"The declivity where he sat to rest was part of a railroad bed blasted out of the hard shale and lime deposits cut by the Hudson River, which was just down the hill, out of sight, hidden by forestation, backyards, homes. The wind eased through the weeds, pressing on both sides of the track, died, and then came up again hinting of seaweed - the sea miles away opening up into the great harbor of New York, the sea urged by the moon's gravity up the Hudson, that deep yielding estuary, and arriving as a hint of salt in the air, against his face, vised between his knees."

I like it. The scene kinda falls out of his resting place and it circles around and then circles back after a bit to his knees. I recall traveling up in the West Point area, it is beautiful. I think I would become accustom to reading this prose. I don't like all commas, no adverbs, no passive voice. His words kinda rise and fall , flow along with his description, like the river these sentences describe.

Aesthetics describes the surface of the world in terms of form and matter. A child knows its teddy, long before it understands the word. The basic structure of a thing must be appreciated as something prior to being known or spoken about. We share the world. What's on the surface is mediated by us as members of a society where these objects have achieved prior normative meanings which we learn.

I think form is the universal, the limit of a thing, it is the objective, it can be described mathematically. The content--mater is sensible, intuited, in-process, it is subjective & particular. We correlate the pair on a normative basis all the time.

I like the Schmitt Music Company building.

I was thinking more along the lines of


This is JR in NYC. The walkway was an above ground train or road, which the City abandoned and then turned into a walkway park, which is very popular. JR gets around, his project in Havana 2012 is inspiring...the video he did shows how he managed to get neighborhood people involved in his artwork.
https://youtu.be/BD2VWmxW1nk

It reminded me of the previous video you posted of the Crown Fountain in Chicago, the artist took faces from the local community to play in circuit on fountain's face.
https://youtu.be/BD2VWmxW1nk

Other more subversive:



Banksy said: “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7bn (£4.6bn) a year in taxes – and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”

It is a positive message, not a negative. Much of the Street Art, I am interested in, places a photo/stencil
in place where it surprises the viewer, unexpected, framed by its normative context. It poses almost a dialectic relationship between its reality and the reality of its context. The more realistic the work, the greater the contrast between itself and what is expected, what we experience all the time.

Up until very recently there was a sense of temporality to most of these works. The city only saw them as criminal defacements and sent out the work crews to whitewash, to purify the city's walls. Many of the major artists such as JR, Shepard Fairey, and others use wheat paste to put up their works. The works have built in temporality.

The Modern era saw artworks that became progressively more abstract, then art went schitzo, it became about itself, it became Postmodern, critical of itself, & any totality. I think some Street Artists are trying to go beyond the critical to embrace a community idea of art, one that shapes lives by romancing the particular. Post-Critique.

I kind of agree with BC on this but, Turkey is another story. They are, arguably in one of the worst positions under constant pressure, but they appear to using the immigrant situation as a way to blackmail the EU into providing its 97 million(?) citizens with passports. The EU has set several conditions which Erdogan has said he will not keep, nor will he keep up to his end of the deal if the EU does not provide the free visas. The EU is also paying Turkey, who knows what they are doing with Greece, but I like the role Greece has played in this, I could be wrong, but it seems as though they have tried to help these people.

Germany has agreed to accept the most...like a million this year and similar amount next year and then 600K per year for 3 more years, it's funny, they project 55% employment by the end of the 5 year period.

My opinion is that we should take these people in and put them in resettlement camps. Places where they could be sorted out, so to speak. As part of that process security concerns could be addressed. My forefathers went through Ellis Island, there was a process.

The migrant camps in various countries appear to be horrific these people are not being treated well.

BC "Transsexual adults have been attacked in public toilets" I looked and I could not find any citations that corroborate your assertion...at least no prior to the current blow-up, do you have a reference. Thanks.

Monsanto is pretty much "The Ugly American", although maybe not for much longer as a separate company, if Bloomberg is right http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/bayer-said-to-explore-bid-for-40-billion-seed-company-monsanto

One of the issues facing Capitalism in general is its need to realize economies of scale. The larger the company the more efficient it can become. Less and less people are required as workers and managers, enabling corporations to syphon off more and more capital value to its shareholders.

Technology/corporate capitalism is going to either save us or sink us, and I don't know which, but I suspect that, along with our continually vanishing middle class, it will ultimately sink us. I think the purpose of such economies of scale, & new technologies ought to be our relief from banal, alienating work, making it easier for us to pursue our passions. All I see is that it is making it harder and harder to break away from a debt ridden lifestyle, which is engendered in our cultural system.

Money talks, nobody walks. Corporations understand how it works, you pay off enough politicians, and you get your way. Here in USA there is a double whammy, corporations are considered legal persons, which means corps can fight citizens in court and lobby to support its business' causes with a ton of money. Corporations are telling people how they should vote...a vote for Mr. X will help you keep your job.

As a guess, Libertarians don't think any trade agreement is 'free trade', it is government restricted trade. Free trade is free trade, you have something to sell and someone else wants to purchase it, you sell it, no trade agreement, no taxes, etc., and they buy it.

As far as what's in it for EU: not sure I know all the answers. This agreement and the other Pacific agreement have not been generally available until last week when Greenpeace leaked the EU negotiation which has been going on for years. I think that agricultural food access, and such things as name provenance (Bordeaux wine, Rhine Wine, all the cheeses), names American mfgs have assumed but not paid for. The cost of importation of heavy equipment from Europe...the so called "Chicken Tax". Of course corporations such as Monsanto have major stakes in the outcome of these talks.

"The EC chart shows that of the 27 chapters that make up the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, 18 are more than half way through the negotiation process as the proposals from both sides are consolidated into one text." The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-chart-shows-how-far-advanced-eu-us-trade-deal-negotiations-really-are-a7016396.html

Prior to Greenpeace's leak of parts of the report, their goal was to complete the deal by years end, based on what EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in this article.

France has no veto power over the deal with the EU, but it could inspire the EU to suspend the deal, which has been negotiated for years. Obama (who must be the most productive lame duck ever) is trying to get it rammed through before he leaves office...neither Trump nor Clinton want it.

Well there is an argument that goes like this:

The "Right to Work" laws are unconstitutional because they amount to a taking.

This is a law,” says Marquette Law Professor Paul Secunda, “that compels one private party to provide benefits to another private party with no compensation.” He is convinced that right-to-work laws, which permit represented workers to quit their union and stop paying fees while simultaneously obligating that union to continue to spend resources representing them, are an unconstitutional “taking.”

Article here: http://www.alternet.org/labor/legal-argument-could-overturn-right-work-laws-around-country

One problem with the argument is that "takings" are generally construed to be properties. They are trying to get into Federal Court so that if successful it would change the National Labor Relations Board rules and regulations and it would automatically supervine the statues in 26 states.

I have an idea, which might be too unpractical, not quite sure.

George Soros claims Europe should spend £23billion and accept 500,000 migrants a year to avoid the EU being torn apart by the refugee crisis, according to the Daily Mail 4/12/16.

At the same time the EU is trying to figure out what to about Greece, which owes owes its official lenders 242.8 billion euros ($271 billion), according to a Reuters calculation dated 6/28/15 so higher today...and getting higher.

Why doesn't the EU negotiate a trade off of debt for settlement with Greece?

I like Plato's Ethics, from which Aristotle took a lot. They are difficult to compare because, Aristotle wrote treatises and Plato wrote conversations.

This trailer as a prologue to Liompa. Reminded me of Bergman.

There is now a new Tennessee Toilet Law. I think that most legislators & governors who sign off on these laws understand that these laws will not stand-up to judicial scrutiny. However, due process will take a while and in the meanwhile they have made their Christian creds.

I get the sense that the NY Times was pissed off that they did not have access to the leaked papers, that they were not part of the consortium of newspapers chosen to investigate the leak. Apparently, these documents were leaked to a German newspaper about a year ago and hundreds of journalists have been working on them for quite a while.

You may want to look at the April 6 comic Black Panther (Marvel Hero), which was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for the Atlantic Mag & 2015 National Book Award winner. Here for interview with Ta-Nehisi re the comic: http://www.vice.com/read/ta-nehisi-coates-talks-about-black-panther-and-writing-from-a-black-experience

Heroes, the ones people really look up to, are generally superhuman in some respect. They have superpowers, are aliens, son's of gods, or gods themselves. Holy men, eat geniuses, scientists, warriors, philosophers. They inspire misanthropy far more than agape. They arrest heroism far more than inspire it. They teach us that only a special kind of elite class can be heroic, and we have to be vain, delusional, childish or foolish to think we can be like them. They make normal people appear less valuable, powerful, competent, and likeable by contrast. They steal away our power to act righteously, and to assert ourselves when it matters most by elevating such attributes into the level of the superhuman. They make us want their prestige, the affection and respect they receive, their superpowers and levels of excellence, which ironically makes their goodness, and heroism more appealing, when it is less significant or impressive coming from a superhuman, risking less, and facing inferior opposition, with all but narrative certainty of success. — Wosret

Do you know any heros personally? People who fit or come close to your description or are all the examples you cite learned from reading? Normal people can sometimes transcend their normalcy and perform very heroic actions.

Or perhaps the hero, this superhuman, super competent is a figment of our collective imagination. Icons whose role is idealized, and serve as symbolic ends we ought to strive towards.

I would rather look at a failed/broken/flawed hero, like Hamlet. His supernatural power, talking to a ghost, enables him to see the facts behind his father's death. Yet knowing these facts alone is insufficient to cause him to act. His father (the ghost) commands Hamlet to revenge his death with a clear heart, which is a performative challenge that borders on the supernatural.

"But howsoever thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind"

The play is about what it takes for Hamlet to act as a man in good faith with clear conscience, which involves his acting crazy to hide his real craze and to reconcile his actions with his mother.

I find flawed heroes more interesting.

Are those opposed to corporate power's influence in our democracy opposed to the process that resulted in the veto of this bill? Or does the fact that the preferred result was achieved negate the corrupt process that brought about the result? Or, do you think that the process was not corrupt at all and that corporations play an important role in our democratic process by using their influence to get results?

"Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people peaceably … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The role these corporations and others played in the legislative arena can be compared to that of lawyers in the judicial arena. Just as lawyers provide the trier of fact (judge or jury) with points of view on the legal issues pertaining to a case, so do lobbyists provide local, state, and federal policymakers with points of view on public policy issues. Corporate lobbying is a big powerful business in Washington, the fact that in Georgia, these corporations decided to do it without employ of a professional lobbyist does not change the fact that it is a legal form of address.

Capital is the dynamic binding agent that holds our market system together, and keeps it going. The threat of its removal is sufficient to change public policy.

It ought to be interesting to see how North Carolina, with its 'Toilet Law' makes out. Jim Crow redux. North Carolina's attorney general said Tuesday that he would refuse to defend the state's new bathroom law in court.

Yes, you're right. I got them muddled.

The following is based on Bruce Fink's book "Against Understanding, Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key" Fink is a practicing psychoanalyst and well known translator and interpreter of Lacan.

Fink following Lacan divides the issue up into neurosis/psychosis. He indicates that the problems these individuals experience are almost opposite at its most basic level. The neurotic is too ego centered and the psychotics ego is too weak.

Ways to distinguish psychotics:

The neurotic's represses, the psychotic does not repress. Neurotics' unconscious is due to their ability to repress, psychotics have no unconscious dimension. What the neurotic finds too distressing to discuss, does not phase the psychotic at all. The neurotic has slips of the tongue (a way unconscious intrudes on consciousness) all the time, not so with the psychotic, who use language very carefully.

The language of psychotics is very literal, very concrete with very little figurative meanings. They have little use of personal pronouns, they don't get metaphors, irony, nor jokes that depend on figurative understanding. . They attach non-normative meanings to words, 'private' meanings.

Intersubjectively psychotics can't put themselves in someone else's shoes (the lack of empathy) Where neurosis is about the desires of the other, this is not an issue for the psychotic. The psychotic expects that what it desires others desire, what it thinks others think , what it opines others opine.

Yes, I saw the 'My Beautiful Launderette' I don't remember the details very well, but I do recall that I liked it. Daniel Day Lewis was great as a punker. I remember the way they redesigned the run-down laundry, it was fantastic almost surreal update, the christening party was a quite a scene, if I recall correctly. Took place during Margaret Thatcher's time in office, it must have knocked her socks off!

The 7 Mile Bridge does have an abandoned bridge that is no longer has car traffic, but you will see scores of people fishing off it all the time. And, yes there are old train trestles still jutting out into the ocean in areas as you drive along the keys. The train track was destroyed by the 'hurricane of the century' in 1935, 400 people died in the storm. The company didn't have the funds to rebuild so there it still stands, I think it is on the list of historical places.

Thanks re the painting.

Based on the 7 Mile Bridge on Florida Keys, my latest.

This appeared in the March 3, 2016 Daily Mail

French president insists Britain WILL face Brexit 'consequences' as David Cameron has to deny a 'conspiracy' over claims the Calais jungle could be sent to Kent

Francois Hollande claims he doesn't want to scare anyone with his warning
But amid a new scaremongering row, the PM denies there is a 'conspiracy'
France threatened to relocate thousands of migrants from Calais 'Jungle'
French economy minister claimed Brexit would provoke France into move
But Out campaign insists the move has been orchestrated to scare voters

Hollande aims to keep Britian from leaving the EU
Hollande communicates that if Brexit, Hollande's EU will bring consequences that would make Brexit less desirable to Britian than staying in the EU.
Hollande's claim is credible to Britian
...[argument structure based on Nozik's model in SEP]

I think the word "credible" need to be unpacked. Perhaps this is why under Nozik's model, coercion can only be successful... non-successful, attempted coercion is not coercion.

"Well, I assumed heroism had something to do with an act of altruism from the part who is a hero. A hero saves somebody else, like the prince the princess or the damsel in distress, but doesn't do this in order to get merit for himself. If something is quite common, it is that you simply don't have someone seeking to be a hero. The hero isn't someone who brags about what he has done."

The prince always ends up with the damsel...reward enough!

Actually, very difficult topic, I think.

Interesting topic. My first thoughts. There are two types of hero:

1) Those that seek it, which I think may be, at least in part, about legacy. (Christ, et al)
2) Those who must confront circumstances and react to them in ways that can
be described as heroic:
a) person who runs into house on fire to save a child,
b)The person who jumps on a grenade in the foxhole reacts reflexively, not thoughtfully.


But perhaps this is too simple. Our ideas about what constitutes a hero have changed
significantly over the last century, in my opinion. Think about movies (modern
fairy tales) John Wayne, versus Clint Eastwood roles as 'hero'. Michael in the Godfather,
movies. The modern hero is complex. Consider Winston Churchill.

It presents the Republicans with a challenge. They are caught between a rock (whomever Obama nominates as Scalia's replacement) and a hard place ( tie court votes, or the Supreme Court leaving its decision making up to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 9 of 13 were Democratic appointees).

It will also mean that the GOP's focus of attention will be blurred between, holding the party together, winning the election, and seeing to it that Obama's nominee does not get appointed.

If you think the GOP appears to be in chaos now, just wait.

I agree with you last statement. :-|

The only rational assertions about art or love or faith that are appropriate are those that occur within the narratives that these experiences generate. They express a life, being lived, in a certain manner, artistically, lovingly, religiously. If what they say has only to do with a way of life then how can reason encompass them. A scientist can be rational and still believe in god. There are many narratives, none have superiority over the other, in themselves as narratives.

Does art exist, does love exist, does god exist. I think these experiences exist and trying to overlay rationally on them loses their essential characteristics. Their internal consistency or lack thereof, must be experienced from within, not from without.

Doesn't the implication of "what we assert about what is the case, or what is real" not apply to love. How does love, (or art) come under "the rubric of reason", they are, they exist, they are "real" or...

Reason is tyrannical, it dominates our life because it is pragmatic, useful for obtaining what we desire, but I don't think it can encompass all that we experience in life. I think narratives always intersect. The singularities which comprise narratives may interact, change, respond to other discourses. It is only at a meta level that reason comes into discourse. Reason discriminates what makes sense from its opposite, and in that process we lose something.

How can any hierarchical ordering provide adequate explanation of love. Love does not make anything better, but it does make life more intense, it differentiates, we see new connections, which may not be reasonable, but are significant, meaningful in our life. I don't think there is an axiomatic system which can capture "I love you".

'Twisted Road' off Neil's Psychedelic Pill album. ('Let the Good Times Roll')

First time I heard 'Like A Rolling Stone'
I felt that magic and took it home
Gave it a twist and made it mine
But nothing was as good as the very first time
Poetry rolling off his tongue
Like Hank Williams chewing bubble gum
Asking me 'how does it feel'?

I agree with Mikhail Bakhtin:

In the realm of culture outsideness is the most powerful to understanding. It is only in the eyes of another culture that foreign culture reveals itself fully and profoundly... A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning they engage is a kind of dialogue, which surmounts the closedness and one-sidedness of these particular meanings, these cultures ...Such a dialogic encounter of two cultures does not result in a merging or mixing. Each retains its own unity and open totality but they are mutually enriched.


Canada:

The Canadians I work with are very polite. The ones who come down to Florida this time of year are always smiling. The ones I work with are now crying about the decline of their Loonie. They make every nickel scream...and me too sometimes.
There are two official languages in Canada - French and English. The Provence of Quebec is almost like another country (with better food, and they are better dressed).
They tend to export their talent (Neil Young!)
Canadians are more socially conscious and the government has better programs to support its citizens.
Better a health care system who's citizens do not go bankrupt after a couple day visit to a hospital.
In Canada - they do not bear arms. Their crime rate is nill compared to the U.S.
Canada has provinces and territories - not states.
Canadians know more about the U.S. than Americans know about Canada.
Canada is a parliamentary system. There is a Prime Minister of Canada not President. There are 3 main parties. (PC, Liberal and NDP). Premiers of Provinces not Governors
Maternity Leave is government mandated from 17 up to 52 weeks
When people get laid off in Canada- severance packages are significantly greater than their American counterparts. There are no "at will" employees.
Canada is to hockey as the U.S. is to football.

Isn't this taking the metaphysical concept of omniscience and treating it as a logical concept? A category error.

I think any narrative ought to be internally coherent within the bounds of that discourse. So yes, reasonable but reasonable only within sets of beliefs that comprise the narrative, not reasonable from outside of that discourse.

Clifford Geertz defined religion as:

(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."

Of these, only (3) appears to be metaphysical, in the sense of this thread.

Very few philosophers, I am aware of, have ever died for their faith in their metaphysics. Socrates, who could have gone into exile and G. Bruno, who unlike Galileo was burned at the stake (I had a little old, but rhetorically thunderous professor, who said Bruno was an idiot).

I don't think there is much to compare. Tell me how many Atheists have died for their 'faith'.

I just reread a fascinating article by Michael Klare a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil.

He reviews a little of the history of oil, the nations and policies involved. He thinks that oil may stay depressed at least through 2020 and maybe longer, which will change the whole balance of power around in the world. Think of how many national economies have been built and sustained by oil.

Interesting idea, it certain might affect stock picks...many industries had to raise their pricing because oil was over $100 a barrel, now at $33 a barrel, these companies profit margins must be going through the roof....if much of food cost is its transportation cost..then look at grocery chains and other fuel sensitive industries.

Article here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176089/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_look_of_a_badly_oiled_planet/

I wonder what ethical or other argument can hold our actions responsible to future generations. Do we have a duty to the unborn, and if so, is there a limit, our children, their children, their children's children?

BC

Didn't Mao say, "Let a thousand flowers bloom"?

No. He said in 1957:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

And when they came forward with new ideas they were executed.

Here is what I think is an even handed assessment of China's economic bump by Chris Giles, the Financial Times economic editor dated 1/7/2016.