This week's New Yorker magazine has two articles which reflect on discussions in this list: there's an essay by Oliver Sacks about the reaction to a paper he wrote about blindness based on one person's experience; and there's a book review by Louis Menand in part about the difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism (a.k.a t&a in the relevant circles). He talks about Arendt's idea of "the mob" and "the masses". The former is composed of "disempowered aristocrats, disillusioned intellectuals, and gangsters." I wonder if there are any disillusioned intellectuals in the Jhereg. Arendt supposedly saw the mob using the masses as troops in establishing totalitarian states; the Orb would be an ideal tool in setting up such a regime, esp. under the Tortaalik-was-just-dumb-hypothesis of the Orb-as-TIA theory.