Undernews: May 22, 2013
Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
Quotes
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. - Mark Twain
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by
everybody. -- Jane Jacobs
Pocket paradigm
Unfortunately, complex failing systems have little capacity to save themselves. In part this is because the solutions
come from the same source as the problem. The public rarely questions the common provenance; official Washington and the
media honor it. Even a failure as miserable as that of Vietnam had little effect on the careers of its major
protagonists, those men who not only were wrong but were wrong at the cost of 50,000 American lives. They remained
quoted copiously, cited as experts and transmogrified into statesmen.- Sam Smith
One of the greatest myths of America's elite is that it functions by logic and reason and that it is devoid of myth. In
truth, elites function like other people; they choose their gods and worship them. The gods, to be sure, are different.
For example, many in Washington believe fervently in the sanctity of data, the Ivy League, the New York Times op pages
and the Calvinist notion that their power is an outward, visible sign of an inner, invisible grace. And some, even while
professing to be without myth, spend their lives creating myths for others. We call them political consultants and
ghostwriters...- Sam Smith
Action notes
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