Profiles

[Phoenix]

I assure you that no such thing has occurred. We were over-budget for new decorum and my personal wet bar, so we allocated some funds from the coffee committee and scaled back you 401Ks and health benefit6s. I am now proud to announce that we have finished the renovations with a surplus, which we will invest in improving local infrastructure by replacing the lamp in my office with a new halogen-based one, which should allow an 12-percent increase in the time I scan spend in that office without getting a headache. I predict that this will help boost our overall efficiency and pave the way to a shining new year for the Corporation. To celebrate this success, we will be throwing an Eegees party! Donations will be accepted in this tin *places tin on desk* and any remaining funds that need be raised will be deducted from your holiday bonuses.

When is the party?

 

[JBeukema]

I assure you that no such thing has occurred. We were over-budget for new decorum and my personal wet bar, so we allocated some funds from the coffee committee and scaled back you 401Ks and health benefit6s. I am now proud to announce that we have finished the renovations with a surplus, which we will invest in improving local infrastructure by replacing the lamp in my office with a new halogen-based one, which should allow an 12-percent increase in the time I scan spend in that office without getting a headache. I predict that this will help boost our overall efficiency and pave the way to a shining new year for the Corporation. To celebrate this success, we will be throwing an Eegees party! Donations will be accepted in this tin *places tin on desk* and any remaining funds that need be raised will be deducted from your holiday bonuses.

When is the party?

How soon can you have your place ready?

 

[Phoenix]

How soon can you have your place ready?

Depends on how clean it has to be.

Of course, it will be trashed after the party anyway, right? So why should I bother making it look really good ahead of time?

 

[JBeukema]

Alright! Party at eve's place!


Here, i got drinks. The blue one with the funny taste is yours... It's a... er... um ... blue... lullaby...

 

[Phoenix]

Alright! Party at eve's place!


Here, i got drinks. The blue one with the funny taste is yours... It's a... er... um ... blue... lullaby...

"The funny taste"?

Why do I believe I should proceed cautiously here?

 

[JBeukema]

*looks up from unbuckling pants*


hush, enjoy your blue Lullaby...


and lock the door...

 

[Phoenix]

*looks up from unbuckling pants*


hush, enjoy your blue Lullaby...


and lock the door...

Fix yer pants.

I'm not that out of it yet.

 

[Agnapostate]

I studied with Howard Zinn, AG.

The word anarchist was never mentioned.

He might believe in that theory of yours, but he never mentioned it.

Mostly he spent his time trying to give us another lense to look at American history through.

It wouldn't have been fitting for him to have been accused of attempting to indoctrinate students with his political ideology, I would imagine. The usage of A People's History of the United States as a course textbook around the country is already considered suspect by many of his critics, and his dismissal from Spelman was of course related to his "excessive" civil rights activism. But yes, Zinn indicated his anarchism to the cursory analyst through his play Emma (based on the life of Emma Goldman), which was first performed in 1976. However, as definitively stated in this interview:

I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization...I think what lies beyond the nation states is a world without national boundaries, but also with people organized. But not organized as nations, but people organized as groups, as collectives, without national and any kind of boundaries. Without any kind of borders, passports, visas. None of that! Of collectives of different sizes, depending on the function of the collective, having contacts with one another.

He was a Stalinist in the late 1930's or so, but he's maintained an anarchist philosophy for many years at this point.

Chomsky, OTOH, did talk about socialist kabutzes in the one seminar I had with him, but the word anarchist was also never mentioned.

I don't know if I'd label the kibbutzim "socialist"; their nature as relatively isolated collectives runs the risk of us excessively reducing matters to the individual economic agent by doing so. But I digress...Chomsky actually lived on a kibbutz for some time in...1953, if memory serves...and remarked "the Israeli Kibbutzim...for a long period really were constructed on anarchist principles: that is, self-management, direct worker control, integration of agriculture, industry, service, personal participation in self-management." (The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism) I think it's fairly well-known that Chomsky's an anarchist and libertarian socialist; as he also remarked:

I was attracted to anarchism as a young teenager, as soon as I began to think about the world beyond a pretty narrow range, and haven't seen much reason to revise those early attitudes since. I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantles, to increase the scope of human freedom.

(Anarchism, Marxism, and Hope for the Future)

You sure these guys advocated this communal anarchist solution, or have they merely noted that these systems once existed in Spain?

Truthfully, I'd wondered why you'd retained relatively typical misconceptions about anarchism (not that you're to blame for that) while simultaneously speaking of the accuracy of Chomsky.

It actually says a lot about you. Wisdom is not just book knowledge, no matter who you quote nor how you try and pretend it is so...Most of what you will learn it life doesn't come from books. You just have to be there.

This would be a relevant point had I claimed otherwise...or were it anything other than a standard cliched platitude. Unfortunately, neither is the case. Firstly, I've always attempted to emphasize the insufficiency of "book learning" for creating a well-formed character or wealth of true knowledge or wisdom, which I've criticized as one of the deficiencies of the current school system. I'm with John Taylor Gatto here:

I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks' time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you'll actually cut them out and set them up. You'll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned how to build a house there for about the cost of one month's tuition in public school.

Secondly, that isn't relevant to comments made on political topics here, and only has the capacity to manifest itself in the form of an argumentum ad hominem, seemingly. Experience is of course a source of knowledge (though it's most commonly a source of anecdotal "evidence" that's insufficient for thorough analysis), but it's merely a means to an end. "Book learning" can be a similarly sufficient or greater means to the same end when it's related to political knowledge here.

I suppose in your case, every dark cloud has its silver lining. It's your lack of experience and emotional immaturity that weighed in on your side where your age is concerned.

Nope. Emotional immaturity is best indicated by the utilization of unqualified assertions about the character or identity of others in an effort to avoid reference to an argument...all because of ignorance of the repetitive legacy of considering certain concepts or ideas unworthy of even basic consideration because of their radicalism only to have them accepted as socially acceptable a few generations later. But the issue's irrelevant anyway; nothing needed to "weigh in on my side."

 

[iagainsti]

*looks up from unbuckling pants*


hush, enjoy your blue Lullaby...


and lock the door...

I think I might just stay in and watch a movie tonight...you guys enjoy the party!

 

[Gunny]

Nope. People's inherent qualities span a widely ranging spectrum of morality. People are inherently self-interested; this promotes behaviors that will maximize self-interest and possess varying degrees of moral or immoral elements.

I have to agree with that...and because of my inherent self-interest, I demand that the conversation revert back to my awesome suggestion.

Welcome to USMB!! You'll find, if you stick around long enough, that often when a thread gets voluminous, there will always be someone who will demand that you stick to the thread topic. Problem is, by that time, nobody can even remember what it was! It's just the nature of the beast.

HEY! Stick to the topic, dammit.

 

[Gunny]

I have to agree with that...and because of my inherent self-interest, I demand that the conversation revert back to my awesome suggestion.

Which was?

Free coffee in the lunch room? I second that... Everyone will give .5% percent of their paychecks to organize an oversight committee to out this into action, purchase and maintain the coffee supply and oversee the distribution of this new free coffee. Fret not about the surplus- I'm sure we'll find a way to spend it...

Huh...somebody stole our coffee tin collecting "donations" for the free coffee. Imagine that.

AND I have spent 5 times the amount of money in the tin to support the homeless cats in my neighborhood. Hope you don't mind, but coffee dues will have to be increased.

 

[Phoenix]

I have to agree with that...and because of my inherent self-interest, I demand that the conversation revert back to my awesome suggestion.

Welcome to USMB!! You'll find, if you stick around long enough, that often when a thread gets voluminous, there will always be someone who will demand that you stick to the thread topic. Problem is, by that time, nobody can even remember what it was! It's just the nature of the beast.

HEY! Stick to the topic, dammit.

Yeah - what he said.



I just hate it when people derail threads ...

 

[Gunny]

I assure you that no such thing has occurred. We were over-budget for new decorum and my personal wet bar, so we allocated some funds from the coffee committee and scaled back you 401Ks and health benefit6s. I am now proud to announce that we have finished the renovations with a surplus, which we will invest in improving local infrastructure by replacing the lamp in my office with a new halogen-based one, which should allow an 12-percent increase in the time I scan spend in that office without getting a headache. I predict that this will help boost our overall efficiency and pave the way to a shining new year for the Corporation. To celebrate this success, we will be throwing an Eegees party! Donations will be accepted in this tin *places tin on desk* and any remaining funds that need be raised will be deducted from your holiday bonuses.

When is the party?

How soon can you have your place ready?

How soon can you have your place ready?

Depends on how clean it has to be.

Of course, it will be trashed after the party anyway, right? So why should I bother making it look really good ahead of time?

Alright! Party at eve's place!


Here, i got drinks. The blue one with the funny taste is yours... It's a... er... um ... blue... lullaby...

Great. There goes more coffee tin money to spruce up Eve's place for official social functions.

 

[Phoenix]

Great. There goes more coffee tin money to spruce up Eve's place for official social functions.

C'mon over Gunny. It's always fun at Eve's place.

 

[JBeukema]

AND I have spent 5 times the amount of money in the tin to support the homeless cats in my neighborhood. Hope you don't mind, but coffee dues will have to be increased.

Are they FDA approved?

 

[Gunny]

Great. There goes more coffee tin money to spruce up Eve's place for official social functions.

C'mon over Gunny. It's always fun at Eve's place.

Better watch out. Gunny's flying solo once again. But I assure you my jeans are affixed quit appropriately around my person where they belong.

Wanna shot? Only the cheap redneck shit for Gunny ....

 

[JBeukema]

Gunny and his redeye

 

[Phoenix]

Better watch out. Gunny's flying solo once again. But I assure you my jeans are affixed quit appropriately around my person where they belong.

Wanna shot? Only the cheap redneck shit for Gunny ....

Well, you're one up on JB ... but I told him to fix his drawers.


I haven't done a shot of anything in about 10 or 12 years. The stuff you throw back is probably too potent for me. I'm a lightweight.

 

[JBeukema]

this stuff is really smooth and yummy

 

[JBeukema]

We could make eve some cream drinks...

or just giver her the bottle of creme' de cocoa