larvatus prodeo

«Между жизнью и колбасой мы выбираем жизнь.» —Владимир Путин, 29.08.2008, 22:34

“But after all the Politburo could speak through the high-strung entrails: and now it did stand to his hand, incontrovertible and plain, inspired, the birches clashing and murmuring, lissome and lugubrious and patriotic and all in favor, and he could face them, thinking, Not could. Will. I want to. So it is the red meat after all, no matter how tough. Because if memory exists outside of the flesh it won’t be memory because it won’t know what it remembers so when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief. And bracing himself against the podium, he announced, between life and sausage, we will take life.”

Official Seal of the Congregation for the Evangelization of PeoplesWriters who discuss these matters have not directed attention to the Propaganda of the Faith as an object-lesson in sales-publicity, its theory and practice, its ways and means, its benefits and its possibilities of gain. Yet it is altogether the most notable enterprise of the kind. The Propaganda of the Faith is quite the largest, oldest, most magnificent, most unabashed, and most lucrative enterprise in sales-publicity in all Christendom. Much is to be learned from it as regards media and suitable methods of approach, as well as due perseverance, tact, and effrontery. ( Read more... )—Thorstein Veblen, Note to Chapter XI, Manufactures and Salesmanship, in Absentee Ownership—Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (B.W. Heubsch, 1923)

On 29 February of this year, two days before the election of pint-sized Dmitry Medvedev to the post of the President of Russian Federation, performance art group Vojna (War), formerly best known for its eccentric commemoration of conceptual poet Dmitry Prigov in a moving train of the Moscow Metro, mounted another exhibition in the Biological Museum. This time, they performed in support of the survival of the bear as the totem animal of ancient Slavs. Notably, the run-up to the election prominently featured a spontaneous youth movement of “bear cubs” rallying in support of Vladimir Putin and his designated successor, whose last name fortuitously echoes notional kinship with Ursus arctos. Thus the most recent Vojna performance featured allegedly authentic sexual intercourse under the banner captioned FUCK FOR BEAR CUB’S HEIR.

In the wake of this affair, some of its participants were identified as students of the Philosophy Department of the Moscow State University, from which they were expelled after the mandatory hand-wringing faculty sessions. Their expulsion was allegedly motivated by considerations of philosophical decorum. Coincidentally, political technology is the most lucrative specialty taught by the MSU Philosophy Department at present.

In the ensuing discussion, several parties have posed the question of whether or not students engaging in similar behavior would have been expelled from Oxford or Harvard. I therefore ask all interested and informed parties to weigh in on this issue with considerations of rules and precedents.

Crossposted to larvatus and elitistasshat; banned from philosophy.

A hidebound wag glibly demonstrates that lobotomy is a prerequisite for voting Democrat, just as colostomy, for voting Republican:

As they took control of Congress at the start of 2007, the Democrats vowed this would be a year of historic importance, and it seems they were prescient: Seldom before in the annals of governance have so many politicians fought so long and so hard to completely screw up a winning strategy being waged on their country’s behalf. Some cruelly define this as treacherous conduct, but this is imprecise and unkind. They tried, it is true, to do serious damage, but were compromised in the event by their chronic incompetence, as well as by being too above-board and open to try to do things on the sly. A stab in the back as a concept was wholly beyond their capacities. This was not a stab in the back that works via guile and subterfuge. It was 41 different stabs in the front, that always fell far short of serious damage, unless you count the damage they did to their own reputations (the approval ratings for Congress are now in the twenties). It was the Stab in the Front, the Surge-against-the-Surge, the Pickett’s Charge of the Great War on Terror. It was a year to remember, that will live in the annals of fecklessness. It was historical. It was hysterical. It was the Stab that Failed.
— Noemie Emery, The Stab That Failed, The Weekly Standard, Volume 013, Issue 12, dated 3 December 2007

One of the greatest boons of American citizenship for this thankful Soviet expatriate is his ensuing opportunity to stay out of politics in good conscience.

Итак, прирождённый онанист Одиноков додрочился до шантажа.

Вставьте мне в сердечко звёздочку, звёздочку,
Вместо ушек вставьте ракушки, ракушки,
А заместо глазок — шарики, шарики,
Вместо брючек дайте штаники, штаники,
Положите меня в ясельки, в ясельки,
Чтобы я лежал бы в люлечке, в люлечке
И пускал из носа сопельки, сопельки,
Издая при этом вопельки, вопельки.
А потом постройте радугу, радугу,
Чтоб по ней бежали гномики, гномики
Чтобы в ней бы жили кошечки, кошечки,
И кормите меня с ложечки, с ложечки.
Но вы этого не можете, не можете.
Ну так что ж вы блядь меня не уничтожите?

—Шиш Брянский

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
by Carlo M. Cipolla
illustrations by James Donnelly

THE FIRST BASIC LAW of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:

a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.

b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol å.

( Read more... )

As is well-known, God helps those who help themselves, which renders God’s help rather superfluous. Now, let us consider an apposite God, one who is committed to helping exactly those who do not help themselves. We bear in mind that, unlike Russell’s barber, who is free to shrug off as impossible his duty to shave those, and only those, who do not shave themselves, the perfection of God requires that he actually do everything he is committed to do. Then is our God under obligation to help Himself?

(Originally published on 20 January 1993.)

Crossposted to larvatus and philosophy.