Etc, etc. ... And God saw that it was good.
When the Jews wrote down their key oral traditions, they juggled that around till it was right at the top, one of the first ideas.
And of course the Jews saw that they were good. I bet that the Jews weren’t the first culture to invent the idea of goodness and then attribute the quality to themselves as well as to their special magician in the clouds, but, best we can tell, they were the first to write it down.
There! two things: "good": and "written" records.
The universe that we know a fragment of was already upwards of fourteen billion years old when the Jews’ God created heaven, earth, and the Garden; the earth was upwards of four and a half billion years old. (Pardon the necessary ridiculousness of that statement: if a "year" is the period of the earth’s revolution around the sun, then how can there have been years before there was an earth?) When a spider is born, does mama spider teach it that it’s good? How about bacteria?
When India squashed into Asia throwing up the Himalayas, did the mountains think they were good?
No. The concept is a human concept. But humans had been around for quite a while before the Garden. Indeed, modern humans had been around for roughly one hundred and forty thousand years. Talk-talk-talking human beings had been around for forty thousand years at least.
Nevertheless, the concept of good, and the attribution of the concept to one’s group -- the United States is good -- is essential to the essence of what constitutes, not modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens, but civilized Homo sapiens: kleptocrats.
I’ll do more with this at Knatz.com’s Society section (temp. offline): in the part on Social Epistemology.
One thing I must be sure to tie in involves my oft-iterated distinction between elements of what we must call "design" in the universe and the so embarrassingly recent magical creation of the Jews' blood-demon.
How blood clots is irreducibly complex. We have no non-laughable way to put it in the camp of evolution. So, until our vocabulary improves, we might as well say that "god" did it: meaning: put it in a black box, the contents not mapped at present (and perhaps permanently unmapable!)
Black boxes are how we can talk with some sense without knowing every detail of every component of what we are saying. It's not quite the same as not knowing what the hell we're talking about: though we do plenty of that too.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
pk's Society
I've been busy work, work, working to restructure the Society section in the "teaching" area of my Knatz.com. Check it out: pk’s Society Entrance.
Cosmology of Pirates
It’s a myth that people ever believed the earth was flat. They thought it was a sphere held up by Atlas. What held Atlas up? Why a big turtle, of course.
The joke goes that some wiseacre traveled to the top of the Himalayas to ask the wise man what held the earth up. "Atlas, and a turtle," the wise man answered. "Well, then," demanded our smartalec, what holds the turtle up?" "You can’t fool me," answered the wise man: "It’s turtles all the way down."
No, says pk. There is no giant turtle. Atlas holds up the world. Atlas used to be Greek, before he was Roman, after he was Persian. More recently he’s been Spanish, and British. Now Atlas is an American.
And Atlas stands not on the back of a giant turtle, but on the shoulders of a pirate: a great pirate. And the great pirate stands on the shoulders of another thief, and the thief stands on the shoulders of a great magician ...
It’s strong men, pirates, thieves, murderers, and great deceivers all the way down.
Or so we would do better to think. Actually though, nothing holds up the earth. The earth isn’t held up. The earth doesn’t need holding: and there is no "up."
The joke goes that some wiseacre traveled to the top of the Himalayas to ask the wise man what held the earth up. "Atlas, and a turtle," the wise man answered. "Well, then," demanded our smartalec, what holds the turtle up?" "You can’t fool me," answered the wise man: "It’s turtles all the way down."
No, says pk. There is no giant turtle. Atlas holds up the world. Atlas used to be Greek, before he was Roman, after he was Persian. More recently he’s been Spanish, and British. Now Atlas is an American.
And Atlas stands not on the back of a giant turtle, but on the shoulders of a pirate: a great pirate. And the great pirate stands on the shoulders of another thief, and the thief stands on the shoulders of a great magician ...
It’s strong men, pirates, thieves, murderers, and great deceivers all the way down.
Or so we would do better to think. Actually though, nothing holds up the earth. The earth isn’t held up. The earth doesn’t need holding: and there is no "up."
Goya, Colossus
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Prediction, Reporting, Results
Elections, for example, sports.
The paper shows the morning line, Cappy narrates progress around the track, then, in a close race, everyone waits around until the officials announce which horse crossed the line first, second, third ... Supposedly, nothing counts until the officials have sorted among the photo finish, the witness of their own eyes, complaints of fouls from the jockeys. Sometimes it’s easy: no fouls are claimed, and everyone saw, saw clearly, that Seabiscuit was many lengths ahead of War Admiral.
Fine.
But what if sponsors have spent millions to ride the high profile of the Yankees? or Tiger Woods? Tom Dewey? or Richard Nixon?
What if you own the newspaper and you want the election results on the street, an extra edition: and you want it on the streets before the votes have been counted, show what a magician you are? Why then you herald "DEWEY!" across the front page! But in the morning, when Truman wakes up, the votes show that he’s President Truman.
CBS spends expensive minutes over hours, Saturday and Sunday, analyzing in close up every move made by Tiger! by Vijay! by Phil! Those are the spending minutes; they are balanced by the network’s earning minutes: Tiger is driving a Buick. Tiger is smiling. The Buick is dominant, makes everybody happy. Tiger had damn well better win the tournament.
And he does. Lots. But not all. What do we do when the cameras have spent Saturday and Sunday on Tiger, on Vijay, but it’s Ben Curtis who finishes 18 with the low score? Who? The experts never mentioned him, never showed a shot of his until he suddenly grabbed the lead at 17: while all the big names fell down.
Before the race you can talk up any horse you want. Before the race you can put up your money, demand that others put up their money, or shut up. But after the race, we’re all supposed to shut up: except to acknowledge the winner: and the winner is the horse that crossed the line first, no fouls judged against him.
At the convention we can curse all the other candidates. On election eve we can incandesce our hatred of the major opponent. On election eve we can still threaten to move to Canada if the other guy wins. But the morning after the election we’re all supposed shut up: except to say Yes, President Truman.
Today’s final round of the PGA Tournament, this year again at Baltusrol, spun me between annoyance and enjoyment. I read all the articles that said Tiger should win easily. As difficult as Baltusrol may be, it was supposed to set up perfectly for Tiger’s game. I’m all for that. If Tiger won every tournament for the next twenty years, it would be fine with me. I missed him on Carson when he was a toddler, but I’ve avidly ridden his bandwagon since he was a teen: a dozen years of pk joining Tigermania.
But Tiger flubbed, Mickelson shone. Then Mickelson flubbed.
Sometimes it seems like some hero seizes the limelight. On Sunday they go eagle, birdie, birdie ... leap up the leader board. There’s been very little leaping in this tournament, and a lot of falling down: bogey, bogey, bogey.
You want to know about the week’s tournament? Thursday through Sunday? Seventy-two holes? Read the paper on Monday. A sensible person wouldn’t watch the horse race. Get a heart attack. Just scan the tote board after the race results are official. What difference does it make which horse had the lead at the turn? Only the finish line counts.
But no. Budweiser, Buick, IBM ... they all want it to be a horse race: where heroic will counts the most.
No. CBS, NBC, ABC ... all want the experts to narrate for us, between commercials: and want the experts to be right. The Yankees must win. Hell, they spent the most money. Dewey must win.
We really shouldn’t count the votes.
Counting the votes can make the experts look bad.
And this PGA is making everybody look ... well, if not bad, then human.
One thing’s sure though, surer all the time: a no-name may win a sporting event, but no major election will ever be won except by the Yankees, by Budweiser, by Buick. Sports are just window dressing, to pretend that everyone has a chance.
The paper shows the morning line, Cappy narrates progress around the track, then, in a close race, everyone waits around until the officials announce which horse crossed the line first, second, third ... Supposedly, nothing counts until the officials have sorted among the photo finish, the witness of their own eyes, complaints of fouls from the jockeys. Sometimes it’s easy: no fouls are claimed, and everyone saw, saw clearly, that Seabiscuit was many lengths ahead of War Admiral.
Fine.
But what if sponsors have spent millions to ride the high profile of the Yankees? or Tiger Woods? Tom Dewey? or Richard Nixon?
What if you own the newspaper and you want the election results on the street, an extra edition: and you want it on the streets before the votes have been counted, show what a magician you are? Why then you herald "DEWEY!" across the front page! But in the morning, when Truman wakes up, the votes show that he’s President Truman.
CBS spends expensive minutes over hours, Saturday and Sunday, analyzing in close up every move made by Tiger! by Vijay! by Phil! Those are the spending minutes; they are balanced by the network’s earning minutes: Tiger is driving a Buick. Tiger is smiling. The Buick is dominant, makes everybody happy. Tiger had damn well better win the tournament.
And he does. Lots. But not all. What do we do when the cameras have spent Saturday and Sunday on Tiger, on Vijay, but it’s Ben Curtis who finishes 18 with the low score? Who? The experts never mentioned him, never showed a shot of his until he suddenly grabbed the lead at 17: while all the big names fell down.
Before the race you can talk up any horse you want. Before the race you can put up your money, demand that others put up their money, or shut up. But after the race, we’re all supposed to shut up: except to acknowledge the winner: and the winner is the horse that crossed the line first, no fouls judged against him.
At the convention we can curse all the other candidates. On election eve we can incandesce our hatred of the major opponent. On election eve we can still threaten to move to Canada if the other guy wins. But the morning after the election we’re all supposed shut up: except to say Yes, President Truman.
Today’s final round of the PGA Tournament, this year again at Baltusrol, spun me between annoyance and enjoyment. I read all the articles that said Tiger should win easily. As difficult as Baltusrol may be, it was supposed to set up perfectly for Tiger’s game. I’m all for that. If Tiger won every tournament for the next twenty years, it would be fine with me. I missed him on Carson when he was a toddler, but I’ve avidly ridden his bandwagon since he was a teen: a dozen years of pk joining Tigermania.
But Tiger flubbed, Mickelson shone. Then Mickelson flubbed.
Sometimes it seems like some hero seizes the limelight. On Sunday they go eagle, birdie, birdie ... leap up the leader board. There’s been very little leaping in this tournament, and a lot of falling down: bogey, bogey, bogey.
You want to know about the week’s tournament? Thursday through Sunday? Seventy-two holes? Read the paper on Monday. A sensible person wouldn’t watch the horse race. Get a heart attack. Just scan the tote board after the race results are official. What difference does it make which horse had the lead at the turn? Only the finish line counts.
But no. Budweiser, Buick, IBM ... they all want it to be a horse race: where heroic will counts the most.
No. CBS, NBC, ABC ... all want the experts to narrate for us, between commercials: and want the experts to be right. The Yankees must win. Hell, they spent the most money. Dewey must win.
We really shouldn’t count the votes.
Counting the votes can make the experts look bad.
And this PGA is making everybody look ... well, if not bad, then human.
One thing’s sure though, surer all the time: a no-name may win a sporting event, but no major election will ever be won except by the Yankees, by Budweiser, by Buick. Sports are just window dressing, to pretend that everyone has a chance.
Order, Archives
The default mode for humans is daytime. Funny, cause our earliest mammal ancestors were night creatures.
Humans like best to look where the light is clearest: that makes hiding things easy: bury it in the dark.
It’s a stupid thief though who buries something in the dark under a light that can be switched on at any time. Of course ignorant of tomorrow’s technology, tomorrow’s habits, priorities, no theft is permanently safe.
You know the joke about the guy coming upon a guy searching under a street lamp: Wha’cha looking for, asks the newcomer. I dropped my car keys, says the seeker.
The newcomer helps him search for a while, then asks, Are you sure this is where you dropped them?
Oh, no; I dropped them over there.
Then why are you looking for them over here?
The light is so much better.
As with so many jokes, that’s deep. But deeper still is Gregory Bateson’s point that a patient random search of any hay stack will eventually find the missing needle; however infinite ordered searching will never find the thing misordered.
The function of any human archive is two-fold: we can file our property deed so that it can be found; we can misfile the Indian’s deed so it will never be found.
This relates to a number of Knatz.com (and other pk domain) modules. Additions will find themselves recreated at pKnatz blog.
Humans like best to look where the light is clearest: that makes hiding things easy: bury it in the dark.
It’s a stupid thief though who buries something in the dark under a light that can be switched on at any time. Of course ignorant of tomorrow’s technology, tomorrow’s habits, priorities, no theft is permanently safe.
You know the joke about the guy coming upon a guy searching under a street lamp: Wha’cha looking for, asks the newcomer. I dropped my car keys, says the seeker.
The newcomer helps him search for a while, then asks, Are you sure this is where you dropped them?
Oh, no; I dropped them over there.
Then why are you looking for them over here?
The light is so much better.
As with so many jokes, that’s deep. But deeper still is Gregory Bateson’s point that a patient random search of any hay stack will eventually find the missing needle; however infinite ordered searching will never find the thing misordered.
The function of any human archive is two-fold: we can file our property deed so that it can be found; we can misfile the Indian’s deed so it will never be found.
This relates to a number of Knatz.com (and other pk domain) modules. Additions will find themselves recreated at pKnatz blog.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Circumcision
Shlain inspired, pk explains circumcision:
Nearly a year and a half after digesting Leonard Shlain’s Sex, Time, and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, a connection with circumcision suddenly comes to me:
Judaism, and therefore Christianity, is famous for being a male-dominant religion: male obsessed: obsessed with blood, always in human matters evoking thoughts of menstrual blood. Shlain argues that women, Gyna sapiens, invented time (as a human concept, of course) thanks to evolution separating women from other mammal and primate females by ... hidden ovulation, conspicuous menses ... Suddenly, women were much smarter than men. Men had to struggle to catch up: or they’d never get laid again: women having figured out the connection between copulation and pregnancy, women having noticed the danger as well as pain of bearing big-headed babies, learned, for the first time, to say No.
So men invented talking, talk the woman into the sack. If women invented intelligence, it was men who invented human intelligence: based in promises, in illusions: in deception (including self-deception).
Women may have participated among men in inventing magic (self-deception) and even in positing special unseen magicians -- divinities, gods -- from their magic; but I’ll bet it was strictly men who invented Monotheism with its authoritative God: a boss.
Lie down! Spread your legs! Or you’ll go to hell! Authority, if you can summon it, is easier than seduction: now ordinary men can also get laid.
But women were first. And women were the mothers: the children were THEIRS! So men were jealous: for the first time.
Therefore, by homeopathic magic -- like begets like, men invented circumcision: make the male bleed: like a woman! Resculpt the penis: like a nipple!And if you circumcise the clit, why then maybe you can finally find the damn thing, in the dark.
I've been using Iona Arc to preview Knatz.com materials; in this case I jotted the ideas first at my Circumcision: Medicine, Science, & Superstition and now share it at this blog.
2005 08 19 It occurs to me, this baker’s week after blogging the above and apropos of my little aside joke at the end, that not everyone has heard about circumcision of the clitoris. Understand, I am NOT talking about removing the clitoris, but of unsheathing it. If the operation has its own proper name, as I’m sure it does, I don’t know it. I never heard of it till a few years ago, reading about a doctor who performed this little trick, scrapping away too thick flesh around the clit that would interfere with its function of female arousal, in all his operations on women, without their consent and without informing them afterwards. Doctors!
Women who’d been married, who had borne children, but who had never been aroused, who’d never had a clue what all the fuss was about, were suddenly becoming nymphomaniacs! They at long last had discovered arousal.
One poor woman though couldn’t stand it. EVERYTHING stimulated her: and it wasn’t pleasant.
Challenged, the doctor insisted he hadn’t done anything wrong: anything unprofessional!
God save us from professions.
Nearly a year and a half after digesting Leonard Shlain’s Sex, Time, and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, a connection with circumcision suddenly comes to me:
Judaism, and therefore Christianity, is famous for being a male-dominant religion: male obsessed: obsessed with blood, always in human matters evoking thoughts of menstrual blood. Shlain argues that women, Gyna sapiens, invented time (as a human concept, of course) thanks to evolution separating women from other mammal and primate females by ... hidden ovulation, conspicuous menses ... Suddenly, women were much smarter than men. Men had to struggle to catch up: or they’d never get laid again: women having figured out the connection between copulation and pregnancy, women having noticed the danger as well as pain of bearing big-headed babies, learned, for the first time, to say No.
So men invented talking, talk the woman into the sack. If women invented intelligence, it was men who invented human intelligence: based in promises, in illusions: in deception (including self-deception).
Women may have participated among men in inventing magic (self-deception) and even in positing special unseen magicians -- divinities, gods -- from their magic; but I’ll bet it was strictly men who invented Monotheism with its authoritative God: a boss.
Lie down! Spread your legs! Or you’ll go to hell! Authority, if you can summon it, is easier than seduction: now ordinary men can also get laid.
But women were first. And women were the mothers: the children were THEIRS! So men were jealous: for the first time.
Therefore, by homeopathic magic -- like begets like, men invented circumcision: make the male bleed: like a woman! Resculpt the penis: like a nipple!
2011 09 06 Silly me, that's not what I meant to say. The joke should have gone, "And if you circumcise the clit, why then you don't have to try to find the damn thing, in the dark."
I had a girl friend a few decades ago who gave me the idea that she herself didn't know where it was: because I'd been paying good attention to it for months, with fingers and tongue as well as whatever bumped from the pubis, when she took me aside to give me a lecture on locating it! I think her daughter must have given her a spiel and she was mindlessly passing it on, not paying any attention to sense: like a priest lecturing the mother of twelve on not over-prizing virginity!
After that I never wanted to give her another orgasm.
(And that wasn't the worst part: but this post isn't about that part of my sad story.)
I've been using Iona Arc to preview Knatz.com materials; in this case I jotted the ideas first at my Circumcision: Medicine, Science, & Superstition and now share it at this blog.
2005 08 19 It occurs to me, this baker’s week after blogging the above and apropos of my little aside joke at the end, that not everyone has heard about circumcision of the clitoris. Understand, I am NOT talking about removing the clitoris, but of unsheathing it. If the operation has its own proper name, as I’m sure it does, I don’t know it. I never heard of it till a few years ago, reading about a doctor who performed this little trick, scrapping away too thick flesh around the clit that would interfere with its function of female arousal, in all his operations on women, without their consent and without informing them afterwards. Doctors!
Women who’d been married, who had borne children, but who had never been aroused, who’d never had a clue what all the fuss was about, were suddenly becoming nymphomaniacs! They at long last had discovered arousal.
One poor woman though couldn’t stand it. EVERYTHING stimulated her: and it wasn’t pleasant.
Challenged, the doctor insisted he hadn’t done anything wrong: anything unprofessional!
God save us from professions.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Fish Resort
A Reuters news item today reports that the city of Chicago has installed a choice environment for beauty-starved fish of the thoroughly urbanized Chicago River. Like a modern zoo or aquarium (with a night house) the public can view and photograph the fish as they sample choice vegetation introduced to the resort.
Bravo: with a BUT.
I make the best of having been born in 1938 that I can by celebrating our times as interesting. Whether we’re on our way to a better society (or a better species) or whether we’re in a Last Days anteroom to hell, our times are interesting.
I don’t exactly have a choice; but if I did, and chose selfishly -- that is, if I chose to please myself, to like and approve my society, my species, I’d choose to live free: that is, in nature: before kleptocracy, before civilization. If I were lucky, I’d get to breed before I ran into a pissed-off lion, or a hungry stronger group. As it is, born into coerced FREEDOM, among critters who, if they understand a word of what I say, don’t have the balls to admit it, I join Ivan Illich in hating every new gimmick to manage us, to put everything in charge of moron experts, to replace woods with gardens and nature with a hospital: ever more expensive and destructive. Now even "wild" animals can’t survive without the interference of a hospital of some sort: animal social workers.
Nevertheless, under the circumstances, a nice modern zoo (or aquarium) with a nice nighthouse (or underwater viewing air-tunnel) is better than total urbanization (and extinction) for everything.
And I love fish. I love to eat them. I love to catch them. (I especially love that most of them are smaller than me: and I catch them, not the other way around.) I love to watch fish. I’ve had aquariums much of my life, if not currently: but then I’m in the water with them nearly every day: wading with my rod. Most of all I love fish because they’re wild: less and less, but still. I love to tussle with a creature that will kill itself rather than be captured. (Fish form their own schools: not a one state-fiated.) (Though once a bass has been released, it never again fights all out like the first time. And I doubt that any farm-raised fish will ever fight like a native.)
(Now me in contrast, if I were ever redrafted for church, for school, for the army, I’d fight like hell: which I didn’t the first time.) (Same if someone tried to trick me into another marriage!)
Bravo: with a BUT.
I make the best of having been born in 1938 that I can by celebrating our times as interesting. Whether we’re on our way to a better society (or a better species) or whether we’re in a Last Days anteroom to hell, our times are interesting.
I don’t exactly have a choice; but if I did, and chose selfishly -- that is, if I chose to please myself, to like and approve my society, my species, I’d choose to live free: that is, in nature: before kleptocracy, before civilization. If I were lucky, I’d get to breed before I ran into a pissed-off lion, or a hungry stronger group. As it is, born into coerced FREEDOM, among critters who, if they understand a word of what I say, don’t have the balls to admit it, I join Ivan Illich in hating every new gimmick to manage us, to put everything in charge of moron experts, to replace woods with gardens and nature with a hospital: ever more expensive and destructive. Now even "wild" animals can’t survive without the interference of a hospital of some sort: animal social workers.
Nevertheless, under the circumstances, a nice modern zoo (or aquarium) with a nice nighthouse (or underwater viewing air-tunnel) is better than total urbanization (and extinction) for everything.
And I love fish. I love to eat them. I love to catch them. (I especially love that most of them are smaller than me: and I catch them, not the other way around.) I love to watch fish. I’ve had aquariums much of my life, if not currently: but then I’m in the water with them nearly every day: wading with my rod. Most of all I love fish because they’re wild: less and less, but still. I love to tussle with a creature that will kill itself rather than be captured. (Fish form their own schools: not a one state-fiated.) (Though once a bass has been released, it never again fights all out like the first time. And I doubt that any farm-raised fish will ever fight like a native.)
(Now me in contrast, if I were ever redrafted for church, for school, for the army, I’d fight like hell: which I didn’t the first time.) (Same if someone tried to trick me into another marriage!)
Majority
Majority:1) a preponderance
2) more than 50% of some sample
3) a political/legal/cultural averaging of some threshold. At twenty-one the previously judged immature aristocrat becomes legally judged mature: he comes into his majority.
Will the numerical majority ever come into its majority: of wisdom? Will the preponderance of people ever becomes mature? Allow free inquiry? free research? free speculation? churches and governments and universities no longer cowering about public opinion?
Don’t know. But my speculation is NEVER!
Cowering: they all cower; but won’t admit it. And the institutions the majority supports (in their minority) are granted an illusory dignity by that majority, which wills itself blind to that cowering.
2) more than 50% of some sample
3) a political/legal/cultural averaging of some threshold.
Will the numerical majority ever come into its majority: of wisdom? Will the preponderance of people ever becomes mature? Allow free inquiry? free research? free speculation? churches and governments and universities no longer cowering about public opinion?
Don’t know. But my speculation is NEVER!
Cowering: they all cower; but won’t admit it. And the institutions the majority supports (in their minority) are granted an illusory dignity by that majority, which wills itself blind to that cowering.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
The Blind Swordsman
When I was a kid I loved Cony Island, I loved Times Square: entertainment: neon lights, crowds, everything braying, everything for sale. After a while I saw the dirt, the disease, the whorishness. I was perhaps fourteen before I ever loved neon lights again: it was a National Geographic picture of Hong Kong’s entertainment district: the neon lights sculpted characters I didn’t understand. Drained of meaning, the patterns were once again beautiful to me.
Like opera: I don’t mind it if it’s in a language I don’t know (though after a while you DO understand some of the Italian, the German: or at least can mimick it phonetically.
When I was a kid I disapproved of westerns: people killing each other, stealing cattle, taking the law into their own hands. The church, the school, fed us parallel lines of behavioral propaganda; Hollywood contradicted all that, stimulated our imaginations to a cartoon of anarchism. But that cultural artifact, my "self," was determined to be "good." So I hardened my heart against all the shooting.
Imagine how confused I became when I saw Kurosawa’s Roshomon in the early 1950s. There the violence was so stimulating I couldn’t resist it. I didn’t see The Seven Samurai till it had been out at least a couple of years, a rerun: and I was smitten afresh. So what good had it done me to resist Hopalong Cassidy? Zoro? Oh, hell, admit it: I never resisted Errol Flynn.
But notice: I was seduced by the violence when it was alien. (Then how come The Seven Samurai seemed so, if not Christian exactly, so moral, so ethicaly challenging?)
So I learned to love great Japanese films: Ugetsu, The Hidden Fortress, Bandits on the Wind, Yojimbo ... And they were all battle-torn. Indeed, I became addicted: and the addict starts seeing films that are far from great, that one doesn’t expect to be great, ethically challenging (or their challenge is concocted horeshit), just so long as the kendo will be good: Sword of Doom, Zatoichi ... (And by now I’ve gobbled a bunch of horseshit westerns too, any damn crime drama.)
But rather than ask what happened to Protestant Paul, let’s rather hypothesize that Hollywood knew my syndrome long before I discovered it in myself: they make their violent entertainments alien, they put them in a "west" no one ever actually colonized, ever lived in. Mine just had to be a little bit extra foreign before I succombed.
These thoughts visit me as I am about to watch a Zatoichi film for the first time in decades: Zatoichi, (the blind swordsman). The Zatoichi series in Japan was to Roshomon what B movies were to DW Griffith, what Quentin Tarantino became to John Ford. to John Huston ...
Later: It was cute. Big budget, professional production ... but this Zatoichi was blond (or at least ashen) and had blue eyes!
Every ronin cliché was employed: and at the end the huge supporting cast engaged in a hoedown: jazzy, funky, with syncopated percussion, and even tap dancing in high-heel clogs!
2005 08 07 I’ve an itch to detail a couple of other cute things about this bit of entertainment. (No one, not once, got kicked in the balls! (Though they were forever cutting themselves and each other with sloppy draws of the sword in crowded conditions.)
We have Zatoichi travelling as a masseur. He’s taken in by a nice farm lady. (She gets a massage, but doesn’t seem to give him any pussy.) The pair befriend a pair of pseudo-geishas: a brother and sister act, the transvestite brother masquerading as a dancer-whore-drinking-companion. Sister plays a biwa whose strings detach so she can use her instrument as a garotte, strangling the john while brother robs him. The biwa like all their paraphernalia conceal steel stabbing and cutting weapons. Seems to me that a wakizashi in the wood would ruin the tone. But my point is: none of the principals seem fazed by their profession or how they practice it. Hell, they’re just a couple of misunderstood kids who had a hard childhood. But then Zatoichi himself kills six out of seven people he meets. But we can see he’s just a farm hand at heart.
Zatoichi can kill everybody lickety-split because, being blind, his other senses are more finely tuned. He can taste where everyone is and what they’re doing, smell the precise position and intentions of their weapons. He makes beaucoup pocket money feeling whether the dice, hidden in the cup, add odd or even.
Which brings up the last point I’ll add: The gambling house gets tired of Zatoicho winning every bet, so they switch dice. He can hear that the dice are different: so he kills everybody present: the dice man, the pit boss, the cashier, the gofer, the joint manager: trashes the place. But the next night, clean and neat, they’re back in business: new dice man, new pit boss ...
Bush for President? How about Hollywood for God? Everybody neat and clean, no matter what a slob they are.
Like opera: I don’t mind it if it’s in a language I don’t know (though after a while you DO understand some of the Italian, the German: or at least can mimick it phonetically.
When I was a kid I disapproved of westerns: people killing each other, stealing cattle, taking the law into their own hands. The church, the school, fed us parallel lines of behavioral propaganda; Hollywood contradicted all that, stimulated our imaginations to a cartoon of anarchism. But that cultural artifact, my "self," was determined to be "good." So I hardened my heart against all the shooting.
Imagine how confused I became when I saw Kurosawa’s Roshomon in the early 1950s. There the violence was so stimulating I couldn’t resist it. I didn’t see The Seven Samurai till it had been out at least a couple of years, a rerun: and I was smitten afresh. So what good had it done me to resist Hopalong Cassidy? Zoro? Oh, hell, admit it: I never resisted Errol Flynn.
But notice: I was seduced by the violence when it was alien. (Then how come The Seven Samurai seemed so, if not Christian exactly, so moral, so ethicaly challenging?)
2011 09 06 Whoops, IonaArc's graphics thru 2006 were stored at PKImaging.com. The fed destroyed all my domains, my images evaporated. Now I try to fix things as I notice which posts need fixing.
So I learned to love great Japanese films: Ugetsu, The Hidden Fortress, Bandits on the Wind, Yojimbo ... And they were all battle-torn. Indeed, I became addicted: and the addict starts seeing films that are far from great, that one doesn’t expect to be great, ethically challenging (or their challenge is concocted horeshit), just so long as the kendo will be good: Sword of Doom, Zatoichi ... (And by now I’ve gobbled a bunch of horseshit westerns too, any damn crime drama.)
But rather than ask what happened to Protestant Paul, let’s rather hypothesize that Hollywood knew my syndrome long before I discovered it in myself: they make their violent entertainments alien, they put them in a "west" no one ever actually colonized, ever lived in. Mine just had to be a little bit extra foreign before I succombed.
These thoughts visit me as I am about to watch a Zatoichi film for the first time in decades: Zatoichi, (the blind swordsman). The Zatoichi series in Japan was to Roshomon what B movies were to DW Griffith, what Quentin Tarantino became to John Ford. to John Huston ...
Later: It was cute. Big budget, professional production ... but this Zatoichi was blond (or at least ashen) and had blue eyes!
Every ronin cliché was employed: and at the end the huge supporting cast engaged in a hoedown: jazzy, funky, with syncopated percussion, and even tap dancing in high-heel clogs!
2005 08 07 I’ve an itch to detail a couple of other cute things about this bit of entertainment. (No one, not once, got kicked in the balls! (Though they were forever cutting themselves and each other with sloppy draws of the sword in crowded conditions.)
We have Zatoichi travelling as a masseur. He’s taken in by a nice farm lady. (She gets a massage, but doesn’t seem to give him any pussy.) The pair befriend a pair of pseudo-geishas: a brother and sister act, the transvestite brother masquerading as a dancer-whore-drinking-companion. Sister plays a biwa whose strings detach so she can use her instrument as a garotte, strangling the john while brother robs him. The biwa like all their paraphernalia conceal steel stabbing and cutting weapons. Seems to me that a wakizashi in the wood would ruin the tone. But my point is: none of the principals seem fazed by their profession or how they practice it. Hell, they’re just a couple of misunderstood kids who had a hard childhood. But then Zatoichi himself kills six out of seven people he meets. But we can see he’s just a farm hand at heart.
Zatoichi can kill everybody lickety-split because, being blind, his other senses are more finely tuned. He can taste where everyone is and what they’re doing, smell the precise position and intentions of their weapons. He makes beaucoup pocket money feeling whether the dice, hidden in the cup, add odd or even.
Which brings up the last point I’ll add: The gambling house gets tired of Zatoicho winning every bet, so they switch dice. He can hear that the dice are different: so he kills everybody present: the dice man, the pit boss, the cashier, the gofer, the joint manager: trashes the place. But the next night, clean and neat, they’re back in business: new dice man, new pit boss ...
Bush for President? How about Hollywood for God? Everybody neat and clean, no matter what a slob they are.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Falsification: the Soul of Science
If your models of reality don’t well map reality, don’t jibe smoothly with experience, make better models, redraft your maps: from scratch if necessary.
This wisdom is not natural to human individuals. Science is rare. No individual can be a "scientist" 100% of the time.
This wisdom is anathema to societies. Societies routinely stretch the bottom of their budget to buttress beliefs that have bumped against experience. Where the university has invested in Newtonian physics, it will resist relativity. Where the university has invested in relativity physics, it will resist quantum incompatibility. Where the Temple has elected its Sanhedrin, it will resist Christ. And where the Temple has accepted the rule of Caesar -- and which temple has not, it will compromise. Caiaphas can interrupt and contradict Jesus, Pilat can judge Jesus without any obligation to demonstrate understanding of what Jesus says: only what Caesar says.
The middle part of the previous paragraph instantly distanced the religious, the latter part alienated the scientists. That’s tough, I hold to the relationship, the apotheosis of reason doesn’t suspend homeostasis.
Besides, Michael Behe claims that most scientists do believe in god (the god of order, the god of design), and I suspect that Behe is right: in more than one thing.
Anyone still here: please understand: I use Christ as a symbol, and Jesus too. There’s no dogma in my meaning. There’s a little bit of "Christ" in any revolutionary, any ugly duckling, anyone blocked from the table. I don’t mean that there is an independent thing, immortal, infallible, and 100% a Christ. And I certainly don’t mean that a man called Jesus and crucified two thousand years ago was the only one to try to upgrade a church, a culture, and get kicked in the face.
Science too is based in belief, but science contrasts with religion in that science is supposed to welcome new maps whereas churches are fortified against review.
My piece on Falsification: No Truth Without It: The Wason Test has been at Knatz.com for five years and counting. The above is today’s revisit.
This wisdom is not natural to human individuals. Science is rare. No individual can be a "scientist" 100% of the time.
This wisdom is anathema to societies. Societies routinely stretch the bottom of their budget to buttress beliefs that have bumped against experience. Where the university has invested in Newtonian physics, it will resist relativity. Where the university has invested in relativity physics, it will resist quantum incompatibility. Where the Temple has elected its Sanhedrin, it will resist Christ. And where the Temple has accepted the rule of Caesar -- and which temple has not, it will compromise. Caiaphas can interrupt and contradict Jesus, Pilat can judge Jesus without any obligation to demonstrate understanding of what Jesus says: only what Caesar says.
The middle part of the previous paragraph instantly distanced the religious, the latter part alienated the scientists. That’s tough, I hold to the relationship, the apotheosis of reason doesn’t suspend homeostasis.
Besides, Michael Behe claims that most scientists do believe in god (the god of order, the god of design), and I suspect that Behe is right: in more than one thing.
Anyone still here: please understand: I use Christ as a symbol, and Jesus too. There’s no dogma in my meaning. There’s a little bit of "Christ" in any revolutionary, any ugly duckling, anyone blocked from the table. I don’t mean that there is an independent thing, immortal, infallible, and 100% a Christ. And I certainly don’t mean that a man called Jesus and crucified two thousand years ago was the only one to try to upgrade a church, a culture, and get kicked in the face.
Science too is based in belief, but science contrasts with religion in that science is supposed to welcome new maps whereas churches are fortified against review.
My piece on Falsification: No Truth Without It: The Wason Test has been at Knatz.com for five years and counting. The above is today’s revisit.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Fishing Paradise
Lake Istokpoga is my favorite fishing lake ever. And yesterday I had the best session with fly rod, popper, and bluegills I've had in years.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Social Intelligence
Never forget: humans are social. Human intelligence has a social matrix: and the society, the culture, governs what intelligence is acceptable, gets nourishment, recognition, and what intelligence gets ignored. What gets published is governed: by an editor (typically an editorial board) if not by a commissar (who himself has a matrix, support). What graduates and what gets left back is typically a committee decision.
(Of course nearly every one of these word/concepts has to be italicized.)
History, science, ... these are socially determined. Thus the reality our consciousness emerges within is social.
Simultaneously, we (all life) are organisms, populations ... species in an actual (non-socially determined) universe (Pleroma). Our maps are made in a real territory. Where the maps are too discrepant from reality, over time (after the oil runs out), corrections are made: by nature, truth, god. Subjectively, they appear as revolution ... death ... extinction; or as learning.
Literate societies, those with the thus-far most efficient means of propagating their memes, have thus far all been kleptocracies, hierarchically organized. Democracies claim to be bottom up, but anyone, no matter how map-ridden, can see it’s a lie. Jefferson, Franklin ... decided what the "people" were, what they wanted: and who qualified as people.
This of course is written by pk. pk advertises himself as a suppressed intelligence: ignored by the committees, by the commissars, by the public. As a child no one in my church, no one in my family, understood my theology. It doesn’t matter that I myself now reject it: the point is that it never got heard: at least not associated with pk. As a young man my reading, my explication, of Shakespeare’s sonnets never got heard, still hasn’t been heard: the best I can tell, not by a single individual, anywhere: even though I "taught" it in a college, even though I’ve now been writing it online for a decade (not that I've yet written it well, or completely, there or anywhere else). My adult (1970) offer of a bottom-up internet made a little bit of news by 1972: then none. The truth and history do not match.
After a revolution maps may be adjusted (which still doesn’t necessitate their being accurate). Before the 1960s all blacks were ignorant; since the 1960s black history is rich and complex. Facts get unburied (which still doesn’t make them complete). Under Communism, the Communists invented everything since the wheel. After its fall, maps get adjusted. Under the British Empire, God was an English gentleman (living off his investments). In America, Jesus was American: spoke English, shared the local prejudices (until the oil runs out).
Every institution has a crypt in which secrets are kept. I’m not saying for a moment that the secret Vatican archives are complete, wholly true. I am not saying that an accurate account of the theologies (or anti-theologies) of every heretic tortured is in that library, nor all Vatican science that didn’t get published to the public, nor all non-Vatican science repressed by the Vatican ... I am saying that there was a distinction, a discrepancy, between what the Vatican "knew" and what the Vatican published to the public. Elsewhere I’ve told how I learned that the Metropolitan Museum knew of many forgeries and misappellations among its collection NOT reflected in the labels shown the public. The Times too, Washington DC ... have unpublished archives: any item of which may be released when the Times, Washington DC ... decide is desirable: or necessary. Back to the wall, things get released.
And what gets released has a social matrix. The post-revolutionary society has its own agenda. With the revolution the doors to the Bastille are thrown open. The jailed thinker is released, the pickpocket is celebrated as a jailed thinker. Then the revolution makes its own new Bastille.
Knatz.com talks of how young pk loved jazz. I loved Bach too, but Satchmo was alive! Dave Brubeck was making great music NOW. I labored as hard as I could to promote the integrated swing of Benny Goodman to my school, my schoolmates. They didn’t want to know about it. Or, they already knew about it -- it being obvious; but they were unwilling to acknowledge what they knew officially. One teacher scratched the Lionel Hampton record she had given me permission to play in her haste to then stop the class from hearing it.
I couldn’t know at that time that what we were waiting for was Elvis! A white man we could give the adulation to, the money, the credit. We were waiting for Mick Jagger: don’t tell us about Muddy Waters.
See? That was BEFORE the 1960s.
Even today: we listen to the integrated music; but not if the integration struggle is acknowledged.
Thus our "history" is like a TV drama: suddenly we all have black best friends, gooks over for diner: so long as there’s no consciousness of how it came about.
These days my IonaArc blog gives a first look at Knatz.com-type new drafts. (Actually, I hope to develop the habit of noting all significant changes at Knatz.com through IonaArc: thus far only partially realized. Understand: these are drafts: first drafts (then second drafts). (N drafts go to Knatz.com: the real deal.)
Anyway, a lot of work remains to be done on this one: revisions, extensions.
(Of course nearly every one of these word/concepts has to be italicized.)
History, science, ... these are socially determined. Thus the reality our consciousness emerges within is social.
Simultaneously, we (all life) are organisms, populations ... species in an actual (non-socially determined) universe (Pleroma). Our maps are made in a real territory. Where the maps are too discrepant from reality, over time (after the oil runs out), corrections are made: by nature, truth, god. Subjectively, they appear as revolution ... death ... extinction; or as learning.
Literate societies, those with the thus-far most efficient means of propagating their memes, have thus far all been kleptocracies, hierarchically organized. Democracies claim to be bottom up, but anyone, no matter how map-ridden, can see it’s a lie. Jefferson, Franklin ... decided what the "people" were, what they wanted: and who qualified as people.
This of course is written by pk. pk advertises himself as a suppressed intelligence: ignored by the committees, by the commissars, by the public. As a child no one in my church, no one in my family, understood my theology. It doesn’t matter that I myself now reject it: the point is that it never got heard: at least not associated with pk. As a young man my reading, my explication, of Shakespeare’s sonnets never got heard, still hasn’t been heard: the best I can tell, not by a single individual, anywhere: even though I "taught" it in a college, even though I’ve now been writing it online for a decade (not that I've yet written it well, or completely, there or anywhere else). My adult (1970) offer of a bottom-up internet made a little bit of news by 1972: then none. The truth and history do not match.
After a revolution maps may be adjusted (which still doesn’t necessitate their being accurate). Before the 1960s all blacks were ignorant; since the 1960s black history is rich and complex. Facts get unburied (which still doesn’t make them complete). Under Communism, the Communists invented everything since the wheel. After its fall, maps get adjusted. Under the British Empire, God was an English gentleman (living off his investments). In America, Jesus was American: spoke English, shared the local prejudices (until the oil runs out).
Every institution has a crypt in which secrets are kept. I’m not saying for a moment that the secret Vatican archives are complete, wholly true. I am not saying that an accurate account of the theologies (or anti-theologies) of every heretic tortured is in that library, nor all Vatican science that didn’t get published to the public, nor all non-Vatican science repressed by the Vatican ... I am saying that there was a distinction, a discrepancy, between what the Vatican "knew" and what the Vatican published to the public. Elsewhere I’ve told how I learned that the Metropolitan Museum knew of many forgeries and misappellations among its collection NOT reflected in the labels shown the public. The Times too, Washington DC ... have unpublished archives: any item of which may be released when the Times, Washington DC ... decide is desirable: or necessary. Back to the wall, things get released.
And what gets released has a social matrix. The post-revolutionary society has its own agenda. With the revolution the doors to the Bastille are thrown open. The jailed thinker is released, the pickpocket is celebrated as a jailed thinker. Then the revolution makes its own new Bastille.
Knatz.com talks of how young pk loved jazz. I loved Bach too, but Satchmo was alive! Dave Brubeck was making great music NOW. I labored as hard as I could to promote the integrated swing of Benny Goodman to my school, my schoolmates. They didn’t want to know about it. Or, they already knew about it -- it being obvious; but they were unwilling to acknowledge what they knew officially. One teacher scratched the Lionel Hampton record she had given me permission to play in her haste to then stop the class from hearing it.
I couldn’t know at that time that what we were waiting for was Elvis! A white man we could give the adulation to, the money, the credit. We were waiting for Mick Jagger: don’t tell us about Muddy Waters.
See? That was BEFORE the 1960s.
Even today: we listen to the integrated music; but not if the integration struggle is acknowledged.
Thus our "history" is like a TV drama: suddenly we all have black best friends, gooks over for diner: so long as there’s no consciousness of how it came about.
These days my IonaArc blog gives a first look at Knatz.com-type new drafts. (Actually, I hope to develop the habit of noting all significant changes at Knatz.com through IonaArc: thus far only partially realized. Understand: these are drafts: first drafts (then second drafts). (N drafts go to Knatz.com: the real deal.)
Anyway, a lot of work remains to be done on this one: revisions, extensions.
Steroid World
Yesterday’s sports headline cited Barry Bonds’ promise that he’d definitely play again, possibly this season: the season thus far having proceeding without him following a knee operation. Today’s headline declares Bonds’ "Return Uncertain." The background for these possibilities is not only baseball and Bonds’ recuperation but the Balco steroid scandal. How much pressure is afoot to dissuade Bonds from healing? There are baseball traditionalists who wish out loud that Bonds had never lifted a bat.
We live in an amazing time. Last weekend both Tigar Woods and Jack Nicklaus walked the same golf links. Roger Federer’s march of greatness in tennis rivals Tiger’s in golf.
When Babe Ruth was making himself known as the Sultan of Swat, neither of us were around to see or appreciate it. All we have is a moment of two on film. I was alive throughout Hank Aaron’s career, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to appreciate what was before us. (The army stuck me with people who did pay attention: and their racist comments still rankle my ears. "He sees something white, and he hits it with a stick," was Joe Garagiola’s public comment.)
I am not exactly a baseball fan but by now I know enough to see at least part of Barry Bonds’ method: he’s got strength, speed, eye sight, eye-hand coordination -- and he waits and waits and waits till the ball positions itself for his maximum impact!
Did he take steroids? I don’t see how it’s possible that he didn’t. I also don’t see how it’s possible that many an unnamed star also didn’t. Think of photos of Magic Johnson arriving at the NBA; now think of recent photos of Magic Johnson. Sure he might have still continued to grow into his twenties; but into his thirties? and forties?
It isn’t just Bonds who needs an asterisk in the record books: it’s our whole era.
We live in an amazing time. Last weekend both Tigar Woods and Jack Nicklaus walked the same golf links. Roger Federer’s march of greatness in tennis rivals Tiger’s in golf.
When Babe Ruth was making himself known as the Sultan of Swat, neither of us were around to see or appreciate it. All we have is a moment of two on film. I was alive throughout Hank Aaron’s career, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to appreciate what was before us. (The army stuck me with people who did pay attention: and their racist comments still rankle my ears. "He sees something white, and he hits it with a stick," was Joe Garagiola’s public comment.)
I am not exactly a baseball fan but by now I know enough to see at least part of Barry Bonds’ method: he’s got strength, speed, eye sight, eye-hand coordination -- and he waits and waits and waits till the ball positions itself for his maximum impact!
Did he take steroids? I don’t see how it’s possible that he didn’t. I also don’t see how it’s possible that many an unnamed star also didn’t. Think of photos of Magic Johnson arriving at the NBA; now think of recent photos of Magic Johnson. Sure he might have still continued to grow into his twenties; but into his thirties? and forties?
It isn’t just Bonds who needs an asterisk in the record books: it’s our whole era.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Reason & the Rain Forest
We all hear how the rain forests of the world are disappearing. We all hear reasons: the people need to eat today more than they need to breathe tomorrow ... The developed nations have suckered the Third World into hock, and now they have to burn their capital ...
Fine. But we should be suspicious of reasons offered by those in the game. What reasons might a disinterested Martian come up with? Well, I don't know any disinterested Martians to ask, but I'll pretend that I'm one:If humans won't restrain their own growth, natural forces will have to (and natural forces aren't altogether stupid: just slow). The rain forests are the lungs of the earth. Maybe "Nature" doesn't want us to breathe tomorrow and knows that we're short-sighted today.
Etc. But here's another angle: a kleptocratic angle:
Governments like to know where things are: their resources, their enemies, their slaves ... Once upon a time a people, sensing an enemy, could "disappear" into the woods. The South American governments have found that exterminating Amazon tribes isn't always easy: some of them just disappear. We in the north had the same problem: with Apaches and so forth.
When someone wants to kill school children, it's a piece of cake: because the government has herded them all into a school. Fish in a barrel. If someone wants to kill strikers, it's easy: they're striking at the factory!
So: if we destroy the rain forest, and all concentrate into camps, whoever wants to destroy us will find us easy to find. There will be nowhere to hide. OK, that's government. But who says Nature can't use government for its own purposes?
Fine. But we should be suspicious of reasons offered by those in the game. What reasons might a disinterested Martian come up with? Well, I don't know any disinterested Martians to ask, but I'll pretend that I'm one:
Etc. But here's another angle: a kleptocratic angle:
Governments like to know where things are: their resources, their enemies, their slaves ... Once upon a time a people, sensing an enemy, could "disappear" into the woods. The South American governments have found that exterminating Amazon tribes isn't always easy: some of them just disappear. We in the north had the same problem: with Apaches and so forth.
When someone wants to kill school children, it's a piece of cake: because the government has herded them all into a school. Fish in a barrel. If someone wants to kill strikers, it's easy: they're striking at the factory!
So: if we destroy the rain forest, and all concentrate into camps, whoever wants to destroy us will find us easy to find. There will be nowhere to hide.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
In Flower
2011 09 05 I was just shocked to realize that these graphics can't have loaded since the US court destroyed, censored all my domains following their Constitution-violating arrest of me in 2006: my images were stored at PKImaging.com: no more business domain, no more data support. So: I reload the images at my new blog where I'm recreated Knatz.com. This post will henceforth display there.
Friday, June 17, 2005
The Essence of Government
You bump against the fire, something burns, you jump back. You don't wait for permission from the priest, or the shaman, or the mayor, or the president ...
Evolution has developed individuals as making their own decisions.
Up to a point: where lots and lots of individuals congregate, group decision making becomes more and more prominent.
Scientists tell us that each bird in a flock is making it's own decisions about when to fly, when to take the lead, when to fall back and rest. The apparent order is emergent; not directly caused by individuals.
Now we're in the 21st Century. You walk down the street, the guy jumps out to mug you. Everything in your Scottish or your Zulu lineage tells you to fight that guy to the death rather than give him one penny. Oh, no, says the cop: give him the money. If it's rape the guy has in mind, and the victim is female, different programs run instantly in her head. Her father, her brother, her financée ... are not there. What to do must be strictly her decision.
The essence of government is to rewire society so that the burned individual will not jump out of the fire till told. School ... church .... it's all part of the government.
Evolution has developed individuals as making their own decisions.
Up to a point: where lots and lots of individuals congregate, group decision making becomes more and more prominent.
Scientists tell us that each bird in a flock is making it's own decisions about when to fly, when to take the lead, when to fall back and rest. The apparent order is emergent; not directly caused by individuals.
Now we're in the 21st Century. You walk down the street, the guy jumps out to mug you. Everything in your Scottish or your Zulu lineage tells you to fight that guy to the death rather than give him one penny. Oh, no, says the cop: give him the money. If it's rape the guy has in mind, and the victim is female, different programs run instantly in her head. Her father, her brother, her financée ... are not there. What to do must be strictly her decision.
The essence of government is to rewire society so that the burned individual will not jump out of the fire till told. School ... church .... it's all part of the government.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Pretend Words
"The community ... the community ..." the newscaster keeps saying. What are they talking about?
I lived in a sort of community as a kid, I attended temporary sorts of communities at church camp, I was transplanted to a sort of community when I went to college, but then I was removed from community by the army: and have never lived in anything I'd agree was a community since.
"Community ... community." The newscaster is reading a script from Tampa. Are there any communities in Tampa? of the kind I grew up in? Perhaps, but I bet fewer and fewer, less and less: just as I bet any caveman, any peasant ripped from 12th-century France or the mountains of Cambodia a century ago, would have difficulty seeing what I thought was community in my Rockville Centre of the 1940s.
If we say "tree" we've communicated a class of thing to a number of people, without misleading anyone, even if someone might argue that the particular tree indicated is actually a shrub. If we're French, or Cambodian, or a caveman, it's pronounced differently. I'm not talking about language differences, words. The caveman would have the concept "tree" whether he called it tree, arbre, or iboo. If he was pre-linguistic, or post- but mute, he's still have the concept "tree": even if he's an Eskimo, lives on the ice, can't think when he last saw a tree.
And, he'd have the concept community. So does modern man: as we live in the thing less and less.
Everything becomes clearer if we realize how many of our words serve pretending rather than observing. If democracy were defined, clearly and simply, how many Martians freshly arriving from Mars for the first time would find that democracy fits the United States? If education were clearly and simply defined, how many Martians would imagine that that's what our schools are supposed to be for? If Christianity were clearly and simply defined, would any newbie from the Deneb star system guess that any member of your church was supposed to be a Christian?
First we cut down the forests, then we hang a woodland scene over the couch. First we kill the natives - human, animal, vegetable - and replace them with Eurasian types, cows for bison, Scots-Irish for Mohawk ... Then we make movies about noble savages.
There would be few humans alive if we hadn't learned to cooperate more often than to not cooperate and to learn it a long time ago. But the societies that invented literacy and wrote the books taught competition over cooperation, trying to rearrange us: succeeding. But we miss our real selves: and so we invent fantasies of love and charity. but they are not descriptions. Neither are they accurate labels. They're fantasies.
Some are wishful. Others are flagrant lies. Stalin's Communism was a flagrant lie.
Keep this in mind when you listen to our news. "There was a fire on Elm Street." I bet that's factual: whether or not there's a single Elm on Elm Street: that's still its name. But when the talk is about "leaders," or "charity," or "entertainment," or "teachers," or "heroes" ... Watch out.I scribbled this here but intend it for Knatz.com's Society section, subsection Reality. Additions and corrections will go there.
I lived in a sort of community as a kid, I attended temporary sorts of communities at church camp, I was transplanted to a sort of community when I went to college, but then I was removed from community by the army: and have never lived in anything I'd agree was a community since.
"Community ... community." The newscaster is reading a script from Tampa. Are there any communities in Tampa? of the kind I grew up in? Perhaps, but I bet fewer and fewer, less and less: just as I bet any caveman, any peasant ripped from 12th-century France or the mountains of Cambodia a century ago, would have difficulty seeing what I thought was community in my Rockville Centre of the 1940s.
If we say "tree" we've communicated a class of thing to a number of people, without misleading anyone, even if someone might argue that the particular tree indicated is actually a shrub. If we're French, or Cambodian, or a caveman, it's pronounced differently. I'm not talking about language differences, words. The caveman would have the concept "tree" whether he called it tree, arbre, or iboo. If he was pre-linguistic, or post- but mute, he's still have the concept "tree": even if he's an Eskimo, lives on the ice, can't think when he last saw a tree.
And, he'd have the concept community. So does modern man: as we live in the thing less and less.
Everything becomes clearer if we realize how many of our words serve pretending rather than observing. If democracy were defined, clearly and simply, how many Martians freshly arriving from Mars for the first time would find that democracy fits the United States? If education were clearly and simply defined, how many Martians would imagine that that's what our schools are supposed to be for? If Christianity were clearly and simply defined, would any newbie from the Deneb star system guess that any member of your church was supposed to be a Christian?
First we cut down the forests, then we hang a woodland scene over the couch. First we kill the natives - human, animal, vegetable - and replace them with Eurasian types, cows for bison, Scots-Irish for Mohawk ... Then we make movies about noble savages.
There would be few humans alive if we hadn't learned to cooperate more often than to not cooperate and to learn it a long time ago. But the societies that invented literacy and wrote the books taught competition over cooperation, trying to rearrange us: succeeding. But we miss our real selves: and so we invent fantasies of love and charity. but they are not descriptions. Neither are they accurate labels. They're fantasies.
Some are wishful. Others are flagrant lies. Stalin's Communism was a flagrant lie.
Keep this in mind when you listen to our news. "There was a fire on Elm Street." I bet that's factual: whether or not there's a single Elm on Elm Street: that's still its name. But when the talk is about "leaders," or "charity," or "entertainment," or "teachers," or "heroes" ... Watch out.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Fair Weather Fans
I characterize most fans as fair weather: and I count myself among them. That is, I'm for the winner: after the contest has been decided.
Sure I'll root for the team that seems most associated with where I happen to be living. I was raised in a suburb of New York: I was glad when the New York Yankees won year after year. When I moved to Maine to teach, it was nice to increase my awareness of the Red Sox, Boston being the nearest major city. But the Red Sox brought limited fair weather that year. When the World Series rolled around it was big Bob Gibson burning his pitches across the plate. Thus, I was for big Bob Gibson.
I have to admit that I followed the 1973 Knicks before they got to the finals, But when I point out that I became mad for the Chicago Bulls only after Michael was a routine news highlight, you see what I mean. When the Bulls disintegrated, I quickly switched my passions to San Antonio: then, to the Lakers.
This behavior puts me in the camp of many a champion. OK, I also rooted, fanatically, for Ali before (as Clay) he humiliated Sonny Liston. But Clay was already an Olympic champ before I ever heard of him. It wasn't me who backed him when he was eleven in Louisville.
So how come I've never supported the Detroit Pistons? They had a dynasty. I didn't follow basketball those years. (Of course I was living in my car at the time, had no access to TV.) Last year I rooted for the dysfunctional Lakers even while Detroit was beating them.
Right now, tonight, Detroit spotted San Antonio eight point in the opening moments of this Game Two. Good.
What do I have against Detroit?
I adored Dennis Rodman when he was the Bulls' bad boy; I'd ignored him when he was the Piston's wild man. Could it be because I've never lived for longer than a week in a market that gave a damn about promoting Detroit and Detroit products (not counting cars)?
Why am I writing while the game is on? I may add more later.
Man, oh man, oh Manu. Two - zip, Spurs. Is there ANYone in the NBA right now better for basketball than Manu Ginobili?
But I was talking about Detroit. How many Americans, over the TV at least, can "like" Ben Wallace? It's not his fault. I've never had a problem loving blacks: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, Dizzy, Miles Davis ... Sugar Ray, Ali ... E'en so, this WASP can't relate to Big Ben's mask of a face. He could be one hundred times "nicer" than I am (that wouldn't be that hard), but I don't feel it through his appearance. (Hey: he could play Greek tragedy without wearing a single prop!) (Assignment: write a Comedy! for Ben Wallace!)
I learned to love Rodman with his stupid hair and his godawful tatoos; but Rasheed Wallace? Yech. Rasheed's talent is awesome. He should be one of the best; but there's something screwy upstairs. Rodman was screwy too, but we loved him anyway (learned to): I did, at least.
Are my "reasons" real? Or is it after all just markets? The wizards who have sold New York and DC and Los Angeles up our noses haven't seen any incentive to make us want to love Detroit.
Or is it that Detroit really is a place that deserves to be presented to us as Elmore Leonard presents it? Of course Leonard moves his criminals back and forth between Florida and Detroit, occasionally foraying into LA. I live in Florida. I meet Okeechobee types, and have some experience with North Miami. I love Lake Okeechobee: even though I've barely dipped a line into it, have no fish stories to tell from that area. I like the whole schmeer from the Keys to the Palm Beaches, and on north to Saint Augustine. So what do I have against Detroit?Game Three: OK, Detroit looked pretty good. Manu never really got started, hurt his knee. Here it was Billups that shone! Richard Hamilton too, I suppose, but he actually does wear a mask! And speaking of the big man, Ben Wallace was truly awesome.
I may think of things of which-way-ever tendencies, but for now I'm merely going to add the story of my first experience with the phrase "fair weather." Grade school. Kid from school, lived across a street I hadn't long been allowed to cross, invites me to Cony Island. Oh, wow. I loved Cony Island. As a very young kid my parents had taken me there for my birthday. I loved to ride the swinging cars of the Wonder Wheel. I looked in awe at the Cyclone, at the Parachute Jump. With a cotton candy in my hand (and all over my face), I was in heaven. I said sure.
The kid's father, who would escort and chauffer us, was quick to add a warning: "You're not going to turn out to be a fair weather friend, I hope?" I didn't understand. I must have looked stricken. The kid explained to me: his father meant the he hoped I wasn't going to take the treats, the free trip to Cony Island, and then disappear: not be a real friend.
That was the first time I had the commercial facts of outings shoved in my face. Of course some adult had to take us: and bring us back. Of course some adult had to pay. That's what adults were for, wasn't it? Were we supposed to owe something back?
I was being told that if I didn't remain this kid's "friend" I'd be a stinker. But I wasn't this kid's friend! I'd never said a word to him! This kid was fat: and dull. I had no intention of being his friend. He lived on the far side of the busy street. But I did want to go to Cony Island.
It was a fun trip. Mr. Henn kept us away from the biggest, most violent rides, but he did give us several trips on the Thunderbolt: my first experience of a roller coaster.
And I never again talked to that kid. Neither did he come visiting me. Then the worried father and the fat son moved away.
I never rode the Thunderbolt again till I was in the army. My buddy, who'd worked one summer as brakeman on a roller coaster, riding "the world's tallest roller coaster" all day, used the Thunderbolt to show how blasé he was. Good. Now we're ready for the Parachute Jump! And the Cyclone!
I don't think my friend ever forgave me.
Whew. Seven games ... and David Stern's international future prevails. Beautiful to see Manu, Horry, Duncan ... Bowen, Barry ...
Sure I'll root for the team that seems most associated with where I happen to be living. I was raised in a suburb of New York: I was glad when the New York Yankees won year after year. When I moved to Maine to teach, it was nice to increase my awareness of the Red Sox, Boston being the nearest major city. But the Red Sox brought limited fair weather that year. When the World Series rolled around it was big Bob Gibson burning his pitches across the plate. Thus, I was for big Bob Gibson.
I have to admit that I followed the 1973 Knicks before they got to the finals, But when I point out that I became mad for the Chicago Bulls only after Michael was a routine news highlight, you see what I mean. When the Bulls disintegrated, I quickly switched my passions to San Antonio: then, to the Lakers.
This behavior puts me in the camp of many a champion. OK, I also rooted, fanatically, for Ali before (as Clay) he humiliated Sonny Liston. But Clay was already an Olympic champ before I ever heard of him. It wasn't me who backed him when he was eleven in Louisville.
So how come I've never supported the Detroit Pistons? They had a dynasty. I didn't follow basketball those years. (Of course I was living in my car at the time, had no access to TV.) Last year I rooted for the dysfunctional Lakers even while Detroit was beating them.
Right now, tonight, Detroit spotted San Antonio eight point in the opening moments of this Game Two. Good.
What do I have against Detroit?
I adored Dennis Rodman when he was the Bulls' bad boy; I'd ignored him when he was the Piston's wild man. Could it be because I've never lived for longer than a week in a market that gave a damn about promoting Detroit and Detroit products (not counting cars)?
Why am I writing while the game is on? I may add more later.
Man, oh man, oh Manu. Two - zip, Spurs. Is there ANYone in the NBA right now better for basketball than Manu Ginobili?
But I was talking about Detroit. How many Americans, over the TV at least, can "like" Ben Wallace? It's not his fault. I've never had a problem loving blacks: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, Dizzy, Miles Davis ... Sugar Ray, Ali ... E'en so, this WASP can't relate to Big Ben's mask of a face. He could be one hundred times "nicer" than I am (that wouldn't be that hard), but I don't feel it through his appearance. (Hey: he could play Greek tragedy without wearing a single prop!) (Assignment: write a Comedy! for Ben Wallace!)
I learned to love Rodman with his stupid hair and his godawful tatoos; but Rasheed Wallace? Yech. Rasheed's talent is awesome. He should be one of the best; but there's something screwy upstairs. Rodman was screwy too, but we loved him anyway (learned to): I did, at least.
Are my "reasons" real? Or is it after all just markets? The wizards who have sold New York and DC and Los Angeles up our noses haven't seen any incentive to make us want to love Detroit.
Or is it that Detroit really is a place that deserves to be presented to us as Elmore Leonard presents it? Of course Leonard moves his criminals back and forth between Florida and Detroit, occasionally foraying into LA. I live in Florida. I meet Okeechobee types, and have some experience with North Miami. I love Lake Okeechobee: even though I've barely dipped a line into it, have no fish stories to tell from that area. I like the whole schmeer from the Keys to the Palm Beaches, and on north to Saint Augustine. So what do I have against Detroit?
I may think of things of which-way-ever tendencies, but for now I'm merely going to add the story of my first experience with the phrase "fair weather." Grade school. Kid from school, lived across a street I hadn't long been allowed to cross, invites me to Cony Island. Oh, wow. I loved Cony Island. As a very young kid my parents had taken me there for my birthday. I loved to ride the swinging cars of the Wonder Wheel. I looked in awe at the Cyclone, at the Parachute Jump. With a cotton candy in my hand (and all over my face), I was in heaven. I said sure.
The kid's father, who would escort and chauffer us, was quick to add a warning: "You're not going to turn out to be a fair weather friend, I hope?" I didn't understand. I must have looked stricken. The kid explained to me: his father meant the he hoped I wasn't going to take the treats, the free trip to Cony Island, and then disappear: not be a real friend.
That was the first time I had the commercial facts of outings shoved in my face. Of course some adult had to take us: and bring us back. Of course some adult had to pay. That's what adults were for, wasn't it? Were we supposed to owe something back?
I was being told that if I didn't remain this kid's "friend" I'd be a stinker. But I wasn't this kid's friend! I'd never said a word to him! This kid was fat: and dull. I had no intention of being his friend. He lived on the far side of the busy street. But I did want to go to Cony Island.
It was a fun trip. Mr. Henn kept us away from the biggest, most violent rides, but he did give us several trips on the Thunderbolt: my first experience of a roller coaster.
And I never again talked to that kid. Neither did he come visiting me. Then the worried father and the fat son moved away.
I never rode the Thunderbolt again till I was in the army. My buddy, who'd worked one summer as brakeman on a roller coaster, riding "the world's tallest roller coaster" all day, used the Thunderbolt to show how blasé he was. Good. Now we're ready for the Parachute Jump! And the Cyclone!
I don't think my friend ever forgave me.
Whew. Seven games ... and David Stern's international future prevails. Beautiful to see Manu, Horry, Duncan ... Bowen, Barry ...
Monday, June 06, 2005
Lousy with Stars
"Gee, the sky is lousy with stars." So said the father of one's of my wife's friends just before proposing to the mother, and it could be the first, might be the only half-romantic thing he said in his life. For me and Hilary it was a favorite quote for a while.
The quote presumably occurred in the late '30s, early '40s, and we were citing it in the early '60s. By the later '60s I was beginning to hear things quantified that had formerly, for me and my habits, remained unnumbered. Thus I heard that there are only 2,000 stars visible to the naked human eye at the earth's surface.
I could have heard that from Bucky Fuller. I could have read it in Isaac Asimov. Guys like Nigel Calder and Carl Sagan said those sorts of things since then.
Now I think to ask other questions around that fact, about that fact. First I presume the figure is a round number: if one actually counted 1,999 or 2,001, one would say "2,000," wouldn't one? But who did the counting? Using whose eyes, whose counter? Were they counting what the eye takes in in one glance? or were they counting 360 degrees, horizon to horizon to horizon? How many stars are visible from earth throughout the night: every constellation and everything in between? And are we sure it wasn't a camera lens and not an eye that did the seeing?
Whatever the answers, I'm satisfied that the quantity will still be in four figures, or a low five. That's quite a contrast from the numbers that Sagan would intone for his Cosmos series: hundreds of billions of stars in almost any of hundreds of billions of galaxies: with previously uncounted stars and galaxies coming into view almost daily: these days.
Now, I'm going to be using those images shortly in the post I'm about to write -- Finite Casting Call. But I post this first and separately: mainly to ask a question. Does anyone out there have answers for any of my questions? Do we see "2,000" stars in one look? Or do we have to be a fish-eye, lying on our back throughout the night?
The quote presumably occurred in the late '30s, early '40s, and we were citing it in the early '60s. By the later '60s I was beginning to hear things quantified that had formerly, for me and my habits, remained unnumbered. Thus I heard that there are only 2,000 stars visible to the naked human eye at the earth's surface.
I could have heard that from Bucky Fuller. I could have read it in Isaac Asimov. Guys like Nigel Calder and Carl Sagan said those sorts of things since then.
Now I think to ask other questions around that fact, about that fact. First I presume the figure is a round number: if one actually counted 1,999 or 2,001, one would say "2,000," wouldn't one? But who did the counting? Using whose eyes, whose counter? Were they counting what the eye takes in in one glance? or were they counting 360 degrees, horizon to horizon to horizon? How many stars are visible from earth throughout the night: every constellation and everything in between? And are we sure it wasn't a camera lens and not an eye that did the seeing?
Whatever the answers, I'm satisfied that the quantity will still be in four figures, or a low five. That's quite a contrast from the numbers that Sagan would intone for his Cosmos series: hundreds of billions of stars in almost any of hundreds of billions of galaxies: with previously uncounted stars and galaxies coming into view almost daily: these days.
Now, I'm going to be using those images shortly in the post I'm about to write -- Finite Casting Call. But I post this first and separately: mainly to ask a question. Does anyone out there have answers for any of my questions? Do we see "2,000" stars in one look? Or do we have to be a fish-eye, lying on our back throughout the night?
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Reluctant Recycle
The dragon fly grabs the insect, eats it, makes it dragon fly. The hawk grabs the dragonfly, makes is hawk, and hawk shit. Insect, dragonfly, hawk ... eventually the vultures get it, the worms, the bacteria: turn whatever into vulture, worm, bacteria ... The cat kicks dirt over its shit: gets it to the bacteria faster: recycling, hygiene, and esthetics matching.
The hominid was as reluctant as any creature to be eaten by the leopard, but before his control of fire, before tool making, s/he couldn't do much about it. With fire control, with tool making, man eats the bird, the deer, kicks dirt over his shit (or sluices his shit into the river), but when dead he still doesn't want anything to eat him. No matter what, the worms, the bacteria will get him anyway, but survivors of the dead succeed in cutting the leopard, the hawk, the vulture out of the circuit. So we can be reborn with our bodies intact.
Asked what he would change if he could change any one thing about man, Gregory Bateson answered "the fear of death." That's deep: and I agree wholeheartedly. I add a wrinkle though: I believe we should transmute our wish to be preserved into a yearning to be recycled: to live on in the guts, then the tissues, of the wolf, the leopard, the shark ... the worms, the bacteria. Hell, we're all descended from the hollow-bodied worms; and they're descended from bacteria: go back to the source, be grandpa: or part of him.
Our attempts to preserve ourselves has always been illusion anyway: on several levels. The makeup is just makeup, a cover. There's no evidence that anyone has ever been born again into his old body: and how could it be? Even the Egyptians scooped the brains out as an early part of the mummification process. Does anyone really think that they'll do well back in an old dead body with the brains scooped out? I'm just reading the delicious Elmore Leonard's Mr. Paradise. In the morgue, they snip off the guy's rib cage; they lop this that and the other thing out of the dead chick, put the parts in a plastic bag, stick the plastic bag back in the cavities ... What's anybody but a worm or bacteria gonna do with all that? And even they, the bacteria, will have to wait till the plastic disintegrates. Might be a long time.
I want to be eaten up by my beloved bass, my bluegills, so long victimized by me, fooled to their panic, pain, and sometimes death (me nearly always eating the kill: very few mistakes, spoilage, waste), when I'm freshly dead (should I die ahem naturally), chopped up only for the eating convenience of the fish (my habits concerning small freshwater fish, not sharks).
Yes, as the body ages, the teeth disintegrate, the hearing fades, the eyesight fails, the mind loses its threads, can no longer even watch a movie uninterrupted, I believe we should look forward to being Other.
Even the bacteria, even the damn matter, will return to the Void. Greatgrandpa. Greatgrandma. Not even sexed.
2005 06 06 It wasn't altogether chance by which I selected sharks as an example the other day: I'd just been watching a movie of great white sharks breaking the ocean surface as they hunted fur seals from deep below, off an island on the African coast. Now today's Reuters has a story about sharks taking spear fishermen as the latter spew the waters with blood from their fish kills: then tether their catch to themselves! Just remember: the humans are behaving dangerously in shark water; the sharks doesn't come up to their apartment, knock on the door, and say "Candygram," as Chevy Chase, with a papiermaché shark head, did to Gilda Radner back on SNL.
Last evening there was a news item about residents near Yellowstone complaining about grissly bears in their back yard. Why then are they living near Yellowstone? That's where the fell human socity is trying to recover a bit of bear population. If they move to Los Angeles, they won't find any bears in their yard.
I still often wade while fishing. But it's been a while since I kept my fish string tied to my waist, thirty, forty, one mad (and unconsciously illegal) time I had roughly eighty-five big bluegills on my string. Even so the alligators never came closer to my string than say forty feet. They followed, but kept their distance. What though if they hadn't? What if one had started eating the bluegills off the hind-end of the string and worked their way closer till they were chewing on my rump? Well, I hope I would have tried to get out of the water. But I assure you: after invading THEIR turf, I wouldn't have gone crying to the lawmakers. If, when I lived in the Apple, a 'gator had climbed up out of the sewer, taken the elevator to my floor, knocked and said "Candygram," I would have shot the interloper. My turf was mine, not his.
The hominid was as reluctant as any creature to be eaten by the leopard, but before his control of fire, before tool making, s/he couldn't do much about it. With fire control, with tool making, man eats the bird, the deer, kicks dirt over his shit (or sluices his shit into the river), but when dead he still doesn't want anything to eat him. No matter what, the worms, the bacteria will get him anyway, but survivors of the dead succeed in cutting the leopard, the hawk, the vulture out of the circuit. So we can be reborn with our bodies intact.
Asked what he would change if he could change any one thing about man, Gregory Bateson answered "the fear of death." That's deep: and I agree wholeheartedly. I add a wrinkle though: I believe we should transmute our wish to be preserved into a yearning to be recycled: to live on in the guts, then the tissues, of the wolf, the leopard, the shark ... the worms, the bacteria. Hell, we're all descended from the hollow-bodied worms; and they're descended from bacteria: go back to the source, be grandpa: or part of him.
Our attempts to preserve ourselves has always been illusion anyway: on several levels. The makeup is just makeup, a cover. There's no evidence that anyone has ever been born again into his old body: and how could it be? Even the Egyptians scooped the brains out as an early part of the mummification process. Does anyone really think that they'll do well back in an old dead body with the brains scooped out? I'm just reading the delicious Elmore Leonard's Mr. Paradise. In the morgue, they snip off the guy's rib cage; they lop this that and the other thing out of the dead chick, put the parts in a plastic bag, stick the plastic bag back in the cavities ... What's anybody but a worm or bacteria gonna do with all that? And even they, the bacteria, will have to wait till the plastic disintegrates. Might be a long time.
I want to be eaten up by my beloved bass, my bluegills, so long victimized by me, fooled to their panic, pain, and sometimes death (me nearly always eating the kill: very few mistakes, spoilage, waste), when I'm freshly dead (should I die ahem naturally), chopped up only for the eating convenience of the fish (my habits concerning small freshwater fish, not sharks).
Yes, as the body ages, the teeth disintegrate, the hearing fades, the eyesight fails, the mind loses its threads, can no longer even watch a movie uninterrupted, I believe we should look forward to being Other.
Even the bacteria, even the damn matter, will return to the Void. Greatgrandpa. Greatgrandma. Not even sexed.
2005 06 06 It wasn't altogether chance by which I selected sharks as an example the other day: I'd just been watching a movie of great white sharks breaking the ocean surface as they hunted fur seals from deep below, off an island on the African coast. Now today's Reuters has a story about sharks taking spear fishermen as the latter spew the waters with blood from their fish kills: then tether their catch to themselves! Just remember: the humans are behaving dangerously in shark water; the sharks doesn't come up to their apartment, knock on the door, and say "Candygram," as Chevy Chase, with a papiermaché shark head, did to Gilda Radner back on SNL.
Last evening there was a news item about residents near Yellowstone complaining about grissly bears in their back yard. Why then are they living near Yellowstone? That's where the fell human socity is trying to recover a bit of bear population. If they move to Los Angeles, they won't find any bears in their yard.
I still often wade while fishing. But it's been a while since I kept my fish string tied to my waist, thirty, forty, one mad (and unconsciously illegal) time I had roughly eighty-five big bluegills on my string. Even so the alligators never came closer to my string than say forty feet. They followed, but kept their distance. What though if they hadn't? What if one had started eating the bluegills off the hind-end of the string and worked their way closer till they were chewing on my rump? Well, I hope I would have tried to get out of the water. But I assure you: after invading THEIR turf, I wouldn't have gone crying to the lawmakers. If, when I lived in the Apple, a 'gator had climbed up out of the sewer, taken the elevator to my floor, knocked and said "Candygram," I would have shot the interloper. My turf was mine, not his.
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