The failure of progressive ideas in America

At Slate, Mandy Van Deven offers this explanation for why the ideas of the left aren't taking root in modern America:

The left's success in the 1930s was based on a lot of preparation that went back to the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era when corporations were seen as malefactors of great wealth. When the Great Depression hit there was immediate support for ideas that people on the left had been talking about, like that corporations are selfish and exploit their workers or that the wealth should be more evenly spread out. For the past 35 years, conservative notions about Big Government rather than liberal ones about Big Business have been dominant. When the economic crisis hit in the 2008, Americans were already primed to believe the government couldn't do anything right because it hasn't been doing anything right for years. Ironically, the conservatives were proved right when the stimulus didn't do what the Obama administration hoped it would do, and clearly the Tea Party has been able to grow on that policy mistake. The reaction depends on what people think when an economic crisis hits, not what people say to make their case after it has happened.

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Conservative Supreme Court Justice warned us about money as speech

Back in 1978, Justice William Renquist wrote a dissent that is extraordinary reading today. This nugget of jurisprudence was dug up by Linda Greenhouse, who write an excellent NYT Op-Ed titled "Over the Cliff."

This dissenting justice did not take issue with a corporation’s status as a “person” in the eyes of the law (as Mitt Romney recently reminded a heckler at the Iowa State Fair). But corporate personhood was “artificial,” not “natural,” the justice observed. A corporation’s rights were not boundless but, rather, limited, and the place of “the right of political expression” on the list of corporate rights was highly questionable. “A state grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as an economic entity,” the dissenting opinion continued. “It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere … Indeed, the states might reasonably fear that the corporation would use its economic power to obtain further benefits beyond those already bestowed.”

Noting that most states, along with the federal government, had placed limits on the ability of corporations to participate in politics, the dissenting justice concluded: “The judgment of such a broad consensus of governmental bodies expressed over a period of many decades is entitled to considerable deference from this Court.

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Why is writing so difficult

Why is writing so difficult, and why is it that I write so slowly? These are two questions addressed by a well-written and presumably slowly-written article by Michael Aggar at Slate.

Kellogg is always careful to emphasize the extreme cognitive demands of writing, which is very flattering. "Serious writing is at once a thinking task, a language task, and a memory task," he declares. It requires the same kind of mental effort as a high-level chess match or an expert musical performance. We are all aspiring Mozarts indeed. So what's holding us back? How does one write faster? Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as "knowledge-crafting." In that state, the writer's brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and—most crucially—theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what's being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience.

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You may not talk like that . . .

Several weeks ago I passed this restroom door, which was located in a grocery store. Cannot?  Oh yeah?  That sign made me want to prove the sign wrong by carrying tons of merchandise into the restroom until it was completely full of merchandise. I don't know why the "can" vs. "may" error gripes me so much--perhaps it's because I hear and see this problem so often, and also because it seems that it would be so very easy to understand the problem and stop making the error.

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Final Cut Pro X + Izzy Videos = excellent videos

Until last week, I was using Final Cut Express 4 on my iMac. It took me quite a bit of time to get familiar with the many features of Final Cut Express--I struggled so much to remember how to access the many features that I created a single-spaced four-page cheat sheet. Then, just when I finally got comfortable with Final Cut Express, Apple released a new ground-up version of Final Cut Pro (version X). It has major improvements compared to FCE, including background rendering, re-design of the work areas, ability to tag and categorize clips and much more. The previous version of Final Cut Pro sold for $800, whereas the brand new Final Cut Pro X sells for only $300. I hesitated to buy the new version, despite the many improvements, because I didn't want to spend a lot of time training up on a new video  program (as I did when I ditched Adobe Premier Elements (on my PC) in order to move to Final Cut Express on an iMac). Nonetheless, I took the plunge last week, downloading FCP X from the online Apple Store (the only way to buy it). One factor in upgrading was the recommendation of Izzy Hyman, who offers first-rate video instruction at his membership-based site. In fact, Izzy now offers 25 free lessons on Final Cut Pro X at his site (Note: I've written about Izzy once before.).  His lessons cover each of the following topics, and each lesson includes high-quality screencasts: [More . . . ]

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