Friday, April 10, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
No Container for Truth
The truth is too corrosive for the foibles of any human institution for that institution and its allied institutions to repeat let alone preserve. Evolution can and has produced individuals, would-be saviors, who can semiotically model the truth, but the model will not transport. It's like the physicist's plasma: we can (theoretically) make it (in very small quantities) but we can't hold it. Like plasma, the truth has no container: except art, and art can always be interpreted away.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Freedom
Knatz.com (and its ancestor, and its spin-offs) had a zillion modules on freedom, thus far none of them reposted to pk blogs. Before I get to it I have a series of things to add that I don't remember yet saying at K. I'll sketch a few reminders to myself, teasers for you, here.
Freedom
You can't be more free in this universe, on this earth, than CroMagnon man was. Did he talk about freedom? Or do we just start obsessing about it after we've lost nearly all that we ever had?
These days, to me, freedom is what comes with "nature": that is, a biosphere not mucked about with by several (and more) billion humans, all talking, talking, talking.
The aborning United States used "freedom of religion" as a sibboleth. The framers meant that the deists wouldn't put the Presbyterians in jail, or the Baptists, or the Methodists once they came along. They certainly did not mean that anyone could think or say anything they wanted about cosmology, theology ... this or that god ... Imagine Hawking set in front of Benjamin Franklin, two great "scientists," but from different eras. I can't imagine either letting the other get a word in (of course I'm first imagining Hawking as actually able to talk, without all that machinery, without that whole infrastructure of computers and programmers ...)
My son tells me that in France they care far more about freedom from religion than any freedom of religion. The Church has a visible presence in France, but is quite without power: would a contemporary Frenchman tolerate the Church if it started reassaming power? (Only if the Frenchman retained to power he now has: to dissent, to mock ...)
What I want is freedom from government.
Freedom of Speech
What good is it if no one understands what you say? if the institutions that manage our lives from birth (and before birth, before conception!) are illiterate? without imagination? are incapable of listening? and too full of themselves to realize that they are ... all of the above?
Maybe actually Franklin and Hawking would get along just dandy. Both were extraordinary men. But: Swift shows us Gulliver helpless among the Lilliputians, then later, just as helpless back in London, trying to explain Lilliput to Englishmen. The Gulliver of the narrative just went along with everything; the Gulliver trying to be a messenger gave up and went and lived, miserable, in the stable. At least in our Christian story we put Jesus out of his misery while he was still in his prime, before he had to waste any more words on us?
Prayer
Humans imagine that they can talk competently with gods, that gods came communicate with them: us, the humans.
Why don't religious meetings begin with a prayer:Oh, God:
If we are in any way misrepresenting you, send us a sign, right now. Burn me, claiming to be your priest, for example, right now.
Burn the congregation, right now, if they are making me say and do things against my will.
...
Freedom
You can't be more free in this universe, on this earth, than CroMagnon man was. Did he talk about freedom? Or do we just start obsessing about it after we've lost nearly all that we ever had?
These days, to me, freedom is what comes with "nature": that is, a biosphere not mucked about with by several (and more) billion humans, all talking, talking, talking.
The aborning United States used "freedom of religion" as a sibboleth. The framers meant that the deists wouldn't put the Presbyterians in jail, or the Baptists, or the Methodists once they came along. They certainly did not mean that anyone could think or say anything they wanted about cosmology, theology ... this or that god ... Imagine Hawking set in front of Benjamin Franklin, two great "scientists," but from different eras. I can't imagine either letting the other get a word in (of course I'm first imagining Hawking as actually able to talk, without all that machinery, without that whole infrastructure of computers and programmers ...)
My son tells me that in France they care far more about freedom from religion than any freedom of religion. The Church has a visible presence in France, but is quite without power: would a contemporary Frenchman tolerate the Church if it started reassaming power? (Only if the Frenchman retained to power he now has: to dissent, to mock ...)
What I want is freedom from government.
Freedom of Speech
What good is it if no one understands what you say? if the institutions that manage our lives from birth (and before birth, before conception!) are illiterate? without imagination? are incapable of listening? and too full of themselves to realize that they are ... all of the above?
Maybe actually Franklin and Hawking would get along just dandy. Both were extraordinary men. But: Swift shows us Gulliver helpless among the Lilliputians, then later, just as helpless back in London, trying to explain Lilliput to Englishmen. The Gulliver of the narrative just went along with everything; the Gulliver trying to be a messenger gave up and went and lived, miserable, in the stable. At least in our Christian story we put Jesus out of his misery while he was still in his prime, before he had to waste any more words on us?
Prayer
Humans imagine that they can talk competently with gods, that gods came communicate with them: us, the humans.
Why don't religious meetings begin with a prayer:
If we are in any way misrepresenting you, send us a sign, right now. Burn me, claiming to be your priest, for example, right now.
Burn the congregation, right now, if they are making me say and do things against my will.
...
Monday, March 16, 2009
Divine Love
Should Jesus on the cross love those who are crucifying him?
The Christian answer is that he does: because he's not human,
he's superhuman, divine.
He's God! and God is Love. God, because of the crucifixion, forgives us!
Don't try to understand it: it's a mystery.
OK. I believed all that as a kid, even as a young man,
at least I tried to believe it.
I sometimes try to believe it at seventy, after being betrayed all my life, defrauded, blackballed, denied the rights claimed to be common across the culture ...
But there's one thing I refuse to respect this sort of Christian divinity for:Should Jesus love and forgive the Christians, no matter how many times they claim they love Jesus, no matter how many candles they burn, no matter how many doorbells they ring, no matter how much money they donate,
if they're still torturing and silencing and interrupting and misrepresenting God(-and Jesus)'s subsequent messages and messengers? There's Jesus on the cross. He loves and forgives the soldiers tormenting him. He loves and forgives the soldier who stuck a spear in his side: so the Jews wouldn't have to be embarrassed to be torturing their Messiah after their Sabbath commenced with sundown. Fine.
Now:Should Jesus forgive the Pope who puts a contract out on Martin Luther?
should Jesus forgive the Pope (or the professors) who threatened Galileo with torture for jeopardizing their (the Church's and Universities' ridiculous ignorant contradicted-by-observation model of the universe?
should Jesus forgive the Church for defrocking Ivan Illich, its greatest priest?
Should Jesus forgive the United States for censoring pk when it was Jesus-Illich's convivial humanity pk was working for?
should Jesus forgive the United States for telling children compelled to attend school that they have free speech while filling the jails with the silenced? such as pk? One last question:Should Jesus forgive the churches who keep no record of claims made by the congregation that God "spoke" to them? I think Jesus should forgive the churches exactly as much as he forgives the schools for allowing no notice, keeping no records, of non-standard ideas that emerge from the non-tenured portion of the school: the instructors, the students.
The Christian answer is that he does: because he's not human,
he's superhuman, divine.
He's God! and God is Love. God, because of the crucifixion, forgives us!
Don't try to understand it: it's a mystery.
OK. I believed all that as a kid, even as a young man,
at least I tried to believe it.
I sometimes try to believe it at seventy, after being betrayed all my life, defrauded, blackballed, denied the rights claimed to be common across the culture ...
But there's one thing I refuse to respect this sort of Christian divinity for:
if they're still torturing and silencing and interrupting and misrepresenting God(-and Jesus)'s subsequent messages and messengers?
Now:
should Jesus forgive the Pope (or the professors) who threatened Galileo with torture for jeopardizing their (the Church's and Universities' ridiculous ignorant contradicted-by-observation model of the universe?
should Jesus forgive the Church for defrocking Ivan Illich, its greatest priest?
Should Jesus forgive the United States for censoring pk when it was Jesus-Illich's convivial humanity pk was working for?
should Jesus forgive the United States for telling children compelled to attend school that they have free speech while filling the jails with the silenced? such as pk?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Stotting in Civilized Man
The gazelle on the savanna senses a predator. The gazelle is built for speed, and for leaping obstacles. So is the predator: both pray and predator co-evolve together, there's no such thing as one species, independent of others, independent of an ecology. The behaviors relate by a complex "tree" that only science can begin to simplify while mapping with any accuracy. Anyway, what does the gazelle do? The gazelle stops munching, pricks its ears, sniffs the wind ...
And if the gazelle sniffs lion , or sees so much as a claw, or a paw, or a haunch of lion, why it runs like hell in another direction, right? No. Not quite. Commonly, just before running, the gazelle will hop up and down a couple of times: then run like hell.
What? It is crazy? A human male will jump off a cliff to impress his buddies, though the behavior, as any biologist can explain to us, is actually intended to impress the female: to get her to lie down and open her legs: so that the guy can get off: that is, mix his genes with hers, make a new guy who will jump off cliffs, or a girl that will still convey his courage to a subsequent male offspring. And so on. But ruminants have no investment in courage — courage is for social predators: they, ruminants, survive, or try to, by running away, by being quick, fast, alert, agile ... What could possibly "cause" crazy, wasteful jumping in place to allow a whole class of species to still be doing it and still be alive?
Jared Diamond explains: combining his brilliance with the wisdom of his disciplines: biology, zoology, physiology:Ruminant species have learned over eons that wasting a moment or two can actually gain in survival chances. The lion sees the gazelle, sees that the gazelle sees the lion, sees the gazelle waste time, energy, movement, not running away ... and the gazelle may "cause" the lion to pause, and think, Well, if that gazelle is so confident it can escape me that it wastes time showing off, maybe it can escape me and I'm wasting my time chasing it.
Some gazelles will get caught, become lion-lunch, but enough other gazelles discourage the lion that the species benefits: all ruminants benefit: for now. (Never assume that what aided survival yesterday will aid survival tomorrow.) OK, that's stotting, also known as pronking: in ruminants: as explained by contemporary zoological sciences (and paraphrased by pk). I mention it not only because I think it's neat, but because I find all sorts of analogies in it beyond the one that Jared Diamond mentioned it to develop: specifically, Diamond introduced stotting and its scientific "explanation" additionally to explain human behaviors that at first glance seem wasteful, stupid, dangerous: such as substance abuse — drugs, alcohol ... (Apparently paleo-evidence supports a theory that humans have been drug-chewing drunks for a very long time now.) But back to the gazelles: the stotting gazelle is telling the predator, Don't waste your time, I'm too fast for you; the human is telling her candidate bed-partner, Look at me: I'm such a great specimen of Homo sapiens that I can drink myself stupid and still have men buy me furs, a Mercedes, and send my kid to Exeter, while the male is trying to convey analogous advertising lies.
The strategy obviously has pitfalls. A lot of gazelles have become hors d'oeuvres for a lot of predators; a lot of human drunks and junkies have wrapped themselves around a tree whether or not they impressed the girl.
OK. Jared Diamond's extension of stotting as an explanation for substance abuse is brilliant, profound: but pk says it doesn't stop there. It may not explain everything, but it sure can be used to shed light on other otherwise incomprehensible behaviors: like why civilized man has devoted 99 calories to ignoring over-population, global warming ... any number of concepts intended to make us wake up and take stock to every one calorie devoted to understanding and responding to the danger.
How about civilized man making life impossible for anyone who doesn't go along with the idea of a God who'll bail us out no matter how drunk, stupid, or depraved we become ... All we have to do is say, "I believe," and light a cheap candle, the quarter going not to God, but to some priest? Isn't that like stotting? Isn't that a way of saying, Existence so favors us humans, the cream of life, the point of everything, that we don't have to be alert, or agile, or truthful, or speedy ... and mostly, we don't have to be honest: with ourselves ... about anything.God is such a sap: he'll buy any horse-shit we feed him, he loves us so. (And if he weren't, we'd get ourselves a different god: pronto! What other explanation could there possibly be for civilized many tolerating a governmental hand in its pocket to fund thugs with guns called cops, illiterates displacing thinkers in pens called schools ... If anyone tries to point it out, as I did, his university can interrupt him, postpone his advancement, make it impossible for make a living (without jettisoning all plans, hopes, investments) ... Finally I was arrested, given a kangaroo trial ... censored, wanted off restoring destroyed information to the internet: stolen from me, Illich (... Jesus) in the first place!
Is civilization a form of stotting?
Look God, We don't have to be smart. We can dance on the edge. You'll bail us out, you won't let us fall. (And if you do, the US will bail our ass!)
And if the gazelle sniffs lion , or sees so much as a claw, or a paw, or a haunch of lion, why it runs like hell in another direction, right? No. Not quite. Commonly, just before running, the gazelle will hop up and down a couple of times: then run like hell.
What? It is crazy? A human male will jump off a cliff to impress his buddies, though the behavior, as any biologist can explain to us, is actually intended to impress the female: to get her to lie down and open her legs: so that the guy can get off: that is, mix his genes with hers, make a new guy who will jump off cliffs, or a girl that will still convey his courage to a subsequent male offspring. And so on. But ruminants have no investment in courage — courage is for social predators: they, ruminants, survive, or try to, by running away, by being quick, fast, alert, agile ... What could possibly "cause" crazy, wasteful jumping in place to allow a whole class of species to still be doing it and still be alive?
Jared Diamond explains: combining his brilliance with the wisdom of his disciplines: biology, zoology, physiology:
Some gazelles will get caught, become lion-lunch, but enough other gazelles discourage the lion that the species benefits: all ruminants benefit: for now.
The strategy obviously has pitfalls. A lot of gazelles have become hors d'oeuvres for a lot of predators; a lot of human drunks and junkies have wrapped themselves around a tree whether or not they impressed the girl.
OK. Jared Diamond's extension of stotting as an explanation for substance abuse is brilliant, profound: but pk says it doesn't stop there. It may not explain everything, but it sure can be used to shed light on other otherwise incomprehensible behaviors: like why civilized man has devoted 99 calories to ignoring over-population, global warming ... any number of concepts intended to make us wake up and take stock to every one calorie devoted to understanding and responding to the danger.
How about civilized man making life impossible for anyone who doesn't go along with the idea of a God who'll bail us out no matter how drunk, stupid, or depraved we become ... All we have to do is say, "I believe," and light a cheap candle, the quarter going not to God, but to some priest? Isn't that like stotting? Isn't that a way of saying, Existence so favors us humans, the cream of life, the point of everything, that we don't have to be alert, or agile, or truthful, or speedy ... and mostly, we don't have to be honest: with ourselves ... about anything.
Is civilization a form of stotting?
Look God, We don't have to be smart. We can dance on the edge. You'll bail us out, you won't let us fall. (And if you do, the US will bail our ass!)
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Free Will
I want to develop a piece on free will in which I largely ignore the question of whether man has free will, concentrating instead on whether religious man would allow God free will.
The Bible presents a series of obligations for God. The story of the Flood has God saying that he won't do it again. Really, no matter what we do, if everyone smokes crack and has a crack baby, God still won't get pissed off and drown us all as he did in Noah's day, or turn us all into pilars of salt as he did for Lot's wife?
The Jews' Bible tells the Jews that God will judge the nations, after which God will enslave everybody except the Jews, all for the sake of the Jews. The Bible promised that God will do this for the Jews No Matter What the Jews Do In The Meantime!!!
Christians say that the Bible promises this and that: so many Jehavah's Witnesses in heaven. At Judgment will God have any say in the matter?
I won't respect any god until the religious would shit a brick rather than allow him to get a word in edgewise.
But you know what? I don't think my god is going to say anything at Judgment. I don't think any humans are going to say anything either. I think we're all going to be dead, and that god won't need any speech.
The Bible presents a series of obligations for God. The story of the Flood has God saying that he won't do it again. Really, no matter what we do, if everyone smokes crack and has a crack baby, God still won't get pissed off and drown us all as he did in Noah's day, or turn us all into pilars of salt as he did for Lot's wife?
The Jews' Bible tells the Jews that God will judge the nations, after which God will enslave everybody except the Jews, all for the sake of the Jews. The Bible promised that God will do this for the Jews No Matter What the Jews Do In The Meantime!!!
Christians say that the Bible promises this and that: so many Jehavah's Witnesses in heaven. At Judgment will God have any say in the matter?
I won't respect any god until the religious would shit a brick rather than allow him to get a word in edgewise.
But you know what? I don't think my god is going to say anything at Judgment. I don't think any humans are going to say anything either. I think we're all going to be dead, and that god won't need any speech.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Brutal Music
Today's StraightDope reports:
I've heard and read stories about musicians, specifically hand drummers, pissing blood after playing a particularly tough or long set. The great Armando Peraza, Santana's longtime bongo and conga player, told an interviewer: "Playing percussion for Carlos you had to be able to play hard, non-stop for sometimes up to three straight hours, and play loud enough to be heard over the electric instruments. A lot of times I played so hard that I would piss blood after the shows. Santana gigs were an endurance test of the highest order." What would the connection be here? Can blood really get into the urine through this kind of physical exertion?--James
Cecil replies:
Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle.
Rhabdomyolysis occurs when muscle cells are damaged to the extent that they break down in the body, releasing into the bloodstream several substances, including a protein called myoglobin that’s excreted in the urine (if you're lucky) and imparts the reddish brown color.
The condition is sometimes called "crush injury syndrome." Some of the first recorded cases were seen during the London blitz in World War II, resulting from the battering people took when they were trapped inside collapsing buildings. It's also found in the victims of earthquakes — after the 1988 Armenian quake more than 1,000 cases were reported — and auto accidents. Some less typical cases have evidently been caused by lightning, centrifugal pilot training, CPR compressions, riding a mechanical bull, being attacked by a wolf, and taking advice from goons.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2848/can-playing-the-bongos-make-you-piss-blood
I've heard and read stories about musicians, specifically hand drummers, pissing blood after playing a particularly tough or long set. The great Armando Peraza, Santana's longtime bongo and conga player, told an interviewer: "Playing percussion for Carlos you had to be able to play hard, non-stop for sometimes up to three straight hours, and play loud enough to be heard over the electric instruments. A lot of times I played so hard that I would piss blood after the shows. Santana gigs were an endurance test of the highest order." What would the connection be here? Can blood really get into the urine through this kind of physical exertion?--James
Cecil replies:
Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle.
Rhabdomyolysis occurs when muscle cells are damaged to the extent that they break down in the body, releasing into the bloodstream several substances, including a protein called myoglobin that’s excreted in the urine (if you're lucky) and imparts the reddish brown color.
The condition is sometimes called "crush injury syndrome." Some of the first recorded cases were seen during the London blitz in World War II, resulting from the battering people took when they were trapped inside collapsing buildings. It's also found in the victims of earthquakes — after the 1988 Armenian quake more than 1,000 cases were reported — and auto accidents. Some less typical cases have evidently been caused by lightning, centrifugal pilot training, CPR compressions, riding a mechanical bull, being attacked by a wolf, and taking advice from goons.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2848/can-playing-the-bongos-make-you-piss-blood
Fascism
Politics reduces to two contrasting simplicities. If you believe in liberty then you must be in essence an anarchist. If you believe that the group has a right to rule in individual, then the steps to becoming a fascist are all but inevitable.
The US gives a monopoly to the post office: fascism.
If I were a "caveman" I don't imagine these distinctions would bother me. As it is, I have zero confidence in civilization. Fascism oppresses me from all sides.
More will follow as I can make time.
The US gives a monopoly to the post office: fascism.
If I were a "caveman" I don't imagine these distinctions would bother me. As it is, I have zero confidence in civilization. Fascism oppresses me from all sides.
More will follow as I can make time.
Hypocrisy
Every kid in Sunday School looks down on hypocrites, despite knowing somehow that all adults are hypocrites. I had extra talents, extra seriousness (and a meta-sense of humor, of mockery): I still looked down on hypocrites as I grew up. But what what I really hate is secular hypocrisy: institutions that pretend to serve freedom but actually create mono-culture.
Most of all I hate the sheeple pledging allegiance, droning about "liberty and justice for all": while the FBI arrests philosophers on any pretext they can concoct, while the cops bust the heads of dissidents.
Of course the press doesn't report such things: abroad, yes, but seldom at home. Even if a reporter were capable of seeing what's before his eyes, sponsors would punish any organ that let slip more than some fraction of truth.
More will come after I rescue another few dozen Knatz.com classics to these damn 2D blogs.
Most of all I hate the sheeple pledging allegiance, droning about "liberty and justice for all": while the FBI arrests philosophers on any pretext they can concoct, while the cops bust the heads of dissidents.
Of course the press doesn't report such things: abroad, yes, but seldom at home. Even if a reporter were capable of seeing what's before his eyes, sponsors would punish any organ that let slip more than some fraction of truth.
More will come after I rescue another few dozen Knatz.com classics to these damn 2D blogs.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Group Fiction
More than one module in pk domains offered Jesus as an example of group fiction. My theory of macroinformation argues that all complex information is data interpreted. Shakespeare, were he among us, would have a priviledged position in interpreting Hamlet, but no matter what he said, I, and you too, could still have our own interpretation. I for one have watched famous authors revise their interpretation of their own play upon hearing my interpretation (Edward Albee with his Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, for example).
But no, the fundamentalists don't want that. They want the world to be black and white, true and false, with authorities right, the truth answerable to them! (That might be grand where the fundamentalists not always so wrong, so retrograde, so stupid, so ignorant ... about EVERYTHING!)Bill Maher, on Christianity:They make it up as they go along! I've already been cheated, defrauded, unpublished, interrupted, misrepresented, bankrupted ... blackballed ... arrested, censored; but I'm still talking: or trying to talk. The ill will of the religious fundamentalists though will pale compared to the ire of secular gullibles when I say that, similarly, our concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" and "education" are also group fictions.
Thinking of Horus, of Mithras, of other pre-Christian born-of-a-virgin martyred-then-resurrected god-saviors, it occurs to me, I shouldn't just be talking about group fiction, I should be talking about group plagiarism.
Oh but then we're all kleptocrats: we don't just steal land, steal women, steal gold, steal labor; we steal stories, religions, saviors, gods ... We steal ideas, we steal superstitions. Not even our stupidity is original.
But no, the fundamentalists don't want that. They want the world to be black and white, true and false, with authorities right, the truth answerable to them! (That might be grand where the fundamentalists not always so wrong, so retrograde, so stupid, so ignorant ... about EVERYTHING!)
2009 06 07
Thinking of Horus, of Mithras, of other pre-Christian born-of-a-virgin martyred-then-resurrected god-saviors, it occurs to me, I shouldn't just be talking about group fiction, I should be talking about group plagiarism.
Oh but then we're all kleptocrats: we don't just steal land, steal women, steal gold, steal labor; we steal stories, religions, saviors, gods ... We steal ideas, we steal superstitions. Not even our stupidity is original.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Initiations
For all the thousands of posts I've done at my domains and blogs I've never coordinated some scattered comments on initiations. I can't now either, but I do now pledge to do so: if I live, if my I.S. bill is paid, if blogspot.com still accepts my posts ...
In the Italy where Shakespeare set his Romeo and Juliet any young rascal with a sword, meaning "son of a property holder, perhaps a noble," could wound or kill almost any one on the street without a sword: the magistrate could be relied on to back the money, and the hell with Jesus' love or God's law. But with or without such details we all know: the privileged of the society are privileged. It's just a redundancy. The law is for the privileged, by the privileged. Ah, but in the famous (read infamous) "public" schools of the English aristocracy (and its public servants) any half-starved school master could terrorize any future duke with impunity. As soon as Lord Byron came by his great expectations, he was transferred from being tyranized by a nanny to being tyranized by the Harrow School: and he had the chilblained feet to prove it.
pk has written, only half-joking, that this practice was the society's way of getting some of their own back, in advance, from the injustices that the privileged lords (and their courtiers) would visit upon the public once they came of age. Now: who else has noticed?Don't we among the developed democracies do exactly the same thing with our own doctors while we have them trapped as interns? as residents?
Can anyone possibly actually believe that making a young doctor work an eighteen hour shift is good for those under their care? or good for the doctor?
No: it's getting our pound of flesh from them before they go off and earn $600,000 a year for being the second-leading cause of death, just behind heart disease.
In the Italy where Shakespeare set his Romeo and Juliet any young rascal with a sword, meaning "son of a property holder, perhaps a noble," could wound or kill almost any one on the street without a sword: the magistrate could be relied on to back the money, and the hell with Jesus' love or God's law. But with or without such details we all know: the privileged of the society are privileged. It's just a redundancy. The law is for the privileged, by the privileged. Ah, but in the famous (read infamous) "public" schools of the English aristocracy (and its public servants) any half-starved school master could terrorize any future duke with impunity. As soon as Lord Byron came by his great expectations, he was transferred from being tyranized by a nanny to being tyranized by the Harrow School: and he had the chilblained feet to prove it.
pk has written, only half-joking, that this practice was the society's way of getting some of their own back, in advance, from the injustices that the privileged lords (and their courtiers) would visit upon the public once they came of age. Now: who else has noticed?
Can anyone possibly actually believe that making a young doctor work an eighteen hour shift is good for those under their care? or good for the doctor?
No: it's getting our pound of flesh from them before they go off and earn $600,000 a year for being the second-leading cause of death, just behind heart disease.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Census
Sesquipedalian Census, or Napoleon the Enlightened
When we lived in small groups nobody needed to count members. Even toddlers knew the group. It's kleptocracies, remote governments, government by proxies — representatives, ha ha — that want to count heads.
Still, the idea of "census" came slowly, and in stages: and required sophisticated math concepts and statistical approximations and sophisticated interpretation to make much sense. Ancient kings and their courtiers might devise strategies for estimating losses in a battle: issue each soldier a coin, know how many coins were distributed ... count the coins reclaimed after the battle: and you know, fairly accurately, how many losses you sustained, how many men you have still walking.
But the modern census started with Napoleon. He had bureaucrats under the charge of some sophisticated mathematicians "count" Frenchmen. (Frenchmen, what a funny concept: when there are Gauls, and Celts, and Catalonians ... all insisting that they have as much right to live as anyone else. The "French" language had to be shoved forcibly down everyone's throat. No trouble for the Gauls, but it sticks in the craw of the Catalonians, to name only one example.)
Forty million is what they came up with. It scared the bejesus out of every one of Napoleon's kleptocratic neighbors. The emperor of Austria trembled like a baby.
You see, these other monarchs had no idea how many "people" they had.
"Primitive" peoples can typically count to three. After three, they say "many." Governments up to Napoleon said, One, two, three; then they said "many." How many peasants are there? Many. Or they'd wax poetic: like leaves on the trees, like sands on the shore ...
Napoleon said, "Forty Million." A terrifying concept, for those sophisticated enough to know that a million is a lot, but too unsophisticated to know that the number is meaningless without other similarly accurate numbers to compare it to. What would the Austrian emperor have thought if his spies told him, the French have got forty million; but you're got thirty-eight million, or sixty million. The emperor should shit his drawers only if told, "The French have got forty million, and you ain't got but six hundred thousand." That's the time to pass out cold.
Mozart and da Ponte had Don Giovanni's Leporello number the Don's conquests quite specifically. Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre. Very funny: because it's so totally unlikely (not just the number, but the implicit accuracy of record keeping). Hemingway's Nick Adams goes fishing, he sets up a perch in the grass. A grasshopper comes and sits on it. He plucks the grasshopper, hooks it , casts it, catches a trout. By that time there's another grasshopper sitting on the perch. No matter whether Nick catches a dozen trout or thirty, he will expect another grasshopper to be sitting on the perch for him to grab as his next bait. Nick doesn't take a census of the grasshopper in the county before he goes fishing. Don Giovanni didn't go to city hall to prowl for records before he went looking for another wench. No, no: one, two, three ... many.
Industrialists didn't take a census of the peasantry before testing how many children could sicken and die in their factories before there were no more children ready to be exploited for a penny a week.
Nietzsche said that the superman was like the ocean: infinite, capable of taking into himself endless amounts of poison and garbage while remaining himself pure: like God listening to endless gibberish from selfish morons wanting unstinted shit for Christmas. Peasants, wenches, children ... red bicycles ... Austrians ... One, two, three ... many. And many more.
The thing about language, any moron can use it. Any moron can say "infinite" without having passed a test administered by Georg Gamow.
Trouble is: we blather about many, and escalate it to infinite, without having measured the ocean or counted the wenches or the children.
I once sat with a lawyer, my jaw dropped, as I watched him "calculate" how much money we were going to make selling some stuff we were about to trick the IRS into helping us finance. The lawyer envisioned us publishing limited editions of lithographs. We'd print 250 there, sell the first 50 at $750, sell the next 50 at $1,000, raise the price to $2,000, sell them out, print the nth edition, sell the first image as cocktail napkins ... And within minutes had showed us a volume grossing $55 million: in a coupl'a years. This lawyer had no idea how difficult it was to sell one! or how long it took how few editions to sell beyond fifty. To him, money was infinite: put up a perch, and pluck the dollar that arrives to sit on it. Cast, catch, re-pluck.
I smiled and nodded not because I believed that I (or anyone) could sell all those images out, but because I knew that the dentists and doctors and plumbers my lawyer would approach for the capital, the IRS pushing their scam, would have no more idea about how hard it was to sell anything out than my lawyer did, and that therefore, by New Years, we'd have hundreds of thousands of new dollars in our bank accounts and multi-millions of dollars worth of new inventory, some of which actually would sell (provided it was me doing the selling).
The logic is impeccable: as long as you know nothing of the real world.
Sure there are publishers who've printed a Sinatra album, an Elvis album, a Beetles album ... sold it out, printed more. But there are many more publishers who printed a YoYo album, and sat with the inventory, paying the warehouse bill till they go belly up.
Never mind: that's more than I meant to say about all of that. I didn't mean to lose sight of my target: kleptocracies.
The Romans didn't invent salt mining. It was the Celts who were the salt masters in the Roman's part of the world. The Celts organized salt mining, salt extraction. Salt was essential for preserving food. Preserved food is essential for kleptocracy: for keeping armies moving: on their stomachs. The Celts flourished. Until the Romans noticed that they were flourishing.
The Romans flourished not by inventing anything, but by stealing inventions, and then administering them. Let the Celts invent the salt business: the Romans could then just take it away from them: the way the US, the universities, the corporations stole the internet from Ivan Illich, Jesus, and me: perverting it as they did so. Point is: once the alpha kleptocracies, following blindly in the wake of the Romans, assuming that there will always be other poor countries to exploit, other poor countries to steal resources from, the buyer determining the selling price for the seller, has destroyed all the open grasslands, all the wet lands, all the forests, all the reefs ... we'll set up a perch, but wait and wait for a new grasshopper to come and be bait for us. We'll look for new wenches to deflower and won't even find any old whores. And children to work for a penny a year? why there simply will be none to be found, none to be found at a penny a second either: and neither will we be here to do the finding.
First draft, what the hell.
When we lived in small groups nobody needed to count members. Even toddlers knew the group. It's kleptocracies, remote governments, government by proxies — representatives, ha ha — that want to count heads.
Still, the idea of "census" came slowly, and in stages: and required sophisticated math concepts and statistical approximations and sophisticated interpretation to make much sense. Ancient kings and their courtiers might devise strategies for estimating losses in a battle: issue each soldier a coin, know how many coins were distributed ... count the coins reclaimed after the battle: and you know, fairly accurately, how many losses you sustained, how many men you have still walking.
But the modern census started with Napoleon. He had bureaucrats under the charge of some sophisticated mathematicians "count" Frenchmen. (Frenchmen, what a funny concept: when there are Gauls, and Celts, and Catalonians ... all insisting that they have as much right to live as anyone else. The "French" language had to be shoved forcibly down everyone's throat. No trouble for the Gauls, but it sticks in the craw of the Catalonians, to name only one example.)
Forty million is what they came up with. It scared the bejesus out of every one of Napoleon's kleptocratic neighbors. The emperor of Austria trembled like a baby.
You see, these other monarchs had no idea how many "people" they had.
"Primitive" peoples can typically count to three. After three, they say "many." Governments up to Napoleon said, One, two, three; then they said "many." How many peasants are there? Many. Or they'd wax poetic: like leaves on the trees, like sands on the shore ...
Napoleon said, "Forty Million." A terrifying concept, for those sophisticated enough to know that a million is a lot, but too unsophisticated to know that the number is meaningless without other similarly accurate numbers to compare it to. What would the Austrian emperor have thought if his spies told him, the French have got forty million; but you're got thirty-eight million, or sixty million. The emperor should shit his drawers only if told, "The French have got forty million, and you ain't got but six hundred thousand." That's the time to pass out cold.
Mozart and da Ponte had Don Giovanni's Leporello number the Don's conquests quite specifically. Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre. Very funny: because it's so totally unlikely (not just the number, but the implicit accuracy of record keeping). Hemingway's Nick Adams goes fishing, he sets up a perch in the grass. A grasshopper comes and sits on it. He plucks the grasshopper, hooks it , casts it, catches a trout. By that time there's another grasshopper sitting on the perch. No matter whether Nick catches a dozen trout or thirty, he will expect another grasshopper to be sitting on the perch for him to grab as his next bait. Nick doesn't take a census of the grasshopper in the county before he goes fishing. Don Giovanni didn't go to city hall to prowl for records before he went looking for another wench. No, no: one, two, three ... many.
Industrialists didn't take a census of the peasantry before testing how many children could sicken and die in their factories before there were no more children ready to be exploited for a penny a week.
Nietzsche said that the superman was like the ocean: infinite, capable of taking into himself endless amounts of poison and garbage while remaining himself pure: like God listening to endless gibberish from selfish morons wanting unstinted shit for Christmas. Peasants, wenches, children ... red bicycles ... Austrians ... One, two, three ... many. And many more.
The thing about language, any moron can use it. Any moron can say "infinite" without having passed a test administered by Georg Gamow.
Trouble is: we blather about many, and escalate it to infinite, without having measured the ocean or counted the wenches or the children.
I once sat with a lawyer, my jaw dropped, as I watched him "calculate" how much money we were going to make selling some stuff we were about to trick the IRS into helping us finance. The lawyer envisioned us publishing limited editions of lithographs. We'd print 250 there, sell the first 50 at $750, sell the next 50 at $1,000, raise the price to $2,000, sell them out, print the nth edition, sell the first image as cocktail napkins ... And within minutes had showed us a volume grossing $55 million: in a coupl'a years. This lawyer had no idea how difficult it was to sell one! or how long it took how few editions to sell beyond fifty. To him, money was infinite: put up a perch, and pluck the dollar that arrives to sit on it. Cast, catch, re-pluck.
I smiled and nodded not because I believed that I (or anyone) could sell all those images out, but because I knew that the dentists and doctors and plumbers my lawyer would approach for the capital, the IRS pushing their scam, would have no more idea about how hard it was to sell anything out than my lawyer did, and that therefore, by New Years, we'd have hundreds of thousands of new dollars in our bank accounts and multi-millions of dollars worth of new inventory, some of which actually would sell (provided it was me doing the selling).
The logic is impeccable: as long as you know nothing of the real world.
Sure there are publishers who've printed a Sinatra album, an Elvis album, a Beetles album ... sold it out, printed more. But there are many more publishers who printed a YoYo album, and sat with the inventory, paying the warehouse bill till they go belly up.
Never mind: that's more than I meant to say about all of that. I didn't mean to lose sight of my target: kleptocracies.
The Romans didn't invent salt mining. It was the Celts who were the salt masters in the Roman's part of the world. The Celts organized salt mining, salt extraction. Salt was essential for preserving food. Preserved food is essential for kleptocracy: for keeping armies moving: on their stomachs. The Celts flourished. Until the Romans noticed that they were flourishing.
The Romans flourished not by inventing anything, but by stealing inventions, and then administering them. Let the Celts invent the salt business: the Romans could then just take it away from them: the way the US, the universities, the corporations stole the internet from Ivan Illich, Jesus, and me: perverting it as they did so. Point is: once the alpha kleptocracies, following blindly in the wake of the Romans, assuming that there will always be other poor countries to exploit, other poor countries to steal resources from, the buyer determining the selling price for the seller, has destroyed all the open grasslands, all the wet lands, all the forests, all the reefs ... we'll set up a perch, but wait and wait for a new grasshopper to come and be bait for us. We'll look for new wenches to deflower and won't even find any old whores. And children to work for a penny a year? why there simply will be none to be found, none to be found at a penny a second either: and neither will we be here to do the finding.
First draft, what the hell.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Obverse
The obverse side of the coin is the heads side; not the tails. Right? What could be clearer, less ambiguous?
Nothing: on a coin. But what about other human dualiites? Male / Female? Rich / Poor? Matter / Energy? Wait. Before investing mental processing in any of those pairings, in or proposing pairings of your own to process, stay with me and let me propose a couple I promise are fertile: and don't forget, I'm laying tracks toward a question of ambiguity in what's obverse in complex dualities. I precede a bulls eye with a near hit:
What is an American public's purpose in censoring Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from school and public libraries? Well, the claimed purpose (from traditional racists of course) is to combat racism. Twain's characters say "nigger," are called "nigger" ... and "nigger" is lower case. First, here's an example. In Huck the protagonist stumbles onto a down-river aunt of his friend Tom Sawyer that his up-river friend is scheduled to visit. There are some cute confusions of identity, the friends loyally trying to cover for each other. In any event Auntie asks the presumed "Tom" why he's so late. "Tom" claims that there was an accident, an explosion on the river boat. Auntie exclaims and asks, "Was anyone hurt?" "No ma'am. Killed a nigger," our slick liar replies. Either Huck or Tom could easily improvise such a lie: they're boys, they've cleaver, they're anti-Authoritarian ... And neither of them is a died-to-the-marrow racist, but they both speak the language and dress in the costumes of their day. So, I ask: is censoring such great literature an act opposing racism? Or is it an attempt to cover our history from ourselves and from our children? so racism can continue to poison the culture? invisibily?
Both interpretations are obverse by two different meanings of the word. There's "obverse," meaning "principal reason," and there's also obverse, meaning principal counter-reason.
Ambiguity can dissipate information, dilute it; or ambiguity can multiply information: near double it, more than double it ...
Racism is a classic pk subject, but even more core is schooling and deschooling. What's the obverse purpose of compulsory eduction, administered by state-controlled school bureaucracies? To educate? Or to regiment?
To make us independent? or to cripple us into dependency?
Well, both answers are obverses: incompatible obverses.
Note: Male / Female above: If the woman is on top, is it not intercourse? Is she then guaranteed infertile? Coins are coins, but other dualities are not coins, and are not necessarily simple.
Hey, wait a minute pk: you glibly cite Matter / Energy as a human duality?!?!?
pk answers: I won't back down from that on the basis that all human concepts, including the concepts of physics (including the concept "God"), are exactly that: concepts. And they're all human, no exceptions: at least not until we can meet and compare notes with a non-human sentience. Once we meet intelligent Alderberanis, then we can begin to become objective about who's intelligent, what's sentient ...
2009 02 03 What I've written thus far on the obverse both here and above, is inadequate. Part of my problem as author (and yours as thinking-reader) is that what I have in mind shares subsets with so many other important concepts from ambiguity to limitations of human sentience (with severe limitations to human intelligence and honesty!) I'll try to do a more complete job at my InsTic.blogspot.com.)
Nothing: on a coin. But what about other human dualiites? Male / Female? Rich / Poor? Matter / Energy? Wait. Before investing mental processing in any of those pairings, in or proposing pairings of your own to process, stay with me and let me propose a couple I promise are fertile: and don't forget, I'm laying tracks toward a question of ambiguity in what's obverse in complex dualities. I precede a bulls eye with a near hit:
What is an American public's purpose in censoring Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from school and public libraries? Well, the claimed purpose (from traditional racists of course) is to combat racism. Twain's characters say "nigger," are called "nigger" ... and "nigger" is lower case. First, here's an example. In Huck the protagonist stumbles onto a down-river aunt of his friend Tom Sawyer that his up-river friend is scheduled to visit. There are some cute confusions of identity, the friends loyally trying to cover for each other. In any event Auntie asks the presumed "Tom" why he's so late. "Tom" claims that there was an accident, an explosion on the river boat. Auntie exclaims and asks, "Was anyone hurt?" "No ma'am. Killed a nigger," our slick liar replies. Either Huck or Tom could easily improvise such a lie: they're boys, they've cleaver, they're anti-Authoritarian ... And neither of them is a died-to-the-marrow racist, but they both speak the language and dress in the costumes of their day. So, I ask: is censoring such great literature an act opposing racism? Or is it an attempt to cover our history from ourselves and from our children? so racism can continue to poison the culture? invisibily?
Both interpretations are obverse by two different meanings of the word. There's "obverse," meaning "principal reason," and there's also obverse, meaning principal counter-reason.
Ambiguity can dissipate information, dilute it; or ambiguity can multiply information: near double it, more than double it ...
Racism is a classic pk subject, but even more core is schooling and deschooling. What's the obverse purpose of compulsory eduction, administered by state-controlled school bureaucracies? To educate? Or to regiment?
To make us independent? or to cripple us into dependency?
Well, both answers are obverses: incompatible obverses.
Note: Male / Female above: If the woman is on top, is it not intercourse? Is she then guaranteed infertile? Coins are coins, but other dualities are not coins, and are not necessarily simple.
Hey, wait a minute pk: you glibly cite Matter / Energy as a human duality?!?!?
pk answers: I won't back down from that on the basis that all human concepts, including the concepts of physics (including the concept "God"), are exactly that: concepts. And they're all human, no exceptions: at least not until we can meet and compare notes with a non-human sentience. Once we meet intelligent Alderberanis, then we can begin to become objective about who's intelligent, what's sentient ...
2009 02 03 What I've written thus far on the obverse both here and above, is inadequate. Part of my problem as author (and yours as thinking-reader) is that what I have in mind shares subsets with so many other important concepts from ambiguity to limitations of human sentience (with severe limitations to human intelligence and honesty!) I'll try to do a more complete job at my InsTic.blogspot.com.)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Do You Believe In God?
Human language can be used to model the territory honestly, efficiently, accurately, but that is its Sunday-best, not the costume it grew or weaned in. Creatures in rut declare their identities: Yearning frog here; or Capable bull. So do rutting predators: I'm a male lion. But hunting, the predator conceals its identity. The female lions stalking the gazelle try to declare nothing of their imminence to their targets: Silence, they say: never mind us, we're just waving grass, tricks of the light ...
Humans rut: boy, do we ever. Humans can also sit and munch veggies: chew the fat, chew the cud. But humans also hunt, humans also prey on each other: oh, not for calories, there wouldn't be too many of us around if we did that; but for resources, for turf, for bragging rights: a rutting stage.
Well, different things at different times. Of course. Different things at the same time as well. And the attribution is necessarily interpretational in all cases: unless there's an infallible God to dictate objective truth to us: at Judgment: infinitely far away from us in time, orthogonally far removed from us in space, and logic.
Do You Believe In God? can mean a zillion things, but an open sincere naive inquiry into the details of your faith is the least likely. I propose that there's nearly always one meaning: alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse: Are you on my team? Not Do You Believe In God? But Are you within my semantic and political control?
Actually, if you think about it, very few questions we ask each other are independent of power, politics, of jockeying for control. Who did you vote for? That nigger? We're always testing our alliances, testing our level in the pecking order: trying to rise, looking for a chance to cheat.
Note: for a consideration of ambiguity in our concept of "obverse" ("alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse" above), see the next post. (2009 02 03 Note further, what I've written thus far on the obverse both here and there, is inadequate. I'll try to do a more complete job at my blog InsTic.)
Also: Though I have read Huck multiple times and studied about Huck many times more, none are within recent decades. I avoided retelling the plot in detail so I would be risking fewer errors, but I still could have made one. Realize: it doesn't matter, the point about America, politics, literature, censorship and racism are the same regardless of whether it was Tom or Huck-as-Tom improvising his lie.
Humans rut: boy, do we ever. Humans can also sit and munch veggies: chew the fat, chew the cud. But humans also hunt, humans also prey on each other: oh, not for calories, there wouldn't be too many of us around if we did that; but for resources, for turf, for bragging rights: a rutting stage.
Do You Believe In God?
What do we mean?Well, different things at different times. Of course. Different things at the same time as well. And the attribution is necessarily interpretational in all cases: unless there's an infallible God to dictate objective truth to us: at Judgment: infinitely far away from us in time, orthogonally far removed from us in space, and logic.
Who goes there? Friend or foe?
Friend.
Should we shoot in the direction of the voice? Or provisionally believe the voice: until s/he gets close enough to put a knife in our ribs?Friend.
Do You Believe In God? can mean a zillion things, but an open sincere naive inquiry into the details of your faith is the least likely. I propose that there's nearly always one meaning: alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse: Are you on my team? Not Do You Believe In God? But Are you within my semantic and political control?
Actually, if you think about it, very few questions we ask each other are independent of power, politics, of jockeying for control. Who did you vote for? That nigger? We're always testing our alliances, testing our level in the pecking order: trying to rise, looking for a chance to cheat.
Note: for a consideration of ambiguity in our concept of "obverse" ("alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse" above), see the next post. (2009 02 03 Note further, what I've written thus far on the obverse both here and there, is inadequate. I'll try to do a more complete job at my blog InsTic.)
Also: Though I have read Huck multiple times and studied about Huck many times more, none are within recent decades. I avoided retelling the plot in detail so I would be risking fewer errors, but I still could have made one. Realize: it doesn't matter, the point about America, politics, literature, censorship and racism are the same regardless of whether it was Tom or Huck-as-Tom improvising his lie.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
pk Profile 2009
I've been writing since 1948: stories, novels, essays, science ... Little was published other than by myself. My university ignored my reading of Shakespeare. The world largely ignored my offer of a cheap internet in 1970, as it's more recently ignored my theory of macroinformation. The fed censored me in 2007 and now threatens me if I republish. There's nothing new about authorities hating saviors. Some of my classic modules I'm trying to repost at my blogs.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Censored!
Please pardon my absence, I was unavoidably detained. That is, I wrote something, a black-comedy, an extreme satire: the object of the satire misread it as a threat (literally, it was a threat, but the writing was symbolic, not literal. (Try explaining that to the fed: my public defender saw it, but made no effort to acquaint the court with the truth. I got railroaded, kangarooed.)
I had roughly three thousand modules on line, distributed over five domains and several blogs. The court objected to two files: the satires. (It was primarily the federal monopoly on violence that I was satirizing!) But the judge censored the entire section. My host (Canadian!) panicked, and deleted the whole of Knatz.com (pk's home page), Macroinformation.org (pk's information science page), InfoAll.org (pk's deschooling and non-coercive internet offering of 1970 page), and AgainstHierarchy.org (pk's domain launched in 2006 to take over Knatz.com's political and sociological modules) got wiped out.
(My family had paid all my bills billed by mail, but the most important bill, my domains, was billed by email, and was not paid. For $6 or so overdue, my host destroyed all my data!) (My family could have, but did not, restore my domains!)
Now released ... (my landlord explains it thusly: They saw they made a mistake, but, being who they are, they can't say so: so, they let him go with a minimum sentence. (Translate: he's innocent!))
I ask that you pardon me for being unable to continue my IonaArc blog. Please do not pardon the cause of the interruption. I offered the public a tool to pry the government off their back in 1970 (my FLEX, reported at InfoAll.org, one of the censored sites). The public didn't utilize it. I don't expect God or god or nature to forgive such a public. I certainly don't.
But absolutely we shouldn't forgive the hypocrite government!
I'm so proud to have gotten the US to violate its most sacred law: the First Amendment!
I'll try to add more details, more posts. I'll try to restore my persecuted domains. Wish me luck. Call, help, send support.
I had roughly three thousand modules on line, distributed over five domains and several blogs. The court objected to two files: the satires. (It was primarily the federal monopoly on violence that I was satirizing!) But the judge censored the entire section. My host (Canadian!) panicked, and deleted the whole of Knatz.com (pk's home page), Macroinformation.org (pk's information science page), InfoAll.org (pk's deschooling and non-coercive internet offering of 1970 page), and AgainstHierarchy.org (pk's domain launched in 2006 to take over Knatz.com's political and sociological modules) got wiped out.
(My family had paid all my bills billed by mail, but the most important bill, my domains, was billed by email, and was not paid. For $6 or so overdue, my host destroyed all my data!) (My family could have, but did not, restore my domains!)
Now released ... (my landlord explains it thusly: They saw they made a mistake, but, being who they are, they can't say so: so, they let him go with a minimum sentence. (Translate: he's innocent!))
I ask that you pardon me for being unable to continue my IonaArc blog. Please do not pardon the cause of the interruption. I offered the public a tool to pry the government off their back in 1970 (my FLEX, reported at InfoAll.org, one of the censored sites). The public didn't utilize it. I don't expect God or god or nature to forgive such a public. I certainly don't.
But absolutely we shouldn't forgive the hypocrite government!
I'm so proud to have gotten the US to violate its most sacred law: the First Amendment!
I'll try to add more details, more posts. I'll try to restore my persecuted domains. Wish me luck. Call, help, send support.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
pk Profile 2008
The deschooler: offered a cheap internet in 1970, arrested in 2006, censored in 2007, three thousand text files knocked offline.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Caesar & Pompey
They'd met for the first time earlier in the day, but had been distant admirers. And after Federer's third Grand Slam win this year and ninth overall — Woods has won 12 majors — they visited. Federer sat while Woods stood with his foot on a chair, two champions in the zone.
Roger said that he wanted to play all the better with Tiger sitting next to his girl in his box. (Mirka's his business manager too, btw.)
If we were Romans 2050 or so years ago, we might have rooted wildly for Caesar: and for Pompey. Should each learn the other's sport now and face off? Can we really stand to have both Jehovah and Jesus in the same universe at the same time? In the same place?
On the women's side, Masha was devastating: and looked better than any female athlete ever had: losing, let alone winning. But pretty or not, she was petulant afterward -- when her father's illegally coaching her from the stands was mentioned.
We may wind up wanting to assassinate this queen.
Pepsi
"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola. We love death."
So said the Afghani guerrilla, according to Time.
That comes as a shocking revelation to me. You mean Coke has lost its grip on the world''s perceptions? You mean Pepsi has caught up not just between New York and California but in the mountains of southern Asia?
Could be. I don't exactly follow these things. It can take forever for a hermit to notice something well documented in public rivers.
So said the Afghani guerrilla, according to Time.
That comes as a shocking revelation to me. You mean Coke has lost its grip on the world''s perceptions? You mean Pepsi has caught up not just between New York and California but in the mountains of southern Asia?
Could be. I don't exactly follow these things. It can take forever for a hermit to notice something well documented in public rivers.
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