Meh.

While certain areas of Canada definitely have their own sound (and we have lots of words that differ from their British counterparts) the whole argument about pronunciation - that the British invented it, so we should speak that way - is a fallacy.

Received Pronunciation (BBC/British English) was invented after North America was colonized. The American/Canadian dialect is probably closer to 17th/18th century English than current British dialects. See this or this for more info.

WikiLeaks' Bottom-Line Revelation

by

Austin Bay

Julian Assange, the man behind the WikiLeaks dump of secret US State Department cables, has been frank about his reasons for releasing thousands of classified -and stolen -- documents.

Assange says he wants to seriously damage the United States. If this damage forwards America's ultimate destruction, so be it. The son of leftist America-haters, Assange was born and weaned during the Cold War. Then the wrong side won. What the superpower Soviet Union failed to do with its armies, he, a super-empowered individual, will accomplish via the information anarchy of the Internet.

If Assange's history-shaping goal seems grandiose and detached from reality, indeed it is. However, once you understand the man's religion, his megalomania and solipsism become a bit more comprehensible if even more reprehensible.

Like other anti-American cranks on the planet, Assange holds firm in his warped faith that the U.S. is the leading source of global evil. The roots of this religion run deep, beginning with 18th century European aristocrats who despised the American Revolution. The anti-Americanism of Nazis, communists, tribalists, anarchists and now militant Islamists all rehash the same tropes, with their semi-schizoid baseline being the U.S. is simultaneously a vast authoritarian conspiracy and a heterogeneous menagerie of infidel-cowboy-capitalist idiots who dogmatically resist enlightened social policies.

Assange argues his revelations will force this conglomerate American monster to become more secretive and authoritarian. Limiting access to information, in order to stop future leaks, will reduce the monster's secretive and authoritarian effectiveness. The monster's "security state" will dumb down, and --here's the moment of religious rapture in Assange's prophecy -- this will increase global justice.

Assange also links this shackling of America to creating peace. Don't snicker too long. There are a lot of tenured gray-haired profs with ponytails who teach this dreck at notable universities and get paid for it.

Assange understands media grandstanding, but he doesn't understand people and certainly doesn't understand how American diplomats contribute to maintaining peace.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands people and diplomacy, and his assessment of Assange's info dump is as clear as it is historically and psychologically informed. At the Pentagon last week, Gates said: "The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments -- deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation."

Gates added that the cables were "embarrassing" and "awkward," but the ultimate effects on policy would be "modest."

Pray that Gates is right about modest impact, but right now and for at least the next six months, the world confronts the possibility of a nuclear war in East Asia ignited by North Korean aggression. This is a time period when the world absolutely needs close -- and trustworthy -- cooperation between the U.S. and China. A big war in Korea could kill millions but will guarantee a global economic depression. Leaked cables discuss corruption in China's Communist Party and names hypocritical party elites.

Even if the information is accurate, this is a case where revealed candor damages personal relationships among key U.S. diplomatic personnel and Chinese leaders. China is a face culture, and the leaders have lost face. A mature appreciation of the common danger should override personal anger, but another leak revealed that China sees North Korea as a "spoiled child" and that it believes Korea will ultimately be reunited with South Korea absorbing the North. This revelation weakens China's political leverage with North Korea at a moment when any leverage is precious.

Assange, of course, did not consider how he increased the threat to the lives of millions of Korean, Japanese and Chinese when he dumped his filched documents. His faith-based narrative of American evil excludes the possibility that American diplomats are collaborating with China to avoid war and eventually put an end to North Korea's armed brinksmanship without a nuclear explosion.

Here's WikiLeaks' bottom-line revelation: Assange and ideologues like him promote an ignorant and destructive solipsism that has nothing to do with peace and justice but a lot to do with sociopathic narcissism.

>> ^VoodooV:

You may have a right to commerce..but you do NOT have a right to fly and/or drive.
two completely different things my friend.
Don't strawman. You can imagine all you want about what would happen if they said that about blacks...but they didn't.
This isn't Burger King...you don't have a right to "have it your way"


This isn't just having it "our" way. It is the standard form of transportation in the United States...restricting it in such a way as to make it extremely trying isn't right. It would be roughly the same as confiscating your horse in the 18th century because you could use it to steal things and get away quicker. So you can say black and white that Flying does not equal commerce. However it can be argued quite easily that it absolutely is and that the pushback to the TSA is entirely valid.

In anything other than a Tyranny, those in power have the responsibility to show why they have that power. The burden in a free society is completely on the people with power and we're allowed to challenge it. If they don't have a suitable reason than that center of power must be dismantled. In this case if the TSA fails to provide good reasoning (which is currently happening) than they must be disbanded.

Kinda moot at the end of the day. N.Korea, like China and Russia are stuck in early 18th century military doctrine. Throw a guy 2 weeks of training, and dump him in the field with a rifle and shovel. I suppose if all you want is fodder, it works well.

>> ^blankfist:

I doubt anyone can or should call Democrats left.

...

Also, during the Bush Presidency, did we forget all the anti-war protesters storming public meetings and carrying signs and yelling? It's the same really. Both sides feel there side isn't doing enough to "fight back".


This is the only part of your comment I agree with. Democrats are only "left" by way of comparison, not because they're actually left of center in any measurable way. Democrats today are to the right of Nixon on many, many issues.

>> ^blankfist:
[T]he whole left vs right paradigm is arbitrary and makes no sense currently. The terms 'right' and 'left' were created based on where political factions were seated in the Assembly during the French Revolution of the late 18th Century. On the left sat the National Party in favor of the Revolution and on the Right sat the Royalist Democrats in favor of a Constitutional.

You left out a word at the end of that sentence. Monarchy. Constitutional Monarchy.

Which is to say, left vs. right was borne out of a division on whose interests should take primacy, those of the nobility and the church, or the commoners?

That's how the parties still divide up today, you just have a lot more propaganda out there trying to muddy the issue.

>> ^blankfist:
I say the right vs. left scale should be total government on the left and no government on the right.

The old left-right struggle was basically a question of whether the landed nobility should get to have total authority (since they owned all the land), or whether authority should flow from rule of law set by an egalitarian democratic process.

The left pretty much won that fight, and ever since the right wants to make the government the enemy, because it gives commoners some sort of power over them.

That's why the royalists want you to believe that they're in a noble struggle against "government" in favor of "meritocracy", because now they need popular support for their cynically self-serving power grab.

It's the modern-day noble lie. The rich deserve all the power because they say they earned it with their own individual industriousness, never mind all the evidence to the contrary. And don't you dare ask questions about whether it's right that any one man should have so much more power than another, it's a sin to question those of noble birth just engaging in class warfare.

The old definition of left & right is still apt, it's just that the right has to pretend it's about something else now.

>> ^blankfist:
I also think the Dems have showed their teeth just as fervently as the Republicans. I mean, yeah, the tea party takes the cake, but Bill O'Reilly is tame these days next to Maddow and Olbermann.

You obviously don't watch any of those shows.

I doubt anyone can or should call Democrats left. I think of them as more centrists. But then again the whole left vs right paradigm is arbitrary and makes no sense currently. The terms 'right' and 'left' were created based on where political factions were seated in the Assembly during the French Revolution of the late 18th Century. On the left sat the National Party in favor of the Revolution and on the Right sat the Royalist Democrats in favor of a Constitutional.

Do either of those parties make sense for us today? No. Heck, the Dems started on the right. It's all madness. I say the right vs. left scale should be total government on the left and no government on the right. Republicans and Democrats would be center of that scale. Anarchists and Libertarians more to the right. Communists and Socialists more to the left.

I also think the Dems have showed their teeth just as fervently as the Republicans. I mean, yeah, the tea party takes the cake, but Bill O'Reilly is tame these days next to Maddow and Olbermann. Also, during the Bush Presidency, did we forget all the anti-war protesters storming public meetings and carrying signs and yelling? It's the same really. Both sides feel there side isn't doing enough to "fight back".

^You should also read J.S.Mill's On Liberty. He was the first of the modern thinkers to get this idea out there. It's an extremely progressive book for its time (18th century).

>> ^blankfist:
You still didn't give me a better system.

I've got a better system than you -- a regulated market. FDA to keep an eye on food and drugs, OSHA to keep an eye on labor conditions, EPA to monitor environmental impacts, an SEC and FTC to keep an eye on finance and market competition, etc.

Better still, I have a welfare state to make sure that economic failure isn't a death sentence, with unemployment insurance, food stamps, universal health care, social security, disability, etc.

Zillions of times better than anything you've ever talked about wanting.

A completely new system that's totally different from capitalism? I'm not sure what that would look like. I do think we need a sort of redesign of economics around actual human behavior, and not 18th century presumptions about human behavior. I don't think individual monetary gain is the only or even the best motivator of people, and I'm definitely skeptical that the bulk of the resources of the human race should be at the command of people who've accumulated it through sheer ambitious drive to acquire material resources for themselves.

I'm not going to be the revolutionary philosopher-economist who invents what comes next, but I think we're deluding ourselves if we think that everything we ever needed to know about how to form a human society was worked out by the classical economists.

No. This video is misinformed at best and deceitful at worst. Now the Young Turks are trying to interpret history how they want to. History should not be read in light of current political feelings, by either side. It needs to be read as it happened.

When tea became popular in the colonies in the early 18th century, British Parliament passed a law in 1721 saying that the colonies had to import their tea only from Great Britain. The East India company never sold to the colonies; it sold wholesale auction in Britain which was then later imported by various merchant middlemen.

Since the British were taxing the East India company about 25% for their tea, plus additional taxes on tea for consumption, and the Dutch weren't taxing their companies any, a huge pastime in both England and the colonies was buying smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices. The East India company was losing big money.

In 1767 Parliament passed the Indemnity Act to help the East India company compete with smugglers. This lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain and gave the company a refund of the 25% duty of tea that was re-exported to the colonies. Of course, this meant a loss of revenue for Parliament, so they also passed the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, which levied new taxes, including one on tea, on the colonies.

Don't forget that the British Empire was in massive debt following the Seven Year's War (1756-1763). You have the 1765 Stamp Act, which was a tax just on the colonies requiring most things on printed paper to use taxed or "stamped" paper purchased at a premium from Britian. You also have the Sugar Act of 1764, which was, again, a tax imposed only on the colonies. Then the Revenue Act of 1766. Add all of this on top of the fact that the colonies were in a big economic turmoil following the war, and that each of these added fuel to the fire of the "no taxation without representation" debate and you get a bunch of pissed off colonists, probably for a whole host of reasons.

The colonies were viewed as nothing more than a source of revenue for the 'grand' ideas of the British Empire.

Im sorry, but WHAT on earth is this about the standing waves being attached to the sides of the kiln?

Otherwise a very nice path from 18th century to the origins of Quantum Physics. I had to chuckle to myself, when I realised I never understood that "Quantum" was refereeing to the discrete quantities of energy that particles occupied - it had always just been a name .

Actually, what he's wearing is pretty par for the go when you go to a Handel opera. While it is a concert and not a full performance, the get-up isn't un-stereotypical of 18th century performance costume...

Edit: that said, I do concede that his shirt is rather puffy.

^ "In feudal Europe, corporations were aggregations of business interests in compact, usually with an explicit license from city, church, or national leaders. These functioned as effective monopolies for a particular good or labor.

The term "corporation" was used as late as the 18th century in England to refer to such ventures as the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company: commercial organizations that operated under royal patent to have exclusive rights to a particular area of trade. In the medieval town, however, corporations were a conglomeration of interests that existed either as a development from, or in competition with, guilds. The most notable corporations were in trade and banking.

The effects of a corporation were similar to a monopoly. On the one hand, the ability to have sole access to markets meant that the business was encouraged (e.g., the ability to be an exclusive trader provided an incentive to the East India Company to accept financial risks in exploration) and the negative effects of competition were avoided (to take the same example, exclusive patents cut down on merchants sponsoring piracy). Innovation was stifled, however, and prices were unregulated. (In the case of patent corporations, the town or monarch was ostensibly able to regulate prices by revoking the patent, but this rarely occurred.)"

wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_(feudal_Europe) Locate from search box under 'corporation'. Scroll to 'feudal europe'.

>> ^Tofumar:
I love this performance. Oh, and if you go to youtube and look at the comments on this video, you'll get a nice example of what was parodied here on the other vid a few days ago: lots of people who probably can't even play cello critiquing this guy's interpretation.

lol you don't have to play a particular instrument to criticize a performance played on it, as long as you're not criticizing his technique but his interpretation. I do not like this guy's interpretation, it feels too fiddly, too fast, he emphasizes notes in weird places and he speeds up/slows down too fast and too much at once. But on the other hand, I love Phoebe Carrai's interpretation. Whatever if this Maisky is celebrated and won prizes, I don't care. Carrai's interpretation is better to my ear that his (she played for 10 years with a german historical ensemble devoted to 17th and 18th century music and it shows).

^aaronfr

I admire anyone who has the ability to revise their viewpoint after being presented with new information.

The biggest problem is that our government is philosophically broken. At the start of the 20th century there was a ideological shift which began to permeate society--one which sought to replace "equality of opportunity" with "equality of outcome". This philosophy is still with us today--and is the very reason both parties have such widespread support as compared with third party alternatives.

In order to get this country back on track we need a similar ideological shift--one which reverts back to an emphasis on personal liberties and economic freedom--the very philosophy which was dominant from the 18th century to the dawn of the 20th century. It was this philosophy which gave us the constitution, the declaration of independence, the emancipation of the slaves, and what transformed America into a dominating power on the world stage.

It is our contemporary philosophy which has led us into warfare, moral decay, social inequality, increased governmental power, restrictions on personal freedom, economic disaster, and the bankruptcy of a once wealthy nation.

We don't have to replace our politicians, force policy, or start a violent revolution--all we need is start a grassroots movement to replace the defective philosophy thats been pulled over our eyes for the past 80-100 years. One which has become so ingrained in our lives, it's as if we forgot what America really stands for.

Alexander Dumas - the ability to turn French fries into pommes frites (and vice versa)

Random 18th century intellectual - the ability to turn grammar into sunshine

Jorge Luis Borges - the power summarize the (w)hole of existence through a short work of fiction which you kinda like but aren't crazy about

Woodrow Wilson - the ability to turn an English speaking audience into a German speaking audience (and vice versa)

Oh, and FDR, no powers, just want to punch the bastard in the face