Illusions Of Free Markets

Read an excellent article on the fact that even though we talk continually of free markets, we have in place thousands and thousands of schemes and pranks and wheezes by which we subsidize and transfer money to the rich.
Things like baseball stadiums come to mind; how often sports owners ask for (and get) outlays from the entire local population, not just those who are baseball fans. In the old days, sports teams relied upon the paying public, and they were forced to cater to those ticket-buying folks.
Now it is a bit different, for there are numerous others ways to generate revenues, one of which is getting the municipalities to cough up subsidies, either by outlays or tax reductions or bonds.

Is there a Free Market in the Entertainment Industry when one of the members, say the local hockey team, receives public money?

Read the article and think about the numerous ways we do the types of activities described.

"Free Lunch": David Cay Johnston on hidden government subsidies for the very, very rich
http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the_scribe/2008/01/free-lunch-davi.html

... What I’ve done is examine a number of cases to show that government has rewritten the rules to favor the already rich, the politically connected, and the powerful at the expense of everyone else. In effect it’s set up mechanisms that the government itself reaches into your pocket and gives money to rich people; the government allows businesses to reach into your pocket in ways it never did; the government has all sorts of subtle and hidden policies now that funnel from the poor and middle class and upper middle class into the hands of the super-rich.  And that is at the core of what’s happening in our society...

-- 

ps.

I remembered a post on the old days when milk was in bottles and they were returned to be washed and re-used.

The cardboard and plastic cartons were introduced because they saved money for the milk distributing company, as they no longer had to wash and re-cycle glass.

However, the new cartons were trash and had to be placed in land-fills, which the public pays for. If there were no land-fills possible, the milk companies would have to go back to glass (as some already have for ecological reasons).

By my tax money being used for land-fills, I am in essence providing tax support for milk... and Huggies, too!

Es War Ein Alter Bauer...

Considering that "baumgartner" means "tree gardener" or someone who had worked in an orchard, there is a sense of irony here.

..

Belief Systems

 

A Sailboat Will Sail Whether It

Believes In The Ocean Or Not

The sailboat follows the ways of the Ocean.

It's keel is a foundation deep within the Ocean.

It may deny the Ocean, but it cannot sail without it.

The belief yes and the belief no are superfluous luxuries of thought and logic that have nothing to do with the price of fish at the dock.

--

My New Computer

 Welcome to Windows 8 !

I have a new HP laptop.
It runs on Windows 8.

I was going to stay with Windows 7, but I found that Windows 7 units cost more for what you were getting than new Windows 8 units.
That should have tipped me off.

I have devoted a good deal of time to both the hardware and software, and I'll talk about software.

Windows 8: I do not get it.
I fail to see how radically changing the way things are done enhances my computer experience.

I see almost no utility in the Start screen, other than pointing to the Desktop mode I am used to. I have tried to find some benefit in the Start screen, but I do not see how it would increase the utility of the computer for me.

The "charms" on the right are not charming. It is just a different place to stick a logo and click it.

And as with every new version, Microsoft finds a way to hide things you have grown used to using.

As is usual, some sort of Security crap came with it. I was busy after I bought it, and did not even open it until a week after purchase. By that time, the trial period of the Security stuff was nearing an end.
When it expired yesterday, I had to locate Windows Defender, only to discover I could not start it.
So I had to search on-line as to why this was the case, finding that certain Security packages disable Defender... which was not mentioned anywhere in my materials.

Uninstall the security stuff, and start up Defender. Defender needed an update and to do a scan, which took 5 hours for a full scan. I wonder how long it will take when I actually have put data on the computer?

I will briefly summarize my experience by saying (1) no more HP computers, and (2) next computer -hopefully - will be a Mac.
Therefore, I shall have a Mac in 3 years. Three years is the time an HP computer lasts, like many other brands. Three years almost exactly.

--

Goofy Climate

I have been reading comments on weather stories, and I guess it is pretty sad commentary on not enough basic education in science, lack of trust in leadership (much of it well deserved), and credulousness.

I know the following:

1) the changes to our way of life caused by climate change (by whatever cause, whether normal or man-made) will be staggering,

2) we shall not be ready for it,

3) to cope with it will damage our democracy even further than it has been damaged by our War on Terror.


--

An Adventure In Art (50)

Preparing Tea

Carol Marine

Carol Marine's Painting A Day (or almost)

http://carolmarine.blogspot.com/

--

Cow Dynasty

Daily Yonder
http://www.dailyyonder.com/reality-tv-seeks-uninhibited-cowboy-family/2014/01/08/7104

Reality TV Seeks "Uninhibited" Cowboys
Reality television continues to push its way into rural America like urban sprawl.

A television production company has put out a casting call for “authentic and colorful cowboys and their families” to appear in a “docu-reality” television program.

The announcement apparently went to the Montana Cattleman’s Association in early November. A more recent notice of the announcement appears here, in the AgricultureProud blog.

Orion Entertainment says it’s looking for a family with at least three kids “that are all great looking cowboys and cowgirls” who work in “stunning ranches with diverse terrain and challenges.” Those challenges might include “chasing grizzlies and wolves away from cattle.”

Finding handsome rancher families may not be too difficult, but other requirements may be harder to meet. Cast members will need to be versatile and perform more than just chores.

“Members of the family and staff should have fun hobbies and skills like [the ability to sing], play the guitar or harmonica, write and recite poetry, cook the best BBQ in the county, make their own clothes, raise bees or have wild animals as pets, raise bulls, or be an aspiring bull rider or rodeo participant.”

Multi-generational families, feel free to apply. "Grandparents are a plus," the announcement says...

--

The Day After Tomorrow

When I wrote of the film The Day After Tomorrow, I did not mean to imply that the science in the film has any sound scientific basis. I was merely emphasizing the speed at which things may change.

It was a license on my part, but I remember not so long ago - and even at present - when it was widely believed that climate changes occur over long periods of time. There was sort of a notion of geological epochs required.

Not true.
Quick-like, fast-fast.

--

First Recipient Of The Climate Denial Penalty Tax

I first read this as a sudden realization by Mr. Trump that there is indeed Climate Change, and we had best do something about it. However, it seems probable that Mr. Trump is focusing on the word "Warming" and very logically sees an immense contradiction between that word and the reality of the polar vortex which brought my family temperatures of -30 degrees Fahrenheit Monday night, Tuesday morning.

Thanks, Mr. Trump. That one went over my head. Thank you for pointing it out.

And actually the contradiction did become apparent to me at sometime in the past, and I would say it was the late 1980's or the early 1990's. At the time, we had been experiencing cold winters in various parts of the globe, and there was indeed a hypothesis among some meteorological scientists that the climate was growing colder.
This view was quickly usurped by the hypothesis that there was Global Warming and that much of it was induced by the actions of mankind. It was further indicated that the Climate Change could cause more extreme weather events, be they hot or cold, dry or wet.

Mr. Trump is focused on "warming" and ignores "weather variability".
An overall increase of, say, 4 degrees Centigrade (or Celsius) is an average, and that indicates not necessarily that every place in the world is uniformly and homeostatically 4 degrees warmer than before, but that when we add together the hot and the cold... and the extremely hot and the extremely cold, we will get an average that is 4 degrees higher than days of yore.
And a moment's reflection will give us an idea of how hot it must be to average out a period of -34 degrees Celsius (equivalent to -30 degrees Fahrenheit) and come up with an average of +4 degrees Celsius, indicating a spell of very hot weather for an equal period or a spell of Hadean hot weather for a briefer period.
(Or a merely hot weather period for a long, long time.)

Mr. Trump and his enterprises should be among the first to receive the Ignorance Of Climate Change tax penalty of 30%  (or more) on all expenditures funding fundamental ignorance of the task we all soon face.

--

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday and Today to the Orthodox Christian communities of the world!

From the small

Child At Kazan Cathedral, Volgograd

to the Powerful

Vladimir Putin At Holy Face of Christ The Savior Church, Sochi

A mighty feast!

--

Old Detroit In Photos

Dave Jordano's pictures

September 4, 1973  Four carny workers at what looks like the Michigan State Fair grounds.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/01/06/dave_jordano_a_photographer_s_look_back_at_life_in_detroit_during_the_1970s.html


Wikipedia:

The first official Michigan State Fair was held in 1849, which is claimed by the state of Michigan to be the oldest state fair in the United States. The first fair was held in Detroit, Michigan. Subsequent fairs were held in other cities until it received its permanent home in 1905 at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit.

In 1904, Joseph L. Hudson, together with three of his associates, decided to give the State Fair its permanent home. They formed the State Fair Land Company, which acquired 135 acres between 7½ and 8 Mile Roads, east of Woodward Avenue. Because Hudson had no interest in running the fair, he sold the land to the Michigan State Agricultural Society for one dollar on April 18, 1905. The Agricultural Society accepted the land then purchased an additional 32 acres, extending the fairgrounds to 167 acres. Throughout the following years, additional land was purchased and sold. The present size of the fairgrounds is 164 acres

On October 30, 2009, Governor Jennifer Granholm cut all funding to the Michigan State fair.Attendance peaked at 1.2 million in 1966. In 2009 the fair attracted 217,000 visitors. The state fair was not held in 2010 and 2011.

On April 9, 2012, Governor Rick Snyder signed Senate Bill 515 and House Bill 4803, which would authorize the transfer of the fairgrounds land to the Land Bank Fast Track Authority, which would oversee the land for future development, including plans for a station for the proposed commuter rail service...

That's the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper.
--

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow

I liked the film The Day After Tomorrow. It was about catastrophic climate change.t
I seem to remember that most reviews panned some of the science, saying that some eminent scientists said such climate changes could not happen so quickly.
A random example,
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641700583.html

... Some eminent climatologists have said the science is dodgy and that changes would be much slower, but the effects could be worse than the film envisages. A colder comfort would be hard to imagine.

I have often said that these things do happen quickly.
You should say it, too. It should be clear to every one by now.

In the summer of 2003, a heat wave swept Europe:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-09-25-france-heat_x.htm

France heat wave death toll set at 14,802
PARIS (AP) — The death toll in France from August's blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000.

Scientists at INSERM, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, deduced the toll by determining that France had experienced 14,802 more deaths than expected for the month of August...

When the final report was issued by the group of scientists investigating what happened to Europe in the summer of 2003, I remember one scientist (I think it may have been the spokeswoman for the group) said that what truly surprised them was the speed at which these climate changes had occurred.
The scientists had expected such climate events, but not as early as 2003.

That was 10 years ago.
The thing that stood out to scientific minds was the SPEED of change.

So now we are in a polar vortex.
I watched the approach since New Year's Day on Weather Unferground, using their Model Maps, and in particular the GFS maps for forecasted  temperatures at 850 millibars pressure, which corresponds to a height of just under 4,800 feet or 1,500 meters.
It would be the elevation of Denver approximately, and I used that as my temperature predictor, for the GFS runs out to about 3 weeks of forecasted data.

When I saw the great sagging udders of cold air...

I unfortunately have viewed arctic weather as a massive Ice Cow, for the cold air masses sort of "hang down" or extend towards the lower latitudes from the North Pole, and they take the shape roughly of a sock or sagging bag... or an udder pendulously hanging down from the Arctic Circle and brushing across the continent... mooing lamentably like cattle trapped by snow on the Great Plains...

... when I saw the forecast cold air, I yelped out loud, and my wife asked me what was going on.

Today it has arrived.
At first the weather news said that such weather had not been seen in 5 years, then 20 years, and now it has not been seen in decades. Notice how fast they change things?
I think I would have some sort of memory of -14 degrees at night 5 years ago.

I woke up last night around 2:00 AM. It was a bit windy, nothing too much. As I sat in the library, my reading light flickered once, then again a few minutes later. Even though we have underground cables here, not every cable supplying the area is buried.

So I imagined the scenario of the power going out, just as it did in Lansing, Michigan during the ice storm at Christmas time; I imagined the power going out when the temperature was maybe 10 degrees Fahrenheit and a wind chill of -14.

I thought back on all the years and all the fears, all the predictions and all the warnings about our power grid. I thought back to when Spencer Abraham was Secretary of Energy, and he warned about the grid and he was there during the great power outage of 2003.
He retired in 2007.

ROBERT KENNEDY, JR.
Well, under Spencer Abraham’s leadership, the Department of Energy seemed to be more interested in serving big energy contributors from the oil and coal industry specifically and from the nuclear energy industry than serving the public interest.

Maybe, maybe not. I would have to go back and study it.

Even so, the infrastructure of the country continues to be neglected. When disaster strikes, will the electricity flow? Will communications be interrupted? Will the roads suffice for evacuation?  (hardly... around here, the road system could barely handle the numbers of people shopping to get ready for this big winter storm Ion.)

This is what our leaders need to do.

Give me a political platform that shows me how it will spend money to restore the infrastructure and protect the well-being of the people.
And I do not care if the level of the deficit is increased within reasonable limits.
The deficit is not our biggest problem.
We think it is because we have watched too many digital clocks counting the dollars spent by the government every second of every day, and we have become lemmings in full flight response.

We have put ourselves in a State of Perfect Irony, in that our power and wealth have delivered us to a position where we cannot spend to avert or repair disasters, and we loathe to spend to protect our allies militarily.
We cannot help ourselves.
We are in a time of Quick and Vast change everywhere, and we shall not be able to help ourselves.

We need a new political vision.
(We need to see a lot of things in new ways, but we'll start here.)

We also need to enact a punitive tax upon all climate deniers who have hobbled our efforts to moderate climate change. From Exxon to the Koch Brothers and well beyond, a 10% tax on income or profits before taxes would help fund what is needed.

Perhaps a 30% tax on the monies spent on climate denier efforts would be a just tax to impose.

Ian Holm  The Day After Tomorrow

--

What's Up With That?

Solution to Cloud Riddle Reveals Hotter Future: Global Temperatures to Rise at Least 4 Degrees C by 2100
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131231094442.htm

Dec. 31, 2013 — Global average temperatures will rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced according to new research published in Nature. Scientists found global climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than most previous estimates.

The research also appears to solve one of the great unknowns of climate sensitivity, the role of cloud formation and whether this will have a positive or negative effect on global warming.

"Our research has shown climate models indicating a low temperature response to a doubling of carbon dioxide from pre-industrial times are not reproducing the correct processes that lead to cloud formation," said lead author from the University of New South Wales' Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science Prof Steven Sherwood.

"When the processes are correct in the climate models the level of climate sensitivity is far higher. Previously, estimates of the sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from 1.5°C to 5°C. This new research takes away the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates, meaning that global average temperatures will increase by 3°C to 5°C with a doubling of carbon dioxide." ...

This is one of those moments.
Do we say , "Told ya!", or do we run for the hills, and let the devil take the hindmost?

I seem to recall reading that 4 degrees Centigrade will radically change life as we know, and right quick-like.
4 degrees seem to be the point at which we dusted off terms like "catastrophic", and "extinction events".

Now that that seems to be the road we have chosen, perhaps scientists no longer deem it necessary to introject those negative avoidance words to try and deter our folly.

--

The Bells Of New Year's

Once again the gunshots fired into the air at midnight awakened me to New Year's Day.
It seems to have taken a while, for when I looked at the clock, it was 12:15 AM, so there had been 15 minutes of gun fire required to ease me from my slumber. Must have been a pretty sound slumber. I supposed that even Armageddon would need at least 5 minutes to wake me.

You can hear gun shots from quite a distance, and the pop-pop-popping went on for a couple of hours.

The sound was guns. It always has been. This is not Chinese New Year, so it was not firecrackers.

She-who-must-be-obeyed told me that some officious do-gooder was urging the locals to ring bells instead of shooting guns. Ring in the New Year with a joyous tintinnabulation! Ring with bells gold and silver, brass and iron; make a cheerful noise unto the Lord with a tolling of bells!!!!!!!!!

I snorted in derision.

"Where does one buy a bell?" I asked.

"I don't think WalMart has a bell section. There are no local Mom and Pop bell stores downtown. Even if there were a school supply store nearby, they would only have bells if they also carried slates and hick'ry sticks. Maybe the teacher needs one, that is, if they still call her the School Marm,"  I continued.

She nodded in agreement.

"I'll bet you it is 10 times easier to buy a gun than it is to buy a bell!"

Ring in the New Year, indeed!

Snort!

--

The Christmas Carol, Pre-Restoration Poets משׁ-משׁ

 The Twelve Days of Christmas Schematic

First, I write "mish-mosh" as משׁ-משׁ
That is my yiddish, my homage to Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Springer, and if someone does not like it, too bad. I never said I was a learned man. I can't even remember the name for the hyphen between words in Hebrew. Mappiq comes to mind, but I think that's a dot that doubles a consonant.

Mish-Mosh is "mixed up" or "mixed together", maybe an anagram, maybe a Mad-Libs of unrelated sentences and words.
It can be a soup or stew into which a cook throws everything but the kitchen sink.
It could also be pronounced "mosh-mish", and is a good example of its own meaning, sort of a self-referential expression.

For example, thus far, this post is a mish-mosh, and nobody knows what I am talking about.

OK.
Reading the Signs (http://readingthesigns.blogspot.com/) sent a comment along about Christmastide and mentioned the 12 drummers drumming of the carol "The Twelve Days Of Christmas".

This immediately reminded me of a year when Christmastide seemed a little too hum-drum and boring. Things were beginning to drag. I called myself Ishmael... quite a few times, mumbling at the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth, leading She-who-must-be-obeyed to begin to get references for neurologists.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time that the nephews should be arriving upon me doorstep.

At last my three nephews, Ayden, Austin, and Aloysius (pronounced a-LOY-shus for all you who are not Sons of Hibernia) blew into town on the wings of Borealis (the north wind) and over tea we discussed not the Christmas goose, but ways to "goose" the Christmas feast... as it were.

My Three Nephews

Later over other beverages we decided to take the plunge into the dark arts of combining Christmas carols and the poetry of the Pre-Restoration English poets.
It soon morphed into the inclusion of all English poets; no point in restricting it.
I started with sort of a Mad-Libs scenario: a poem of Byron wherein I would excise portions and ask about for a line from Ginsberg or Bukowski... or even Donald Gaines.... or Danielle Steele, not even restricting it to poetry.

Then it underwent a change, and we generated things like

"And therefore never send to know for whom the 12 drummers drum;
they drum for thee."

and this went on for the entire set of verses,

"And therefore never send to know for whom the 10 lords leap;
they leap for thee."
 [...]
"And therefore never send to know for whom the 8 maids milk;
they milk for thee."

all the way down to,

"And therefore never send to know for whom the partridge perches;
it perches for thee."

Since we happily included Post-Restoration poets, we could do things like

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey;
And merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!

There are few rules, and you make them up on the fly.
All that is needed is that there must be enough of the poem to allow the glögg befuddled and rum-spiked egg nog inebriated minds of even the densest dancing Fezziwig and Fan to easily place the poetry and carol.

Now I think you will agree that this is a true, blue Christmas miracle, as well as a good משׁ-משׁ


--

Balaam Speaks

I had a discussion of religion over the holidays, and it was with a person who had many, many beliefs. They had an enormous belief system. It sort of reminded me of Howl's Moving Castle (2004 by Miyazaki; see below), tall, wide, clunky, creaky, leaking steam from the joints, dripping hydraulic fluid, and all kept together by fervently wishful thinking.

I told them about my lack of "belief systems".
I actually went further and critiqued the word "belief".
Of course, I was accused of making it all a matter of semantics, which was sort of a tautology, since we were, indeed, fencing not with dull wooden children's swords, but with the "meaning" of words; it was, indeed, all a matter of "meaning".

It was tedious. Since I do not drink alcohol, I have no idea why I was involved in this. It was the type of discussion one gets into at a bar when there are no good-looking dolls to flirt with.

Anyway, I ended it by saying that I was metaphorically Balaam.

My opponent looked at me oddly, and asked if I were admitting finally that I was a bad prophet of deviously evil advice (as they had already been sneakily thinking to themselves). 
They may not have heard the word "metaphorically", or they may have thought it was all semantics.

Nope, I said. There's another take on it. (I love the word "take" meaning "understanding" or "interpretation". I think the expression "hermeneutics" should be changed to "take speak" or something equally looney that is appropriate for the present age. I also like "on tap" heard so often on cable news, and meaning "scheduled to be presented". I like comparing world events to various beers.)

I resisted the urge to explain, something I could not have withstood 20 years ago.

Someday it will dawn on my friendly debate partner that I meant that I had been talking to an ass.

--

Dodging An Ice Bullet

I'm off to my mother's to get her some food-stuffs.

There will be light snow starting at midnight Saturday - today - and the heavy snow begins Sunday PM, so I have to get there shop, do some other things I would have done Monday... because I wont be there Monday. It is going to be 14 below zero Monday night, and I have to take care of my own place with its own ice and snow.

My mother's place is very warm and tight. There are almost no drafts.
I will tell her to not go out an grab the mail by the front door; there will probably be no mail until Tuesday anyway.

I called her last night. She watches Cable news, so the weather news is slow getting to her.
I look at the Weather Underground or Unisys weather model maps, so I can get 10 days ahead.

Her first response was that everyone should go up to her place for however long the bad weather lasted, which I figured to be 2 to 3 days.
Well, she has no internet, and too much togetherness will undoubtedly drive us crazy. We've tried it, we know.

I said why did not she come down here? I could pick her up.
No, that was out of the question. All her stuff was there. I guess she figures we ain't got no stuff; we do not have favorite cozy beds and special coffees and teas for the morning and afternoon; we must also prefer mustards and condiments that have the date "2005" emblazoned on the bottles, as do hers.

"Hasn't killed me," she says.

Condiments from pre-barcode days are commonplace. I remember once there was something from the days before ingredients and nutritional info were listed. She still has a jar of powdered nutmeg we used for Christmas that is from her old house, so it is at least 17 years old. If you know what fresh nutmeg smells like, this smells like nutmeg, dust bunnies, and rust.

So I'll go, check and see if my brother needs anything, too. I might boogie before midnight. They say there will be a slow 3 inches by morning, and 3 inches - if there is any attempt at snow removal - is not bad. On New Year's Day there was 2 to 3 slow inches, but the municipalities weren't taking any responsibility seriously other than hangovers and football.
There was some effort, although I did not see any snow plows/salt truck trucks until later in the day. It was a slow drive, but do-able.
Last February there was a similar snow and the municipalities made NO effort until the snow was done. Maybe by February they had run low on funds. It was not enjoyable. From Oakland County into Detroit the I-75 was 6 lanes of cars going 5 mph. The ramps were iced. The surface streets were awful.
No road crews were anywhere on pavement.

I thought these were the workers and managers for the municipalities that were supposed to be getting cushy pensions... so, get it done!


All I ask is that you warn us.

There is that little band of news that runs along the bottom of the cable screen, telling us all the schools and academies that are closed on snow days. Add a notice:  All Municipalities Refuse To Get Off Their Duffs For Snow Control Until Further Notice! Drive At Your Own Risk!


--

ps.
I know driving in weather.
I drove 110 miles a day minimum on business days for 37 years, summer and winter. And our business was weather-sensitive.
You get to know weather conditions.

In Which Some Folks Ask The Magic Eight Ball About Jesus

I was shocked by how this story worked out.

1) Jesus the Magician? Archaeological Find Unlikely As Earliest Reference to Jesus Christ
http://ezinearticles.com/?Jesus-the-Magician?-Archaeological-Find-Unlikely-As-Earliest-Reference-to-Jesus-Christ&id=1593610

A bowl newly discovered in Alexandria, Egypt, and dated to the period from the late second century BCE to the early first century CE bears an engraving that may be the world's earliest known reference to Jesus Christ. The engraving reads dia chrstou ogoistais, translated by the excavation team as "through Christ the magician." According to French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, co-founder of the Oxford Center of Maritime Archaeology, and Egyptologist David Fabre, the phrase could very well be a reference to Jesus Christ, since he was one known as a primary exponent of white magic.

The team found the bowl during their underwater excavation of the ancient harbor of Alexandria. They speculate that a first-century magus may have used the bowl to tell fortunes. They note that the bowl is very similar to one depicted on two early Egyptian statuettes that are thought to show a soothsaying ritual. Ancient soothsaying manuals describe a technique in which the fortune teller poured oil into water and then entered an ecstatic state while studying the whirling mix. In the hallucinatory state, the fortune-teller hoped to meet mystical beings that could field questions about the future. The inscription, the archaeologists theorize, may have served to legitimize the soothsaying by invoking the name of Christ, acknowledged to be a wonder-worker.

[...]


How weighty is the evidence?
o Is it "Christ" or "Good"? - The archaeologists may have mistaken one Greek word for another in their interpretation. A glance at the photograph of the cup reveals a letter between the rho ("P") and the sigma ("C"). The letter, though poorly formed, seems unmistakably the letter eta ("H"). If this identification is correct, then the lexical form of the Greek word inscribed is not christos, but chrestos, meaning "kind, loving, good, merciful."

The prepositional phrase, then, probably indicates that the bowl was a gift, given "through kindness" from some benefactor. It seems obvious that chrestou is much more likely than christou for the engraved word. Rather than referring to the power of Christ, the word chrestou might be a reference to the person who gave the cup as a gift-as we might write on a gift "from Donald with best wishes." This explanation seems as plausible as its alternative is unlikely.

I had read about the cup in another place, and being familiar with some of the literature of Jesus as a magician, right along with Simon Magus, I was fascinated.

I did not read about the evidence, however, at first, nor did I read the inscription myself.

2)
I ended up at http://gwynraven.livejournal.com/1063796.html 
who seems to be a young lady who does not even read Greek, but I needed her to point out that there is a Greek letter "Eta" in the phrase dia chrstou, so the proper reading is dia chrēstou.
This is immediately obvious, and the letter actually does not seem "poorly formed". I tried scratching an "eta" onto some sheetrock, and one cannot make the rounded edges; it comes out exactly like that upon the cup.

There is absolutely no basis for believing this refers to Jesus Christ based upon the inscription.
It can only be done if one totally ignores the "eta".

3)
The incorrect transcription has "the magician" and "chrestos/christos" in different grammatical cases.
If it said,  "Through Christ, the Magician", the words Christ and Magician would both be in the genitive case. As it is, the word Magician is nominal and "chrestos/christos" is genitival.

Words in apposition:  "Christ, the Magician"    would be in the same case, not in two different cases.
Something like   dia christou tou ogoistou  .

4)
Chrestos interestingly enough is used in fortune telling, and means a good augury or a happy outcome.

There is a use of  " dia "  with the verb " to be "  which translates "being in a state of..."
So "dia chestou" could be "in the state of a happy telling of future fortune" or something like that.

Furthermore, the verb "to be" is often not expressed, but the reader assumes it is there. We do the same thing at times.


If indeed this is a fortune teller's cup or bowl, I would do a first draft as:

The Magician or Fortune Teller  (is) (in the state of) (having received) a happy fortune (for you).

There may have been a fellow bowl which displayed the unhappy outcome, and together they formed an ancient Magic Eight-Ball.

The question remains as to how this nonsense could be perpetrated on the public!

--

The Laws Of Guns

 

Originally, people thought of guns as guaranteeing our freedoms. That is the entire spirit of the Second Amendment.

However, it seems as if our society sees them and uses them as instruments of various forms of anarchy and subversion of the social peace.

I cannot believe that if the Framers of the Constitution were confronted with these absurdly repetitive killings by fire arms they would have phrased the Second Amendment the way they do, for they would have realized that the guns were being subverted out of the context of political freedom and its guarantees into some terrible punctuated and occasional social self-genocide.

The Second would have been vastly different.

--

"Conservative" Media Pile On

 Shag Carpet

That is "pile" as in the pile of a carpet.

I do not like carpeting. I like rugs, particularly from the Middle East. I like to see them on hardwood floors. But carpeting is not to my liking. It holds the dirt, grime, dander, and dust mites forever. Carpeting is more like a zone of habitation than it is decor for my domicile.

Your can take rugs out and throw them over the clothes line and beat the dirt out with a rug beater. It will poof! into the air, and then fall to the ground.
With carpeting, you really just push the powdery dust around, creating newly cut deep furrows and harrowing the old. Discing is what you do; we let the carpet set, then turn up the dirt, discing it with vacuum plowshare.

Did you ever see a home where there's is sadness? Did you ever see it when the sun streams in through windows that have not been washed for a while, then through white curtains that look and feel indisposed, and then they hurl what's left of the masticated and undigested sunlight upon a faded carpet?
Does it not look like Harry Hope's bar in The Iceman Cometh, like the bottom of the sea rathskeller?
And are we not very sure that Harry has not cleaned the carpeting in his front room, nor has he washed the windows that front the street in the last 20 years since his wife, Bess, passed away?

Conservative media is like shag carpeting: it holds the dirt forever.
For example, even though the New York Times has published an investigation into Benghazi destroying most conservative points, they will not be expunged from the conservative collective.
That shag carpet, deep, rough, and miserly of the dust and the minute life that lives on it, will hold everything deep within its pile.

There is a point when one is no longer questioning, but is actively spreading despair.

We have passed it.

Watch what happens.


--

Today

Today is Childermas, by the way; the Feast of the Holy Innocents murdered by King Herod.

God bless the children.

--

Turing Tests For Bloggers

I have just encountered the most difficult "Please prove you're not a robot" test I have ever seen !

One of the many variations I saw was the word  "Geâts"  with a bloody circumflex on the "a"!
Since this was Beowulf's clan, I thought it grossly unfair to be coupled with a undecipherable second word.
(furthermore, I had purchased the cheap computer whose keyboard did not have the European accented vowels! My next laptop will even have a qamets-hey on it.)

I think http://thetrouserpress.blogspot.com/ makes up his own Turing tests. I think I shall start to do my own.

--

No Country For Old Men

Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff in the film No Country For Old Men is an observer, not a solver of crimes, not a hero to right wrongs. His sole purpose is to watch silently as the "country" passes from a state that was intelligible to him and made "common sense" into a vast wasteland of destruction.

The inverse rites of passage from the Quick to the Dead are reflected in his weary face, and in his decision to retire. They are reflected in the seemingly endless passage of money from hands to hands, from hiding place to hiding place, and the movement in its wake as it draws all the lives of those it has touched into a whirlpool of death.

I think of the forests that once covered our country from coast to coast. They are all gone.
I look at and dream of the prairie flowers and grasses which carpeted the Great Plains. They are islands and museums now.
The Native Americans passed away from east of the Mississippi to the West, where their fate was no more benign.

Now they say that if America draws down its troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban is back in power by 2017.
I could have told you that back in 2003, when Afghanistan went on the back-burner.

The only thing we did was to pay a trillion simoleons so that the Taliban could vacation in the mountains for five or six years, then come back refreshed.

We shall perish in the wake of a trillion simoleons there, four trillion dollars in Iraq, and a terminal inability to focus on real issues.
Ain't no country for old men no more.

--

Republican Nightmare Cinema 1

--

Positive Polarity

If you have read the post on Negative Polarity today, http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/12/negative-polarity.html, then .... spoiler alert? Anyway, go read and return after a while.

OK. If you have read post, then it may have dawned on you that there must be Positive Polarity Items, too.

I think "oodles" is one such PPI.
Compare "I think your dog is oodles of fun" versus "I do not think your dog is oodles of fun." Although I may say the first (in some alternative universe), I would never say the second, especially after stepping into oodles of dog feces left in the summer cottage backyard on Fathers' Day, 2013.

--

The Rise In Health Care Costs

 

Adam Smith   by Michael Hogue

Some people - myself being one - tend to view the rapid increase in health care costs to be very much akin to a financial bubble.

The problem with that is that it implies that nothing can effectively be done to avert the bursting of the bubble. Since the very fast rise in price is driven by irrational expectations of those in the market, we know that the bubble will grow, all cautions will be thrown to the wind, and when there is trouble, panic may ensue, causing the bursting of the bubble.

There really is no way to stop the crowd of financial lemmings headed for their cliff of choice. Sermons, cautions, tales of wise old men, none of these can hold a candle next to the brilliance of the false promises of Ponzi rewards for every investor.

The only way to control such things are the institution of Regulators, who perform the function of Governors on steam engines, allowing steam pressure to be controlled and preventing the catastrophe of a run-away increase of steam pressure. Or, more to our time, they act as the graphite rods inserted into a nuclear reactor to control the chain reaction.

This day and age does not like Regulators. Our faith is on Free Markets and Invisible Hands.

However, even Adam Smith did not believe in free markets like we do. Read a review of his Theory Of Moral Sentiments at The American Conservative,
 http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/adam-smith-communitarian/

--

Negative Polarity

 

Scissors Grinder, by Karl Malevich

(I could not find a picture of a Tinker)

Negative Polarity Items on All Things Linguistic:
http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/61793502009/giving-a-shit-about-negative-polarity-items

NPI stands for Negative Polarity Item, and they’re called that because they tend to be found in the scope of negation and serve to emphasize that negation. Classic examples are any, ever, and even, which sound great in negative sentences like (1-4) but pretty weird in the positive equivalents in (5-8).*

(1) I don’t love anyone.
(2) We are never, ever, getting back together.
(3) I don’t even know myself.
(4) I don’t want to go to sleep either.

(5) *I love anyone.
(6) *We are ever getting back together.
(7) *I even know myself.
(8) *I want to go to sleep either...

 I came up with "a tinker's dam"  (or "damn", if you must)  as in "I don't give a tinker's dam" versus "I do give a tinker's dam." Obviously a negative polarity item.

--

First Amendment Rights

Having thought about the First Amendment which prohibits the making of any law abridging the right of freedom of speech, I have concluded at this time that if I deprive someone of a TV show on which to state their views, I have not abridged their right of freedom of speech - for they are free to speak whatever they wish - but I have merely abridged their propagation of speech.

There is no amendment that guarantees the right to wide and loud propagation of speech, Citizens' United notwithstanding.

The amendment does not guarantee the right to the wide broadcast of any idea. It guarantees the freedom to express the idea, but not necessarily to spend money to spread it.


--

The Monster-Woman Reflects

If you recall, Mr. Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 2012, had a favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand.
Libertarians, some conservatives, Sean Hannity, and Paul Ryan extolled her philosophy of Objectivism.

Ms. Rand was very deep, indeed.
From Romancing The Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand And William Hickman
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)

At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan.According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)

"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.

So the question is, who exactly was he?

William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.

You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer.

Other than that, he was probably a swell guy.

In December of 1927, Hickman, nineteen years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get custody of a twelve-year-old girl, Marian (sometimes Marion) Parker.

Marian Parker's dead and dismembered body was found soon after.

Further on,

[...]

Now here are some of Rand's notes on the fictional hero she was developing, with Hickman (or what he "suggested") as a model:

"Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.' "

"He shows how impossible it is for a genuinely beautiful soul to succeed at present, for in all [aspects of] modern life, one has to be a hypocrite, to bend and tolerate. This boy wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn't approve of."

Apparently what Hickman suggested to Ayn Rand was "a genuinely beautiful soul." The soul of Marian Parker, the murdered girl, evidently did not suggest any comparably romantic notions to her.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a term for a person who has "no organ" by which to understand other human beings -- a person who "can never realize and feel 'other people.'" That word is sociopath. I mean this quite literally and not as a rhetorical flourish. A sociopath, by definition, is someone who lacks empathy and cannot conceive of other people as fully real. It is precisely because the sociopath objectifies and depersonalizes other human beings that he is able to inflict pain and death without remorse...

Leopold and Loeb come to mind immediately.
The story is ghastly, and we almost had a new national philosopher who reveled in such horrors.
Some have put it down to youthful infatuation with Nietzsche in European philosophy. There was a good deal of interest in the Nietzschean Superman in Europe at the time, just as there was in genetic purity in America under the aegis of the Euthanasia Society of America (which itself is a history worth reading).

Read it and vomit at how close we came to a new low.

(Note:  I do not for one minute think Paul Ryan ever got further than watching the movie with Gary Cooper. Hannity probably did not get that far.)

--
you may also read a post in The Daily Kos,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/19/968385/-Hero-or-Monster-Ayn-Rand-and-William-Hickman#

--

Post Meditationem Omne Animal...

A note on the post Meditation 1/27/2013

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/12/meditation-12272013.html

The second but last paragraph:

That is why there are always mountains to climb and rivers to cross: intelligent life is myriad in its detail. In its desire for expression, it goes through every possibility, including those we call evil, bad, ugly.

This seems to imply something in moral philosophy. It seems to say that if evil is always with mankind, it is because evil is a choice that has a certain probability of occurring, even though it is not part of the nature of mankind.
Evil comes from having too many choices and millenia of time to choose in.
Just as there are benign periods of beauty, so also are there times of ugliness; there are times of peace, and times for war.

There is a time for everything under the sun, and everything possible under the sun.
Therefore, be firm in virtue, for the probability of Misery Comin' Around is greater than zero.

--

A Duck In The Crowd

Huck, the Duckster

Mike Huckabee seems to have found his calling with the Duck-troversy over the TV show Duck Dynasty.
I even read an article from Newsmax (It was a first-time reader experience for me.) about him:

"We're willing to say live and let live until someone says, 'but we want all of you who hold these views to just shut up and go away,'" said Huckabee, who is also a Baptist minister. "And I think a lot of people said, 'no, we're not going away, and we're not going to shut up. We're going to stand with Phil.'"

O.K.
I will not ask about which of his descriptions of stuff you are really tight with him, Hucka-Duck. I will not ask.
It's good to have a role model, or a totem, or a hero figure to look up to. That's part of growing up.

I used to watch A&E; it used to mean Arts and Entertainment. The "Arts" have disappeared lately. Ditto with Bravo. Even Mozart would find it hard going against the likes of  The Real Housewives and Ducks.

I personally do not see the Duck-troversy as a self-defining moment, nor a movement defining moment, mainly because the manner in which the ideas were brought forth was overly graphic, and made me think more of ancient rituals of procreation as filmed by Cecil B. DeMille than Christianity. Sermons should avoid language which may enflame the spirit of concupiscence. Everything has it own time and place.

However, I did have a distinct Andy Griffith moment over the whole business.

Not Matlock. Not Sheriff Andy Taylor. (Come on! Get real, here!)

A Face In The Crowd, where he played Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes.
Patricia Neal was also in it, Elia Kazan produced it, and Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay. If you flash on it, you are saying "Ah, ha!".
If not , Google it.

 Lonesome Rhodes

Keep in mind I am not saying that Phil Robertson (or Roberts, or whatever the name be) is "like" Lonesome Rhodes morally or in any other way.
I am saying that the process of creating fame and celebrity by the media is the same, and such machinations are fraught with dangers.

As the good Baron Frankenstein eventually said, after a long tutorial in terror, "There are some things Man is not supposed to know !"

--

Meditation 12/27/2013

Quantum Needlepoint

All expressions of intelligence are related, since they come from the same place: the mind of mankind.

Over time, they grow and they differ between themselves.

Rites and rituals were actions that tended to be enacted habitually over time. There was no dogma nor idea behind them. Rather, there was intelligent activity and there was repetition of actions that served the intelligent beings as they felt or judged there to be a need.

The genius of architecture perhaps bloomed within the caves of Lascaux, when intelligence descended within a form structure into darkness, eventually finding enough space to stand, to light a torch, and to see with awe that the vault above suddenly went into a lofty vastness; they stood in a place truly ineffable.

From architecture we can derive cozy cottages or sprawling McMansions that seem to go on forever, ever seeking volume to consume, seeking the elusive beauty of space humanly defined.

Just as religions of warcraft, violence, and eternally recurring death may come from the experience of God, so also comes the religions of help and succour and resurrection.

Nothing remains constant and still within life, and even less so in intelligent life.
That is why there are always mountains to climb and rivers to cross: intelligent life is myriad in its detail. In its desire for expression, it goes through every possibility, including those we call evil, bad, ugly.

It is the nature of intelligent life. That is the moral dimension that beautiful quanta do not have: the ability to jump into existence from the vacuum in a clumsy or nasty way. Only mankind and the animals can do that.

--

Health Insurance On St. Stephen's Day

Face Painting, More and More Used to Keep Away Evil

Spirits when Health Insurance is Unaffordable.  It Also is

a Practice that Some Use to Replace Child Vaccination.

We met some friends for lunch yesterday, St. Stephen;s Day, or Boxing Day, which is just another day in the Twelve Days of Christmas, all friendly and warm and...perhaps nice, perhaps; we all get a bit wacky as we age, or we become less adept at hiding it.

I won't go into detail until after the Twelve Days. Really should not complain right in media res, as it were.

So we met for lunch, and my friend and I start nibbling around the Affordable Care Act. He gives me his phone with an email from some guy who is a consulting engineer, who tells us how much he makes, tells us how hard he works, and tells us he really buys into the whole symbolic thing of "nose to the grindstone" and "penny saved is a penny earned".
He lives with a doll - remember, he is a "guy", so she is a "doll"; that's how it works in Nathan Detroit's system - and she doesn't make as much as him.
So they need some of that high priced health insurance under ObamaCare.

Quite an email, I said. Then I said "Fan email from some flounder?" I said, Bullwinklishly.


He told me blah-blah-ObamaCare-blah...

So I told the story about how our cost of health insurance under Michigan Blue Cross/Blue Shield skyrocketed in the years before we jumped onto the Medicare lifeboat.
One year our premiums jumped from around $600+ to around$900 per month.

That was some years ago.

I told my friend that I do not care if this engineer finds insurance expensive. It has always been expensive. My family found it expensive, but the Republican Party did not ask me for a testimonial that they could email out to the country at large.
FOX News did not cover the 35% increase to holders of private health insurance in Michigan.

No one cared then. Why should I care now?

Why should I care, when the real problem is the exponential rise in the Cost of Health Care? Insurance will continue to rise under any insurance scheme as long as the costs of providing health care rise out of control.

The Media and Ourselves has once again conspired to argue about the items of lesser importance, and once again our attention is diverted by the 24/7 merry-go-round of trivia posing as news.

--

Christmas Poem 2013 #1

Jump, Christmas!

I am drawing Christmas lights with colored chalks
upon the sidewalk recording hop-scotch dreams:
won't never get to heaven ,
won't never see paradise,
oil, wine, bread, and salt; oil, wine, salt, and bread,
let me jump past Herod, Lord,
and I'll fly my way to Bethlehem,
next to thee to lay my head.

I am spinning Christmas gifts upon my loom,
with the yarn of barberry and holly plants:
will get to heaven soon,
I will sit in paradise,
pass over, red rover, pass over!
let me jump past Pilate, Lord!
I'll serve the Magi three and wise,
their gifts to Thee discover!

Christmas ornaments I sew from a piece of felt,
and sturdy snowmen make for a fine, straight tree!
pines trees grow by heaven!
we climb them up to paradise!
Small limbo, great limbo, and Great Rest!
let me hop-scotch today, Lord!
It is sunny Christmas day... or not!
Carolyn and me... we were best!

--
notes

picture above:  http://topbestappsforkids.com/best-kids-apps-snowrabbit/

many of he expressions are mentioned in the old hop-scotch diagrams

--

Film Titles

From writing about  "Boxing Day" , this popped into head:


The Bachelor

And The Sobbing-Boxer

--

The Boxer

Christmas Box on Ye!

Thus did my wife's relatives greet each other the day after, upon St. Stephen's Day, the daybreak after Christmas.
For it was Boxing Day.

There are many explanations of the term "Boxing Day", ranging from the servants downstairs giving and getting Christmas boxes upon this day as they rested from the chores of the 25th, all the way to imaginings about the Marquis of Queensbury.

I prefer to think of it as they day when, having received largish blocks of fun as gifts, the children begin to explore the many and varied playful uses of the immense packing boxes in which the gifts came.
Boxing Day is Irony. I am obsessed by irony, especially the ironic reversal from the gaudium of gifts to the castles of cardboard.

At any rate, Boxing Day is well named, for there are boxes, and there also is a goodly sized element of sparring back and forth.

I have some posts to make, but She-who-must-be-obeyed has an entire Jumanji safari of places, which I usually avoid, to go to today. Maybe that's what the season is all about, going places and doing things out of the ordinary in your life. I mean, I actually bought my younger brother a present.
Of course, he was immediately suspicious. Probably still is.

How was Christmas Dinner at my mother's?

My elder brother called at two in the afternoon to tell me they were starting their trip, and that a niece and her salad were not going to show up, appearance-at-the-festive-table-wise, due to an untimely onset of flu.
We would be an entire salad short for 15 people.

By that time, I knew how the wind blew, so I said that it was already a disaster, and a missing salad would not be noticed, really... perhaps we could create a "faux salad"  (or is that "fausse salade"?) out of bric-a-brac, and trompe-l'oeil the heck out of everybody!

And a nephew (not one of the trinity of nephews whose names begin with the letter "A") had become engaged, and was there with his fiancee. However, he confided in my mother, expecting her to share the news, but she told no one.
So there we were with hearty "Merry Christmas" on the tip of the tongue, but scant a "Congratulations!" or a "Huzzah!" or "It's about time!"
No celebratory champagne, or anything like that.

Had I known, I might have paid closer attention and actually have bought potato chips to go with the dip.
Maybe.
I did have a heart-to-heart with some nieces who were wondering why grandma always says picky things about their fingernail designs. I think I handled it well.

Merry Boxing!

--

Christmas Morning Lite

On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day
handsome young men, young women were we!

O, that we are! O, that we are! Beee-you'-tiful!
You just look at us, and see!

Now Jesus born, in Bethlehem...
even better we shall be!



--
notes

accent on second syllable in "beee-you-ti-ul"
(beautiful)

Our first Christmas with no kids about. Everyone is at their own homes across the country.
It is a wonderful day, but the sense of anticipation is somewhat less. (That's why the morning is "lite".) No matter how stressful it may be, the hustle and bustle of the whirlpool of family often seems better than the silence which prevails when children are not present.


I feel a slow and sleepy temblor of change, like I feel I am looking at the small Christmas tree we put up, and I am traveling, and have just turned the corner where the road to the West comes out of the forest, and suddenly you know you are walking towards Avalon, the island of orchards and apples, the Alma Ata of new discovery, Hesperides and the golden, golden West.

What a wonderful thing are Mankind and their Creator!

--
thx to Plutarch and Lykurgos for help in the poem.

A Feeling Of Inadequacy On Christmas

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

W.B.Yeats

I know a young person who is worried whether they will measure up to the demands of their job.

In fact, I know a lot of people who are worried about such hypotheticals: will I measure up to the demands of my job? will I measure up to the demands of my family?
A lot us us wake up in the night watches and face stark fear in the face, perhaps because sleep lets down our defense mechanisms, and as we sail to Byzantium of dreams, we find it is No Country For Old Men (and Women), or for that matter, perhaps for young men and women, too.

We often read of celebrities who we think have got life by the tail, and have a wonderful life. Yet we find in interviews that they are beset by fears and self-doubts.
Just like we are.

The emotional state of feeling inadequate leads to our marginalization; it is a natural selection of the cards we deal in a game where we always fold, because we think the game is "too rich for our blood".

It is illogical.
Recognize it as such.

This Inadequacy Emotion  is the modern day remnant of the Flight Instinct.
When faced with a situation of potential danger, an entity may fight, and perhaps die, or it may flee, and live to fight some other day. The Flight Instinct preserves the entity by causing it to flee, maintains its existence and gene pool, and indeed live on to another day.

We may construct a hypothetical scenario like the above which illustrates why the Flight Instinct may indeed be naturally selected over the Instinct to Fight (or to Approach, or to indulge in Uncautious Curiousity).

The Instinct of Flight may lead to a preponderance of cautious individuals.
The Instinct to Fight may become predominant in other situations, particularly situations where the probability of our surviving a fight are rather good. For example, if we have tools and weapons, our chances of fighting and winning are quite a bit better than if we had to fight with hands and teeth.
Or if we have money;
Or if we have power to compel.

Our feeling of Inadequacy is nothing but the instinct to flee, surviving into the modern world, putting on the new clothes of our modern age, transforming itself into a new form of the very same emotion of old-time fear of the unknown.

Inadequacy can always be quantified. It can be measured.
If I cannot run more than 2 miles this morning at a rate of 6.25 mph, there is no hazy area in my sweaty awareness of it: it is very clear with every gasp.

If we are inadequate, there is no doubt: we are in the midst of battle and we fully and clearly know what's going on.

Very many scripts and many images are available in our society to assist people to marginalize themselves, to give themselves over to vices and weaknesses which tend to destroy, rather than to enrich.
How many cities were able to say no to casinos?
Not many.
Opening the door to weakness and vice has become the new "rational" and "normal" in our lives. By officially cutting the symbolic ribbon and opening the new way into new palaces of vice, whether they be casinos, or pornography, or viciousness and violence, or even the unthinking slaughter of innocent lives by improperly used guns...
If we officially do such, it is clear that as a society we are officially are giving our stamp of approval to marginalizing great numbers of people, that we are giving our OK to establishing a great divide between those who have and those who have-not....

Do not let ourselves be marginalized by old fear in new dress.
Be strong, be honorable, and be virtuous.

--