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.
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