1. I missed this: Eric Schliesser, a Dutch philosopher, sent an email to fellow philosophers suggesting that they boycott conferences without female presenters.
2. Mark Steyn on the ‘War on Women’:
The “war” on women boils down to Sandra Fluke, a 30-year-old schoolgirl, demanding Georgetown Law should pay for its students’ contraceptives – notwithstanding that the entire cost of that four-year contraceptive bill works out to less than the first week’s paycheck of a Georgetown Law graduate’s first job (average starting salary: $160 grand per year). War is hell.
3. A landlord fined $40,000 by the EPA for not telling a tenant about the lead paint history of a property. Reminds me of a story my dad repeated during the summer of 2010 to me and anyone else who would listen. A local contractor was fined $35,000 for various offenses including improper scaffolding padding. Contractor couldn’t handle the fines and quickly went out of business.
4. The biggest reason California is bankrupt: while government employees have increased by 9.3% over the past decade their compensation has increased by more than 40%.
5. The Last Psychiatrist on Tom Morello vs. Paul Ryan:
Instead of condemning Paul Ryan for not being cool enough to get it, Tom Morello might want to ask how it is possible that “the embodiment of the machine we are raging against” ended up liking him. What was the precise mechanism that caused that to happen? Do you think– everyone take a moment– that Paul Ryan liked it on his own free will? That if we dropped those beats on some 10th century viking marauders, they’d be all in?
And why, when Tom Morello wants to rage against Paul Ryan, he does it through the subversive, iconoclastic, angry medium of…. Rolling Stone? That’ll get him. Let me be clear: I don’t blame Morello for writing in Rolling Stone, I blame him for not asking himself what kind of a man is he that attracts Rolling Stone. (2)
Paul Ryan and Tom Morello are 100% the exact same person.
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Here’s a book recommendation for you Chuck:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/the-victims-revolution-by-bruce-bawer.html?_r=2
rage against the machine sucked. it’s a stupid name for a band as well.
I haven’t paid much attention to the whole Morello/Ryan debate, since I’m not a RATM fan. However, rock stars generally outrank politicians on the alpha male spectrum. This could be a simple case of Morello just wanting to remind everyone of that.
Chuck: you covered the Rebecca Watson elevator-gate last year and you regularly cover feminist issues, as well as leaning towards disbelief, so hopefully you’ll find this interesting:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/08/27/how-the-atheist-movement-failed-me-part-2-dealing-with-diversity/
basically, there is this sub feminist-movement within organized atheism looking to co-opt atheism for the aims of feminism and liberalism. then these same cunts get all bitchy when the overwhelmingly white, male (and nerdy) atheist community doesn’t want to deal with their shite. would love to hear your thoughts on the article and the “movement” in general?
Regarding #1, I read about the background of the particular all-male philosophy conference that ignited this most recent commotion. As always, the male organizers had sent invitations to female philosophers but none had been interested.
20 to 30 percent of academic philosophers may be female, but they are disproportionately concentrated in bullshit fields like feminist and race theory. This means that there are very few women in many areas of philosophy, and the few female specialists in each field get more invitations than they can handle. Unfortunately, this simple arithmetic is too difficult for feminists.
I missed this: Eric Schliesser, a Dutch philosopher, sent an email to fellow philosophers suggesting that they boycott conferences without female presenters.
Just remember, kids, every single thing women achieve is due to their awesome awesomeness, and in the face of unrelenting hostility from the patriatchy!
I think Tom Morello could have handled it much better. He should have said he was happy to hear that Paul Ryan is a fan, even though, they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. He could have sent him some free tickets. He would have gotten the same point across, without making himself look bad.
Tom Morello is a self-important dumbass who’s deluded enough to think that his “fans” actually understand or care about the political “content” of his music. The kids at his concerts simply hear something loud and rebellious and they like the general sound, but they don’t give a crap about the band’s ideas on Chomsky, Anarchism, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung, the Zapatistas, etc. (nor do most of them even know who these people are)
“Tom Morello could have handled it much better. He should have said he was happy to hear that Paul Ryan is a fan, even though, they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum”
That’s how Republicans and conservatives think. Liberals see it as total war, not as sportsmanship. They see everybody to the right of them, from Bob Dole to Andres Brevik, as the same — an enemy to be humiliated and destroyed.
Upside: there is really no solid incentive for righties to compromise.
Morello is about a 10 of 10 on the insufferability scale. He needs a beating. I may be the one to deliver it as well. When are they in town next?
Dan in Dc
I said it before on here, Paul Ryan and Morello are more alike than Morello thinks. Both want to break the system. They fracture at the libertarian divide – left libertarianism versus right libertarianism. But they are both operating off of anarchist principles. It’s the reason I like some of RATM. Part of me wants to watch it all burn too. That part of me enjoys the band.
“Both want to break the system”
Morello wants to do away with the permanent federal bureaucracy, progressive taxation, and public schools?
Nah, he’s no libertarian, left or right. Anarchists are nothing more that the vanguard for the system’s progressive growth.
When you put it that way…Morello at one point (through RATM) wanted to break the system. But as The Last Psychiatrist points out, he now embraces the system. He has become the Machine himself. Maybe Ryan is what Morello once was, to an extent, but without all of the bombast and flair.
Wanting to bring down the system is a young male mentality. I think it must be because they would be the most likely to survive any major social upheaval.
“I think it must be because they would be the most likely to survive any major social upheaval.”
Not exactly. I remember myself at 19 or so going through an intense and angry anarchist phase. The psychology of a young male anarchist has more to do with an impatience with the established system. We want a shortcut to having an older man’s status… also to clear the field to leave out mark on it. We want to sweep away the old to have a virgin landscape to piss on and mark as ours.
This is in part innate to all young intelligent men, in part a symptom a broken connection between fathers and sons.
I think daddy issues are very important. I heard Tom Morello’s interview with Adam Carolla. It was quite revealing. First he is a lot like Obama. His dad was a feckless African diplomat who got his white American girlfriend pregnant and never visited his son. His mom who was a school teacher, did not have an easy time not being as wealthy as the Obama’s mothers family but did manage to provide for him. He then won a full scholarship to Harvard The only difficult period in his life seemed to be the first couple months after he graduated from Harvard when he moved to LA. Within a few months though he was hired as an aide to California Senator Alan Cranston and probably could be a successful politician now if he hadn’t made it in music. Objectively the “Machine” treated him pretty well. I think it is likely that the rage is caused by misplaced anger at his bad dad.
Also I agree with Lara. Why not handle it in a classy manner. I like Chrissy Hynde’s attitude towards Rush Limbaugh. She justs mail his royalty checks to PETA.
“30 year old schoolGIRL” rather says it all, don’t you think?
I don’t think Morello’s politics were ever anything close to Paul Ryan’s, or any libertarians. The “Anarchism” of Rage Against the Machine has always been that of an Ethnic Studies department.
Why do they even HAVE philosophy conferences? I presume that taxpayers and the parents of college students are the two groups who pay?
I hope they actually stop attending such conferences. They will shut down quicker, and the number of male and female keynotes will be the same.
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