Romulus' Livejournal

memage
Meme from

natowelch, in which you ask someone to pick seven of your LJ interests to have you explain in an original post.

bush knew: The notion that George W. Bush had some manner of foreknowledge about the 9-11 attacks, even so small as knowing that al Qaeda was planning an attack on a major US city. The notion that the government may have had positive foreknowledge of such an event isn't novel; there have been claims for many years that this was true for Pearl Harbor. GWB's popularity was in the toilet prior to 9-11; it shot up frighteningly in the weeks afterward; and allowed his Neocon puppet masters to pass lots of anti-freedom laws that had been brewing for many years. One interesting thing about this interest is that the other person I found who had it was a traditional (non-neocon, anti-bush) conservative.
consolidated: Consolidated is a political hip-hop / rock band from California known for its highly progressive/leftist themes, and for recording (often hostile) open-mike rants at their shows to include on their albums. Their tracks include "America Number One", "The Typical Male Thinks With His Dick", "Friendly Fascism", "Meat Kills", "Your Body Belongs to the State", "Business of Punishment".
cursor: Cursor is an excellent progressive political news aggregator site that I read religiously every day for a few years post-9-11. They are not RSS enabled and that has had some effect on my lack of reading them these days. While Democrats were voting for wars, Cursor was pointing to those calling bullshit on it all.
intellectual arguments: Semi self explanatory. I like getting into discussions about philosophical, technical, or otherwise deep topics. I like to bounce ideas, theories, opinons off of people, who have their own ideas, theories, and opinions, but we can accept and ponder each other's.
obscure: There is a lot of art (music, literature, etc., etc.) that is obscure, but good. The more obscure, often, the more weird. Weird has merit, often because weird takes balls -- or simply lack of caring about its reception. In popular society, there is little originality. Much of what appears to be originality in the mainstream is in fact ripped off from the obscure. True originality is too raw; the only way it is acceptable to the mainstream is to have a dash of it sprinkled on the already familiar. But true critics of any art form recognize the real creativity is made in the underground. For example, the common understanding of "rap music" these days is of Crunk and booty bass and gangsta-funk, because this is the part of the genre that is in the mainstream. This stuff is rarely original or creative. But there is plenty of underground rap and "abstract hip-hop" where creativity, originality, and true boundary-crossing occurs, with artistic merit and daring. But unless you seek it out, you'll never hear it. I seek out the strange because that is where the most creative and interesting things can be found.
progressive: Progressivism is the notion that society and the nation can move itself forward by working to help itself and share its resources, as well as take care of the resources we do have. It parallels but sometimes differs from "liberalism", and has little if anything to do with "Democratism".
secular humanism: This is a popular version of atheism that focuses on the idea of people being considerate and caring for each other without need for a mythical authoritarian figure and a cabalistically-defined corpus of dogma to enforce this onto people. It bases a compassion and respect for fellow man based largely on utilitarianism and common sense. Some use the term as a synonym for "atheism" as it closely reflects the beliefs of many atheists, though strictly speaking, it isn't. Secular Humanism is not so much a religion or dogma as a common-sense, benevolent atheistic viewpoint. Free Inquiry is a magazine at the forefront of SH, which I once subscribed to.

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