Book memo: Billy Bunter & The Schoolboy Broadcasters

"The Schoolboy Broadcasters" is "This week's ripping school story of Harry Wharton & Co. at Greyfriars".  This week is February 12th, 1927, and this is the facsimile edition of The Magnet  published by Howard Baker Press, London.

The students at Greyfriars get a chance to broadcast their stuff over a new experimental radio station, and get into a bigger adventure than one would have imagined. 

The Magnet's Motto: "Clean, Wholesome Literature!".  That it is.

The Republic dodges a bullet - barely

While most commentators are focused on the fate of the people and their healthcare, which is proper, I'd like to draw attention to the travesty that Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell almost succeeded in pulling off.

The House gave its assent to a bill that could not otherwise get a majority of the votes in the House on the assurance that the bill would be changed anyway in the Senate; and the Senate was cajoled to do the same on the assurance that the bill would be changed anyway in conference.   That is, this was a way to get through a blank check legislation that could not get votes in the House and in the Senate, and that would take shape in conference.

This attempt failed with 46 Democrats, 2 Independents and 3 Republicans voting against it in the Senate.  While 50 of them had been holding firm from the outset,  one of them, the "political maverick" John McCain, finally put his vote where his speeches have been.

For this travesty of democracy, in my opinion, Ryan, McConnell and all their willing collaborators should be tarred and feathered and driven out of town.

PS: Yes, what is so democratic about tarring and feathering?  Do understand this - in my opinion, Ryan and McConnell are oath-breakers - they have broken their oath to uphold the Constitution, not technically, but in spirit.  Yes, they have broken no laws, they've operated within rules of procedure, etc.  I guess we could try to make airtight rules - but the operation of any system involving humans requires a certain minimum of character and integrity.  It should not require endless rule-making to constrain people to do the right thing.   In my opinion, these folks have forfeited any claim to any consideration, they should be "cast into the outer darkness".

Josh Marshall: The Darkness and the Rot

One of Marshall's best pieces so far.

The key insight:  "Eventually I sensed that Trump wasn’t inducing people’s self-destruction so much as he was acting like a divining rod, revealing rot that existed already but was not apparent."

Steve Dickinson: How to sell your high-value equipment in China

Via BRF, I came across these three posts on how to do business in China.  It seems like a credible set of posts to me, and is pretty amazing and dismaying.   I'm not excerpting anything here, read the three parts.  I wonder how all of this squares with WTO, free trade and all the other standard rhetorical garbage that is trotted out. If you have answers, comments are welcome.

Part I: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/02/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china.html
Part II: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/03/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china-part-2.html
Part III: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/03/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china-part-3.html

Heinrich Zimmer on linear and cyclic time

This following is a chapter form "Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization" by Heinrich Zimmer.    This rendering by Zimmer of a story from the Brahmavaitarta Purana may be read before reading this chapter.

Eric Prydz - Generate (2015)

First heard on an aircraft entertainment system.  Way to get it out of the head is to post it here :)

History: a profound cultural difference

"The idea of history as a space where the salvation of individuals as members of a “nation,” a “race,” or a “faith” manifests is alien to Indian thought."

A clearer statement than the above cannot be found.  Of course, modern Indian thought seems to be  rapidly alienating itself from the roots of Indian culture.  Maybe modern Indian scholarship can rescue it.

The quote is from here.


PS:

As is the one below, with emphasis added:

The fact that everything transpires in history and can therefore be arranged temporally is a relatively banal insight. As a taxonomic principle it is no more compelling than those Foucault discovered on reading Borges in The Order of Things. So the distinguishing feature of the contemporary view is neither the insight into the historical nature of all existence (a discovery variously attributed to Vico, Herder, Humboldt, Hegel, and Ranke) nor the relating of events and discoveries to historical time. Rather, what is distinctive about historicism is the significance attached to history—a significance that, as Löwith rightly notes, originates with the Jewish and Christian experience of awaiting the Messiah. The Greek concept of time is cyclical: historical narratives exist but history itself insofar as it is chance and accidental cannot be the subject of an episteme (science). The proper object of knowledge is the eternal laws and customs that uphold the cosmos and ensure its orderly functioning. As Löwith notes, “In this intellectual climate, dominated by the rationality of the natural cosmos, there was no room for the universal significance of a unique, incomparable historical event.” Contrast this with the Jewish and Christian experience, for which “history was primarily a history of salvation and, as such, the proper concern of prophets, preachers, and philosophers.” There is now a tremendous interest in studying history. As the sphere where man’s salvation plays itself out, history acquires a new significance. To the extent that they regard themselves as Geschichtswissenschaften (historical sciences), the contemporary humanities also stand in this tradition. They have replaced philosophical understanding and ethical self-cultivation with reading the historical tea-leaves.

Can the Earth have a runaway greenhouse effect?

Stephen Hawking is in the news, having said that the Earth could experience an accelerating greenhouse effect that renders it uninhabitable, like Venus (e.g., here).

Back in 2013, the Scientific American had this story:  

Fact or Fiction?: We Can Push the Planet into a Runaway Greenhouse Apocalypse
A new study suggests human activity could, in theory, bring about the end of most life on Earth

The new study was this paper in Nature Geoscience:

Low simulated radiation limit for runaway greenhouse climates, Colin Goldblatt, Tyler D. Robinson, Kevin J. Zahnle & David Crisp