Welcome To Weimar 1

Bertolt Brecht

Dedicated to Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has labelled Global Warming a hoax perpetrated by naughty scientists.

Truly, I live in dark times!
The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet had
The terrible news.
What kind of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it suggests silence about so many horrors?


Bertolt Brecht, To Those Born Later

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Triumph Des Willens

Lest we forget:  

For a full year or more before the March 2003 invasion, the neo-cons and their major media outlets - notably, the Weekly Standard, the National Review Online, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the New York Post and Fox News - kept up a virtually daily drumbeat of op-ed articles, television appearances, selective leaks to the mainstream media by their confreres within the administration with only one aim in mind - to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein represented such a threat that he could only be dealt with by military means.  

As the invasion drew near, the AEI, the movement's de facto headquarters, drew scores of reporters to its weekly "black coffee briefings", where such neo-con worthies as Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, then-Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and Iraq National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, held forth on the evils of the Ba'athist regime and the regional implications of the forthcoming "liberation" of the Iraq people.  

The carefully orchestrated and coordinated drumbeat for war four years ago has been nowhere in evidence with respect to Iran over the past month when, judging by their writings and television experiences, they have appeared far more concerned with the growing public and Congressional pressure to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq and prevent Bush from adding more forces there.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB17Ak02.html

The Iraq War was the Triumph des Willens, the triumph of the Neoconservative American WILL, whereby the Neocon USA shall dream itself into its schizoid persona of Starship Trooper , and destroy the terror spawn of Saddam. We also were able to get the Vietnam monkey off our back. (I'm afraid we shall find the Vietnam monkey was rather light compared to the Iraq gorilla which will haunt us hence.)

Will the Neoconservatives ever be brought to justice?

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The Iraq Thing

Senator John McCain can no longer be my choice for President. In speaking against the Funding Bill with Date Certain-a measure I do not support either-Senator McCain said that it was the path of surrender. My question for Senator McCain is surrrender to whom? Realistically speaking-meaning in this universe-the War in Iraq was won; Saddam's statue pulled down and all that good stuff; Saddam's neck stretched and the heads of his aides popped like the tops of soda cans, all good sport for the TV audience. Law and Order was also destroyed-oooops! To whom would one surrender, Senator McCain? At least in the Vietnam War, we had the Viet Cong and North Vietnam as the Enemy. In the Iraq Thing we don't even have that. We've got a little Al Qaida, but even Q is not much of a Enemy, since we got Mr. Z. Remember what a thrilling victory that was? We've got jihadists, gangs, militias (some of which we supported as pseudo-police for years),Shi'as, Sunnis, and Kurd groups. How can you surrender, Senator McCain? What you have emphasized is the ghastly illogic of the situation: we won, now we must continue to destroy the land and its people. Now I shall have to vote for Mitt Romney. At least he is the only Republican candidate who has been married only once. The Christian candidates have been divorced multiple times; the Mormon is faithful to his vow. The Newt Gingrich specimen went to Canossa to beg the pardon of Pope Falwell for cheating on his wife while she was dieing of cancer. Pope Falwell forgave him, and said he could not contain his oily, squealy delight at the prospect of voting for the Newt in 2008. This nation will never achieve its potential unless it recognizes the Iraq Thing for what it is.

NeoCon Porn: Jeorge Does Jihad

The evening was long and filled with the ennuie of friends just departed, friends who were a bit boring, whose conversation made one feel the horrible accidie of the soul that drove mediaeval monks to hang themselves from the bell ropes during Matins. Actually, not quite as bad as that...but close. So I decided to rent some Porn. The flick was Jeorge Does Jihad. The Jeorge of the title was a sort of disreputable Broadway Danny Rose. Lacking any sort of moral compass, Jeorge engages in a frenetic search for the meaning of his life by jumping from one objective to another, all the time deliberately obfuscating his true intentions. At the end, we discover that Jeorge has no true intentions. He is empty. If you are offended by all this, then go to Uruk.Net : http://www.uruknet.info/?p=-6&l=e At that site, you may discover what the TV heads mean when they say that 40 bodies were found in the dumpster. The bodies showed signs of torture. We are the Moral ENABLING Majority! What could be sweeter to us than TV and Cable, chattering on about who's gonna win that Presidential race, knowing full well we do not have the nerve to do anything remotely honorable and virtuous. Oh, world of blasted mosques! O, the time of blinded Jami'a! Does Al Hadath the Red know its color is blood soaked, not the stain of the ochrish sand? Our time has come.

The NeoCon Memorial Design 8: Michael Ledeen

:Design: La-Z-Boy of the Sleep of Reason/Michael Ledeen

"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business" "Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader—a dictator—willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures,' which few know how, or are willing, to employ." Michael Ledeen,White House advisor and fellow of the American Enterprise Institute Many are in favor of the Ledeen. He is one rather unique individual. I mean, how many people can actually pump for getting rid of one dictator, while all the time supporting the essential notion of dictatorial authority? What do these people fight for? If there is a country anywhere that nourishes and grows the execrable entities called "neoconservatives", it is a nation of the most debased reason and faith, a nation of lies and deceit. Before we end, let us have another pernicious example: The usual suspects are up in arms that I am a 'liar' for stating in response to the Vanity Fair piece that 'I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated — as I still do — support for political revolution in Iran as the logical and necessary first step in the war against the terror masters.' But those who have actually read what I've written would not be surprised I would say such a thing. Here is what I wrote in my book...." I emphasized the words "the logical and necessary", because there is no logical act without a pre-exisiting scenario in the real world, and there is no necessary act in the real world. There are logical and necessary things in Logic, and in the disciplines most allied to Logic. To say that there is a logical and necessary first step is to lie. True, it a rather good lie, but a lie none the less. It's purpose is to enslave you to the notion of inevitability. Only the Ministry of Freedom, MiniFree, teaches Inevitability, for it knows that Inevitability is Slavery, and Slavery, of course, is Freedom. This is another demonstration of how anything, even Reason, can be turned to the Dark Side. The arguments of Reason shall bind you now and in the future as readily as they freed us in the past. What are these guys doing in the USA? Surely they cannot be indigenous species? They suffocate with words, just as they kill with their weapons.

The Crackpot Jew Norman Finkelstein 1

This is how an article in Commentary portrays Mr. Finkelstein. This is due to the fact that Mr. Finklestein disgrees with the opinions expressed in Commentary.
 
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10136&page=all

Neat,eh? Actually, they went further; they said

" crackpot anti-semitic Jew...".

If you have nothing better to do, you may wish to read the whole bloody thing. I thought it was an excellent example of how stifling and incarcerating rational thought and discourse can be. I sense the presence of some idolatry which defies being seen. It feels the need to go back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to make its case. It is compelled to create a Golem to defend against the anti-semitism everywhere. It has the antique stench of the mediaeval about it. One certainly wonders that if the authors feel the need to mind us that we are cut from the same cloth as Fr. Coughlin, then we shall never escape the accumulated burden of the sins of our fathers. There is something decidedly suspicious here. nota bene: I rather esteem Mr. Finkelstein, in case you're wondering. nota melius: I've decided to write more on this piece. It is "emblematic" of a certain miasma. Hence, the "1" in the title.

What Rush Will Say

I suppose now that Mrs. Edwards has been on TV to talk about her illness, we whall see Rush Limbaugh making fun of people being treated for cancer. Perhaps he will suggest that she is shamming. Perhaps AC will have something to say. Bloody Zylons!

Surgery

My father came through his surgery for an abdominal aneurysm. The aneurysm was 5.4 cm at one end and 7.2 cm at the other. It was big enough to write "Happy Birthday!" on. It had been discovered by accident when he was having his lungs checked for the remnenats of last year's bout with pneumonia. At that time, the pneumonia was diagnosed, but it was not fully treated. Then it reappearred in August, 2006. For some reasons, the hospital had him in a tuberculosis quarantine. At least it was a private room. We had to wear masks and regalia when we went in. That was the weekend of Katrina; the week of growing disbelief, waiting until Thursday until we broke down and got those people out of the Super Dome. Major surgery is incredible. We waited all day for surgery to be done, then for him to leave the recovery room, then to await his arrival in the ICU. His journey to the ICU was a series of about 6 or 7 half hour intervals, each initialed by a report to us that he would be in the ICU within 30 minutes. As time wore on, we retreated to our private and frantic thoughts. I went with my mother to the ICU when we were allowed to see him. Of course, he was still feeling the effects of the anaethesia. He had a tube down his throat for breathing, and he was so pale. He looked as weak and fragile as a baby bird, newly born, unseeing and confused. My mother-in-law had looked like that when she neared death. She was infinitely small and birdlike, blind eyes, gasping for breath to the left, then to the right. There was no drip in that country. They gave us this wonderful gift to last us the rest of our lives. The night of the surgery, my mother and I went to my home. We had offered to lodge my mother's cat, too, but she insisted that my wife go to Port Desespoir and nanny. (This backfired, since the cat likes she-who-must-be-obeyed, and my mother feared for alienation of affection.) Well, the next morning my father was awake and had a good color. Thank God. He still had the tube down his throat and could not talk. He needed something and tried to write it. FInally I leaned over and he poked me in the glasses. He wanted his glasses. Of course, we had left them at home, but home was only 11 miles away. Each day got better. Lots of hospital stuff going on. I sat around telling nurses their horoscopes and such things. I had written down some questions about my father on a thin, long slip of paper and took it to the Nurses' station. The nurse there saw the paper and asked if it was a fortune from a fortune cookie. So I said she would be meeting an oriental gentleman. She looked at me with amazement, and accused me of hanging around the water cooler or the coffee machine with Beth and LaWanda from MRI, talking about her sex life! She was going out with a doctor that evening, a doctor of Chinese heritage. I said that if it had been something she did not already know, I would have charged her for it. The next morning she threw a bed pan at me. As I ducked, I saw her scowling in my direction. "Hey!", I said. "Darn you and your oriental gentleman!", she said. I tried to keep from laughing, trying to look puzzled. "I take it the date was...not......great?" She laughed. "Keep your fortunes to yourself, buddy." As I ducked into the room, I said "I coulda told ya." I heard a urine jug bonk emptily against the door. Yesterday my father told me "We got through it, buddy." This reminded me of something else intuited about him and me, but I think I shall keep it to another time.

The Omega Point And The US Flag

OMEGA POINT I was going to insert a proper picture of something arcane and mysterious, yet numinous and compelling, with which to illustrate the goal of Religion, the Omega point of mankind, the ultimate sanctum...and so on, and so on... I found all pictures to be insufficient. I suppose this is the rationale of Commandment II in re graven images, they just do not do justice to the purported object they are describing. Not only that, but these images of holy things debase the Numinous, rendering it homely and human, and what was sacred is now profane. Go ahead, Google on "Omega Point" and see what awful crap one gets. God is not a graven image, nor a painted image, nor an image created by learned words, nor an image held in memory. All images tend to fail. If you need an image of God, you will render yourself prey to corruption, and you will corrode along with your God and your beliefs. THE FLAG The Ann Arbor Film Festival is having some sort of tiff with the State of Mishegaas - er, Michigan- about funding. They want it, some do not. In the laws and by-laws of the grand conundrum called the State of Michigan, there is an express prohibit about providing funding for displays of various verboten things. O.K. Forget the Film Festival now. It was merely a introduction to this part of the post. In the laws, it is prohibited that any display desecrating the US flag receive funding. "DESECRATING ??!!??" "Desecrate" means to offend against sacredness. The flag is not "sacred". Or, if it is, then how is God sacred? Or should I be wary of trampling upon both items? Surely the lawmakers meant "dishonoring". Please tell me that they meant "dishonoring". What happens when a society no longer knows the difference between "dishonor" and "desecrate"? I guess we shall find out.

Religion And Politics

Religion is not derivative. It is not derived from some emotion, for example. I have heard it said that the great feelings of love impel the tender spirit to postulate the existence of a universal and loving God... Posh! Utter drivel. Religion is not an offshoot of the Emotional Structure of mankind. Nor is it derived from anything else. It stands on its own, just like Language stands on its own, Music stands on its own, independent functions of the Mind. Music may cause great emotion and feeling. We do not, therefore, derive Music from Emotional States. Not do we insist on the dependency of Music upon Emotion. Politics is a bit different. It needs more than one conscious being to come into play, not like Language, which needs only the single speaker ( pace Wittgenstein and his goofy private language notions). In The Religions of the Oppressed, we see that religious movements are more often than not accompanied by political activity. Thus, I shall have to modify my idea that religion should not mix in politics, for religion need not be alien from anything human. What is important is the motive of the politics. Arguably, the Christian Church's worst moment came when Constantine led them into the Basilica of the law. However, the Church was a child of it time. And it was a time of Barbarism and Compulsion. Any politics that does not lead to an ennobling of mankind away from the animal basis and to that of the Spirit, that politics is pernicious. The distinction lay in the attractor of Love and the repeller of Hate. I seem to recall Empedocles talking about this, just before he fell into the volcano. Love creates a union, wherein there is growth from multiplicity, or creates a silence, wherein there is growth from singularity. Hate breaks down union, and dismembers the multiple, and creates a cacophony to distract.

My View Of Religion 5

Economics is the study of the dull and tedious job of acquisition of an animal nature. It has an origin in the process of eating and digestion: acquire, exploit, throw out the dregs. As such, it is admirable...in its limited, animal scope. The much more complex nature of the Spirit is not amenable to analysis by these blunt and dull tools. Religion is the science of the expansion of being from the molecular past the merely animal an into the realm of the Numinous...where we shall all see clearly.

From The Archives

A note from my Note Vault: Use warfare to destroy infrastructure of target, then provide business for your own country's companies – a very unholy alliance. 04/12/03 March 12, 2003 apparently an observation on big Government and Big Business and how it was not only Oil, but also Oil Support Inudstries and Construction...in fact, it was all politically connected companies. Only, it did not seem to work out. So, the fact that we see the disastrous remains of the days of Iraq in front of us should not blind us to the fact that the planners had something very different in mind, and not merely an exportation of democracy. The very notion of destroying the structure of a state and dropping a "democracy" bomb on them, which would explode into a springtime of love and tolerance and democracy is the type of juvenile thought so characteristic of Neoconservatives.

Morphic Fields

Cyril Richard as Captain Hook

Rupert Sheldrake gave me the idea. I merely took it and ran with it.

The use of morphic fields in time travel and inter-dimensional travel, not to mention travel from brane to brane within the many branes sprung from the Inflation after the Big Bang, has been a mixed blessing. It is seemingly related to Iconic Participation, only the Icons or Emblems are more mundane, not quite so imbued with the supernatural.

I myself have appropriated the persona of Cyril Richard and have had excellent results. When the need arises, when I am in dire straits, when a good exit strategy best be forthcoming, I don my Captain Hook outfit, call in the First Mate named after a particular type of marine bird, and have the band play whatever music I deem best for the situation.

We found ourselves in Anbar Province the other day, and after falling over each other to find cover, we assembled in the remains of an elementary school, where I ordered them to play a Tarentella. The outlines of our escape took shape. We vanished just before the IED hit the fan.
--

God is...

God is not my friend. My friends fail me. God is not my lover. My lover is untrue. God is not my earthly father, nor an image derived from there. God is not my earthly mother, nor any image of maternity, painted or graven. God is not a fulfiller of dreams...He is the Giver of Dreams. God is not the Giver of Success...He is the success.

Shaka Naw 3 And NeoCon Memorial Design 7

The Neoconservative Iraq Memorial Design

Great stuff, great stuff...great war, eh? Not a bad idea. Wonderful heritage for the Neoconservatives. What else could the heritage of that group of idiots be, however, other than outrage and opprobrium.

I never supported this war. I never found support for any of the reasons advanced, and I already knew the history of Iraq, so I knew there would be problems. I also stated that there were no WMDs to be found. Exactly why I did this is somewhat harder to understand. I remember thinking that if WMDs were found, it would be embarassing. But, I stuck with my belief.
It was a bit of a shock that absolutely nothing at all was found.I guess I had good intuition. Maybe I knew more than the CIA? Maybe my sources were a bit better than self-seeking Chalabis and other riff-raff. HEY! Come to think of it, what else do my sources say? Well, one thing one of them says - and I find it distressing-is that when the new Iraqi government monsters flipped the head of an aide to Saddam while they were supposedly hanging him, this was done on purpose. In fact, the original intent had been to flip old Saddam's head off like a spent match, but they had not perfected their technique. Why? After Hussein, the son of 'Ali and Fatima, had been slain along with all his retinue, his head was cut off and carried back to the caliph as evidence of death. Thus did the Sunni's behead the Shi'a. So this beheading of the present day was turn-about is fairplay. It was a hideous allegory made up by the twisted minds of our allies. Saddam's head would make up for the head of Imam Hussein.
A head of Hussein for a head of Hussein. Neat and tidy. That's the only new item. Everything else is old. There's the fact that the USA never did intend to leave Iraq...in case you've forgotten. Despite all assurances to the contrary, the USA built 4 permanent bases there. This government never had any intention of giving up its stranglehold on the oil. We looked the other way when the Sunni Saddam slaughtered the Shi'a at the end of Gulf War I. I assume the Sunni Saudis approved. We eagerly watched on prime time TV as bombs were dropped into the cities of Iraq. We thrilled over smart bombs. We turned away when sanctions were killing thousands of children. We ignore the ongoing slaughter of innocents...some how believing that the incompetent will lead us to victory and obtain a balm to assuage our consciences. We dismantled the Iraqi army and police in order to rid the scene of anyone to question our authority over the long term we would be there. When society collapsed into chaos-a turn of events the most obdurately foolish of students of sociology could have foretold-we were taken by surprise! When the civilian authority was removed, and when criminal acts were perpetrated, we were surprised! What idiocy!
We are trying out a private army, Blackwater, Inc., in Iraq to see how it works out for our masters. Yes, this is a private army and is obedient only to those who pay it. No flag, no Constitution, nothing but mercenary greed. Just like the Roman Empire...as it fell. We were all in on this. We are all war criminals to have allowed this to go on so long, and to still even now allow it to continue, while people who are so ignorant that they do not know that ancient grudges will flare anew continue to kill for an ever-changing objective...and we hope they find some end, for in our souls there is a terrible emptiness and fear. I lost my taste for the present day American society. My America was a country of the past, not this present. So now you clowns go out and demonstrate against the war. Big deal. Pretty soon you'll be following some other group of charlatans. 30% of people support the President. What an interesting group they must be. I believe we have found the "Base". This is indeed a generation of vipers. Shaka Naw, Folks!

The Origin Of The Presidential Species

Why do we not stop and consider the whole process of electing a President from the vantage point of a Darwinian process? Is it not, in our minds if not in reality, a bit of the old survival of the fittest? What are the characteristics of those running for President? What are the characteristics of those who lead in the beginnings? In the mid term of the race? What are those characteristics of the eventual winners? Consider this: WE have created a Darwinian process for electing officials. Let us describe this process. Money seems to be a natural to be in any list. The individual running for President must have ready access to money, and lots of it. Thus, we have a wealthy family, or wealthy friends, or wealthy corporations, or wealthy unions as supporters, plus a knack for the grubbing of the green. Since this same characteristic extends to Senators and Represenatatives, it is doubtful that they should ever enact meaningful campaign reform, thereby negating the traits they possess. Beyond the obvious, is there more in the influence of money? For example, in David Geffen's remark about the Bush and Clinton royal families, is there something else going on? Might we say that the monied interests are finding that it is better to have a limited range of potential candidates, thereby keeping a handle on the situation? (It did not work with Bush Jr., but the elite is not actually dieing in Iraq now, is it?) How else may we describe this eco-system? Information Processing is another facet. There appears to be a great need for feed-back loops. Most political opinion bloggers seem to be self-reinforcing feedback loops. There is a mighty feedback, but little or no input. The candidates have to be masters of this: no input, appeal to the squeaky loopsters. There has to be a constant repetition and a constant posturing. There are appeals to reason, but no actual reason. There are appeals to comity, but little or no friendliness. In short, all words need to be as empty of meaning as possible. The more empty the words become, the more self-reinforcing feed back is necessary to create the illusion of meaning, just as if a microphone placed too near a speaker will create a cacophony of noise...and we may pretend it is a concert of music. Race is important, as well as Gender. There have been observed certain individuals in the eco-system who appear to have mutated. The racial barrier seems to have been bridged by individuals with a multi-racial heritage. The Gender barrier still remains. Hmmm. I thought this would have been a great deal more interesting than it turned out.

Shall I Wear My Suetonius Today?

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

Which hat will it be? Suetonius or Tacitus? Which historian of the Roman Empire shall I emulate? David Geffen has said recently about Senator Obama: "...he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family..." This, of course, refers to the interesting fact that since 1988, the US voters ( aided and abetted by the Supreme Court ) have only elected members of the said families to the Presidency, and have a chance to do so again. My, My. It has worked out so well, too. If we construe George W. Bush as Caligula, Little Boots, son of a war-time emperor, then who will Ms. Clinton be? It would be shameful to merely throw out the name of Agrippina, and it would not be to the point. Ms. Clinton will be Claudius. After her comes Nero.

If It Looks Like A Goose And Steps Like A Goose 3: Ann Coulter Buys Brown Chemise At Ann Taylor

Julius Streicher in Nurmberg

Leader of the Pack (Brown Shirts)

Ann Coulter called, referred to, made a quip about, snidely remarked that, implied John Edwards as 'faggot'.
What is the problem with this? Other than the present day mania for political correctness and tickets to Re-Hab? The first theorem of Fascist Sociology: (1) Fascism requires an Internal Enemy to be the focus of Violence of the violent members of the Base. As far as I know, "sons-of-bitches" are not targets for bashings by various people in the present day. If someone were to call me a "son-of-a-bitch" (hard to imagine as it is), I would not think my life was just threatened, for I am totally unaware of guys getting drunk and deciding to go out and bash some "sons-a-bitches". I am totally unaware of "son-of-a-bitch" as being the equivalent emblem to a target being placed upon one's clothes, thereby marking the individual as an acceptable target, as a target worthy of one's violence.

The target is beyond the pale of the protection of society. The target is the other... The target remains the other until the Political Ritual of violence is over; it remains until the intoxication passes; it remains until the war is over and the camps are liberated. "Faggot" is very different from "son-of-a bitch". I am very aware that faggot bashing does indeed occur even today. To label someone a faggot can be correctly construed to be an invitation to the Base which has the time and inclination to violence to go ahead and do their thing.

I suppose the most extreme analogy would be to envision Donald Rumsfeld somehow Twilight-Zoneishly in the streets of Falluja wearing a pretty good disguise, thus passing for a local. It would be an incitement to violence if I were to yell "Oh, Arabs. Behold your tormentor!" and slapped an American flag pin on his clothes.
It is not entirely about Ann Coulter. Nor is it about her lable of choice. The leader of the Brown Shirts may not always be Julius Streicher or Ernst Roehm. The Sturmabteilungsfuehrer changes. The target may change, too, if another target with a greater violence potential presents itself. The leader may become Lincoln Rockwell. It may become Meir Kahane. It may become an Imam calling for Israeli blood as target. It may become American TV and radio personalities calling for Arab countries as targets to be 'nuked'. We all of us walk in and out of the closet of the Brown Shirts. We try on a shirt, or a chemise; maybe a pair of pants, maybe boots. We try them out. We buy them. We don't buy. Sometimes we leave, but come back next week. Sometimes we never come back. If we begin to consistently come back, the ghost of Julius Streicher smiles.  

Now, how do I know that what I have said is correct? 
 I know it because it explains a number of things in history for me. When I have set forth this particular line of thought, most of the people I have spoken to have disagreed. They think the whole thing is a tempest in a tea pot. AC has gone too far, again! But that's all it is.
The first time I had an intelligent person respond this way, I immediately flashed on Jews in Germany in 1936: why did they not leave? Why did some, even when they could get out, stay? They stayed because they would not feel the real intuition that told them they were doomed. They relied on the knowledge of the day, in the bright sun, which told them that the German nation has always had its Jew-bashing, a few heads broken, a little blood under the yarmulke, but that was it. Once the "high" spirits of the Jugend came back down from the fever temperature, things are always O.K.
My theory's reception made this immediately understandable. I felt an understanding in my gut that I had never felt before: staring into a horrible future of death and not being able to see it. There is still a lot I do not understand. However, it is comforting in one sense to know I am so much smarter than intelligent folks. In another way, it is very frightening.

Richard Jeni

Comedian Richard Jeni has passed away. A good man. He said about religious wars: "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend." I agree with that. If you recall, I said that I do not think of God as my friend. If God were my friend, He'd be trying to borrow money right about now.

Nuns On The Run And Captain Nemo

I have had a number (2) of posts of various things on the run recently. This is all due to the wonderful Nuns on the Run film, starring Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane. I propose Montag's Paradox: (x) { If x is 'on the run', THEN the situation is inherently funny} which reads, for the logically challenged, "For all x, if x is on the run, it is usually good for a laugh."

Captain Nemo enters here, pursued by a bear. The Captain's motto was "Mobilis in mobile". This translates to "Changing with Change" or "Keeping up with Change" or something along those lines. I usually amend it to read "Semper Mobilis Sub Ubi in Mobile". This translates to "Always Changing Underwear in Mobile (Alabama)" The good Captain was himself "on the run". It wasn't funny, as I recall. Hence, the Paradox. Get it?

Bees On The Run

picture: bluebison.net

I have been following Climate Change for about 30 years. I recall that about that time, I was having discussion with a fellow who believed in the soon-to-come end of the world. We mentioned climate change- it did not go by that name then. I forget the name we used; maybe just natural disasters-as a possible scenario. (He was right, actually, but had the wrong imagery: his young wife suffered a debilitating stroke, recovery was long, and at the end of recovery, she took off, leaving him with the 2 kids. You might say it was an end of the world.)

Now Climate Change is politicized, and it is politicized a la USA Politics, which is pretty crappy. How nice. I read a Yameenee (righty) complaining about a Shamalee (lefty): some guy upset about Al Gore pretending to be Mother Theresa while driving an SUV. I wrote and said it was a Righty upset because a Lefty beat him to a scam. In essence, there's money in the Environment. Al Gore beat me to it! Blast!

However, we all agree its a good scam, and now we should argue about it and politicize, thereby effectively insuring that nothing will be done for at least one more generation. Observe how or Energy Independence Policy has flourished: we move Daylight Savings ahead 3 whole weeks! About 6 years ago, I read a book on pollinators: bees, wasps, ants, birds - the guys that get out there and move the pollen around from stamen to pistil, or whatever. I forget the name of the book. It probably was Pollinators, which would make sense. I'm sure a lot of you also read it. Anyway, it was a Liberal type book. It had to be, because it took a Liberal posish; i.e., that many groups of pollinators were under pressure and diminishing in numbers. If we lost our pollinators, we may as well kiss the food on the table good-bye. Definitely Liberal trash. So, today we see:  

Vanishing bees threaten US crops 
 By Matt Wells BBC News, Florida, USA 

 It is officially called Colony Collapse Disorder, but a more pithy way of describing it would be Vanishing Bee Syndrome. Bees are driven around Florida to help pollinate early cropsAll over America, beekeepers are opening up their hives in preparation for the spring pollination season, only to find that their bees are dead or have disappeared. ... "There's a lot of Congressmen have called...wanting to know what's going on. It's serious.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6438373.stm

This has been going on for a couple of years. ( I think it's been longer. I seem to remember an NPR special on bee keepers years ago, where some Chicken Little was crying about "crashing" populations, or some such balderdash.) It is a matter of days before a congress person calls for a "Manhattan Project" to save the bees. Perhaps moving Daylight Savings Time ahead another week will help?

Now, the question is whether we shall politicize this? I think we should. Politics is an essential art of mankind. We in the USA have really developed an interesting variant of Politics. It is a Politics of Blatant Cynicism that rewards people with no definite stand on an issue. Thus, by Darwinian selection, we breed more and more moral, scientific, religious, political, educational NUMBSKULLS running for office and succeeding. (IF you want me to prove it, I shall hold up a Hilary picture and say Gotcha! Hilary is hated for being a real person with real stands on issue and real...huevos! That's why we all hate her, right gumbahs?)

When a disaster happens, these ninnies are forced into a situation where they must make a decision. Since they have no true beliefs, it is a coin toss whether things will be good or bad. Sometimes they have an eminence grise in the form of a Svengali-type Vice President-or a Wormtongue-who will direct the course of events for them.

Don't forget! Write your Representatives and let them know: POLITICIZE BEES ! LET'S WHINE ABOUT IT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE!

A Darwinian Process To Explain Our Sorry State

I have written two posts already without getting to the meat of the matter. This posting will be my message in a bottle:

In case you find this and I have disappeared,

We want to post something about a Darwinian Process and

Barabara O'Brien.

We have...gasp...scientific proof of all we...have...said.

They are at the door !

Au secours!

This Barbara O'Brien published in 1958. You won't know her. You won't find her. She, like so many others, has seemed to have vanis...............................................................................................................................................................

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Shaka Naw 2

Since my previous posting had in its essence been an invitation to peruse a Blog of the Conservative persuasion, I have decided in my unique slice-and-dice way to ignore good judgement (Good Judgement: Montag? Montag? No. Don't know him. You don't mean that wonderfully intelligent Susan Sonntag, do you?") and write an overtly offensive post that would cause any self-respecting bloke or molly on the odd numbered pages......

 ...(odd numbered being those pages Right of the binding crease in a book) ...(the production crew is becoming exasperated with me. they say it's like working with Aunt Bea when they shot that Foster's Furniture Polish commercial) ...(there are so many threads here that mere italics do not suffice, and we are forced to color code things) ...(a shot rang out and a scream was heard "Does he have an 'off' button?")  

O.K. I'm sorry about straining at being cute. 
The idea of a person of the odd numbered pages being a right winger because the odd numbered pages are on the right side of the book binding crease is a bit much. (This merely means I'll file it away for future use. I'm sorry, but it popped into my head just as I was writing this. Memo to Self: Add a tag saying "Great Stuff!")

So. Shaka Naw 2 Hmmm? Something sure to be offensive to those who call themselves Conservatives. ( I do not actually call myself a Conservative at all. I merely write that because I am forced to do so when dealing with you earth creatures. We call ourselves Anasazi, or children of the Spider.) Hmmm? So, did I tell you the story about my friend who was once afflicted with extreme agoraphobia, and whom I called up yesterday, saying that I was trying to impress him, so I decided to write a screenplay about him, adding that Paul Giamatti was lined up to play him? I was merely trying to get him out of his shell. Now that should be a Shaka Naw ( Shock 'n Awe)! My nephews approve, saying that the way the expression " SHAKA NAW" has found its own meaning as sort of a superlative Masala, over the top with piquancy, is a beautiful thing. Shaka Naw, Folks!

Conservative Butterflies Caught In The Education Web

Saturday March 10, 2007 Did you ever notice how many Political Opinion Blogs of a distinct Dexter Alar Rampant type (right wing...rampant) are manned by Captain Nemos who are Ph.D.s? Furthermore, many are still behind restraints in, or are recently sprung from, the sacred hoosegows of Academe? Frightening. What have they gone through? (I have decided to try something new out. I will publish this post...then add to it as time goes on. It shall be a "work in progress" as the intelligentsia are so fond of saying. )

>>Start Weird Rant<<

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

O.K. Now about this topic....oops! forgot! Let me stop this particular thread......

>>End Weird Rant<<

O.K.

Ooops. The Bold font setting is still on.

There. (Is it a Russell paradox if the expression "Bold Font" is in regular pica?)

I have already received a comment on this posting in its unfinished, barely conceived state. I count this phenomenon to be so very odd, that I am filled with forboding. So I shall write what I have in mind to write before opening up that little IED of Opinion from a friend or foe.

If you do not hear from me, I shall have thrown myself upon it as it exploded. That, or something like "I fall upon the thorns of life..."

There are many blogs of educators. Some are what the boobs call Rightie, or Conservative; some are Leftie, or Liberal.

I actually do not try to call them anything at all. I am serious. If I do happen to read them, I try to recall a emblematic posting that struck me.

This I put into the storehouse of the mind...frighteningly like that one in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. Right, eh? Jonesy?

I try to remember the Blog from the emblematic, or typical, post. Then I either shudder, smile, go "oh, yes.", or laugh out loud. Nurse Memory can go away, knowing she'd done her bit.

I cannot really use this phenomenon in my "favorites" section of my Microsoft VirusMotel Internet thingey, so I am forced to rely on Rightie and Leftie. To be quite honest (and my better judgement points out that it knows no reason why I should be), I use 'conservative' and 'liberal' for standard blurbs of literary pretensions, and I use 'rightie' and 'leftie' for blogs.

My nephews say this shows my underlying snobbery. I say does not. They say does, too.

(They also refer to my posts as a 'Blob' rather than 'Blog', as in "What did you write in your Blob today?", thereby feigning interest, feigning care, feigning esteem...all their sarcasms are like an infinite Matrushka doll.)

Now, where was I?

Oh. I have also some sections labelled 'far right' and 'far left' and one general one named 'oddballs'.

I really do not have to try and save a typical post for the 'oddballs'. I pretty well know what they are.

Now, as to blog by Ph.D.s in Extremis Educationis...

I have read many.

Some are good, some mediocre, some poor. Some are rightie, some are leftie, some are decidely oddball.

In short, they are like humanity as a whole.

However, I receieve the distinct impression that Academia can be quite the battle zone. There seems to be a war going on between what we may vaguely call 'lefties' and 'righties'.

I say vaguely, because I have no assurance that these labels mean anything close to what I primitively think them to mean. To clarify this, I do not know what the pay-offs are in Academia for each group. If, for example, group A wants some sort of radical course C, and group B is opposed to it, I do not see why in terms of what are they fighting for, other than ideals.

Well, maybe it is the ideals. I can relate.

To bring this posting, in its inception infinite, to its end, I think it is enough to observe

Quot homines Tot Sententiae

which means that there are as many opinions as there are men. Or how many men? so many the opinions. (Ask Cicero. I'm busy.)

I state candidly and honestly (good judgement to Montag: there's that word again!) that I believe...no, not believe...I sense that there is something very important in the Multiplicity of opinions. I have sensed ever since I first read Lanternari's The Religions of the Oppressed.

It is almost as if the state of nature is diversity.

What do we make of Diversity today?

There are many meanings.

However, I think the USA was founded on Diversity, Diversity is the basis of freedom- each man free to his own opinion, and Free Markets are based on Diversity.

(In fact, in Free Markets we see that the potential Chaos we sense in a different opinion for every person may actually lead to a higher or different type of grouping.)

Enough of this Rump Parliament of a posting!

In the name of God, end it!

Fiat Finis.

I Had To Laugh...

It is often the case that when Bloggers are getting ready to drop cluster bombs on people with whom they disagree, they like to say folksy things, like "Jeez! I had to laff when I saw what old X had written...(that imbecile!)", or " You know, I might just be plum slow and stupid, but when I saw what X said...(the moron! the alien, extraterrestrial moron!)" Thus, we see and blanch at: http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/ >>Begin Weird Rant<< MORAL RELATIVISM IS JUST ANOTHER STRATAGEM FOR THE LEFT They really do however believe in nothing. The only thing that really motivates them is their visceral hatred for the world about them and their wish to tear it down. And any excuse that might pass at the time will do to accomplish that. Their destructive policies are no accident. Destruction is what they really aim at. Post below excerpted from Dr. SanityVictor Davis Hanson in The Corner: Democratic DisconnectWe need an Orwell to offer some psychological explanation for why an Al Gore, who gobbles up carbon-based power in his mansion and private jet, continues to harangue the less well off about their energy profligacy and threats to the planet, or why a John Edwards, who just finished a towered 28,000 sq. foot palace, claims Jesus would find us unforgiving to the poor, and serially speaks in terms of two nations, rich and poor.Is this disconnect explained by an easy means of alleviating guilt over their own largess through cosmic preaching about the inequality and selfishness of others?Or is it a genuine notion that as a crusading Senator and trial-lawyer they have battled enough for the less well off to justify some small compensation for their ongoing labors?Or is it a clinical schizophrenia in which one side of the Mother Teresa brain has no connection with the Donald Trump other? It may be all or none of the above clinical syndromes, but I refer to it as the political left's "theory of relativity." Al Gore is just one of the more recent relativists who believe in the theory. >>End Weird Rant<< (You may have noticed that I am developing my own Blog programming language, an extension of HTML.) Well, I had to laff when I read this. Ya see, watch'ya got here is a Rightie p-o'd at a Leftie for running a scam that the Rightie was too stupid to run hissef! Al Gore find revenue in Eco-consciousness! Wish I'd thought of it! In 2007, we're all Scammers and Jammers. It's a zero-sum game, and a Scammer can not stand it when a Jammer comes up with some wheeze to grab money away from people. They actually are cut from the same cloth...which they hold up in front of them to veil themselves...a cloth like "campaign contribution reform"...very flimsy, very evanescent, like a gossamer from Salome's breast... And nothing will ever come of it. Not while the Grifters still think we have two nickles to rub together. The blog owner where the Rant appeared was called polymathic. Maybe, but definitely not polytropic. A record stuck in a groove.

My Profile

I just discovered that I had put country of origin in my profile as Afghanistan. I am not, nor ever have been, a citizen of Afghanistan, not that there's anything wrong with that. Sorry. Uqbar is nowhere, nowhere, and nowhere near Afghanistan. I have decided to randomly locate good old Uqbar, sweet Motherland of Heroes, in various countries around the world. My nephews said that this was the fairest thing to do: spread the blame!

If It Looks Like A Goose, And Steps Like A Goose 2

On my way into to the weekly breakfast of the Greybeards Round Table, I was grabbed by Levine, der alte Engel, and pulled aside.
"Levine! What the heck...?"
"Shh! I wanted to ask you something. Before, you know, before you sit down and we start talking about everything under the sun...you know, before we all start kvetching about Michigan and all its crap..."
A major hometown banking institution had just announced it had to leave and go to Texas...investors were leery of a bank with headquarters in Michigan, the automotive capital of the Third or Fourth World. Michigan, after having been destroyed by idiot automakers, idiot unions, and idiot politicians, has begun looking at Robert Mugabe with wistful appraisal.
Since Michigan has the second least amount of sunshine in the continental USA, after Seattle, we always consider Michigan to be that proverbial place "where the sun don't shine" and where various undesirable things are stuck.
"This Coulter thing, are you serious?" I thought for a moment. "What do you mean? Exactly?" "Are you actually saying she's...a...like...Julius Streicher? A Sturmabteilungsfuehrer?"
"Sure." I said. "Yeah. No doubt."

Levine was silent. Levine was young when WW II raged. He was born in 1938 in Czechoslovakia and somehow ended up in Macedonia by the end of the war. He did not talk much about it.
"I was reading..." he said. "I was reading this morning. The others, the people in the papers, the politicians, they all say she's vile, she's a whore, all that stuff, but..."
I waited. "They are too blind to see her for what she is."

Levine slowly got up. Hanaan passed by with her usual scowl, but he ignored her, and she seemed flustered, as if she had spent hours fixing up her face, and all the cosmetics of irritability had been ignored by the guys. "You are right. This labelling...They labelled Jews, you know. My parents had to wear the yellow star. Like a stinking target for the brownshirts."
"Oh. I did not know."
"Yeah. You're right. I like your sense of logic..."
"Thanks." I beamed.
"...and illogic, too." He laughed. "A lot of Germans said Streicher was vile, too, for all the good it did them."
Then he continued, "If there is a group that is already a target, already being attacked, whether a little or a lot, then if you say a guy is a member of the target group, yeah, you're drawing a yellow star on him; you're putting a target on his back...and there are people who will do the dirty work."
We went over to join the rest of the group. I felt rather good. I felt rather intelligent. Hanaan walked by and stepped on my foot, grinding her heel into it. I turned and stared at her. Now she was smiling like an angel.
--

Beards On The Run

I choose this title from the many sent to my by my Title Service, because, as they pointed out to me, it may cause a number of the dear and benighted to stumble into your blog by accident, whereby they will bash around in the dark for a while, receive atomic wedgies, and end up staring at their sorry selves in the fun house mirrors you have scattered about the place, thus seeing themselves as they actually are! Fat chance, I said. But I choose the title anyway. We haggled over the price. They thought it was premium and top shelf. I said it was yesterday's bread. I told them that I was growing tired of the randomness of the whole thing. I mean, why should I subject myself to a process wherein some bloody Title Supply and Laundry Service drops off a title on my doorstep, and then I have to ferrier a posting of iron and irony about it? I said it would be considerably easier to write my own titles. They hemmed and hawed in a respectful way, and sort of slyly mentioned the mess I had made of the Tag inventory, for which, by the way, they have an excellent spreadsheet program for a very reasonable price. O.K.

Main posting...here we go.

I saw an article about how every Islamic country should be "nuked" off the map.

This was particularly interesting since this same author had turned red with rage when President A. of Iran had said something translated as Israel should be wiped off the map.

(This was the title to go with the illustration, something like "Wipe my map, you blankety-blank!" )

Perhaps it was the manner by which we remove the countries that he objects to: nuking is good, wiping is bad. Perhaps there was sort of a toilet hygiene thingey attached to the notion of "wiping" off the map that he found especially offensive. So, we conclude:

Keep the Beards on the run, ducking from sand dune to sand dune;

Watch out for IQFWDs, or Islamic Quest for World Domination, a sort of a WMDs type acronomous hoodia.

A Visit From "Auntie Christ"

My great aunt Sophronia will soon be swooping by like the Angel of Death. Since everything happens in threes, and four members of my family have died since January 1, 2007, I think I shall be safe. My mother, however, always the chipper little bird, points out that four is greater than three. Hence, everything happens in threes, but now the cycle is beginning again, and there are two more needed to fill in the present mahayuga.
Sophronia travels around the country and speaks to various groups of antiquities ( She calls the AARP a "bunch of wild kids!" ) about politically related issues. The fall of the Soviet Union threw her for a loop. She stayed in her house for a year with the blinds drawn. Of course, this was almost 20 years ago, so she was in her mid-70s. We used to take turns going over and knocking on the door. If the door was open, we drew straws to see who would get to go inside, the assumption being that she had passed away a few days ago. She did not die.
She emerged from her quasi-death revitalized. She had found a cause. It was Nuclear Re-Armament. To the rest of the family, it seemed liked a crazy, mixed up, re-hashed concatenation of the quondam Moral Re-Armament and Dr. Strangelove. It turns out that it was exactly that. When a decidedly odd family thinks it has an eccentric in its midst, it is time to fear the enraged villagers with torches and pikestaffs and pitchforks. She travels around speaking about President Bush's implementation of the Nuclear Posture Review.
She likes the idea of the sole superpower expanding the role of nuclear weapons. She has a delicious appreciation of irony. She will quote from memory, putting those of us of the generation less than 3 score and 10 to shame, that "In setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities, distinctions can be made among the contingencies for which the United States must be prepared. Contingencies can be categorized as immediate, potential or unexpected. North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies. All have longstanding hostility toward the United States and its security partners; North Korea and Iraq in particular have been chronic military concerns. All sponsor or harbor terrorists, and all have active WMD, or weapons of mass destruction, and missile programs.”

Whether from usage or pretence, she gives "missile" the British pronunciation, the second "i" being long. "Missiiiile..." long and lovingly dripping from her tongue.

This same program was characterized by The Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy as : The administration plans to revitalize the U.S. nuclear infrastructure to maintain U.S. nuclear capabilities and to discourage other countries from competing militarily with the U.S. Upgrades and new nuclear weapons development are a part of this plan. Plans indicate that new nuclear weapons will be required to accomplish new military missions. This arsenal would have the capability to target and destroy mobile and re-locatable targets and hard and deeply buried targets. Plans are also underway to reestablish advanced warhead concept design teams. She scoffs at the "pacifist padres". She calls them "padres" because that's what they called them in WW II. She is fond of singing "Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition." Her married name was Chresto. Hence, Auntie Christ came from the lips of toddlers just beginning to talk, just looking at the wide world with new eyes.

Caring For Veterans 1

Caring for Veterans on the Cheap http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=80291 published in April, 2006

A Great Reversal

There are many stories of Tricksters. The trickster is very intelligent. An example would be Native American stories of Coyote and Raven. These stories tell us something about human intelligence. Sometimes the trickster does great things.

Sometimes the trickster is discomfited. When things go awry, this is a reversal. The trickster started out to achieve something, and he ended up sitting on a dung pile. So it is with human intelligence: we accomplish great things, we reach the moon. Then sometimes we get caught in our cunning lies, and we say what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Deceit implies a plan and implies intelligence. Scams are products of intelligence. So intelligence can work both ways, for good and ill. The trickster stories often show this reversal.

Hubris is a reversal. It is not, as is often said, arrogance. Oedipus was not arrogant when he reached the crossroads and unwittingly killed the king, his real father whom he knew not. He was not arrogant when he unwittingly took the queen as wife, for he did not know she was his real mother. From his high point as King of Thebes, there came the great reversal and Oedipus ended a tragic figure. This was through no particular fault of his own. We are in a time of change. Climate change, political change - the new US politics of discord and insults, economic change-some for good, some for ill. How shall we weather this great reversal?

Some will say that the concept of Reversal derived from the Trickster stories are the product of pagan religions, religions that did not have the true religion. This is a good point. However, going back to Matthew 28, verse 12: Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, but whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. This is usually given an interpretation that emphasizes the moral aspect of the quote.

However, it is also an exact description of a Reversal, a reversal of roles. In the Magnificat of the Virgin, we read that God shall cast the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly. Again, a reversal. This does not imply any continuity between the Gospels and a Trickster Cycle of pre-Christian gods. This merely shows the concept of Reversal is not at all alien from the Gospels, nor from the Jewish tradition which preceded.

All our images, all our feelings, all our hopes and all our fears about the End of Times, about the Apocalypse and a coming Tribulation stem from our being within a Great Reversal. As I have previously stated, we are in the times when mankind is seen as being evil; the product of a passion for God thwarted in a most horrible way.
So, like Richard III, if we cannot be heroes and lovers, we are determined to be proved villains. The great reversal from man as a good being to man as an evil being commenced. This IMAGE is everywhere: on television, in films, in books, in music... The most depraved and degraded images are contained within the products most artful and expertly done! The TV show CSI blasts obscene truths into the living rooms and bedrooms of viewers.

We are totally awash in Mankind as Evil. Mankind as Good is somewhere far away, with little or no exposure to us. I cannot tell you the mind of God. It is hidden from me. I only know God when I act according to the ways I believe godly. It is not a knowledge that can be given in words. If I say that I write about God, I write about my own knowledge. I cannot be like those who say "God is here." or "God is there." or "God is in that book....or that one over there." However, I think I know His wrath when I feel it scrape over the hairs on my neck. We must look and feel God's presence. Else, we shall miss what He shows us. We must take a stand in godliness against this Reversal.

My View Of Religion 4

There was a comment earlier on about My View Of Religion. Someone had said they wished they had a belief like mine. They probably did at one time. They have had it educated out of them. What is it like to look at our world and believe that mankind is inherently good? Who knows anymore? The 20th century was the schoolroom where we learned of the evil inherent in man. The shock of this became a view of man as inherently evil. Who could doubt it? All one has to do is look around and see the killing, the bombings, the oppression, the theft. The Good is hard to come by. So we think mankind is inherently evil. We do little to demolish this belief. In fact, we support it. We think that the Churches are doing our fighting for us, to save us from ourselves. Mankind is inherently Good. It is Evil that is the mutation. Evil is not the rule, it is the exception that puts the rule of Good to the proof. Only we shall not wait and look at the proof. Pity this generation which will never know what it is to think of mankind as inherently Good and truly in the image of God, rather than some ethnic cleansing scum. We shall never know what is it to realize how good man is, because we prefer to believe in evil. Evil is used to rationalize our wars, our business lying, our marital infidelities, our alcohol abuse, everything under the sun. We sin because we are such weak and sinful creatures. I believe we are strong and Godly creatures. We are living in the time of a Great Reversal, however. This is putting us to the test. It tries to make us despair. It is so far suceeding.

If It Looks Like A Goose, And Steps Like A Goose...

My grandfather used to say that if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then it is a duck. (Actually, grandfather was an ornithologist and took the above quite a longer distance than I has set forth. He would add things like "...and is of the Class Aves, and is of the Order Anseriformes, and is of the Family Dendrocygninae...") Ann Coulter has given a speech in which she called John Edwards a "faggot". She has defended this, saying young right wingers should emulate her. Julius Streicher reminds me of AC. He was an early leader of the Brown Shirts, and was a foul mouthed wretch. His "base" as we foppishly call it these days, was the radical right, radical enough to indulge their violent and intemperate fantasies. AC is a centimeter from violence. How do I know this? Because in many parts of the world, in many parts of this country, people still indulge in bashing faggots. Hence, by this labelling, we see the establishment of a thin veiled code to urge the "base" to violence. The "base" is not the Right wing members of the University Club, it is those members who are most likely to respond to a call to violence, and who have a lot of free time to indulge in it. The "base" upon which AC seems to focus seems to be the same type of base Julius Streicher appealed to. So if it looks like a goose, swims like a goose, and goose-steps like a goose...figure it out.

Mr. Patrick Buchanan et alii

The American Conservative, Huzzah! The American Conservative has joined my blogroll of honor. Mr. Buchanan and his associates are rather brilliant. If you wish very good Conservative opinion, read them. (If you wish a sort of The Onion presentation of Conservative opinion, read The National Review.) You will notice that I have Juan Cole's Informed Comment and Patrick Buchanan's The American Conservative on the same list. Most people would consider that a Liberal-Conservative paradox. However, one reaches an age where one finally becomes tired of being lied to incessantly and opts for the Truth, no matter what the political suasion. Health Care and Medical Insurance The problems at Walter Reed hospital have been going on a long time. In my life, the tawdry way that wounded soldiers have been treated has been commonplace, going all the way back to Vietnam. The Executive branch and the Legislative branch do not care. At least, they do not care to the point of doing anything. That is the measure of care: whether they do anything because it is the right thing to do, not merely because a free press has once again forced them to own up to their incompetence. So, if this country's elected representatives cannot even supply a Health system to those of its citizens who have given the utmost in devotion, why do you think they will be able to create a Health system for the rest of the country? The Leviathan of the Bureaucracy will crush us, and they will not lift a finger. Perhaps we should keep the present administration on. They did get things done by allowing the companies involved in the Health industry to write their own rules. If we extend this to allowing them to perform their own oversight, we would probably see a Health system overnight. IBS A lot of Bloggers suffer from IBS, Irritable Blog Syndrome. They can't go anywhere without knowing where their notebooks are, and there is the constant wind, nausea, bloating, pain, and spasms. I know a great many that do. They usually have a serious political bent, such as "I am a serious political blogger." I am not a serious political blogger. Sometimes, I obviously am not a serious writer/blogger. I wrote a monstrous piece on Negative Comments that was tantamount to putting a jester motley on and a hat with bells, capering around the blogosphere and saying "Call me Wamba!" I started this Blog to write about God. Sometimes I lose the way. Or, I am a fish on a hook on a line stretching to the ends of the earth, and He pulls me back with a twitch on the line. Hound of Heaven, eh? Tags I have been quite bowled over by tags. I thought I could organize things in the Blogstead, the Blog-pantry, the Blog-wine cellars, the Blog-garage, but now I have more tags, one says "Blog-pantry", another "Blog-garage" and so on. If this were an exponentially Inflationary thingey, like that Big Bang wheeze, I would be in the existential soup! (Crikey! A tag labelled "tags" was just added!) Memories I could not remember the name of my accountant yesterday. I was driving my car. I do not mean to imply cause and effect here, that somehow driving causes me to forget everything, names, addresses, inhibitions! No. Merely setting the scene. Creating a pied-a-terre, to use an expression Jeeves is fond of. His name is T. I could not remember it. So, as I approached the stop by the University of Funny Architecture, I thought to myself that I should have to call his office and ask the receptionist to go through all the names, and that would be embarassing. So my mind drifts along, and makes the call for me, as it were. The mental imago of the receptionist, quite a looker, by the way, picks up the mental telephone and begins going through the names. She literally says " Is it P? Is it Q, R, S? Is it T?" I jump at it and thank her. It was the right name. It took me about 20 seconds, after my intial feeling of euphoria passed, to realize how odd this all had been.

My View Of Religion 3

I previously mentioned there were two books that made a great influence on my view of Religion. That was a mistake. Firstly, Toynbee’s Study was in 14 volumes. I read it a long time ago. There was no baby Mozart back then, but there was baby Toynbee, so my parents started reading it to me, and I took over when I learned to read, about volume 5. Secondly, I neglected to mention Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy. The Idea of the Holy takes a strictly Kantian point of view, and Prof. Otto regards the idea of the Holy as a special thing within the Kantian category of Value. I do not agree with this, but this was the very first mention I had ever across that the Holy was an idea that was part of the very structure of the human mind. I believe that the idea of the Holy, the idea of God, is part of the structure of the human mind, both consciously and not consciously. By this we do not mean that God is somehow hard-wired into the human mind. If this were indeed the case, then we would be at a loss to explain the existence of Atheists. I believe God speak to each of us in a special way due to the structure of our minds. I believe we are aware of this when we are children, hence Jesus asked that his disciples let the children come unto Him. The type of consciousness of children I call dawn consciousness, or eoconsciousness, and this serves to distinguish from the consciousness into which we grow as we reach the age of reasoning and language use. The loss of innocence of the children is the realization of the idea of Death, and not merely the concept of Death, which forms a part of God’s plan, but the gross imposture of Death as final and the end of all. As my father approaches his operation for an abdominal aneurysm, I find I shall have to speak to him to calm his nervousness. I shall if needed. What shall I say? I shall say what I have already said numerous times to people I know who need God, but cannot find belief in their hearts. I tell them that God touches us when we are conceived and in our childhood. This dawn consciousness is the consciousness we use to live and play. We played cowboys and Indians as children. We played soldiers. However, when someone was shot and killed, they did not remain inert. They did not stay silently on the ground. They did not remain dead. Rather, they rose up! We rose up and played on! At that time, we had the dawn understanding of life, and in that time God had indicated to us that Death has no dominion. And the only thing we as adults have left of this Eden is a dim concept of the Resurrection, so dim it cannot stay our fears. Most of us think it a dark mystery, not a bright mystery. Our understanding of the Resurrection, in Christianity, in Islam, and in Judaeism, stems from our dawn understanding. And our dawn understanding was different; it was not incorrect and childish. It is we, the adults, who are childish, because we cannot see the truths given us when God created us.

Thinking On Thin Ice

I have mentioned the blog Thinking On Thinking at http://pmulder.blogspot.com/ The title inspired me ( in the usual convoluted, labyrinthine way my mind works ) to build an addition onto my Blogstead entitled Thinking On Thin...Ice! This is where I shall politely disagree with such types as propound Intelligent Design mumbo-jumbo and similar bad hoodia. Thus I shall preserve the form and letter of etiquette, if not quite the spirit.

Russell's Paradox 1

I titled this post Paradox 1 with the optimistic expectation there will be a 2. We shall see. There is a very nice Blog titled THINKING ON THINKING at http://pmulder.blogspot.com/ It has a posting on the Russel Paradox. (By the by, we are talking Bertrand Russell here, not Jack Russell.)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Russell's Paradox "Nothing contains everything", applied: A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself ? * If the barber does not shave himself, he must abide by the rule and shave himself. * If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself. And, another one:"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, the Cretians (sic) are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This testimony is true."Titus 1:12-14 (King James Version)



Much has been written about the paradoxes Barbieri di Seviglia and Cretan Liar.
We may describe the Cretan Liar as follows: Epimenides says "All Cretans are liars." Epimenides is a Cretan. If Epimenides' statement is true, then this implies that Epimenides always tells falsehoods. Hence, Epimenides' statement is false. Or, the truth of Epimenides statement implies the falsity of Epimenides' statement. Both paradoxes have been seen as problems in statements that are self-referential.

I do not believe that the Cretan Liar is a "nothing contains everything" type of paradox. Observe that the Cretan Liar scenario is a paradox when there is exactly 1 Cretan liar. It is also a paradox when the scenario allows for exactly 2 Cretans who lie. And so on, up until all Cretans surveyed are liars. The scenario where all Cretans are liars still leads to the paradox: the truth of the statements of 1,000 Cretans that all Cretans are liars implies the falsity of the 1,000 statements. I conclude that such a paradox as the Cretan Liar indicates that the original statement was not the type which may be assigned a truth value.

I do not believe that all propositions may be assigned such truth values. When a proposition, or statement such as "The Cure concert rocked!" is treated as if it may be assigned a truth value, it always leads to paradoxes. Hence, it was not the type of things to assign a truth value to. Epimenides statement is an appraisal, not a proposition of the form (x) {if x is a Cretan, then x is a liar}. It has only the appearance of being so. This is not the first instance of mimicry, mummery, or disguise in Nature.
Now, the Barber. Observe that the Barber paradox disappears if we allow that there are 2 barbers. Then barber 2 may shave barber 1, and barber 1 may shave barber 2. It disappears if there are 3 barbers. Barber 1 shaves barber 2, barber 2 shaves barber 3, barber 3 shaves barber 1. { Of course, we have to transform the original statement of the paradox to: A man of Seville is shaved by a Barber of Seville. ( not "the" barber, not just one and no more.) } If all men in Seville are barbers, they all shave each other in some sort of ghastly daisy-chain rig-a-marole.
In fact, they form sort of a circular group of order N, where N equals the number of men in Seville.

From this I conclude that the Barber Paradox is a Singularity Paradox. It is not dependent upon Set Theory and whether there is a Set that contains all items of a population. It is dependent on the fact that Singularities are inherently paradoxical.
For example, look at the work done by Linde on Inflation Theory cosmology. This was inspired, in part, by the cosmological problems created by the singularity of the original Big Bang theory. In essence, where did the singularity come from?

Similarly, we see the problem in arguments for the existence of God from a chain of causes, wherein God becomes the First Cause. As observed by Schopenhauer, the Principle of Causality is not a hansom cab that we take only so far, and then send away when we judged that we have arrived at our destination. Thus, the Principle of Causality cannot be used to establish a Terminus at the beginning of a chain of caused events. I have often wondered "I wonder what it was like for the first men or women who uttered speech? Was there anyone else around to understand them?" Scenarios like this, dealing with the first occurence, are very, very foggy. Was there a "first" person to speak? We often talk as if there were. So, prove it. Singularities are funny creatures. Ask Professor Hawking if you do not believe me. Two paradoxes down.

Cocktails Of The Elite: Mesopotamian Manhattans

There is a furtive website devoted to archeological bric-a-brac which has been lifted, borrowed, taken out on very long term loan from the Baghdad Museum. This goes back to the good old days of euphoria after the fall of Saddam and the disbanding of the Iraqi Police. I considered this as a logo ( although, what " I " have to do with all this is not clear. I have already distanced myself from "BLOOD" diamonds, mostly through the brainy idea of labelling them "Gem Haematites".) There is a Sumerian Seal, overlain by a maraschino cherry, without which no Manahttan may be drunk. In an inspired moment, I substituted a red crescent-shaped plastic scimitar for the usual straight plastic cocktail sword, thus combining Sumeria with the crescent of Islam- the red being a dash of tabasco or Al Hajjaj. Al Hajjaj is the sort of individual who would be called the "blood" in a "bloody good time."

I realize the script work on the top is a bit more Indus Valley or Mohenjo-Daro than it is Sumerian cuneiform, but Pakistan is not so far down the list.

painting: Suheir Salman

from: http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2007/03/point-zero.html

Shaka Naw 1

If you are one of those rare individuals who believe that we are actually responsible for the outcomes of our acts, you may wish to investigate different accounts and interpretations of The Iraq Thing. ( I really do not know what to call it anymore. It's not a war, not Shock 'N Awe, anymore. More like a way of life while we choose whom to elect in 2008 to put an end to it. Say, by the way, am I the only person of the face of this earth to have heard some sort of doggerel music with "Shock 'n Awe" sung like "Shaka Khan, Shaka Khan" - you know the song I'm talking about. It was some ghastly "Shaka Naw, Shaka Naw, gonna love ya, Shaka naw! Gonna bomb ya, Shaka Naw!" I had forgotten that hideous nonsense completely until right now.) Consider: http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/ It is not for the faint hearted, nor for those who really do not want to know.

E* Rulz*

(Blogger won't accept "!" in titles, so I used the " * " )

There seems to be a growing awareness that Politics is now Entertainment, or E!Politics. This goes hand and hand with the realization that Journalism had become E!Journalism, and it still is for the most part, although some journalists seem to have pulled back from their E! status during the Embedded Phase I. I am not a Ph.D. in Economics, but it seems to me that in a Consumer Culture such as we infest, everything that exists exists to be consumed, and it has to be advertised and brought to the eye of the consumer. The best way to do this is good old E!. I mean, who in their right mind would have recourse to the opposite approach, the antithesis of E!, boredom, irritation, being a pain in the back, to get you to spend money on their stuff...who other than prophets and holy people, that is. They have always been a pain.

In Locusts and Honey http://locustsandhoney.blogspot.com/2006/05/you-must-buy-this-book.html there is a wonderful post:  

So often, it seems that when a group of Christians think that there is a problem in their church or a new opportunity on the horizon, the solution begins and usually ends at: *Buying a particular popular book by a Christian author. *Paying to attend the Xcitement Christian Expo Conference 2006 in Las Vegas (or whatever conference name is selected). *Hiring a popular Christian speaker to come to the church to address the congregation. Whenever there is something to be done, we must spend money before doing it. Or maybe even spending money is the whole action taken. The writer does arrive at a sentence "How do we teach a church to pray? It ain't nuclear rocket brain surgery."

I seem to recall I sort of said something almost opposite, as it were, maybe. Prayer is not hard. Prayer that is humble and does not assume one is the center of the universe is. Prayer that does not attempt to scam, run a wheeze on, or put the touch on God is difficult.
However, it is only difficult because we have been taught from childhood to be self-centered. (The usual way of teaching children not to be self-centered, if and when such a process does exist, is to whale the daylights out of 'em!)
The main point of this is that even in Religion, E! rulz! Buy, read,consume. Go to see a movie approved by the elders. Pray to the E!God! If we continue like this, all the forms of E! will be interchangeable; political discussion will be Bruce Willis scenarios, morality will be TV shows, religion will be a "Lilies of the Field" experience. E! is like currency, it is a fungible entity. E! can transform into other forms of E! or E! assets. Thus, we shall be able to confess our sins at the Game and do penance on the Golf Course, and God will smile in SimHeaven.

Ann Coulter Gives A Speech

Seen in the front row where the speech was delivered.

There was a lot of sexual innuendoes and double-entendres.

She called John Edwards a "faggot" and more.

The popcorn was free.

Thanks, and a tip of the leader's hat to AC!

///:=)

Negative Comments; A Hair Of The Pen That Bit You

"It is an observed fact that men employ their reason to defend conclusions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at by the passions are defended by the passions." Benedict de Spinoza Theologico-Political Treatise, chapter 7. If we accept this observation of Spinoza, we are forced to recall that sometimes the conclusions of reason are also defended by passion. Hence, there is a passion in reason and a passion for reason. Are the conclusions of faith defended by faith? Or by passion? You go figure it out. Getting back to the main foci of attention, me, myself, and I, I received my first unflattering comment. I wondered about it. It was written about My View On Religion 2. I knew I was going to get into trouble when I really said what I actually believe. However, I can't wait forever. I am working on fuller presentations of my faith, but I had to go on record somewhere, sometime. So, I believe Religion is the greatest thing for humanity since sliced bread. Religion-if we can look beyond the degraded state to which WE have brought it-is the inherent behavior of mankind to seek a higher state. You would think the atheist side would have howled. You would think the secularist would rol their eyesl and yell for my head. No. A disciple of Jesus said I was boring, long winded, liberal (whatever he means by that - usually when someone calls me a liberal,I say I shall wait until he finds out what 'liberal' means in his Falwell Faith FedEx ! When someone calls me a Tory, I say something about a post from Pitt the Younger.), gray, fuzzy, illogical, dumbfounded, calamitous, catastrophic, oxymoronic, bearded, having a tendency to scratch too much, and having the dental hygiene of a British soccer fan. After having bought myself some much needed time by the listing above, it dawns on me that I did indeed accomplish what I wanted: Commenting is not easy in the first place. In the second place, when you write a comment to an eccentric, Lord knows what to expect! (My daughter has said that did she not know me, she would not write a comment! ) When I wrote the truth, it had enough traction to make someone pick up a pen... and denounce me. (I do not disguise the fact that support would have been preferable, but oh, well. Resisting Vanity is not my strong suit anyway.) It means that the words had effect. They resonated so loudly, the disciple had to comment and stop that bloody racket. I believe that is good. It is good for both of us. We both stop and think. (NB: I am informed that I was not strictly correct. This was my first negative comment that had been submitted in text. There have been a myriad of exasperated negatories that have never made it as far as the keyboard.)