This is driving me nuts. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time. I could have sworn I'd never picked up this book before but I'm finding so much of it familiar.
Spoilers below.
Husband & ex-Wife still a team in spite of his being an asshole? Check.
An intelligent squid named Sheena 5? Check.
Said squid getting pregnant when she wasn't supposed to? Check.
Communication with downstream generations via neutrinos (or some shit)? Check.
Smart kids all over the world being treated like shit? Check.
I must have read this before but I don't remember seeing all this in words. I thought it might have been an audible book I'd downloaded but My Library on Audible.com doesn't show this novel.
I'm stymied but still intrigued because there is plenty of stuff to the story that I'm not familiar with.
I'm about three-quarters through Zero History, and I like it so far.
That's good, I've been wondering if the $28 was worth it. So far it's basically just been descriptions of interior decoration and fashion.
I know Gibson's a clothing geek, but dude, it's a novel, there's supposed to be a story. The first 18 pages shouldn't be devoted to describing an arrival to a hotel, its furnishings, and the personal hygiene of the protagonist.
This is driving me nuts. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time. I could have sworn I'd never picked up this book before but I'm finding so much of it familiar.
Spoilers below.
Husband & ex-Wife still a team in spite of his being an asshole? Check.
An intelligent squid named Sheena 5? Check.
Said squid getting pregnant when she wasn't supposed to? Check.
Communication with downstream generations via neutrinos (or some shit)? Check.
Smart kids all over the world being treated like shit? Check.
I must have read this before but I don't remember seeing all this in words. I thought it might have been an audible book I'd downloaded but My Library on Audible.com doesn't show this novel.
I'm stymied but still intrigued because there is plenty of stuff to the story that I'm not familiar with.
Malenfant appears in all his Manifold books but it isn't the same Malenfant. As though he made a different choice in his past. Hmm, I'm explaining this badly. It's still Malenfant, just his environment is different.
Is Time the one with the Moon colony filled with children?
__________________
Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.
Why Race Matters by Michael Levin. Great book so far. Levin is a scary-smart philosophy professor who is especially focused in philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science. In the book, he fully applies this expertise toward debunking the disingenuous and dogmatic 'anti-racist' worldview.
Michael Levin is of course famous for his 1982 essay, The Case For Torture, in which he argues that torture is not only necessary in the US but also morally right.
He's also known for labeling the American Renaissance conferences (the same group that he's addressing in the videos you linked) as rife with anti-semitism:
From SPLC, 2006: Schism Threatens White Nationalist Group
Quote:
The debate that began early this year at the Washington, D.C.-area conference of the racist American Renaissance magazine -- between those who see blacks as the main problem and those who think Jews are even worse -- has continued for months on the Internet.
...>snip<...
HERNDON, Va. -- For a gathering of people devoted to denouncing the inferiority of blacks and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims, the biannual conferences thrown by the New Century Foundation, publisher of the racist newsletter American Renaissance, are decidedly genteel affairs. Men dress in suits and ties, women in formal business attire, and there are no uniformed skinheads or Klansmen to be seen. Large plasma television screens, Starbucks coffee spreads and fancy linens adorn the hotel meeting hall. Epithets have no place here.
Or at least they didn't. At the latest edition of the conferences that began in 1994, held this February at the Hyatt Dulles hotel, a nasty spat broke out that upset the gathering's decorum -- and may even shape the future of the radical right.
It began when David Duke, the former Klan leader and author of Jewish Supremacism, strode to a microphone after French author Guillaume Faye wrapped up a talk vilifying Muslims entitled "The Threat to the West." Duke thanked Faye for remarks that "touched my genes." But then he went one further.
"There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and spirit," Duke said, according to an undisputed account in The Forward newspaper.
"Tell us, tell us," someone in the back yelled.
"I'm not going to say it," Duke replied. Laughter began to fill the room, until a short, angry man leaped from his seat, walked up to Duke and began to curse.
"You fucking Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting!" he said.
And with that, Michael Hart, a Jewish astrophysicist and long-time attendee at American Renaissance conferences, headed for the door. As many as 50 people at the conference began to jeer and point at the rapidly disappearing Hart.
This extraordinary incident marked the beginning of an open rift between those on the radical right who see blacks, Hispanics and Muslims as the primary enemy, and those who say "the Jews" are ultimately behind every evil -- a split that has usually stayed just below the surface but now threatens a leading institution of American extremism. While in the past he has managed to bridge this divide mainly by ignoring it, American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor now must finally come to terms with the split. His dilemma boils down to this: Throw out the anti-Semites and try to build a larger movement with electoral possibilities like those increasingly seen in Britain and Germany; or openly join hands with the very energetic neo-Nazis even though that means the loss of any remaining shred of respectability.
...>snip<... Over the years, more and more participants at Taylor's conferences were Duke allies -- most notably, Don Black and supporters of Black's Stormfront website, including Stormfront moderator Jamie Kelso.
...>snip<...
The list goes on. In separate interviews with the Intelligence Report, numerous "academic racists" complained of the neo-Nazi element at the conference.
• Michael Levin, a Jewish philosophy professor at the City University of New York who has spoken four times at American Renaissance conferences, said that there was "anti-Semitism among members of AR" and that this was part of the reason he did not attend the 2006 edition. (However, Levin still plugs his black-bashing book, Why Race Matters, in ads in American Renaissance.)
And Levin's sourcing for IQ stats for black people is of course from racist, junk-science, eugenicist Pioneer Fund-er Robert Lynn.
I'm about three-quarters through Zero History, and I like it so far.
That's good, I've been wondering if the $28 was worth it. So far it's basically just been descriptions of interior decoration and fashion.
I know Gibson's a clothing geek, but dude, it's a novel, there's supposed to be a story. The first 18 pages shouldn't be devoted to describing an arrival to a hotel, its furnishings, and the personal hygiene of the protagonist.
It is a little disorienting and slow enough at the start that I did start to wonder if there was a direction it was going. But it gets stronger and more focused about 40 pages in, and builds nicely off the intro. And fashion as well as branding and markets is a bit of a refreshing direction for his books.
This is driving me nuts. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time. I could have sworn I'd never picked up this book before but I'm finding so much of it familiar.
Oh, good grief. I feel so stupid.
It turns out that I bought this book on my Kindle almost two years ago. No wonder I recognized it!
Oh well, now I can stop rushing through it in order to get it back to the library on time.
I'm reading The Out of Sync Child, and I only mention that because it's just like every other parenting book I ever read. Do they think we have nothing better to do all day than read overly long books filled with irrelevant case studies?
Really, If I have to read another case study about a kid named Tommy and his special needs/learning abilities/disease it'll be too soon. Fuck Tommy! I'm trying to learn something to help my kid and be a better parent, not trying to avoid my child by reading something the size of the Oxford English Dictionary (abridged) that could be adequately explained by a pamphlet!
Right now I'm still reading The Death of Virgil and The Banquet Years in paper form, and I downloaded The String of Pearls, and Jane Eyre from LibriVox, plus commercial audiobooks of Carry On, Jeeves and Desolation Island from Overdrive.com.
I've already finished the Librivox audiobook The Iron Heel, which was fantastic. It ends abruptly in a way that I won't spoil, but I think it was smart of London to do it that way. It brings up a lot of issues about how thoroughly we can know the past, or think we know it.
I've recently finished Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Girl Who Played With Fire on audio. I'm taking a break to read Confessions of a Window Dresser before I read the third. I took my mom to see the movies and she wanted me to read the books as well.
My take on their popularity is that a crusading journalist who targets corporate crime, especially by banks and stock speculators, is the perfect fantasy hero for our time. One of my coworkers said she didn't feel that way, but she's a conservative so I figured that was why.
This is the first time I've listened to books on my MP3 player rather than read them and I'm quite enjoying it. One unfortunate side effect is that I get words, particularly character names, echoing in my head in the reader's voice for days after like getting a song stuck in your head. It didn't last too long, though, so I can live with it.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Well, I read Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and am reading Sense and Sensibility. None of them are the books I am thinking of. I know it's not Emma (watch it be Emma and the people not be sisters), so that leaves Mansfield Park, which I will have to check out of the library.
Annoying.
It is going to take me forever to figure this out.
So IOW, he might have said some mean stuff about someone or another to some mean people or something sometime or so you say so that means he can't be right about race. I might as well say since you've made fun of my having brain cancer, I can't ever trust you about the price of tea in China. Speaking of which, Chinese scientists find results similar to those tabled and excerpted and analyzed by Levin.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
Michael Levin is of course famous for his 1982 essay, The Case For Torture, in which he argues that torture is not only necessary in the US but also morally right.
By that logic, we should dismiss anything Alan Dershowitz says - he's morally argued in favor of torture, too. Anyway, I disagree with both Levin and Dershowitz with regard to torture. That said, many of you have gone out of your way to torment me, so I'm not sure what your point is. You favor psychologically tormenting for pleasure, or so you hope, while he favors torture for other reasons while actually making logical arguments for it? Guilt by innuendo is as easy as guilt by association, but truth is truth, no matter who says it. I suppose since Bob Dylan was once a supporter of Kahane, I'd better stop enjoying his music. You guys are pretty consistent about not coming up with any real arguments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
He's also known for labeling the American Renaissance conferences (the same group that he's addressing in the videos you linked) as rife with anti-semitism:
From SPLC, 2006: Schism Threatens White Nationalist Group
So now all the sudden the evil torture monger becomes trustworthy for your purposes? He also continues to get along quite well with key figures involved in AR. I actually agree that AR has serious problems which is one reason I'm involved in developing a different tendency and movement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
The list goes on. In separate interviews with the Intelligence Report, numerous "academic racists" complained of the neo-Nazi element at the conference.
We won't be inviting Duke to our conferences, but is it not a tad hypocritical to use the presence of gentile White supremacist scammer Duke against AR only to reference the Intelligence Report of the Jewish White supremacist scammer outfit SPLC? If the SPLC were a consistent anti-racist organization, I'd respect it. Instead it's a dishonest ethnic activist outfit.
By the way, Muslims are a threat to the West. Shaming tactics won't make the truth disappear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
• Michael Levin, a Jewish philosophy professor at the City University of New York who has spoken four times at American Renaissance conferences, said that there was "anti-Semitism among members of AR" and that this was part of the reason he did not attend the 2006 edition. (However, Levin still plugs his black-bashing book, Why Race Matters, in ads in American Renaissance.)
What black bashing? Stating empirical fact is not black bashing. Neither is extrapolating from it. Neither is testing scientific theory with it. Considering that in Black run South Africa a woman is more likely to be raped than ever learn to read, you don't seem to have your priorities straight if you seriously want to protect Black people from abuse. Hint: Black people are being abused now far more than they were under apartheid. Get a fucking clue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
And Levin's sourcing for IQ stats for black people is of course from racist, junk-science, eugenicist Pioneer Fund-er Robert Lynn.
Ad hom bullshit. Who cares if some Jewish authoritarian flings verbal poopie like 'junk science' at an outfit that assists real scientists who are persecuted by the established authorities and their apparatchiks? If Pioneer-connected scientists are somehow all junk scientists then how is it the truly great Hans Eysenck - the psychologist most referenced by science journals at the time of his death - arrived at similar conclusions with regard to race and intelligence? Chinese and Japanese psychometricians also come to similar conclusions so this Klan conspiracy you're seeing under every bed and bush is getting way out of hand! Richard Lynn is an infinitely better qualified and better experienced and better respected scientist than you in all the pertinent fields. The SPLC isn't run by intelligence researchers in the relevant sense, just would-be enforcers of status quo power relations. So why should anyone with a functioning brain and seeking mind be frightened by your ritual denunciations of Levin via ad hom and association fallacy? I suppose if a Nazi scientist said that two and two make four, we should reject that sum out of hand!
Oh yeah! I've never, ever seen you denounce the racist state of Israel, so your sinister Jewish supremacism disqualifies you from arguing in favor of any anti-racist positions!
Ah yes, The Mankind Quarterly, whose founding members include Henry Garrett, one of the witnesses called on to defend segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and who organized an international group of scholars devoted to advocacy against "race mixing" and for segregation as well as "racial hygiene".
Also included is Corrado Gini, who wrote The Scientific Basis of Fascism in 1927.
And last but certainly not least, Ottmar von Verschuer, a Germany biologist primarily concerned with "racial hygeine" and who did human experiments at Auschwitz under the aegis of the Nazis, ably assisted by a certain Dr. Josef Mengele.
You've thrown your lot in with quite a passel of winners.
P.S. I remember you shitting up this thread with references to the "peer-reviewed" literature you were reading on paedophilia in your previous incarnation. I guess you're giving up any pretense of having changed at all.
I'm finished Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. I'd like to see that some day.
I also picked up Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things to try to get a handle on my family's dysfunction.
At least there isn't a case study about Tommy in it yet..
I'm finished Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. I'd like to see that some day.
You probably can. It's one of Tom Stoppard's more popular and well-known plays. I'm going to be leading three class sessions on the play later this semester.
Pro-tip: If you see it, try to see it at a university. I've seen three productions, one professionally produced, and two at universities, and the university productions have been much more satisfying, because they could call on the expertise of the other professors there to explain the dense scientific and literary content of the play.
-------
Now, onto my reading:
I was listening to the LibriVox audiobook of Jane Eyre, but I stopped for a bit because it was just too depressing to listen to Jane's horrendous upbringing. Right now, I'm not in a mood to deal with that kind of thing.
So I switched to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, which is a wonderful historical romance and Conan Doyle's favorite work out of all his books, and frankly I agree with him. I've read the entire Holmes corpus, but this book is better, livelier, and funnier. I didn't have the clearest idea about what the plot was. I thought the title referred to the Cistercian monks, who wear white, but instead it's a reference to the group of knights the two main characters join (that commonality between uniforms is probably not accidental).
And tonight I started listening to Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart. I was inspired to it by a great production I just saw, though not of Schiller but rather Shakespeare's Richard II. I was so enthusiastic about the whole business of theater that I decided to listen to one of the LibriVox plays I had online on the drive home. Schiller is one of my favorite playwrights, though sadly much neglected in the U.S. This is a really great group performance of one of his best plays, a revisionist take on the battle for dominance between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.
Last edited by Nullifidian; 03-14-2011 at 03:01 AM.
OK I finished "Stuff" which was interesting, also relevant to my family.
It also had some interesting things about anxiety in children, children naturally have collections. Apparently a childhood trauma can make one feel insecure and then you lose your ability to discern what to keep or not.
It was well written and the case studies were actually illuminating, not padding.
To celebrate I sorted through a bunch of papers and got rid of/sorted a box that has been sitting around since January 2010.
I started reading The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean. So far it is very entertaining.
__________________
Live for today and not tomorrow
Live for the Now and whats here
Stop living for what maybe or what may never come
Live for the day already here
I started reading The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean. So far it is very entertaining.
Ooh, intriguing! I have a thing for the periodic table. How does the book approach it? Is it about the compiling of the table itself or about the elements or something else entirely?
Re: What are you reading?
Re: What are you reading?
Sonoma Bear
Linear Mode
