Once again, I am going to juggle a few balls, several balls, as many as I can: so long as I can see that they belong together, and that that combination has never been seen tossing among each other before. I may drop one, I may drop all of them; but perhaps you'll see that they could have been juggled: should be juggled.
First though, I'll have to make the balls.
Balls
Balls: right there, there's a start. The ovaries make the egg. The ovaries are hidden well within the lower body of the female: as the center of the visual cortex is centered in the skull. The female is the default setting for humans. Extra information is needed to make a male. The female is like the nucleus of the atom; males buzz around like electrons.
It's the testes that define the male. If it's got balls, it's male; if it don't, it's female. If the testes don't develop normally, it IS male; it LOOKS female. The male begins life with the testes protected deep within the lower body. As it matures, the testes descend: and display themselves.
Male bats hang from the cave ceiling balls uppermost. Male humans walk around with their balls out in front like their nose: until they're civilized. Civilized males cover their balls: but only to stick metaphors further in front: football stadia, all of Detroit, the Manhattan skyline, the Pentagon: balls out front. Females show their femaleness from all angles. Males are more two-sided. Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing strips its females within the opening minutes. We see prime bottom (holding still), bosoms about to be unveiled. Then all the males jump naked into the pool. They're all shown from the rear (moving), and there isn't a one whose balls don't show between his legs.
OK: that's enough for the moment. You see that ball, you see how it can be made further. Here's where I really want to "start":
Sleeves
"See?" the magician says, "I have nothing up my sleeve." No one from the audience inspects the magician's sleeve. No one from the audience inspects the magician's socks, his coat: the magician's back stage, side stage ... ceiling rigging, trap doors, below stage machinery ... Anyone from the audience who might have wanted to hold the magician upside down and shake him was thrown into the alleyway before the show started, with a bump on his head.
"Half" of what the magician says will be a lie. The magician has a grab-bag full of lies: and truths. The magician cat fetch any of them to his purpose from moment to changing moment.
Compression
The citizens of Babel piled their tower from the ground toward heaven. A ziggurat: brick on brick. Bridges also used to be built compressively: stick something up on one bank, stick something up on the other, stick something up in the middle, stick bricks between, hope it doesn't all fall down. Now civilization has hurled a brick or two beyond earth's escape velocity. What we really need is a non-human brick to come from some other direction. If they got our brick, and we got theirs, and we both could hold both lassoed, then maybe we could build something that wouldn't just fall down.
Tension
Human institutions display bricks that they claim are from heaven. "God" says "Don't do this, don't do that." "Give to Caesar ..." I don't see any of those bricks as ever having exceeded earth's escape velocity. Superman can jump back into the space he comes from at will.
If only there were a bridge, a bridge built by tension as well as compression, a bridge with god holding one end while we held the other, we might begin to get someplace.
Iona Arc is now three weeks old. To date pk has finished at least draft one before posting; unlike pk's other domains where things sometimes get mounted before the oven has even begun to brown them. I think this one's going to be good, important, core across the domains. Thus I let the public watch the construction.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Originality
Science can prove error, not truth.
Plagiarism can be proved, originality cannot.
Theft can be proved; not ownership.
One could prove that the devil isn't God, God himself could not prove that God is God.
Plagiarism can be proved, originality cannot.
Theft can be proved; not ownership.
One could prove that the devil isn't God, God himself could not prove that God is God.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Stars and Starlets
The entertainment industries comb the populations for stars and starlets so that audiences may be exposed to select beef and tush. By the time we have TV as well as movies, Playboy as well as the Sunday rotogravure, the entire population will be unable to love its actual spouse.
Furthermore, once the female trods the boards, she will become incapable by cultural reason after economic after social reason to bear her otherwise normal number of offspring. Now there's no genetic guarantee that beauty breeds: but better looking than average parents do tend to have better than average looking kids. Ditto intelligence, ditto motor skills. The guy with quick feet, quick hands, nimble wits will have a better than average chance of feeding his kids. If he's a star, he could feed them: if he had any.
Narcissists, public or private, don't breed at the normal rate: even if the narcissism is imposed on them by circumstance. Pamela Anderson wouldn't pass her silicon implants on to her offspring: at least not genetically; what she very well might pass on is a tendency to buy silicone implants: together with an ability to pay for them. But: how many daughters does she have?
A 1960s DW Griffith festival stimulated me to fall in love with Lillian Gish as I had with no other actress since Gulietta Masina (for her Gelsomina). Dorothy Gish too was wonderful, as were all Griffith heroines. Lillian Gish made twelve movies for Griffith in 1912. Her career in theatrics spanned seventy-five years. In her nineties she wore the same dress size she had worn at sixteen, and I for one could see her Orphans of the Storm or her Broken Blossoms in her ancient face. But how many more Lillians and Dorothys issued from her loins?
Rock Hudson ... never mind Rock Hudson. (Besides his acting consisted mainly of standing there (keeping himself in some sort of shape, I'll admit.) How many little Humphreys did Bogart breed?
Of course it's complex: looks is one determining factor: but you can have no looks, no hands or quick mind, but if you're rich enough, you also tend to forget to replenish the earth (overrun it, that is). It's even more complex: being an alpha-kleptocrat, even a poor and powerless one, tends to lure one out of the gene pool. An unemployed American WASP dropout with no discernable talents, compared to brothers of other colors around the world, will tend to breed closer to Donald Trump's rate than to that of any farmer from ancient Sumer or the pre-Columbian Mississippi.
Furthermore, once the female trods the boards, she will become incapable by cultural reason after economic after social reason to bear her otherwise normal number of offspring. Now there's no genetic guarantee that beauty breeds: but better looking than average parents do tend to have better than average looking kids. Ditto intelligence, ditto motor skills. The guy with quick feet, quick hands, nimble wits will have a better than average chance of feeding his kids. If he's a star, he could feed them: if he had any.
Narcissists, public or private, don't breed at the normal rate: even if the narcissism is imposed on them by circumstance. Pamela Anderson wouldn't pass her silicon implants on to her offspring: at least not genetically; what she very well might pass on is a tendency to buy silicone implants: together with an ability to pay for them. But: how many daughters does she have?
A 1960s DW Griffith festival stimulated me to fall in love with Lillian Gish as I had with no other actress since Gulietta Masina (for her Gelsomina). Dorothy Gish too was wonderful, as were all Griffith heroines. Lillian Gish made twelve movies for Griffith in 1912. Her career in theatrics spanned seventy-five years. In her nineties she wore the same dress size she had worn at sixteen, and I for one could see her Orphans of the Storm or her Broken Blossoms in her ancient face. But how many more Lillians and Dorothys issued from her loins?
Rock Hudson ... never mind Rock Hudson. (Besides his acting consisted mainly of standing there (keeping himself in some sort of shape, I'll admit.) How many little Humphreys did Bogart breed?
Of course it's complex: looks is one determining factor: but you can have no looks, no hands or quick mind, but if you're rich enough, you also tend to forget to replenish the earth (overrun it, that is). It's even more complex: being an alpha-kleptocrat, even a poor and powerless one, tends to lure one out of the gene pool. An unemployed American WASP dropout with no discernable talents, compared to brothers of other colors around the world, will tend to breed closer to Donald Trump's rate than to that of any farmer from ancient Sumer or the pre-Columbian Mississippi.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Costume Nazi
England's Prince Harry is in hot water for having attended a costume party in Nazi dress. Now the Prince, his father, wants him and his brother to visit the death camp at Auschwitz: in Nazi-annexed Poland. What? As penance? To learn history?
Once upon a time the Beatles made a Sergeant Pepper album. The cover graphic was a bric-a-brak of symbols. Do you imagine that John, Paul, George, and Ringo had more than the vaguest idea what any of those symbols symbolized? How many Christians have a clue what their cross is all about? I think it would be a hoot to challenge a lottery-sampling of anthropology majors to interpret the Sergeant Pepper graphic: or the album itself.
Why can't a kid wear any costume he wants to a costume party? Of course he's not a kid, he's a prince: and that's key to the problem.
But first: What if Harry had gone dressed as "the" devil? Would Prince Charles or anyone else have cared? Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler occupied France. Hitler bombed the hell out of England. Hitler stole left and right. Hitler killed Jews, gypsies, fags, dissidents ... eighteen million worth -- not counting the war itself. But that's amateur: think of what the devil is supposed to do. What if Harry had gone dressed as God? Is there anything that's ever happened, good or bad, that God isn't supposed to have a big hand in? Hitler was an amateur. And he fell on his nose. What about the devil? What about God?
When I was half Prince Harry's age Ernie Kovacs did a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" spoof for Mad. They showed a drawing of some voodoo "Death Mask." Anyone who sees the mask dies. The blurb ended "Too bad if you looked."
Any field, any wood, has deadly plants, animals: mushrooms, snakes. When the United States military finally leaves some country it typically leaves the country's woods salted with land mines. (Soldiery strikes me as the least likely manifestation of kleptocracy to learn to clean up after itself.) Yet there are more than six billion humans living on the planet. Any library has scads more symbols than the librarian knows about that are as toxic as any Nazi, devil, or god.
England boasts a country that's talked about "freedom" for centuries. When Americans talk about freedom they're likely to be repeating things some Englishman said before there was a United States. But England has a prince that can't even wear what he wants.
My last short story showed a king at great peril fleeing his own coronation. You don't have to be English to know that kings have never had any freedom. You're too important to be allowed to play in the mud. Contemplate the Queen if you want to see a human being warped into a boring statue.
Historian Michael Grant suggests that that's what made Nero and Caligula so crazy: they were totally helpless.
I've duplicated this piece in Knatz.com's Society section.
PS: Jay Leno just had a couple of good gags on the situation. He said that Prince Harry claimed that wearing the Nazi uniform wasn't his idea: he was just following orders. Then Leno added, His father was very upset: and Prince Charles wasn't very happy either.
Once upon a time the Beatles made a Sergeant Pepper album. The cover graphic was a bric-a-brak of symbols. Do you imagine that John, Paul, George, and Ringo had more than the vaguest idea what any of those symbols symbolized? How many Christians have a clue what their cross is all about? I think it would be a hoot to challenge a lottery-sampling of anthropology majors to interpret the Sergeant Pepper graphic: or the album itself.
Why can't a kid wear any costume he wants to a costume party? Of course he's not a kid, he's a prince: and that's key to the problem.
But first: What if Harry had gone dressed as "the" devil? Would Prince Charles or anyone else have cared? Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler occupied France. Hitler bombed the hell out of England. Hitler stole left and right. Hitler killed Jews, gypsies, fags, dissidents ... eighteen million worth -- not counting the war itself. But that's amateur: think of what the devil is supposed to do. What if Harry had gone dressed as God? Is there anything that's ever happened, good or bad, that God isn't supposed to have a big hand in? Hitler was an amateur. And he fell on his nose. What about the devil? What about God?
When I was half Prince Harry's age Ernie Kovacs did a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" spoof for Mad. They showed a drawing of some voodoo "Death Mask." Anyone who sees the mask dies. The blurb ended "Too bad if you looked."
Any field, any wood, has deadly plants, animals: mushrooms, snakes. When the United States military finally leaves some country it typically leaves the country's woods salted with land mines. (Soldiery strikes me as the least likely manifestation of kleptocracy to learn to clean up after itself.) Yet there are more than six billion humans living on the planet. Any library has scads more symbols than the librarian knows about that are as toxic as any Nazi, devil, or god.
England boasts a country that's talked about "freedom" for centuries. When Americans talk about freedom they're likely to be repeating things some Englishman said before there was a United States. But England has a prince that can't even wear what he wants.
My last short story showed a king at great peril fleeing his own coronation. You don't have to be English to know that kings have never had any freedom. You're too important to be allowed to play in the mud. Contemplate the Queen if you want to see a human being warped into a boring statue.
Historian Michael Grant suggests that that's what made Nero and Caligula so crazy: they were totally helpless.
I've duplicated this piece in Knatz.com's Society section.
PS: Jay Leno just had a couple of good gags on the situation. He said that Prince Harry claimed that wearing the Nazi uniform wasn't his idea: he was just following orders. Then Leno added, His father was very upset: and Prince Charles wasn't very happy either.
Eunuchs for the Harem
Nuns are Brides of Christ, right? Virgins supposedly.
Priests, the temple's male servants, are celibate, supposed to be continent.
Uh, are they the harem's eunuchs?
How long do the brides remain virgins?
What? They die virgins?
Is the god sated? Too old?
Maybe Christ doesn't like hairy legs and no jewelry.
Priests, the temple's male servants, are celibate, supposed to be continent.
Uh, are they the harem's eunuchs?
How long do the brides remain virgins?
What? They die virgins?
Is the god sated? Too old?
Maybe Christ doesn't like hairy legs and no jewelry.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
The News as Advertising 2
| from Iona Arc to Knatz.com to Iona Arc | Teaching / Society / Order (for pk: NoHierarchy) / Media /News | 2005 01 09 2005 09 07 2009 08 01 |
The News as Advertising
The purpose of TV is entertainment? education? No: the purpose of TV is the ads. How about "the purpose of TV is the news"? No. Or, if so, it doesn't change a thing: because the purpose of news is the ads. Indeed, the news itself is all ad. The news itself is a rainbow of ads.
The news itself is all ad.
First, superficially, most obviously, the news is sponsored. No sponsor, no TV news. So that's ads: the sponsored part.
Ah, but the show part of the news is sponsored: by the network! The news is an ad for the network! Count how many times in any fifteen minutes network personnel identify the network by name: including when they identify each other by name.
The news is an ad for the network.
The network is sponsored by the state. It's the state that divies the electromagnetic spectrum and gives the divisions away. The international news is an ad for the state. Actually, all of the news is an ad for the state: while the state is an ad for the sponsors: including those friends the state gave those divisions of the spectrum to. If the network members hadn't been friends of the state the state wouldn't have given them the division. And if they hadn't been friends of the state somehow anyway they become friends of the state.
The international news is an ad for the state.
Actually, all of the news is an ad for the state:
While the state is an ad for the sponsors.
Actually, all of the news is an ad for the state:
While the state is an ad for the sponsors.
(McLuhan distinguished ads that stimulate sales from ads that steep the consumer in confidence that purchases of the brand already made were wise: Cadillac owners are assured that they spent their money on the right product. Network news is an ad of both kinds simultaneously: watch NBC, be proud that it’s NBC that you jack into your brain.)
Meantime, for brief snatches, the TV shows, all chopped up, offer "real" entertainment: movies made for the commercial movie theaters, for example. But of course more and more those movies too sell ad space. But even before they did, the movies were ads: ads for basic cultural biases, ads for fashions, ads for commercial consumption even where no brand is specified. Ads for theological positions, ads for political tendencies ...
The movies are ads for basic cultural biases.
Get out of here! What about the cartoons?
The cartoons are ads for basic mythic stances: democracy: and if not democracy, then for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species bias: men are better than monkeys, monkeys are better than dragons ... and nothing is as bad as snakes: unless it's spiders.
The cartoons are ads for basic mythic stances.
Uh, so isn't there such a thing as news really?
Sure there is. When your neighbor yells that your house is on fire, that's news. When your neighbor yells that there's one lantern shining from the belfry, that's also news: they're coming by land.
I’ve duplicated this piece in the News folder of Knatz.com’s Society section. (I’m also transferring it from the macroinformation blog to my Iona Arc blog.
3 Comments:
At 4:47 AM, furious said...
On a slightly different note, Ezra Pound said, "Literature is news that STAYS news." I don’t think that spares it from your category of ads.
I am enjoying the blog.
At 4:09 PM, pk said...
Speaking of TV as a series of ads for the state, WHEW! Is everyone watching this 39th Super Bowl?!
Patriotism had been escalating its infection of sporting events in recent years anyway: baseball games routinely start with the national anthem, recent World Series games have intruded additional anthems at the seventh inning stretch.
Information can never be assumed to mean what it seems to mean though; maybe this is all a sign that we’re embarrassed as never before.
At 2:59 PM, pk said...
Reading David Liss’s A Spectacle of Corruption I am impressed by how clearly Liss presents newspapers of eighteenth-century London as strictly political organs, managing more than reporting the "news," inventing whatever suits the agenda. When I was a kid delivering the Star Tribune in Long Island’s Rockville Centre, I was bewildered by the alacrity with which adults identified the Star with the Republicans, Newsday with the Democrats. Now I see it as clearly true.
Life was Protestant, Look sympathized with Catholics. Networks are a bit more sly.
The society would be healthier is all organs wore their political (or theological) button above (and bigger than) their mast logo. Inaccurate buttons should trigger pillage.
Whew, this post was mounted at IonaArc 2005 01 09. I moved it to Knatz.com, deleted it from Iona Arc. Then the fed censored my AgainstHieararchy.org. All my five domains slid into the memory hole. Only today do I notice that the original post was also missing from its original place. So: I restore it: just after having added a new piece on advertising, directly above.
What confusion: I just reposted this as 2005 01 09. And now it's linked from the PKnatz blog as well.
What a great piece, I'm really proud of this one.
The News as Advertising
The purpose of TV is entertainment? education? No: the purpose of TV is the ads. How about "the purpose of TV is the news"? No. Or, if so, it doesn’t change a thing: because the purpose of news is the ads. Indeed, the news itself is all ad. The news itself is a rainbow of ads. First, superficially, most obviously, the news is sponsored. No sponsor, no TV news. So that’s ads: the sponsored part.
Ah, but the show part of the news is sponsored: by the network! The news is an ad for the network! Count how many times in any fifteen minutes network personnel identify the network by name: including when they identify each other by name.
The network is sponsored by the state. It’s the state that divies the electromagnetic spectrum and gives the divisions away. The international news is an ad for the state. Actually, all of the news is an ad for the state: while the state is an ad for the sponsors: including those friends the state gave those divisions of the spectrum to. If the network members hadn’t been friends of the state the state wouldn’t have given them the division. And if they hadn’t been friends of the state somehow anyway they become friends of the state.
(McLuhan distinguished ads that stimulate sales from ads that steep the consumer in confidence that purchases of the brand already made were wise: Cadillac owners are assured that they spent their money on the right product. Network news is an ad of both kinds simultaneously: watch NBC, be proud that it's NBC that you jack into your brain.)
Meantime, for brief snatches, the TV shows, all chopped up, offer "real" entertainment: movies made for the commercial movie theaters, for example. But of course more and more those movies too sell ad space. But even before they did, the movies were ads: ads for basic cultural biases, ads for fashions, ads for commercial consumption even where no brand is specified. Ads for theological positions, ads for political tendencies.
Get out of here! What about the cartoons?
The cartoons are ads for basic mythic stances: democracy: and if not democracy, then for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species bias: men are better than monkeys, monkeys are better than dragons ... and nothing is as bad as snakes: unless it’s spiders.
Uh, so isn’t there such a thing as news really?
Sure there is. When your neighbor yells that your house is on fire, that’s news. When your neighbor yells that there’s one lantern shining from the belfry, that’s also news: they’re coming by land.
I've duplicated this piece in the News folder of Knatz.com's Society section. (I'm also transferring it from the macroinformation blog to my Iona Arc blog.
3 Comments:
At 4:47 AM, furious said...
On a slightly different note, Ezra Pound said, "Literature is news that STAYS news." I don't think that spares it from your category of ads.
I am enjoying the blog.
At 4:09 PM, pk said...
Speaking of TV as a series of ads for the state, WHEW! Is everyone watching this 39th Super Bowl?!
Patriotism had been escalating its infection of sporting events in recent years anyway: baseball games routinely start with the national anthem, recent World Series games have intruded additional anthems at the seventh inning stretch.
Information can never be assumed to mean what it seems to mean though; maybe this is all a sign that we're embarrassed as never before.
At 2:59 PM, pk said...
Reading David Liss's A Spectacle of Corruption I am impressed by how clearly Liss presents newspapers of eighteenth-century London as strictly political organs, managing more than reporting the "news," inventing whatever suits the agenda. When I was a kid delivering the Star Tribune in Long Island's Rockville Centre, I was bewildered by the alacrity with which adults identified the Star with the Republicans, Newsday with the Democrats. Now I see it as clearly true.
Life was Protestant, Look sympathized with Catholics. Networks are a bit more sly.
The society would be healthier is all organs wore their political (or theological) button above (and bigger than) their mast logo. Inaccurate buttons should trigger pillage.
This post has been copied, duplicated, linked, relinked ... it went up twice here! I'll dedup.
Ah, but the show part of the news is sponsored: by the network! The news is an ad for the network! Count how many times in any fifteen minutes network personnel identify the network by name: including when they identify each other by name.
The network is sponsored by the state. It’s the state that divies the electromagnetic spectrum and gives the divisions away. The international news is an ad for the state. Actually, all of the news is an ad for the state: while the state is an ad for the sponsors: including those friends the state gave those divisions of the spectrum to. If the network members hadn’t been friends of the state the state wouldn’t have given them the division. And if they hadn’t been friends of the state somehow anyway they become friends of the state.
(McLuhan distinguished ads that stimulate sales from ads that steep the consumer in confidence that purchases of the brand already made were wise: Cadillac owners are assured that they spent their money on the right product. Network news is an ad of both kinds simultaneously: watch NBC, be proud that it's NBC that you jack into your brain.)
Meantime, for brief snatches, the TV shows, all chopped up, offer "real" entertainment: movies made for the commercial movie theaters, for example. But of course more and more those movies too sell ad space. But even before they did, the movies were ads: ads for basic cultural biases, ads for fashions, ads for commercial consumption even where no brand is specified. Ads for theological positions, ads for political tendencies.
Get out of here! What about the cartoons?
The cartoons are ads for basic mythic stances: democracy: and if not democracy, then for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species bias: men are better than monkeys, monkeys are better than dragons ... and nothing is as bad as snakes: unless it’s spiders.
Uh, so isn’t there such a thing as news really?
Sure there is. When your neighbor yells that your house is on fire, that’s news. When your neighbor yells that there’s one lantern shining from the belfry, that’s also news: they’re coming by land.
I've duplicated this piece in the News folder of Knatz.com's Society section. (I'm also transferring it from the macroinformation blog to my Iona Arc blog.
3 Comments:
At 4:47 AM, furious said...
On a slightly different note, Ezra Pound said, "Literature is news that STAYS news." I don't think that spares it from your category of ads.
I am enjoying the blog.
At 4:09 PM, pk said...
Speaking of TV as a series of ads for the state, WHEW! Is everyone watching this 39th Super Bowl?!
Patriotism had been escalating its infection of sporting events in recent years anyway: baseball games routinely start with the national anthem, recent World Series games have intruded additional anthems at the seventh inning stretch.
Information can never be assumed to mean what it seems to mean though; maybe this is all a sign that we're embarrassed as never before.
At 2:59 PM, pk said...
Reading David Liss's A Spectacle of Corruption I am impressed by how clearly Liss presents newspapers of eighteenth-century London as strictly political organs, managing more than reporting the "news," inventing whatever suits the agenda. When I was a kid delivering the Star Tribune in Long Island's Rockville Centre, I was bewildered by the alacrity with which adults identified the Star with the Republicans, Newsday with the Democrats. Now I see it as clearly true.
Life was Protestant, Look sympathized with Catholics. Networks are a bit more sly.
The society would be healthier is all organs wore their political (or theological) button above (and bigger than) their mast logo. Inaccurate buttons should trigger pillage.
This post has been copied, duplicated, linked, relinked ... it went up twice here! I'll dedup.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Black Holes: Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down
Whatever we see we see because of light: an octave within the electro-magnetic spectrum. Whatever we think we think by organo-electrical impulses running around our nervous systems: processes employing the electro-magnetic spectrum. Photons jump around the universe, electrons jump around the wetware.
We used to think that if it was there, we could see it. Then we decided that light velocity was finite: maybe some things were too far away to see. Ah, thought I once upon a time, we can still think it. Light was finite; thought was instantaneous -- I thought. No, no, the wetware is slow. Maybe some things are too far away to think.
Some gravity theorists decided to think that maybe there were some things we couldn't see because they were too massive for light to escape. Photons had to have some teeny bit of mass.
Isn't that great? What happens when an irresistible force meets an irresistible object? Light is so fast, light goes anywhere! Yeah, well what if it doesn't? Physics! Fabulous. It's as neat as theology ever was. If one thing is irresistible, then the other thing can't be. Or maybe neither can be. ? There we go again, thinking impossible things: nonsense. Well, what else do we have to do with all these thoughts? all this time?
Original Think/Sinners. Maybe not so original after all.
Black holes have stimulated some of the best contemporary thinking. Think of something you can't see, have no experience with, can't have any experience with, then think about it. Beautiful.
Actually, I think humans have a great deal of experience with black holes. Light goes in, light can't get out.
President Johnson asks everybody what we should do in Vietnam if we don't think we should kill everybody. What should we do instead? Out of millions, dozens, maybe hundreds tell him. (Fools! Don't use your real name, invent a return address!) Thoughts go into the White House, thoughts never leave the White House. I mean lots of thoughts go into the White House, only certain thoughts leave the White House.
Oh, goody. Let's all think about God. The Church tells us to. All sorts of thoughts go into the Church; only certain thoughts leave the Church. Light leaves the Church: showing piles of thinkers burning.
Think! says the school. (Don't use your real name!) (Unfortunately, they already know your real name: the municipality stole your name from your parents at birth (that's why you had to be born in a hospital!), gave your name to the school, gave it to the draft board ...) (What a joke! how would the school know if a student thought? Communication would have to be possible first: I don't mean from the industrialist to the school board member, from the school board member to the principal, from the principal to the student; I mean from the student to the teacher, from Van Gogh to the Academy ...)
All sorts of thoughts, thoughts going every which way, go into the school. Remarkable! Only certain thoughts, all lined up and goose-stepping, come out of the school. Light comes out of the school: shaded, dimmed, distracted from, but it comes: people in detention, people in straightjackets, people in comas -- pumped with drugs. Ashes, ashes.
All fall down.
I've duplicated this piece in Knatz.com's Society section.
We used to think that if it was there, we could see it. Then we decided that light velocity was finite: maybe some things were too far away to see. Ah, thought I once upon a time, we can still think it. Light was finite; thought was instantaneous -- I thought. No, no, the wetware is slow. Maybe some things are too far away to think.
Some gravity theorists decided to think that maybe there were some things we couldn't see because they were too massive for light to escape. Photons had to have some teeny bit of mass.
Isn't that great? What happens when an irresistible force meets an irresistible object? Light is so fast, light goes anywhere! Yeah, well what if it doesn't? Physics! Fabulous. It's as neat as theology ever was. If one thing is irresistible, then the other thing can't be. Or maybe neither can be. ? There we go again, thinking impossible things: nonsense. Well, what else do we have to do with all these thoughts? all this time?
Original Think/Sinners. Maybe not so original after all.
Black holes have stimulated some of the best contemporary thinking. Think of something you can't see, have no experience with, can't have any experience with, then think about it. Beautiful.
Actually, I think humans have a great deal of experience with black holes. Light goes in, light can't get out.
President Johnson asks everybody what we should do in Vietnam if we don't think we should kill everybody. What should we do instead? Out of millions, dozens, maybe hundreds tell him. (Fools! Don't use your real name, invent a return address!) Thoughts go into the White House, thoughts never leave the White House. I mean lots of thoughts go into the White House, only certain thoughts leave the White House.
Oh, goody. Let's all think about God. The Church tells us to. All sorts of thoughts go into the Church; only certain thoughts leave the Church. Light leaves the Church: showing piles of thinkers burning.
Think! says the school. (Don't use your real name!) (Unfortunately, they already know your real name: the municipality stole your name from your parents at birth (that's why you had to be born in a hospital!), gave your name to the school, gave it to the draft board ...) (What a joke! how would the school know if a student thought? Communication would have to be possible first: I don't mean from the industrialist to the school board member, from the school board member to the principal, from the principal to the student; I mean from the student to the teacher, from Van Gogh to the Academy ...)
All sorts of thoughts, thoughts going every which way, go into the school. Remarkable! Only certain thoughts, all lined up and goose-stepping, come out of the school. Light comes out of the school: shaded, dimmed, distracted from, but it comes: people in detention, people in straightjackets, people in comas -- pumped with drugs. Ashes, ashes.
All fall down.
I've duplicated this piece in Knatz.com's Society section.
Friday, January 07, 2005
No Cops in the Cathedral
If government is always onshore, let’s all go offshore.
Back in my day Hollywood taught every kid that if the king’s enemy could get to the cathedral, the sheriff couldn’t arrest him once inside. Hollywood also taught us that the vampire could eat any and everybody: unless you held up a cross, ate garlic, held out till dawn ...
In high school we’d drag race on Sunrise Highway a mile or so from the town border. The cops would chase us. We’d beat the cops to Baldwin, pull over, and laugh at them. I don’t think that we were really criminals: we just loved the idea that they had a leash: and that we could yank them up short on it.
There’s nothing new in all this. The cat chases the bird. If the bird can get airborne, the cat can’t follow. The dog chases the cat. If the cat can climb a tree, the dog stops.
The guy chases the mugger, but not into Harlem. If I can get out of the water, the shark will not pursue me up onto the beach.
OK. There are natural boundaries: for different species. What I particularly love are political boundaries: and the boundaries of superstition. Once in the church, the secular loses its power. Once out of the church, the superstition evaporates.
John Grisham’s current best seller, The Last Juror, offers a villain with a circumstance I adore. The guy comes from a family of Mississippi moonshiners who settled an island generations ago. They have a still, they have their own under-class of blacks, they steal cars, they branch into cannabis, they launder their own money ... And the revenuers learned to leave them alone generations ago. No cop will venture onto the island; no revenuer ever came back!
So here’s the little old fashioned, backwards, nearly backwoods Mississippi town, preyed on by a guy who’s genuinely backwoods. They can convict him in town, but they can’t arrest him out of town.
The town manages to convict him for rape and murder. His family’s threats, bribes, tricks, fail to get him off. But then he’s sent to a state, not a town, prison. The parole board doesn’t bother to know anything about the trial. And once state-level government has paroled him, his parole officer has no idea where he is, what he’s doing, whether or not he’s connected with the string of murders that starts eliminating every juror who’d convicted him!
I’m not for murder: in general. Even less do I tolerate rape. Least of all do I tolerate monopolies of power. I am so glad that the vampire can’t follow me as far as the dawn.
I’m glad the devil won’t bother me in church.
But where do those of us without an island controlled by our own clan get away from government?
And once we’re sick of God, is there a universe we can go to to get away from him?
3 Comments:
At 1:16 AM, bkMarcus said...
To quote a contemporary philosopher, "If I can get far far far enough into my own head, maybe God will leave me alone."
At 11:25 AM, pk said...
bk's comment is cute between the two of us, but perhaps I should explain for third parties: I'd just bolted the theme to him as he was surprising me by opening the blog for me, his promptings having had no effect. First I said that I'd play with it later: within seconds though I found myself redrafted the just scribbled email for the blog.
I don't know why, but I left out the email's climactic sentence. bk must have liked it: because he supplies it: "... once we’re sick of God, is there a universe we can go to to get away from him?"
At 1:28 AM, pk said...
Ugh, I butchered my comment on bk's comment: a typo and a mistake. I've corrected both by adding the piece to the Society section of Knatz.com.
This post has been moved from the macroinformation blog to the Iona Arc blog and has also been duplicated in Knatz.com's Society section.
Back in my day Hollywood taught every kid that if the king’s enemy could get to the cathedral, the sheriff couldn’t arrest him once inside. Hollywood also taught us that the vampire could eat any and everybody: unless you held up a cross, ate garlic, held out till dawn ...
In high school we’d drag race on Sunrise Highway a mile or so from the town border. The cops would chase us. We’d beat the cops to Baldwin, pull over, and laugh at them. I don’t think that we were really criminals: we just loved the idea that they had a leash: and that we could yank them up short on it.
There’s nothing new in all this. The cat chases the bird. If the bird can get airborne, the cat can’t follow. The dog chases the cat. If the cat can climb a tree, the dog stops.
The guy chases the mugger, but not into Harlem. If I can get out of the water, the shark will not pursue me up onto the beach.
OK. There are natural boundaries: for different species. What I particularly love are political boundaries: and the boundaries of superstition. Once in the church, the secular loses its power. Once out of the church, the superstition evaporates.
John Grisham’s current best seller, The Last Juror, offers a villain with a circumstance I adore. The guy comes from a family of Mississippi moonshiners who settled an island generations ago. They have a still, they have their own under-class of blacks, they steal cars, they branch into cannabis, they launder their own money ... And the revenuers learned to leave them alone generations ago. No cop will venture onto the island; no revenuer ever came back!
So here’s the little old fashioned, backwards, nearly backwoods Mississippi town, preyed on by a guy who’s genuinely backwoods. They can convict him in town, but they can’t arrest him out of town.
The town manages to convict him for rape and murder. His family’s threats, bribes, tricks, fail to get him off. But then he’s sent to a state, not a town, prison. The parole board doesn’t bother to know anything about the trial. And once state-level government has paroled him, his parole officer has no idea where he is, what he’s doing, whether or not he’s connected with the string of murders that starts eliminating every juror who’d convicted him!
I’m not for murder: in general. Even less do I tolerate rape. Least of all do I tolerate monopolies of power. I am so glad that the vampire can’t follow me as far as the dawn.
I’m glad the devil won’t bother me in church.
But where do those of us without an island controlled by our own clan get away from government?
And once we’re sick of God, is there a universe we can go to to get away from him?
3 Comments:
At 1:16 AM, bkMarcus said...
To quote a contemporary philosopher, "If I can get far far far enough into my own head, maybe God will leave me alone."
At 11:25 AM, pk said...
bk's comment is cute between the two of us, but perhaps I should explain for third parties: I'd just bolted the theme to him as he was surprising me by opening the blog for me, his promptings having had no effect. First I said that I'd play with it later: within seconds though I found myself redrafted the just scribbled email for the blog.
I don't know why, but I left out the email's climactic sentence. bk must have liked it: because he supplies it: "... once we’re sick of God, is there a universe we can go to to get away from him?"
At 1:28 AM, pk said...
Ugh, I butchered my comment on bk's comment: a typo and a mistake. I've corrected both by adding the piece to the Society section of Knatz.com.
This post has been moved from the macroinformation blog to the Iona Arc blog and has also been duplicated in Knatz.com's Society section.
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