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...
Here is wisdom, found in the usual place. I daresay, there never has been a human more deserving of seeing a building named after him while he’s still breathing, than Thomas Sowell. George Washington, and Aristotle, maybe. Sowell would be third on my list.
Seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that words are wise men’s counters, but they are the money of fools.
That is as painfully true today as it was four centuries ago. Using words as vehicles to try to convey your meaning is very different from taking words so literally that the words use you and confuse you.
Take the simple phrase “rent control.” If you take these words literally– as if they were money in the bank– you get a complete distortion of reality.
New York is the city with the oldest and strongest rent control laws in the nation. San Francisco is second. But if you look at cities with the highest average rents, New York is first and San Francisco is second. Obviously, “rent control” laws do not control rent.
:
Warm, fuzzy words and phrases have an enormous advantage in politics. None has had such a long run of political success as “social justice.”The idea cannot be refuted because it has no specific meaning. Fighting it would be like trying to punch the fog. No wonder “social justice” has been such a political success for more than a century– and counting.
While the term has no defined meaning, it has emotionally powerful connotations. There is a strong sense that it is simply not right– that it is unjust– that some people are so much better off than others.
Justification, even as the term is used in printing and carpentry, means aligning one thing with another. But what is the standard to which we think incomes or other benefits should be aligned?
Is the person who has spent years in school goofing off, acting up or fighting– squandering the tens of thousands of dollars that the taxpayers have spent on his education– supposed to end up with his income aligned with that of the person who spent those same years studying to acquire knowledge and skills that would later be valuable to himself and to society at large?
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None of these things is equal or can be made equal. If this is an injustice, it is not a “social” injustice because it is beyond the power of society.You can talk or act as if society is both omniscient and omnipotent. But, to do so would be to let words become what Thomas Hobbes called them, “the money of fools.”
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…more deserving of seeing a building named after him while he’s still breathing, than Thomas Sowell. George Washington, and Aristotle, maybe.
Washington and Aristotle live? Who knew? 😉
- bpenni | 09/14/2010 @ 11:19Dude,
“…never has been a human more deserving…”
What’s with this picking-on-fragments thing? You been hanging around a bunch of Palin-hatin’ liberals?
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2010 @ 11:33“Fighting it would be like trying to punch the fog.”
That’s gold, there.
- philmon | 09/14/2010 @ 13:28What’s with this picking-on-fragments thing? You been hanging around a bunch of Palin-hatin’ liberals?
1. It’s my calling; I AM your resident pedant. Parse we must.
- bpenni | 09/15/2010 @ 11:182. Nope… Palin-dismissing conservatives. 😉
Speaking of which, she did okay in Delaware. All the “smart” people are saying that’s going to turn out to be a regrettable mistake…par for the course. “We were wrong this time but we’ll be really really right next time” or something.
That Palin. What a pathetic loser she is…as long as you re-define “lose” to “win” and vice-versa.
Regarding the sentence fragment, I’m afraid Galileo is no longer with us. He, too, would be on my short list of people who deserved to see a building named after them within their lifetimes. Milton Friedman might be added on, too.
- mkfreeberg | 09/15/2010 @ 13:23