To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.
– Jacques Derrida
Er, yeah, whatever Jack…
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October 9th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Avant-Garde French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has finally been deconstructed:
Though to say that he has “died” is to, perhaps, impose a structural context defined by the ontology of Western metaphysics. In the grammatic, linguistic and rhetorical senses he has merely desedimented, dismantled and decomposed. Indeed, this is a grand narrative undoing in the egological, methodological and general sense, as opposed to a mere critique in the idiomatic or Kantian sense. Er…or something. October 9th, 2004 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried. (I doubt she had politics in mind but…) October 8th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have always liked J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (though I must confess I have only seen the movies and not read the books). She writes about wizards and magic and yet the world she creates is populated by characters who still act like real people. Moreover she is the anti-thesis of the sugar coated Disney pabulum of recent years. Not only do her characters act like real people, when the story calls for it, they die. l have long loathed Disney for presenting some of the classic children’s stories of Western literature in such a sanitised and castrated form that Disney’s use of the titles is close to being fraudulent (such as the completely inverted ‘Little Mermaid’). J.K. Rowling is made of far sterner stuff and she realises what the focus-group addled hacks at Disney do not… children are also made of sterner stuff. October 8th, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world. It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm. After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves. October 8th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
October 8th, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a recent Spiked article, Dr Helene Guldberg quotes Liz Kendal talking about a recent IPPR report about child rearing which she co-authored:
I think this quote throws an interesting light on the mania to regulate that now sweeps across the world. There is nothing like an impossible task to enable the regulatory process first to begin, and then, once begun, to go on for ever. Consider. According to Liz Kendal, who emitted the above quote, the government should be “serious about giving children an equal start in life”. Yet think about this. It is impossible. It simply cannot be done. People are different. They think differently and they live in different circumstances. They rear their children differently. How could it possibly be otherwise? It cannot. Yet if this possibility is seriously pursued, as Liz Kendal thinks that it should be, there is no logical end to the process. → Continue reading: The micro-management of parenthood – and of everything October 8th, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
You said, “but.” I’ve put my finger on the whole trouble. You’re a “but” man. Don’t say, “but.” That little word “but” is the difference between success and failure. Henry Ford said, “I’m going to invent the automobile,” and Arthur T. Flanken said, “But . . .” October 7th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via Catallarchy, here is something you do not hear every day from a legislator:
So said Michigan Representative David Palsrok, sponsor of a bill signed into law today in that state by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm – a law which bans people suing food companies and restaurants for ‘making’ them fat. And here is another quotation from the same article which is not quite as much of a shocker:
Says who? The Michigan Trial Lawyers’ Association, of course. October 7th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
A British muslim in the Royal Air Force has been successfully prosecuted for going AWOL after claiming he did not want to help kill fellow muslims in Iraq. It seems to me that an excellent reason for refusing to join a nation’s military is the simple desire to not shoot at, or facilitate shooting at, people that you might not feel should not be shot at. If you have a goodly distrust for the wisdom of the state to begin with, taking the view that you are not going to kill someone just because the government wants you to is a very reasonable default position to adopt. Now of course all states and their militaries are not the same. If you voluntarily contract to do the bidding of the government of Sweden or the Vatican or Switzerland or Costa Rica or Swaziland or Belize or Luxembourg… nations who are certainly not ‘military extroverts’… then the range of things you could reasonably expect to be asked to do will generally not include going to far off places you had never previously heard of and dropping bombs on the locals. However… If you do elect to join a military in circumstances other than fighting off the clear and present danger of an invasion, it seems to me that you are offering to allow the state make the decision for you of when it is appropriate to shoot and at which particular people. Moreover, if you join a military of some place like Britain, France or the USA, i.e. states who frequently sent their soldiers off to kill folks in far off lands for all manner of reasons other than the direct self-defence of the homeland, then it seems a bit rich to take the state’s pay checks for several years but then act surprised if you get asked to, well, help kill folks in far off lands. Read the damn job description before you take the shilling. October 7th, 2004 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems as though I have not really paid much attention to domestic issues in quite some time. Perhaps its because the domestic front has been locked into near-total stasis, with little movement, much less progress, of any kind. The political scene has resolved itself into the party of 80% hostility to a libertarian agenda (the Republicans), the party of 95% hostility to a libertarian agenda (the Democrats), an irrelevant fringe, and a legacy media complex to whom anything other than the cult of the the state is simply incomprehensible. Frankly, I do not see any significant changes in the relationship between the state and the citizenry in the offing, just a long expansion of the state sphere until something catastrophic/revolutionary occurs. What that might be and when it might happen, I have no idea. On the domestic political front, I am left rooting for the slightly less bad option, which is not exactly energizing. All the action and energy seems to be around foreign affairs, and specifically how we stop the Islamic world from oozing its toxic Wahhabist/fascist effluent into our societies. I find the current debate in the US on this issue to be less than enlightening. The Bush campaign has done a terrible job of explaining why they are doing what they are doing, and the Kerry camp is too busy straddling and flopping to make any contribution at all. Suffice it to say that I remain convinced we will not see the end of this without nuclear weapons being used. October 6th, 2004 | 54 comments - (Comments are closed)
For those of you interested in business oriented blogging, I have written an article called Business Hippos and Blogging Birds over at the Big Blog Company. I have always seen business blogs as the best manifestation of the whole Cluetrain vibe.  October 6th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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