Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to BenWilson,
I get the feeling that Nolan's/Ledger's Joker is but one degree of separation from Stanley Milgram.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kracklite,
Worth a separate post, methinks...
The role of universities as "critic and conscience of society" is much ridiculed today... and I think that one should ask why this is so. We see universities pressured to become degree factories, research institutes... but Mammon forbid that the humanities departments start discussing Orwell's examination of how language can be corrupted to serve despotism, because that's just not productive according to some bean counter's calculations, is it? Somehow I do happen to think that that actually does have some social value. If one refuses to understand that, maybe that says more about the person who dismisses it with facile stereotypes...
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Robert Fox,
I think the social value of people going to university and studying literature, philosophy etc is currently a negative value, since the net result is generally a person who is unable to communicate their ideas about art/philosophy/whatever to a non-academic audience
This is a huge generalisation.
And utterly facile.
I have to say, as someone with degrees in both the technical and professional areas, Industrial Design and Architecture and humanities – English lit, I have to agree with Gio: bollocks.
Danyl’s argument represents the most shallow form of utilitarianism – “If it is not of immediate discernible benefit to me, then it is no benefit whatsoever.”
This is otherwise known as solipsism. Maybe philistinism. Perhaps reductionism. Very probably egotism.
to a non-academic audience
Because that is all that matters, of course. The implication is that academia is of no social benefit. Hmm, a point for the anti-intellectualism, perhaps. Careful, Danyl, some common bloke is going to question whether your work is going to give them better caseroles… Then you’ll be in trouble…
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kumara Republic,
On tertiary ed, fees and loans issues aside,
I think that the student fees discussion here has not so much been about the fees themselves, as the fact that the ladder-kicking by Goff was an indicator that he is simply not leadership material, but merely a follower. Placed in the position of a leader, he has simply demonstrated his fundamental, intrinsic inadequacy. Then he was a follower of Douglas and now he's a follower of whatever his latest auger says the chicken entrails decree this week.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Baker vs Straker was just a microcosm of it.
Indeed, an investor who is generally productive contrasted with one who deals in virtual wealth, of the kind that only benefits the dealer - sometimes, under artificially-maintained conditions. Was it Gramsci who spoke of "morbid symptoms" or does plain old "decadence" suffice as a descriptor?
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
And at some stage the government is going to have the balls to put interest back on. Which is going to go back to the end result of people that earn less as a graduate paying more in real terms for their tertiary undergraduate education.
I actually appreciated the student loans brought in by that grinning Thunderbirds puppet Lockwood Smith, because they were the only means by which I could have continued my tertiary education… after Goff had kicked away the ladder he had climbed himself.
And at the moment we have a government – and “opposition” of people who have climbed the ladders of opportunity and then, with crocodile tears flowing in torrents, kicked them away. A real opposition dedicated to social mobility would make sure that they remain fixed in place for perpetuity. It comes down to what one thinks of as being good for society overall, not just now. That requires a vision, a broader scope, not just a sense of what might be tactically sensible and what might not frighten the horses today. I see that Trotter, weathervane that he is, has transferred his allegiance to yet another Golden Boy (and it’s a boy of course), which is symptomatic…
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Islander,
OK, I’ll accept that, and history, I hope will judge him, as I hope history will judge Jimmy Carter, as a cautious person and perhaps therefore moderation provides an example that is necessary when extreme rhetoric is so prevalent and so toxic.
There have been areas in which I have an especial interest in which he has shown an appalling lack of initiative and sheer guts and as a consequence I’ve been concerned that my hand will become permanently fused to my forehead.
Still, OK, considering the nature of political rhetoric in the US these days…
The hyperbolic style of the time holds that he’s a revolutionary Fascist Socialist Jacobite Guelph supporter of the Great Criminal Akhenaten, so it seems laughable that he’s so lukewarm in practice.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
insert rant about how feeble Obama has been on
...everything.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rex Widerstrom,
I lost count of the number of times I let him rant about something, then simply said “Right, but in reality what we’ll do is…
I really don’t intend a Godwin here, but I’m reminded of my readings of WWII history where Hitler would rant on enthusiastically about some new gargantuan superweapon and Albert Speer (Minister of War Production and Armaments) would nod and smile and let development continue for a while before quietly canceling it. He probably prolonged the war by a year at least.
He was a smart guy and it’s a pity that he was on the wrong side.
Sorry, really.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Sacha,
I think that is, by some circumstance of chance and chicken entrails, a somewhat-ostenibly-more-or-less-I-mean-compared-to-the-alternative-sort-of-vaguely-leftish-at-least-according-to-its-brand coalition could emerge in November, it still won’t last past a term, while a disastrous neoliberal alliance would collapse catastrophically in 2014, and that might ensure that a real leftish alliance could emerge and last at least two terms to do something substantive… but then the damage that could be done post-2011 doesn’t bear contemplating…