If you have a Mac, then iWorks ($79, lesser if you buy it during Apple's occasional discounts) has an equivalent suite of tools (Pages/ Numbers/Keynote) that can limit the damage to your eye and other organs if you absolutely have to use such tools. Me, I prefer troff. ;-) LaTeX is for the weak. ;-)
On Aug 21, 2009, at 9:53 AM, Matthias Wasser wrote:
> <snip happens>
> Two, I don't think a critique of the majority has to be made from a
> self-consious position of greater expertise. Obviously just as
> birdwatchers
> have more knowledge of birds than the average person, your typical
> leftist
> (or right-wing glibertarian) *does* have more knowledge of history,
> economics, &c than the average person, but let's ignore that for a
> second. I
> think the only sane stance has to be one of partial knowledge - the
> recognition that almost everybody knows quite a few things that most
> other
> people don't know. From a position of partial knowledge it's a duty
> to share
> your perspective but no right to consider it wholly authoritative.
>
Good stuff.
> Three, I think the importance of value conflicts dwarfs that of
> technical
> knowledge of the world. You basically choose to identify with your
> loved
> ones or your nation or your species, and to accept or reject the
> Enlightenment, in various degrees, and that's it. There's nothing
> about the
> objective world that makes left-wing values more true than
> glibertarian or
> organic conservative ones; <...>
Values drive objectives don't they ;-). But seriously, a thought: there may be nothing about the *world* that makes left-wing values more true, but there may be something *objective* nonetheless that make them more consistent (and true in that sense), deductively speaking. No?
--ravi