All the benefits of Science and Technology result in nothing if the attitudes of their societies lead to a Politics of Obscurantism.
The Conservatism of our present time is Simplification, just as the Liberalism has become a Complexity which becomes a moral maze wherein people say repeat "I don't know, I don't know" forever.
At the same time, the Simplification of Conservatism makes the hills low and the valleys high, and gives us a moral plateau of indifference. The indifference stems from the fact that we have separated ourselves from the moral quest, and relied upon the past-as-remembered by authority.
What is Simplification?
An example of gross Simplification in thinking is shown in a situation where - confronted with a moral dilemma - someone asks "WWJD?", or "What would Jesus do?"
An example of the opposite method of thinking, which I call "Fractal" - meaning that it tries to deal with the full complexity of a situation as opposed to simplifying it, would in this example consist of asking the question "What would Jesus do?", then doing likewise, then attempting to re-cast one's entire life according to such moral principles, and finally to live one's life as a moral entity rather than a plaything of Matter & Desire.
--
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Justice Scalia's Foolishness 2
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2012/07/justice-scalias-foolishness.html
Is Mr. Justice Scalia correct in treating the Federal Constitution as a holy object, and seek access somehow to the mental events in the minds of those who wrote it?
Does this mean that if a case at law were to come before a court, and that case relates to an amendment to the Constution, do the justices need get into the minds not of the Founding Fathers, but of those men who write the applicable amendment to the Constitution?
And do we need merely and solely to gain access to the mental working of the Framers of the Consitution? Or do we also need to look about in the minds of those legislatures of the several states that voted for it? Are those members of the State Legislatures considered Founding Fathers, or don't they meet the definition of "Founding Father"?
The members of the legislatures were in constant contact with their representatives at the convention tasked with writing the Constitution, and we know their representatives paid attention to their missives... where do these "minds" fit in Justice Scalia's reasoning?
It took more than 3 years to secure the adoption of the Constitution by all 13 States (voted on by the State legislatures) and in several States the margin of victory was exceedingly slim.
New Hampshire was the 9th State to ratify, at which time it became the law of the land: the vote by the New Hampshire legislature was 57 to 46 in favor of the Constitution.
In New Hampshire, were the 57 yea voters of minds similar to those inspired minds of the Founding Fathers, and how do we evaluate the minds of the 46 nay voters? Uninspired? Unimaginative? Anti-Wave-of-the-Future?
Tell, us, Mr. Justice Scalia.
The original document also guaranteed the establishment of slavery; was this an "inspired" bit of legislation... or a bit of haggling at the county fair. It worked, but it hardly reflects a frame of mind we wish to seek out and emulate today.
Let us consider Slavery.
Let us now strive to attain insight into the minds of those men struggling and haggling over Slavery, and who came up with a compromise ensuring Slavery had a place in the country...
... and which led to the famous case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford...
... the outcome of which was a highly probable re-iteration of the mental set that established the Constitution: that slaves belonged to their owners: the Justices under Chief Justice Roger Taney actually did get into the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they haggled in the market of political ideas, and they came down 7 to 2 that Mr. Scott was the property of his owner, a result consistent with the negotiated settlement of the Constitutional framers that was necessary to get the southern States into the Union.
The fiery response to the Dred Scott decision was not based on legal discussions about the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, but rather on the outrage of people totally opposed to slavery... a mind-set which was not equally shared by the Framers of the Constitution. There was no similar large scale resistance to slavery back at the birth of the Constitution, and the subsequent development of anti-slavery ideas accentuated those doubts about slavery which the Founding Fathers committed to paper for the edification of future generations, and decreased those writings which reflected their certitude about the rights of slavery.
... or should we ignore all this and struggle to "get into" the minds of those who wrote the 14th Amendment, outlawing such slavery? Or, again, into the minds of the several State legislatures?
Mr. Justice Scalia would answer that I have attacked a straw man, and his position is much more complex than I have described. I doubt it. The more complex his position becomes, the more a dubious over-simplification of History it becomes.
Mr. Justice Scalia is a Simplifier, and as such seeks to Abridge the complexity of life.
Mr. Justice Scalia takes the Fire and cools it lukewarm.
--
Is Mr. Justice Scalia correct in treating the Federal Constitution as a holy object, and seek access somehow to the mental events in the minds of those who wrote it?
Does this mean that if a case at law were to come before a court, and that case relates to an amendment to the Constution, do the justices need get into the minds not of the Founding Fathers, but of those men who write the applicable amendment to the Constitution?
And do we need merely and solely to gain access to the mental working of the Framers of the Consitution? Or do we also need to look about in the minds of those legislatures of the several states that voted for it? Are those members of the State Legislatures considered Founding Fathers, or don't they meet the definition of "Founding Father"?
The members of the legislatures were in constant contact with their representatives at the convention tasked with writing the Constitution, and we know their representatives paid attention to their missives... where do these "minds" fit in Justice Scalia's reasoning?
It took more than 3 years to secure the adoption of the Constitution by all 13 States (voted on by the State legislatures) and in several States the margin of victory was exceedingly slim.
New Hampshire was the 9th State to ratify, at which time it became the law of the land: the vote by the New Hampshire legislature was 57 to 46 in favor of the Constitution.
In New Hampshire, were the 57 yea voters of minds similar to those inspired minds of the Founding Fathers, and how do we evaluate the minds of the 46 nay voters? Uninspired? Unimaginative? Anti-Wave-of-the-Future?
Tell, us, Mr. Justice Scalia.
The original document also guaranteed the establishment of slavery; was this an "inspired" bit of legislation... or a bit of haggling at the county fair. It worked, but it hardly reflects a frame of mind we wish to seek out and emulate today.
Let us consider Slavery.
Let us now strive to attain insight into the minds of those men struggling and haggling over Slavery, and who came up with a compromise ensuring Slavery had a place in the country...
... and which led to the famous case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford...
... the outcome of which was a highly probable re-iteration of the mental set that established the Constitution: that slaves belonged to their owners: the Justices under Chief Justice Roger Taney actually did get into the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they haggled in the market of political ideas, and they came down 7 to 2 that Mr. Scott was the property of his owner, a result consistent with the negotiated settlement of the Constitutional framers that was necessary to get the southern States into the Union.
The fiery response to the Dred Scott decision was not based on legal discussions about the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, but rather on the outrage of people totally opposed to slavery... a mind-set which was not equally shared by the Framers of the Constitution. There was no similar large scale resistance to slavery back at the birth of the Constitution, and the subsequent development of anti-slavery ideas accentuated those doubts about slavery which the Founding Fathers committed to paper for the edification of future generations, and decreased those writings which reflected their certitude about the rights of slavery.
... or should we ignore all this and struggle to "get into" the minds of those who wrote the 14th Amendment, outlawing such slavery? Or, again, into the minds of the several State legislatures?
Mr. Justice Scalia would answer that I have attacked a straw man, and his position is much more complex than I have described. I doubt it. The more complex his position becomes, the more a dubious over-simplification of History it becomes.
Mr. Justice Scalia is a Simplifier, and as such seeks to Abridge the complexity of life.
Mr. Justice Scalia takes the Fire and cools it lukewarm.
--
Tea Party Simplified Viewpoints
The Romney campaign called stimulus for start-up wind energy companies a "boondoggle".
What, then, are the billions in subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil, now and in the past?
Then, Richard Mourdock of Indiana running for the Senate frequently compares the present to the time preceding the Civil War. In the Huffington Post:
It is a simplified simile, and should be used to send the mind in other directions and to gather much more detail.
For one thing, I think you would need a "Bleeding Kansas" type skirmish for starts. We may have one yet, but we certainly do not now. Perhaps Mr. Mourdock sees himself as the latter-day John Brown. That's is a name he should keep bringing up, not the name of Lincoln
Yes, perhaps Mr. Mourdock is closer to John Brown.
--
What, then, are the billions in subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil, now and in the past?
Then, Richard Mourdock of Indiana running for the Senate frequently compares the present to the time preceding the Civil War. In the Huffington Post:
Just last week, Mourdock compared President Barack Obama's rescue of Chrysler to slavery, saying the deal stiffed creditors -- including Indiana's pension system -- and that it was like the slavery Lincoln opposed because it involved taking from one person and giving to another.
Mourdock joked during his victory speech about how often he brings up Lincoln.
Asked on Capitol Hill Tuesday about his penchant for making historic comparisons that some find objectionable, Mourdock stood by his habit, and elaborated about how he means it.
"I'm a big history buff," Mourdock said. "I just mean it in the sense that polarization -- And in that sense the polarization makes it hard to find compromise. And that's not unlike the incredible polarization that took place during those periods of the 1860s."I am not sure I follow what is going on in this story, but the nonsense of comparing the present now in any meaningful way to the time preceding the Civil War is stupid. I know that I have done it, but it is a simile that points in other directions and not to any assumed deep similarities to that age.
The polarization of the 1860s led to the bloodiest war in American history....
It is a simplified simile, and should be used to send the mind in other directions and to gather much more detail.
For one thing, I think you would need a "Bleeding Kansas" type skirmish for starts. We may have one yet, but we certainly do not now. Perhaps Mr. Mourdock sees himself as the latter-day John Brown. That's is a name he should keep bringing up, not the name of Lincoln
Yes, perhaps Mr. Mourdock is closer to John Brown.
--
Monday, July 30, 2012
Justice Scalia's Foolishness
Justice Scalia's foolish belief that the Constitution must be interpreted using the meaning of the text at the time it was written is pernicious and leads him further into foolery.
It is an act of utter Faith far greater than the Faith of any present day religion. What were thousand of years of study, theology, discussion, Mishnah, and collating of variant texts of holy writ about? Was it all mere idiocy of the religious who seem incapable of determining what the meaning of the text was at the time it was written?
Justice Scalia is not a simpleton, but he is a Simplifier. He is equivalent to the man sitting on a bar stool saying that all the world's problems would be solved if we only asked "What Would Jesus Do?".
Read more on Scalia's nonsense: http://news.yahoo.com/justice-scalia-steps-criticism-healthcare-ruling-201206215.html?_esi=1
and I will write tomorrow about the early history of the Constitution, and muse on the odd notion that the Founding Fathers inhabited the Golden Age, and no one since that time was of sufficient wisdom or virtue to promulgate laws equal in inspiration. The myth of a past golden age is always a low valuation of the present, and I for one am sick and tired of having simple-minded buffoons interpret our history to us.
--
The Immediate Man
The Media interposes itself between Life - past, present, and future - and the man or woman.
(immediate = in the middle)
By this interposition, the Media arrogates to itself the role of The Past (History), the role of the Present (News), and the role of the Future (Politics).
Who has not heard the statement that something is true because someone saw it on TV, or heard it on Radio, or someone read it in the News? All of us have experienced this, and it is exactly a demonstration of the interposition of Media into its role as Interpreter of Life, the dragoman who interprets the shock of new and old things to us.
I have given up on Media. I rarely read the news, much less watch it.
I have found that by doing so, slowly but surely I am withdrawing from the Imaginary reality that has been created by the Media. I no longer can accept the simplistic summary of events, for I realize that the very act of simplifying or abridgement of complex events necessarily turns those events into something entirely different: there is no such thing as a "simplification" which retains full, deep meaning.
I am reading the entire record now of the Congressional hearings on J. Robert Oppenheimer which eventuated in the withdrawal of security clearance from the father of the atomic bomb. The detail and complexity is overwhleming and borders on the oppressive.
It is clear why so many of us reach out for simplicity and ease and rapidity.
It is also clear that the majority of important situations that succumb to simplicity, ease, and rapidity of judgement end up as a gross miscarriage of justice.
We stand between the past and the future, we who live in this present! It is time to take back our Immediacy!
--
(immediate = in the middle)
By this interposition, the Media arrogates to itself the role of The Past (History), the role of the Present (News), and the role of the Future (Politics).
Who has not heard the statement that something is true because someone saw it on TV, or heard it on Radio, or someone read it in the News? All of us have experienced this, and it is exactly a demonstration of the interposition of Media into its role as Interpreter of Life, the dragoman who interprets the shock of new and old things to us.
I have given up on Media. I rarely read the news, much less watch it.
I have found that by doing so, slowly but surely I am withdrawing from the Imaginary reality that has been created by the Media. I no longer can accept the simplistic summary of events, for I realize that the very act of simplifying or abridgement of complex events necessarily turns those events into something entirely different: there is no such thing as a "simplification" which retains full, deep meaning.
I am reading the entire record now of the Congressional hearings on J. Robert Oppenheimer which eventuated in the withdrawal of security clearance from the father of the atomic bomb. The detail and complexity is overwhleming and borders on the oppressive.
It is clear why so many of us reach out for simplicity and ease and rapidity.
It is also clear that the majority of important situations that succumb to simplicity, ease, and rapidity of judgement end up as a gross miscarriage of justice.
We stand between the past and the future, we who live in this present! It is time to take back our Immediacy!
--
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Diff'rent Minds
The unconscious mind has discoveries and is creative,
The intuitive mind discovers things and is creative.
The conscious and rational mind has many discoveries, and using science incorporates experiment to validate such.
Only the institutionalized mind - such as exists in authoritarian regimes of human behavior - has no discoveries and finds nothing new.
There may be limited success using the old and time-tested methods, but they shun the new.
Religious minds filled with End-Of-Time beliefs are examples of authoritarian minds, and see the future as a dead end; they cannot see the Fulfillment of Time as ongoing and, hence, filled with the new things... and End-Of-Time minds fear the New precisely because the New is equivalent to a Bible verse they have not memorized, and cannot use for their own ends.
He who memorizes holy verses is only virtuous when he is silent; otherwise he is cunning.
--
The intuitive mind discovers things and is creative.
The conscious and rational mind has many discoveries, and using science incorporates experiment to validate such.
Only the institutionalized mind - such as exists in authoritarian regimes of human behavior - has no discoveries and finds nothing new.
There may be limited success using the old and time-tested methods, but they shun the new.
Religious minds filled with End-Of-Time beliefs are examples of authoritarian minds, and see the future as a dead end; they cannot see the Fulfillment of Time as ongoing and, hence, filled with the new things... and End-Of-Time minds fear the New precisely because the New is equivalent to a Bible verse they have not memorized, and cannot use for their own ends.
He who memorizes holy verses is only virtuous when he is silent; otherwise he is cunning.
--
Trinity Day
I trust you all observed Trinity Day on July 16?
It was the first atomic bomb test, and it ushered us into the future where we see things still a bit unsettled nuke-wise.
We discussed the first use of the atomic bomb, yeasay or naysay, and covered all the arguments.
I realized that language and reason are insufficient to deal with such profound moral situations: these best that can be attained is to achieve a life of the habit of virtue... then live the situation and watch where Virtue leads us.
So far, the experiment has not been tried.
--
Friday, July 27, 2012
Stalin's Ghost
Suppose a group of people were to view Stalin in the Metro in Moscow, as happened in one of Martin Cruz Smith's novel about Senior Investigator Arkady Renko.
Reason tells us that of all the explanations for this, a real ghostly presence is probably the least likely explanation, so we work to dismiss the notion that Stalin's ghost had made an appearance, and strive to prove some other state of affairs that would explain things.
Once we have eliminated Stalin's ghost, have we actually put things as we understand them aright with the way things actually are?
In a situation such as the one about Stalin's ghost, it seem powerfully obvious that there is a delusional state of affairs at variance with some "real" state of affairs, and we must strive to understand the mystery.
But it is not at all clear that Stalin's ghost is the sole delusion in the state of affairs referred to as "seeing Stalin's ghost"; there may be other, less important, delusions that we ignore in our efforts, as they do not seem to bear directly upon the Mystery in the Metro.
By eliminating a delusion, we have not proven the existence of some "real" state of affairs: we have merely demonstrated that a certain complex of concepts and statements is incoherent when taken within the context of a larger complex of concepts and statements.
Or, the proof that something does not exist is not proving that it need necessarily not or never exist. Everything is acceptable in Being.
It is we who winnow Being, and separate the wheat from the chaff... supposedly.
--
Reason tells us that of all the explanations for this, a real ghostly presence is probably the least likely explanation, so we work to dismiss the notion that Stalin's ghost had made an appearance, and strive to prove some other state of affairs that would explain things.
Once we have eliminated Stalin's ghost, have we actually put things as we understand them aright with the way things actually are?
In a situation such as the one about Stalin's ghost, it seem powerfully obvious that there is a delusional state of affairs at variance with some "real" state of affairs, and we must strive to understand the mystery.
But it is not at all clear that Stalin's ghost is the sole delusion in the state of affairs referred to as "seeing Stalin's ghost"; there may be other, less important, delusions that we ignore in our efforts, as they do not seem to bear directly upon the Mystery in the Metro.
By eliminating a delusion, we have not proven the existence of some "real" state of affairs: we have merely demonstrated that a certain complex of concepts and statements is incoherent when taken within the context of a larger complex of concepts and statements.
Or, the proof that something does not exist is not proving that it need necessarily not or never exist. Everything is acceptable in Being.
It is we who winnow Being, and separate the wheat from the chaff... supposedly.
--
Monday, July 23, 2012
Fifty Shades of Dark City
I finally decided to see the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy, and started with Batman Begins, which seemed the logical thing to do.
I regret having ignored it for so long. Of course, Gotham City in its dismal depression and gloom reminds me powerfully of Dark City, which was the precursor of The Matrix in portraying life as a simulation, computer or otherwise.
Of all the things that can be said, the Darkness does reign, and the fight of Batman is a pennant of righteousness in the winds of the black nights. Is there a metaphor anywhere? They are everywhere. Gotham City can be seen as our modern society with its feckless pursuit of nothingness. What makes Batman Begins interesting is that there is an ethos and a man to go with it to creatively fight against the gathering night.
We don't have that. We have darkness and we fear it... that's about all we do, other than invoking old beliefs that failed over and over in the past 2,000 years... yet we shall not modify them one jot. We use Religion to put lipstick on evil.
Then there is Fifty Shades of Grey.
Sadomasochism is always dark and cold and grey. Dungeons are dark and cold. There is a pretense that Sadomasochism is hot and passionate, but whatever fire there may be is overwhelmed by the genius of cold and the genius of icy blood.
There was a pretense that there was wisdom in DeSade, but that was never anything more than someone else's gifted junk tossed into a dumpster, and we retrieved it, thinking it was fine and new.
I also heard of young people watching a show Dexter; they said they liked it.
A woman was killed earlier this year in California; she was killed in a dungeon:
Her killer used power tools to try to dismember the body in the manner she had seen on "Dexter," a television series about a serial killer, according to a confession note left by one of the suspects after a failed suicide attempt. That note is quoted in one of the affidavits.If Evil is Art, we shall admire it and write about it and discuss it at meetings. Anything can be considered as Fine Art, harking back to Daniel Defoe's Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts, remembering In Cold Blood and watching a society make Caligula look like Mr. Rogers.
The dark, cold, desperate marble tomb of our society must be broken open to the light.
--
Mitt's Problem
Romney is a superb businessman who cannot and will not explain his own finances, nor where his riches might be located.
It is a paradox: we do not bash business, but when one runs for the highest office, one should be able to do the simple disclosures everyone else has been doing for years.
--
It is a paradox: we do not bash business, but when one runs for the highest office, one should be able to do the simple disclosures everyone else has been doing for years.
--
News in the Free Media Today
1) $21 trillion (at least) hiding in tax-havens
2) Two California cities tackle the mass foreclosure problem (while Washington sleeps)
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/106f0ec2-d27c-11e1-8700-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz21Qv16RXZ
An excellent article on the passivity of politicians to the Crisis, wherein real innovative thinking comes from the bankrupted cities of Ontario and Fontana in San Bernadino County.
--
There is the considerable amount of drug money here... suitably laundered, of course.A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion (£13tn) hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study.The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.
The Price of Offshore Revisited was written by James Henry, a former chief economist at the consultancy McKinsey, for the Tax Justice Network.
Tax expert and UK government adviser John Whiting said he was sceptical that the amount hidden was so large.
Mr Whiting, tax policy director at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, said: "There clearly are some significant amounts hidden away, but if it really is that size what is being done with it all?"
Mr Henry said his $21tn is actually a conservative figure and the true scale could be $32tn...
2) Two California cities tackle the mass foreclosure problem (while Washington sleeps)
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/106f0ec2-d27c-11e1-8700-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz21Qv16RXZ
An excellent article on the passivity of politicians to the Crisis, wherein real innovative thinking comes from the bankrupted cities of Ontario and Fontana in San Bernadino County.
--
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Los Olvidados
Forgotten and rarely heard from are the villages and populations of Native inhabitants who are mostly ignored by us, their overlords. When is the last time you heard news about them? Other than killings and drug and alcohol abuse specials, they are los olvidados, the forgotten ones.
I think we should take a look at them, for their state is our future of wealth and power inequity...
Anyway, in the BBC
there are pictures, and a story:
Somos todos el tribu Nasa.Police in Colombia have driven members of an indigenous group from a strategic mountain top they were occupying.More than 20 people were injured in the clashes in Cauca province, in Colombia's south-west.
Nasa tribesmen had taken the army post on Cerro Berlin on Tuesday and forced the soldiers stationed there to leave.
The Nasa say they are tired of being caught in the middle of confrontations between the security forces and members of the Farc rebel group.
--
Linchpin of the Universe
"You know, it just occurred to me; if there are an infinite number of parallel universes, in one of them there is probably a Sheldon that doesn't believe parallel universes exist."Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, Physicist and Future Nobel Laureate
I was watching The Big Bang Theory this morning, as I always do: begin and end the day with Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, et alii. Things seem to go so much better.
Anyhow, so there is the above quote in the episode entitled The Desperation Emanation, first aired 10/21/2010, and straight away it suddenly grabs the old attention by the windpipe.
Even though certain theories of Physics may hold that there are many universes, even an infinite number of them, "beliefs" are not necessarily infinite nor random.
Given a truly infinite number of universes, all the objects, states, facts, and states-of-affairs that are subject to the science of Physics may indeed be infinite in number, and, therefore, all phenomena have an infinite amount of slack cut to allow reality to take on every possible permutation imaginable... even many Sheldons.
However, a "belief" is not immediately obvious as being one of the objects that Physics studies.
Simply put, if there be many Sheldons, there are many Sheldon-life-histories also. We are interested in the many Sheldon histories which are annals up to a certain point, say one congruent to The Desperation Emanation.
If we have postulated an infinite set with the infinite number A of possible Sheldons due to electrons, neutrons, electricity, force, attraction, etc., we find we have yet another number of items we have neglected: beliefs, opinions, half-baked notions, dreams, aspirations, etc. which when mixed into the calculus, give us another infinite number, yet one that is greater than A. Let's call it B.
Then we are faced with another set of beliefs, opinions etc., about all of the above, giving us another infinite set - yet larger - of phenomena with a transfinite number C, and so it goes. These opinions are my opinions: the beliefs of an infinite number of me, myself, and I, and all our limitless friends.
In essence, treating mental phenomena as objects of Physics allows Reality to expand without any bounds, rational or irrational.
The only recourse is to deny that mental phenomena are random within a many-universe schema: All Sheldons believe the same thing, no matter what universe they exist in. From this it follows that faith is not random across the span of infinite universes of string theory.
The only other alternative is to be silent, or to make belief a matter of spin, charm, up or down.
Interesting. Belief is a good harbor, a linchpin in the galaxy.
--
The Disaster Leitmotif
reprint from 2007
This deals with our recurring Disaster Theme of History, and follows on the latest shootings. I think many of us feel that we are in a dead end without any exits. There is at least one exit, and that is our own faith and optimism.
I was trained in the British-American tradition of philosophy. In my senior year at University, I discovered Sartre. I resisted at first, but then fell into complicity with him. I do not think I have ever come across a philosopher I did not like. I mean, I agree with them all. Where some people see some chasm or dichotomy between the British and the Continental tradition, I see different ways of looking at the same phenomena and a sort of a parable about men in blindfolds describing a pachyderm: the one touching the truck says that the elephant resembles a tentacular creature while the man touching the leg say it resembles the pillars at the ends of the earth.
I think one of the things about the Roman Catholic Church I found most displeasing was the tradition of Thomas Aquinas' philosophy and little else: a myopia in philosophy. I could never quite reconcile my vision of Jesus with the mediaeval obsession with philosophy applied to divine things. I always had a sneaking suspicion that if somehow Jacques Maritain could appear to Jesus in His own day, Jesus would think a new type of Pharisee had come for a visit.
Jean Beaudrillard passed on this year and he spoke of hyperreality. The realm of philosophy is similar to other realms of hyperreality. I have always been fascinated by the enclosures of fancy we create and then try to insulate them from contamination by an intrusive reality. I considered the run up to the War in Iraq just such a hyperreality. It was an excellent experiment to observe how such things are created.
We see today in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720
There is a difference between a dispassionate appraisal of reality and a hyperreality, a virtual reality, if it please you, that exists in another dimension, whether it be in the individual mind, or the collective social awareness of a nation, or in cyberspace.
Since 9-11, we have been mostly dealing in states of hyperreality. We have chosen up sides and each side has striven to delineate the parameters of its own hyperreality. Then we scream back and forth. We scream because the taste and smell of the real is so intense, how could we see that hyperreality is not the same as reality?
Hyperreality is constructed of the same building blocks of Remembered and Historical Events with which we create the real. Thus, its smell must be the smell of reality. Its taste must be the taste of reality. Its remembered beauty must be the remembered beauty of reality. It is the Logic that has lost its sense of direction.
The Logic which compels the construction of Reality is no longer the hidden algorithm of many nodes, web-like wherein we balance like spiders in a filmy gauze suspended above the void. The Logic has become distorted and no longer an inborn song of creativity. It is an inflexible and rigid mechanism, unbending and without a sense of History - neither coming from the past nor going to the future, but merely a focus of a moment of present obsession.
The Themes of Disaster flows in and out of our lives: from Virginia Tech to Iraq to Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD). The Disaster Figure always wears a new face: Virginia Tech or John Muhammed or Saddam Hussein...or Iran...or the Religious Right or Islamic Fundamentalism. But the god of Disaster is always there in our minds and in our prayers...and in our hyperreality. When I have said the mind can be a prison, this is what I was referring to. Philosophy should not enslave, not incarcerate.
This deals with our recurring Disaster Theme of History, and follows on the latest shootings. I think many of us feel that we are in a dead end without any exits. There is at least one exit, and that is our own faith and optimism.
I was trained in the British-American tradition of philosophy. In my senior year at University, I discovered Sartre. I resisted at first, but then fell into complicity with him. I do not think I have ever come across a philosopher I did not like. I mean, I agree with them all. Where some people see some chasm or dichotomy between the British and the Continental tradition, I see different ways of looking at the same phenomena and a sort of a parable about men in blindfolds describing a pachyderm: the one touching the truck says that the elephant resembles a tentacular creature while the man touching the leg say it resembles the pillars at the ends of the earth.
I think one of the things about the Roman Catholic Church I found most displeasing was the tradition of Thomas Aquinas' philosophy and little else: a myopia in philosophy. I could never quite reconcile my vision of Jesus with the mediaeval obsession with philosophy applied to divine things. I always had a sneaking suspicion that if somehow Jacques Maritain could appear to Jesus in His own day, Jesus would think a new type of Pharisee had come for a visit.
Jean Beaudrillard passed on this year and he spoke of hyperreality. The realm of philosophy is similar to other realms of hyperreality. I have always been fascinated by the enclosures of fancy we create and then try to insulate them from contamination by an intrusive reality. I considered the run up to the War in Iraq just such a hyperreality. It was an excellent experiment to observe how such things are created.
We see today in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007 declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, George W. Bush can become what is best described as "a dictator": "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security”. The full text is below. A critical analysis on the directive can be found here. This is another step towards official martial law (see “US government fans homeland security fears”), which suggests that a new "catastrophic event" 9/11-type pretext could be in the pipeline.It may be surprising that the most interesting thing I find in this is that it is another thread of End Of Time, or Approaching Disaster, or Armageddon Is Just Around The Corner; these are the hyperrealities which infest our minds.
There is a difference between a dispassionate appraisal of reality and a hyperreality, a virtual reality, if it please you, that exists in another dimension, whether it be in the individual mind, or the collective social awareness of a nation, or in cyberspace.
Since 9-11, we have been mostly dealing in states of hyperreality. We have chosen up sides and each side has striven to delineate the parameters of its own hyperreality. Then we scream back and forth. We scream because the taste and smell of the real is so intense, how could we see that hyperreality is not the same as reality?
Hyperreality is constructed of the same building blocks of Remembered and Historical Events with which we create the real. Thus, its smell must be the smell of reality. Its taste must be the taste of reality. Its remembered beauty must be the remembered beauty of reality. It is the Logic that has lost its sense of direction.
The Logic which compels the construction of Reality is no longer the hidden algorithm of many nodes, web-like wherein we balance like spiders in a filmy gauze suspended above the void. The Logic has become distorted and no longer an inborn song of creativity. It is an inflexible and rigid mechanism, unbending and without a sense of History - neither coming from the past nor going to the future, but merely a focus of a moment of present obsession.
The Themes of Disaster flows in and out of our lives: from Virginia Tech to Iraq to Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD). The Disaster Figure always wears a new face: Virginia Tech or John Muhammed or Saddam Hussein...or Iran...or the Religious Right or Islamic Fundamentalism. But the god of Disaster is always there in our minds and in our prayers...and in our hyperreality. When I have said the mind can be a prison, this is what I was referring to. Philosophy should not enslave, not incarcerate.
Unspeakable Horror
Heard on the Sunday morning news-blab: How could a quiet science student have committed such an unspeakable horror?
We have inured ourselves to horror; it takes more and more of the old "unspeakable" to move us anymore: more blood, more gore, more sexual sadism.... does the most popular ebook come to mind yet, people?
We really cannot get enough, can we? We live in the Age of Drones (murder made squeaky clean) and Sadism (sex made squeaky cold).
Welcome to the future.
--
We have inured ourselves to horror; it takes more and more of the old "unspeakable" to move us anymore: more blood, more gore, more sexual sadism.... does the most popular ebook come to mind yet, people?
We really cannot get enough, can we? We live in the Age of Drones (murder made squeaky clean) and Sadism (sex made squeaky cold).
Welcome to the future.
--
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Entanglement
Warner Bros. also moved to pull trailers for its upcoming movie "Gangster Squad" from showings of "The Dark Knight Rises." The trailer of the film, which stars Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling in a ruthless war between '40s Los Angeles police and the mob, includes a scene of mobsters firing into a movie theater from behind the screen.Our society more and more resembles its fantasies, as as those fantasies are deadly, so will be our future. We have gone into a world of depressions, armageddons, despair, and end-of-times zombies, and we are beginning to lose our sense of a way out.
No one knows what to do anymore.
--
July 20
Sunrise Over the Earth by Apollo 12
There were shootings on July 20, 2012; I shall not talk about those, because this country is not ready to discuss such things. What is the point, really? We shall continue on until some mini-Armageddon, then we may discuss... Necessity is still the Mother of Conversation, no?
Instead, I shall mention July 20, 1969 when, at 20:17:40 GMT, mankind landed on the Moon. Since the Apollo space era, mankind has not gone back.
I miss the sense of goal-directed behavior for the country and the world, for the space program did give us that sense that there was something cosmic in our future. Now when we gaze at our futures, we see little but worry about whether the Congress will destroy Medicare and Social Security.
We have a sense of Fahrenheit 451, where the future is firmly centered on an Earth that increasingly resembles 1984. A sense of exhaustion rules, and we are going no where but in circles:
Vicious Circle #1:
a) a shooting takes place;
b) news coverage 24/7 even when there is nothing "new" and everything is repetitious,
c) angry shouts pro and con about guns;
d) uproar dies down;
e) people stop talking about a better way;
f) at some time t+e, loop back to step a)
Back in 1969, we were good. We went to the Moon, we protested an idiotic war in 'Nam, and we fought against racism and segregation. We sought to escape the circles of the past, and to go forward.
We were one heck of a country.
--
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Dream Factory: Great and Powerful Tea
The Intelligent Designer was Tea: black, white, green, aged and still on the bush; the I.D. Guy was Tea.
I had always thought it would be some sort of supernatural being who could be imagined as a Gepetto-like figure, tinkering around with reality.
However, it was Tea, the Great and Powerful.
As I was standing in the wings of Paradise, watching some sort of divine growth spurt, I saw Earl Grey make a grab for power... must have been thinking of Milton's Paradise Lost. In fact, I had been reading bits of it over the past couple days. Connect that with the ever-present Alexander Pope (in my head) wherein we meditate on queens, whom numerous realms obey... and sometimes counsel take... and sometimes taaayyy.
Freud could not have unwrapped this enigma with a slicker lissomeness.
--
I had always thought it would be some sort of supernatural being who could be imagined as a Gepetto-like figure, tinkering around with reality.
However, it was Tea, the Great and Powerful.
As I was standing in the wings of Paradise, watching some sort of divine growth spurt, I saw Earl Grey make a grab for power... must have been thinking of Milton's Paradise Lost. In fact, I had been reading bits of it over the past couple days. Connect that with the ever-present Alexander Pope (in my head) wherein we meditate on queens, whom numerous realms obey... and sometimes counsel take... and sometimes taaayyy.
Freud could not have unwrapped this enigma with a slicker lissomeness.
--
Monday, July 16, 2012
A Fine "State of Affairs"
This is a note to myself before I run out the door:
Dear Self,
Wittgenstein's notion of a "state of affairs" attempts to excludes the "state of affairs" of the subjective observer or person who states a proposition.
This is how Science wishes the propositions of science to be, and it reflects other peoples' work: Moritz Schlick, Carnap, and the Vienna Circle among other.
It also is eeriely similar to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Theory, which I find very interesting, and not the slightest bit Bohr-ing.
(note to self, laugh loudly here!)
However, in most other situations, a "state of affairs" usually includes the state of affairs of the intelligent individuals who observe and propound the propositions.
The question is how a "state of affairs" differs from the one type of proposition to the other, for it seems obvious that the second type of proposition is a bit more than merely a first type - Wittgensteinian - proposition with some added information about the person making it.
Certainly, all my emotional nuances and quirks constitute "a state of affairs"; my evaluations are "facts";
thus, some states of affairs are eliminated under Wittgenstein et alii. Interesting
--
Dear Self,
Wittgenstein's notion of a "state of affairs" attempts to excludes the "state of affairs" of the subjective observer or person who states a proposition.
This is how Science wishes the propositions of science to be, and it reflects other peoples' work: Moritz Schlick, Carnap, and the Vienna Circle among other.
It also is eeriely similar to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Theory, which I find very interesting, and not the slightest bit Bohr-ing.
(note to self, laugh loudly here!)
However, in most other situations, a "state of affairs" usually includes the state of affairs of the intelligent individuals who observe and propound the propositions.
The question is how a "state of affairs" differs from the one type of proposition to the other, for it seems obvious that the second type of proposition is a bit more than merely a first type - Wittgensteinian - proposition with some added information about the person making it.
Certainly, all my emotional nuances and quirks constitute "a state of affairs"; my evaluations are "facts";
thus, some states of affairs are eliminated under Wittgenstein et alii. Interesting
--
Eros
Reading the Ancient Greeks, I come to understand that Eros and Sex differ from mere Hunger, in that Eros has energy that endures beyond Satiety.
Hunger does not: you eat, you are no longer hungry.
The energy transcends fulfillment to create something else...
... and that something else may be benign or malign, depending on the Education and Morality of a society.
Perhaps this is what so many of us are trying to say today in our conceptually and language impoverished ways.
--
Hunger does not: you eat, you are no longer hungry.
The energy transcends fulfillment to create something else...
... and that something else may be benign or malign, depending on the Education and Morality of a society.
Perhaps this is what so many of us are trying to say today in our conceptually and language impoverished ways.
--
Intelligent Design & Mad Men
If there be an Intelligent Designer, I wish it would be something like TV or Advertising, where I would have a washboard abdomen (instead of a bumpy "dashboard" gut).
I also would like to wear shades and look menacing in a sexy and re-assuring way... sort of James Dean... establishing my bona fides as suicidal charming.
Having written this, I am not so sure anymore.
--
I also would like to wear shades and look menacing in a sexy and re-assuring way... sort of James Dean... establishing my bona fides as suicidal charming.
Having written this, I am not so sure anymore.
--
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Wherein I Am Proven Correct
The recent news about the Jerry Sandusky trial has caused many individuals to express their disgust and condemnation in speech and writing. Similarly the problems of various religious organizations whose figures of authority preyed upon young people caused great outcry.
Please note well that as individuals, we all of us speak out in condemnation.
Yet, the groups and organizations involved did little or nothing to put an immediate and absolute end to the abuse.
Let that sink in: the groups wherein the abusers were members did not put an immediate end to the abuse; yet this is abuse which each and every member of the group, church, university, religious group, would have no qualms about openly condemning.
Yet, as a group, they could not.
I firmly believe that as a group they did not, because they can not. We have allowed public and private activity among numbers of people to dispense with any sense of morality. Once the glare of publicity is gone, groups go back to their own ways, and one of these ways is an inability to deny evil.
This inability to condemn evil openly and as a group to act against it is the source of our world-wide troubles, from a continuing meaningful arms control to all the other problems bedeviling us.
As individuals, we are angels; yet our groups and parties and committees are devils, and they will continue to be so until the group mind is rendered free to confront its demons.
The entire chain of events of the Sandusky Trial have demonstrated the bizarre split between our private morality and our public and group immorality. The fact that the University of Pennsylvania could not stop this continuing abuse - an abuse which each person involved condemned - is proof of the immorality of our present day groups.
Think of crimes beyond sexual abuse: think of the crimes committed in the financial sector, think of the crime of government officials condoning torture... think of the magnitude of the evil we as a group called Nation allow.
And it is not merely amorality: groups do not merely care nothing; groups enable evil and violence and discord, and will continue to do so until we find the answer to our dilemma.
--
Please note well that as individuals, we all of us speak out in condemnation.
Yet, the groups and organizations involved did little or nothing to put an immediate and absolute end to the abuse.
Let that sink in: the groups wherein the abusers were members did not put an immediate end to the abuse; yet this is abuse which each and every member of the group, church, university, religious group, would have no qualms about openly condemning.
Yet, as a group, they could not.
I firmly believe that as a group they did not, because they can not. We have allowed public and private activity among numbers of people to dispense with any sense of morality. Once the glare of publicity is gone, groups go back to their own ways, and one of these ways is an inability to deny evil.
This inability to condemn evil openly and as a group to act against it is the source of our world-wide troubles, from a continuing meaningful arms control to all the other problems bedeviling us.
As individuals, we are angels; yet our groups and parties and committees are devils, and they will continue to be so until the group mind is rendered free to confront its demons.
The entire chain of events of the Sandusky Trial have demonstrated the bizarre split between our private morality and our public and group immorality. The fact that the University of Pennsylvania could not stop this continuing abuse - an abuse which each person involved condemned - is proof of the immorality of our present day groups.
Think of crimes beyond sexual abuse: think of the crimes committed in the financial sector, think of the crime of government officials condoning torture... think of the magnitude of the evil we as a group called Nation allow.
And it is not merely amorality: groups do not merely care nothing; groups enable evil and violence and discord, and will continue to do so until we find the answer to our dilemma.
--
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Suffering
I was looking at a blog which chose as its purpose a reckoning of all the horrible things which are happening today; it was anti-Obama and spoke of the need for gold - the latter day idol - and the government as Gestapo. It was a diary of Dukha, or Suffering, as the Lord Buddha might have said in similar circumstances.
Suffering and Fear are the Limits of Life.
They are not events within life. Change is a source of suffering, but Change is not an event which causes suffering and fear, rather it is Life pushed up against the limits of its abilities.
In Change, we would think we are not capable of meeting the challenge of the new demands upon us: we are pushed against the Wall of Life, and the Pain is that limiting wall, that prison wall, not the push that placed us there.
Suffering is always present, because we are always forming and placing limits on ourselves; then events change and conspire to destroy those limits, causing us pain.
Blogs and Writings and Media Circuses filled with the Negative - a very prevalent phenomenon nowadays - are presenting their feelings at the Limits of Life, and they assume that those Limits are eternal: they cannot be changed nor transcended.
Therefore, they assume that Suffering, Fear and Pain are eternal unless some change in circumstances occurs, allowing us to return to our previous place: our previous beliefs and actions and expectations of the world, in effect, restoring the old limits.
The Genius of Religion expresses the change from Pain to Joy in a poem I wrote some years ago on viewing a child's grave in the Puttygut Road Cemetery:
Give him a hat,
a marble lamb;
no name thereon engrave.
Give him a robe,
a swath of lawn,
alive, we never gave.
Give him boots:
of stoney base!-
he'll no more run and play.
Give him a rose
within his cheeks
to bright this holiday.
Give him heart
and give him vein!-
O, undiscovered bourne!
May he wake
within Your love,
O God of Life eterne!
We go from the pain of lost life and lost potential to life eternal... and that is how it is supposed to be: from the grief and suffering about life and its limits to limitless life!
--
Suffering and Fear are the Limits of Life.
They are not events within life. Change is a source of suffering, but Change is not an event which causes suffering and fear, rather it is Life pushed up against the limits of its abilities.
In Change, we would think we are not capable of meeting the challenge of the new demands upon us: we are pushed against the Wall of Life, and the Pain is that limiting wall, that prison wall, not the push that placed us there.
Suffering is always present, because we are always forming and placing limits on ourselves; then events change and conspire to destroy those limits, causing us pain.
Blogs and Writings and Media Circuses filled with the Negative - a very prevalent phenomenon nowadays - are presenting their feelings at the Limits of Life, and they assume that those Limits are eternal: they cannot be changed nor transcended.
Therefore, they assume that Suffering, Fear and Pain are eternal unless some change in circumstances occurs, allowing us to return to our previous place: our previous beliefs and actions and expectations of the world, in effect, restoring the old limits.
The Genius of Religion expresses the change from Pain to Joy in a poem I wrote some years ago on viewing a child's grave in the Puttygut Road Cemetery:
Give him a hat,
a marble lamb;
no name thereon engrave.
Give him a robe,
a swath of lawn,
alive, we never gave.
Give him boots:
of stoney base!-
he'll no more run and play.
Give him a rose
within his cheeks
to bright this holiday.
Give him heart
and give him vein!-
O, undiscovered bourne!
May he wake
within Your love,
O God of Life eterne!
We go from the pain of lost life and lost potential to life eternal... and that is how it is supposed to be: from the grief and suffering about life and its limits to limitless life!
--
Friday, July 13, 2012
Drought
Dry Irrigation Canal in Tulare, California
A Drought Disaster has been declared in 26 states.
I told you so, or - as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory once paraphrased - "I informed you thusly!"
What I said was when the Climate Change debacle comes, it will come quickly, much more quickly than scientists have been saying.
Why did I know this? Think back for the past 25 years every time a climate disaster occurs; think of the Europe Hot Summer of 2003 during which 10,000 people died ( I still cannot believe that 10,000 figure, and I have to re-check it every time I write it: that is a phenomenally high number!); remember that each and every time, after the reports had been issued, the committees evaluating the climate science said that the rapidity of these changing events took them a bit by surprise.
Things go both ways; sometimes glaciers are thought to be melting, sometimes they are found to be in fine fettle, but uniformly up to a few years ago, forecasts were 50 to 100 years ahead of us for various changes, and these would be conservative estimates.
But Nature has acted radically.
Thanks to everyone who has helped by politicizing Climate, thus ensuring that Nothing will Continue to be Done!
--
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
I'm Giving Up
It has finally come to this: the various ploys and schemes employed by people to dissuade robots from posting comments to blogs have become so intricate that they are beginning to foil me completely... just as if they were a Turing Test in reverse: survival of the fittest robot, and all that, as we puny human fall by the wayside after trying to write in the test words for posting comments.
I came across one today that appeared for all my life to be (I kid you not!) a fingerprint, followed by a snakes nest of the letter "S" cuisinarted with a couple of spicy vowels.
I positively goggled at it.
Then I threw in the towel, because I really do not have anything all that interesting to say.
--
I came across one today that appeared for all my life to be (I kid you not!) a fingerprint, followed by a snakes nest of the letter "S" cuisinarted with a couple of spicy vowels.
I positively goggled at it.
Then I threw in the towel, because I really do not have anything all that interesting to say.
--
The Twins: Science and Religion 2
How do Science and Religion treat Creativity?
World Science
A human bias against creativity is hindering science, research claims
(Think of the Lord Buddha's critique of suffering in the world: Change is one element of Suffering. However, the Lord Buddha did not believe that resisting change would in any way reduce Suffering.)
The present age offers immense benefits to Science and Research for creativity. Lacking those benefits of money and wealth and power, Science would be as obscure as Religions like to be.
Individual salvation continues on in the life history of individuals: their pain and sufferings add to the sum of religious knowledge if and when such individuals are canonized or recognized as holy people. Even then, their contribution - consider, for example, St. Francis of Assisi - are made to conform to orthodoxy.
It seems that Creativity requires Rewards.
That is not all that new; most of us believe that Good Deed require tangible rewards from some supernatural being.
Change is Suffering, but Lack of Change is also Suffering... we all know this to be true.
--
World Science
A human bias against creativity is hindering science, research claims
“The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity,” Mueller and colleagues wrote. “If people hold an implicit bias against creativity, then we cannot assume that organizations, institutions or even scientific endeavors will desire and recognize creative ideas even when they explicitly state they want them.”If Science and Research are reticent to welcome innovation and creativity, think of Religion and how dead-set our modern religions are opposed to creativity, new thinking, and innovation.
(Think of the Lord Buddha's critique of suffering in the world: Change is one element of Suffering. However, the Lord Buddha did not believe that resisting change would in any way reduce Suffering.)
The present age offers immense benefits to Science and Research for creativity. Lacking those benefits of money and wealth and power, Science would be as obscure as Religions like to be.
Individual salvation continues on in the life history of individuals: their pain and sufferings add to the sum of religious knowledge if and when such individuals are canonized or recognized as holy people. Even then, their contribution - consider, for example, St. Francis of Assisi - are made to conform to orthodoxy.
It seems that Creativity requires Rewards.
That is not all that new; most of us believe that Good Deed require tangible rewards from some supernatural being.
Change is Suffering, but Lack of Change is also Suffering... we all know this to be true.
--
Medical Definitions and Practices
Heart Transplant Procedure
How much of our communal lives is devoted to discussions of Medicine? A good deal is; we discuss issues from Health Care and Health Insurance on the basis of economics to Abortion on the basis of morality and philosophy and religious belief.
In short, Medicine is discussed under almost all the categories which make societies work: Economics, Business, Morality, Ethics, Religion, Philosophy, Politics...
I suggest that Medical Practice may substitute for Life: in essence, let us run a simulation of Life by looking at medical practices and our discussions and involvement in them.
In particular, let's look at how medical practitioners define medical terms.
Discover Magazine
The Beating Heart Donors
The article cited above deals with organ donations, and how those affairs are defined and run. Read it and pay attention to how the important terms are defined. In particular, we are interested here in how "death" is defined, because we are dealing with organ donations from individuals who are declared to be dead.
I quote the beginning paragraphs below:
In 1968, thirteen men gathered at the Harvard Medical School to virtually undo 5,000 years of the study of death. In a three-month period, the Harvard committee (full name: the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death) hammered out a simple set of criteria that today allows doctors to declare a person dead in less time than it takes to get a decent eye exam. A good deal of medical language was used, but in the end the committee’s criteria switched the debate from biology to philosophy. Before many years went by, it became accepted by most of the medical establishment that death wasn’t defined by a heart that could not be restarted, or lungs that could not breathe. No, you were considered dead when you suffered a loss of personhood.
But before we see what substituting philosophy for science actually means to real patients, let’s look at the criteria the Harvard authors believed indicated that a patient had a “permanently nonfunctioning brain”:
• Unreceptivity and unresponsivity. “Even the most intensely painful stimuli evoke no vocal or other response, not even a groan, withdrawal of a limb or quickening of respiration,” by the committee’s standard.
• No movements or spontaneous breathing (being aided by a respirator does not count). Doctors must watch patients for at least one hour to make sure they make no spontaneous muscular movements or spontaneous respiration. To test the latter, physicians are to turn off the respirator for three minutes to see if the patient attempts to breathe on his own (the apnea test).
• No reflexes. To look for reflexes, doctors are to shine a light in the eyes to make sure the pupils are dilated. Muscles are tested. Ice water is poured in the ears.
• Flat EEG. Doctors should use electroencephalography, a test “of great confirmatory value,” to make sure that the patient has flat brain waves.
The committee said all of the above tests had to be repeated at least 24 hours later with no change, but it added two caveats: hypothermia and drug intoxication can mimic brain death. And since 1968, the list of mimicking conditions has grown longer.To me, the point of all this exercise is to wake me from my slumber induced by the anesthesia of Authority, and see what is actually going on: and what is going on is an imperfect process which - even though we tend to impute great validity to it because it is a product of great Authority - remains imperfect and may become more so.
Despite heroic efforts to clarify and justify the definition of death, it remains opaque, confusing, and inconsistent.Although the Harvard criteria were based on zero patients and no experiments were conducted either with humans or animals, they soon became the standard for declaring people dead in several states, and in 1981, the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) was sanctioned by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The UDDA is based on the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee’s report. That a four-page article defining death should be codified by all 50 states within 13 years is staggering.
We are all imperfect.
Who, then, is qualified to pass perfect judgement upon other weighty questions, such as when does Life begin, and Abortion?
Not I.
I am not qualified, yet I must decide... and that is a strange thing, is it not?
--
PS.
Another facet of organ donation is that are various agents and agencies involved, some of which are paid for organs located and used.
The only party which is absolutely prohibited from receiving money is the donor or their family; everyone else may make some money on the deal.
--
Monday, July 09, 2012
The Twins: Science and Religion
Science and Religion were born together as intelligent beings viewed with awe the universe of creation.
Science attempts to understand the universe in certain ways, and employs theories to order its findings. When theories are no longer adequate to explain the universe, there is a paradigm shift, and theories are changed to reflect the new understanding.
The Religion of Our Age, by which I mean Organized Religion of the most recent times, also is an effort by intelligent beings to understand the universe in certain ways, and employs theories, doctrines, and teachings to order its findings.
However, when theories and doctrines are no longer adequate to explain the universe, paradigm shift is forbidden; the old understandings are reinforced and people are coerced to belief: there is a shift to Fundamentalism, with the underlying doctrine that the present lack of efficacy of religion is due to deviation from some perfect standard and scenario of what religion "really" was in the past.
Coming off the 20th Century and the early 21st Century, I believe it to be obvious that the Religion of Our Age, while remaining efficient for individuals, has lost any efficacy for any but the smallest groups. (One reason being groups required a "smoothing down" of rough edges of belief in order that the group be unanimous in its doctrinal purity - something an individual may live with without ever changing.)
Like it or not, Religion is a process: God evolves in our understanding.
Paradigms will shift.
--
(Intense studies and writings - Mishnah, for example -are the closest thing to Science in Religion, but the students of these are akin to Galileo in their acceptance within Organized Religion... or remember Father Hans Kung of the RC Catholic Church.)
Science attempts to understand the universe in certain ways, and employs theories to order its findings. When theories are no longer adequate to explain the universe, there is a paradigm shift, and theories are changed to reflect the new understanding.
The Religion of Our Age, by which I mean Organized Religion of the most recent times, also is an effort by intelligent beings to understand the universe in certain ways, and employs theories, doctrines, and teachings to order its findings.
However, when theories and doctrines are no longer adequate to explain the universe, paradigm shift is forbidden; the old understandings are reinforced and people are coerced to belief: there is a shift to Fundamentalism, with the underlying doctrine that the present lack of efficacy of religion is due to deviation from some perfect standard and scenario of what religion "really" was in the past.
Coming off the 20th Century and the early 21st Century, I believe it to be obvious that the Religion of Our Age, while remaining efficient for individuals, has lost any efficacy for any but the smallest groups. (One reason being groups required a "smoothing down" of rough edges of belief in order that the group be unanimous in its doctrinal purity - something an individual may live with without ever changing.)
Like it or not, Religion is a process: God evolves in our understanding.
Paradigms will shift.
--
(Intense studies and writings - Mishnah, for example -are the closest thing to Science in Religion, but the students of these are akin to Galileo in their acceptance within Organized Religion... or remember Father Hans Kung of the RC Catholic Church.)
Ade Ileke 47: The Heat
In the Heat, you wake up to a paparazzi sun;
there's a crowd of them solar trainspotters
and keepers of celebrity,
suns who arrest my image
in the few closed rooms
where I fall asleep, remembering
a crush of paparazzi memories
in the road tunnel
of my head
as we approach the Paris Ritz.
--
there's a crowd of them solar trainspotters
and keepers of celebrity,
suns who arrest my image
in the few closed rooms
where I fall asleep, remembering
a crush of paparazzi memories
in the road tunnel
of my head
as we approach the Paris Ritz.
--
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Future Religion (Progress of Spirit 1)
The next step is to stop short of articulating a judgement in language. We shall certainly change our behavior to mirror any such judgement, but we have to stop short of "codifying" it in our language, and entering it into those Mini-Bibles we carry around in our heads, which are essentially The Word of God As Interpreted By We Ourselves.
If we disagree, I think I shall try to leave it at:
There is Time, there is Intimacy, but there also is a time for all things under the sun.
When we get to "we hate the sin, but love the sinner", it is already too late. Hate and the sinner have become mixed together in that mini-bible we call our "belief system". Sooner or later, there will be trouble, for our actions should be perfect based on perfect habit, not hatred.
We do not have to articulate "we hate the sin", for we avoid it: our actions indicate that we loath it. There is no need for a statement about it... except for instructing children.
A lot of our problems in religion do reside in the fact that we never get beyond the child stage of it.
Religion is Heroism, not the children's section of the book store.
--
If we disagree, I think I shall try to leave it at:
"Next time you come this way, I hope we can share bread as brothers and sisters, rather than sharing merely as strangers."
There is Time, there is Intimacy, but there also is a time for all things under the sun.
When we get to "we hate the sin, but love the sinner", it is already too late. Hate and the sinner have become mixed together in that mini-bible we call our "belief system". Sooner or later, there will be trouble, for our actions should be perfect based on perfect habit, not hatred.
We do not have to articulate "we hate the sin", for we avoid it: our actions indicate that we loath it. There is no need for a statement about it... except for instructing children.
A lot of our problems in religion do reside in the fact that we never get beyond the child stage of it.
Religion is Heroism, not the children's section of the book store.
--
Chimp Attack
Gun Rights Chimp
From Fort Worth NBC:
I almost had no image for this post, because when I went to Google's and entered "chimp attack" for images, the results were rather horrifying.The parents of the American student mauled by two chimps in South Africa last week called their son's survival a "miracle" and thanked doctors for their work.The statement on Friday said Andrew Oberle was stable but remains in critical condition.A hospital spokeswoman Martina Nicholson told The Associated Press the hospital will not release any information about the victim. His parents say they might release further statements.
I for one am tired of these chimpanzee terrorists. I think we should go over there and bomb them back to the Stone Age!
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Foibles of the Near Rich and Famous
Brad Pitt's mother sent a letter to her hometown Gazetter:
I suppose that it may stem from the saying that mentions "...whenever two or more are gathered in my name...", and it struck someone that - gosh! - suppose a zillion Christians all prayed within a 24 hour period, and what all about that!
Personally, again going back to Matthew 6 5-6
--
Jane Pitt's letter continues:
A National Day of Prayer?! What is that?Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney's opponent, Barack Hussein Obama—a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.
I suppose that it may stem from the saying that mentions "...whenever two or more are gathered in my name...", and it struck someone that - gosh! - suppose a zillion Christians all prayed within a 24 hour period, and what all about that!
Personally, again going back to Matthew 6 5-6
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."Ms. Pitt, you are more a politician than a religious person. Try not to disguise your efforts at persuasion and coercion as Religion. It has a bad odor.
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Friday, July 06, 2012
Health Care Tax or Penalty?
I'll pay any tax that guarantees me an immediate and tangible benefit.
I resent taxes that are spent on questionable wars and political obscurity.
The Republicans are attacking the health care mandate as a tax... which offers tangible and clear benefits to those who pay the tax.
That is an interesting approach.
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I resent taxes that are spent on questionable wars and political obscurity.
The Republicans are attacking the health care mandate as a tax... which offers tangible and clear benefits to those who pay the tax.
That is an interesting approach.
--
Sunday, July 01, 2012
The Eric Cantor-John Boehner Republican Memorial Design Contest
Design 1
This design is a collage of fallen trees and police line tape, and is intended to invoke the contrarian spirit of "climate denier", which was able to turn real danger into a political boogeyman. This enabled the country to ignore the danger of increasing costly natural disasters, which in turn impeded the effort to reduce the deficit.
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From Atoms To Show Boats
Paul Robeson in Show Boat
When I finish studying the development of the atom bomb, with particular attention to the construction and maintenance of Los Alamos as well as the surrounding area, I think I will attempt to study the story of Show Boat from its genesis through writing the book to the play to the film and until the modern day.
I have always found it a fascinating story with an unusual structure; I love the music, too. And I esteem Edna Ferber.
(see http://thediscreetbourgeois.blogspot.com/2010/11/show-boat-musical-that-changed.html
for a thoroughly good discussion.)
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The Sabbatical Year
The seventh year was a Sabbatical Year, verily a shabbas among years, in which debts were cancelled, and the inequities of wealth which tend to creep into the community were subject to a levelling out: the hills made lower, and the valleys boosted up a bit.
This is usually ignored by modern believers, who cherry-pick their beliefs, choosing only the ripest and juiciest bit of hypocritical self-interest to pop into their little baskets - just as we say that we forgive those who "trespass" against us and not that we forgive the "debts" owed us by others.
Which is why Religion is so difficult; we really are not up to it, are we?
The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great had the right idea: hold off that whole rig-a-marole of Baptism until on one's death bed, then send for the vicar!
How could we hope to live up to those "inhuman" virtues expounded in the Bible? We would become fanatics of charity, terrorists against evil, wild-eyed-radicals of justice!
The mere thought makes one's head spin!
Let us be thankful for our innate ability to deceive ourselves.
John 12:25 He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
We pick and choose our law - we "cherry pick" the law we shall follow - exactly because we are in love with this life, and we would go to any lengths not to lose our life in this world: we would deny every principle and maxim in our holy writings, we would distort and torture the meaning of every religious genius who has spoken to us, just so that our comfortable life in this world may not be infringed.
It is our paradoxical "love" of this world of illusion and life that creates our Politics.
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The 2013 Crash
OK, so I'm sounding like NewsMax, the illiterate right-wing rag. I can not help it. We are all mad men thrown together in the world, are we not? We tell our tales, full of sound and fury...
Back on topic now.
The UK suffers from the same kinds of Financial problems we do: an overly complex system which relies upon people who are not skilled enough to administer it, people who are too slow to respond to its fast-as-light workings, and people who are greedy, covetous, and often crooked.
For today's variation on a theme, read the BBC story .
The doomsday scenario for 2013 is:
1) Republicans win White House and a majority in at least one branch of Congress;
2) There is a determined effort to balance the Budget on the backs of the Less-than-Rich;
3) There are problems with China of an as yet undetermined nature: China and the Chinese Communist Party has many problems, and, given that the country is enormous, these problems are enormous;
4) The Banking Sector manages to Flash-Crash, Glitch, Stumble, and Cheat its way into another Bank Failure scenario...
Hello, Saint Leibowitz and the Dark Ages once again.
ps.
You really should familiarize yourselves with the problems of the electronic banking system. Since your own efforts are your best teachers, start studying it.
--
Back on topic now.
The UK suffers from the same kinds of Financial problems we do: an overly complex system which relies upon people who are not skilled enough to administer it, people who are too slow to respond to its fast-as-light workings, and people who are greedy, covetous, and often crooked.
For today's variation on a theme, read the BBC story .
The doomsday scenario for 2013 is:
1) Republicans win White House and a majority in at least one branch of Congress;
2) There is a determined effort to balance the Budget on the backs of the Less-than-Rich;
3) There are problems with China of an as yet undetermined nature: China and the Chinese Communist Party has many problems, and, given that the country is enormous, these problems are enormous;
4) The Banking Sector manages to Flash-Crash, Glitch, Stumble, and Cheat its way into another Bank Failure scenario...
Hello, Saint Leibowitz and the Dark Ages once again.
ps.
You really should familiarize yourselves with the problems of the electronic banking system. Since your own efforts are your best teachers, start studying it.
--
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Ann Curry
Ann Curry was a real person and a fine journalist, and she will be leaving the Today show.
I really haven't watched Today since Bryant Gumbel's days; I used to really like it when I thought Al Roker was Roxie Roker's brother... I guess he is her cousin. I liked Willard Scott, too, though Lord knows why.
I really do not like Matt Lauer, and I find him very facile.
Today must descend to the level of the audience and management of the day.
Soon we shall be looking for a J. Fred Muggs to do the interviews.
--
I really haven't watched Today since Bryant Gumbel's days; I used to really like it when I thought Al Roker was Roxie Roker's brother... I guess he is her cousin. I liked Willard Scott, too, though Lord knows why.
I really do not like Matt Lauer, and I find him very facile.
Today must descend to the level of the audience and management of the day.
Soon we shall be looking for a J. Fred Muggs to do the interviews.
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Who's Responsible?
In The Washington Post:
More than 1.5 million homes and businesses across Maryland and Virginia lost power Friday night as one of the most powerful and punishing storms in months swept across the Washington region...
The ferocity of the storm appeared to reflect the intensity of the daytime heat that set records across the region, as the mercury at Reagan National Airport rose to 104 degrees...
A very large derecho storm with straight winds blowing 80 mph, following yet another record setting day of heat ...
And in Lousiana, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal will oversee the beginning soon of a new school year with textbooks being widely used which not only teach Creationism as Science, but also that there is no Climate Change, rather it is a plot by liberals to destroy our wonderful economy... as if we could not have done it ourselves in 2008 with the Republicans calling the shots.
Let's hold the Republicans responsible for their actions.
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Friday, June 29, 2012
New York Times Puzzles
Mr. Will Shortz
Starting July 7 - or just some other nonce date - The New York Times will start charging people who buy their print edition a fee to access the crossword puzzles on-line. Hitherto, we have done the Sunday "puzz" (as we call it) on Saturday evening, since the puzz goes up on the web at 6:00 PM EST.
We have applied ourselves while the British series As Time Goes By plays on WTVS, public TV.
Now we shall have to wait until Sunday for the print edition to be delivered. This means the one hour or so spent on the puzz will bite into Sunday. It is also a "tax" upon subscribers, essentially a "double dip" into our pockets.
We do not like it, we shall not pay the extra. Occupy Will's Shortz!
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What We've Been Saying For Years...
ScienceNews today:
Web edition
: Thursday, June 28th, 2012
It looks like 70 years of breeding for better color in unripe fruit has inadvertently helped create the wet-paper towel flavor of the modern tomato...
And just because a variety is an heirloom doesn’t mean it tastes great, he cautions. For his taste panels, Cherry Roma is the reigning favorite. When choosing among generic tomatoes, he recommends going for cherry tomatoes and other little types: “Breeders haven’t had as much time to mess them up,” he says.Tomatoes, apples, oranges, you name it.
It seems roots and tubers, like beets, which are not susceptible to differing appeal based on color are the only things that taste like they used to.
Thank, and a tip of the hat to the Food Industry.
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Those Who Stay At Home
There are those who go on the Quest, and there are those who stay at home.
Did you ever wonder how boresome it must be to stay at home, while Frodo and Merry and Pippin are on the quest? Or while Coyote is stealing fire from heaven, while you are digging furrows for maize? Or while Theseus skulks through the Labyrinth, while we try to schedule a conference call?
Well, we do know. We are the stay-at-homes.
Being on a Quest will change things forever; that is the whole meaning of the Quest in story and myth.
We thought we had a Quest in Vietnam, and we thought we had the key to the mythic dynamic in The Domino Theory, and if we could only thwart that old domino theory...
Alas.
We thought we had a Quest in Iraq; we thought we had a quest in Afghanistan. But it cannot be, for if we had a Quest, we would have been changed forever.
We are not changed. We are not ennobled. We do not see miles and miles.
We see as far as the racially offensive bumper sticker on the car in front of us, both of us sitting in yet another traffic jam on a hot summer day, burning gasoline and cursing the climate-changed induced heat...
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The Class Distinctions of Alcohol
Wall Street Water Bender
The Rich keep their insane drunkeness behind the veils of gated communities and friendly law-enforcement,
The Not-Rich are more blatant about it all.
The same goes for drugs.
In the 1990s Cocaine was the DOC (Drug Of Choice) on Wall Street.
What now? Bloomberg's had a facetious article on Chia seeds, as if anyone would believe that the financial industry ran on sprouts and "Water Bender" myths.
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Un-Friending Right Wing COPD Types
Our choices have narrowed down to a purge; only a total purge will do, a cathartic, if you will - a great flushing out of the system.
We have to un-friend numerous people we know on Facebook.
It all started the other day when I heard She-who-must-be-obeyed sort of harrumph.
"What nonsense!" she expostulated.
"And so much of it, one right after the other!"
I looked up from reading Richard Rhodes' history of the development of the atomic bomb.
"Hmm?" I soothed, amiably, sort of an invite to share... but leave the big guns spiked: do not unload on my awareness with the entire imbroglio which discomforts you, my dear; merely share a hint of the troublesome and annoying which has come to you via the internet.
"Well, you know so-and-so..." she said, names being left out to protect the idiots.
"Yes, I recall." I said.
There was a short list of friends, amiable all, with whom we had spent time playing cards, Truth or Dare, and Dr. Ruth. (I remember that I always managed to seriously annoy some of them or their "spouses" when I played cards... I have a very idiosyncratic manner of card playing.)
There were an educated group, too.
So why must they continuously post things they know are going to scrawl across their Friends homepages that some Friends may find offensive? Why political pornography in the worst instance and why political tirades in the best case?
I mean, one's Democratic party friends might egregiously glom all over your sensibilities at lunch or at the bar at times, but they don't subject one to this constant wheeze of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Political Disease) all the time, do they?
I mean, does everyone think they're running for office? And is such an onslaught effective for persuading the undecided? If I were undecided, I would find this cacophony repulsive; I would feel as if I were being felt up by gourmet zombies in the Hive under Raccoon City in Resident Evil.
For Pete's Sake! Find a cabal somewhere in some racially restrictive gated ghetto and have your crappy little tea parties of fear and loathing! Do not put it on Facebook where your inane vitriol spills over into your "Friends" space... and this is using "friend" very loosely; it is more like "those who overlook your nastier failings".
The last straw was a old Eucher-playing, erstwhile BFF, who started writing things about supporting Israel - particularly Christian support for Israel - based on Nostradamian and Fortean readings of scraps and snippets of holy writ.
I guess we have to put up with your thinly-veiled racist jokes and your tedious ill-formed opinions, but we draw the line at your obscure idolatry of religion and politics.
A purge it is. No Stalinist-era show trials, just a friendly un-friending...
We considered whether to send an explanation, such as "Dear friends, we remember your smiling faces, but do not wish your opinions to be in our faces all the time". Maybe we shall; do not know...
... but we do know that if we don't do it now, 28 Days Later will be too late................
--
We have to un-friend numerous people we know on Facebook.
It all started the other day when I heard She-who-must-be-obeyed sort of harrumph.
"What nonsense!" she expostulated.
"And so much of it, one right after the other!"
I looked up from reading Richard Rhodes' history of the development of the atomic bomb.
"Hmm?" I soothed, amiably, sort of an invite to share... but leave the big guns spiked: do not unload on my awareness with the entire imbroglio which discomforts you, my dear; merely share a hint of the troublesome and annoying which has come to you via the internet.
"Well, you know so-and-so..." she said, names being left out to protect the idiots.
"Yes, I recall." I said.
There was a short list of friends, amiable all, with whom we had spent time playing cards, Truth or Dare, and Dr. Ruth. (I remember that I always managed to seriously annoy some of them or their "spouses" when I played cards... I have a very idiosyncratic manner of card playing.)
There were an educated group, too.
So why must they continuously post things they know are going to scrawl across their Friends homepages that some Friends may find offensive? Why political pornography in the worst instance and why political tirades in the best case?
I mean, one's Democratic party friends might egregiously glom all over your sensibilities at lunch or at the bar at times, but they don't subject one to this constant wheeze of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Political Disease) all the time, do they?
I mean, does everyone think they're running for office? And is such an onslaught effective for persuading the undecided? If I were undecided, I would find this cacophony repulsive; I would feel as if I were being felt up by gourmet zombies in the Hive under Raccoon City in Resident Evil.
For Pete's Sake! Find a cabal somewhere in some racially restrictive gated ghetto and have your crappy little tea parties of fear and loathing! Do not put it on Facebook where your inane vitriol spills over into your "Friends" space... and this is using "friend" very loosely; it is more like "those who overlook your nastier failings".
The last straw was a old Eucher-playing, erstwhile BFF, who started writing things about supporting Israel - particularly Christian support for Israel - based on Nostradamian and Fortean readings of scraps and snippets of holy writ.
I guess we have to put up with your thinly-veiled racist jokes and your tedious ill-formed opinions, but we draw the line at your obscure idolatry of religion and politics.
A purge it is. No Stalinist-era show trials, just a friendly un-friending...
We considered whether to send an explanation, such as "Dear friends, we remember your smiling faces, but do not wish your opinions to be in our faces all the time". Maybe we shall; do not know...
... but we do know that if we don't do it now, 28 Days Later will be too late................
--
A Rational Explanation
I heard Fox Mulder recently say that he was looking for a rational explanation for some mystery that was bedeviling him.
I think this is an error.
I think he should have said that he was undertaking a rational search for an explanation; the explanation for mysterious events is under no obligation to be "rational". If it were, there would be no mysteries.
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I think this is an error.
I think he should have said that he was undertaking a rational search for an explanation; the explanation for mysterious events is under no obligation to be "rational". If it were, there would be no mysteries.
--
Thursday, June 28, 2012
In EurekAlert:
--
Maya archaeologists unearth new 2012 monument
Archaeologists working at the site of La Corona in Guatemala have discovered a 1,300-year-old-year Maya text that provides only the second known reference to the so-called "end date" of the Maya calendar, December 21, 2012. The discovery, one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades, was announced today at the National Palace in Guatemala.It is a good, short story. And it points up our madness...
"This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy," says Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Institute and co-director of the excavations at La Corona...
"In times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse," says Canuto.
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Monday, June 25, 2012
Farm Subsidies
Reading a good article on why farm subsides do not cause obesity.
There are two graphs comparing the cost of red delicious apples to chocolate chip cookies, and showing that the apples - i.e., "good" food - are as cheap or as costly as the cookies are, thus invalidating the proposition that farm subsidies have caused healthy foods to be more expensive than "unhealthy" foods.
All very good.
However, what is missing is the fact that I have not been able to purchase an apple that has been remotely good tasting in almost 2 years, whereas choco-chips are still pretty good.
I remember wonderfully sweet apples, but I only remember them, unless I go to the Pick-Your-Own orchards. Maybe that ride into the country is what we need.
--
There are two graphs comparing the cost of red delicious apples to chocolate chip cookies, and showing that the apples - i.e., "good" food - are as cheap or as costly as the cookies are, thus invalidating the proposition that farm subsidies have caused healthy foods to be more expensive than "unhealthy" foods.
All very good.
However, what is missing is the fact that I have not been able to purchase an apple that has been remotely good tasting in almost 2 years, whereas choco-chips are still pretty good.
I remember wonderfully sweet apples, but I only remember them, unless I go to the Pick-Your-Own orchards. Maybe that ride into the country is what we need.
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Sunday, June 24, 2012
Pauses in Democracy
In the ancient limited democracies, there were times when democratic procedures were suspended by agreement. There were at least two periods of what were dictatorships: the first being the Roman institution of Dictator, such as when Cincinnatus left his farm and assumed the dictatorship twice; when the crises passed, he relinquished the post and returned to private life, spurning any desire to become tyrant.
Similarly, when the ancient Greek poleis reached a state of total dysfunctionality for whatever reason, sometimes a wise man was given the power of transforming the state, such as Solon in Athens and Lycurgus in Sparta.
These instances indicate periods of weakness in democracies, and we should ponder them in their entirety.
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Similarly, when the ancient Greek poleis reached a state of total dysfunctionality for whatever reason, sometimes a wise man was given the power of transforming the state, such as Solon in Athens and Lycurgus in Sparta.
These instances indicate periods of weakness in democracies, and we should ponder them in their entirety.
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From the People That Brought You The Housing Bubble...
Which is to say, real estate developers...
Here is a story on Corporate Education from the Huffington Post:
I love it, because I used to be in business, and I know the type of minds at work.
Educational "Capital" may take on other forms than those which the mind of a real estate developer is capable of handling.
(I don't mean to disparage people in real estate, but I do disparage people who think their small understanding of one corner of reality extends to the entire universe.)
--
Here is a story on Corporate Education from the Huffington Post:
I love it, because I used to be in business, and I know the type of minds at work.
For more than two weeks, the University of Virginia has been in an uproar over the abrupt resignation of school President Teresa Sullivan. Sullivan stepped down after just two years in office, citing "philosophical differences" with the institution's governing Board of Visitors...I can only point out that Capitalism was a theory and practice of managing Capital, not profit chasing.
Members of the board, steeped in a culture of corporate jargon and buzzy management theories, wanted the school to institute austerity measures and re-engineer its academic offerings around inexpensive, online education, the emails reveal. Led by Rector Helen Dragas, a real estate developer appointed six years ago, the board shared a guiding vision that the university could, and indeed should, be run like a Fortune 500 company.
The controversy, which threatens to seriously damage one of the country's oldest and most prestigious public universities, has implications beyond its own idyllic, academic refuge. For some, it is emblematic of how the cult of corporate expertise and private-sector savvy has corralled the upper reaches of university life, at the expense of academic freedom and "unprofitable" areas of study...
Educational "Capital" may take on other forms than those which the mind of a real estate developer is capable of handling.
(I don't mean to disparage people in real estate, but I do disparage people who think their small understanding of one corner of reality extends to the entire universe.)
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Tossing Minds Around
1) If people's opinions of dynamic events is like tossing a coin with outcomes (in favor of, in disfavor of), then the coin is not fair, because we know that most people tend to have consistent beliefs; they tend to be liberal or conservative, for example.
One function of democratic intercourse is to attempt to restore the coin to fairness by extending the time allowed to formulate and ruminate on a message before deciding whether one is in favor or not. The time extension allows the message to be "uncompressed" fully and opened to outside influences, and thus become more complex.
2) "Meme" theory is based on a perceived lossless compression scheme for messages between "minds".
Otherwise, the "meme" mutates step by step and cannot be assured of "going viral".
A virus doesn't compress its message.
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One function of democratic intercourse is to attempt to restore the coin to fairness by extending the time allowed to formulate and ruminate on a message before deciding whether one is in favor or not. The time extension allows the message to be "uncompressed" fully and opened to outside influences, and thus become more complex.
2) "Meme" theory is based on a perceived lossless compression scheme for messages between "minds".
Otherwise, the "meme" mutates step by step and cannot be assured of "going viral".
A virus doesn't compress its message.
--
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Catullus At Hillsdale College
George Roche, One-Time President of Hillsdale College
Egregiam narras mira pietate parentem,
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2012/06/hillsdale-college-again.html
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Une Petite Surprise!
Julien Benda
So I was reading about Norman Finkelstein again, and what do you know? One of his favorite books was La Trahison des Clercs ! (The Treason of the Intellectuals)
In the Tablet:
One of my favorite little books is Julian Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals, which is based in this binary notion that there are two competing sets of values in the world: fame and fortune on the one side, truth and justice on the other side. Benda’s main thesis is, the more vigorously you are committed to truth and justice, the less you’re going to see of fame and fortune. So, I don’t want to become too popular, because then I’m betraying truth and justice.
I read it in bits and pieces years ago; I could not find a copy in print, so I had to cull pieces of it from various places until the time when I could put my hands on it.
Benda wrote my copy in 1946 - a very important year, he inscribed a new introduction to a new edition:
Depuis vingt ans qu’a paru l’ouvrage que je réédite aujourd’hui, la thèse que j’y soutenais – à savoir que les hommes dont la fonction est de défendre les valeurs éternelles et désintéressées, comme la justice et la raison, et que j’appelle les clercs, ont trahi cette fonction au profit d’intérêts pratiques..."In the 20 years since the work I am re-editing, the thesis which I support - namely, that the men whose function is to defend the eternal and disinterested values, such as Justice and Reason, and whom I call the Intellectuals ( or "Clerks, meaning "clerics" = the literate class in the Middle Ages), have betrayed their function in favor of profit and practical benefits..."
(My translation... pretty poor, I know.)
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Big Brother's Embrace
Big Brother as conceived in Orwell's 1984, not some cable-TV-real-life thing, is not really necessary in a society which actively seeks to pin point and locate its members for reasons which are not entirely clear, but which seem to come down to "We do it because we can."
I mean, why would anyone want to self-locate themselves all the time? I am at church, I am at the gym, I am at Lucky Baldwin's for Ladies Night....
Why?
Of course, I do not even like biographies for the most part. I was reading about James Joyce's biographies in the NY Times Review of Books, and even that was boring beyond description. I guess I do not get it: I enjoy sporting events greatly, but I find the spectacle of watching and listening to sports figure talk about their feats to be a gruesome form of torture.
Similarly, even though I may read a book and esteem it a masterpiece of literature, the entire idea of going to Christmas dinner at the author's house and chit-chatting with him, his aunts, nieces, and nephews, to be a Fuseli nightmare of the first water.
I myself write. I know how different writing is from speaking and conversing, particularly face-to-face, and I have grown old watching people afflicted with my conversation seeking ways to extricate themselves and yet maintain some sense of dignity and decorum.... Even Tom Wolfe in person cannot be as natty and perfectly clothed as Tom Wolfe the feature of our individual imaginations and our media imaginations.
Anyway, read the following about supplying too much information on the web.
Remember, individually we may all be saints, but let us form groups, corporations, and national governments and we become akin to the spirit of Negation!
NewScientist
Big Brother Is Watching Facebook And Twitter
21 June 2012 by Jim Giles
I mean, why would anyone want to self-locate themselves all the time? I am at church, I am at the gym, I am at Lucky Baldwin's for Ladies Night....
Why?
Of course, I do not even like biographies for the most part. I was reading about James Joyce's biographies in the NY Times Review of Books, and even that was boring beyond description. I guess I do not get it: I enjoy sporting events greatly, but I find the spectacle of watching and listening to sports figure talk about their feats to be a gruesome form of torture.
Similarly, even though I may read a book and esteem it a masterpiece of literature, the entire idea of going to Christmas dinner at the author's house and chit-chatting with him, his aunts, nieces, and nephews, to be a Fuseli nightmare of the first water.
I myself write. I know how different writing is from speaking and conversing, particularly face-to-face, and I have grown old watching people afflicted with my conversation seeking ways to extricate themselves and yet maintain some sense of dignity and decorum.... Even Tom Wolfe in person cannot be as natty and perfectly clothed as Tom Wolfe the feature of our individual imaginations and our media imaginations.
Anyway, read the following about supplying too much information on the web.
Remember, individually we may all be saints, but let us form groups, corporations, and national governments and we become akin to the spirit of Negation!
NewScientist
Big Brother Is Watching Facebook And Twitter
21 June 2012 by Jim Giles
...officials at the Department of State issued a procurement notice on 1 June asking software developers to submit bids for a contract to supply tools that provide "deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web". These tools will analyse conversations taking place in at least seven foreign languages, including Chinese and Arabic...--
Thursday, June 21, 2012
On A Ethical Scale Of 1 To 5...
Mark Zuckerberg, Billionaire Genius and Demi-God
..., 1 being the lowest, meaning "bad" or almost no "good" at all, and 5 meaning the highest possible amount of "good", where would you rank such-and-such?
Is "good" an absolute, or does it exist in a range of values, somethings being "better" than others?
It seems to me that Fundamentalist philosophies and religions tend to view things as absolutes, whereas the non-Fundamentalist forms do not, and thus require a good deal more work and thought and study to come to a moral conclusion.
It reminds me of Isaac Singer's Rabbi of Goray, who was relatively lenient on the issue of divorce on the appeal of women, versus the Rabbi of Lublin, who was very strict: as a result, women from all over the East journeyed to Goray to see the Rabbi, who did not see divorce in absolute terms, but in terms which were modified by differing circumstances, differing life-histories.
So today in MarketWatch, David Weidner writes:
So long, suckers — I’m leaving Wall Street
Commentary: Some lessons from 15 years observing the industry,
and ends with:
... remember: Greed is good, but good is better.and that sums it up, so now I must wonder whether mankind again is a bunch of savages dancing (or yelling out buy-sell orders) in front of heartless and mindless idols of graven images, or whether there is a progress - a spiritual progress! - available to us of "better" and "better".
All things can become "better". There is no absolute Science, Economics, nor Morality. Just as we may descend, so we may ascend.
There is in these times a feeling that mankind is inherently evil.
I cannot believe such a proposition, even when it is modified by the doctrine of Original Sin.
We exist in a range of values, and we have free will to choose where we shall go. The accumulation of woes and sorrows we are struggling through now are the fruits of our choosing Greed and not something Better! (And I shall think about this when I ponder Mark Zuckerberg's sale of his stock at the obviously over-priced opening IPO price, and the eventual decline of 10%, which amounts to a billionaire stealing money from schlubs... it really "zucks!"... even though if we were to ask him on a scale of 1 to 5 how would he rate himself as a positive benefactor to humanity, he would probably say that he's a "big old Fi-i-ive!")
--
ScienceDaily (June 20, 2012)
The problem is that our vigilant attitude costs $, whereas the vigilant attitude of the pests only requires them to eat our crops and reproduce.
From our own history, we know that eating and reproducing is an attitude shared by those with $ and those without $. Hence, our battle is much harder and requires a long-term commitment and frame of mind to a goal which we have not demonstrated hitherto.
--
— Pests are adapting to genetically modified crops in unexpected ways, researchers have discovered. The findings underscore the importance of closely monitoring and countering pest resistance to biotech crops.All that is necessary to ensure food for the world is a constant vigilance and expenditure against crop pests....
The problem is that our vigilant attitude costs $, whereas the vigilant attitude of the pests only requires them to eat our crops and reproduce.
From our own history, we know that eating and reproducing is an attitude shared by those with $ and those without $. Hence, our battle is much harder and requires a long-term commitment and frame of mind to a goal which we have not demonstrated hitherto.
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