Realism

"The problem is that when your enemies control the vocabulary of public discourse," says the Your Lying Eyes blogger, "it's hard to maintain a sophisticated private understanding of what is going on."
[via the iSteve blog]

So what is a "wage slave" anyhow?

Noam Chomsky gives his definition here. [YouTube]

"if yr not getting happier as you get older, then yr fuckin up."

So says Ani DeFranco. Hmm. That observation says it all.

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Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt)

Max Stirner And The Heresy Of Self-Abundance (Maynard Whitlow @ The Anarchist Library)

"The ethical agreement between Stirner and Bridgman is striking. Both men, in denying the sacredness of institutions, are simply demanding, in Bridgman’s words, that ‘society be so constructed that it serves the individual, not that the individual serve society.’ On this matter of force, Bridgman is in exact accord with Stirner: ‘The only compulsion that society can exert on me is the compulsion of superior and external force.’ And Bridgman adds that he will have no part of the ‘conspiracy of silence . . . which attempts to shield my children from the realization that society must rest on a background of force.’  Nor should we lose sight of the fact that the ‘altruist’ (an ‘involuntary’ egoist) assumes that he has the right to use force to gain his ‘altruistic’ ends. "

Stirner never got his due for the contributions he made to philosophy.

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Kalamazoo cop with 23 year long record of misconduct allowed to resign - MLive (Kalamazoo)
I don't usually bother with cop misconduct stories. But this guy was a well-documented fuck-up for 23 years and only got the boot when he showed up drunk to the Obama speech at WMU last summer and seriously acted the fool and embarrassed the K-zoo police brass in front of the Secret Service. That a goof like this wasn't terminated a long time ago says a lot about public safety agencies, public employee unions, police brass and city bureaucrats in K-ville and the much ballyhooed  blue wall of silence. The story is so bad it's funny. Until you think about it.


The problem with today's intellectual class - Big Questions (James Mathew Wilson) via Front Porch Republic
"The modern intellectual engages in thought without end, for all purpose would be denounced as agenda or ideology. Restless before this convergence of freedom and uselessness, his occupation takes a critical turn and becomes the mere dissecting of all the interested buzz of the world of practical action. Because it lacks a sense of where thought might find fulfillment, the intellectual realm becomes not a place above the mundane world, but a parallel zone of criticism, where the beliefs of others may enter only to be seen through. The intellectual life reduces itself to functional nihilism, warding off despair only by means of attacking the latest ideology voiced beyond its doorstep."

What's a city council seat worth? In Ann Arbor about $300 or so a week. $700 or so if you're mayor - Ann Arbor Chronicle (Dave Askins and Hayley Burns)
I suppose salaries are better than per diem payments or expense accounts because when it's all out in open there is less opportunity for corruption. But as to council service being a "sacrifice" as some put it in this article, I beg to differ; No one gets drafted to serve. If it is a "sacrifice" of time, money, and whatever it is one made voluntarily. So there's that. Having a compensation committee made up of people the mayor and council agree on who's pay recommendations take effect automatically unless voted down is a sham though.

Sci-fi/fantasy author Robert Asprin has a new book out which is really amazing considering that he died a few years back. Asprin spent most of his life in and around Ann Arbor. Met him once and he seemed like a good guy.

Internet-controlled remote-fired shotgun battery set up by land owner to exterminate feral hogs - io9
Brilliant concept, but totally irresponsible, dangerous and illegal.