I hope they paid you in silver.
Shapeless wrote:coberst wrote:I am suggesting that most of our inellectuals have sold out to government and corporations for silver.
Can we have an example?
Our think tanks are filled with such intellectuals.
That was very vague. For one thing, it's not really relevant unless you're also claiming that "most of our intellectuals" (since that is the scope of your claim) are to be found in think tanks. For another thing, it's begging the question.
I was sort of hoping for an illustration of who exactly they are what exactly they're doing to warrant being branded sell-outs. I'm just asking for some details so that we can have something real on which to build a dialogue; at the moment we just seem to be trading sound-bytes.
We might consider the plight of the university intellectual who is increasingly pressured into "producing" money from grants and patents from inventions. This sometimes determines the topics of thought and research, as opposed to inspiration.
Quite frequently in the humanities, one's chances of landing a grant or fellowship is dependent on one's ability to write a research proposal couched in whatever academic language the source of money tends to promote. But per academic field, only a small portion of academics ever see significant grant or fellowship money of any kind; there aren't many research grants available to humanities academics to being with, at least when compared to the sciences, and that makes the competition that much more intense. I know of many humanities academics who have stayed away from research-oriented institutions for just this reason; many of them have chosen (to the extent that it was their choice!) to be "just" educators for the remainder of their academic careers. Some of them are happy with this choice, others aren't.
Character is an important component for an ideal intellectual. I would say that an ideal intellectual would have the same kind of character as does an ideal journalist.
One significant advantage engineering, physics and much of the natural sciences has is that they speak in mathematical terms. The individuals often speak in formulas or mathematical verbiage that is clear and concise and understandable by all the members. The use of every day words like habit can be confusing because of a lack of clarity. One might also think of attitude as a proper way to describe what I call habit.
What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.
I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.
Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. "Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction."
From the Wikipedia entry on macaroons:
Quote:Macaroons are a cookie or confection, or a cross between the two, depending on where they are made. The macaroon is a close cousin to the meringue.
The original macaroon is the cookie version, made with powdered almonds, which originated in Italy. The English word macaroon comes from the French macaron, from the Italian maccarone meaning "dumpling" (plural, maccaroni, "dumplings" - which is what macaroni products are, generically) - because almond macaroon paste is the same colour as macaroni pasta.
Macaroon cookies (or "macaroon biscuits") often use egg whites (usually whipped to stiff peaks), chocolate or dates as the binder of a food fabric, such as ground or powdered nuts, coconut, cocoa, potato starch, corn starch, peanut butter, poppy seeds, toasted sesame seed paste, etc. Some recipes use wheat or other types of flour, but this is unusual and macaroons made with flour arguably are not true macaroons. Almost all recipes call for sugar, which caramelises and provides body and a smooth, moist texture to the macaroon. If the coconut or other fabric used is very sweet, however, the sugar may be omitted.
[Accessed 24 September 2006]
