Wings Over Scotland

Regarding next Saturday night, just so you know I will be taking care of transport back for anyone that is staying overnight at my place.

If your driving then you can come early and park your car here as cearc will be doing. If anybody needs details of my address then you will need to contact me directly on the mobile, I’m sure you can get the number through others you know.

There’s one addition Jock Scott is coming to sing while Cactus plays some tunes LOL.

@Brian Doonthetoon

Yes I know what Wetherspoons think, I’m one step beyond though 🙂

Here’s a rare one for you lot to ponder upon…
link to youtube.com

@Paula Rose

I do but we won’t be doing that, we’re not there to stir it up but to make friends. No point attracting enemies and they do exist.

I won’t be inviting any hotheads to have a pop at us which is very possible on a Saturday night, Our strength is in our openness and level heads. Confrontation not necessary, lets be ourselves, wear our badges argue our point if we must.

For now I’m not for rubbing anyone’s nose it, met too many nutcases in my life already and don’t fancy meeting any more.

Lat’s have a good time, civil to all especially each other LOL

Off the deep end…
link to youtube.com

A Dundee Band…

link to youtube.com

And another Dundee Band…
link to youtube.com

And yet another Dundee Band…
link to youtube.com

Hi Paula Rose,
As a Dundee resident and long time Wings reader/ lurker I would love nothing more than to come and meet you guys this Saturday, however, as a student teacher I’ll unfortunately have no time for such frivolities. I shall be with you all in spirit however.
Have fun and until the next time.

@ Jim Bo

I know how focused the SNP are on education and narrowing the attainment gap but, surely they have not got you doing overtime on a Saturday night 😉

@ Cactus

It’s alive, It’s aaaaaalive.

link to youtube.com

Am eh on your ignore list an ah? 🙂 Eh seem to be on abody elses!! 😉

Boo – Hoo 😉

link to youtube.com

@ Cactus

Guid nicht oot?

Invasion oh meh mind!

link to youtube.com

Guid stuff William Wallace, ah liked the panning on the excellent invasion 🙂

Kevin McCabe is quality.

@ Cactus

He was in Liff wi meh auld man iy.

Mental – yet lucid.

@ Cactus

Set fire to the rain 😉

link to youtube.com

Love to all of Scotland. Shine brightly!

Without effective voice in the British state, Scots lack political agency and are unable to express a political identity outwith boundaries defined by English votes. Having never experienced democracy that reflects our popular sovereignty, are Scots truly free?

Culture – Too Long In Slavery
link to youtube.com

Confusion in this Evening Standard item, courtesy of msn.com, regarding England and Britain – no surprise for Wales and Scotland

link to bing.com

Apologies for not archiving. One of many skills still to be acquired

In case anyone’s interested,

link to wingsoverscotland.com

is still simmering away; sensibledave this afternoon and my reply to him a wee whiley ago.

Hi Winger’s

Really looking forward to the get the gither@Dundee, it has definitely been too long, just need suggestions as to where to stay?

Brian Doonthetoon says:
7 November, 2017 at 9:45 pm

Hi Yesbot.

Ask Alex about the space availabe on his carpet…

8=)

I’ve tried Jolly’s and B + B’s no joy. Not so familiar with Broughty/Dundee.

Dear Alex, Can you help, will travel with sleeping bag??

@yesbot

I wish I did but now looking overbooked and wife starting to get nervous lol. I’ve found these for you which are available:

Jolly’s still have one room available on Booking.com at £59, breakfast extra.
link to tinyurl.com

Stonelee Guest House, a 5 minute walk away. Rated 9.2 twin room available at £60 including breakfast.
link to tinyurl.com

Best Western Woodlands Hotel, 5 minutes in a taxi, single room £54 excluding breakfast 5 minutes in a taxi.
link to tinyurl.com

Good luck in the hunt 🙂

I wish I did but now looking overbooked and wife starting to get nervous lol. I’ve found these for you which are available:
Jolly’s still have one room available on Booking.com at £59, breakfast extra.

Thank you Alex, will try for that! See you next week.

It’s not my event it’s ours :), from around 19:00 on is what I’m suggesting.

I’ll be there for 19:00 with a few others, but people are welcome to turn up at any time of course, sure we’ll still be there 🙂

Morning Ruglonian and Alex.

Aye I’d been planning on driving up from Glasgow wae Jock Scot… if yer flying solo, sure come and join us 🙂

DasIstKeinKapital?
Let me enlighten you about identity, equality and politics.

Putting the ‘Identity’ into Identity Politics

….Identity politics seeks to give political weight to the ways in which particular groups are marginalised by the historically shaped structures of society. To be a woman, a person of colour, transgender or Indigenous is to be born into and located within a set of social meanings and power relations that shape and constrain what sort of life is possible for you. Your experience of the world will be conditioned in very different ways from those on the other side of social power asymmetries. Identity politics, at its simplest, is an attempt to expose and respond politically to this reality.

Importantly, identity politics has always been a reaction to liberalism, a very different, political anthropology which shares the goals of equality and ending oppression. The liberal approach to social justice sees the demand for political equality as emanating from a shared human dignity. As such, it de-emphasises difference. If only we look past the superficial things that divide us, we’re told, we see a common humanity that washes away any justifications for discrimination on the basis of race, gender or orientation….

link to ethics.org.au

Ethics, Identity, and Society Career Path

Are you interested in political, economic, and racial equality? The Ethics, Identity, and Society path is focused on questions of social justice, political identity, and political philosophy, with courses ranging from the early roots of democratic equality to contemporary debates about political inclusion and economic fairness. This career path will help you develop skills of ethical, historical, and cultural analysis, and to recognize the ideas and presumptions beneath the surface of everyday politics. This is a great path for those who want to study several areas of law, work for national and international NGO’s, serve in analysis or outreach for urban, state, or tribal governments, or take part in public debates about policy….

link to polisci.uoregon.edu

The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves

Abstract

Like so many of Hegel’s pithy observations, this one is suitably enigmatic. I am drawn to it because it can be read to capture, avant la lettre, and with admirable brevity, the implications of recent work on identity in psychology, analytical philosophy and political theory. This research indicates just how elusive the concept of the self is, conceptually and empirically. As many philosophers contend, the self may be an illusion, but one that is central to the well-being of modern people. As Hegel suggests, we appear in multiple guises by virtue of our numerous self-identifications, but invariably think of ourselves in the singular. Given the contradictions between our self-understandings and those of science, we have a strong incentive to keep the former under wraps. My goal in this book is to shed light on conceptions of identity and their associated practices. Following in the footsteps of Hegel, my end goal is to think about the relationship between identity, and politics and ethics.

Most analytical philosophers and neuroscientists question the existence of the self. Some deny its existence altogether, and describe consciousness as a never-ending stream of fleeting sensations and reflections on them. For others, there is a ‘minimal’ or phenomenological self, an illusion to be sure, but a powerful one that provides meaning to our lives and guidance in our interactions with others. If selfhood is questionable, identity, which rests upon the foundation of the self, is an even more dubious concept. Westerners—and many other people—would be as shocked by the thought that they do not possess a self as they would be by the suggestion that they are without a gender. More remarkable still, most Westerners believe in the face of all the evidence to the contrary that their identities are consistent and unique.

Highly respected scholars in diverse fields (e.g. Clifford Geertz, Erik Erikson, Paul Ricoeur and Anthony Giddens) encourage this illusion, as do prominent philosophers (e.g. Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor) who want to ground ethical systems in such identities. They write in an era when our discourses reveal the near-metastasis of the word self, which is now attached via a hyphen to an almost endless list of words. These include self-image, self-seeking, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-consciousness, self-reference, self-preservation, all of which have a positive valence. In part, my project is aimed at pulling the empirical rug out from underneath such claims, but more importantly, in understanding why they are made. What accounts for our fixation on the self in the modern era, and more so still in the last half-century? What kinds of identity projects has modernity spawned? What accounts for this variation, and to whom do different constructions of identity appeal? Could we recognize ourselves as fragmented and question the status of the alleged selfhood on which our identities are based? If so, what would be the ethical consequences?

link to link.springer.com

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a bit of an existentialist. He felt identity was of central importance equality.

As Nolen Gertz writes on his blog,

“…Beneath his views on race and oppression lies a philosophical schooling that began at least in graduate school, during which time he took courses at Boston University and Harvard on not only the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Religion, but also a yearlong seminar on Hegel.”
——–
“I became convinced that existentialism,” he continues, “in spite of the fact that it had become all too fashionable, had grasped certain basic truths about man.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

link to critical-theory.com

The Paradox. – Ring the Changes
link to youtube.com

Tinto, you want to know the truth about Brazil?
“You can’t handle the truth”… 🙂

Item One:
There are only two things that are cheap in Brazil – Human life; and granite kitchen countertops. Really. I know, because I’ve remodelled a kitchen.

Item Two:
Some Brazilians’ moral compasses are slightly askew. Example, reported in papers a couple of years ago:
A man discovered that a local religious leader was having sex with the man’s underage daughter. So the man, like any outraged father would do…

…started blackmailing the pastor for money, threatening to tell the police if he didn’t get cash.

Item Three:
If you don’t like creepy-crawlies, then stay away! With the weather, the sun, the lack of freezing temperatures, there’s hunners an thoosands of beasties, everywhere.
Wee cockroaches, medium cockroaches, big bastarding cockroaches galore. They like dark hideyholes, like down the slots in your kitchen knife block (finding them there was just – ughh).

Item Four:
It’s always sunny. Fuxake, that big yellow ball in the sky doesn’t take a break. It gets depressing waking up and KNOWING you’re going to be sweating all day, same as yesterday, and the day before.
On the other hand watching the tv news gleefully reporting on some high-altitude town getting a bit of ACTUAL FROST!?! when the temperature goes to minus-1 is always good for a laugh. 🙂

Item Five (The good news):
The soft drink Guarana Antarctica is excellent, give it a try if you see it. It has a very light flavour, fruity but a bit similar to ginger ale. There’s no Irn-Bru here but Guarana is an worthy alternative.

More later. Mibbes.

Hey guys,
Glad I checked here first – I was just going to book my train ticket – I’d be delighted to join your merry band Cactus, thank you so much for the offer, and if Alex is getting the tea on, all the better 😉
Email me later and we can arrange ourselves!

So looking forward to this weekend 😀

David: you paint not a very attractive picture. I thought it was all luscious, sun-kissed lovelies on Ipanema beach rolling you a dooby on their smooth thighs. You don’t see that kinda hing in Gourock, you know.

Cockroaches I don’t like, not even whistling ones.

Come back home, all is forgiven.

But that video had the wrong kind of “topless volleyball players, and great big coconuts”, David.

Wotaswiz!

Had to scrape the car this morning, too.

Loved the “snakehipped charmer” comment, though. So true, so true…..

*Checks profile in big hall mirror*

Aw tae the wan side like Gourock, match that!

@Ian Brotherhood

Nana just posted a link about 40 minutes ago on the MT with Alex Salmond being interviewed on I’m guessing BBC about becoming chairman of Johnson Press and very good it was too. He’s one smart cookie.

link to youtube.com

Anyway that’s not what I came on to tell you about it was this that I was offered by Youtube as an “you might like” after watching Nana’s link. Ace! LOL

link to youtube.com

Tom Tom Club – Wordy Rappinghood 🙂
link to youtube.com

#Loki #Tom Gallagher?

Morning Ruglonian ~

You have mail.
—–

Cheers to all off-topical Wingers.

“Friends of Wings Over The Ferry Digital Countdown Clock”:
0 months, 0 weeks, an about 2½ days remaining.

See ye on the beach William.

Ah the Gantocks Tinto, did the Waverley not brush up against them wanst? Have scraped by a puffer in the Crinan Canal on one of my yachting hols, don’t think it was the Vital Spark though. Apparently you can tell coal-fired puffers fae diesel wans by the position of the funnel in relation tae the wheelhouse?

Big fan of Para Handy, the chapters are just the right size for reading in bed! Apparently the author’s faither was the duke of Argyll?

@Fred

Ah Para Handy and the Vital Spark.

“see this thing that’s gon roon and roon it shood be up an doon” 🙂

link to youtube.com

@Alex clark

Thanks for your comment on the main thread. I’m learning stuff every day from links and from other wingers.

I just need to learn to be a bit more patient for indy, lol but it’s hard this waiting and waiting and wai…………….

OK I’m sorry for this. Really really sorry. I can’t help myself and I have to play it. Once again sorry just sorry I didn’t mean it.

link to youtube.com 🙂

Nostalgia for the poverty of the past? Nah I don’t think so, it’s a reminder of the mistakes of the past. We can be different as an Independent country. A great future awaits us and it’s up to us.

Embrace the future, make it yours!

link to youtube.com

Literally decades since I had a good few great nights out in Paisley including the Indian buffet of course. Last train home job, leave the car.

link to youtube.com

@Brian Doonthetoon

Well that was a treat, Space patrol I’d never even heard of I’ve only watched the first 5 minutes yet am engrossed.

I’ll need to go back and watch the whole video, even the kids programmes back then were more grown up than Great British Bake Off Come dancing Shite that we get now. Good tunes too!

I’m into retro that’s for sure. Long live retro 🙂

Kind of retro
link to youtube.com

Was probably a YES

yesindyref2
I used to bump into that dude quite regularly, as he was a friend of my next-door neighbour (more than a decade ago). It’s a funny old world.

As far as “imagined communities” go, I reckon Scotland is about the optimal size for a healthy nation.

@CameronB Brodie
I’ve always thought anyone into folk music would have to be a YESser, apart from one of the Humblebums! Caledonia is a great song but I always thought YES should have something mre upbeat and future. Maybe like, this:

“Now I’m a union man
Fed up with what I am
I say what I think
That the Union stinks
Yes I’m a union man.

When we meet in the Freedom Square
I’ll be tearing out my hair
With a hell of a shout
It’s out voters out
And the end of the Union’s share.

Oh, you don’t fool me I’m out of the union
You don’t fool me I’m out of the union
You don’t fool me I’m out of the union
Before the day I die, before the day I die.”

Needs a bit of work, and the rest of it!

yesindyref2
The original “what” works in an existentialist sort of way. 😉

Re. William Shatner covering Garbageman. My life is now complete. 🙂

BDTT,

I’ve now got the theme tune for ‘Torchy, Torchy, the battery boy’ bouncing around my head from the moment I read your comment.

@Tom Holland
That’s a rather confused message from you there, especially as your a historian. Your country is England and only England. Britain is not a country, it is the political union of Scotland and England. Your epistemology appears normatively biased to the extent that your objectivity has been compromised. Not a good look, frankly.

Postcolonialism and History

Abstract

This chapter traces the influence of postcolonial studies on the discipline of history, focusing specifically on the historiography surrounding British imperialism and colonialism. It argues that postcolonial methods and perspectives have helped re-invigorate this hitherto hidebound field of study. The intellectual genealogy of postcolonial studies’ influence is examined; this is then followed by a review of three of the main thematic preoccupations of the new, postcolonial-inspired historiography: identities, geographies and epistemologies. Key works and topics are surveyed, with attention being given to both their contributions and their limitations. The contrast between postcolonialism’s influence on historians of colonial India and Africa is also highlighted.

link to oxfordhandbooks.com

I too often talk shite, off to bed. All the best to all the faithful.

@ Alex,and all Wingers.
In the style that I love.
link to youtube.com

@Baphomet?
Re. the Anlgo-American New Right, Farage (as in garage), and right-wing populism in general. Authoritarian capitalism is a crime against humanity, frankly.

CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

ANARCHY STATE AND UTOPIA

Three years after publication of Theory, Rawls’s Harvard colleague Robert Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which is, after Theory, probably the most celebrated and widely discussed work in political philosophy in recent decades. In contrast to Rawls’s defense of the social welfare state, Nozick’s conclusions are libertarian. His main purposes in the work are reflected in its title. He attempts to refute the anarchist contention that a legitimate state is not possible by demonstrating how a state could come into existence without violating anyone’s rights. This “minimal” state is charged only with protecting rights, including a strong conception of property rights, and enforcing contracts. Anything more than this is illegitimate, and Nozick mounts a full-scale assault upon conceptions of distributive justice that require more. The result is not only sustained criticism of Rawls’s theory but Nozick’s development of a powerful alternative view.

Although individual rights are central to Nozick’s project, his justification of them is only cursory — as he was well aware (1974: p. xiv). To establish the possibility of a legitimate state, Nozick presents an “invisible hand” argument. As in the famous argument of Adam Smith, Nozick attempts to show how a result that is not directly anticipated by political actors, in this case, the emergence of a state, is brought about through their actions in pursuit of other goals. Nozick posits a state of nature based on Locke’s. Without a common power to keep order, people, feeling threatened, have strong incentives to band together in protective associations. Because of the distinctive nature of protection, individuals not only want to be in a protective association, but in the strongest one possible, which is able to provide protection from other associations and their members.

Thus the logic of protection causes individuals to leave their own associations and join the one that is strongest. This process strengthens that association further, giving other individuals incentives to join it, a process that continues until it emerges as the “dominant protective association” or “ultra-minimal state,” which wields de facto authority in the relevant territory. Even people who do not join voluntarily are legitimately absorbed by this entity. Because of dangers that could result from their using force to defend themselves, the dominant protective agency may prevent them from doing so. But it must compensate them for this loss by protecting them. With everyone subject to this association’s protection, the “minimal” state is achieved.

link to politics.virginia.edu

Right-Wing Populism and the Limits of Normative Critical Theory

If one wants to address the question of what Frankfurt School Critical Theory can still teach us about the resurgence of right-wing populism in Europe and the United States in recent times, one must call the very concept of the “Frankfurt School” into question and look more closely at how Jürgen Habermas’s efforts to “reconstruct” Critical Theory on normative foundations transformed the intellectual tradition he inherited from Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and the other members of the Institute for Social Research.

In a short essay like this, I can only discuss a few key points. I would like to say a few words about how Habermas’s theory of history – which was originally very similar to that of the early Horkheimer – shifted in the 1960s and 1970s and how his move away from the Freudian-Marxist foundations of early Critical Theory, more generally, has attenuated his ability to grasp the regressive social and irrational political developments we have witnessed in Europe and the U.S. in recent times. Subsequently, I would like to discuss briefly how and why the early model of Critical Theory is still more helpful than normative approaches in grasping and combating right-wing populism. This short essay should be read in conjunction with the piece that appeared in the previous issue of Logos, in which I provided a more detailed analysis of contemporary right-wing populism and authoritarianism in the United States from the standpoint of early Critical Theory.[1]

link to logosjournal.com

The Right to Justification
Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice

Contemporary philosophical pluralism recognizes the inevitability and legitimacy of multiple ethical perspectives and values, making it difficult to isolate the higher-order principles on which to base a theory of justice. Rising up to meet this challenge, Rainer Forst, a leading member of the Frankfurt School’s newest generation of philosophers, conceives of an “autonomous” construction of justice founded on what he calls the basic moral right to justification.

Forst begins by identifying this right from the perspective of moral philosophy. Then, through an innovative, detailed critical analysis, he ties together the central components of social and political justice, freedom, democracy, equality, and toleration, and joins them to the right to justification. The resulting theory treats “justificatory power” as the central question of justice, and by adopting this approach, Forst argues, we can discursively work out, or “construct,” principles of justice, especially with respect to transnational justice and human rights issues.

link to cup.columbia.edu

@Darren Loki McGarvey
Dude, you’re being played for a fool.

Ideology, the state and welfare in Britain
Critical perspectives: neo-liberalism and the ‘New Right’

‘Neo’-liberalism is an updated version of the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century. There is in a sense very little that is new about ‘neo’-liberalism; it is essentially a restatement of old ideas in an up-to-date and more sophisticated form. Major contemporary neo-liberal thinkers include Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992), an Austro-British economist and political theorist who spent much of his later career at the University of Chicago after a period at the London School of Economics in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the author of, among many other works, The Road
to Serfdom (1944), a book admired by Keynes, The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and the three-volume treatise Law, Legislation and Liberty, published in the 1970s (Hayek, 1944, 1960, 1982). Hayek was particularly sceptical in his later work about the concept of social justice, dismissing it as an illusory ideal.

Another significant figure is the University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman (1912–2007), who was especially associated with the revival of interest in monetary policy and with the doctrine of ‘monetarism’, which asserts that inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon which can be tamed by controlling the supply of money in the economy. His most politically influential book is probably Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962 (Friedman, 1962). Most of this is devoted to exploring the supposedly negative effects of government in trying to regulate society, and how free markets and voluntary action could be used to solve a variety of social problems, including, for example, racial discrimination and professional dominance in health care (Friedman, 1962: Chs 7 and 9).

Another significant thinker was the American philosopher Robert Nozick (1939–2002), whose closely argued treatise Anarchy, State and Utopia seemed to some people to provide the philosophical underpinnings for a theory of the ‘minimal’ state (Nozick, 1974). These three thinkers differed in their basic assumptions, but all shared a scepticism about, or even a hostility to, the contemporary active, ‘enabling’ and interventionist state as had developed in the twentieth century, and particularly since the Second World War. With the possible exception of Nozick, they did not say that the state should have no role at all in providing welfare, only that any such role should be limited largely to the relief of destitution; the state should provide a safety net, but no more.

link to catalogue.pearsoned.co.uk

Linton Kwesi Johnson – Fite Dem Back
link to youtube.com

Never understood wot this was all about but it’s a nice memory from The Olden Days:

link to youtube.com

C ya sometime, seps.

“talk shite”? “talk shite”?

I haven’t even got going yet!

Tinto Chiel
I’m not sure. That’s thon mechanistic, materialist worldview?

Thee Headcoatees – All My Feelings Denied
link to youtube.com

Re. sweeping majesty. 🙂

WHEN NICE WON’T SUFFICE
THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER LEADER

Honest discourse is key to shifting school culture

While no one has the power to make a person or group change thinking and behaviors, teacher leaders who recognize the signs of a dysfunctional culture, respond proactively and in the moment, and follow up after a team collaborates can initiate moments that move the team beyond the culture of nice.

1. RECOGNIZE THE SIGNS.
A team affected by the culture of nice can look high-functioning on the surface, but signs of an unhealthy culture may exist:

• Teachers rarely question each other’s and their own practice, assumptions, and beliefs. Instead they may only compliment each other, without investigating areas where the student needs to improve and how the teacher can change instruction to meet those needs. If teachers always leave a team meeting only feeling confirmed in what they have been doing, the team has probably never reached rigorous collaborative discourse.

• Teachers only share successful student work to avoid judgment from peers. While a teacher leader can still facilitate a rigorous collaborative discourse around successful work, educators stuck in the culture of nice rarely question what makes the work successful and how to elicit similar successes from students not meeting expectations.

• Teachers who share their unsuccessful student work and those examining it make excuses as to why the student underperformed. In a culture of nice, teachers are more likely to find blame with the assessment or the student rather than analyzing the instruction that may have affected the student’s work. This approach can come from good intentions, like not wanting to hurt a teacher’s feelings, but ultimately it doesn’t change instruction and can be harmful to students.

• Teachers recommend strategies for the presenting teacher to apply, but don’t critically reflect and apply them to their own instruction. Teams who are stuck in the culture of nice may not explore the broader implications of what they are discussing.

link to fpsct.org

@Darren Loki McGarvey
Dude, you’re not ready for this level of discourse yet. Gain some knowledge and experience first.

Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty

When it comes to just about any topic, it seems as if the public discourse on the internet is dominated by rhetoric and propaganda. People are either selling products or ideology. In fact, just because someone may come across as calm and knowledgeable does not mean you should let your guard down and trust what they say. What you need to look for is a track record of intellectual honesty. Let me therefore propose 10 signs of intellectual honesty….

link to designmatrix.wordpress.com

It’s not so easy for anyone to make a monkey out of you then Tinto.

Harry Nilsson – Coconut
link to youtube.com

I was looking through pics that I’ve uploaded to my web space over the past year or three. Don’t know if I’ve flagged this on here before but I will now.

It shows the very rare, shy and elusive ‘Highland Kangadeer’. No need to thank me.

This one shows a dragonfly that me and my nieces rescued from the River Ardle, to the east of Pitlochry, in Strathardle, funnily enough. After around 15 minutes drying in the sun, it took off, nae bathir.

Check out the guy in the blue strip at the left of the next pic and how appropriate the headline is.

I may post more later…

————————————————–

Hi yesindyref2.

The reason I’m scanning my uploads (see above) is to give sd something to chew over. I’ll probably get it posted in the next hour or so.

Here are another three uploaded pics.

This tank appeared in Dundee High Street, once upon a time.

Alex Clark may find this interesting. Ony ehdeea whar it is?

Lastly, Eh’ll hae twa bridies – a plenn ane an’ an ingin ane an’ a’.

Hi yesindyref2.

Done, at:-
link to wingsoverscotland.com

It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts.

@BDTT
Nice 🙂

Thing is I don’t think SD will get it!

Do we really believe Salmond, careful planner that he is, didn’t inform Sturgeon, well in advance, of his plan for a tv show on RT?
I believe they carefully planned her response for media questions about it.
Salmond’s’s not out to pasture, he’s still working to achieve Indy.

——————–

Alex Salmond working on his tv show with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.
Place your bets now on how soon the unionists will start implying they are having an affair.
I’m not kidding. I really think the unionists are that desperate now.

And if I’ve though of this, darn sure so has Salmond – plus worked out a scheme to turn this smear against the unionists.

@Cactus
For anyone who doesn’t know Wetherspoons, the Lamb shank is absolutely meltingly gorgeous.

@David
Some poster on the Herald has already implied that.

Hope you make it, Chick.

Sheena’s back.

Like I say it was a friend who we had been out for meals and a concert with and who goes out with Sheena and others on a coffee afternoon once a week and we knew she had dogs but had never been to her place.

Turns out it was 22 dogs, two horses and two cats.

I felt guilty as hell because I stayed in the hoose, we thought it was maybe just 4 or 5 dogs.

Must be virtually a full time job for her, hope she gets out soon.

So we cannot make it tonight but I’m crap company anyway so your not missing much.

At jolly’s where abouts are you all

Wur still up…

Whose on breakfasts?

Morning.

That was a simply vile night in the Ferry, way above and beyond the bounds of common decency. 😉

You know what they say though, “no rest for the wicked”.

@Tom Gallagher
Re. sterile nationalism. How do you understand nationalism and the social world we share? Are you really able to distinguish between ‘good’ Muslims and ‘bad’ Muslims, simply by the way they look? Do you support the state of Israel?

The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory

Critical Theory constitutes one of the major intellectual traditions of the twentieth century, and is centrally important for philosophy, political theory, aesthetics and theory of art, the study of modern European literatures and music, the history of ideas, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies. In this volume an international team of distinguished contributors examines the major figures in Critical Theory, including Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, and Habermas, as well as lesser known but important thinkers such as Pollock and Neumann. The volume surveys the shared philosophical concerns that have given impetus to Critical Theory throughout its history, while at the same time showing the diversity among its proponents that contributes so much to its richness as a philosophical school. The result is an illuminating overview of the entire history of Critical Theory in the twentieth century, an examination of its central conceptual concerns, and an in-depth discussion of its future prospects.

link to cambridge.org

Feuerbach and the Philosophy of Critical Theory

Abstract

It is a hallmark of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory that it has consistently made philosophical reflection a central component of its overall project. Indeed, the core identity that this tradition has been able to maintain arguably stems from the fact that a number of key philosophical assumptions have been shared by the generations of thinkers involved in it. These assumptions form a basic ‘philosophical matrix’, whose main aim is to allow for a ‘critique of reason’, the heart of the critique of modern society, which emphasises the collective, historically situated and naturalistically grounded nature of rationality. In this matrix, Feuerbach’s place has been only a minor one.

This paper aims to show that there is more to be retrieved from Feuerbach for critical theory than at first meets the eye. The first section identifies key conceptual features that are shared by the central authors of the Frankfurt School. They signal a collectivist and materialist shift from Kant to Marx via Hegel. This shift is well adumbrated in Feuerbach’s emphasis on the ‘intersubjective’ and social dependency of the subject. However, Feuerbach’s decisive philosophical contribution lies in his insistence on the ‘sensuous’ modalities of intersubjectivity, that is, on the fact that the dependency of subjects on others for the formation of their capacities is mediated and expressed not only through language and other symbolic forms, but also and primarily through embodiment. This Feuerbachian ‘sensualism’ is a rich, original philosophical position, which is not soluble in Marx’s own version of materialism.

In sections II and III, I highlight the legacy of Feuerbach’s sensualism in two areas of critical theory: first, in relation to the critical epistemology that grows out of the ‘philosophical matrix’ consistently used by critical theorists; and secondly, in relation to the arguments in philosophical anthropology that are mobilized to promote the critical project. In these two areas, Feuerbach’s sensualism – his insistence on the embodied dimensions of cognition and action – represents a useful resource to resist the tendency of critical theory to translate its foundation in the critique of reason into a narrowly rationalistic enterprise.

link to tandfonline.com

The Epistemology Assumptions of Critical Theory for Social Science Reasearch

Abstract
The main objective of critical theory is the focus upon the inherent connections between politics, values and knowledge in order to uphold that politics and values form the foundations leading towards scientific knowledge. Habermas’ consensus theory of truth is considered here as the most important contribution toward the whole paradigm of critical theory.

Critical theory critique towards the Objectivist’s, stand for politically neutral observation language and states the social cultural factors influence our sensory experience and human cognition shapes reality through its imposition of a priory cognitive principles. Only the knowledge derived by discourse through the ideal speech situation is warranted knowledge. A criticism of critical theory is the lack of a clear methodological problem in the concept of oppression and its ideal speech situation. Despite numerous criticisms, critical theory provides the descriptive and normative bas for social inquiry aimed at deceasing domination and increasing freedom.

link to umexpert.um.edu.my

“[Osama] Saeed’s argument that the Muslim community’s moderation is a given might be confirmed by the absence (in those parts of Glasgow where most Scots Muslims reside) of the Islamic bookshops, bitter young men and fully-covered women that are characteristic of parts of London and of other English urban conurbations with large Muslim populations.” – Tom Gallagher, Scotland’s nationalist-Muslim embrace, Open Democracy, 9 August 2007

@Darren Loki McGarvey
Do you really want to associate yourself with bigots and racists?

@Tom Gallagher
What efforts have you made to de-colonise your epistemology?

Understanding Society

Critical theory in the Frankfurt School

A critical theory, then, is a reflective theory which gives agents a kind of knowledge inherently productive of enlightenment and emancipation. (2)

Critical theories aim at emancipation and enlightenment, at making agents aware of hidden coercion, thereby freeing them from that coercion and putting them in a position to determine where their true interest lie. (55)

The idea of enlightenment here is related to achieving accurate knowledge of one’s place in the world — “to determine what [one’s] true interests are”. And emancipation in this context means having the epistemic tools necessary to make one free — to change the world and the structure of governing social relations in ways that increase one’s ability to live and develop freely. So critical theory is a body of knowledge that permits people to move in the direction of greater autonomy and self-definition. And it is a body of knowledge that penetrates through the obstacles and forms of mystification that prevent individuals in dominating social relations to accurately perceive their situation.

link to understandingsociety.blogspot.co.uk

Epistemology and Ontology

Extending the discussion: epistemology and ontology

Epistemology

The two opposing camps identified by Onwuegbuzie & Leech (2005) – positivists and interpretivists – are, in fact, making knowledge claims about the world based upon acts of perception and human interaction. And if we accept that ‘knowledge is created from data and analyses’ (Carter & Little, 2007; p. 1317), positivists and interpretivists, broadly conceived, are simply collecting and interpreting different types of data and making different claims to truth. Ultimately we can define knowledge as a particular construction of a phenomenon given the ‘stamp of truth in our society’ (Burr, 2003; p. 68). It is this debate – the status and constitution of knowledge – that forms the central concern of epistemology.

link to stmorgan.co.uk

What is epistemology? Introduction to the word and the concept
link to youtube.com

oops critical realism link.
link to is.theorizeit.org

Bhaskar’s ‘critical realism’ and multiple levels of reality
link to youtube.com

Re. Occam’s razor and similar medieval bollocks.

Living In A Box – Living In A Box
link to youtube.com

@Jock Scot –

What a generous tribute that is – makes me aw the more scunnered that I missed it…

🙁

Jock Scot
You’re a gent yourself and an inspiration.

Just a wee heads-up to those Wingers who kindly provided me with ‘wurds’ for the crossword in The National when I was a bit fed-up and looking for fresh stuff…

One or two have already appeared, but the bulk should be appearing over the next fortnight or so. I didn’t keep a note of when they’re appearing so if you want to get a National XW with ‘your’ wurd in it you’ll have to buy it every day!

As ever, open to suggestions for future crosswords…minimum three letters, maximum fifteen.

😉

A benefit concert for Dick Gaughan at the end of January in Glasgow’s Old Fruit Market, Edinburgh ditto I think.

Glenrothes gathering
BDTT 8:57

6/7 April was the weekend I had in mind and will be checking
With the owner in the next few days. Will get back to you in a day or two.

Thanks to all who made to Jollys, I fair enjoyed it. As a
result I am bloody knacked so it is time for kip.
Goodnight all.

Also peeps,

This page,
link to wingsoverscotland.com
is STILL active (since 30th Oct). I replied to sensibledave tonight.