Claire Berlinksi visited a Marxist Jamboree in Paris (The City Journal):
‘“Oh.” She rearranged her face to look less judgmental.’
Roger Scruton on his experiences in 1968 Paris (behind a paywall at The New Criterion):
‘In the narrow street below my window the students were shouting and smashing. The plate-glass windows of the shops appeared to step back…’
Speaking of The New Criterion, they have a piece on Jeffrey Hart:
‘Lit by an inner illumination, which regularly showed through the glimmer of his blue eyes, he checked his politics at the door and let the lyricism of “books, arts, and manners” lead the way for students.’
Rand Simberg at The New Atlantis on ‘The Return Of The Space Visionaries:’
‘Saganites view the universe as a precious jewel. How beautiful! “Look at it — but don’t touch it!” Tumlinson quips. Space is for scientific inquiry only, and that is best done by investigating it with robots. Later in life Sagan recognized the value of sending humans to other worlds, but as an astrophysicist and planetary scientist, his goals were focused on science, not economic development or settlement.’
Barring revolution, an attractive option for many committed ideologues lies in gathering under the ideals of education, health-care, peace and the environment, becoming institutionalized at taxpayer expense.
Common threads?: ‘Social’ justice is a kind of unclear concept. Ideology ain’t necessarily science. Many adrift in the postmodern humanities are quite hostile to the sciences, living within their own dramas and [even] doing dirt on the arts. A move towards the liberal idealist and rationalist invites the activist and irrational response.
As previously and consistently posted-Thanks to a reader. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.’
Universal wokeness need not be confined to Earth.
I’d like to get ahead of the move towards legitimizing UFO claims in the popular mind.
Workers of the Galaxy Unite!
CLEARLY, alien life (haven’t seen any myself) should be conceptualized as the poor, noble savage kind. These Romantically Primitive oddities could do with some solidarity. I envision studying these proud, native creatures as a space anthropologist, seeking to live and work amongst them as a tribe of distant cosmic relatives.
When the bad colonizers and rapacious corporations come (as they must), I face a harsh choice: Return to my traditional roots, joining my rational secular space captain and his universal peace treaties, or take up arms with the Shining Star Revolutionary Brigade in the worm holes of Rulon 7?
Eat Gakk, muyalino.