Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • AN HOMAGE: THE END OF LOVE OF THE EXPERIENCING OF DRIVING? Most people buy exoti

    AN HOMAGE: THE END OF LOVE OF THE EXPERIENCING OF DRIVING?

    Most people buy exotics entirely for signaling purposes. They certainly do not buy them for utilitarian transportation. But for some minority of owners, the pleasure of driving something terribly powerful, elegant to look at, visceral to command, and mechanically uncompromising is a pleasure in itself.

    In an era of commuting, where we often seek to replicate our living rooms in order to reduce the tedium of repetitive driving, or where we augment that utilitarian purpose with consumer status signaling, the pure pleasure of the experience of driving the sports car or the experience of adventure from driving the grand touring car is often forgotten.

    We have few places where we can experiment with our sports cars without fear of prosecution, and the world has shrunk so much and become so densely populated, and our roadways so utilitarian, that the grand touring experience has become one of selecting from a set of fixe drives through aging natural amusement parks rather than a means of exploring the world around us, and loving the experience of it.

    For many, the signaling that comes from driving a Ferrari is a net benefit. THey attract attention. For some of us, they attract too much attention. It’s painful to come back to your car after ten minutes and find a dent in the hood and fresh droplets of pistachio ice cream on it, because someone who does not know better sat on the car as a photo opportunity.

    For that reason, the Porsche truly is the best brand with which to experience the world. They are uncompromising machines. They are durable machines. They’re beautiful machines. And they’re thrilling to drive. And you don’t have to leave them with a hotel valet. You can leave them in a parking lot without worrying that they’ll attract the attention of the impulsive if you want to have an espresso while sitting in the sunshine, people-watching at a cafe.

    Much of the world that was explorable with postwar British sports cars is gone. The developed world is too highly populated, and human culture no longer functions in open air of markets and city streets. That postwar exploratory experience today is better found with a Jeep or Land Rover in the developing world. Outside of Los Angeles, the postwar baby boom car culture – cruising – as a means of socializing, is not only impossible but open to prosecution, because it is indistinguishable from criminal surveillance by gangs, or inebriated risk taking by the young. To some degree urban foot traffic in europe is the only way to have that social experience. Online socialization hardly suffices. But the thrill of driving is reserved tot hose people who participate in celebratory rallies like the Gold Rush or Gumball rallies. Rare events that are expensive and orchestrated, not recreational exploratory opportunities to gain insights into and compassion for, your fellow man.

    Driving is an expresson of freedom. A gift of modernity: our ability to move outside of our twenty mile radius of possible life experience with ease. A way of touching more humanity that we could without it. It was a privilege. A reflection of a time of rapid change. And what little is left for us, is best experienced not with an exotic which is the focus of your attention, but by a little sports car, where humanity, despite it’s materialistic homogeneity. is the focus of your attention.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-06 13:07:00 UTC

  • Do We Have Occasion To Verbally Criticize The Feckless?

    Murray states:

    we must change the language that we use whenever the topic of feckless men comes up. Don’t call them “demoralized.” Call them whatever derogatory word you prefer. Equally important: Start treating the men who aren’t feckless with respect. Recognize that the guy who works on your lawn every week is morally superior in this regard to your neighbor’s college-educated son who won’t take a “demeaning” job. Be willing to say so.

    This shouldn’t be such a hard thing to do. Most of us already believe that one of life’s central moral obligations is to be a productive adult. The cultural shift that I advocate doesn’t demand that we change our minds about anything; we just need to drop our nonjudgmentalism.

    It is condescending to treat people who have less education or money as less morally accountable than we are. We should stop making excuses for them that we wouldn’t make for ourselves. Respect those who deserve respect, and look down on those who deserve looking down on.

    via Why economics can’t explain our cultural divide – Society and Culture – AEI.

    I understand that we can use this approach in the various media. But as a people who have also become spatially independent and therefore socially isolationist, and who converse with little more than our televisions while watching shows that reinforce our sentiments, in an society where politics rewards polarity, in an economy that must desperately seek the favor of consumers and can brook no negative feedback, where the few people with whom we share no sentimental differences, then there remains an interesting question: In what circumstance may we provide this feedback? Really.

  • Haidt – liberals and conservatives – their sentimental differences

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.xmlJonathan Haidt – liberals and conservatives – their sentimental differences.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-25 18:05:00 UTC

  • RULE 🙂 “Our study confirms our hypothesis that people with autism have higher p

    http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2012/WTVM054757.htmAPIES RULE 🙂

    “Our study confirms our hypothesis that people with autism have higher perceptual capacity compared to the typical population. This can only be seen once the task becomes more demanding, with more information to process. In the more challenging task conditions, people with autism are able to perceive significantly more information than the typical adult.”

    “The finding may help explain why people with autism spectrum disorders, such as Asperger’s syndrome, may excel in some careers … which can require intense concentration and the ability to process a great deal of information …

    Our study clearly shows that people with autism can do better than typical adults in tasks involving rapid presentations of a lot of information.”

    Aspies, depending upon the severity, are at a disadvantage in some ways, but you can learn empathy if you work at it.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-25 18:00:00 UTC

  • “The question is whether the government is providing means for people to use the

    “The question is whether the government is providing means for

    people to use their judgement in pursuit of their own goals, or whether

    it is using people as means to ends of the government’s devising.”

    Our founder’s first mistake was in failing to separate law-making (law-discovery) from the levy and use of taxes. Their second was in using unclear language in the constitution – particularly the commerce clause. Their third was assuming that the church would persist indefinitely as a competitor to the state and source of moral education.

    And by way of colonialism, anti-communism, education and evangelism, we have now spread this set of errors around the world.

    Multiple-Secession and constitutional evolution are the only means by which we can repair these errors.

    Yet, even that is unlikely. The majority of people do not want either freedom or responsibility. They equate freedom with consumerism and the welfare state.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-22 09:50:00 UTC

  • William Tell: An Example Of The Virtue Of Violence

    William Tell, came from the town of Bürglen, and was known as a strong man and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking control of Uri. Albrecht Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village’s central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat. On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and so was arrested. Gessler — intrigued by Tell’s famed marksmanship, yet resentful of his defiance — devised a cruel punishment: Tell and his son would be executed, but he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off the head of his son, Walter. Tell shot, and in a single attempt, he split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow. But Gessler noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one. Before releasing Tell, he asked why. Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler’s ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht to spend his newly won life in a dungeon. But, as a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would founder, and unbound Tell to steer with all his famed strength. Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the rocky site now known as the Tellsplatte (“Tell’s slab”). Tell then ran cross-country to Küssnacht, and as Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse. Tell’s blow for liberty sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. That fed the impetus for the nascent Swiss Confederation. He fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten.

  • William Tell: An Example Of The Virtue Of Violence

    William Tell, came from the town of Bürglen, and was known as a strong man and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking control of Uri. Albrecht Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village’s central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat. On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and so was arrested. Gessler — intrigued by Tell’s famed marksmanship, yet resentful of his defiance — devised a cruel punishment: Tell and his son would be executed, but he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off the head of his son, Walter. Tell shot, and in a single attempt, he split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow. But Gessler noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one. Before releasing Tell, he asked why. Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler’s ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht to spend his newly won life in a dungeon. But, as a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would founder, and unbound Tell to steer with all his famed strength. Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the rocky site now known as the Tellsplatte (“Tell’s slab”). Tell then ran cross-country to Küssnacht, and as Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse. Tell’s blow for liberty sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. That fed the impetus for the nascent Swiss Confederation. He fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten.

  • WILLIAM TELL An Example Of The Virtue Of Violence William Tell, came from the to

    WILLIAM TELL

    An Example Of The Virtue Of Violence

    William Tell, came from the town of Bürglen, and was known as a strong man and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking control of Uri.

    Albrecht (or Hermann) Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village’s central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat.

    On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and so was arrested.

    Gessler — intrigued by Tell’s famed marksmanship, yet resentful of his defiance — devised a cruel punishment: Tell and his son would be executed, but he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off the head of his son, Walter. And, in a single attempt. Tell split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow.

    But Gessler noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one. Before releasing Tell, he asked why. Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler’s ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht to spend his newly won life in a dungeon. But, as a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would founder, and unbound Tell to steer with all his famed strength. Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the rocky site now known as the Tellsplatte (“Tell’s slab”).

    Tell ran cross-country to Küssnacht, and as Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse.

    Tell’s blow for liberty sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. That fed the impetus for the nascent Swiss Confederation. He fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-12 01:52:00 UTC

  • FILLICIDE STATISTICS “Among children under age 5 years in the United States who

    FILLICIDE STATISTICS

    “Among children under age 5 years in the United States who were murdered in the last quarter of the 20th century, 61% were killed by their own parents: 30% were killed by their mothers, and 31% by their fathers. … 72% of the mothers had psychological problems.” — From 39 combined studies.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-02 06:26:00 UTC

  • DO YOU TALK TO YOURSELF? Why do people talk to themselves? The humorous response

    DO YOU TALK TO YOURSELF?

    Why do people talk to themselves? The humorous response is “So that I have someone intelligent to talk to.” But humor aside, the traditional psychologist’s argument has been that by involving more senses, verbalization helps to block out distractions, and to focus our thinking – especially when alone, and when under stress or when we want to plan.

    But in Daniel Kahneman’s language, it means “System 2’s intentional system can more easily take control of System 1’s automatic system”. I tend to think of it as intentionally inserting stimulation into system 1.

    System 1 is very, very loud in my head. That’s why I like to be around people. They keep me linked to the real world despite the bright and intense mental reality that emerges from System 1, in someone who has such exceptional memory. I think all mild “Aspies” have this problem, and all Autistic people are complete victims of it.

    Does this sound like I’m happy to intellectualize talking to myself? It does. It also explains why I’m more likely to do it when I’m tired and surrounded by a lot of stimulation: the need to crowd out the sensory data so that I can focus on whatever it is I’m trying to concentrate upon. Most Aspies and all Autistics cannot as easily filter stimuli as well as normal people.

    Perhaps I’ll feel a smidgen less guilty about talking to myself when I’m trying to plan the rest of my day from now on – but I doubt it.

    =====

    PLEASE READ

    Please read “Thinking Fast And Slow”. For those people who haven’t kept up with research in psychology, he’s condensed the past half century into a few narratives which will help you understand our world better. And most importantly for conservatives and libertarians, he’s helped explain why conservatives are right in their concern about human hubris in everything – because we are intuitive more than rational and our intuition is terrible at statistics. In fact, the fact that we need the field of statistics is an attempt to overcome our incompetence in judgements about complex relations.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-01-23 11:01:00 UTC