“Is Vagueness simply an unexplainable descent into nonsense? Did Vagueness begin as an antidote to the demands of political correctness in the classroom, a way of sidestepping the danger of speaking forbidden ideas? Does Vagueness offer an undereducated generation a technique for camouflaging a lack of knowledge?”
Tag: 01.11
An “Un-Museum” In Tasmania
MONA is essentially programmed to self-destruct. “If I cared about longevity,” he says, “I wouldn’t have built a museum a couple of meters above the sea level. The Derwent is a tidal river. In 50 years, a lot of money is going to have to be spent on MONA or it’s going to be underwater.”
The New Global Super-Elite – They’re Different From Us
“Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition–and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly.”
PT Barnum, Sociopath
“The Life of P. T. Barnum is one of those curious historical artifacts: the sociopathic memoir. Like Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, or Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, Barnum’s memoir consists largely of anecdotes about tricks played upon an individual or the public at large by a semihuman shape shifter.”