Big-League Bluster. There’s an old joke about Soviet Russia that you might have heard, where you reverse the two parts of a sentence: “In America, you break law.
In Soviet Russia, law breaks you.” The joke is an example of chiasmus, a rhetorical form that repeats words or clauses in transposed order—but this particular version has a name: the “Russian Reversal.” In the United States, the Russian Reversal flourished during the Cold War. Bob Hope, for example, told a form of it at the 1958 Oscars, reminding his audience that though there was a television in his Moscow hotel room, “it watches you.” The comedian Yakov Smirnoff popularized it in the 1980s, hawking Miller Lite with the slogan “In Russia, Party always finds you.”
It’s easy to see how the Russian Reversal and Cold War–era Soviet politics relate: the joke turns a subject into an object—something, or, more tellingly, someone, who does not act but is acted upon. Is $60 million really not enough for the Obamas? Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future. Are We Humans Terminally Insane or Just Waking Up? By Paul Levy Source: Reality Sandwich The following article was originally published on Awaken in the Dream.
“The world today hangs by a thin thread, and that thread is the psyche of man.”– C. G. A clinical psychologist explains how Ayn Rand seduced young minds and helped turn the US into a selfish nation. The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness.
Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961. America Is More Religious Than Other Countries Due To Its Proximity To The Gates Of Hell. Looking beyond "America First": war, politics, and human community. The polarity between self-assertive and integrative tendencies is characteristic of all human life on earth, even including the life of separate states in world politics.
In this connection, regrettably, President Donald Trump’s conspicuously proud emphasis on “America First” represents an unambiguous preference for the former. In time, this unfortunate preference could subvert any still remaining chances for wider human community, residual opportunities for cooperation now so desperately needed to prevent some “final” form of global catastrophe. The president’s core mantra is inherently crude and injurious. Why communism survived for so long. Any reader looking to Service for answers to these questions will be disappointed.
The author’s 500 pages reflect an impressive familiarity with a vast literature as well as access to newly available archives, but in his attempts to explain the successes of communism (as well as its failures) he tends to fall back on familiar prejudices. Though he has a prestigious academic post at Oxford, his book reads more like an extended Daily Mail feature than a scholarly analysis, more like a GCSE coursebook than an academic study. Service’s clunking metaphors are well suited to his platitudinous theorising. The Soviet Communist Party, once ‘a cork bobbing on a sea of indifference’, later found itself ‘a ship floating on an ocean of popular hostility’. It seems a pity that neither the cork nor the ship were, ‘like conch shells swept on to the beach after a storm at sea’, listened to by radical anti-capitalist groups.
Another Startling Verdict for Forensic Science. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced this week that the Justice Department is closing a federal agency formed four years ago that was designed to instill more scientific rigor in the forensic sciences.
The National Commission on Forensic Science had been working on best practices for crime labs and had been funding research to assess reliability in whole fields of evidence. Why Counterterrorism Scholars Should Overhaul Their Research. Instead of discussing how discontented people from specific sects resort to Islamist terrorism, counterterrorism scholars should move on to study the nature of violence itself.
An ISIS militant flies the black flag in Raqqa, Iraq. Credit: Reuters/Files Since 9/11, there has been a tremendous growth in terrorism-related research and related activities, with vast output through publications in mainstream and academic media, and seminars and conferences. The aim has been to develop a discourse that tries to understand the problem and then solve it. John Gray: Dear Google, please solve death. “Dead of the world, unite!”
Appearing in a manifesto published in Petrograd in 1920, this arresting slogan encapsulated the philosophy of cosmism, which promoted interplanetary exploration as a path to immortality. Mixing scientific futurism with ideas derived from the 19th-century Russian Orthodox mystic Nikolai Fedorov, cosmism was summed up by the rocket engineer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) as “the perfection of man and the liquidation of all imperfect forms of life”. Liberated from the Earth, human beings would become pure ether, bodiless and undying. The belief that death could be conquered by science was embraced by a renegade section of the Bolshevik intelligentsia, including Maxim Gorky, and informed the decision to immortalise Lenin’s cadaver – first by refrigeration, in an early experiment in what would later be called “cryonic suspension”, and then by embalming when freezing failed. This is Sweden: how a democracy responds to terror.
TERROR screamed the Expressen headline about the terror attack in the heart of Stockholm.
The other national tabloid, Aftonbladet said 14.53 Sverige under Attack: 14.53 being Friday April 7, when a hijacked beer truck became an improvised terror weapon, careening along Drottninggatan, Stockholm’s central pedestrian mall, killing 4 and wounding many more. An old story now in Europe, but no one here expected an attack like this to hit Sweden. But the inside pages of both tabloids — one right-wing, one left-wing — told the story of a single country coming together, saying: this is how a functioning democracy meets a terror attack. My wife and I learned of the attack just after it happened last Friday, when the phone rang. The United Passenger Video Statements Are Absurd. As soon as video emerged of Chicago police forcibly removing a 69-year-old man from his seat on a United Airlines flight, the Internet's outrage machine kicked into high gear.
The man was bloodied in the incident; he seemed disoriented, perhaps in a state of shock or suffering from trauma. The Origins of Overprotective Parenting. Theconversation. Management at Pobeda Airlines, the Russian low fare subsidiary of Aeroflot, has responded to a spate of violent attacks on staff by training staff in the martial art of Sambo. The latest attack took place in February at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow was caught on CCTV and shows a passenger who – having missed his flight and having been refused a refund – throws a series of punches at a customer service manager. An airline spokesperson said the airline would train staff in the Russian martial art so that they are better able to deal with disgruntled passengers. Pobeda is not the first airline to adopt this policy – it appears to be a wider industry approach to dealing with rising levels of violent customer behaviour towards their staff.
Hong Kong Airlines and its low fares’ subsidiary, Hong Kong Express, have trained their staff in kung fu. There are very different ways of seeing this policy. The low cost model. Why Clean-Cut Comics Are Cleaning Up. Working a room of 6,000 doctors and their families at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Florida, dapper comedian Dan Nainan is breaking out his best material — and every bit of it is G-rated. “People always tell me, ‘Your dad is from India and your mom is from Japan — so that makes you half-Asian!’
Asia's New Military Hub: Rivals at Home, Partners Here. Walk down the streets of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa these days and don’t be surprised if you hear certain pleasantries from taxi drivers and vendors: Ni hao, sayonara and hwan-yeong are all becoming increasingly common. More Chinese, Japanese and Korean workers are coming into this strategic area as they begin to camp out far from home for the first time with permanent military facilities. Rivals at home, where some of their East Asian governments act like enemies, they’re working together a lot better here. This presents the United States, still the dominant foreign military power in the region, with enticing possibilities. Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on How Our Certitudes Keep Us Small and the Generative Power of Not-Knowing.
Why Iceland Doesn't Have an Alt-Right Problem - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world. With the recent rise to prominence of right-wing populist parties across Europe, it’s refreshing that Iceland has remained largely immune to such nationalistic rhetoric. On the continent, figures like Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands are capitalizing on what political scientists are calling a third wave of European populism that began after the international financial crisis of 2008. These parties are characterized by their anti-immigrant, and specifically, anti-Muslim sentiments. They fashion themselves the “protectors” of their homelands’ traditional culture against cosmopolitan globalism. Yet, tiny Iceland has resisted this dirty brand of politics because of the rise of social movements that challenged the power structure of the Icelandic political establishment after the financial crisis of 2008.
How to Pick Up the Pieces When Everything Falls Apart. “I never saw it coming. Maybe I was blind or working too hard to see what was going on in front of me. How could she have been having an affair for two years? Mexicans Who Help Build Donald Trump's Wall Are 'Traitors,' Top Archdiocese Says. Winnicott on creativity and living creatively. Mitochondrial replacement techniques and Mexico. The birth of the the first child after a mitochondrial replacement technique has raised questions about the legality of such procedure. Rules of Interpretation. Rules of Interpretation. Log In - New York Times. Log In. Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? Flipboard on Flipboard.
Theconversation. The risk of thermonuclear war has rarely been greater. But despite the growing threat, the general public are less prepared than they ever have been to cope with an attack. With Trump in the White house, Putin in the Kremlin, North Korea testing ballistic missiles and the perilous state of military security, nuclear war is a real possibility. Can Entrepreneurs Learn Something About ‘Disruption’ From Trump? Why Men Don't Have to Like Talking About Sports. This waitress surprised a deaf man by taking his order in sign language. Ex-Westboro Member Reveals What Growing Up In Hate Group Was Like. Rep. Jim Himes Masterfully Handles Tucker Carlson's Defense Of Trump's Wiretap Lies. <a class="icopyright-article-tools-noscript" href=" target="_blank" title="Main menu of all reuse options"><img height="25" width="27" border="0" align="bottom" alt="[Reuse options]" src=" Click here for reuse options!
MITP on Nautilus: The Outer Limits of Reason. Physicstoday.scitation. Paul Feyerabend and the debate over the philosophy of science. Paul Feyerabend (born 13 January 1924, died 11 February 1994) is best-known for his contributions to the philosophy of science, which is somewhat ironic because, I suspect, he wouldn’t have thought of himself as a philosopher of science.
Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true. Common sense tells us that only living things have an inner life. Consolation Prizes. Theconversation. The ideal of authenticity. We tested Apple's Siri, Amazon Echo's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Google Home to see which personal assistant bots stand up for themselves in the face of sexual harassment — Quartz. Scenario from The Best Defense. Originalism’s Constitutional Imaginary – Guernica. Why some neuroscientists call consciousness "the c-word" There’s a showdown coming between Trump and the ‘deep state’ — and none of the outcomes are good. Trump Just Gave the Best Press Conference Since Clinton-Lewinski Days. Why I Hate Barstools and You Should, Too. Winston Churchill on Aliens: 1939 Essay Discovered. You Are Not the Majority. Earth - Your face is probably more primitive than a Neanderthal's.
On Science, the Left Has Its Own "Alternative Facts" JCS chairman’s diary reveals top-level deliberations from 1971. To Libya and Back: Inside a Stealth Bomber Strike Against ISIS. Atlasobscura. There may be an antidote to politically motivated reasoning. And it’s wonderfully simple. Population will soon hit 8 billion. Here’s why that scares people. Is a mission to Mars morally defensible given today’s real needs? What We Can Learn From Oklahoma City Bombing in Age of Trump - Rolling Stone. Three Presidents Who Stiffed the Working Class. Cat Marnell on Drugs, New Memoir, Coming Back After Rehab - Rolling Stone. William Hartung: Investing in the military (and little else) Mass incarceration and the perfect socio-economic storm. The Most Innovative Mayor in America? Relatively Interesting Controversial 21st Century Philosophers - Relatively Interesting. Kengo Kuma: "I feel embarrassed by some of my buildings" Living in Dangerous Times. Theconversation.
The Race to Weaponize Empathy. Has India seen a foreign policy reset under Narendra Modi? James Comey's Meeting with House Democrats About Russia Is a Mysery. Munk Debates - Progress. The sound of lotus blossoming (global warming part 1) Colour Constancy and the Mind-Independence of Colour – The Brains Blog. Has Hollywood lost touch with American values? Popular Show "Breaking the Set" Listed as One of the Justifications for Russia Punishment. Someone Is Rewriting Trump’s Tweets Like A Grown-Up, And He Could Learn From It. Groundbreaking UFO Video Just Released By Chilean Navy. ‘You guys are a f*ckin’ joke’: The internet rips WikiLeaks for whining about leaked report on Russian hacks. 12-simple-ways-you-can-build-positive-attitude. Oliver Stone's Depressing Year-End Take on US-Russian Relations. Ignored: Russia's Legitimate Nuclear Fears and How US' Provocative Nuclear Strategies Could Lead to Armageddon.
Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us From Fake News. The Unexpected Sign You Are A Good Conversationalist. A Highly Valued Personality Trait That Sadly Increases The Risk of Suicide. Something About This Russia Story Stinks - Rolling Stone. Obama Just Signed off on a Shadowy New 'Anti-Propaganda' Center That Will Be Handed Over to Trump. Teen Vogue editor receiving rape threats after calling Fox host ‘a partisan hack’ A Man in California Is Fighting a Caffeine DUI, and the State Won't Back Down. Grandma Hangs On To Spend One Last Christmas With Nursing Home Staff. Top ten developments in international law in 2016.
Georgia Cop: Let Me Fly Confederate Flag... or Else. Silicon Valley has fallen. Donald Trump Wins Electoral College Vote, Becoming 45th President - We Are Terrified of the Truth. Culture - Why Children of Men has never been as shocking as it is now. The Vampire Squid Occupies Trump's White House - Rolling Stone. “Not Sending Their Best”: World Map of IQ Drop Due to Immigration. Log In. Trump, the Dragon, and the Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis. How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler. James Mattis Quotes - The Monks of War, a James Mattis Biography.