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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Today's links

My favorite historical novels. (Some familiar names.)

Michael Johnson makes the case for generalists (such as himself and RAW) after reading Bucky Fuller. Excerpt: "Because most of us in the West were educated to specialize, we tend to abandon personal responsibility for thinking of the Big Picture, and taking social action. We let others deal with the big stuff."

Jesse Walker on five myths about conspiracy theories.  And see that Lewis Shiner, who did one of the best RAW interviews ever (see the link on this page) likes Jesse's book.

A reasonable article on when liberals should make common cause with libertarians. On Twitter, Julian Sanchez, oddly channeling RAW, comments. "This is a great piece, but maybe leaves out the most important consideration. Maybe I have something to learn from you, even if I don't ultimately join your team. Maybe you have something to learn from me, even if you don't ultimately join my team. I know this rests on the crazy premise that possibly no current team has the Complete and Correct Picture of Reality, but… maybe, you know?"

Ted Gioia on 61 Things We've Learned About the NSA. A great list, but make that 62. He apparently missed the NSA listening in on phone sex calls made by U.S. troops. 

"History tells us we need to watch the watchers." Good short video on the NSA.


6 comments:

michael said...

Such quality links! I do feel a bit out of my league compared to Julian Sanchez, Ted Gioia and Jesse Walker.

Those lines from Sanchez indeed do sound like Wilson.

The NSA vid: yea, but who will watch the watchers' watchers? (RAW loved to riff with the Catastrophe of Infinite Regress here...although it couldn't be truly infinite, as once all 7 billion are involved in surveilling each other, we must either consider that a finite set of surveillance people or JOOTS: jump outside of the system...to our invisible alien overlords? Oh maybe the Catastrophe's cousin, Reductio ad Absurdum, is/was at work here.)

Re: your list of fave historical novels: I have lots of reading to do: Thanks!

Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson) said...

I can relate to Michael's comment because I often feel intimated when I read MIchael, Oz Fritz, Eric Wagner, etc. But I think MIchael is being too modest.

gacord said...

What Tom said. But I add Tom to that list...

jsanchez said...

It's not that odd; I've been rereading Illuminatus!

jsanchez said...

It's not that odd; I've been rereading Illuminatus!

Unknown said...

When I was growing up, the US had actually managed to make anti-communism worse than communism, by picking on people for agreeing with the Commies about anything. So even if I didn't have a past as a libertarian fellow traveler (Unpopular Front?), I wouldn't want to turn it in the other direction. We make common cause with the libertarians when they're trying to make the state stop snooping on us and meddling in Asia, and we laugh at alleged libertarian Rand Paul when he tells us to support the candidate who wants to outlaw oral sex.