Good Morning Charles,
I just shared this article with you on another installment on SLOG:

http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/column…

I found it fascinating regarding the implications for religion should intelligent life be discovered elsewhere in the universe. It's about the SETI project.

A second is an eternity. Look at this, if you will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of…
The so-called Planck, Grand Unification, Electroweak, Inflationary, Quark, and Hadron Epochs all play out within the first second of existence.

The real mystery is how you thought that linking a traffic jam resulting from the public construction of a public road in a centrally-planned economy to capitalism would make you sound profound.

Charles' mind is like the Pacific garbage patch - you never know what kind of junk is going to turn up there.

@3, the real mystery? you think of capitalism as something that's independent of economic planning.

Ah yes, it's the typical pile-on-Charles-Mudede in the comments. Conservatives pretend to hate genuine Marxist analysis but, man, liberals really fly off the handle with flaming indignation. Keep it up, Charles.

@5 No, I don't. But I do think that when distinguishing between capitalism and Marxism, the amount (and desirability) of central planning is a salient characteristic. Therefore it is odd to critique capitalism by citing a negative result of central planning, when your preferred alternative would result in a greater degree of central planning than a capitalist's.

Of course, I might be missing the way in which it is actually those features of Chinese society which reflect a capitalist vision more than a Marxist one that are actually at the root of this traffic jam. But your post lacks such an explicit connection, and I (perhaps through my ignorance) don't see one implied.

hi charles. theres an interview with martin amis on charlie rose from last week where he makes a comment about hitchens, who was always a mediocre writer until he gave up the whole orthodox marxism thing in the 80s, and then he became a much more interesting, complicated, and more forceful writer. i happen to agree with your critiques of capitalism and the middle class (for thats what you and i essentially are), but the whole orthodox marxist thing is pretty unimaginative.
-admirer of women

@8 If given the choice between being mediocre, unimaginative writer and an asshole, I'll choose the former with no hesitation. I'm not drawing this about all Marxists/non-Marxists (and note: I do not call myself a Marxist, though my perspectives of capital is very much informed by Marx) I'm talking specifically about Hitchens.
Also, there is a shift button on the right AND left side of your keyboard.

Spend some time in the most centrally-planned, Marxist organization in the US, the military, and you see precisely the same "hurry up and wait" mentality. Or, if you prefer, hours, days, even weeks of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by adrenaline-fueled seconds of excitement and/or violence.

thnaks for the tip bhowie, i dont really care about grammer or punctuation or spelling and so on