I pride myself on being only a semi-ignorant person in that I may find it difficult to read about some of the more complicated aspects of politics but I will eagerly read about issues that interest me if it's written down in cold, hard English.

I also really, really enjoy reading articles that make me angry, such as this one in The Expectorator. Not only did this article make me thoroughly, thoroughly angry, it also challenged a lot of things I believed in, which is awesome on many levels. I didn't necessarily agree with all of what it was saying, but it definitely gave me something new to think about.

I think there should be a thread for people to post links to thought-provoking and challenging articles in. Especially articles that undermine the general media presentation of certain topics. I try to regularly sift through 'intellectual' magazines but I don't have enough time to find everything.

Good idea.

I feel slightly like I'm lowering the tone, but this is a rather fascinating article about FC United of Manchester. It's a bit lefty orientated, but does a great job of questioning what it means to support a football team, and what the fans and the community get out of it.

Genuinely thought provoking read, even for a cricket fan like myself.

I noticed that the food miles thing in Britain was causing a fair bit of concern in New Zealand, and that people back home are very much hoping that UK consumers will be looking at the carbon footprint instead (which show that agricultural produce shipped from NZ actually often produces less emissions than locally-grown stuff) rather than the meaningless "food miles". I also hear it said that, since shipping is quite energy efficient, half the carbon used to get your groceries from New Zealand to your house comes from the drive back from the supermarket.

As for the carbon offsetting - well, it's not all Kenyan dung burners. A fair bit of that carbon offsetting money has gone towards building wind farms in New Zealand (and driving through Woodville it's hard not to notice their ever-increasing presence). But even with regards to Kenyan dung burners, I imagine that the carbon offsetting calculations are (or should be) based on the Kenyans using them for a certain amount of time, rather than forever and ever.

As for that old argument about the third world being entitled to aspire to our lifestyle - I don't think our lifestyle does us much good anyway. It's far too trashy right now. Wouldn't it be better if all of us aspired to a new lifestyle? A less disposable lifestyle, with less possessions overall but a higher quality of manufacturing so we didn't have to keep throwing away our cheap plastic shit, sustainable self-generated power, and cheap, efficient public transportation? Why do we so readily accept the idea that our culture is the high-water mark for leading a happy life? I suppose people in western countries aren't depressed or suicidal at all.

I'm tired of our junky consumer culture. Why should third world countries aspire to what we have? What we have is shit, and we only live like this because it's a good way for companies to make money off us. If we all lived safe and healthy lives with clean air and water, food and shelter, good friends and plenty of leisure time, we'd be happy enough wouldn't we?

THE CBI HAVE SHOWN THAT LEISURE TIME IS UNPRODUCTIVE. RETURN TO YOUR WORKSTATIONS.

I'm a big fan of The Next 500 Years by Adrian Berry. While he comes across as slightly 'culty' at times, it's a really interested set of ideas covering suggested approaches for solving our growing space, energy, and food needs.

Hey Flack, what's all this 'we' stuff about?

About making sweeping generalisations? About us people who live in the western democracies?

But I have heard that third world aspiration argument loads of times, and I don't remember anyone ever countering it with "but all this crap has fuck all to do with our quality of living, really".

But to guarantee all the things you list as the basics would still be costly in terms of energy and many are currently things that much of the world lives without. For all those billions of people to get to the way of living you describe would still need masses more energy than we can cleanly produce. In any case I actually quite like telly, cars, computer games, holidays, central heating etc I think they actually do contribute to the quality of my life and I'd be a shameful liar if I tried to convince someone in the third world that they don't. As you say we could do most of these things a good deal more efficiently but that would really only help a bit.

I think we could probably do all of those things quite efficiently indeed, except for the bit about cars and overseas holidays. For example I think it should be perfectly possible for people in the third world to enjoy playing computer games without expending very much energy, although they probably would prefer to not be drinking contaminated water before they consider bustin' out a game of Contra.

But if we were all made to put solar panels on our roofs I'd say great, if we lost our cars and got bicycles I'd say... um, well I already have a bicycle and no car, which is just fine as long as the trains work. Air travel is a bit of a sticky one for me, since I come from New Zealand and don't really want to be stuck there forever, but I'd happily give up aeroplanes as well if I could have longer holidays and a comfortable boat ride. The thing is, most of our energy is just being pissed away. Just about everything we buy is designed to be scrapped in five years or less; I don't think that really increases our quality of life so much.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think that 95% of our energy use is cruft, and if you designed your society with this in mind, you could achieve a very nice standard of living without all the waste. And of course, some people do do this, taking their house off the national grid etc. But that's piss all use except as an experiment; if anything's going to change around here it's going to be through regulations. But it's also a great opportunity for third world countries to build new, modern systems - why should they have to make all the same stupid mistakes as we did before we can agree to move on?

[edit] Hm, perhaps discussion on required reading ought to be in a seperate thread to the required reading though, if this is going to continue...

Maybe but the third world is not designing societies from scratch so they will have little choice but to continue to increase their use of motor vehicles and the like as they develop further. To create a society with an efficient integrated transport system takes long term planning, something which is possible and indeed probable in somewhere such as China but the politics of Africa I would imagine may prevent it so development will probably continue in an inefficient, ad hoc manner.

[edit] yes I was kind of thinking that myself, this thread will soon get full of hastily concocted opinions like mine and the articles by people who actually know what they're on about may get lost.

Does anybody regularly read The Spectator? If that's the typical standard of article, I think I may have to start picking it up.

Used to. As in, discarded copies on the train every other week. It's as solidly Tory as the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, if that puts you off.

(Regarding Spectator's centre-left rival, New Statesman, I hope it has improved recently. Couldn't bare to read it for a while.)

Inspired by a passing remark; a non-spoileriffic blog entry on the philosophy of Bioshock's Rapture civilization, and the memory of a friend having an intense and thereby interesting hatred (for the author), I'm thinking about getting a copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Which, and whom, I know nothing about, save for the following.

I've glanced at the Wikipedia entry for Objectivism, which sounds fascinating:

Is anyone familiar with her books, philosophies et cetera? They sound like something I'd find interesting - I find myself sympathetic and in some degree of agreement with objectivism as described above.

I'm aware she's a very divisive author, and welcome any negative opinining, not just the positive. With the greatest respect - often I find it just as important and valuable to have a strong dissenting opinion from someone I otherwise might not agree with, if I can respect them for their dissent. Or in other words - even if I think you're a prick, I may do so with admiration, as I hope you would for me.

Anybody read her?

Not read Rand but covered Objectivism in my Degree.

It's the basis of the right wing think tank "The Rand Corporation"

And interesting side note fact fans, Anton Le Vey used Objectivism as the basis of his "Satanic Bible" for the Church of Satan (which is a rather amusing read in itself).

I haven't read Rand but I found some old Donahue interviews with her on YouTube. I liked watching them – they were actually interesting, intelligent and thoughtful. I'm so used to television interviews being dumbed-down and shallow that it's hard to imagine watching interviews where the interviewer actually allows the interviewee to complete a whole sentence without cutting them off. In fact, Donahue doesn't even get to ask his first question before they're off on a tangent on the phoniness of humility. Who would have guessed that television was getting more stupid as time passed?

Good stuff.

Unfortunate, but not too alarming about it being used by a right wing think tank. Shall we start a seperate 'Good books ruined by their famous fans' thread? ;)

*adopts most satirical face* Well, mm, at least it's good to know the Satanic bible did have a basis in something, unlike... yes...mmm.

What did you do your degree in?

@thomsedavi: Cheers for the video, I shall have a gander tonight, once my eyes have unglued from my screwed up, light hating, morning sickly little face.

My degree was in Economics & Politics (couldn't be arsed with the Philosophy) with a special subject in Modern Politicial Theory.

I found these three books a useful toolkit:

Letters to a Young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
Essays on how what the majority thinks / believes is wrong and how to argue them into submission. I've seen Hitchens name mentioned a few times in the "Enemies of Reason" thread and while I find his recent semi-conversion to Neo Conservatism quite bewildering his writings are always interesting. You can find quite a lot of essays on www.slate.com, mainly dealing with Iraq and bashing Islam & religon in general (but mostly Islam).

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World - Francis Wheen
Starts with a discussion of the Iranian Revolution and the election of Thatcher and how both these events have shaped thinking in the last 25 years and led to us believing some rather ridiculous things

Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
A discussion on how rational thinking is the only way to avaoid a new dark age.

Available for a rather bargainous 23p on Amazon Marketplace at the mo. (Obviously more like three quid with the rip-off fixed shipping, but still cheap.)

Do you know if Freakonomics is any good? I've only read a little bit, but what I read I liked.

Incidentally, are there any decent internet bookshops that take PayPal?

Demon Haunted World is one of the best books I've ever read. I recommend it very, very highly.

If everyone in the world had read this book we would be in a much better place right now.

I found it very interesting and it made a lot of sense. I think your 'enjoyment' of the book will depend on how willing you are to laterally reason out things. If you can argue that e.g. football is better than rugby because some trees are evergreen and some not* - and do so logically and not surreally - then you'll enjoy it. Er.

It's tremendously interesting and also entertaining to read until near the end, when it starts to get a mite repetitious, but for the most part it's golden. Even if you don't agree with it, I'd say it's still a good read.

I know naff all about economics, mind.

* or something similarly random and example-y.

Good article in the Guardian today.

How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

Neoliberals? COMMIE SCUM, more like.

Note: deliberate obtuseness may be at work.

Whoa, this thread totally died... and stuff.

Question: Does anyone know any really good political blogs? Something entertaining, informative and balanced? And not written by anyone like right-wing skank-whore bitch Ann Coulter? Maybe a blog, if you can imagine it, written by the political equivalent of Rev Stu Cam?

Racists, you mean?

Well, the ability to see beyond Obama's "OMG he should become presidnet because he is a person of colour" appeal would be welcome. Mr. Obama "yeah, policy... ask me this question again next year" Notanoldwhiteguy.

No, he means only updated a couple of times a year, silly.

Isn't that just asserting that the world, y'know, exists?

In your opinion.

In a sense. From what I can tell so far, it seems to be an expansion or variation of Descartes. That we have only our perceptions of the world to guide us, not a true model of what the world is.

No one had any political blogs to post? I mean, if you ignore the stigma against blogging, they can be more informative than the actual news because they know how to be entertaining.

Here's one I read: This Modern World. I started reading it after I found the cartoon of the same name.

What's most surprising about this clip is that almost none of the comments were written by the usual idiots. For a YouTube video, that's unprecedented.

Description of clip: Mayor of San Diego gets emotional while supporting gay marriage. A politician with emotions and a sense of social responsibility? You won't believe it until you see it!

Loads of stuff here.

PDF magazines, some arty bollox, some nice stuff. Its free, so hey.

http://www.order-order.com/ is highly rated round our way.

Because being politically on the right isn't a crime if you're a libertarian too.

The new N. Klein book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' is flawed, but worth reading.

Hey cunts, this rather fucking brilliant article, by Steven Twatty Pinker is about bloody swearing isn't it?

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20071008&s=pinker100807&c=1

I'm just got to the stroop test bit, and it's jolly well interesting.

I aim to do my small bit to change that, because it's a great response.