Re: African democratic countries accoding to Starydog



On Sun, 25 Nov 2007, phil scott wrote:

On Nov 25, 2:16 pm, Straydog <a...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
First of all, it is a mistake to say that "Art believes" when I
actually talked about what the authors of a book said.

I think it is also a misrepresentation of history to compare wikipedia's
entries for the _current_ status of South America with the book I talked
about and I did not hide the fact that the book was as of _1988-89_.

And, why is wikipedia a better source for information?

It is a further misrepresentation of history to try to "paint up" the
first 150 years of South American "military dictatorships" as if "Oh,
look how well they ended up (go scroll down and read what DK wrote),
therefore we can ignore how they started" and, by the way,
somehow DK forgot all about the 300 years of Spanish/Portugese
imperialism/colonialism that came before independence as if Spain/Portugal
didn't do anything bad, or, we don't need to take that into consideration.

So, we're looking at a 500 year "progress" trajectory for South America,
and about 50 years for Africa, and DK is saying: Oh, look how much better
South America is right now than Africa.

I wonder if we could look at GDPPPC(PPP) for Latin America back 50 years
after Spain/Portugal sent conquistadors there and see how that looks
compared to sub-Saharan Africa 50 years after independence. Looks to me
like DK is comparing apples and oranges.

I'm going to make a few comments below....but, remember, I don't have the
benefit of corroboration for 1988-9 to the present and I have no reason to
think wikipedia is intrinsically better or "ultimate truth" either.


there are a few little problemo's with wikipoo... search the
following terms in combination.

'wikipedia, founder, 'now edited', background, prior,
pornographer'.. its not *entirely white as snow,

Well, there were some articles not too far back where people were complaining that some definitions/content was being "edited" by outside people and there were arguments (as there always will be) about what _is_ and what _isn't_.

In the engineering business we have an entire army of factually based
operations... facts are facts.. so that what is factual in one
context, gets applied into some other context causing great havoc...as
the larger picture is obsured to hide the screw up.

When you get into quantifiable things, and things where a measurement can be made and made accurately, and stuff comes off an assembly line. Such as a 6-32 thread (I use these all the time), there will be specifiable tollerances down to the limits of today's technology.

Period.

Go into politics, religion, philosophy...and all bets are off. Even music and art. Me, I don't like jazz, but that does not mean jazz is junk. A lot of people think its the "pinacle" of music. OK, different strokes for different folks.

the larger picture with humanity is that each person, race, family
tree, nation, govt, school.. etc. evolves, devolves or turns to crap
at a different pace in different ways upon the same base of the
broader species.

And, as empires rise and fall, so does the fortunes of those peoples.

Seeking to find fault with all of the others.. justifies oneself...
and unfortunately justifies oneself in context with his or her array
of errors, bogus, and utterly corrupt notions (the human condition)...
so that such justification ruins its host.

And, leads to these never-ending threads of arguments where, in the most absurd limits, both sides claim victory. Most realistically, we get everyone's _opinion_ (throw in conjecture, speculations, innuendo, etc., for ballance).

a big deal..... not affecting the 'wops, spear chuckers, sand
niggers, or crackers' slurred in the faintest... those bent on finding
fault in others, decimate their own lives by justifying their own
error... entirely invisible to them.

And does he who thinks he is without defect dares to throw the first stone? You are free to deconstruct.

Unavoidable in that case...none the less a fatal mechanism.

what works better is to understand the human condition, the various
rates of advance or decay.. then look for the driving principles...
discuss those, Thats relevant. the individual vulnerabilites etc.
act as bait for idiots it seems... smart idiots though, like the
ones that blew up 2 space shuttles and designed the Denver Airport
Baggage handling system.

I could name a few, too.





Phil Scott









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