Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Marx is a painful read (Score 0) 44

"It's not always clear whether people are carrying out rituals for their genuine mystical value, or just doing religious push-ups"

Terribly true. Some of the odd gyrations beggar rational understanding. (My favorite is the Rabbinate prohibition on mixing dairy and meat, a pure invention that I nonetheless follow generally, though not strictly, simply for reasons of taste. They also turn it into a jobs program in many cases, by forbidding gentiles from touching food on the assumption they (gentiles) are unclean. Which is a true assumption, but a meaningless one, as jews are also all unclean, but I digress. )

At the same time, others do not. For instance even if modern methods of preparation arguably reduce the threat of actually becoming sick from *eating* pork to acceptable levels the production of pork is still a danger to public health at the very least. Seafood and carnivorous animals concentrate environmental poisons, and I think it's a safe bet that environmental poisons have increased, not decreased, since the bronze age. And whatever the extent of the deeper reasons, it's clear that cruelty to animals is simply something we are advised not to engage in, particularly in the production of our food.

Comment Re:What trolls (Score 2) 382

Exactly and literally. Smokey and the Bandit was still in or just coming out of theaters when I was 14. And yes, we were trolls (not on CB though). We did real world trolling. Smoke bombs, bottle rockets, bb guns, sling shots, chunking wax balls from those stupid wax sippy candy at cars (no damage, in case you got busted) etc. We used to do all kinds of crap that would have gotten our asses kicked if we didn't know the alleys and yards you could jump fences in without a dog biting you. Trolling on the internet is for pussies. We were bored, but we got a good work out, without inflicting TOO much damage. I don't recommend what I did, but kids that think that they are breaking the rules, trolling, from behind a laptop that mummy and daddy bought them aren't exactly rebels. They are just cowards.

Comment Re:Marx is a painful read (Score 1) 44

Their lack of abilities in the area of symbol manipulation (i.e. language) is a clear distinction, and I dont believe in animal rights as a result, however growing up on a farm with lots of animals around I never doubted they were self aware, meaning conscious of themselves, their own existence, their own pains and joys.

Comment Re:So, 2% procedural improvement (Score 1) 44

Here's the really odd thing I have noticed about Marx and Marxists though. .

See their method, their 'dialectic' boils down to this.

  1. 1. In any situation, on any question, look at how exactly the actors in the field get their _stuff_.
  2. 2. Divide the actors into two and only two groups, based on how they get their stuff. The boozhies and the proles.
  3. 3. Side with the Proles, defeat the Boozhies, end of class warfare (since everyone is now a prole.) This is presented not only as good and necessary but as *inevitable* since class warfare is a necessary consequence of classes themselves, it can only end when one class or the other is extinct.
  4. 4. Profit!

My take: Step one is real good. Step 2 - roughly legitimate analysis, but fatally over-simplified. Step 3 - fundamentally mistaken.

Now, what is odd is, Marx himself was clearly a boozhie. So was Engels. And in fact, every Marxist I have ever met in the flesh was too. High-nosed blue-blooded boozhies every one of them. Working people dont have time for that nonsense, you try to talk to them about Marx they roll their eyes up into their heads. With one exception, a young fisherman. Who turned out to be from a rich family. And about to get fired cause he kept screwing up.

Comment Re:So, 2% procedural improvement (Score 0) 44

Sure, the class warfare is the poisonous part of it, and even there I have to give Marx /partial/ credit. It's not like he invented it. It's a reality and has been a reality for several thousand years now, that most people exist in a system of classes or worse castes where accident of birth is the paramount determinant of opportunity.

What's poisonous is the suggestion to somehow solve this by enflaming 'class consciousness' which is the very last thing that really should be done. Class consciousness to the extent it means identifying with one class of people and waging war on all other classes of people needs to be extinguished.

Anyway I part ways with his stream of thought a few generations back. The French Revolution was based on the idea that all problems can be solved (with the application of enough force.)  It was based on the French Enlightenment ideals about the perfectability of man and it spawned the Reign of Terror. The American Revolution had a lot of the French in it, but it also had countervailing currents both Anglo and Gaelic as well, and the upshot of it was just the opposite - a regime based on the idea that actually a lot of problems cant be solved, particularly by the application of force, and that often the worst thing the king can do is, well, anything.

Where the French had built a powerful modern state and tasked it with creation utopia, we instead built something really quite retro, a mix of ancient greco-roman democracy and ingvaeonic feudalism with more than a dash of gaelic confederacy. All about limiting the king. 4 year terms. Enumerated powers. A Court system AND a Legislature, both equal to him, if either does not agree he is stopped from using force. We could go on but I think the point is made. French Revolution-> Marx. American War of Independence -> Emerson. I prefer the road less travelled you might say.

Comment Not a marx fan but (Score 0) 44

I will step up to defend him a little, very mildly.

The one thing I think you have to give him credit for is explicitly putting forward the idea of analyzing social relations on the basis of economic relations and material culture. Not that he came up with the notion - far from it, when the Latins said qui bono they were just translating a very old notion into the language of the day - but I definitely think he deserves a little credit for expanding the notion and getting people to really focus on it.

Now obviously his little book is considered to have spawned a political movement that I wouldnt want anything to do with, but it's also been inspirational to some work in the social sciences that I see as positive. Marxist archaeology, for instance, despite the name, managed some real contributions which laid the foundation for processualism which is quite an important thread in archaeology. Stripped of political baggage, looking at the relationships of production in a society to gain some insight into it just seems common sense. Yet it was so rarely done. It was typical to look at material culture and 'interpret' it based on irrelevancies and flights of fancy, where now those same artifacts are used to reconstruct elements of what Marx would call the relationships of production - which is much more informative.

That said, obviously those that identify themselves as Marxist are relatively unlikely to be able to strip away the political baggage and extract any nuggets from underneath.

Comment Re:Ticket ToS (Score 1) 226

Not exactly. There is no freedom of panorama in the US, so sorry, but you are mistaken. Some photos of the inside might be ok, but anything that has arguably has artistic content (ie: more than text) would be fully copyrighted by the designer. You could argue "Fair Use", but the copyright still doesn't change hands, it isn't yours. Years of arguing with lawyers and such on Commons will teach you that.

Comment Re:We Are All Under Suspicion Now (Score 0) 232

You forget that the people pay for the government, and are supposed to own it. The government is supposed to be part of the nation, not an external bloodsucker set on top of it. And searches are supposed to require a warrant, supported under oath or by affirmation, giving probable cause that a crime has been committed.

So yes, if the FBI wants to take OUR database which is in their care, and compare it with OUR database which is in the care of the INS, then they should do so within the constitutional framework, get a warrant, and only get to keep the results that match the warrant, not everything else.

Comment Re:So, such rules are bad for keeping people worki (Score 1, Informative) 327

Of course they are.

And how does anyone even pretend this is legal? They can just 'waive' laws for special people and leave them in place for us proles now?

This is not the American way. One law for everyone. If the law is wrong, repeal it, don't 'waive' it for your friends while the rest suffer.

Slashdot Top Deals

Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.

Working...