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Remora A couple of days ago LI indulged in that infantile positivism that makes our fair readership grimace and pretend not to know us. We made fun, that is, of the Yale Philosophy department's "probability theory and Jesus is my fave philosopher" conference. Or whatever it was called. We might have even implied that, between the News of the World's interviews with the Alien that advised Clinton, and Yale's faculty's attempts to prove the verity of the gospels, integrity, honesty, and science are all on the News of the World's side. As a followup, we recommend Jerry Coyne's mugging of a soft focus book by Michael Ruse that attempts to meld Darwinism and Christianity into the cutest little choir of Christmas decorations you ever saw . The first paragraph actually solves our problem with the probability argument for the resurrection. If you will recall -- or even if you won't -- the post was about a NYT story involving a man who seemingly c

Remora A Ramble "The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls." Exquisite Corpse does civilization and its discontents a favor, and publishes a translation of Oswaldo de Andrade's Cannibal Manifesto. "I asked a man what was Right. He answered me that it was the assurance of the full exercise of possibilities. That man was called Galli Mathias. I ate him." Oswaldo's works and days were spent on poetry, the libido, and communism. Or at least until, like all Latin American intellectual poobahs, he settled down into the utter fatuousness of old age, wallowing in his own lipids and lying memories. We do like his definitive refutation of the liberal principle, by the simple expedient of eating the liberal. St. Paul advises us to prove all things and hold fast that which is good. Oswaldo simply supplements that dictum: do it with your mouth and teeth and tongue. We also like the fact that the the golden age proclaimed

Remora Privatization is as much an ideological as a business proposition. Operating on the level of railroads or power, its ideological use is as a lever against regulation: a way of extracting things from the State. The idea that engrossing, macro projects can magically summon up the investment to make a profit in the far off future on selling to customers who have to 1. accustom themselves to the technology, and 2. justify the early adopter costs has been severely hit by the telecom meltdown -- Gilder's telecosm, like a middle aged man's orgasm, proved to be a spike of ecstatic sensation followed by the sag of deflation, and a heavy post-coital headache. In today's NYT, there's an item by DIANA B. HENRIQUES and JACQUES STEINBE RG about the much vaunted Edison School project. Headed by Charles Whittle, the Tennessee money goon who contrived Channel One (that odious tv corporate brainwash that swept through the school systems (especially of the South) in the e

"There was a law of lese-majeste against those who committed some fault against the Roman people. Tiberius grasped this law and applied it, not to those cases for which it was made, but for all those which could serve his hatred or his suspicions. Not only actions fell within the limits of the law, but words, signs, even thoughts: for what was said in the flow of the confidence of the heart between two friends can only be regarded as a species of thought. There was no liberty in celebrations, or in the confidences of parents, or in the fidelity of slaves; the dissimulation and melancholy of the prince communicated itself into all parts. Friendship was regarded as a reef, brilliance as an imprudence, virtue as an affectation which could recall, in the minds of the people, the happiness of times past." -- Montesquieu, Considerations on the causes of the greatness and decadence of the Romans The Observer sends its man to report from Cuba on the eve of Carter's visit.