besides advance their own interests. Well, they’re human. That’s what humans do. Usually. There are exceptions.
Imagine you can snap your fingers, and all throughout the universe the voltage in every material thing is instantly equal. That necessarily means nothing runs; the lights go dark, the fans stop turning, and your car doesn’t start. If you can hand-crank it to get it going, like a biplane pilot from a century ago, it won’t run. Nothing works.
Equalize the temperature, PH level or pressure, life forms go extinct. Equalize the wealth, we’re all poor. Equalize the heat and the life-energy, we all die.
Life itself relies on inequality. Equality is death.
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mkfreeberg: Life itself relies on inequality. Equality is death.
Interesting analogy. The cell has a membrane, and animals have an epidermis, so that the interior can remain differentiated from the exterior. Without such differentiation, life can’t exist. On the flip side, if the membrane entails complete isolation, if the separation is too rigid, then the organism dies. Too much or too little order is detrimental to life. Life exists near the edge of chaos.
In terms of human social structure, too much equality means there are no incentives, leading to stagnation. Too little equality means rigidity and brittleness.
- Zachriel | 09/28/2013 @ 07:37This reminded me of Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life, where he writes about the dynamic systems theory of life. Living organisms are not closed systems, and thus do not (while alive) tend toward thermodynamic equilibrium. In order to stay alive (a “metastable state”), they have to continually take in matter/energy from their surroundings. Ceasing to do that leads to death, and the body then reaches a thermodynamic equilibrium with its surroundings. The same ideas can be applied to systems of interconnected individual living organisms. I would like to see how this way of thinking can be applied to various social systems, and how the reward system of reaping the benefits of hard work compares with governmental subsidized existence
- IcelandSpar | 09/29/2013 @ 06:20Too little equality means rigidity and brittleness.
Of all the problems I can imagine with regard to too little equality, the fail-point has to do with constraints being exceeded, not with rigidity/brittleness. A gigavolt applied on a circuit designed for a kllovolt. A centerfire .17 wrecking the firing chamber in a semiautomatic. An early grave because of a lifetime of dietary excess…and high blood pressure.
Rigidity and brittleness are cited often, actually, as problems with the policies implemented by those who seek greater equality. Like for example, suspending the coach if his team wins by 35 points or more.
- mkfreeberg | 09/29/2013 @ 08:42mkfreeberg: Of all the problems I can imagine with regard to too little equality, the fail-point has to do with constraints being exceeded, not with rigidity/brittleness.
A simple example of rigidity and brittleness in social structure is pre-Revolutionary France.
- Zachriel | 09/30/2013 @ 05:34