Reaction Points (#6)
“It’s becoming impossible to keep up” — that’s probably a direct quote from at least 17 different dark side blogs, so I won’t try to pin it down to anyone in particular. One response to the mania is to drop all pretense of a round up, and go meta. A round-up of reactosphere round-ups is still doable (at time of writing), with Foseti still master of the art (here and here), challenged by infant upstart Nick B Steves (here and here). How long before the depressive phase of the cycle begins, and we can all get some sleep?
More on overload (and time).
Competition on the reactionary-visualization front arrives from James Goulding, embedded in an excellent post (among many recently).
‘Spengler’ on the disastrous consistency of American foreign policy.
In encouraging news for explorers of the abyss, Lee Smolin argues that outside time is still time (the time of the outside): “Time must go all the way down. It must not be emergent, it must not be an approximate phenomenon, it must not be an illusion. … It seems to me a necessary hypothesis that the Big Bang was not the first moment of time but was an event — a transition, something like a phase transition before which there was a universe that had possibly different properties and different laws.”
Could we really be getting off this rock?
Non-reactionary, but probably close enough to get into trouble.
I’m slow getting to this, but slow’s the norm: “… a decline of ~1.23 IQ points per decade or fourteen IQ points since Victorian times.” (HBD* chick has more.)
Hyperinflation in strange places.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv4sfT0tnVA?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360
3:02 am local time…
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Thales Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
“3:02 am local time…”
At that hour, I’d have gone for Matchbox 20…
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Nick B. Steves Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 3:55 am
I like them too. Do they have a song about “Who needs sleep?”
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Nick L, I blame you for all these books I’m buying. Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff.. MUST BUY.
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Posted on May 24th, 2013 at 9:23 am | QuoteOh – and the link to my blog is wrong.
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admin Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Fixed
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Takedown of the reaction time study here. Haven’t read the study myself, but that matches my intuitive “if they’re wrong, here’s what failure mode they’re in” guess.
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nydwracu Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 1:01 pm
“reaction time study”, oh hell, why hasn’t anyone punned off that yet
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Thales Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Ironically, my perception of that Necker cube was stuck at the “pun” — I didn’t “get it” until clicking through. Moar sleep is definately required…
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Handle Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
Good spot! Here’s some I can think of which need double meanings. I’ll make a list to check off when I see them used well.
“Chain Reaction”, “Reaction Time”, “Knee-Jerk Reaction”, “Chemical Reaction”, “Initial/Immediate Reaction”, “Spontaneous Reaction”, “Explosive Reaction”, “Negative Reaction”, “Public Reaction”, umm … any others?
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Handle Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
You could spiff off Right too, I’m still waiting for “Right Club”.
Thales Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Sorry, can’t talk about “Right Club”…
admin Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 2:35 pm
HBD* chick quibbles, and links to more quibbles, so I thought my duty was done passing people onto her. That said, for anybody who can read it’s totally fricking obvious that we’re morons compared to the Victorians.
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Handle Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Mencken, Prejudices: Sixth Series
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Thales Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Smart Fraction Theory and the Wealth of Nations
We neither require nor desire a population of Aristotles, rather an abundancy of 110 IQ supervisors, managers, engineers and entrepreneurs.
fotrkd Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
You’ve given me an excuse to post about the London sewerage system. It’s not my favoured topic of conversation, but it’s really interesting, honest…
When Joseph Bazalgette designed the 100 miles of Victorian sewers that still serve London, the population of the capital was around 2m people. Now it is 8.2m.
“Bazalgette’s system was incredibly well designed,” explains Phil Stride, head of Thames Tideway Tunnel. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with what he created. The bricks, the design, the workmanship have all stood the test of time. The problem is we have outgrown it, by some distance.”
“Drop through a manhole in the pavement near Blackfriars Station in the City and the quality of the workmanship is immediately apparent. Not a brick is out of place, the mortar is solid, nothing has crumbled. The air may not be fresh, but the work is. It is like being transported back to the mid 19th century. Nothing has changed, nothing has been added, nothing taken away. Bazalgette’s work has withstood everything London has thrown at it, and proved capable of dealing with everything other than the volume.”
Also, here’s a picture of the inside of one of the original pumping stations.
The construction of this 100 miles system was completed between 1859 and 1865. Thames Water’s current ‘super sewer’ plans involve the construction of 25 km (16 miles) of sewerage pipe. The ‘planned’ start date for the project is 2015 with a planned completion date of 2023.
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admin Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 3:10 pm
A nation spiraling down the drain.
fotrkd Reply:
May 24th, 2013 at 3:17 pm
Indeed. We can’t even tag hyperlinks correctly. [… without nannyish Admin hand-holding]
Nick B. Steves Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 3:58 am
I assume you’ve all seen Harvard’s 1869 admission test.
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@
@Nick – don’t rub it in!
@Fotrkd – The pumping station is incredible – right out of a Donald Pleasance horror-fest circa 1970
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Posted on May 24th, 2013 at 8:09 pm | QuoteGoulding’s Sociology of Reaction piece is brilliant. His blog deserves more links.
This is one of the most important topics for discussion right now in the DEC: the general discussion of what the DEC is as a social movement.
But I still think we are for the most part missing a reactionary teleology. All the “prole” groups to use Goulding’s terminology are/were defined by what they don’t want. Most of Goulding’s “sages” define a (usually Christian, frequently Catholic)-derived teleology. If one is fond, as Goulding says of “sophomores”, of Bayesianism, this requires the recognition that we are defined by our definition of the priors.
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Nick B. Steves Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 3:59 am
Goulding is an enigma wrapped in a fine leatherbound volume wrapped in kidney pudding.
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Nick B. Steves Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 3:59 am
Was this chaos time??
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admin Reply:
May 25th, 2013 at 5:55 am
No, but you get a technical weekend pardon.