inkbluesky

beautiful balloon - Hard-wired for the ups and downs

Of course, I say that because I evolved as a member of a reverse dominance hierarchy. We all did. Maybe if we’d evolved differently, which is the contingent part of this, we’d admire wolf hierarchies. But a human reverse dominance hierarchy is something that is led by an individual at the top who by dint of skill, talent or knowledge, or maybe just force of personality, becomes the corporal, the staff sergeant, the team captain, the platoon leader or the chairman, and the rest of the guys go along with it. It’s called a reverse dominance hierarchy because the leader needs the co-operation of the led.

Attempts at dictatorial domination were likely to be responded to in the Pleistocene with exile, homicide, non-cooperation and, interestingly, ridicule. Ridicule is a standard way for all human societies to deal with people at the top. We need look no further than Australian politics.

Caught my eye because among the many things Australia and America have in common is a perversely authoritarian Right of center political movement. In the U.S. anyway we seem to be on our way to punishing “dictatorial domination” of a president and his party with the modern equivalent of exile, defeat at the polls.

glued on gothic. why would someone chose to ruin a good piece of modern architecture by adding on those gothic cake decorations (foreground). then just behind that building add on a giant cheese grater. maybe it serves some kind of sun deflection/cooling purpose.

The Thin Skin of Apple Fans

In an excerpt posted this week, he looks at an area where facts often become particularly slippery, specifically perceived bias in the news media against, of all things, a technology company: Apple.

“Last year,” Mr. Manjoo writes, “I praised the iPhone in something of the way Romeo once praised Juliet: The device, I said, is revolutionary — ‘it marks a new way of life. One day we’ll all have iPhones, or things that aim to do what this first one does, and your life will be better for it.’ ”

But because he mentioned that the phone was a bit pricey, “several readers alleged that I was an Apple-hater.” One wrote him to ask, “Does Salon actually pay you or are you being paid under the table by rival companies?”

Anybody who has ever written about Apple products will tell the same story — introducing even a hint of negativity into a review or article will bring down the wrath of Apple’s most fanatical fans.

Good article about perceived bias, which has been at fever pitch for as long as I can remember, versus actual bias. I like Apple well enough and know quite few Mac fans. In their defense, at least in my experience none of them have drooled on me or tried to sabotage my PC. The rants on the web by Mac fans is another matter,

But the phenomenon is particularly stark when it comes to opinionated reviews — however laudatory — of Apple products. That’s because many Apple fans “care little for honest opinion,” Mr. Manjoo writes. “They want to pick up the paper and see in it a reflection of their own nearly religious zeal for the thing they love. They don’t want a review. They want a hagiography.”

hagiography- idealizing or idolizing. frequently associated with the veneration of saints.

new world

Terrorism is far from a new phenomenon. Human beings terrorizing each other rather then prostitution may be the world’s oldest profession. Like a participant in a popularity contests it has had its ups and downs, but recently moved to the top of charts in favorite boogie men. Seeing that the average person is more likely to be killed by a runaway Zamboni the emphasis placed on terrorism of foriegn origins seems misplaced, but we seem to need new boogie men. Probably a waste of time, popularity contests not being particularly rational, but maybe we could turn our attention to something a little more pressing in the nature of threats to democracy, The growth of authoritarian government financed capitalism,

In the past five years, governments around the world have been transforming themselves into deal makers and business players on a scale never seen in the modern era. In China, state-owned oil giant PetroChina has become the largest company in the world, worth more than $1 trillion. In Russia, state-owned Gazprom has grown into the world’s largest gas company. States are also wielding influence by directly buying into major private firms: The investment fund run by the Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi is now the world’s largest, and recently spent $7.5 billion to become the top shareholder of the American financial giant Citigroup. Singapore’s state-controlled wealth fund, Temasek Holdings, sank $5 billion into Merrill Lynch, the largest US brokerage.

The standard response from you know where is that this isn’t bad, America and American workers benefit from this influx of capital. True up to a point. My understanding that the origins of capital mattered. That it should come from that great horn of infinite goodness, the private sector hand in hand with the supposed democratizing forces that we’ve all been told ad nauseum were built into capitalism. Capitalism is a wonderful thing at its most basic, but like many human inventions can be used for good and then again it can fall in with a bad crowd,

 A recent report by the global monitoring organization Freedom House found that “a group of market-oriented autocracies” were an important force in an overall decline in world freedom.

Arch Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research, sees these countries’ new financial clout as having significant consequences for the world. “These autocracies are unapologetic and increasingly assertive, at home and abroad,” he writes.

This new capitalism isn’t just about making money and the greedy attached sucker fish that we all know about its about what authoritarian governments fold into this new financial clout. They throw in the greed, corruption and influence peddling that have been part of capitalism since day one and add a political agenda. Authoritarians such as Marxists and fascists have tried their hand at almost the same game and meet with dismal failure. This time the authoritarians might have stumbled on a hybrid systems that works,

Perhaps the most dramatic example is China. Over the past 25 years, while keeping firm control over its economy, China has adopted many of the tools of capitalism - ceding some operational power to a Western-trained executive class, inviting foreign investment and partnerships, and buying and selling on the global open market.

The author of this piece Joshua Kurlantzick at the Boston Globe writes that since the history of close state private sector partnerships ( think Blackwater and Halliburton) is also a history of the ensuing rampant corruption and people will rise up in protest. Or unable to bob and weave with changing market forces big clumsy government-corps will be punished in the market place by smarter faster traditional companies. I’m not superstitious, but I’m crossing my fingers hoping that he’s right.