. . . . . entries for 29.11.11 . . . . .
What does it mean when a person is militant and inflexible about an ideology that ostensibly includes openness to new ideas, debate, and the acceptance of uncertainty?
or, possibly relatedly,
What does it mean when a person claims to value life, but would sooner kill ten thousand people through inaction than take just one life to save them?
. . . . . entries for 17.11.11 . . . . .
That hurts, you know. Surely you know.
. . . . . entries for 14.11.11 . . . . .
I was just thinking about you the other day, and dreaming about you that night - so anxious for you, apprehensive, hoping that you would land safely on the other side of your leap of faith. And another other day, I was thinking that however infuriating, however ridiculous, however overprotective, however imperfect she is, I could not even think of how I would cope when my own mother died. Because at the top of the lists of imperfections is always mortality. And I don't know what I would do. I don't know . . .
Life is unfair to us, and unfair in a wretched, awful way to you (and your brother, I realized driving home, and your father, and your whole family). I wrote a whole book about it in my head on my hour-long drive, after I heard the news, and the book is trash. Words suck for this. Nothing is any good for this. I wish something were - I wish I were.
. . . . . entries for 4.11.11 . . . . .
Hello blog. I know it's been a while, but I have a thing to rant about and would like to take a bit of time out at my lunch hour in order to do so.
You may have heard about Occupy Wall Street. (Here, let me google that for you.) OWS is something that should have happened a long time ago, a thing that an old professor of mine tried to rile up this summer in a more organized, establishment-progressive-backed fashion (though "establishment progressive" be a strange term) - but it happened of its own accord, and has resulted in some interesting political talk and the use of quite a lot of tear gas and some flash grenades and that sort of thing.
There's a website where OWS folk and their sympathizers (among whom I count myself) rate which policy agenda items they think are most important. On that website is floating around the phrase "Tobin tax," which I had to look up. It originally meant a tax on international currency transactions, and now means a tax on any "financial" transaction - that is, something that a Wall Street trader would do during the business day. The wikipedia page is extremely economically technical, clearly written by and for economists and financial policy experts. The phrase is also extraordinarily political, as the good folks at WSJ will demonstrate for you.
I am so mad that they use this stupid, worn out, dead, academic phrase to describe a very simple and politically compelling concept: tax financial speculation. Tax gamblers whose chips are your retirement funds. Tax the kind of thing that caused this jobs crisis. Tax it because we want financial stability. Tax it because traders make plenty of money for messing around with yours. Tax it because we need income to pay for the programs to reignite real job creation in America. Tax it because money isn't a real product, because producing it and playing with it and hoarding it for its own sake does not help anyone but those who do it, because Joshua of Nazareth only became angry once in his life and it was in the temple overtaken by money-changers.
WSJ wrote that if one country enacted a Tobin tax, some other "enterprising" country would simply attract "talent" and capital away. But financial trading is not about the kinds of enterprise or talent that are foundational to a strong economy, nor is its current form sustainable, either in a business sense or an environmental sense. It is about inventing false worth, a golden calf of hollow value, and living off of your ability to maintain the illusion that such value is real. It takes humans and makes them think like corporations. Money for money's sake breeds sociopathy.
I decided to post a blog entry about this in lieu of ranting about it on facebook or wherever because I sound like a raging socialist about this stuff, but my original anger is just that people understand the idea of taxing financial speculation, at least on a basic level, but they don't understand a Tobin tax, and OWS should change the language in all their stuff as soon as possible to reflect their constituency's actual opinions and not just repel them with politicized academic balderdash.
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)