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classes in America, Glenn Beck, Higgs boson, physics, racism, redistribution of wealth, right wing wingnuts, science, Supersymmetry, teabaggers, theoretical physics
I used to think of myself as being on the cutting edge, or close, when it came to technology. The key word is used. We are as cave dwellers today. We have yet to have a cell phone. We have no lap top, no high-speed internet, no iTunes, no plasma screens, no flat screens of anything. Mostly its finances. And location. Here in the dark hole of “the country” we spend most of our time crying out to a modern world, “can you hear me now?”
Well, we decided to discard our old phone. The static was becoming unbearable. We now have two phones, both mobile, with their little “homes” in the office and in the kitchen.
Since the Contrarian takes care of all things DVR and computer, he decided that I should become the savant where it comes to the phone. He plugged all the stuff in. That’s the wire stuff. I do the wireless stuff, and let me tell you, it’s every bit as real as cords that trip and coil around your throat.
I have managed, as of now, to program the date and time. They do not make the manuals very “instructive” if you know what I mean. Instructive I guess if you are used to that sort of thing. Not so much if the last thing you programmed was a tape cassette recorder. Wish me luck!
We got the damn fool phone on a shopping excursion yesterday. I”m back to my monthly menu planning. Just ask me what we are having say, March 16. I can tell ya. Impressed?
I got my hair cut again, finally. I swear, next time I’m going to tackle the hairdresser, brandish a curling iron, and demand strict attention. All I get is ” oh, yes I see, uhuh, no problem.” Then they blithely go about the business of doing exactly what they decided was “right for me” all along.
Speaking of hair, mine grows at lightening speed. I’m always mildly surprised when the mail doesn’t bring a request by the local university to make me the subject of a study on hair growth. But so far, the postman has only brought bills.
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The Q Blog, has a most interesting entry today about racism’s tenacious hold on America. It relates to an incident that I was utterly unaware of dating back to the Mayor Daley years of the 60’s and Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s been my contention here certainly, that a good deal of criticism of Obama is located in deep-seated and deeply denied racism. Certainly the rabid right simply drips bigotry in their refusal to use the word African-American, their denigration of all African-American groups such as the NAACP and others as “racist” institutions playing the “race card,” and their heaping on of vitriol against all African-American leaders, as fanning the flames of divisiveness in their “race baiting.”
They cover this by a unitive demand for “equality” meaning no affirmative action, and applaud those that set up various means to “help the beleaguered white man.” A group in Texas has been formed to seek out white males for “scholarships to college.” Their name starts out as “The Former Majority”. In Texas, Latinos and African-Americans now outnumber whites in the state. Of course if Obama would do something about “illegals” this would not be the case, but of course that is “his plan.” Yeah, they aren’t racist at all.
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“Wake up a little Susy!” the Everly Brothers cried. And theoretical physicists are pretty much in chorus. SUSY, standing for SuperSymmetry, is the current love child of the discipline, making all other things “work” in the rarefied world of subatomic tinkering. Problem is the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland has yet to find the Higgs Boson, so-called “God particle”. Things are gearing up for another go at it at LHC, but if it’s still not found, major revamping of the popular theory may be in order.
I know it keeps me up at night worrying. Sure it does you as well.
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Republicans literally spit out of the phrase “redistribution of wealth” as if it were some evil. Obama was accused of this following the Joe Plumber meeting of this, and it became the rallying cry which ginned up the wacko right. COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, and any other OTHERISM!!!
A Harvard business professor polled Americans on what they think is the income distribution in America, what it actually is, and where Americans feel it should be. Darned if Americans don’t believe in redistribution of wealth, and darned if they think things are more equitable than they really are! Take a look at the charts, the numbers are truly staggering. Oh you idiot teabaggers, if only you could READ!
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Propagandee, over at Urantia Sojourn, has a really fun look at Glenn Beck through the “eyes” of deceased historian Richard Hofstadter. The parallels between the extreme right-wing that Hofstadter was talking about in 1964, are strikingly similar. Read it and see if you don’t immediately see the shadow of Beckian insanity? I suggests we might all benefit from picking up a copy of Hofstadter’s work, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Look for it in the archives of Harper’s. There’s a lot more here, so please link up to this one. It’s a bookmark, and source of further reading.
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As to updates on all the other major stories we’ve been talking about: Things remain all screwed up.
Related Articles
- Why The Left Lost It (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
- Miles Mogulescu: The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Its Past, Present and Future (huffingtonpost.com)
- Anti-intellectualism and Wine (fermentation.typepad.com)
- Americans HEART conspiracies (politico.com)
Existential Ennui 