Rome is burning

For those of you who like to watch the decline of civilizations, I think that we have front row seats to a slightly less sexy Berlin Wall de(con)struction (though with far less immediacy, imagery or baaaadddddd music).

What caffeine fuelled apophenia am I babbling about this fair morn? Well, the call to re-consider the almighty U.S. dollar as the world's key reserve currency.

To paraphrase an advertorial 'its not happening overnight. But it is happening.'

Best Book Review Ever

I've always admired AC Grayling, but this book review of his takes the cake.

Some choice excerpts:

It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible, like Dissent over Descent, the latest book from Steve Fuller, are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism.

And in the next paragraph:

[...] at the end of these nearly 300 pages of wasted forest he tells us what science needs in order to justify its continuation (oh dear, poor science, eh?) and what Intelligent Design, a theory he defended before a US Federal Court in the 2005 Dover Trial, needs to “realise its full potential in the public debate” – that is: how a theory trying to bend the facts to prove its antecedent conviction that Fred (or any arbitrary and itself unexplained conscious agency) designed and created the world and all in it, can attain its full potential in the public debate. This, note, from a professor at a proper British university. Well: if this is not proof of the efficacy of Jesuit educational methods, nothing is.

It just gets better from there.

Of course, it gets particularly interesting when Steve Fuller responds.

I wish I could repay AC Grayling’s compliment by naming an exotic mental pathology after him, but regrettably his review of Dissent over Descent displays disorders of a much more mundane kind: he has merely failed to read the book properly and does not know what he is talking about.

And then Grayling has the last word:

Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did.

...OR IS IT?






(Thanks to OTF Wank for drawing my attention to this.)

Failure of democracy or evidence of its success?

For those of you following the current US economy, no doubt you are enthralled by the failure of the US$700 Billion bailout of their economy. The proposed emergency legislation was canned last night, in a decision of 205 for and 228 against. ( Interestingly, the party split was 33% Republicans in favour and 60% Democrats in favour. Despite this, however, some lay the failure of the rescue plan at the feet of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who is a Democrat.)

Bipartisanship aside, it seems that one of the decisive factors was the looming election, and politician's fears of supporting an unpopular policy. “People’s re-elections played into this to a much greater degree than I would have imagined”

So this raises the question, is this evidence of a mortal failure of the model of representative democracy or a rallying cry, screaming that it is very much alive and kicking? On one hand, this may show that a politician's chief concern is re-election: Blind to all other considerations until this condition has been met, politicians are willing to sacrifice anything to maintain personal power. On the other hand, however, this may show that politicians are deeply receptive to the fears and wishes of their constituents, and won't be bullied into supporting something that they don't believe, simply because their party leaders command them.

So what does it all mean? Are we watching the collapse of representative democracy as we know it, or witness to its phoenix-like rise from the ashes?

As the US economy shits itself, we look on in confusion...

I am not an economist. I know nothing of economic theory, and have a five year-old's grasp of economic practice. Yet even a five year-old can see that there is something hideously wrong with the US/World economic system. Some of the big thingies* in the US have encountered troubles - Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie May. Now the US federal reserve has bailed out the insurance company American Insurance Group with a loan of US $86 Billion.

It seems that the so called 'sub-prime' crisis is tearing apart the fabric that holds together modern economic theory. Fascinating to watch, unless of course, your house is being repossessed, your job cancelled, or your food is too expensive to buy for eating. No-one, it seems, knows how long this recession will last, what the long term effects may be, or if there even is a recession at all. (In The Doubter's Companion John Raulston Saul argues that the world economies have been in a depression since 1973 (pp 95-99). Coincidentally, the same year that Black Sabbath released Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. But I don't think you can blame them entirely). I am sure that there are a stack of tricksy economic sleight of hand tricks to pull, and like rabbits out of a hat, we will all emerge unscathed and better for the experience.
One idea, that is so simple that it must surely be wrong is put by former US senator in a NY Times article today: “We’ve been consuming more than we’ve been producing. We’ve been spending more than we’ve been earning...It’s been a big holiday.”

Governments in the developed world have followed the mantra of privatisation to the letter, and privatised debt, shifting debt from a public responsibility onto the backs of 'working families'. Now, the US government is throwing money hand over fist to prevent full scale collapse of the US and world economy. For years, free market advocates have been voiciferously opposed to the state interfering in economic matters. Should we now demand that the state remove its hand and let the world economy collapse, or will the invisible hand come to the aid of struggling economists to explain why the system is not working?

As should now be entirely clear, I don't really know what I am talking about, and have no idea of what I want to say. But when US $86 Billion is thrown at something, I wonder what in hell is going on, and could that money be spent elsewhere?


* Again as the use of the technical term 'thingies' shows, I am not an economist. I don't know who these Freddie Mac or Fannie May people are, why they had a fight and are now not talking. And I don't know who let the Stearn Bear into the US stock exchange, causing a Bear-ish market. I think there is some gun related freedoms going on here: as some of you know I fully believe the Second Amendment and the right to arm bears, but maybe not in a crowded stock exchange. But more on that some other time.

You learn something new every day.

Apparently dinosaurs helped to build the pyramids!

More stupid:

“When man landed on the moon (in 1969), they expected the landing module to sink in a deep layer of dust. But the layer was only a few inches deep. This proves that the universe is still young!”

Actually the best bit is that the Maltese education director is named "Dr. Borg".