Imagine being able to sit down on your couch and go anywhere you want. You could go to Paris and walk beneath the Eiffel Tower. You could go to the bottom of the ocean and touch all the strange, wonderful creatures that live there. You could go to Mars and explore its sandy dunes alongside the Curiosity Rover. In this scenario, you can see, do, and be anything you want. All you have to do is put on a headset.
That’s the future of virtual reality, according to Ernest Cline’s cult classic science fiction book Ready Player One. It’s also the future that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to create.
Clown Prince of the Revolution
QuoteThere has, however, been one important change. A new kind of leftist thinker has emerged—one who clothes his revolutionary zeal in a layer of irony, half-dismissing his own impractical idealism as though speaking through the face paint of a clown. If you set out to study in a humanities department at an American university, it won’t be long before you come across the name of Slavoj Žižek, the philosopher who grew up in the comparatively mild regime of Communist Yugoslavia, qualified as a “dissident” during the declining years of Communism in his native Slovenia, but is now making waves as a radical critic of the West, though one whose tongue is always in his cheek.
1,000 True Fans
QuoteTo be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
The Muddled Mystique of Karl Polanyi
LinkThe first problem is that Polanyi sides with extreme, free-market economists who argue that the market is ‘self- adjusting’ or ‘self-regulating’ and always works best when there is no state interference (see claim 2 above).
By contrast, there is a long tradition in (both mainstream and non-mainstream) economics that has shown why markets are not self-regulating and intervention is required. Consider the writings of a multitude of writers including Arthur Pigou, John Maynard Keynes, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. Their reasons include externalities, information problems, transaction costs, insufficient effective demand, and so on. Consequently, markets require some regulation or other intervention to work well.
The second problem is that Polanyi (like many mainstream economists) pays insufficient attention to the fact that markets require institutions such as property, contract law, a legal system of enforcement, regulation of standards and so on. Consequently, as I argue at length in my book Conceptualizing Capitalism, a modern market economy requires a state, to constitute as well as maintain a modern market system.
The third problem is that Polanyi is inconsistent. The fifth observation in the preceding section – making the important point that ‘laissez-faire itself was enforced by the state’ and required regulators ‘constantly on the watch’ to make it work – undermines the second claim that the market is ‘self-adjusting’ or ‘self-regulating’.
The fifth observation is valid and important in my view, but can be strengthened by an appreciation that the state and other institutions are required to constitute, and not simply to regulate, a modern market economy.
The Culture Wars and Evangelical “Evangelism”
LinkChristian activists on both sides are complicit in the demonization of the enemy. According to Hunter, they have “embraced a means to power that seethes with resentment, anger, and bitterness for the injury they believe they have suffered.” Hunter calls this posture “ressentiment,” and it fits the narrative of a declining Christian America. But in resorting to ressentiment, Christians undermine the message of the very gospel they desire to advance. In fact, Hunter says that many evangelical political activists are “functional Nietzscheans.” Both liberal and conservative Christians have become “instrumentalized on behalf of different party structures, jockeying for power.” They seem more animated by the deadly sins than the fruits of the spirit.
Beyond the effects on evangelicals’ souls, it has devastating effects on their Christian witness. In their study of contemporary religion, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam and Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell write that the extraordinary rise of people who affiliate with no religion is due in part to their rejection of its entanglement with politics. Today 20 percent of the population says they have no faith. Putnam and Campbell write, “A growing number of Americans, especially young people, have come to disavow religion. For many, their aversion to religion is rooted in unease with the association between religion and conservative politics. If religion equals Republican, then they have decided that religion is not for them.”
Trump : What You Get In A Nation Bewitched By The False Evangelical Gospel
QuoteEveryone deserves a fair shake, but somewhere along the way, you have to put two eyeballs on what’s in front of you. The truth is, Donald Trump and his political phenomenon are a product of the false Evangelical gospel. The family secrets of American, fundamentalist Christianity are increasingly becoming exposed. In Donald Trump, we have a megaphone of what their Gospel looks like in human, political form.
The Corporate Predator
Link
The nation-state is in decline. It’s being replaced by corporate predators operating at a global level.
Football Manager 2017 Features
VideoCivilization VI — Hands-On GAMEPLAY & In-Depth Analysis!
VideoThe Fury and Failure of Donald Trump
QuoteKeeping up with Trump revelations is exhausting. By late October, he’ll be caught whacking it outside a nunnery. There are not many places left for this thing to go that don’t involve kids or cannibalism. We wait, miserably, for the dong shot.
David Sloan Wilson’s Statement: The Neo-Darwinian Revolution Is Far from Complete
LinkEvery major discipline such as ethology, ecology, paleontology, systematics, development, genetics, population genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology has a separate history that is contemporaneous with the theory of evolution. Model species such as Drosophila were chosen during the early twentieth century because they were easy to culture in the laboratory or because their chromosomes were easy to stain and observe under the microscope. The most pressing questions were often mechanistic in nature, pushing Tinbergen’s other three questions into the background. Who needs to know the nuances of the ecology of Drosophila when you’re trying to work out the basic mechanisms of recombination, the transcription of genes into proteins, and the like?
As mechanistic knowledge increases, then the need to bring in the other questions becomes increasingly important, but integration can require decades and is impeded by a variety of intellectual and sociological factors. If I were to nominate the single most important priority for the biological sciences, it would be to get everyone on the same page with respect to Tinbergen’s four questions.
“Do you want to make sure something sucks really bad for decades? Put the rich wives of hedge fund managers on the board to fix it.”
QuoteDo you want to make sure something sucks really bad for decades? Put the rich wives of hedge fund managers on the board to fix it.
— holly wood (@girlziplocked) October 14, 2016