Always for the Sake of Argument Across the Curriculum

Transformational Obama.

The devastating Financial Panic of 1837
which resulted in numerous bank failures,
many commercial and individual bankruptcies,
and widespread unemployment, gave people
like[Orestes] Brownson further reason to
criticize existing social institutions which he
did, for instance, in Babylon is Falling a
sermon in which he predicted violent
confrontation between the party of “privilege,
inequality, and war” and the party of “liberty,
equality [and] peace.”

(Sterling Delano: Brook Farm)

Knowing history: it’s still going to repeat itself.
Nature loves redundancy even if Eng. Teachers
don’t. True?

The OPEC cartel ordered a cut
in oil production of at least 1.5
million barrels a day on Friday.
The reduction will come into
effect on Nov. 1, according to Ali
Al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister.

Japan and South Korea led Asian
stock markets in steep declines
Friday as dismal corporate earnings
and economic data under scored the
depth of the challenges facing the
export-dependent economies in the
Asia-Pacific region.

Forest fires: nature’s way of rectifying
forest management.

Deep Grammar: Deep Ecological Modeling of
patterns that connect the surface differences &
their devilish nitty gritty details: relationships
otherwise occluded by surface grammarians &
their non-trans-formational superficial sustainability
concerns.

Times that try myn’s souls are nevertheless a field day for
the Sustainability Club to expand attention from the economy
of light-bulb conservation and saving-the-world (in our own
terms of desire, of course) to the wonder of how IT works
& its Meta-Sustainable Systemic Self Corrective Ways:
that Other Economy.

Stunning. It confounds expertise. If the best experts were not
able to foresee the development, "I think we have to ask ourselves,
'Why is that?'" Mr. Greenspan said. "And the answer is that we're
not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far
in advance." He continued, "There are always a lot of people
raising issues, and half the time they're wrong. The question
is what do you do?"

Something LIKE the final concluding report
the 9/11 Commission that we suffer from
insufficient imagination.

Greeks called IT Elenchus-to-Aporia. Bottoming Out, as if struck
stupid by a stick and now just right for study and student-dom:
prerequisite to the beginnings of philosophy. Liberal art, damnit.
One way to Frame IT. IT, I said.

People can CHANGE without bottoming out, a student asserted
in Fiction class in conversation concerning “Great Falls” and
“Royal Beatings” 2 stories in our Norton Anthology

Yes, but transform?

In “primitive” culture: elders put on scary masks to frighten
the children to death. Boo. And then: off they come & it was
only the mommas and the poppas after all. From then on: they
might could consider themselves groan-up: initiates, novitiates
in the Mysteries of Sustain Ability.

xxxooo, Alan Greenspan