Breaking news from LinkedIn:

Congratulations, Jamie!

(Apologies to Charlie and Campbell.)

Αυτές τις μέρες ας τιμήσουμε τη μνήμη του αδικοχαμένου αυτού παιδιού, του Αλέξη Γρηγορόπουλου…

Και να προσέξουμε να μην καπηλευτεί αυτή η μέρα από τον οποιονδήποτε που θα θελήσει να τα κάνει όλα σμπαράλια…

Υπάρχει και άλλος δρόμος….

«Έτσι θα τελειώσει ο κόσμος, όχι με έκρηξη αλλά με λυγμό».

T. C. Elliot

20) SHARON JONES & THE DAP KINGS – 100 Days, 100 Nights

19) BONOBO – Animal Magic

18) ALICE RUSSELL – My Favourite Letters

17) LACK OF AFRO – Press On

16) DEELA – Mano Mano

15) THIEVERY CORPORATION – The Cosmic Game

14) Κ. ΒΗΤΑ – Για Σένα Με Αγάπη

13) KABANJAK Meets PROTASSOV – Grow

12) BACKINI – Threads

11) RJD2 – Deadringer

10) QUANTIC – 5th Exotic

09) BLACK GRASS – A Hundred Days In One

08) CAYETANO – Focused

07) DEADLY AVENGER – Deep Red

06) SKINNY – Taller

05) PAROV STELAR – Shine

04) ILYA – They Died For Beauty

03) FEDERICO AUBELE – Gran Hotel Buenos Aires

02) PEPE DELUXE – Beatitude

01) PORTISHEAD – Third

June? June?

Oh well – I’m back, probably.

What’s been happening? Looking back at the last two posts, both those papers got rejected; in one case it was more of a “revise and resubmit”, so I’m not particularly distressed. The other was more of a “hit the back wall without bouncing” rejection, which did stop me in my tracks for a bit – but I’ll get a resubmission out of it. And my book is almost out, and almost has its own Web page (a holding page as I write this, but I’m going to fix that RSN).

I was going to kick this blog back into life with a few thoughts on blogging, or a political meme that drifted past in the summer, or some thoughts on the mainstreaming of Fascism, or possibly even my long-planned post on the ethics of armed struggle. (Armed struggle: I’m agin it.) Instead of which, I’m going down that time-honoured route to a blog post, the comment that got too long for the comment box. Sparked off by something on Daniel’s site, which has an odd sort of big-fleas-little-fleas appropriateness about it.

First off, how about a bit of Tronti? (Borrowed from my book, which is out soon.)

Capitalist society has its laws of development: they have been formulated by economists, applied by governments and endured by the workers. But who will discover the laws of development of the working class? … We ourselves have put capitalist development first, workers’ struggles second. This is wrong. We need to reverse the problem, change its sign, begin from first principles: and the first principle is the struggle of the working class. Where capital is developed on the social scale, capitalist development is subordinate to workers’ struggles: it follows on from them and has to shape the political mechanisms of its own production accordingly.
Mario Tronti (1964), “Lenin in England”

More generally – Tronti and the workerists argued – capitalist development is parasitic on workers’ intelligence and creativity, which they use in the refusal of work. You get the job done with half an hour to spare and sneak off for a fag; your employer cuts your working day by half an hour and cuts your pay accordingly. Result: profit. You do eight hours’ work in six hours; your employer increases your workload by 33%. Result: profit.

And so to Thomas Friedman.

we need to understand that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade, but also our public [i.e. state] school system. Otherwise, the jobless recovery won’t be just a passing phase, but our future.
…
[the] problem will be reversed only when the decline in worker competitiveness reverses — when we create enough new jobs and educated workers that are worth, say, $40-an-hour compared with the global alternatives. If we don’t, there’s no telling how “jobless” this recovery will be.
…
Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education.

For a start, the “untouchable” theme is a striking example of Friedman’s legendary tin ear. To use “untouchable”, as a noun, to refer to people at the top of the heap – people who will thrive while the rest of us struggle – is bizarrely insensitive. To do so when what we’re struggling against is competition from low-wage countries, like, say, India – ugh. Brane hertz.

The “work-smarter-not-harder” stuff in the last paragraph quoted above is pretty insulting, too – at least, it is for those of us who have been hearing it from management gurus, year in and year out, ever since the last recession. The sermon changes from year to year – sometimes there’s just no money around; sometimes there’s lots of money but lots of people competing for it; sometimes it’s neither of the above but the world is changing! – but the message is always the same. There’s always some compelling reason why we’ve got to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to achieve this and save money on that. We can’t just get on with our jobs – that would be wrong. (More to the point, it would mean we didn’t generate more profit than we did last year. See Tronti.)

But Friedman has something more specific to say here. Something that goes roughly like this:

“Only a minority of American workers are doing well out of globalisation – everyone else is getting shafted! As nobody could possibly have predicted (except for everybody but me)! So we need to move all American workers into that minority! And the key to that is education, government-provided education in particular! And what we need to do to government-provided education is, oh, damn, time’s up.”

I was particularly struck by the line about the $40-an-hour jobs. He’s literally proposing to fix the problem at the margin – by moving everyone who’s being affected by global competition into the margin of jobs so skill-intensive, and skills so specialised, that they can’t be done for less than $40/hour. Because if they could be done cheaper they would be, and if they’re done cheaper on the other side of the world, hey, them’s the breaks.

In The age of insecurity, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson liken globalisation to a strong wind – a conventional enough image these days. They then say that the anti-protectionist orthodoxy is a bit like saying we should deal with this strong wind by opening all our doors and knocking down walls where possible. (That wind is out there whether we like it or not! It’s a fact of life! It’s the way the world is!) Friedman has been urging on a process which other people said should be resisted or slowed down, because it would lead to disruption and immiseration on a large scale. He’s now claiming that it has led to large-scale disruption and immiseration – and his only solution is for the 80% to clamber on board the 20%’s lifeboat. And if that doesn’t work, well, it’s probably the fault of the government.

More than 10.000 clicks after one and something year…. Thanx to all of ya! Keep it alive and kickin’!!!

One of the best music blogs ever, is now closed…. Freedom and justice will fall upon those, who believe that they can handle everything. And especially things that don’t belong to them… Things like music… All the big labels… you can kiss my ass!! I will leave the link in the “friends or foes” section as a homage….

Dear mates, αποφάσισα να παρουσιάσω, παράλληλα, και κάποια albums, τα οποία θεωρώ ότι αξίζουν να τα ακούσετε και να τα αποκτήσετε, τόσο για την ποιότητα τους όσο και για τη σπανιότητα τους. Το κακό είναι ότι δεν έχω βρει links για αυτές τις δουλειές. Άρα θα πρέπει να τα βρείτε εσείς, μέσω κάποιου P2P προγράμματος, όπως το Soulseek. Enjoy!

Sorry guys but, at the moment, I’m experiencing some internet connection problems. There are some thoughts to change the internet provider. Until things are stabilised the posts will be updated whenever I can. Sorry again. Enjoy…

Funkier, Groovier & More Tanned Than Ever…..

So….Get Ready!

P.S. By the way, check out my new blog:

www.cortexunderattack.wordpress.com

It has nothing to do with music….it’s just for the heck of it!

Despite his annoying quirks, his occasional vulgarity, his poor choice of friends, the low quality of his fiction writing, and the shallowness of some of his reasoning, there is a reason why I keep a link to Vox Day on my sidebar. Occasionally he offers very entertaining provocations:

So, will PZ dare to enter the Red Box? Given that this is the area of his scientific and academic expertise and I am, according to him, “a pathetic little twerp with delusions of grandeur”, there’s absolutely no reason he should not… unless, of course, he’s afraid he can’t present a sufficiently convincing case for Darwin’s dangerous idea.

UPDATE: Wow, the Pharyngulans are already hurling metaphorical feces, providing excuses for PZ to run away, and trying to change the subject to religion. I find their lack of faith… amusing.

Ho ho! This is rich. A much less arrogant evolutionist, Scott Hatfield, was willing to go a few rounds with Vox, and it didn’t hurt him at all. In fact, it mostly served to confirm the prejudices of his regular blog readers, and to educate some of the Vox Popoli in the finer points of Neo-Darwinism. Then Scott and Vox each went on their merry way.

However, PZ Myers has a leviathan ego, so much so that he believes it is his mission on earth to be intellectually sovereign in representing the entire scientific community against the barbarian biblical creationists. To this end, he has resolved to forever stay in his little tower and throw rotten vegetables down at them, rather than venturing forth and meeting them face to face, where he would risk wetting himself in public before the confrontation actually began.

This is because PZ doesn’t view “creation vs. evolution” as a scientific, economic, religious, or philosophical question, but rather as a political question. Vox is scientifically skeptical, but ultimately he sees it as an  question of economics, as shown during his debate with Scott. I see it as a philosophical question, and I am skeptical of both the scientific claims and the religious claims; that is, I don’t consider it to be pertinent to an understanding of natural processes or to personal salvation.

PZ, however, is mostly concerned with posturing, whining, and making political calculations. According to his political calculus, the cause of evolutionary indoctrination would be terribly damaged if its most important advocate were to be seen as acknowledging the credibility of any creationist, even a superficial rhetorical credibility. This pathetic circumstance, in which a moderately proficient science teacher is reduced to cynical political manipulations, perfectly illustrates why I despise politics.

I understand that blogging involves a lot of hot air and that the blogosphere itself is less important than many people think it is. However, most journalism and most political arguments are less important than many people think they are. I am not highlighting Vox’s mockery because I think it “proves” that evolution is wrong or that Vox is smarter or braver than PZ; they are actually both acting within the normal range of adolescent blog-silliness. I think it does prove that the truth of evolutionary theory is inconsequential to the “true believers.” They just want a social marker in a political game. Just as when “conspiracy theorists” are ignored by government officials, there is no pretense about finding out the truth.

Update:

More hysterical whining documented:  PZ attempts to make himself famous by confronting Ken Ham in the same way he doesn’t want creationists to confront him.

Only a few days left…..Don’t freak out! (Even I can’t stand the wait)

Ok, people….it’s summer time & I (too) should leave this God forsaken town, before I totally melt…The posts will be updated in extreme occasions of boredom and near-death experiences…:D

Soooo….be cool everyone and stay tuned after the 15th of August…U all have a great summer…

Thefreedictonary báo không tìm thấy từ này trong tự điển đề nghị kết nối tới wikipedia. Lật Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary New 7^th Edition 2006 cũng không thấy từ này xuất hiện. Bấm chuột vô MacMillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners CD-ROMS 2^nd Edition 2007 thì được giải thích như sau:

Blogosphere (noun) [singular] computing: the imaginary place on the Internet where people’s blogs go so that other people can read them and react to them.


Như vậy, ngoại trừ wikipedia và MacMillian với địng nghĩa trên hiện đang có để tra thì Oxford và một số tự điển khác vẫn chưa chấp nhận sự có mặt của nó kể từ khi được Brad L. Graham khai sinh trong lúc bông dùa vào ngày 10/9/1999 để rồi nhanh chóng rơi vào kỷ niệm thì đến năm 2002 William Quick lại lôi nó ra lần nữa. Lần này thí nó may mắn được nhanh chóng thừa nhận và lan truyền trong giới viết warblog (hay mirblog), một cộng đồng chuyên viết blog về tin tức chiến sự đang diễn ra ở các nơi trên thế giới.

Cũng theo wikipedia, mọi người vẫn còn xem blogosphere là con đẻ của chuyện bông đùa nhưng trên BBC và càc chương trình như Morning Edition, Day to Day, hay All Things Considered của National Public Radio lại nhiều lần sử dụng từ này trong đàm luận ý kiến công chúng. Một số phương tiện truyền thông trong những năm gần đây bắt đầu sử dụng blogosphere khi cần lấy một chuẩn để “đo lường” dư luận xã hội. Blogosphere cũng đã được sử dụng trong văn chương phổ thông cũng như bác học để nói tới việc nổi lên hoặc thoái trào của sự kháng trở đối với các hiện tượng như globalization, voter fatigue (một hiện tượng nguội lạnh với việc bầu cử khi quyền này bị lạm dụng).

Như vậy, cùng với việc phát triển của blog và blogger, trong từ vựng Anh văn đã xuất hiện thêm những từ mới có liên quan đến cái xu hướng hiện đại của cái thế giới ảo này như MacMillan cho định nghĩa ở trên. Tôi tự thắc mắc sao cả Bard L. Graham rồi đến lượt Willian Quick không xài một cụm từ nào đó của Anh văn để diễn tả cái sự chử nghĩa của dân blog lại đi khai sinh một từ vừa không lạ vừa cũng không quen bằng cách ghép hai tiếp vĩ ngữ Hy Lạp vô cái từ quá mới là blog để cho ra thêm một từ mới nữa nhưng rồi cũng tự giải thích được bởi vì không có từ nào ngắn hơn cái từ blog quá đỗi thân quen này được gắn thêm “logos – có nghĩa là từ” và “sphere – thế giới” để trở thành mọt từ mới có nghĩa chính xác hơn một cụm từ hay từ ghép trong Anh văn.

Nhược Sắt ® 28/06/2009

Thefreedictonary báo không tìm thấy từ này trong tự điển đề nghị kết nối tới wikipedia. Lật Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary New 7^th Edition 2006 cũng không thấy từ này xuất hiện. Bấm chuột vô MacMillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners CD-ROMS 2^nd Edition 2007 thì được giải thích như sau:

Blogosphere (noun) [singular] computing: the imaginary place on the Internet where people’s blogs go so that other people can read them and react to them.

Như vậy, ngoại trừ wikipedia và MacMillian với địng nghĩa trên hiện đang có để tra thì Oxford và một số tự điển khác vẫn chưa chấp nhận sự có mặt của nó kể từ khi được Brad L. Graham khai sinh trong lúc bông dùa vào ngày 10/9/1999 để rồi nhanh chóng rơi vào kỷ niệm thì đến năm 2002 William Quick lại lôi nó ra lần nữa. Lần này thí nó may mắn được nhanh chóng thừa nhận và lan truyền trong giới viết warblog (hay mirblog), một cộng đồng chuyên viết blog về tin tức chiến sự đang diễn ra ở các nơi trên thế giới.

Cũng theo wikipedia, mọi người vẫn còn xem blogosphere là con đẻ của chuyện bông đùa nhưng trên BBC và càc chương trình như Morning Edition, Day to Day, hay All Things Considered của National Public Radio lại nhiều lần sử dụng từ này trong đàm luận ý kiến công chúng. Một số phương tiện truyền thông trong những năm gần đây bắt đầu sử dụng blogosphere khi cần lấy một chuẩn để “đo lường” dư luận xã hội. Blogosphere cũng đã được sử dụng trong văn chương phổ thông cũng như bác học để nói tới việc nổi lên hoặc thoái trào của sự kháng trở đối với các hiện tượng như globalization, voter fatigue (một hiện tượng nguội lạnh với việc bầu cử khi quyền này bị lạm dụng).

Như vậy, cùng với việc phát triển của blog và blogger, trong từ vựng Anh văn đã xuất hiện thêm những từ mới có liên quan đến cái xu hướng hiện đại của cái thế giới ảo này như MacMillan cho định nghĩa ở trên. Tôi tự thắc mắc sao cả Bard L. Graham rồi đến lượt Willian Quick không xài một cụm từ nào đó của Anh văn để diễn tả cái sự chử nghĩa của dân blog lại đi khai sinh một từ vừa không lạ vừa cũng không quen bằng cách ghép hai tiếp vĩ ngữ Hy Lạp vô cái từ quá mới là blog để cho ra thêm một từ mới nữa nhưng rồi cũng tự giải thích được bởi vì không có từ nào ngắn hơn cái từ blog quá đỗi thân quen này được gắn thêm “logos – có nghĩa là từ” và “sphere – thế giới” để trở thành mọt từ mới có nghĩa chính xác hơn một cụm từ hay từ ghép trong Anh văn.

Nhược Sắt ® 28/06/2009



Ngồi buồn, lôi tự điển MacMillan rồi tự điển online ra tra xem họ định nghĩa như thế nào về cái từ blog vốn dĩ nhanh chóng trở thành một từ quá quen thuộc trong một thời gian quá ngắn trong vòng chưa đầy một chục năm trở lại đây để hiểu vì sao blog hấp dẫn và lôi cuốn như vậy và mọi người ai cũng muốn trở thành blogger.

Đầu tiên, cũng giống như một người đang học Anh văn, khi tra một chữ trên tự điển đều có khuynh hướng truy tìm căn nguyên của nó. Nói cho có thuật ngữ thì gọi là từ nguyên hay là Etymology trong Anh văn. Theo wikipedia và thefreedictionary, blog vốn là một chữ được ngắt ra từ danh từ weblog có nghĩa là một trang web chuyển tải thông tin theo thời gian tính do một hay nhiều người thực hiện luôn có kèm theo đường dẫn đến những nhận xét liên quan đến đề tài (thefreedictionary trích định nghĩa từ The American Heritage© Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 bởi Houghton Mifflin Company và được cập nhật và phát hành năm 2009). Sau một thời gian phát triển thì weblog có thêm nghĩa mới là bài viết cá nhân trực tuyến (a person’s online journal – thefreedictionary trích định nghĩa từ Collin Essential English 2^nd Edision 2006 © HarperCollins Publisher 2004, 2006).

Vậy, nguyên nhân từ đâu ngày nay chúng ta chỉ sử dụng blog để nói về weblog? Theo wikipedia và Rebecca Blood trong Weblogs: A History and Perspective thoạt kỳ thủy, weblogs được Jorn Barger đưa ra vào tháng 12 năm 1997 để chỉ các trang có tính chất đồng dạng với nhau mà ngày nay ta gọi chúng bằng một thuật ngữ duy nhất đó là blog. Để rồi sau đó, khoảng tháng 4 – 5 năm 1999, Peter Merholz trong lúc bông đùa đã “bẻ” weblog thành một cụm từ là “we blog” đặt trên trang “blog” của mình Peterme.com. Ngay lập tức sau đó, Evan Williams ở Pyra Labs sử dụng ngay “blog” vừa là danh từ, vừa là động từ có nghĩa hiệu chỉnh hoặc đăng bài lên weblog; đồng thời sáng chế thêm từ blogger sử dụng cho sản phẩm của Pyra Labs Blogger.

Dài dòng với thefreedictonary rồi wikipedia cùng với Rebecca Blood thì cũng chẳng cần đến định nghĩa của MacMillan nữa nhưng thiết nghĩ, định nghĩa của MacMillan lại ngắn gọn và súc tích:

Blog (noun) [countable]: a type of diary record of what someone does each day on a website that is changed regularly, to give the latest news. The page usually contains someone’s opinions, comments, and experiences.

Blogger (noun) [countable]: MacMillan không định nghĩa blogger nhưng với nguyên tắc cấu tạo từ của Anh văn thì tiếp vĩ ngữ ER khi được gán vô một từ thì từ đó thường chỉ đến người làm một việc nhất định để cho ra một sản phẩm có tên chính cái tip vĩ ngữ đó được gắn vô.

Điều cần chú ý từ định nghĩa của MacMillan rồi wikipedia ta thấy blog là một không gian trên internet được người sử dụng có nhu cầu lưu lại sự việc có kèm theo ý kiến của người tạo ra rồi chia sẻ (to give the latest news) vì nguyên tắc chung của internet là tính sociable chính vì thế mà số lượng blogger ngày càng trở nên full-blown (phát triển mạnh mẽ) vì đó là bandwagon (xu hướng thời đại) của internet mà Rebecca Blood đã nói trong Weblogs: A History and Perspective. Điều thú vị mà Rebecca Blood nhận định là đối với một blogger, càng viết nhiều thì blogger đó càng trở nên năng động do tính phản hồi trước một vấn đề ngày càng được phát triển so với việc chỉ cảm nhận rồi phản ảnh. Tôi rất thích cách dùng từ của Rebecca Blood cho cái câu rất ngắn này. “Ideally, he will become less reflexive and more reflective.”

Nhược Sắt®

White Exterior…Black Interior

Ok, people. I have to admit…this is one hell of a ride!!! But, unfortunately, because of the summer, there will be a cutback at the frequency of the posts’ updates. Don’t worry though. Whenever there’s a little spare time, we will be in contact, sharing our thoughts & music… Soooo, until next time…u all have a great summer…

Quality Music…Sounds Better!

[Thomas Paine] possessed a wonderful talent of writing to the tempers and feelings of the public. His compositions, though full of splendid and original imagery, were always adapted to the common capacities. He was intemperate and otherwise debauched in private life. His vanity appeared in everything he did or said. He once said he was at a loss to know whether he was made for the times or the times made for him. His “Age of Reason” probably perverted more persons from the Christian faith than any book that ever was written for the same purpose. Its extensive mischief was owing to the popular, perspicuous, and witty style in which it was written, and to its constant appeals to the feelings and tempers of his readers.

Benjamin Rush, Commonplace Book, June 8, 1809; in The Founders on the Founders (2008), ed. Kaminski. 

This comment on Tom Paine corresponds pretty well with what Socrates said about orators: that they pander to popular tastes rather than improve their listeners. It is also generally true of bloggers.

Όσοι “κατεβάζουν” μουσική από το Ίντερνετ, αγοράζουν και περισσότερη μουσική…

Περισσότερα χρήματα ξοδεύουν στην αγορά τραγουδιών αυτοί που κατεβάζουν παράνομα μουσική στο διαδίκτυο σε σύγκριση με αυτούς που απλά αγοράζουν, σύμφωνα με έρευνα Νορβηγών επιστημόνων.

Διαβάστε περισσότερα….

You have great reason for thankfulness to your kind perservor, who hath again carried you through many dangers, preserved your Life and given you an opportunity of making further improvements in virtue and knowledge. You must consider that every Moment of your time is precious, if trifled away never to be recalled. Do not spend too much of it in recreation, it will never afford you that permanent satisfaction which the acquisition of one Art or Science will give you, and whatever you undertake aim to make yourself perfect in it, for if it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.

Abigail Adams to John Quincy Adams
Braintree, March 2, 1780
The Founders on the Founders (2008), ed. Kaminski, p. 4-5

What is the difference between recreation and “Art or Science”? Here Abigail Adams distinguishes art and science from recreation as that which improve our virtue and knowledge, and as that which are worth doing well.

This is why I like playing sports, but not with most people. Most men who play “recreational” sports, for example, have made a science out of the one or two that they excel at; they have devoted significant portions of their lives to analyzing their performance and analyzing others’ performance. They are pros in their own minds. Since I don’t take their obsession very seriously, I’m not only not on the team, I’m not even in the league. They don’t want to play, they want to win, just for once in their lives. Good for them, but I don’t want to be around them; their priorities are upside-down and backwards, and as long as that is true, they will always be losers.

Likewise, I make a science out of reading, and this annoys most people. They don’t want to read the actual words; they don’t care what they actually mean or whether they make sense. They hate editors and they hate rules. Partly that is because some editors make up their own rules, and partly that is because some editors are made up only of rules, most of which are arbitrarily made-up. As a consequence, most authors before the 1990s were fortunately never published. Now, unfortunately almost all of them are published. The fiction authors are bad because they are squishy and temperamental and self-righteously expressionistic; the next worst are the deliberately obscure and insecure academics; and the worst of all are the mindlessly herdlike political bloggers, oozing with the drunken rage of demonically possessed swine. At least the academics will pay to be edited, though.

The takeaway for me is that art and science exhibit purpose, and my activities should be purposeful, so most activities should be pursued as an art or a science. The exception is where the purpose of an activity is social; in that case it need not necessarily be performed as an art or science. Recreational activities that are not artistically, scientifically, or socially purposeful, then, are dissipative and narcotic.

I wish their Ennemies could by any means be perswaded to carry on the War against them in Places where they might be sure of Tryumphs, instead of insitsing upon pursuing it, where they are Sure of Defeats.

John Adams to Benjamin Franklin
From The Hague, June 13, 1782
The Adams Papers: Papers of John Adams, vol. 13, May-October 1782, p. 117
(unmodernized, uncorrected text)

Here Adams is referring to the British, who were at war with France, Spain, Holland, and America. I can apply this to all kinds of situations in which I think people are more interested in fighting than in winning. They have a political objective that requires them to identify a specific enemy, attribute specific motives to that enemy, and publicly engage that enemy over a period of time; however, they have no practical objectives and show little willingness to accomplish anything efficiently.

On this account, I would criticize tax protestors; anti-abortion activists; anti-war activists; advocates for starting and continuing the Iraq War; intelligent design advocates; evolution advocates; the emergent church; the New Atheists; gay marriage opponents; Democrats under Bush; and Republicans under Obama.

These folks are playing some kind of public relations game in which they want to demonstrate “public support” for a hopeless position by flooding blogs, forums, chatrooms, radio airwaves, cable channels, and editorial pages with mindless grumbling and arguing. I call their positions “hopeless” because if they had faith in them, they would seek some kind of concrete improvement towards an achievable goal. Since they don’t really believe in the practical significance of their professed doctrine, they are content to flounder aimlessly in the mud pit with their opponents, as long as they can still hear the roar of the crowds.

Furthermore, this applies generally to most people who want to debate things on the Internet, in a bar, over a joint, or in any other situation where the method of discourse and the results don’t actually make any difference. If there is anything that you are willing to argue about with someone who is antagonistic or indifferent to you, it is probably something that you cannot care about. If you could care about it, you would model it more than talk about it; and you would seek strategic victory rather than meaningless, bloody fights followed by whining and bitter insults.

Καλό Πάσχα και καλή Ανάσταση σε όλους….

Φραπεδούπολη Θεσσαλονίκη…..αύριο κοιμήσου….μην πας για καφέ! Πιες τον σπίτι σου….

Recently I had an exchange with the estimable scientist John A. Davison, who is also an iconoclastic, full-time gadfly to anyone involved in the Darwinism-Intelligent Design Debate for Loquacious Yahoos, which I will simply abbreviate as DIDDLY. (The practical significance of this debate is, indeed, DIDDLY-squat.)

Having spent a lifetime annoying orthodox TENS evolutionists and orthodox Christians, Davison is very concerned with the current state of Internet discourse, specifically the problems of banishment and anonymity. 

I have been banned from both “liberal” and “conservative” sites, just because I stated an opinion that made the blog owner uncomfortable. I have also been completely blocked from viewing a site. What is the point in that? Such priggish insecurity is pathetic. I have found that evolutionists in particular have little tolerance for dissent, so when I go to their forums I veil my criticism in velvet words.

I have concluded that many blog owners are trying to create a kind of social experiment as art. That is, they imagine that they can attract enough supporters to make them feel loved, as well as enough detractors to make them feel important. In the end, however, they expect everyone to bow to their rhetorical authority, like characters in a novel that are strongly delineated but ultimately work out the author’s intended plot. They are “Howard Roark” types who want full control over their creations, that is, their precious blog posts and the derivative comment threads.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with this as such, since each blog or forum is a kind of “private property”; but it does denigrate the idea of the “public forum.” The problem with the World Wide Web is that it has become a grotesque version of a Jeffersonian democracy, in which everyone is a small landholder and a supposedly a direct political participant, but there is no single common space where each one can be heard by everyone else in a meaningful way. This bloated global populism is ultimately rather unfulfilling for someone with the sensibilities of a New England town-hall populist. (Jefferson, by the way, ended up advocating a “New England town-hall” style democracy that he called “ward government.”)

Davison is convinced that the intolerance of blog/forum owners is related to the prevalence of “anonymity” on the Internet:

There is a clear correlation between anonymity and intolerance which characterizes every weblog of which I am aware. The higher the percentage of anonymous users, the lower the quality of the dialogue. 

However, he doesn’t really mean anonymity; what he really means is pseudonymity.

Anonymity is what you get in a crowd of corporate clerks, communist laborers, Black Friday consumers, football fans, soccer hooligans, revolutionary sans-culottes, blipvert victims, Hitlerjugend, ants, cancer cells, Agent Smiths, Democrat/Republican straight-ticket voters, and mass-suicide cult members. The way of the crowd is broad, and it leads straight to hell. 

Pseudonymity comes from abandoning the identity conferred on you by your parents, your traditions, your government, your employer, or your marketing demographic profile, and choosing to create an identity from scratch. Naturally, since it lacks depth and breadth, such an identity is going to be insecure. It is made even more unstable if it is based on an idealistic social arrangement that follows the American Idol model:  that is, a blog.  

Concealing one’s “actual” identity is admittedly discourteous, as everyone instinctively knows in real life. What has happened on the Internet is that “identity” has taken on a new meaning that looks a lot like an archaic  meaning.

In the distant past of Euro-American culture, and yet today in some tribalistic cultures elsewhere, identity was wholly dependent on family unit and place. In such a culture, “individual” identity was unthinkable, and tribal identity plays out in modern terms as resistance to the concepts of intellectual property and plagiarism, as well as obsessions with “saving face” and ritual conformity.

Other traditional Euro-American concepts of identity have included national, ethnic, religious, regional, imperial, and global identities. All of these traditional identity paradigms are now being challenged as arbitrary and superfluous. They are being replaced by a kind of neo-tribalism that is situated in webspaces and characterized by intentional family units. Neo-tribalism (or Neo Tribalism, if you prefer) also has little regard for 19th-century American ideas about intellectual property, and is obsessed with blog buzz and netiquette.

Thus, humans are now attempting to supplant their biological and ethnogeographical origins as sources of identity, by using ephemeral technological constructs that perform the same function. Marshall McLuhan, where are you? You died too soon.

Without the guiding hand of a global imperial government, it is now impossible to establish and verify a “true” identity in the traditional sense. That is the way in which we are achieving a form of the tribal model, in which identity is confirmed by the testimony of those who “know” you personally. Yet, if it is merely a biological/geographical referent, it means nothing to someone on the other side of the world who sees you only through the lens of the Internet.

That is why Davison’s Internet adversaries are so unhappy with him:  he throws off the equilibrium of their arguments, on which their identities depend. He is unquestionably an accomplished scientist and professor who could trash an intellectual lightweight like Myers or Dawkins in a matter of minutes. His existence as a scientifically credentialed evolutionist who argues against natural selection is acutely embarrassing to the phony political animals who are trying to promote collective sanctification through evolutionary theory indoctrination. Yet, he also maintains that there may not have been a single divine creator or creation event; that any divine creators of the past are probably dead now; and that we are now poised to take over that role by becoming transhumanists. So, he also has no friends among creationists; and he even causes friction among his natural allies, the  somewhat incoherent advocates of intelligent design. 

Davison, an anarchist at heart, responds to this commotion about DIDDLY with a standard line:

I don’t need a fan club and I thrive on abuse.

I love it so!

Go in peace, buddy.

There was a curious piece in the ‘Work’ section of Saturday’s Guardian (I only read it for the problem page). It was headed

10 things we’ve learned so far

We send our reporters around the UK to see what happens in a downturn

but on inspection there were only three things that they’d learnt from their roving reporters; the other seven were single-paragraph makeweights. The three big investigative findings were

1. We innovate more
Kate Burt meets the start-ups who won’t be put off by a credit crunch.

2. We’re willing to lower our sights
Lydia Stockdale and Huma Quereshi interview workers who swallowed their pride to do a job they previously thought beneath them.

and

3. We don’t like ‘foreigners’ taking ‘our’ jobs
Hsiao-Hung Pai visits migrant Italian workers living on a barge in Grimsby.

OK. Now, I’ll admit to having taken a fairly optimistic view of the Lindsey strike from day one. I’m in favour of people being able to travel to look for work, but I’m even more in favour of people not having to travel any further than they want to. I don’t see anything inherently problematic in a workforce in location X objecting to being replaced by a workforce which the employer has bussed in (or shipped in) for the purpose; I certainly don’t think any such protest is inherently racist or xenophobic, as Pai’s scare-quotes rather strongly suggest. (“We don’t like the boss taking the jobs we were doing off us” wouldn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

But it can’t be denied that the strike did acquire some definite nationalist overtones, thanks not least to some of its supporters on the mainstream Left. So it was heartening to see the demands which (thanks to Socialist Party members) the strike committee adopted – demands which rather pointedly don’t frame the strike in nationalist terms.

• No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
• All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement
• Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members
• Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers
• All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
• Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers – via interpreters – to give right of access to Trade Union advice – to promote active integrated Trade Union Members

There have been different views on what the strike achieved. The Socialist Party remained upbeat:

the original contractor, Shaw, had been told that they had lost part of the work to an Italian company, IREM, who would bring in their own workforce from Italy and elsewhere to do the job. As a result, Shaw had told the shop stewards on the site that some of their members would be made redundant from 17 February to make way for the Italian workers.

What was crucial in this was not the fact that they were Italian or Portuguese but that they would not be part of the National Agreement for the Engineering and Construction Industry (NAECI). Why? Because under the EU directives, backed up by the European Court of Human Rights, employing those workers under NAECI conditions would be seen as a “restraint on trade” and therefore against the freedom of movement of labour and capital enshrined in the EU capitalist club’s rules and regulations.
…
It was clear that the IREM workers were not in a union, Italian or otherwise. Italian union confederation CGIL leader Sabrina Petrucci was quoted in the Morning Star on 6 February saying that IREM is a notorious non-union firm.
…
In a major breakthrough, part of the deal allows for the shop stewards to check that the jobs filled by the Italian and Portuguese workers are on the same conditions as the local workers covered by the NAECI agreement. The Lindsey oil refinery is what is known as a ‘blue book’ site and all workers on it should be covered by the NAECI agreement. This means in practice that the union-organised workers will be working alongside the IREM-employed Italian workers and will be able to “audit” whether or not this is the case.

Unite’s statement is rather less gung-ho; but then, it wasn’t a union strike, and as such there must have been an element of relief when it was over. But even Derek Simpson stops short of trotting out the “British jobs for British workers” line again:

Unite joint general secretary, Derek Simpson said, “This is a good deal which establishes the principle of fair access for UK workers on British construction projects. We now expect other companies in the construction industry to level the playing field for UK workers. The workers involved in the unofficial strike can now get back to work.

“Lindsey is part of a much wider problem that will not go away just because the workers at Lindsey have voted to go back to work. There are still employers who are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on construction projects. No European worker should be barred from applying for a British job and absolutely no British worker should be barred from applying for a British job.”

Some on the left have pointed to what IREM told ACAS, suggesting that the strike was based on a misapprehension: supposedly IREM already were abiding by the provisions of the ‘blue book’ (even though they didn’t have to), and the only substantive difference in pay and conditions had to do with the timing of meal breaks. On the other hand, ACAS do concede that IREM couldn’t provide documentary evidence of what they were claiming; on those grounds alone, the role which the settlement grants to shop stewards is a step forward. I also think that, if it’s a choice between “hiring decisions made by corporate management” and “hiring decisions made by corporate management and local unionised workers”, anyone on the Left should prefer the latter in almost all circumstances.

In short, what the strike achieved was: to make the demands of local workers a factor in corporate decision-making; to ensure that all workers, whether locally-based or brought in temporarily, are employed on terms better than the minimum required by EU law; and to give the unions a role in policing this agreement. (The unions hadn’t done a lot to earn this – but then, the unions do tend to turn up in time to take the benefits of wildcat actions, even when they’ve been sitting on the sidelines all the way through. Oops, little bit of workerism, my name’s Toni Negri goodnight.) On a broader level, the strike also legitimised the idea of wildcat industrial action and demonstrated that anti-union legislation can be ignored if you’ve got the numbers. Basically, the job’s a good ‘un. But you wouldn’t know it from Hsiao-Hung Pai:

Francesco and Gianluca are two of the 100 Italians who arrived in late January on a four-month contract to work at the French oil giant, Total, at Lindsey oil refinery in Immingham. Francesco, in his late forties, has worked as a welder in Tunisia and Libya. Gianluca, in his thirties, has worked in Croatia and Germany. “This is my first time in the UK,” Francesco says, “and it is the first time in my 20 years of working abroad that I’ve experienced anti-foreign feelings.”

Their employment by Italian company Irem, for the building of a sulphurisation facility at Total, prompted a wave of nationwide wildcat strikes involving more than 6,000 workers on 20 construction sites – all angry that “foreign workers” are taking “British jobs”. The Unite union says the strikes are about challenging the Posted Workers Directive and ensuring service providers follow national agreements across the EU. And yet the unions have rallied behind the divisive slogan of “British jobs for British workers”, and alienated migrant workers in the process.

I think ‘divisive’ is a bit strong. ‘Potentially divisive’, fair enough, but it’s not an inherently divisive slogan: it’s perfectly possible to read that slogan as saying “people based here want to carry on working here (and we’re throwing Gordon Brown’s words back at him)”. Apart from anything else, I’m not aware of any evidence (and Pai doesn’t quote any) that migrant workers have been alienated; indeed, I know of some unionists who have gone to some lengths to try and stop this happening. More to the point, what’s with that ‘and yet’? There’s no dishonesty here, and not much in the way of contradiction. Yes, Unite – in the person of Mr Simpson – has ‘rallied behind’ that slogan, although (as we’ve seen) even he has backed away from it now. But the strike was about challenging the Posted Workers Directive; the worst you can charge Simpson with is inconsistency. Besides, Simpson and Unite weren’t even involved. The fact that the strike took place outside union structures, and that the strike committee itself disowned that slogan, would surely be worth mentioning in any reasonably complete account of the dispute.

Francesco says the real issue is about the system of subcontracting which isn’t specific to overseas firms and affects workers of all nationalities. “Irem pays differentiated wages to its workers,” he explains. “The hourly rate ranges from €14 [£12.50] in Bologna to €12 in the UK. Ten of us welders are on €12 per hour but the 80 labourers are on €7 per hour. And the new 100 British workers [starting work following an agreement with the unions] will be on the same rate.” Gianluca looks at my interpreter friend. “I remember migrants in Italy, like Bulgarian workers … They earn less than half our rate, for doing the same skilled jobs. I asked myself, the Bulgarians are also specialists like us, why are they only earning €5? All [posted] workers should be paid equally and have the same rights.”

Interesting information – although I don’t quite follow the bit about how a system in which The hourly rate ranges from €14 [£12.50] in Bologna to €12 in the UK isn’t specific to overseas firms. More to the point, the demand that all [posted] workers should be paid equally and have the same rights was exactly what the strike was about – and exactly what the victory of the strike achieved, albeit only in one location (so far – la lotta continua).

But instead of advocating equal conditions for all workers, British trade unions have bowed to nationalist pressure and fought for quotas for British workers. Picket line racist abuse was treated as acceptable. “I saw a Lindsey steward give out union jack flags to strikers here,” said local activist John Shemeld of the Staythorp power plant strike. “The leadership [of the strikes] is not racist, but they don’t challenge racism.”

This is extraordinarily misleading. First, as noted above, the strike took place outside any union structures; in this instance ‘British trade unions’ haven’t ‘fought’ for anything. Second, the strike committee fought for “equal conditions for all workers” and a one-off quota (not “quotas”) for locally-based (not “British”) workers; the two aren’t contradictory. (I suspect that the enforcement of equal conditions will make shipped-in labour less attractive anyway, but even if this weren’t the case I would see the quota as making British and Italian workers more rather than less equal.) Third, Pai doesn’t tell us anything about this “picket-line racist abuse” (what, when, how much); or who it “was treated as acceptable” by; or, for that matter, what the connection was between this abuse (whatever it was), its toleration (whoever did tolerate it) and that “nationalist pressure” (whatever that means). There certainly was “nationalist pressure” on the picket line, in the sense that the BNP turned up; the BNP turned up and they were told to clear off. Again, you wouldn’t learn this from Pai. There’s a general, woozy slippage between ‘racism’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘willingness to adopt patriotic imagery’ here, exemplified by that closing line from “local activist John Shemeld”. Shemeld seems to read tolerance of racism into the sight of a steward handing out Union Jacks – not ideal, certainly, but it’s worth noting that shop stewards couldn’t hand out anything with a union logo on, given that it was a wildcat strike.

In short, I think Hsiao-Hung Pai’s either got a very superficial understanding of the dispute or been misinformed. It’s great that she managed to talk to the Italian workers, but it’s a shame she didn’t speak to any of the local activists who were actually involved in the strike; I’m sure they could have helped her come up with something better. (I wouldn’t mind so much, only the other two articles were bobbins – especially 2. We’re willing to lower our sights. Apparently packing stuff in a warehouse doesn’t pay as well as being an investment banker, but you don’t have to get up so early. Or it might have been the other way round. Being a part-time lecturer in 2009 doesn’t pay as well as editing a magazine in 1998, I can tell you that, and you still have to get up in the morning. I wouldn’t go back, though – apart from anything else, that magazine doesn’t come out any more. But I digress.)