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Showing posts from July 1, 2012

Not so happy fourth thoughts. But shoot your firecrackers, you guys and gals!

Fourth of July thoughts Truly, this is shaping up to be one of the most depressing presidential elections since Harding vs. Cox. I thought the 00s were the worst decade I'd ever seen, but this one is already a complete washout and it isn't four years old. We have a drone em candidate, Obama, and the spend more on the military and cut taxes on the rich candidate, Romney. And we will once more have the insane conversation about 'executive' abilities. If such things really do exist, then we can all save much money by computerizing them, firing en masse the parasitic cadre of CEOs, and putting in their place expert programs. To tell the truth, I think this would work - most CEO 'magic' happens only when the market is rising, and some corporation ekes out a bit more on that rise, usually compensated for when the market is falling and the extra risk taken by the corp bites em in the ass and they lead in the loss column. CEOs have as much to do with

paper dualism

“It is more difficult to understand how they can write proper names, especially foreign ones, for these are things that they have never seen, nor could they have invented a picture for them. I tried to examine this when I was in Mexico with some Chinese, and I asked them to write this sentence, or something resembling it, in their language: “Jose de Acosta has come from Peru.” The Chinese gentleman thought about it for a long time and at last wrote, and then the others read what sas indeed the same sentence, athought there was some variation in the proper name; for they use the device of taking the proper name and finding something in their language that resembles that thing, and then they write down the picture of it.” – Natural and   Moral History of the Indies, Jose de Acosta (1590) There was always something philosophically magic about the relationship between the figure and the thing inscribed. There was something entangled about the figure and the thing that held it, for h