Aerial photgraph of a ~70-meter star of David carved by Israeli tanks into Gaza farmland.

Content. Draws heavily on the thought of Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr. America faces impediments on (i) cultural (profligacy leads to deficits and resource dependence); (ii) political; and (iii) military fronts. Much-needed focus is brought to bear on the notion that military commitment can bring about economic growth, à la Nitze’s  (1950) NSC-68. The major novel hypothesis is that the quality of senior U.S. military leadership has sharply declined since WWII, and that this is responsible for failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jimmy Carter’s ‘Crisis of Confidence’ Speech, July 15, 1979

See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvGKJF2XQU

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“I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. » Continue reading “President Jimmy’s Speech”

Sins of our fathers. It has been many moons since I felt so ashamed of the white blood in my veins. I will write more of this soon – now, my heart is too sad. Those that come here and have not read this book, do so if you would call yourself my friend.

Žižek, S. (Autumn 2007), ‘Tolerance as an Ideological Category’:

The Culturalization of Politics
Why are today so many problems perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, not emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? » Continue reading “On the Liberalist’s Tolerance”

Binyavanga Wainaina (winter 2005), Granta:

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates… Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls…

Grice, H.P. (1975), ‘Logic and Conversation’

Formalists vs. Informalists:

• Divergences in meaning exist between formal devices and natural languages.
• Philosophers in the formalist camp view elements of meaning in natural languages as imperfections.
• Informalists hold that the insistence on a perfect language is philosophically unjustified.

“Women’s Desire Is Driven By Narcissism“

“Zipf’s Law describes the power law patterning of the ordering of word frequencies. The frequency of a particular word in natural languages is found to be proportional with its rank: the most commonly used word is twice as frequent as the second most common word, three times as frequent as the third most common word, etc. Cancho and Solé were able to model the emergence of Zipf’s power law distribution in a network describing the effort required in mutual understanding between a hearer and a speaker. Language which relies upon maximum rigidity of word and meaning associations (such as computational machine language) requires too much work for the speaker, whereas language which allows maximum flexibility of associations (such as dream language) requires too much work for the hearer. Least effort is achieved at a point of creative ambiguity, a sudden transition point in which words are distributed in Zipf’s power law relation.”

- From a thesis on Hermeutic Gaia by Adam Croft