Not Ike's Military Industrial Complex

So says one of the authors of "Top Secret America," The Washington Post series about the sprawling defense apparatus that has mushroomed since 9/11.

Kafka could have only dreamed of such bureaucratic inefficiency. Of course, that's absolutely false: he wrote about it. (Actually, just re-reading The Castle; a translation put out in the past decade that is much closer to what he left behind than what was originally published, and finished, after his death by his friend.)

[Lovin' that -do.]

Finally, perhaps, the always-expanding defense complex, which includes the military and all the intelligence agencies, will become part of the deficit debate. It will be interesting to see how the deficit-hawks, typically some of the strongest supporters of defense spending (of course, this crosses the aisle), will react to this indictment of the community, which includes the Congressional role of funding of the whole thing.

This was the thread picked up most by the former head of the 9/11 Commission that recommended the creation of the DNI position, the ostensible head of this ungainly beast, in the first place. On PBS News Hour, he said that no matter how well coordinated the agencies are, redundancies and inefficiencies will remain, if the funding process in Congress remains fragmented. Uh, great.

Gopnik takes Evolutionary Bio to task (and: Pinker decries tech-phobia)

This sums up well the argument against there being different human races. And it's a 150 yo, so obviously it'll be widely accepted in no time.

Hopefully, eventually, because he's not now, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker editor and author, will be seen as a greater thinker/writer (he writes about a much wider range of subjects) than Steve Pinker--not that I dislike him, just disagree more.


Except here, where I totally agree with him about all the tech-is-rotting-our-brains shit.

The most recent iteration, which began at least fifteen years ago (reading a book of essays about tech and lit and language from '95; and while only half of them are doomsday predictions, it's interesting to read the same urgency, hasting toward the precipice, we hear so much of today), goes: print is dying, we're stopping reading, our brains are turning to mush. Bullshit. Language, as it always has, will mutate and be mutated by the mediums and environments we humans find or put ourselves in. I'm starting to think that language is the height of human accomplishment, the greatest technology, and all subsequent developments are similarly oriented towards encouraging mutually-beneficial bonds within the species, possibly with other species, by way of expanding empathy and compassion. (This is a combination of thoughts taken from the one of the essays mentioned above and Pinker's evo-bio concept of the purpose of empathy.)

Holy shit, I've turned Buddhist and linguist in one paragraph--Jesus.