By then, The Ramones had softened into a network television version of themselves, their sound steadily becoming more pop. As they became less cutting edge, they became less relevant; name a single track off of Animal Boy or Halfway to Sanity. It's okay to have a few bad records in a career, but it isn't okay not to strive toward something. With fifteen studio albums released, they had time to experiment, but they didn't.
On the other hand, Bryne and his Heads never stopped experimenting, the culmination of which is "(Nothing But) Flowers" off their final record. In that song Byrne screams, "We caught a rattlesnake, now we got something for dinner!" Nowhere in the entire Ramones catalogue will you find that kind of avant-garde lyricism on a track that still makes you dance your ass off.
The Talking Heads are, unquestionably, lyrically better than The Ramones. But their real advantage was their ability to keep innovating long into a storied and comfortable career. Listening to Naked, you can hear you can a distinct musical and thematic progression from Talking Heads 77. The Heads had the wonderful ability to take music making seriously without making overly serious music.
And for what it's worth, The Talking Heads don't have a bad record. The Ramones most certainly do. Just try to jam Halfway to Sanity all the way through. See how far you get.
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11136-The-Talking-Heads-vs-The-Ramones
Friday, January 6, 2012
Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11133-Salaried-Professionals-and-the-Soul-Battering-System-That-Shapes-Their-Lives
Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
January 5th, 2012
Be warned: If you are having difficulties with maintaining appearances at work, this book won’t make it any easier.
Via: Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives by Jeff Schmidt:
For understanding the professional, the concept of “ideology” will emerge as much more useful than that of “skill.” But what is ideology, exactly? Ideology is thought that justifies action, including routine day-to-day activity. It is your ideology that determines your gut reaction to something done, say, by the president (you feel it is right or wrong), by protesters (you feel it is justified or unjustified), by your boss (you feel it is fair or unfair), by a coworker (you feel it is reasonable or unreasonable) and so on. More importantly, your ideology justifies your own actions to yourself. Economics may bring you back to your employer day after day, but it is ideology that makes that activity feel like a reasonable or unreasonable way to spend your life.
Work in general is becoming more and more ideological, and so is the workforce that does it. As technology has made production easier, employment has shifted from factories to offices, where work revolves around inherently ideological activities, such as design, analysis, writing, accounting, marketing and other creative tasks. Of course, ideology has been a workplace issue all along: Employers have always scrutinized the attitudes and values of the people they hire, to protect themselves from unionists, radicals and others whose “bad attitude” would undermine workplace discipline. Today, however, for a relatively small but rapidly growing fraction of jobs, employers will carefully assess your attitude for an additional reason: its crucial role in the work itself. On these jobs, which are in every field, from journalism and architecture to education and commercial art, your view of the world threatens to affect not only the quantity and quality of what you produce, but also the very nature of the product. These jobs require strict adherence to an assigned point of view; and so a prerequisite for employment is the willingness and ability to exercise what I call ideological discipline.
Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
January 5th, 2012
Be warned: If you are having difficulties with maintaining appearances at work, this book won’t make it any easier.
Via: Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives by Jeff Schmidt:
For understanding the professional, the concept of “ideology” will emerge as much more useful than that of “skill.” But what is ideology, exactly? Ideology is thought that justifies action, including routine day-to-day activity. It is your ideology that determines your gut reaction to something done, say, by the president (you feel it is right or wrong), by protesters (you feel it is justified or unjustified), by your boss (you feel it is fair or unfair), by a coworker (you feel it is reasonable or unreasonable) and so on. More importantly, your ideology justifies your own actions to yourself. Economics may bring you back to your employer day after day, but it is ideology that makes that activity feel like a reasonable or unreasonable way to spend your life.
Work in general is becoming more and more ideological, and so is the workforce that does it. As technology has made production easier, employment has shifted from factories to offices, where work revolves around inherently ideological activities, such as design, analysis, writing, accounting, marketing and other creative tasks. Of course, ideology has been a workplace issue all along: Employers have always scrutinized the attitudes and values of the people they hire, to protect themselves from unionists, radicals and others whose “bad attitude” would undermine workplace discipline. Today, however, for a relatively small but rapidly growing fraction of jobs, employers will carefully assess your attitude for an additional reason: its crucial role in the work itself. On these jobs, which are in every field, from journalism and architecture to education and commercial art, your view of the world threatens to affect not only the quantity and quality of what you produce, but also the very nature of the product. These jobs require strict adherence to an assigned point of view; and so a prerequisite for employment is the willingness and ability to exercise what I call ideological discipline.
extended stay away from home
“There's nothing in the statute that says you can't, so conceivably you could set up camp for 10 years,” says Shannon, “but the chances are there's some mortgage company or somebody that's not getting the payments on it, so it's not real practical in the cities.” The Tarrant County Clerk’s office accepted about 60 of these adverse possession filings this year before it stopped taking them. Some of the more egregious cases include Brunner’s neighbor, the woman receiving chemotherapy, and a travelling nurse who had been gone for a few months because of work.
“I will say this is the most amazing situation we’ve ever dealt with,” says Tarrant County Constable Clint Burgess. “How anyone thinks they can take a home for $16 and live in it and then grief to a homeowner after that, it just amazes us.” The squatters have even gone so far as to file mechanic’s liens against the homeowners to reclaim funds for supposed “improvements” to the house. Then they offer to settle with the homeowner, for a price. To District Attorney Shannon, these cases are criminal, pure and simple.
“A person who moves in without the consent of the owner with the intent to commit felony or theft or assault, then that's a burglary of a habitation,” said Shannon. So far, Shannon is prosecuting about five of these cases with more to come. Investigators are trying to figure out why these cases have popped up in Tarrant County this year and if any of them are related. For Brunner, the HOA president whose neighbor was victimized, the damage is done. He says his neighbor is now considering selling the half million dollar home.
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11127-Squatters-in-Texas-Town-Use-Arcane-Law-to-Claim-Vacant-Homes
“I will say this is the most amazing situation we’ve ever dealt with,” says Tarrant County Constable Clint Burgess. “How anyone thinks they can take a home for $16 and live in it and then grief to a homeowner after that, it just amazes us.” The squatters have even gone so far as to file mechanic’s liens against the homeowners to reclaim funds for supposed “improvements” to the house. Then they offer to settle with the homeowner, for a price. To District Attorney Shannon, these cases are criminal, pure and simple.
“A person who moves in without the consent of the owner with the intent to commit felony or theft or assault, then that's a burglary of a habitation,” said Shannon. So far, Shannon is prosecuting about five of these cases with more to come. Investigators are trying to figure out why these cases have popped up in Tarrant County this year and if any of them are related. For Brunner, the HOA president whose neighbor was victimized, the damage is done. He says his neighbor is now considering selling the half million dollar home.
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11127-Squatters-in-Texas-Town-Use-Arcane-Law-to-Claim-Vacant-Homes
Corporations don't lobby Congress for fun
The American Jobs Creation Act is just one example. Not every lobbying effort has a return of 22,000 percent. There are companies that probably lose money lobbying — they spend limited resources on lobbyists and see no benefit in return. But the company-lobbyist-politician ecosystem, Scholz says, is a problem:
We have a situation where we, in essence, invite corporations to buy their own tax rate through lobbying... which ultimately corrupts both the companies and the politicians.
Read more about Alexander and Scholz's study. And listen to our previous podcast in our series about lobbying and U.S. politics.
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11128-Forget-Stocks-Or-Bonds-Invest-In-A-Lobbyist
We have a situation where we, in essence, invite corporations to buy their own tax rate through lobbying... which ultimately corrupts both the companies and the politicians.
Read more about Alexander and Scholz's study. And listen to our previous podcast in our series about lobbying and U.S. politics.
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11128-Forget-Stocks-Or-Bonds-Invest-In-A-Lobbyist
Teenage Romney takes unpopular stance in favour of south-east Asian war
They were protesting at the introduction of a test designed to help the authorities decide who was eligible for the draft. Mr Romney was one of approximately 150 conservative students who counter-picketed the sit-in.
Carey Coulter was one of the demonstrators alongside Mr Romney that day. He told BuzzFeed.com: 'We were there to get an education and these people holding the administration hostage was antithetical to that. 'Mitt walked up to me and said that he had some experience with the press, and that he would handle the press for me if I wanted him to. I said fine, because I was busy running the demonstration. 'I don't recall ever seeing him again.'
The press experience to which Mr Romney referred no doubt came from witnessing how his father, George, dealt with the media. George Romney headed American Motors before becoming Michigan governor in 1963, a position he held for six years before being appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by Richard Nixon.
Click this bar to view the original image of 634x689px.
Handling the press: A newspaper cutting records the moment the future presidential candidate made his mark
Ironically, he later had a change of heart and turned against the Vietnam War. His pro-war son, meanwhile, never served in south-east Asia because his status as a Mormon missionary exempted him from the draft. The GOP hopeful spent just one year at Stanford before heading to France for 30 months of missionary work. He had already met his future wife Ann in 1965 when he was 18 and she was 15. The couple married in 1969 and have five sons and 16 grandchildren. Mr Romney went on to earn millions as a business consultant and venture capitalist. After co-founding private equity firm Bain Capital in the late 1970s, he helped launch the Staples office supply chain, as well as buy Domino's Pizza.
more--
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11126-Mitt-Romney-demonstrated-in-favour-of-Vietnam-War-draft
Carey Coulter was one of the demonstrators alongside Mr Romney that day. He told BuzzFeed.com: 'We were there to get an education and these people holding the administration hostage was antithetical to that. 'Mitt walked up to me and said that he had some experience with the press, and that he would handle the press for me if I wanted him to. I said fine, because I was busy running the demonstration. 'I don't recall ever seeing him again.'
The press experience to which Mr Romney referred no doubt came from witnessing how his father, George, dealt with the media. George Romney headed American Motors before becoming Michigan governor in 1963, a position he held for six years before being appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by Richard Nixon.
Click this bar to view the original image of 634x689px.
Handling the press: A newspaper cutting records the moment the future presidential candidate made his mark
Ironically, he later had a change of heart and turned against the Vietnam War. His pro-war son, meanwhile, never served in south-east Asia because his status as a Mormon missionary exempted him from the draft. The GOP hopeful spent just one year at Stanford before heading to France for 30 months of missionary work. He had already met his future wife Ann in 1965 when he was 18 and she was 15. The couple married in 1969 and have five sons and 16 grandchildren. Mr Romney went on to earn millions as a business consultant and venture capitalist. After co-founding private equity firm Bain Capital in the late 1970s, he helped launch the Staples office supply chain, as well as buy Domino's Pizza.
more--
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11126-Mitt-Romney-demonstrated-in-favour-of-Vietnam-War-draft
may be space rock older than anything on Earth
The rock, found in Russia's Koryak mountains, is a mysterious 'quasicrystal' - a kind of crystal discovered in synthetic materials in 1982. Until now, it was believed quasicrystals did not occur in nature - and all were man made
The rock, found in Russia's Koryak mountains, is a mysterious 'quasicrystal' - a kind of crystal discovered in synthetic materials in 1982.
Until now, it was believed quasicrystals did not occur in nature - and all were man made.
The mysterious rock fragment in Russia is only known natural quasicrystal on our planet.
The fragile crystalised fragment - known as a quasicrystal - is believed to be the remains of a meteorite that formed during the formation of the early solar system.
If correct, it is it older than any rock found so far on Earth's surface.
Researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University said: 'Analysis of the oxygen isotope in the rock indicate it is a fragment of a meteorite formed at the formation of the solar system over 4.5 billion years ago.'
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11125-Impossible-Crystal-Found-in-Russia
The rock, found in Russia's Koryak mountains, is a mysterious 'quasicrystal' - a kind of crystal discovered in synthetic materials in 1982.
Until now, it was believed quasicrystals did not occur in nature - and all were man made.
The mysterious rock fragment in Russia is only known natural quasicrystal on our planet.
The fragile crystalised fragment - known as a quasicrystal - is believed to be the remains of a meteorite that formed during the formation of the early solar system.
If correct, it is it older than any rock found so far on Earth's surface.
Researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University said: 'Analysis of the oxygen isotope in the rock indicate it is a fragment of a meteorite formed at the formation of the solar system over 4.5 billion years ago.'
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11125-Impossible-Crystal-Found-in-Russia
my favorite one is applejack
widdle pink horseys? Hugs and horseys? Oh my.....
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?10375-My-Little-Pony-Friendship-is-Magic
Terror and tyranny are inevitable byproducts of democracy
the one legitimate form of rule permitted by Washington to the tribes of humanity. Our struggle for the rights of man must by necessity incur some casualties, but such bloodshed waters the tree of liberty. Tabulated (or not) as collateral damage, Pashtun villagers are ripped apart by Hellfire missiles launched by drones so that one day girls from that very community may go to an NGO-run school and learn about voting and contraception. Yet when a Pakistani who has taken U.S. citizenship attempts to blow up Times Square in revenge, no one in America’s political and media establishment seems the least bit curious as to his motives. The entire affair is written off as business as usual in the Open Society--after all, it could have taken place anywhere. This regime is the culmination of liberalism’s logic; it is what U.S. forces patrolling the Hindu Kush and all other corners of the earth defend. We fight them over there to invite them over here, for peace and unity in our world must first be enforced through universal war.
Violence and dysfunction shall be distributed over every country and clime; Danes and Minnesotans will experience the horror of Somalia's strife in a most personal and painful manner. To question this sublime experiment or (even worse) to oppose it would be an unpardonable sin against democracy, the creed of our greatness. And what is the secret of democracy, this gospel to liberate and empower all mankind? It is the political expression of our modern faith, self-worship. Just below the rationalistic assertion of rights and equality is the abyss of desire, the wish to ultimately recognize no authority higher than one’s own will made divine. Faith, ethnos and culture must be annihilated by egalitarianism and market forces, thereby giving rise to the New Man. From spiritual disorder springs social anarchy. In the contemporary West, a nation is no longer itself, but a mass of atoms, sovereign in their frenzied quest for profit and pleasure, mere demographic material for the plutocrats’ global Babylon. As surely as the laws of nature, chaos will then necessitate further manipulation and control from above.
It is illustrative that as Congress passed the NDAA to facilitate military incarceration of U.S. citizens, A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas was playing in movie theaters across America[2]. Having built their model society on the primacy of base desire, our master class is also subject to its compulsions. An electronic carnival of cultural sewage is supplied to the proletariat while the elites treat themselves to global conquest, highbrow orgies and financial bailouts. Repressive measures like the Patriot Act and NDAA can be employed to protect the oligarchy should events ever deviate from script. “Rights” serve as a convenient vehicle for the will to power; they are not immutable and can be fabricated or disposed of as circumstances permit. Herein we discover the bankruptcy of humanism: reason works as an eloquent prostitute for passions that would enslave us all. The Pleasure Dome is a police state.
When the democratic principle is exalted beyond the suitable level of local institutions, it flattens all qualitative distinctions between individuals and peoples, leaving destruction, mediocrity and token tasteless amusements in its wake. As the modern West pursues the ideals of liberty and equality to their final outcomes, it draws ever nearer to a nightmarish despotism and dissolution. Immanent universal brotherhood can only be diagnosed as the fever-dream of a diseased imagination, which in its turn is seduced by a malicious deceiving spirit. In Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, the revolutionary theoretician Shigalev cursorily explains the dialectic of liberation:
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11124-Pleasure-Dome-Police-State-How-Democracy-Ends
Violence and dysfunction shall be distributed over every country and clime; Danes and Minnesotans will experience the horror of Somalia's strife in a most personal and painful manner. To question this sublime experiment or (even worse) to oppose it would be an unpardonable sin against democracy, the creed of our greatness. And what is the secret of democracy, this gospel to liberate and empower all mankind? It is the political expression of our modern faith, self-worship. Just below the rationalistic assertion of rights and equality is the abyss of desire, the wish to ultimately recognize no authority higher than one’s own will made divine. Faith, ethnos and culture must be annihilated by egalitarianism and market forces, thereby giving rise to the New Man. From spiritual disorder springs social anarchy. In the contemporary West, a nation is no longer itself, but a mass of atoms, sovereign in their frenzied quest for profit and pleasure, mere demographic material for the plutocrats’ global Babylon. As surely as the laws of nature, chaos will then necessitate further manipulation and control from above.
It is illustrative that as Congress passed the NDAA to facilitate military incarceration of U.S. citizens, A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas was playing in movie theaters across America[2]. Having built their model society on the primacy of base desire, our master class is also subject to its compulsions. An electronic carnival of cultural sewage is supplied to the proletariat while the elites treat themselves to global conquest, highbrow orgies and financial bailouts. Repressive measures like the Patriot Act and NDAA can be employed to protect the oligarchy should events ever deviate from script. “Rights” serve as a convenient vehicle for the will to power; they are not immutable and can be fabricated or disposed of as circumstances permit. Herein we discover the bankruptcy of humanism: reason works as an eloquent prostitute for passions that would enslave us all. The Pleasure Dome is a police state.
When the democratic principle is exalted beyond the suitable level of local institutions, it flattens all qualitative distinctions between individuals and peoples, leaving destruction, mediocrity and token tasteless amusements in its wake. As the modern West pursues the ideals of liberty and equality to their final outcomes, it draws ever nearer to a nightmarish despotism and dissolution. Immanent universal brotherhood can only be diagnosed as the fever-dream of a diseased imagination, which in its turn is seduced by a malicious deceiving spirit. In Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, the revolutionary theoretician Shigalev cursorily explains the dialectic of liberation:
http://thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?11124-Pleasure-Dome-Police-State-How-Democracy-Ends
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