No, my sources tell me, we live in a pre-post-post-sarcastic-modern era. With a need to drum up sales for the DVD release of "Inglourious Basterds" and the upcoming cinematic release of a Matt Damon flick, producers of both movies hired professional assassins as a publicity stunt (see Kevin Smith and Michael Moore for similar acts of poor taste). Apparently, the assassins were given a list of possible targets, including some key opponents of Western entertainment imperialism. More news as this story develops!
Speaking of Western ideology, another source tells me that Iranian leaders have been using Hollywood/Bollywood entertainment promoters for years to create, print, publish and distribute idolatry images of the leaders in order for the leaders to avoid the issue of directly disobeying Mohammedan anti-idolatry teaching. In lockstep, the Revolutionary Guards have become their own version of a cross between the irreverent inglorious bastards and the Nazi SS, crossing any and all religious/civil lines in order to meet their dastardly ends. O, Canada, where's Dudley Do-Right when we need him, besides cleaning up the mess behind the U.S. Vice President Joe "I Like the Taste of Shoe Leather" Biden in British Columbia?
I learned the supposed origin of the word "snob": s.nob. - sine nobilitate. According to the folks at Oxford, such etymology ain't right. Even so, there are those who fill the bill no matter how they quack or the colour and size of their plumage.
Speaking of interesting ideas, to show I am willing to give voice to those whose opinions greatly differ from mine, I share with you the title of a book that negates all I've been taught to believe: It's A Young World After All. Given to me my Phyllis and John J. (neighbours and work colleagues of ours - Phyllis a computer programmer and John a physicist, I believe - they moved to Europe many years ago, John working for NATO in Brussels at that time). Many in the Huntsville community, including those with advanced college degrees, hold to the same opinion, taking a literal view of Biblical teaching (including bushes that talk and astrological signs of stars from the East, notwithstanding the secular likeness).
So, if a community like this, with rocket scientists and missile fin designers, contains a mix of liberals, conservatives, Bible believers, atheists, and housing estate developers, all who depend and believe in large part on public funding of space exploration, how do we convince them to convert to a belief in support of private funding of space exploration? Mr. Griffith, you have the floor to answer that question!
Quote for the day (from "Toward a Philosophy of History," by Ortega y Gasset, p. 196):
"Naturalism is, at bottom, intellectualism, i.e., the projection on to the real of the mode of being peculiar to concepts."I have a pile of books to read and yet want to add others to the bottom of the pile for more analysis and comparison of this historic moment to other historic moments to remember in the next one, including books authored by Hegel, Comte, Leibnitz, Fichte, Henri Bergson and the Eleatics (Xenophanes, Parmenides and Zeno) as well as some Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern authors I've neglected too long (including a rereading of Confucius' words). If the conservative movement is a snowball rolling downhill, I want to be informed of its composition before it inevitably turns into an avalanche so I can determine if we're moving into the Ice Age (meaning I'm about to be crushed by a glacier) or just exactly what's causing my ears to perk up at the edges of private conversations in public about hooded knights meeting in woods once again. The times, they are a'changin' and I want to be packed up and ready to move if the new kind of change ain't what I signed up to be an adult for.
How do we safely accelerate the private space business, anyhow? I'll take the next rocket to anywhere anytime soon!
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