Quidnovi

Samhain

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:09:13 GMT

The Path Less Traveled

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 23:31:49 GMT

Illustration: Scott Mutter, The Escalator

"Each entered the forest at a point they, themselves, had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path."

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Out of Time

Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:06:59 GMT

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

---Isaac Asimov, "Foundation"

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Noble Lies?

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:11:11 GMT

A martial elite lies to its people about the need for war---and feels righteous about it.

Above and beyond the question of US credibility abroad looms a larger issue. Does the current administration believe in our institutions or does it think that something more transcendent, such as "manifest destiny" or maybe "divine providence" or just simply the belief that it "knows better", somehow supersedes those institutions and imbues it with some sort of a "mission," perceived or imagined, that gives it (in its mind) the right or the duty to govern by deception?
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A Brave New World Revisited

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:05:39 GMT

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

---Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)

In 1958, Aldous Huxley wrote what might be called a sequel to his novel Brave New World, published in 1932, but it was a sequel that did not revisit the story or the characters, or re-enter the world of the novel. Instead, he revisited that world in a set of 12 essays. Taking a second look at specific aspects of the future imagined in Brave New World, Huxley meditated on how his fantasy seemed to be turning into reality, frighteningly and much more quickly than he had ever dreamed. more >

The Nationalist Nightmare

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:42:56 GMT

Snapshot from Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's film (1966), IT HAPPENED HERE, a brilliant and chilling re-write of history.

A man once told me that conquest, a full century or more of war, the spreading of civilization by force, and democratization of the world at the point of a gun are the ways in which you transform a generation for the better. All I could do at the time was stare in horror at the sickness expressed in that comment.
--- Invictus

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Means and Ends

Wed, 1 Oct 2003 10:49:52 GMT

It has become almost a sacred dogma in our age of apathy that politics, centered on power and conflict and the quest for legitimacy and consensus, is essentially a study in expediency, a tortuous discovery of practical expedients that could reconcile contrary claims and secure a common if minimal goal or, at least, create the conditions in which different ends could be freely or collectively pursued. more >

Being There

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 16:35:04 GMT

Is it possible that we are all just clever versions of Chance the gardener? That we are trained from an early age to respond automatically to given words and concepts? That we never really think out much of anything for ourselves, but are content to repeat what works for others in the same situation?
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Economics as if People Mattered

Sun, 7 Sep 2003 13:49:55 GMT

Illustration: J.P. Fert
September 7

E. F. Schumacher observed

Economist

(1911 - 1977)

E. F. Schumacher was a prophet in the guise of an economist. He spent a lifetime mastering the principles of growth, savings, and the invisible hand of the market. Yet ultimately he became one of its most effective critics, alerting the world to the catastrophic consequences of the Western experiment in materialism. He wrote, In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society the mutilates man. And yet he was not content to denounce. He inspired hope that it was not too late to fashion an alternative society modeled on the human scale and responsive to the moral, aesthetic, spiritual, as well as material needs of human beings.
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Edition no. 0002

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 00:25:37 GMT

The Musing Muse

A collective production of THE MUSE, a room of/for/about Creative Writing open to all

1. ENQUIRING MUSE WANTS TO KNOW, a free-style, free-play bit of a reporting on and about NCN and its
members.

2. A CREATIVE GAZETTE about Creative Writing
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