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Teaching the controversy is a catch phrase that people should be aware of. Firstly, it usually prefaces a false equivalence between two topics, for instance, evolution versus creationism. Evolution is a explanatory theory supported by a large body of factual evidence. Creationism, on the other hand, is a mythology made up by ignorant people and handed down through the centuries to keep the feckless from asking too many questions. The positions are most certainly not equivalent in any sense of the word an thus, are not comparable, lest you wish in Physics class to postulate that invisible elves are responsible for making pool balls move a the precise angles they do when struck.
“95 percent of economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.” – Ha-Joon Chang
Thing One. There is really no such thing as a free market.
Thing Two. Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners.
Thing Three. Most people in rich countries get paid more than they should.
Thing Four. The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet.
Thing Five. Assume the worst about people, and you get the worst.
Thing Six. Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable.
Thing Seven. Free-market policies rarely make poor countries richer.
Thing Eight. Capital has a nationality.
Thing Nine. We do not live in a post-industrial age.
Thing Ten. The US does not have the highest living standard in the world.
Thing Eleven. Africa is not destined for under-development.
Thing Twelve. Government can pick winners.
Thing Thirteen. Making rich people richer doesn’t make the rest of us richer.
Thing Fourteen. US managers are over-priced.
Thing Fifteen. People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries.
Thing Sixteen. We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
Thing Seventeen. More education in itself is not going to make a country richer.
Thing Eighteen. What is good for the General Motors is not necessarily good for the US.
Thing Nineteen. Despite the fall of Communism, we are still living in planned economies.
Thing Twenty. Equality of opportunities is unequal.
Thing Twenty-one. Big government makes people more, not less, open to changes.
Thing Twenty-two. Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient.
Thing Twenty-three. Good economic policy does not require good economists.
The capitalist system is not working, despite what elite opinion says. Starting with these points is a great place to look into our perceptions of what Capitalism is.
Welcome to the 21st century.
It would be nice to move on already from the tired debate of those who do still believe in magic and mythology.
Welcome to the official ZJW kick off post. Today, along with the classical musical interlude we shall celebrate the banal excellence of christianity in all of its delusional grandeur.
Of course, if you are part of the underclass female gender, your pretty lady brain might not be able to handle the video and all of the manly wisdom on display.
We had a slight break in routine as Eric Whitacre and his virtual choir took me by complete surprise. I’m sure Brahms would forgive me for inserting a choral work of that magnitude into the play of his first symphony. Catch the first movement here, if you are feeling out of sorts.
Many thanks to JSTOR for more information on the Symphony cited below.
Brahms’s Orchestral Music
J. A. Fuller-Maitland
The Musical Times
Vol. 74, No. 1083 (May, 1933), pp. 401-406
Vol. 74, No. 1083 (May, 1933), pp. 401-406
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/917980
[…] When the first Symphony, Op. 68, in C minor, appeared in 1877, it provided the composer’s detractors with a serviceable new weapon, in the curious likeness between the big tune of the Finale and the ‘Hymn to Joy’ of the ninth Symphony. (As Brahms said, ‘Das sieht jeder Narr! ‘) It is true that in the first movement of the Symphony the old accusation is not wholly unjustified; but the opposing scales of the introductory poco sostenuto need a considerable amount of orchestral material to bring them out. Among the great interpreters of the Symphony there seems to have been some difference of tradition as to a certain slackening of the time in this first movement; it is not definitely prescribed in the score, and it seems quite possible that at different times of his life Brahms may have approved of the different readings, or at all events that he did not actively disapprove of any. Unfortunately the exact moment at which Joachim began the rallentando in the exciting first English performance of the work could not be registered, even if the score had been published as early. But whereas Nikisch began his three bars before letter M, Richter started his at the fourth bar after the same letter, and Steinbach did not make a very emphatic slackening until fifteen bars before letter 0, where an unnoted a tempo was made by all; and all drew back in the eight bars before the poco sostenuto that finished the movement. It is in the Andante sostenuto that one of the great moments of the Sym- phony is vouchsafed to us. At the seventeenth bar the oboe, supported by the rest of the wood-wind, has a theme that comes nearer than anything else in music to the point where words will no longer be needed for the trans- mission of thought.
Just when one expects it to be finished by some cadential figure it stops as if at the bidding of a little phrase of warning, which has already appeared in the third bar of the movement. Even when the oboe’s eloquent strain re-appears with horn an octave below it, and a solo violin an octave above, the interruption again takes place, as though the complete utterance of the whole would have transgressed some spiritual law, and let humanity into some divine secret. It is only in comparison with the deep impor- tance of the other movements that the section marked poco allegretto seems to fall short of being as great a movement as the others; the adagio that starts the introduction to the last movement opens with some ominous bars in the violin part of which some have detected a prophecy of the great tune that is soon to bring us its benediction. At the sixth bar begins a figure of quavers, pizzicato, which are soon hurried by a stringendo poco a poco to an a tempo, and the process is gone through twice in immediate succession. A rather tire- some habit was started, probably by Nikisch, under whom it was most evident, of taking the pizzicato quavers almost at the speed of the preceding crotchets, no doubt for the excellent purpose of giving space for the stringendo, but in the meantime throwing the movement out of balance.
Soon we come to the emotional climax of the Symphony, the delivery by the horns of the phrase that could not fail to suggest to every one in the Cam- bridge audience the familiar chimes, the ‘Cambridge Quarters’; the coincidence was so striking that the place of the phrase in the design of the Symphony was overlooked in the pleasure of recognizing the chimes whenever the Symphony was heard. After a short hymn-like phrase on bassoons and trombones, we are plunged into the rapture of the Allegro with its famous unmistakable resemblance to the Beethoven tune. As I have said else- where: ‘ In the two themes there is little, if any, resemblance in the melodic curve or in the sequence of notes; both are strongly and exclusively diatonic in movement and in har- mony, and the younger theme, equally with the older, belongs to the most precious things in the treasury of music.’ The exciting coda is for a moment interrupted by the hymn-like strain just before the close.
The medium is the message. :)
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