The reason why government (and corporate) officials in positions of power seem so much more at home with totally extravagant gross distortions of fact, telling bold lies that bear not even the vaguest resemblance to truth, rather than just the slight twisting and prevarication that the rest of us are expected to engage in, is summed up quite well ( Read more... )

After reading this article, and the comments in response to it, I've written up this brief summary of the events being discussed ( Read more... )

When i was in school, many years ago, in an English literature class, two books that we were required to read were Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and Golding's "Lord of the Flies". These stories were presented back-to-back and accompanied with a question of the nature of society: Are people naturally 'good' until they become corrupted and ( Read more... )

Depression is like a Poincaré Disk:

From the outside, it appears to be just a few short steps across the whole thing... but from a point within it, the distance to the edge of it is infinite.