I had provided myself with the popular books of the day (this was sixteen or seventeen years ago), and for two weeks I had never left my room. I am speaking now of those books that treat of the art of making nations happy, wise and rich in twenty-four hours. I had therefore digested—swallowed, I should say—alI the lucubrations of all the authorities on the happiness of society—those who advise the poor to become slaves, and those who persuade them that they are all dethroned kings. So it is not astonishing if I was in a state of mind bordering on stupidity or madness. Only it seemed to me that deep in my mind, I was conscious of an obscure germ of an idea, superior to all the old wives’ formulas whose dictionary I had just been perusing But it was only the idea of an idea, something infinitely vague. And I went out with a great thirst, for a passionate taste for bad books engenders a proportionate desire for the open air and for refreshments.
An Unenviable Situation
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Sunday, October 06, 2024
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNORLANSING, MICHIGAN 48903GEORGE ROMNEYGOVERNORAugust 9, 1965Dear Dr. Kaufman:Your article, "Teach-ins: A New Force for the Times", in NATION of June 21st has been called to my attention. I admire you for the depth of your conviction that you have performed an essential service for democracy; but, I would have wished you to be more objective in your presentation. Your phrase, "But presumably in the world of Governors and auto executives, business is always business, and sacred11 , is a neat stereotype, but obviously removed from the facts of the case. It certainly does not describe accurately my response to your original teacher strike proposal.My reaction, that of the legislature, and your colleagues, too, should have made it crystal clear that our concern was for the majority of students, faculty, and administration at the University who did not choose to participate in your demonstration. The strike would have forced a cancellation of classes, whether this was desired or not, to be made up later if schedules · could be rearranged. Certainlyyou felt your cause to be important enough to warrant "a departure from work as usual". And you anticipated an audience of 700 from a student body of 30,000. Following your example, it would be necessary for the whole University to defer to any 2% of the University community which felt it had a cause important enough to bring the tight schedule to a standstill.
Saturday, October 05, 2024
All repeats, but I'd never put the images side by side.
The ideal of Modernism was that it was a sort of return to the Renaissance, but the Renaissance was a loosening of rules, while Modernism was a closing down. Gursky’s nihilism begins in Seurat. To see Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as the high-point of 20th century painting is to imagine a century beginning with the Carracci and Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas and fading into mannerism. The idealism of Modernism is always the idealism of a church, or the equally strict, fearful, ironic mockery of the same church.
Friday, October 04, 2024
And again.
The Atlantic, The elite college students who can’t read books
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
The Connecticut Mirror: This Hartford Public High School grad can’t read. Here’s how it happened.
When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.
Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.
That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.
Leiter asks a question. Read the answers.
I have gradually reduced the amount of reading that I assign in Philosophy classes and added documentaries and videos where possible.
repeats. start here, work back to a defense of illiteracy by a friend of Henry Farrell, and then further.
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Friday, June 21, 2024
Smartphones are a global phenomenon. But apparently the rise in youth anxiety is not. In some of the largest and most trusted surveys, it appears to be largely occurring in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. “If you’re looking for something that’s special about the countries where youth unhappiness is rising, they’re mostly Western developed countries,” says John Helliwell, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the World Happiness Report. “And for the most part, they are countries that speak English.”
Robert Osborn, 1960 |
The CCG launched a brutal assault on the AFP personnel aboard an AFP Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB), aggressively ramming it and brandishing bladed and pointed weapons, explicitly threatening to harm AFP troops. pic.twitter.com/LuFgLE3WJj
— Armed Forces of the Philippines (@TeamAFP) June 19, 2024
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Stuff I’m hearing about current undergrads is devastating. I haven’t taught in a few years. But the most enthusiastic, bright-eyed bushy-tailed teachers come back to say “they don’t know what a topic sentence is,” “can’t string a series of thoughts together” etc. Is that right?
— Nic Johnson (@TiltingatM3) June 12, 2024
meeting academics from virtually anywhere in the world these days: “how’s the teaching going?” [series of frustrated sighs] “none of them know how to write an essay anymore”
— csz (@cszabla) April 21, 2024
This was the most astonishing thing about teaching freshmen at Cornell this fall: students who had never read anything longer than a reading comprehension excerpt for the SAT. https://t.co/86oL8XBGje pic.twitter.com/p758WqWPxZ
— cpetersen.bsky.social (@p_e_t_e_r_s_e_n) February 12, 2024
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jumping ahead, to October.
Monday, May 20, 2024
You will remember that Plato said that only his body still inhabited the City and, in the Phaedo, also explained how right ordinary people are when they say that a philosopher's life is like dying.46 Death, being the separation of body and soul, is welcome to him; he is somehow in love with death, because the body, with all its demands, constantly interrupts the soul's pursuits. 47 In other words, the true philosopher does not accept the conditions under which life has been given to man.
Aaron Swartz, Scott Aaronson, Milo Yiannopoulos, et al.
I think here's something to be said for returning money to the old category of "shit".
Science is optimistic, so anti-material, anti-physical idealism becomes not the monastic self-abnegation of adults who refuse desire, but the preadolescent imagination that's never felt it. I've said this all before, and I'll say it again. Altman is brilliant maybe, and an idiot. His "discovery" of human interaction, as a marketable thing, after a lifetime at the keyboard is almost funny. And his need to see himself as in control, as an agent, to the point of fantasizing panpsychism, which he's apparently never heard of. But panpsychism is as much a product as he is: it exists as an idea for the same reason he exists as a mind.
maybe I'll write more.
ChatGPT has a tag.
Wednesday, May 08, 2024
record keeping
Statement of the #ICC Office of the Prosecutor pic.twitter.com/Cw331pMcDm
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 3, 2024
The Office of the Prosecutor is aware that there is significant public interest in its investigations, and it welcomes comments, communication of concerns, and engagement In its activities from State and elected officials, non-governmental organisations, scholars, and activists.The Office seeks to engage constructively with all stakeholders whenever such dialogue is consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially.That independence and impartiality are undermined, however, when individuals threaten to retaliate against the Court or against Court personnel should the Office, in fulfillment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction. Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Art. 70 of the Rome Statute.That provision explicitly prohibits both "[r]etaliating against an official of the Court on account of duties performed by that or another official" and ”[i]mpeding, intimidating or corruptly influencing an official of the Court for the purpose of forcing or persuading the official not to perform, or to perform improperly, his or her duties." The Office insists that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials cease immediately.
Wooooow. H*m*s released the text for the ceasefire deal that they accepted. It includes the release of ALL Israel hostages & war prisoners and all bodies of deceased Israeli hostages & war prisoners. ALL OF THEM.
— Taleed El-Sabawi, JD, PhD (@el_sabawi) May 7, 2024
Israel said no. https://t.co/rm7GAIEtrg
Sunday, May 05, 2024
Israeli cabinet votes unanimously to close the network’s operations in Israel with immediate effect.The statement comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted unanimously to close Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, weeks after Israel’s parliament passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered to be a threat to national security during the months-long war in Gaza.
Netanyahu announced the decision on X, formerly Twitter. “The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel,” he posted in Hebrew.
Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi wrote on X that he had signed the orders against Al Jazeera, which would be effective immediately.
Karhi said he ordered the seizure of Al Jazeera’s broadcasting equipment “used to deliver the channel’s content”, including editing and routing equipment, cameras, microphones, servers and laptops, as well as wireless transmission equipment and some mobile phones.
May 4th, Barrons, (AFP)
A top Israeli official said Saturday that Hamas's continued demand for a lasting ceasefire in the war in Gaza was stymying prospects of reaching a truce. "So far, Hamas has not given up its demand to end the war, thus thwarting the possibility of reaching an agreement," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.The official rejected reports that Israel had agreed to end the war as part of a deal to free the hostages held by Gaza militants.The official said suggestions Israel was prepared to allow mediators to provide Hamas with guarantees of an end to the war were also "not accurate".The official's comments came after Hamas negotiators returned to Egypt on Saturday to give their response to a proposed pause in the nearly seven-month war.
May 5th, Haaretz
Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Important article by Amos Goldberg. Please note that Professor Goldberg has not had a chance to look over the translation. But it is a reliable rendition of the Hebrew original and he has allowed me to post it.https://t.co/yEge11gXMS
— Omer Bartov عومر بَرتوف עמר ברטוב (@bartov_omer) April 28, 2024
Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.
From a legal point of view, there is still no telling what the International Court of Justice in The Hague will decide, although in light of its temporary rulings so far and in light of increasing prevalence of reports by jurists, international organisations, and investigative journalists, the trajectory of the prospective judgement seems quite clear.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
'It's like pop culture, concentrated teen angst,' she said of the rally. 'The rhetoric is too heavy handed. That's the problem with American activists. They need to simplify.' Someone on the stage railed against police brutality, and she rolled her eyes."
—and 2015: "...other people have rights too." Responding to protests about Halloween costumes, but not this one:
2015 NYT, "Walmart Withdraws Hooked ‘Sheik Fagin’ Nose From Halloween Store"
The link (Christakis ) from 2015 includes a link to this.
"To be perfectly clear, student journalists do have the right to take photos and protesters do not have a right to push away journalists. Students engaged in public protest, the very purpose of which is visibility, cannot credibly argue that they have any reasonable expectation of privacy."
During Jummah (Friday prayer) this afternoon, Columbia University students formed a human shield with blankets to provide privacy to those students participating in prayer after a video showing students praying on the lawn began circulating on social media
— katie smith (@probablyreadit) April 20, 2024
📸 pic.twitter.com/xnPllK0shV
"This was the most astonishing thing about teaching freshmen at Cornell this fall: students who had never read anything longer than a reading comprehension excerpt for the SAT."
meeting academics from virtually anywhere in the world these days: “how’s the teaching going?” [series of frustrated sighs] “none of them know how to write an essay anymore”
— csz (@cszabla) April 21, 2024