Horner's Corner

Ludwig Wittgenstein

b.April 27, 1889

Photographed by Ben Richards in Swansea

_______________________

Wittgenstein’s Dream

Peter Porter

I had taken my boat out on the fiord,

I get so dreadfully morose at five,

I went in and put Nature on my hatstand

And considering the Sinking of the Eveninglands

And laughed at what translation may contrive

And worked at mathematics and was bored.

(….)

After dinner I read myself to sleep,

After which I dreamt the Eastern Front

After an exchange of howitzers,

The Angel of Death was taking what was hers,

The finger missed me but the guns still grunt

The syntax of the real, the rules they keep.

And then I woke in my own corner bed

And turned away and cried into the wall

And cursed the world which Mozart had to leave.

I heard a voice which told me not to grieve,

I heard myself. ‘Tell them’, I said to all,

‘I’ve had a wonderful life. I’m dead.’

…(more)

_______________________

Wittgenstein

rowing from Skjolden to his house

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical Sketch

via ::: wood s lot ::: “the fitful tracing of a portal”.

Noam Chomsky in TomDispatch.com:

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.

There was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his “parameters”: imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001 to resolve the differences and were making considerable progress. In their final press conference, they reported that, with a little more time, they could probably have reached full agreement. Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, however, and official progress then terminated, though informal discussions at a high level continued leading to the Geneva Accord, rejected by Israel and ignored by the U.S.

A good deal has happened since, but a settlement along those lines is still not out of reach — if, of course, Washington is once again willing to accept it. Unfortunately, there is little sign of that.

More here.

 

Many politicians and pundits warned us that the health care reform (HCR) legislation that just became law will destroy America. Government bureaucrats will take over health care decisions, we were told. The old and infirm would be hauled away by death panels. Everything about the way we receive our medical care will change, and change drastically, they said.

Medicare recipients have been frightened by stories that their benefits will be cut. Middle-age people are worried they will lose their jobs when the law’s dreaded regulations, or taxes, or maybe regulations with taxes, would destroy their employers’ businesses.

The truth is, very little will change for most people. If you were insured by employee benefits before HCR, you will be insured by exactly the same policy in exactly the same way after HCR. You will have access to the same doctors on the same terms. “Government bureaucrats” will no more be involved in your health care than they were before.

And the same is true of Medicare, which of course is a government program, although many of the people who opposed the HCR bill don’t seem to know that.

Here are the “cataclysmic” changes to health care that are now in effect, or which will go into effect within the next six months for people who are already in group insurance plans:

• The law says you can’t lose your insurance coverage because you get sick. Before, in many states, if you were stricken with a severe illness such as mesothelioma cancer that would be expensive to treat, your insurer could use just about any excuse to cancel your coverage. That is over.

• HCR has ended lifetime limits on coverage. As long as you are receiving medical care, your insurer pays the bills.

• Your children can be covered on your existing policy until they are 26 years old.

• In six months, insurers cannot refuse to insure people under the age of 19 because of “pre-existing conditions.” This provision will go into effect for everyone in 2014.

And if you are on Medicare, you will be asked to struggle with the following:

• You get a free annual checkup.

• The co-pays and deductibles on many preventive care services are eliminated.

• If you are in the Medicare D “doughnut hole,” doughnut hole,” doughnut hole,” you will get a $250 rebate check in a few weeks. The hole itself will be closed gradually and will be gone by 2020.

But what about all those terrible regulations and taxes that are about to drive businesses out of business? Um, there really isn’t much to report. Oh, wait, here’s one — a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps will go into effect July 1. That’s about it.

However, beginning this year a tax credit will be available for some small businesses to help provide insurance coverage for employees.

Soon the politicians and pundits will start trying to frighten you about the provisions that will go into effect after this year. I assure you they are about as scary as the provisions that go into effect this year, but I will discuss them in a follow-up post.

— Barbara O’Brien

hnn

At the City University of New Yorks Graduate Center, a friend of mine named Lydia Hazen is testing subjects to see whether they have greater perception of certain colors or shapes after reading poems by Wallace Stevens. Shes engaged in what the New York Times recently dubbed “neuroscience lit crit,” in an article wondering whether its “the next big thing” in literary studies. ? Exciting – but hardly the “new thing”; it should more accurately be called an experimental trope on the oldest traditions of modern literary criticism and philosophy in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834. The infamous English Romantic – opium addict, plagiarist, long-winded talker and poet of fragments – was also a metacognitive theorist far ahead of his time, who now appears to me a startlingly contemporary figure. Today, we have blogs, text-messages, FaceBook updates, Twitter. Coleridge had his notebooks

Read more here: via 3quarksdaily.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps) is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1811 and 1815. Initially commissioned by the king of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800.

Read more about David’s five versions of the painting via Napoleon Crossing the Alps – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

There’s an amusing exchange between Bob Crow and John Humphreys on the BBC over Network Rail strikes which, with the use of some pretty onerous anti-union laws, were banned by a court injunction due to a balloting technicality. Humphreys tries every tactic in the book to insinuate that there was some sort of rigging involved in the balloting, or something suspicious about the union’s conduct, and Crow skilfully demolishes him and takes the discussion back to the problems causing the dispute, and the unfairness of the laws by which they are obliged to work. Recall that BA workers were prevented from taking strike action last December in a similarly politicised decision by the courts, exploiting technicalities under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act. These anti-union laws were thus instrumental in assisting BA bosses whom industrial relations experts have accused of attempting to bust the union. They are, that is, a vital weapon in class war from above.

Unite and RMT are far from experiencing this legal attack for the first time. A couple of years ago, it was bus workers who were slapped down on a technicality – this being that the union had failed to detail the occupational grades of those taking action with sufficient precision. Last year, court decisions in favour of Metrobus further enhanced the employers’ massive legal advantage. Keith Ewing of King’s College London, writing as the BA strike was unfolding, noted that Britain’s laws meant it fell foul of its obligations under international human rights legislation. The ILO Committee, reviewing the laws, have once more called for the government to consider abolishing them. That isn’t going to happen, but nevertheless, the trade unions have consistently relied on New Labour, even where the chances were roughly on a par with those of a hell-bound snowball, to repeal Britain’s atrocious anti-trade union laws. But Blair had pledged in opposition that his government would not only keep the laws in place, but would be the “most restrictive government against the unions in Europe”. Gordon Brown has made clear his fidelity to this stance. It has to be such. New Labour’s model of growth, which is its only means of delivering some modest reforms, depends on keeping labour markets flexible, with weak bargaining power. Meanwhile, the Tories and Lib Dems have made it clear that they are opposed to the “militant unions” and consider the government far too soft.

This is going to become an ever sharper issue as all major parties press for deeper cuts than Thatcher. Let me remind you of what’s ahead of us, via John Lanchester of the LRB:

The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to cuts of about 11 per cent across the board. Both parties, however, have said that they will ring-fence spending on health, education and overseas development. Plug in those numbers and we are looking at cuts everywhere else of 16 per cent. (By the way, a two-year freeze in NHS spending – which is what Labour have talked about – would be its sharpest contraction in 60 years.)Cuts of that magnitude have never been achieved in this country. Mrs Thatcher managed to cut some areas of public spending to zero growth; the difference between that and a contraction of 16 per cent is unimaginable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies – which admittedly specialises in bad news of this kind – thinks the numbers are, even in this dire prognosis, too optimistic. It makes less optimistic assumptions about the growth of the economy, preferring not to accept the Treasury’s rose-coloured figure of 2.75 per cent. Plugging these less cheerful growth estimates into its fiscal model, the guesstimate for the cuts, if the ring-fencing is enforced, is from 18 to 24 per cent. What does that mean? According to Rowena Crawford, an IFS economist, quoted in the FT: ‘For the Ministry of Defence an 18 per cent cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army.’ The FT then extrapolates:

At the transport ministry, an 18 per cent reduction would take out more than a third of the department’s grant to Network Rail; a 24 per cent reduction is about equivalent to ending all current and capital expenditure on roads. At the Ministry of Justice an 18 per cent reduction broadly equates to closing all the courts, a 24 per cent cut to shutting two-thirds of all prisons.

It’s impossible to imagine all of this being accomplished. It’s equally impossible to imagine the bosses, and the bankers in particular, relenting until the massive transfer of public assets to the banks has been paid for by the working class. Unless the economy magically grows at such a rate that deep cuts can be avoided, there is likely to be years of bitter conflict, not to mention a complementary dash of pandemonium in the streets. The major resistance to these cuts is going to come via the public sector trade unions. And while the courts will certainly not be the major venue in which such disputes are settled, it is hard to see the government relinquishing the tools that BA and Network Rail – to select just the most recent examples – have availed themselves of. It has previously made use of such legislation when dealing with prison officers, for instance. A campaign to repeal the anti-union laws would appear to be the appropriate solution to all of this, except that the government have given us every indication that they wouldn’t listen to any campaign without a proportionate bite. In reality, only if workers acquire the confidence to break the union laws and strike anyway, as postal workers did with wildcat action at the start of the millennium – and won some surprising victories against management – will there be any chance of seeing an end to the laws. Now, I want John Humphreys to say that on air.

via LENIN’S TOMB.

Bonus Bureau, Computing Division
Washington, D.C.
November 24, 1924
detail
Library of Congress

via ::: wood s lot ::: “the fitful tracing of a portal”.

nhnbv

These excerpts  are from a review in the LRB of David Knyaston’s Family Britain, the second installment of his social history of Britain in the post war period.  The article is exemplary: it takes the subject of the book under review in a critical though not unappreciative manner and expands the analysis to the state of Britain today. I think these excerpts give some of the flavour. Do read the whole  article.

…. the basic configuration of power relations in Britain has changed remarkably little across the last half-century. The route to power lies much where it always lay, while access to that softly carpeted and gently inclined path is scarcely more open today than it was in the 1950s. According to the report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, published last year, ‘the typical doctor or lawyer of the future will today be growing up in a family that is better off than five in six of all families in the UK.’[†] Only 7 per cent of children are educated at private schools, but half of all professionals in Britain have been to one, a proportion that rises to 56 per cent for solicitors, 70 per cent for finance directors and 75 per cent for judges. The cost of sending a boy to Eton or Winchester is currently around £30,000 a year – that’s £50,000 of pre-tax income. Average annual pre-tax income in the UK stands at just over £25,000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that 80 per cent of the population earns less than £35,000. Meanwhile, according to a study by the New Policy Institute and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, there are now 13.4 million people in Britain living in low-income households earning less than 60 per cent of the national average. For a couple with two children this translates into a net disposable income of £15,000 a year, once all benefits and allowances have been taken into account – half, then, the income needed to send a boy to Eton or Winchester for a year. Only 1 per cent of the population have annual gross incomes above £100,000. And this, of course, says nothing of inherited wealth.The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that education and skills – or rather their absence – are the ‘main drivers’ behind the rise in inequality in contemporary Britain. And what the figures indisputably make clear is that elite formation in our society is still powered by a small but formidable educational engine, fuelled by wealth that only a few possess, and since access to the elite means access to wealth, the cycle of elite formation is essentially self-sustaining and closed to outsiders.

[...]

Seven years after the end of the period covered by Family Britain, Granada Television screened the first of that extraordinary series called Seven Up, the original and most remarkable experiment in reality TV, in which 14 children from across all social classes were brought together for a day and interviewed about this experience and about their lives, for the cameras. The idea was that these 14 representative citizens of the future Britain would be revisited every seven years and interviewed again – which is what, more or less, has happened (there have so far been seven such programmes). The first programme is little short of astonishing for the insight it gives into the class structure of Britain in 1964. Although they are only seven years old, the degree of social differentiation in the children is extreme. The sense of radical disjunction between lives and fates is shocking, precisely because each of the children seems unique, while all have evidently already been moulded by the system. Being children, none of them has yet thought that they might be ‘ordinary’ and all are startlingly authentic, not least the three little posh boys. ‘I read the Financial Times,’ lisps one of these delicate angels, while another talks of his destined journey via Charterhouse to the City of London. They seem like little aliens, at the very least mere curiosities from an age long superseded. Yet, while watching them, I had to remind myself that they were actually slightly younger than I was in 1964, and that I too went to a school such as theirs, and that David Kynaston did too, and David Cameron and George Osborne. All of us will, of course, protest that, as Cameron likes to say, where we came from doesn’t matter, it’s where we are going that counts. And, in one sense, this is true. But in another it isn’t, which is why Gordon Brown’s quip about Eton struck such a nerve. Whatever we have become, our most impressionable and formative years were spent in the company of the elect, in a milieu that was continuous with the milieu in which the three little boys in Seven Up sit cosseted. Some of us grew up to write history books, some to review them. Others, to travel first class by train every morning from the Home Counties to the City to collect their bonuses. Yet others became politicians. They are about to form our next government.

via LRB · Nicholas Spice · Don’t Look Down.