Rosetta Lands !

The Rosetta Lander of the ESA, European Space Agency, has landed successfully upon its comet of choice.

I fills me with memory of the Mediterranean:  Rosetta, now Rashid, on the Nile delta; Philae, an island in the Nile near Aswan; PTOLEMY,
http://www.open.ac.uk/science/pssri/research/missions/rosetta/ptolomy.php

The scientific goal of using Ptolemy is to understand the geochemistry of light elements, such as hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, by determining their nature, distribution and stable isotopic compositions. The picture on the right shows the lander instrument, Ptolemy, which was designed and developed in conjunction with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The size of a shoebox and weighing just 4.5 kg, Ptolemy will use gas chromatography / mass spectrometry (GCMS) techniques to investigate the comet surface and subsurface;

and OSIRIS, an acronym for Optical, Spectroscopic, and InfraRed Remote Imaging System.

I also saw the film Interstellar today. It was great. One of the best parts was in the beginning where an elementary school teacher complains that Matthew McConaughey's daughter is causing trouble in class by showing pictures of the Apollo missions to the Moon, thus disagreeing with the official curriculum that the Apollo landings were phoney political ploys designed to cause the USSR to overspend on rockets and such.

Wonderfully done.

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Pope Francis and Cardinal Burke

Pope Francis has demoted the very conservative Cardinal Burke. Some Catholic blogs think that this will be bad for Francis, because Burke, who has said that the Church is "rudderless" under Pope Francis, will be free to speak his mind on everything under the sun.
However, I see it as an instantiation of the old adage to keep one's friends close... and one's enemies closer.

If Francis is not afraid to demote, he will not be afraid to inflict further penalty upon the recalcitrant bishop.

We read:
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/11/10/pope-francis-sidelines-probably-cant-silence-cardinal-raymond-burke-analysis/

VATICAN CITY (RNS)

In demoting American Cardinal Raymond Burke from his powerful perch at the Vatican, Pope Francis has sidelined an outspoken conservative agitator — for now.

The pope moved the feisty former archbishop of St. Louis from his role as head of the Vatican’s highest court to the largely ceremonial position of patron of the Knights of Malta on Saturday (Nov. 8).
Francis has effectively exiled one of his loudest critics, but Burke’s supporters — and his opponents — warn that his position at the Catholic charity may actually give him more freedom to exercise greater influence and even rally opposition to papal reforms.

In other words, the stunning demotion may remake Burke into St. Raymond the Martyr, the patron saint of Catholic conservatives.

“His position as patron of the Knights of Malta is Rome-based and mostly ceremonial,” wrote Edward Pentin for the conservative National Catholic Register.
“He is nevertheless likely to continue and perhaps even step up his defense of the Church’s teaching in the face of continued efforts to radically alter pastoral practice in the run-up to next year’s second synod on the family.”

Burke is well-known for his uncompromising stance on abortion, homosexuality and the sanctity of marriage, and his passion for doctrine is matched only by his passion for the elegant finery of his office.
Wearing the vibrant red robes of a cardinal for the first time on the day he was appointed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in 2010, he used one word to describe the greatest threat to the church: “secularization.”

During the global bishops’ Synod on the Family held at the Vatican last month, Burke bitterly complained that conservative views were being stifled amid initial signs of a more welcoming approach to gays and lesbians.

But he raised the ante in an interview with Spanish Catholic weekly, Vida Nueva, at the end of October when he made a direct attack on Francis’ leadership.

“At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,” Burke said. “Now, it is more important than ever to examine our faith, have a healthy spiritual leader and give powerful witness to the faith.” ...

And this reminds me of the parable of the three talents (a type of money), about which I very recently wrote:
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-parable-of-talents_13.html

... The parable in Matthew 25:14-30 tells of a master who was leaving his home to travel, and before going entrusted his property to his servants (property worth 8 talents, where a talent was a large unit of money, as discussed below). One servant receives five talents, the second two talents, and the third one talent, according to their respective abilities.

Returning after a long absence, the master asks his servants for an accounting. The first two servants explain that they have each put their money to work and doubled the value of the property they were entrusted with, and so they are each rewarded...

The third servant, however, has merely hidden his talent in a hole in the ground, and is punished...

At times I have found it hard to understand why the servant who did not put the money at risk should be punished, for those who had been enriched could also have been impoverished, and we could have lost the principal along with the income.

The talents are symbols of the Torah for Jesus.
There are at least two ways to approach the Law:  put it out into the marketplace, or hide it and bury it away from the sight of other folks.

Apparently in this parable we hear of the Law as a living thing, capable of change. What kind of change, we ask? Well, the answer to that is up to us. The kind of change that the Law experiences will be the result of a negotiation between all the parties involved.
But the important part is the teaching that our present understanding of the Law is not a Credo, not a Catechism, but a living entity which exhibits the characteristics of other living entities. It is not a coin to be hidden under a rock.

I do not say I disagree with Cardinal Burke. However, his reaction thus far seems to be that of a servant who believes the his understanding of the Law must be kept virgin and intact.

He appeals to the Scriptures. Pope Francis appeals to life-lived-as-life, not as life-as-monument.

The word "schism" has been heard.
I am happy that Politics will once again trump Unity, for this is the Time of Discord, and the race of mankind will bleed itself until it comes together in the Harmony of Exhausted Souls.

How may mankind comprehend the Law of the Holy?... except by trials and errors and all those sorrowful streets we know by now so well?
--

北方之旅... And Back Home

The get-together for Alvin Xiao back in July was a terrific blast.

The food was varied from superb to ghastly. My friend's cousin reminded me of Jack London. I ran in the Leland  "Friends of Fishtown"  5K race.

My Chinese language skills were perfunctory. I had studied an old text from the Sun Yat-tsen days, and I sounded like some old Sheng that talked as if he remembered the Yuan dynasty.

There were fire lanterns lofted into the summer sky of night. Someone had one and was lighting it about 12 feet from me, and I had visions of it blowing into me and dumping blazing parafin on me, scarring me forever and providing a viral hit on YouTube during the summer doldrums.

On the day when everyone went to the beach, our hosts had chosen a secluded shingle that was a bit of a trek up hill, down dale, and around rather largish inlets of still water. One of the older numbers in the party became quite bowled over by the efforts to enjoy the sun and surf, and they had to be returned via borrowed kayak.
Let that be a lesson: when having large get-togethers, always have some sort of quick exit device thingey available, just in case someone is not feeling well.

After July, we went into August, September, and on...

My mother's house was sold. We had to find her a new independent living place. We had a garage sale, found a place, and moved vast quantities of stuff.
My mother describes herself as a neat-freak, but I think she is more of a neat-hoarder-freak.
When it came time to move, her vaunted box collection was just about useless.

She gave my niece 3 previously owned plastic chocolate eclair containers from Sam's Club along with 14 calendars for 2015. At least she is not giving them out for Christmas!
She also had more wire shelving of different sizes than I have ever seen. Of course, she has room for hardly 1/5 of all that.
She has tea cups stackers even though all of her tea cups were given away, and mugs are to be used.

This took a while.

My younger brother suddenly died on October 5.
My older brother has 4 surgeries scheduled ( hip, hip, knee, knee) starting November 20.
The day after my mother moved into her new digs, I took her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure of an early and not too debilitating stage... maybe. She spent about 3 hours in the hall on a gurney, and when the nurse came to give her Lasix, I said that I do not think she could make it to the Ladies' Room.

I remember my father and Lasix. It was like jet fuel for the bladder for him. (Did I tell you that not only had my mother "saved" one of my father's plastic hospital urinals, but she had also conserved one of her father's old-timey metal hospital urinals... and she had been planning to offer them as items in the Garage Sale. We told her the neighbors would talk, and she backed down... but the metal urinal probably would have actually sold at a good price.)

She still argues against getting a Medicare Plan D for medications. She does not seem to grasp the notion of insurance against catastrophic medication costs.
Quaint.

Live is good, although most of these details suck.

--

The Triumph Of Marxism

Only maybe not on a political level...

Quantum theory will hold that there is not a state such as "nothing", for even where there is nothing, there is nonetheless a quantum foam bubbling where entities flash into being and crash out of being.

This is Hegel's awesome Power of The Negative.

Karl Marx was a Hegelian, if anyone ever was.
These threads of philosophy will work themselves out in the near future, and things will become clearer. There will be a new appreciation of Hegel... and then obscurity again !

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Time To Take A Breather

My mother is almost entirely moved into her new place; my brother has been laid to rest and probate remains; my elder brother awaits his first of 4 operations later this month.

I will take a brief rest before I start a lawsuit against the HOA of my condo.

No rest for the wicked.

--

5 Minutes To Midnight...

...according to the clock of the Orwell Society, which measures our approach to 1984-hood.

War spreads like a fire in zero-gravity, yet surely we must all realize that ISIS and their ilk are funded, supplied, and taught by Saudi Arabia, the USA, and their assortment of allies.

If we end ISIS in Syria, we end the war there, and when wars elsewhere end, we tend to look at the alienation of lands in the West Bank, or we look at the ideological crimes of the royal house of Sa'ud.

Once again, we created Al Qa'ida because it suited our purposes. So did we create ISIS... it suits our purposes, which is a State of Constant War.
This State of Constant War is to exist between Oceania (NATO), Eurasia (Russia and its allies), and East Asia (China and the Shanghai Cooperative). Plans have been drawn up, operations have started, and all that remains is the eventual globalization of Banal Despair.

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Ebola Preparedness

My mother was talking about the nation's poor state of readiness for Ebola.

I thought about it, and then asked her how much more she would be willing to pay for a state of readiness approaching 100% ; how much would it cost to drill medical people many times a year and to have constant readiness seminars to try to ensure that proper procedures are followed?

It would cost a lot, and this country is not willing to pay for it yet.
That is why all the kvetching about the response to Ebola so far strikes me as idiotic irony, for it would cost a lot of money and not one person complaining about it presently has said that they would pony up.

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Spread The Wealth

If Dr. Spencer in NYC was not contagious until he began showing symptoms of Ebola - and the first symptom (at least, the first we know about) was the elevated temperature on Thursday last morning - why are people going around disinfecting everything he has come into contact with?

It seems that he felt sluggish back on Tuesday. Apparently feeling sluggish is not a symptom. In my mind, it is a symptom of the flu, so maybe he was celebrating the onset of seasonal flu with a trip to the bowling alley across town.

Perhaps sluggishness led to extremely poor choices, an inability to think clearly. I have had those symptoms with the flu in the past.

Julia Ioffe has an article in the NY Times on the phenom of America's frenzied indulgence in germ-spreading:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119969/new-york-city-ebola-case-why-did-dr-craig-spencer-go-bowling

From where I sit, it often looks like the other side of American individualism, which becomes selfishness when you lay it on thick. It’s the belief that you and your needs are acutely exceptional and important, and take precedence over those of the people around you. It’s the unspoken belief that your day radiating sickness at the office is worth a couple of your colleagues being bedridden with your flu for a week. 

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We Make The World

Through our conversation we make the world.

As we communicate, we are "negotiating" a common world view. We may not agree, and the common world view will contain contradictions and conflicts, but we are negotiating as longer as we talk and interact.

The world is not only our responsibility, it is our fault.

It can also be our creation.

There is a great fund of good in the world which we obscure by a mudslide of 24/7 bad news and political debate.
My wife says she watches NBC News and Bryan Williams because he ends the show every day with a story about people who are making a difference. However, it seems symptomatic of our dilemma: 27 minutes of conflict and hurt and 3 minutes of the good, when in real life, the opposite ratio is probably the correct one.

We are scripting a story of suffering and pain for all to see and participate in.

Let us do something else.

--

The Christians Of Iraq

I saw a car with a bumper sticker that stated, "Save The Iraqi Christians"
It did not say how that was to be accomplished.

(Keep in mind that our leaders are the products of the same educational system that is bringing us the daily examples of how to handle infectious diseases, such as Ebola.)

The removal of the Iraqi Christians is another step in decreasing diversity of religion. We are already into a process of decreasing biodiversity, and the concentration of wealth we witness serves to decrease social diversity.
Diversity is decreased by cramming everything into a smaller number of possible boxes; instead of a large number of boxes, some large and some small, we have just one or two large boxes: wealth or poverty, ISIS or the sword, feast or famine.

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From Metropolis To Hitler: Fire and Clay

I have finished reading Thea von Harbou's novel Metropolis. I have seen Fritz Lang's film five times, three times in the past two years. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I think that the leader of Metropolis, Joh Fredersohn, is a pre-archetype of Hitler, being an anticipation of the type of leader who actively seeks the destruction of the society he has created.

Joh Fredersohn's motives escape me, unless there is some connection between his wife, Hel, and the ancient goddess Hel.
There probably is.
The shrine to the woman Hel who was the mother of Joh Fredersohn's son, Freder, was in Rotwang's house, the strange continuum between antiquity and alchemy - Kabbala and the Star of David - mixed with Tesla coils and modern science.

At the threshhold between new and old, we see Rotwang striving to recreate Hel, who had died in the birth of Freder. Since both Rotwang and Joh Fredersohn had loved Hel, and since Rotwang is seemingly working for Fredersohn to create his robotic version of Hel, this is a very tight triangle of passion.
Yet, the scheme changes as Fredersohn seeks to undermine and kidnap a new religious movement among the oppressed workers by abducting Maria, the main figure of the new movement, and creating the robot using her as a template. The motive is to turn the pacifist religious workers movement to revolution, and then to turn the police and army loose to destroy them...

... none of which makes sense, because the city quite obviously cannot exist without the working class.

And there is a sense of the Golem, made from clay by Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the 16th century Rabbi of Prague. The Rabbi brought the Golem to life to protect the Jewish community during a time of troubles.
And in the midst of the Star of David in Rotwang's house/lab, we see a woman made, not of clay like the golem, but of metal and electricity brought to life to destroy a community! The defender of the oppressed becomes the oppressor!

And there is a current children's book titled The Golem And The Jinni in which the Golem is a female and the Jinni male, the female made from clay and the male made from smokekess flame of fire, as the Jinn are created, as is written:

Where are we?
I feel lost in a maze of symbolic misadventures.

Why did we enter the twentieth century in dubious battle and why did we leave the twentieth century in the fog of wars?
Why does man imagine that he himself creates and he himself destroys? And why is man become intoxicated with his illusion of power? Where have God, where has Adonai, where has Allah disappeared? For they exist only as ideological signs... without the awe of the Holy.

We awe ourselves with our own cruelty and destruction.

--

The Parable Of The Talents

I refer to Wikipedia for a succinct account of the Parable of the Talents ("talents" being an ancient currency):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_talents_or_minas


Parable of the talents

The parable in Matthew 25:14-30 tells of a master who was leaving his home to travel, and before going entrusted his property to his servants (property worth 8 talents, where a talent was a large unit of money, as discussed below). One servant receives five talents, the second two talents, and the third one talent, according to their respective abilities.

Returning after a long absence, the master asks his servants for an accounting. The first two servants explain that they have each put their money to work and doubled the value of the property they were entrusted with, and so they are each rewarded:

His lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord."

— Matthew 25:23, World English Bible

The third servant, however, has merely hidden his talent in a hole in the ground, and is punished:

He also who had received the one talent came and said, "Lord, I knew you that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter. I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have what is yours."

But his lord answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn't sow, and gather where I didn't scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn't have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

— Matthew 25:24–30, World English Bible


This is a tough nut to crack, this parable. One needs to be there, to see the gestures and the intonations of the speaker's voice to know what was intended in places. For example, I could read the last quoted portion as:

"You !! You -oh, Einstein! - you knew that I did not sow !!??..." and so on. Sort of sarcastic-like.

Be that as it may, I read the money or talents as the Law, the Torah.

By hiding it in the ground, the servant treats it as a mere possession; precious, indeed, but still merely an asset of value to be put into a vault and guarded.

By taking the talents and putting them out into the world, by putting them at risk - for the money could have decreased as well as increased - the first two servants treat the Law as something valuable which yet must be changed in some way.

For me, this change is understanding.
Understanding changes not only the one who understands,  but it changes that which is understood, and - if the matter be weighty enough - it changes the world.

My own study of this parable changed my understanding of the parable, but also changed me, for I see now the distinct difference between the Rabbi of Goray and the Rabbis of the surrounding villages:
Women desiring divorce or a pronouncement of death for a husband (lost to war or pogrom for some years gone by) flocked to Goray because the Rabbi there interpreted the Law with great sympathy and understanding and lenience, whereas the Rabbis round about were stiff-necked and had little sympathy for the sorrows of women.

The Law is not something that sits upon the necks of mankind.

It is something which calls us on to understand, and blesses us when we do.

This is reflected in the desire of various types of people who wish to have copies of the Ten Commandments erected upon the square in front of City Hall; these people wish that the Law of God be seen by all people as cast in stone and unchanging.
But the Law of God can hardly be expressed in words, and each and every person and generation must struggle to come to an understanding, and as they do, the Law as it is perceived by mankind changes.

The servant with much understanding changed most, the servant with less changed, but less in the same period of time.
The servant who treated the Law as an unchanging asset to be stored away and hidden gained nothing, changed nothing, and was cast out in the end.

--
pix: Wikipedia

Futility's Exercises

Futility is electing a Republican majority in Congress in 2014.

If we want anything done, we should elect Democratic majorities in 2014, and turn them and President Obama loose to accomplish something, anything!

Then, if you still don't like it, elect Republican majorities and a Republican President in 2016.

--

My Brother

My younger brother passed away last weekend.

It was not entirely a surprise, but that only eliminated the element of surprise, not the element of grief. Yesterday I saw the real meaning of "Infinity", which is never to see again; never, never, infinitely never will the touch or look be there.

Drugs may have been involved.
Thus, he belonged to the under-class of our brave, new world. Even though many of us have read and heard the Gospels say that our human judgement is a perilous project:

- Judge not so that you may not also be judged;
- Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone;
- As you measure, so shall it be measured to you;

we always ignore such scriptural clap-trap and render our judgements, probably with the feeling of great satisfaction that we are once again showing Jesus of Nazareth who's boss.

All elements of the "good" people involved treated me with respect and my brother's memory with disrespect. From the police to the medical examiner's office to the landlord of the apartment where he lived, deftly, surely, respectfully, with great sympathy...  and some without even a vestige of sympathy, casting out his belongings... they let it be known that my brother was really not worth my time.

The police went to great lengths to make sure I was informed not only of his last moments, but of a parade of events earlier which cast him into a bad light. They did not know that I usually saw him every week or two; that we would go to the bank and the store; that we would go to the coffee shops; that we would drive down to the river and watch the river traffic and talk.

The "better" crowd wanted me to know that he was riffraff, just in case I were one of those relatives who, after having ignored the black sheep of the family for years, now pops up out of no-where to act in a pious manner.

I do not judge their actions. I merely state that I was appalled by them, and I continue to be so, even though I fully understand them.
What I cannot understand is the vast desert of ignorance of any religious teaching underpinning our everyday activities... for if someone acts in a manner we consider immoral, then why would we jump at the chance to add a judgement which is discountenanced by Scripture?

Not to judge does not mean to approve of. It merely means to be silent. It means to seek understanding of our lives of happiness and suffering.

A judgement is cast in stone. Understanding is deep change, for to understand something we previously did not understand changes us and our world. That is why I hate "belief" systems: they are dead and buried in a vault. I would rather seek understanding and be surprised by the world and by God...  for I do not question existence, but I realize my grasp of the Nature of the World and The Holy is grossly imperfect.

Those who make judgements are the "good" citizens who seek to have the Ten Commandments propped up in front of the City Hall: the commandments are Laws, cast in stone, unalterable.
If we put up the Golden Rule to do unto others as we would wish them to do to us in front of City Hall, we might cause people to stop and ponder. Thinking deeply might cause change. Insights might fly in like a flock of flamingos, and we would be changed.
Perish the thought!

Those who judge now reflect that he who was of little value has now died, punished by death and the barbs of our condemnations, while the "good" live on in sanctity.

Those who understand now look about like the Prince of Verona at the end of Romeo and Juliet, look about at the dead and the living, and say:

"All are punishèd...

    All are punishèd ! "

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Detroit Tigers Win The Central Division !

At the end of the regular baseball season, I was present at Comerica Park to watch the Detroit Tigers play the Minnesota Twins. There was a close race with the Kansas City Royals to the championship of the American League Central Division.
Earlier in the week I had listened to the local TV news by some gross error on my part, and if was reported that there was a weird machine of statistics that was non-Gould-computable (after Stephen Jay Gould, baseball nut and fine scientist) which said that any combination of Tigers wins or Royals losses that equaled 3 would mean the local boys would win.

It went down to the wire.
So here we were on a fine, warm Sunday.
My friend required a free parking space, so we parked a mile and a half away from the stadium in a George Romero-type neighborhood. I knew this because a large abandoned building had "Zombieland" painted across the upper floor facade.
This did make it easy to find the car after the game, since Zombieland was visible well beyond the ball park, a feature that made up for the fact that there were so many buildings with boards over the windows - just like the fenestral barricades in "Night Of The Living Dead" and "28 Weeks Later" and other memorous flicks of the nouvelle onde de zombies ( I don't use "nouvelle vague" since that has been patented by earlier Frenchies, and I hate to pay des royalties !!)

I had worn my least comfortable shoes, my docksiders. It was a tough walk until the pain numbed me up. Even my "Milkman" shoes would have been better. ("Milkman" shoes is what I call my flipping Tevas, since the name reminds me of "Tevia", who happens to have been - and still is - a milkman.)

My friend bought peanuts on the outside of the stadium, significantly cheaper than those inside. This fact of life was significantly established by Dr. Carver years and years ago. Same goes for beer and bottled water.
I eat the entire peanut; I just throw the whole thing into my mouth and chomp away on it. Since there is a good deal more salt on the shell than on the kernels, I do not eat many peanuts this way... unless there is a bottled water monger nearby.

Speaking of which, we sat on the third-base line about five rows higher than the top of the home team dug-out, and about 15 seats from it away from home plate.
These were great seats until the 5th inning when the crowd became thirsty from the sun and wind and the beverage mongers I mentioned - water and beer - decided to encamp between ourselves and home plate, waving bottles of refreshment in their hands, two or three cans or bottles per hand, waving them like plastic date palm fronds in a frenzied oasis.

My friend and I had decided to make a bet on the outcome of the game.
We both picked the Tigers to win - probably based on the irrefutable fact that "they were due!" - so we had to modify the wager.

He said to pick how many runs they would win by.
I considered this. One run or two runs seemed to hardly register in my mind. I saw three, four, or five runs, and nothing greater than five. Then four and five faded, leaving a big old  3  staring right at me with my own mind's eye.

So I held up three fingers, saying that the Tigers would win by three runs.

Long story - or at least 9 innings duration - truncated and made brief, they won by precisely three runs.

We went to eat afterwards. I ate a club sandwich with an enormous wooden "waif-pole" crowned with curlicues of plastic clingfilm. I was thinking of  Ahab, Tashtego and Dagoo, not my extraordinary prowess at prognostication.
When we left the eatery, my friend said he had left my winnings as my portion of the tip.

I told him first that he was a scoundrel's sibling, and then that when it comes to betting on future events, I valued being right over the money involved.
Since he could not thimblerig me out of that, he decided to drive home by way of the Past.
He drove through the sketchiest neighborhoods, then by the street where he was born, then down Chandler Park where I was born.

I hungered for a madeleine to nibble, but the Cadieux Cafe, the neighborhood Belgian bar, was closed and eerie, wild grasses trespassed lawns in a drunken stagger, and I took solace in being right, for the joy of youth was lost in the translations from concrete isle to concrete isle within the asphalt archipelago.

photo: James D. Griffioen
--

Friar Lawrence's Blog

Arms and the man... the love of man for woman, the woman and man for the child... and of all for the black powder and firearms

These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,..

I cannot find any reports of children shooting and/or killing other children in the USA for October 3, 2014.
Nor any report of a child killing their instructor in firearms.

Huzzah !

--

The Digital Revolution Becomes The Digital 18th Brumaire !

Is there anyone there who has any sense, common or otherwise?

From the highest priorities - protecting the President, keeping the country safe from Ebola, governing the country instead of squabbling, running a banking system without destroying it - down to the everyday matters such as health care idiots, banking buffoons, and cable TV incompetents, we are being worn down into a formless, quivering mass of people who are mad as hell, and may not take it anymore.

You have tried to fix a mistake on an invoice or statement. After a few rounds with a mechanized phone menu system which asks you to enter "1" or say "Yes", and which interprets your clearing of your throat as a response, or which eavesdrops on you speaking to your wife when it is giving you a long list of choices, and takes your words and says that it does not understand them, you finally get someone who takes an hour to clear things up... and then signs you up for some gizmo or plan that you expressly turned down.

The Electronic and digital revolution has left us prey to business and hucksters, governments and scammers, hackers and hijackers...

The Era of Multi-Tasking has left us with people in charge who cannot even do one task anymore: they cannot perceive the whole and they cannot formulate the steps to go through and they cannot monitor nor evaluate the results... even though those results are delivered in real time.

We have a country where half the people have bizarre constructs called "belief systems" about newspapers, TV, the time of day, and the nature of angels.
Half the country cannot comprehend science, and the other half distrusts it.
The educational system - what is left of it - is being delivered into the hand of dogmatists and people who value politics above learning.
India has a satellite circling Mars. The people of India value science and religion; they do not choose one over the other. We hitch rides to the Space Station on Russian rockets.
We have constant battles of buffoonery, where various reincarnations of Snopes, Darrow, Bryan, and our Sciences and our Religions fight in the fog of war over little understood "belief systems".

We have Memes that run our lives, and "Memes" are nothing but Great Attractors of the random Brownian pool of concepts and idea we have floating through our echoing craniums.

When the ferment of the French Revolution - that great period of dissipation of the energy of Aristocracy - came to an end, it eventuated in the new growth of Napoleon as Emperor.

The breakdown of the pre-digital age has come to an end, and it has led to the new empire of Wealth Concentration, Dysfunctional Government, Incompetence based on the Illusory Ability conveyed by the speed and flexibility of electronics... and the list goes on.

--

Texas Hospital Ship Of Fools

 Ship Of Fools

(Possibly Texas Hospital Ship Of Fools)

I have come to the conclusion that the people in charge of this country are indeed aliens.
They are not very intelligent aliens, either. They are Stephen King's Tommyknockers with the added attraction of not being able to jimmy rig.

How difficult is it for a medical person hearing that a man who has arrived at the hospital with a fever - a man who states he had been in Liberia, where an Ebola outbreak is raging.........

... how difficult is it to quarantine the guy until the CDC gets there?

The people in charge of this country form a hierarchy of stupidity.
They are as stupid as the rest of us, but we do not get the Power nor the Money they do for their brand of stupidity.

Yesterday there was an article about NASA doing some work on handling rogue asteroids headed towards Earth.
NASA has had its poor moments, but I feel they will make a good effort that will far exceed anything the CDC has so far done about Ebola in the USA.

If the CDC were running NASA, they would give a pass on the first asteroid headed towards Earth, saying they'd double up efforts on the second planet buster.

If the UN were running NASA, they could not get the group of gifted and powerful imbeciles that make up their membership to agree on any measures to take.

If the US State Department were running NASA, they'd add fire power to the asteroid, hoping that it would hit Bashar Al Assad's office.

If the Congress were running NASA, they go home on recess and reconvene at some future date, after they had cut NASA funding.
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Archetypes

I was reading about someone interested in the history and understanding of the Warrior archetype in our society.

Hmm...

There is the Hero / Heroine. The Hero is Odysseus, unwillingly thrust into someone else's war, and living by his wits and skills until the day he can return to normal life.
In his journeys, he goes is transformed from Everyman into the Hero. This is accomplished by his or her ability to find deep sources of energy and knowledge within themselves.

The Warrior is Achilles or Ajax.
The live for war, and the blood they spill boils on their red hot skin. The best Warrior is the beserker, a war-machine.

We have been mislead by movies and books into thinking Warriors are anything but those members of society which serve our communal blood lust.

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Semitic Anti-Semitism

During the most recent Gaza War, left-wing Israelis demonstrated against the violence, only to be met by right-wing Israeli violence.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/government-inciting-israeli.html

The Narrative of 60 plus years may fall apart. What would we do without our Narrative?


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The Fog Of War

The phenomenon called "fog of war" usually occurs during intense battle, when information flows are interrupted, passions are high, and smoke obscures the fields of battle. No one can be sure what's going on.

Here in the USA, we have improved on the concept, and we have extended the fog of war even to the planning stages.
We started this process back in Iraq in 2003, when we mislaid the files containing the plans for what to do once the shooting stops. This ran at the same time as the Afghanistan war when we pushed the enemy out of the country, but notoriously failed to destroy his ability to re-infiltrate Afghanistan and to wage war.
A war which does not destroy the enemy's ability to wage war is more like a pugilistic walk in the park.

Concerning the entity now known as Islamic State, the Congress has voted to support a vastly flawed plan.
(Can you imagine what would happen if the idiots actually were not dysfunctional and were able to come together effectively to "run" our own country?!  It makes one tremble.)

Now Iran will not back the US led Alliance of Airplanes against IS, but will support Syria and Hezbollah in their fight against IS.
Of course, the USA, true to its long, long, long history of arming people and seeing those arms later turned against the USA itself, will "vet" Syrian rebels and supply the "good" rebels with arms to fight IS. (How we determine the "good" rebels probably comes down to asking them to pinkie swear that they will not use US weapons against US soldiers and people.)

Since Assad and Hezbollah will continue their fight against Syrian rebels - even the "good" ones - the two efforts against IS will soon find themselves at odds, and the independent efforts will soon turn from merely being uncoordinated into being actively deleterious to each other. Then the match will be "Advantage, Islamic State!"


... AND, in case you have not noticed, by doing this we have introduced ourselves into the middle of a religious civil war!

Sunni versus Shia. Our allies - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. etc. - versus Iran.
The one thing everyone has agreed the USA should never do: step into a religious civil war in the Middle East, has just been accomplished by our elected leaders.

No fog in that war, pal. We got a pretty good idea what's going to happen.
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TransperceMer / Sea-Piercer

Libyan Parliament Currently Operating from a Floating Ferry
http://mashable.com/2014/09/10/libyan-parliament-ferry/

Libya's elected government has fled escalating violence in the country's capital, and taken refuge in a Greek ferry in the neighboring port city of Tobruk, according to news reports.

A large ship usually used to transport cars between Italy and Greece was hired at the last minute to accommodate Libya's parliament, the Guardian reported. Elected in June, the officials were originally set to meet in Benghazi, but changed course due to intensifying conflict...

If you have seen the film Snowpiercer ( Transperceneige ), you will recognize the theme of human events carried on in the universe of Continuous Transport.
Many science fiction stories have involved generations living on starships in their centuries long journeys to far away stars. That is pretty much Continuous Transport. It is Irony in an enigmatic cocoon: human nature remaining the same while the environment radically changes; immobilis in mobile.

We are Captain Nemos, however; we seek mobilis in mobile: change within change.
If we do no change, we will never arrive at our far-off goal.

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World War E

World War E
(Ebola)


A call to violence flies the wind,
and wakes the sleeping horde;
display butterflies unpinned,
resurrected from their board!

Crack!  The specimen window glass
like a stone back rolled;
life and death in stark contrast,
command as quisling lord!

The rumor’d wars, the pandemics
us to their bidding bind;
we cannot run, we cannot mix,
as the civil knots unwind!


--

Written September 17, 2014 upon hearing about President Obama's plan to combat Ebola.
Disease, Poverty, and Ignorance are much greater enemies than ISIS could ever hope to be, for all that is needed for peace is for enough men to kill each other and to exhaust the capability of warfare.

I greatly disagree with arming the Syrian rebels, for that is exactly how we helped to created ISIS, which itself followed our Frankenstein-like creation of Al Qa'ida.
To continue to follow such a grotesque and monstrous policy is the path to ruin.

Hopefully, we may reclaim ourselves by the much more difficult battle against Ebola, which requires a commitment to the world for the present and for the future, and whose aim is solely that of the welfare of the peoples of the world.

How long has it taken us to respond to a crisis which is not political and whose implementation is not problematic? The photo above is from the following blog article:
http://leschroniquesderorschach.blogspot.com/2014/03/une-epidemie-debola-ravage-la-guinee-et.html

Les Chroniques de Rorschach
samedi 22 mars 2014
Une épidémie d'Ebola ravage la Guinée et la Sierra Leone 

The date is Saturday, March 22, 2014 and the title is "Ebola epidemic raging in Guinea and Sierra Leone".

So it has been at least all of 2014 until now that the world is mounting a response that might possibly succeed.

Let this also be a warning to those who think the elites that run the world are competent to maintain the health and well-being of the world community.

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Evolution And Its Discontents

 

Thomas Huxley, Known As Darwin's Bulldog

A Lady said that Evolution was a scientific theory - just as the Gipper, better known as Ronald Reagan said - and she agreed: just a theory.
She then asked me if I believed in Evolution.

I answered that although the science of living things seems to be the correct arena in which to have beliefs or disbeliefs, I had none: I neither believed nor disbelieved.

Interestingly enough, she disbelieved my seriousness. It was her "belief" that I was somehow "pulling her leg".

However, I have no rods on the anvil nor any ferric materials in the fire. Evolution is an old friend - I recall reading about Darwin, Huxley, Leake, and Bishop Usher when I was in grade school. Yet I have no reason to establish a full-blown "Belief System" (or, "BS" as it is abbreviated) about the whole thing.

Were I in research, now, that is a different case. Were I researching, say, worms and amoebae or lichens or some ratty little mammals that I had to chivvy from their burrows and rush to the laboratory mazes, I would probably need to have a BS.
Or if I had to, say, bet money on some future life issue, like "should I move to an island nation if climate change is true, and the ocean levels will rise 20 feet over the next trimester of the CO2 cycle?", then I would probably have to swat, study, and set up a proper BS.

Otherwise, no. The Belief System is potentially in me (as Aristotle would say), but it is not everywhere present in force at all times.

I then told her that God and the Holy were not properly "beliefs" at any time or place. I left her in a state of disheveled disbelief. She said hotly that I acted as a capricious and arbitrary cad.
I said "Arbiter, Non Modo Arbitrario"
("An Arbiter ... referee, judge, moderator; any good-type of notion that deals with placid reason and virtue... but not Arbitrarily!")
At which point She-who-must-be-obeyed, who had sat silently during this vaudeville of belief,  took straight aim at my shins under the table and delivered a stealth kick of 20 megatons! Later she said she would have kicked the other lady, if she had had a clear shot.

--

IS ?

Gates Of Mordor 

(Doubling for the Gates Of Hell)

This is not an essay on Heidegger and Being, meditating upon "what-is" and "what-is-not".

What-is-not is our dreams, and What-is is our comeuppance, chickens coming home to roost, and a game of pick-up-sticks in which we have been granted the guarantee of grasping the night soil end of the stick.

It is about the new War against IS, ISIS, or ISIL.

(1)
In the Washington Post we read:

Arab states willing to join air fight against Islamic State in Iraq, U.S. officials say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/arab-states-willing-to-join-air-fight-against-islamic-state-in-iraq-us-officials-say/2014/09/14/7bdbe1a4-3c41-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html?hpid=z1

PARIS — Several Arab states have offered to conduct airstrikes against militants in Iraq alongside the efforts of the United States, U.S. officials said Sunday as the Obama administration sought to bolster its case for action against the Islamic State.
“A lot of this is still in the discussion phase, but I want to be clear that there have been offers, both to CENTCOM and to the Iraqis, of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action against ISIL,” including airstrikes, a senior State Department official said in Paris, using an alternative acronym for the militant network...

Lucky old stiffs are we, to have the Battlestar Islamica Rangers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Dubai come to our cause, especially since they were the ones who funded such mercenaries in Syria in the first place.

What will happen when IS sees the mighty air forces of civilization arrayed against their iniquities!!

Will they tremble in fear and remorse? Or will they skedaddle into heavily populated areas and cities, thereby ensuring that any air strike will inflict the maximum collateral damage and death among the civilian populations?

The culture of death loves the holocaust past. The Art of Modern War as set down in the days of World War II by the GGs (Greatest Generation) involved extensive bombing and destruction of civilian areas, a strategy which carried over into the Cold War in the form of Mutually Assured Destruction (of cities) - an Armageddon bullet we dodged once and are eager to confront again.

(2)
The beheading videos seem to be designed to elicit an uncontrolled and inchaote response, which is exactly the way numerous people are responding to them, as if IS were some sort of super-powered Puppet Masters who rule men's minds!

(3)
We ignore natural allies because they are enemies of the Likud party:

Senator Lindsey Graham:

“The first thing I want to tell American people, from my point of view, it is our fight, it is not just their fight,” Graham said. “I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource or security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL, without a substantial American component. To destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off the financing, and destroy the capability to regenerate.”

There are troops on the ground in Syria: the Syrian Army and the rebel groups whose fighters are the source of the IS army.

(Senator Graham also said
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/09/14/Graham-ISIS-is-an-Army-Of-Islam-Opening-The-Gates-Of-Hell-On-The-World

"If they survive our best shot, this is the last best chance, they will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world. This is not a Sunni versus Sunni, this ISIS versus mankind."

and we may reasonably pause and consider the implications of a very senior US Senator describing important world affairs as if it were all part of a Left Behind novel...
What the heck!)

(4)
We should support in a big way a combination that has a good chance of success.

The people of this area must fight their own wars.
If people wish to kill, they have to do so until they are incapable of continuing. If a outsider or referee steps in and says "Time-out!", then they will only live to kill yet another day.

And they must learn the lessons other nations learned in conflict; they must create their pown heroes and heroines and leaders who will lead a new nation born in their wars.

As it is, the political process is frustrated by interventions.
What would the USA be if the nations of Europe and France were strong enough to have forbade the British to commence hostilities against the colonies of America? Would George Washington have risen to the status he achieved? Would there have been a Constitution?

Those who live by the sword must be schooled by the sword and be sent to after-school detention class, which will be overseen by Mr. Sword

--

La Maison De Ma Mere Est Sur La Table...

(My Mother's House Is On The Table...) ... and ready for its new owners.
(I have no idea why I fancy it is "on a table". I wuz reading Mme de Sevigne's letters, and the mood took me into franco-steampunk-o-phile associations.)

My mother's house has been sold and closed on, with nary a hitch... except at the bank where the niceties of Trusts and Trustees and the incorrigibly correct wording of documents of Trusts and financial instruments referring thereto were delved into interminably, while my mother sat there with a knowing look on her face.

The next day she called and asked me how to write a check for my brother.

She had not heard a word the banker had said.

Some things never change, no matter how truthful yet fruitless they have become, and my mother's belief (and - to be truthful - I suppose, mine also) that people tend to mumble, speak inaudibly, and to swallow words at the end of sentences - all of which is clearly true... just ask some foreign guys and dolls that come over here and try to speak to 'Mericans! - leads us into a state of Truth perversely joined from Joy...

For the fact that people mumble cannot be changed, and only by purchasing some sort of hearing assistance device ( such as an ear trumpet ) may we be able to engage in sock-in-the-mouth chit-chat with other blokes and frails.

She resists with the faith of a believer who has found Truth and Frustration, two gunwhales of the canoe of Life spread athwart by Irony.

--

Brennt Die Welt?

Is the world burning?

Not really.

ISIS is 2 million young men with no hope and no jobs looking to kill themselves and others, and soon the fund of suicidal young Muslims will be exhausted, and the fire will die.

Russia and Ukraine is a conflagration, but it will not spread like wildfire.

Ebola is rising...
We shall see how the world regimes handle that problem.
Hopefully, we can handle it better than global warming.

America still has no real functioning form of government, and does not look to have one anytime soon.
It does not seem able to confront its problem of racism, nor of gross inequity.
That is a real problem that has been pushed to the back burner, but will explode again soon once the world looks for leadership.

--

An Adventure In Art (57)

 

Chiens De Mon Quartier

Bernadette Leclerq

Peintre-Illustrateur-Ceramiste

http://leclercq.bernadette.over-blog.com/

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Jokes I Missed The First Time...

... because there was just too much of an interval between punch lines. Yes. Punch Lines. Plural. So we have multiple punch lines, long extended jokey narratives, and it takes one heck of a weather eye to spot the Moby Dick of Jest if and when he breaches the placid ocean of the mundane.

So, Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, Season 1, The Great Game.

The opening scene in in Minsk, Belarus. Sherlock is seated across the table from a prisoner in an otherwise deserted room of empty tables, probably a cafeteria doubling as an interview room.

The prisoner tells his story of how he killed his girlfriend, quite accidentally, and as he tells the story, Sherlock corrects his grammar. When the prisoner, Tate (I believe) says " I weren't", Sherlock corrects him: "I wasn't", and Tate repeats " I wasn't".
So also with "he learned me" to "he taught me", "I done it" to "I did it", "weren't" to "wasn't" again, and a double negative with "no more" changed to "anymore".

The prisoner pleads to a departing Sherlock that

"...without you, I'll get hung for this."

Sherlock pauses and looks back,

"No, no, no; not at all, Mr. Tate...(pause)... "hanged", yes!"

 Funny stuff.

So within minutes, the main story starts, Sherlock is in his flat, shooting at the wall from boredom, Watson enters hungrily, walks to the fridge and finds a head that Sherlock has procured from the morgue to study the coagulation of saliva after death, and he is keeping it cool.

Watson asks Sherlock whether he read his "A Study In Pink" in Watson's blog.
After a bit of a dispute as to merits, Watson points out that Sherlock surely must admit that he is unfamiliar with some very basic facts.
Sherlock responds that,

"... it doesn't matter to me who's Prime Minister, or who is sleeping with who."

 I wonder whether back in Minsk there's a dead man walking, muttering "With Whom! Bloody with whom!"

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Personal Snapshots Of The Great Painters: Giorgio de Chirico

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Chickens Coming Home To Roost

modernfarmer.com

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