12 JAN 2015 by ideonexus

 The Futility of Linguistic Prescription

When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear ...
  1  notes
 
29 AUG 2011 by ideonexus

 Medical Knowledge Comes by the Low Road

There is no short cut, nor 'royal road' to the attainment of medical knowledge. The path which we have to pursue is long, difficult, and unsafe. In our progress, we must frequently take up our abode with death and corruption, we must adopt loathsome diseases for our familiar associates, or we shall never be acquainted with their nature and dispositions ; we must risk, nay, even injure our own health, in order to be able to preserve, or restore that of others.
Folksonomies: knowledge medicine
Folksonomies: knowledge medicine
  1  notes

John Abernethy describes how doctors must get their hands dirty and take up "abode with death and corruption" in order to attain medical knowledge.

19 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 The Train of Thought to Equality

Since then society has evolved a sequence of ci central con¬ cepts each of which was at one time thought to make it work of itself, and each of which has had to be corrected to the next. There was the early eighteenth-century concept of selfinterest, in Mandeville and others; then came enlightened self-interest; then the greatest happiness of the greatest num¬ bet; utility; the labor theory of valueie; and thence its expression either in the welfare state or in the clasassless society. Men ...
  1  notes

...ending in the Declaration of Independence.

06 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 Lincoln on the Enthronement of Corporations

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless (emphasis mine).
  1  notes

There is a valid dispute as to whether these words were actually Lincolns, or if they were fabricated to support a political campaign 20 years after his death; regardless, they are prescient words eloquently spoken for their time, no matter the speaker.

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 Limbaugh Attacks Science and Academia as

You know, folks, the two universes here -- The Universe of Lies, The Universe of Reality -- they don't overlap anymore. And this is even bigger than global warming, which was my point yesterday. It's about everything that the left is involved in. What this fraud, what the uncovering of this hoax exposes, is the corruption that exists between government and academia and science and the media. Science has been corrupted. We know the media has been corrupted for a long time. Academia has b...
Folksonomies: irrationalism
Folksonomies: irrationalism
  1  notes
Science, academia, government, and media form four pillars of a web of lies in Limbaugh's world, while the world he describes, the world of conservative talk radio, Fox News, and Conservapedia, is reality.