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"This is very good port they have given me, but why have they given it me in a claret glass."
a Bertrand Russell anecdote (apparently William Gladstone said it in Bertrand Russell's vicinity)
[...] But Russell's Jacobinism is high Tory; it springs from the certitude that birth and genius are impose both the right and the obligation of moral precept. [...] True politics are the art of securing elbowroom for the best; they will alienate the squalor in the world at large that embarrasses or dissipates the life of the mind. [...]
Bertrand Russell was born and brought up an aristrocrat: grandson of a Prime Minister; extended family definitely in the ruling class (Whig aristrocracy of Victorian England)
[...] Chomsky saw--and this, I believe, has been his most penetrating insight--that a valid model of linguistic behavior must account for the extraordariny fact that all of us perpetually and effortlessly use strings and combinations of words which we have never heard before, which we have never been taught specifically, and which quite obviously do not arise in conditioned response to any identifiable stimulus in our environment. Almost from the earliest stages of his linguistic life, a child will be able to construct and to understand a fantastic number of utterances that are quite new to him yet that he somehow knows to be acceptable sentences in his language. Conversely, he will quickly demonstrate his instinctive rejection of (that is, his failure to grasp) word orders and syntactic arrangements that are unacceptable though it may be that none of these have been specifically pointed out to him. At every stage, from earliest childhood on, the human use of language goes far beyond all "taught" or formal precedent, and far beyond the aggregate of individually acquired and stored experience. "These abilities", says Chomsky, "indicate that there must be fundamental processes at work quite independently of 'feedback' from the environment." The dynamics of human communication arise from within.
To a true chess player, the pushing about of thirty-two counters on 8x8 squares is an end in itself, a whole world next to which that of mere biological or political or social life seems messy, stale, and contingent.
[...] By comparison, Ezra Pound's cracker-barrel Fascism, the deeply incised anti-Semitism of T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden's call for "the necessary urder" (this time at behest of the left) are thin stuff. It is the sheer weight of Céline's racist vituperations [...]
useful material for my kill-your-heroes post (as background--I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions here)
[...] Russell has debated philosophy with Wittgenstein and fiction with Conrad and D. H. Lawrence, he has argued economics with Keynes and civil disobedience with Gandhi, his open letters have provoked Stalin to a reply and Lyndon Johnson to exasperation. [...]
and of course he wrote about mathematical logic and philosophy (most notably in Principia Mathematica along with Alfred North Whitehead)
[...] Rabble explained that he was only in San Francisco for a short time with his fiancée, Gabba, so they could save money to continue traveling and going to political demonstrations and protests around the world. This, Rabble explained, was their "full-time" job. But they were not your traditional protesters: They were hacktivists, part of an emerging group of protesters who used laptops instead of picket signs nad blogs instead of bullhorns and who marched down the Internet instead of paved streets. Rabble told Noah he planned to work for only a few weeks, then hit the road again, looking for another protest to join and another way to tell "the man" to fuck himself. He had just wrapped up assisting protesters involved in the 2004 presidential elections, he explained, and once he saved money from this new gig, he would set out for South America to wreak digital havoc on a government there.
kinda cool
But after Google, Ev wasn't anywhere to be found at Odeo, either. He soon semiretired at thirty-two years old. His bank account had gone from a three-figure balance--often barely enough to cover his rent--to double-digit millions of dollars. For Ev, it was time to enjoy the good life, not get involved in another start-up. He began taking Italian cooking classes and exploring museums. He bought a house worthy of a millionaire with wide windows that overlooked San Francisco like a perched owl and a fast new car to put in the millionaire's garage. He went on expensive vacations with his new girlfriend, Sara, whom he had met at Google during an office party.
lol @ nouveau richness
Jack also had an anarchist background. One of his tattoos, on his right leg, was a black and orange star, which was a symbol for an anarchist group. He had been vociferous for years online about his contempt for war and corporations. He'd written about these issues on his own personal web site, which he called gu.st, and also posted some rants about the perils of capitalism, his disdain for banking institutions, and Americans' thirst for oil. He also frequented message boards promoting feminism.
One morning he rushed into the office early and placed a crane on her keyboard. He then slyly sat at his desk, silently pretending to work when she arrived with her cup of Tully's coffee to be met by a little paper bird staring up longingly from her computer. At first Crystal put the crane to the side, smiling at it and moving on with her day. Then she received another the next day. And another the day after that, until finally she grew upset at Jack's relentless passes, especially given that she had a boyfriend.
"You don't need to get me juice," she said to Jack as she stormed over to his desk, reminding him that she was in a relationship. "And it's really sweet that you're putting the cranes on my keyboard, but you can stop now."
"Did you see which letter I put them on?" Jack said excitedly, almost ignoring her request to respect her boundaries. She had not seen that the cranes had each been placed on different letters, which were going to spell out her name. "No!" she said, annoyed, and turned around to leave. But he pressed on, determined that something would eventually happen with Crystal.
spoiler alert: she would end up dating early employee Jason Goldblum, although they did manage to remain friends, amazingly enough (but I very much empathise)