January 30, 2012
January 30, 2012
Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves.
The power of questioning -- not simply believing -- has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it. ***
TECHNICAL PROBLEM: We have not been able to fix our RSS Feed problem. The Tech Support department at Pair.com, which hosts our Web site, refused to help. Sean M. Burke, who created the RSS Feed, is behaving so erratically that he cannot be trusted to take control of our Web site. No one else has volunteered to help. Gilles d'Aymery is a publisher, a co-editor, a writer, and a (clean) HTML formatter, but unfortunately, he is not a UNIX programmer. Accordingly, all links to the non-functioning RSS Feed have been deleted on the front page. We apologize for the inconvenience. Anyone who used the RSS Feed (some 2,000 of you) can send us an e-mail and we will add your address to our bi-weekly distribution list. We hope we can find a way to create a new RSS Feed, but it will take some time. Sorry again.
Note from the Editors:
A recent study on children in the U.K. showed that those with low intelligence were more likely to become social conservatives and racists. Perhaps that answers Jan Baughman's question as to how we can allow an entire generation to languish when our future is in their hands: so they'll grow up to vote Republican! With childhood obesity on the rise, they are being groomed as an emerging market in chronic disease to replace the aging and soon-to-disappear baby boomers as consumers of our high-priced health care system. More on political agendas and consumers comes from Glenn Reed, who demonstrates how non-profits are rapidly adopting the language of free-market capitalism and abandoning their role in society. Yet despite the destructiveness of free markets, our current leaders and their would-be replacements continue to tout laissez-faire economics as the answer to all the world's problems, as Harvey Whitney, Jr. observes. Manuel García, Jr. applies the Prisoner's Dilemma -- a zero sum game -- to shopping, debt, and voting, if you're looking for some guidance on the next election or financial decision. Is all this -- the neglect of our children, unbridled capitalism where winner takes all -- not a form of eugenics? Michael Barker continues his exploration of the practice with Part II of his series on Konrad Lorenz and the evolution of eugenic-inspired thinking that flourished in the wake of World War II. And speaking of economics and the world's problems, Gilles d'Aymery's Martian Blips provide further evidence of the deliberate and coordinated attack on the euro, and more.
Turning the page to culture, Peter Byrne offers a look inside the Neapolitan Mafia-like organization, the Camorra, through a review of two books, while Raju Peddada considers what actually makes for a good historian -- an academic appointment or a lifetime of personal observation. In the Coin français, Christian Cottard's story shows that a life of little can often be very rich. Marie Rennard translates a biography of Mary Anning, "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew." Francesca Saieva revisits the writer Claudio Magris and indifference to the other, and Simone Alié-Daram's poem speaks to the chagrin of a day. Ricardo Gonsalves's experimental poem reaches for the book, and Guido Monte's multilingual poem blends together some thoughts before sleeping. We close without your letters -- please keep them coming, and if anyone out there knows how to program an RSS Feed, we'd sure appreciate some help...
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RESISTANCE: In The Eye Of The American Hegemon
What is
YOUR Purpose?
Question
YOUR Answers!
War is NOT
the Answer
Think
before you think! —Stanislaw Lec
Don't believe everything you think!
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America: Myths & Realities
What About The Children?
We are living in a time of uncertainty -- a protracted recession, protracted unemployment, record personal and public debt, and no exit strategy in place but for continuing to prop up corporations and the wealthy in the guise of trickle-down economics. No serious efforts to improve the situation are being floated because for the elite, all is good. At least for now. It's unfathomable that a country can exploit and sacrifice its children, who hold the very future of the country in their tiny hands. More... Jan Baughman is a clinical researcher and Swans' co-editor.
Capitalistic Language & The Non-Profit World
What does the word consumer mean to you? According to the Webster Dictionary Web site, a consumer is "one that utilizes economic goods." Economic goods make you think of toothpaste, jeans, or new cars. But what about clean air, a chronic illness, or a house on fire? These days, non-profits have eagerly adopted the language of free-market capitalism, including consumer. More... Glenn Reed is a long-time activist and author who lives in Fair Haven, Vermont.
Peddling The Ideal Of Free Markets
For a party that is diametrically opposed to inflation, the GOP never tires of inflating Ronald Reagan's legacy and accomplishments. I got a kick observing the Iowa Republican presidential primaries as the candidates sought to lay claim to Ronald Reagan's legacy by either proclaiming the evils of government or trying to cast themselves as "true" conservatives. I find it strange, considering that I was only a teenager when Reagan was in office, that the candidates, much older than I am, should have a more obscure memory of Reagan than I do. Reagan first and foremost worked with Democrats who controlled Congress during the 1980s -- remember, deregulation would not have happened under Reagan without a compliant Democratic Congress -- and only rarely was he polarizing. More... Harvey E. Whitney, Jr. is a Ph.D. student in history at Florida State University.
Bayesian Bargains: Jail, Shopping, Debt, And Voting
We are often caught in dilemmas, uncertain about choosing between two courses of action, and sometimes suspicious that "the game is rigged" so that whatever choice we make will benefit a behind-the-scenes controller. One interesting way of exploring this question is to formulate simple idealized situations, which can be taken as analogies to some of the real-world complexities in our lives, and analyze them with the Bayesian model of deliberation. More... Manuel García, Jr. is a retired physicist, author, and family man who lives in Oakland, California.
Patterns which Connect
On Konrad Lorenz (Part II of II)
Desperate to reinvent himself, Konrad Lorenz found it hard to escape his past, and in 1950, his "candidacy for the professorship of zoology at the University of Graz [in Austria] was scuttled when opponents brought to the attention of the minister of education Lorenz's 1940 Der Biologe article." In view of such ongoing employment problems, Lorenz began cultivating stronger links to British biologists in the hope of securing a suitable academic position in England where the other founding father of ethology, Niko Tinbergen, was based. More... Michael Barker is an independent researcher who lives in London, England.
Tidbits Flying Across the Martian Desk
Blips #122
"The imitativeness of our early years makes us acquire the passions of our parents, even when these passions poison our lives."
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Hungry Man, Reach For The Book
Naples: Greeks, Romans, And Hitmen
There are maps in both these books showing the Naples hinterland. In the sixty years that separate the two accounts the area has remained in the hands of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia-like organization. The American gangster Vito Genovese, a figure of power in the Allied military government in 1944, laid the groundwork for what is now the most extensive criminal operation in the world. The British travel writer Norman Lewis described the situation in 1944. More... Peter Byrne is an American-born teacher and writer who lives in Lecce, Italy.
Arts & Culture
History: Sired By Literary Nomads (Part I of II)
I am an ardent devotee of the word. Just like seeds hold entire forests within, words pack whole histories within. Seed pods explode, dispersing the propagation engines of the next generation. Similarly, powerful sentences are like seed pods, with images and ideas dispersed onto fecund minds, engendering new worlds of progression, as well as regression. More... Raju Peddada is an industrial designer who lives in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Le coin français
Lucie
Elle habitait sur le trajet qu'ils empruntaient pour rentrer chez eux. Alors, plusieurs fois par semaine, ils passaient la voir. L'embrasser. Parler un peu avec elle et voir si elle n'avait besoin de rien. Ils n'y venaient pas parce qu'ils étaient obligés, ils y venaient pour leur plaisir. Ce qu'elle ne voulait pas croire. Alors, toujours, à chaque fois, elle les mettait à la porte au bout d'une demi-heure en leur disant : « Allez, allez vous-en ! Vous avez d'autres choses à faire que venir perdre votre temps avec une vieille ! » More... Christian Cottard est né en 1953 et vit à Velleron où il exerce la profession de professeur d'EPS.
Mary Anning (1799-1847)
Bien qu'on ait consacré à Mary Anning plusieurs livres et articles, on sait relativement peu de choses de sa vie, et nombreux sont ceux qui ignorent l'ampleur de sa contribution à la paléontologie dès l'origine de cette discipline. More... Hugh Torrens est un professeur de géologie à l'université de Keele, Staffordshire, Royaume Uni.. Marie Rennard est une auteur et poète qui vit à Annecy, France. Elle est l'éditrice en chef du coin français.
Claudio Magris, écrivain de frontière contre l'indifférence
Il y a quelques mois j'ai écrit pour Swans l'article "Voyage vers d'infinies patries dans un seul Livre: Claudio Magris." A ce moment-là je n'avais pas encore pensé articuler des réflexions pour expliquer la conception socio-culturelle de Magris. Cette idée s'est imposée à mesure de ma réflexion à propos de ces "étranges jours" de la crise mondiale. Je pense à une situation globale, car il est limitatif de penser la crise contemporaine comme une prérogative euro-américaine. More... Francesca Saieva est née en 1972 et vit à Palerme, Sicile, où elle enseigne la philosophie et la pédagogie.
Chagrin
Sur le pavé gris Simone Alié-Daram, à la retraite d'une carrière distinguée en médecine, est une auteur et poète qui vit à Toulouse, France.
Poetry
Reach For The Book
reach for the book Ricardo Gonsalves is a therapist and an experimental poet who lives in Irvine, California.
Multilingual Poetry
Thoughts before sleeping n.2
tout naît d'un geste, everything is born Guido Monte teaches Italian and Latin literature in Palermo, Italy.
Letters to the Editor
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