Einstein, who wrote this piece in 1949, was a humanist (anybody remember humanists?) as well as a brilliant physicist:
Category: Worshipping Mammon
Your town flooded? Come to Ocean City!
Interesting front-page advertorial on behalf of the Ocean City, NJ, tourism industry in Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. The reporter maximizes the story’s tackiness by quoting a public relations hack who urges Hurricane Irene victims to to enjoy an expensive weekend of sun and fun in Ocean City…
The repo man is bigger, badder than Irene
Was coverage of the hurricane too intense? A better question is why don’t politicians and the media put the same amount of energy into covering the economic disaster still unfolding right under their noses?
No relief in sight from Eric Cantor disaster
The dapper super-nerd with the smug grin is leading the latest Republican attempt to shrink government to the size of an antebellum plantation…
Pesky lawyer still on banksters’ case
When it comes to describing the complacency of the Wall Street banksters, their disregard for the millions of people they defrauded and the ease with which they continue to push the right buttons in Washington in order to avoid restitution and prosecution… well, nobody does it better than Matt Taibbi.
Dems, too, are helping undo ‘grand bargain’
This on-target piece in Washington Post is about the contemporary conservative agenda, but it’s not only about so-called conservatives. Which politicians do you trust these days?
Near-As-No-Matter Feudalism
One of the US’ founding laws is a prohibition on creating a titled aristocracy. A couple centuries on, this seems quaint. But considering that our nation is violating the crap out of it in spirit, which I will illustrate below, it’s worth revisiting.
Setting aside a long list of unjust aristocratic perks and abuses, the worst thing about feudal systems was their everyday suckitude. Most people lived in hopeless misery, were held to harsh standards by authorities and had no protection from injury by their superiors in wealth or power. Following the invention of epidemiological studies, it was discovered that chronic poverty and mistreatment causes illness and shortened lifespans, to no one’s very great surprise.
While we can’t ask them, I’m pretty sure that most of the misery in feudal societies wasn’t caused by philosophical disagreements with Divine Right of Kings theory.
Continue reading “Near-As-No-Matter Feudalism”
Philly schools chief gets $905K to drop out
Here’s how not to begin an editorial about the departure of an arrogant and divisive “public servant” who hung on until the school district and anonymous donors gave her $905,000 to go away…
Support our superpatriotic couch potatoes
Excellent NYT piece about an annoying symptom of America’s decline — the tendency of far too many too people to “infantilize” themselves with mindless hero worship and a desperate belief in American exceptionalism.
You can’t tell the cops (SEC) from the robbers
Information in e-mails often ends up in databases that can be used against us by government agents. However, as Matt Taibbi points out, agents can just as easily destroy a database that might contain evidence of crimes in high places.