prole

Oh, I get it. But in your version the Eloi are the elderly drawing, at most, about a thousand bucks a month in Social Security. Nice.

BREED FOR AMERICA!

The regime run by those with the stagnant trillions that aren't hiring anyone and thereby preventing them from working? Oh right, it's us that's supposed to come groveling to them.

And it's the left that's always charged with "social engineering". Priceless.

Ebenezer Scrooge?

Until capitalism comes up with a way of dealing with its "surplus population" and the means for its working classes to meaningfully participate in social life other than the consumerist spectacle OR does away with its pretensions to democracy entirely, the welfare state will do quite nicely. Keep us posted! I can only take "shared values" to mean the socialist ideals embedded there over generations.(good not to mention Russia here, where most extreme application of your values took place). You're right, without those kinds of shared values our own transition is likely to fare much worse. Hedonism? Is that what you're calling your golden age now? That's the fantasy that bosses and marketing departments and their politicians have been using to keep citizens filling their dreary responsibilities since the nineteen-twenties. It's what you've had us to understand was the highest measure of human freedom! What's to provide the new ideological cornerstone of civilization, Jay? I think you're holding back on us a little bit, teasing with those allusions to some "duty to reproduce". More Remorseless Math, no doubt.

I think the hardcore invisible handjobbers would recommend the let it burn and build the new utopia from our ashes approach. Jay?

It's all bushes' fault.

Ooo, honeymoon's over!

A nation of half-starved peasants. It's what the Founders intended!

"Wail slap mah ass n' call me Johnny! Ding-a-dang-dong-Doodly-le-ding-dong!!"

I KNOW, RIGHT!?!!? JUST AWESOME!

Glass beads, a few trinkets, and cowrie shells. Gold's for the big boys.

Good find! Although perhaps too much emphasis is implicitly placed on the role of objectivists in our modern version of pre-1930 speculative boom and bust cycles. I have "issues" with all of the Curtis' films I've seen, but he's asking fundamentally important questions in a fascinating way. I just kind of sit back and let him do his thing. The Century of the Self and The Trap are must see stuff.

The latter.

"Oops." [video:youtube]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Surely we've hit bottom.

Most depressing thread ever.

Four Clues.

Israel Backsliding As Jewish Fundamentalism Grows

Ex-Porn Star Reads to School Kids Former porn star Sasha Grey took her talents a less adult audience by visiting Emerson Elementary School and reading a book to students, which caused the school to receive several complaints and at first deny Grey’s visit, TMZ reported. “We have several celebrities who read to our students each year,” a spokesperson for the school told TMZ. “The actress you indicated was not present.” But photographs uncovered by the entertainment website and a tweet by the actress told a different story. “Spent the am with Read Across America Compton, reading to the sweetest 1st and 3rd grade students @ Emerson Elementary,” Grey tweeted. A spokesperson for Read Across America told ABCNews.com that Gray was not affiliated with the program. Grey responded to the backlash from her visit Friday by telling the entertainment site: “I believe education is a universal right. I committed to this program with the understanding that people would have their own opinions about what I have done, who I am and what I represent.” The ex-porn star, who made her last adult film two years ago, most recently appeared on the television series “Entourage” playing herself.

I think I'd rather hear what the Zookeeper has to say, know what I mean

Philosophy is meant to ask questions, not answer them. I wouldn't presume to think any of these thinkers as the "be all, end all". Only more or less helpful. As far as synthesizing the empirical and rational, I have no idea where that's going, but it sounds good.