<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Why is a druid any less credible than, say, an economist?<div><br><div><div>On Nov 25, 2008, at 4:42 PM, Amandeep Jawa wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Wait - what was our choice? Cause I would have picked a Mars mission, recreating our energy grid using renewables, a rebuild of the school system, and bringing mammoths back from extinction through genetic engineering, funding a vast worldwide education and health effort (esp. for women), and a puppy.<div><br></div><div>But seriously what was our choice?</div><div><br></div><div>'deep</div><div><br><div>.ps</div><div>Really, I'm reading a druid? And he's making a lot of sense so far? Have I been in CA too long?</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Nov 25, 2008, at 4:27 PM, Tom Radulovich wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Of course we had a choice. <div><br></div><div>John Michael Greer, who writes "The Archdruid Report" (It isn't a cute handle; he is actually an Archdruid), wrote a piece called "The Flight to Abstraction" which I haven't been able to get out of my head for a few weeks. The post contains one of my favorite quotes <font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">about Las Vegas: "of all of the cities I have ever visited, </font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Las Vegas is my least favorite: a garish urban cancer that apparently exists for the sole purpose of proving that it’s possible to take a barren, scorpion-infested wasteland and make something even worse out of it."</font></span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Las Vegas provides a segue to Giambattista Vico's treatise on history, which includes the idea that as societies age, they lose a focus on the concrete realities and focus increasingly on abstractions. For example, the cost of the AIG bailout alone (± $250 billion) would build the US a world-class, nationwide electrified passenger rail system. But somehow, the task of shoring up AIG and all of the abstract 'capital' it represents (capital once meant 'goods') became a much more compelling political imperative than creating actual, tangible, usable infrastructure we could use to move around the country without continuing to destroy the planet.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Greer's take on history and civilization owes much to Oswald Spengler, and his view of industrial civilization's prospects is throughly pessimistic, but he is a thoughtful and original writer.</span></font></div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-decision-some-two-and-half-years-ago.html">http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-decision-some-two-and-half-years-ago.html</a></div><div><br></div><div><div><div>On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:19 PM, Amandeep Jawa wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">The original post is here:<div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-bucks/">http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-bucks/</a></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:16 PM, Amandeep Jawa wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; "><h3 class="entry-header" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 5px; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">damn. this f*()&)ng sucks. I don't know that we had a choice, but F@#$k!</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; ">----------------------------------</font></div></span></h3></span></div></blockquote></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>