catchup, May 12, 2010

5-12-2010-A majority in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll says Afghanistan is not worth the cost. NYT, A23
--New analysis of a student’s audio recording from the shootings in which four students were killed at Kent State University in 1970 shows that Ohio Natoinal Guard troops received orders to fire into a crowd of unarmed students... NYT A18
--Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook. ... The Diaspora* group was inspired to begin their project after hearing a talk by Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, who described the centralized social network as “spying for free.” –NYT A19
--5-10-2010—Had the calculation been done correctly, Anthem would have needed an average increase in the individual market of only 15%, not the 25% it proposed. NYT A20
--NYRB, May 27, 2010 pp. 53, 56. Mark Lilla: Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, [a new strain of populism] is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. ... They don’t want the rule of the people ... they want to be people without rules.
2003—There were what, 3000 dead? Historically, that’s insignificant. As a US example, 50,000 died at the Battle of Gettysburg. What is significant, as my old profs said, is they struck at the heart of the Empire. In previous conflicts—Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War—the Empire managed to keep the barbarians outside its gates, its borders. In that sense people may look back on 9/11-and I stresss MAY—as the beginning of the great barbarian invasion.—Barbarian Invasions.
413 AD. “So long as it lasts,” they say, “so long as [our country] enjoys material prosperity, and the glory of victorious war, or, better, the security of peace, why should we worry? What concerns us is that we should get richer all the time, to have enough for extravagant spending every day, enough to keep our inferiors in their place. It is all right if the poor serve the rich, so as to get enough to eat and to enjoy a lazy life under their patronage; while the rich make use of the poor to ensure a crowd of hangers-on to minister to their pride... Augustine Bk II. Ch. 20