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time_is_now
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« Reply #2895 on: 21:11:58, 01-04-2008 » |
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Glad you seem to be feeling better about it, hh. It'll be fine once you arrive, and it does sound as if you have good reasons for waiting till tomorrow to go.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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brassbandmaestro
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« Reply #2896 on: 10:37:17, 03-04-2008 » |
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Hope it all works out for you hh.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #2897 on: 12:13:33, 03-04-2008 » |
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I received this email this morning from some American friends and it gave me food for thought. See what you think.
2 Tough Questions
Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?
Read the next question before looking at the response for this one.
Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts
Here are the facts about the three candidates.
Who would you vote for?
Candidate A
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologist
He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate B
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.
Candidate C
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.
Which of these candidates would be our choice?
Decide first... no peeking, then scroll down for the response.
Candidate A: is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate B: is Winston Churchill.
Candidate C: is Adolph Hitler.
And, by the way, on your answer to the abortion question:
If you said YES, you just killed Beethoven.
Pretty interesting isn't it? Makes a person think before judging someone.
Wait till you see the end of this note! Keep reading..
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember: Amateurs...built the ark.
Professionals...built the Titanic
And Finally,
can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:
*29 have been accused of spousal abuse
* 7 have been arrested for fraud
*19 have been accused of writing bad checks
*117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
* 3 have done time for assault
*71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
*14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
*21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
*84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year...Can you guess which organization this is?
Give up yet?
It's the 535 members of the United States Congress.
The same group that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #2898 on: 12:23:24, 03-04-2008 » |
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I did the world leader choice without cheating. My choice was "none of the above".
As to the abortion question, I suppose any of us who have used any form of contraception (not the same thing, I know) might have prevented the birth of any number of geniuses. Or perhaps not.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #2899 on: 12:52:02, 03-04-2008 » |
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This is all a bit silly though, isn't it?
If ALL you knew about Hitler was that he was a vegetarian non-smoking bachelor with a medal (and the same mutatis mutandis for the others) that would be one thing, but when he was actually standing for election in 1933 you'd also have known that he'd been in prison for attempting a coup, during which time he'd written a book announcing his intention, among other things, to invade eastern Europe and annihilate the Jewish "race". And in any election nowadays you'd know a lot more sordid details about the candidates than even that, since their entire lives are picked over in prurient detail.
As for the abortion question, I agree completely with Mary. It's pretty wacky to suggest removing a woman's right to choose on the grounds that she might possibly give birth to a genius. (She could also give birth to a genocidal maniac, of course.)
As for the US Congress, I would imagine the same thing more or less could be said about both Houses of Parliament over here.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #2900 on: 13:00:50, 03-04-2008 » |
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I don't think it's so much "silly" as a bit sobering. All I think is that it is food for thought. Re. the abortion queston we are very very judgmental about things as a species and I sometimes wonder if things might sometimes be best left alone. In fact we're very judgmental about a lot of things and particularly the conduct of people we've elected to be in power.
Let's face it, these examples were given as just questions that you might give a gut-reaction answer to - human nature being what it is and all that.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #2901 on: 13:14:27, 03-04-2008 » |
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Well, I like to think that I would have produced a genius if I'd gone on having children  . You never know.... |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #2902 on: 13:22:25, 03-04-2008 » |
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Before we hold up Roosevelt and Churchill as great leaders as well, we might consider such things as the Bengal famine, which occurred during Churchill's premiership, the internment of Japanese-Americans under Roosevelt (and apparent plans to firebomb Japanese cities more than a year before Pearl Harbour), and the fact that FDR hailed Mussolini and Fascist Italy as late as 1939 (after the invasion of Ethiopia) (some have argued that the New Deal was inspired by Fascist Italy). Also, according to this article, when FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1917, he relished and repeated a comment about the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture that 'that man would have brought $1,500 at auction in New Orleans in 1860 for stud purposes'. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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George Garnett
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« Reply #2903 on: 13:25:37, 03-04-2008 » |
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I'm afraid I got so engrossed in trying to work out whether someone really could drink a 'quart of whiskey' (two pints?!) every evening that I clean forgot to vote.
It turns out there are all sorts of different measures called a quart. If it was a Queen Anne 'whisky quart' then maybe it is just about possible.
Sorry, maybe I've wandered off the point there. But it is the waffle thread so perhaps that is impossible.
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« Last Edit: 13:29:50, 03-04-2008 by George Garnett »
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #2904 on: 14:42:41, 03-04-2008 » |
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Well, I like to think that I would have produced a genius if I'd gone on having children . You never know.... I'm sure you already have Mary!  Ian - as far as calling someone a "great leader" is concerned, that's an issue for others. Historically they're all going to have flaws if you dig deep enough. That pesky old human nature thing again. Out of interest - who would posters consider to be a "great leader"? Post if you dare and then wait for the inevitable flak. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #2905 on: 14:55:10, 03-04-2008 » |
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Ian - as far as calling someone a "great leader" is concerned, that's an issue for others. Historically they're all going to have flaws if you dig deep enough. That pesky old human nature thing again. It's much more than that, it is about extremely callous actions: in the case of the Bengal famine, it lead to over a million deaths. Nowadays a certain mania for both Churchill and Roosevelt applies, and in particular an attempt to hold up the supposedly superior nature of 'our' leaders as against 'theirs' (in terms of fascism and communism). Most Western leaders were up to their necks in hideous colonial exploitation, but somehow that gets conveniently overlooked. And most today are in cahoots with that very international capitalism that causes millions of deaths in the third world every year. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2906 on: 14:55:45, 03-04-2008 » |
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Out of interest - who would posters consider to be a "great leader"? Post if you dare and then wait for the inevitable flak.
Hugh Bean? |
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« Last Edit: 15:26:19, 03-04-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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brassbandmaestro
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« Reply #2907 on: 15:18:00, 03-04-2008 » |
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Hugh Bean or not to Hugh Bean that is the question!!  |
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2908 on: 16:28:43, 03-04-2008 » |
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To be more serious, I'm very suspicious of the concept of leadership. I had rather a lot of it rammed down my throat at school - where the ethos was militaristic/muscular Christian (the head was an ex Naval Commander) and the kind of boy who was commended for "leadership" was normally the one who exhibited the more sophisticated forms of thuggery on the playing field, or whose cheery demeanour changed to reverence at the mention of Chapel or CCF. Now, working in the public sector, I find myself bombarded by surprisingly similar rhetoric about leadership, which is normally linked to "managing organisational change" or other such banalities, and in both cases it seems to me that what passes for leadership is in fact a set of post-hoc rationalisations of the imperative of corporate obedience - respecting authority, overriding scrutiny and questioning and so on.
I suppose real leadership is something to do with giving a voice to the powerless - and, to use the wonderful Quaker phrase - about speaking truth to power. But not something that one often finds in people who successfully manipulate political systems.
I greatly prefer the concept of self-respect.
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« Last Edit: 16:34:31, 03-04-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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