I wish I could add to what Ruta already said; I'm powerless.
It is easy for me to grieve over this place; after all, you were (are?)here.
I would like to give an 'informative' answer. But according to information theory, the level of information conveyed is inversely related to the amount of uncertainty that exists in the system.
Information then becomes more of a commodity in a situation where we lack it- and anything that causes cognitive dissonance becomes, epistemically, more costly to us, because it amounts to throwing aside the straws we clutch in a storm, and it is easier to just ignore it. Obama presents himself as a cipher, an unbiased individual, and a lot of people were (are) invested in that.
The self-presentation of the unbiased, nonpartisan, 'rational' being may be fraying now, and information that contradicts this may cause less costly cognitive dissonance.
In more diachronic mode, 'information,' like Hopkins' favorite term 'inscape,' or Joyce's 'agenbite of inwit,' is a very Augustinian and Scholastic term. Claude Shannon and co. in trying to make a digital translation of the analog term may be losing some of the info.
http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_mad1668&person=mad
It is amazingly good reading.
]]>"It is the idea of tradition as a political concept which was central to the ideological debate between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, the latter being one of the best-known exponents of the French Revolution. It was Paine who declared: Let the dead bury their dead. It was Burke, on the other hand, who argued that the dead should have the right of suffrage. We should in effect give them the vote in deciding on the ordering of our government and society because of the wisdom which we may gain from the ideas which they had derived from their experience."
I guess Paine is an easier target, rhetorically, than Thomas Jefferson, especially if Kristol wants to make the (false) claim that Burkeanism (or his understanding of it) was the 'deciding vote' until 1950.
Because Jefferson enunciates the same principle that Kristol attributes to Paine:
]]>I've been OK, though this place has been kinda glum.
The joy of this place was its random, cross-purposes character. It was addictive.
Even its ending (if it is ending) seems haphazard. I loved Bwak's last post for that very reason.
Are those Sour Grapes ?
]]>1. Googling "myTPM readytoblowagasket" [for example] and clicking on my blog page
2. Scrolling down my blog page and clicking on the "How to use myTPM" link (which is in the center column, just below "Favorites")
3. Clicking the word "Login" at the top of that page.
Why did this guy let Wordsworth walk all over him? (of course I know why.)
Also, y'know...flooding is a topic that nobody really wants to talk about. Raises too many troubling questions here in the US, apart from the religious sickness.
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