Aside from the story, or lack thereof, the action was laughable. Comically over the top sequences are reduced to honest laughs by godawful cgi blood and flames that I haven’t seen since video games had FMV sequences. The physics are all wrong, a six shot pistol somehow pumps out a dozen rounds a second, and a small combat knife can somehow instantly slice through bone. Perhaps the worst part is that it’s played entirely straight. If it were camped up a bit with a knowing grin I could have some amount of fun from the experience.

Expendables is an incoherent mess of a film that showcases the very worst in action movies.

Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is — and that is the point I want to stress — that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word. . . I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.

–Karel Capek

Courtesy of Conor Friedersdorf

Liberals: X is an even bigger problem now. The solution Y3 is an urgent national priority.

Conservatives: The Founders would hate Y3. It’s European. In other words, socialist. Why doesn’t anyone care about how many people Mao killed?

Voters: Yeah, why doesn’t anyone care about how many people Mao killed? And Y3 is a flawed solution. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any conservative alternative for addressing X. And we’re sorta worried about X.

The Two Party System at Work, Connor Fiedersdorf

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

“I can’t believe Jesus was struck,” said his brother, who noted the giant Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was untouched. “It’s the last thing I expected to happen.”

To an outsider, the notion that a two hour football game only consists of 11 minutes of televised action must seem absurd…

Maybe the contrast between the short, frenetic play of American athletes and the fluid build-up of a European soccer match offers some insight into our respective cultural psyches. But I suspect a more fluid style of play already appeals to American sports audiences. Fast-paced, transition-oriented basketball was the calling card of Magic Johnson and the Showtime-era Lakers. A quarterback-directed hurry-up offense is often the most exciting part of a football match. So if you like fast-paced team competition, give soccer a try.

–
Why I watch Soccer, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

One thing I’ve noticed recently is a number of comments by a man known as Professor Coldheart who always seems to have something interesting to say. IOZ recently laid down a little introduction to anarchism and in the ensuing comments the good professor gives his own definition that wouldn’t be entirely out of place as a response to the Ouroboros state.

Similarly, anarchism is the belief that there is no State. By “State,” I mean “some independent body of law that limits the unjust use of power.” There is no such animal. I can’t sum up my entire argument in a blawg’s comment box, but, in brief: (A) what we call the State is not a singular entity but a network of agencies with different agendas; (B) the State is no more immune to human folly than the humans it governs; (C) the State is a concentration of power, not a bulwark against it.

My ultimate point: we are already living in anarchy. We are already living in the world that you predict anarchy would turn into – a world where the biggest gang has grabbed all the guns and cowed everyone they can’t shoot. That’s the state of affairs right now. Anarchism, as a philosophy, simply exposes that. Anarchism states that the idea of Power Subservient to Justice – a/k/a, a benevolent State – is a myth.

Men cannot live without seeking to describe and explain the universe to themselves. The models they use in doing this must deeply affect their lives, not least when they are unconscious; much of the misery and frustration of men is due to the mechanical and unconscious, as well as deliberate, application of models where they do not work…

The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist men to understand themselves and thus operate in the open and not wildly, in the dark.