Blogs are like newspapers: whatever the editor writes, selects, prints gets published for that issue, that date. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, archives are different: there there is a hierarchical organization as well as a chronological one, the hierarchy more important than the chronology.
pk's Knatz.com was hierarchical from day one. I mounted that days work, but located it in a hierarchy, a logical tree: this post is didactic, this personal, this organizational. Among the didactic posts this one concerns divisions of reason, this one concerns men living together or failing to live together in a society ... this one is cosmological, this one is both cosmological and theological, while that one distinguishes plants from animals, terrestraisl from extra terrestrials ...
This post (while it happens to get posted on 2011 09 16) is a taxonomic post: organizational, a hallway connecting rooms, an elevator indicating that men's wear is on the second floor, kitchen gadgets in the basement ...
Blogspot organizes posts by year, by month, in order of day. My new IonaArc Menu is getting built at the PKnatz blog. To date it links to the posts here chronologically. My progress with it is still in 2005. Ah, but once I've caught up to the present, I'll start to distribute the links in pKnatz's category menus. Thus a post date, while it may be important, as with a Christmas piece, or a 9-1-11 piece, is normally trivial: what counts is taht this post relates to pk on Semiotics, or to pk on human institutions, or tells a story about pk from when he was in grade school ...
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
pk's Arrest
2011 07 23 When the federal court attacked and destroyed my domains it not only evaporated my thousands of text files online but my thousands of graphic files too. My PKImaging.com hosted many of the graphics for IonaArc. I'm fixing missing images asap as I find them.
In the summer of 2006 I decided to move all Knatz.com modules about factitious human hierarchies, that is, about authoritarian institutions — nation-states, governments, churches, compulsory school systems ... to a new domain: AgainstHierarchy.org. All of the files at InfoAll.org, my deschooling domain, would be absorbed there. So would all of Knatz.com's may Society modules on civilization, on kleptocracy ...
In 1962 I'd begun graduate school, dreading it, but wanting to teach college English — while also writing fiction, publishing scholarship ... But my graduate school, while utterly capable of dispensing known ideas, proved wholly blind, deaf, and dumb to my suggestions for improving those ideas. McLuhan's publisher told him that audiences can't absorb more than a tiny percentage of new material. Somehow McLuhan got published, and read, and rich, and famous ... anyway. There's no telling though how many original ideas die on vine, unheard by the society. I don't doubt that the more schools we have, the less we will hear; that the more governemtn funds "science," the sooner science will wither, replaced by authoritarian orthodoxy. The Temple will kill any son of god over and over. It's a "pope" societies want obeyed, not any god: unless the "God" is firmly in the control of the Church with its pope.
My graduate school hadn't understood a word I'd said, from 1962 thorugh 1970. By 1967 I was teaching: while trying to devise a way NYU might understand my thesis: my reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets in terms of orthodoxy versus experience. That never happened. But in 1970 I'd discovered Ivan Illich and his proposal to replace compulsory school systems with voluntary public cybernetic data bases, reinventing the ancient market place as it were. Such record keeping should belong directly to the public, without government interference. Post human resources, inannimate resources, match individuals based on expressed common interest ... and post feedback on the human and inanimate resources. That is, a colleage of a person listed as a resource, could evaluate the colleague: Plank commenting on Einstein, for example. Einstein's student could also comment on Einstein — as a teacher: tell if she thought he was looking up her dress more than he was concentrating on physics, for example. I offered to help Illich to realize the creation of such networks. I'd already been waiting for an internet for years, imagining such in fiction, in dreams. Illich told me to found such an institution myself, he was busy. I did. The Free Learning Exchange, Inc., NYC, 1970.
Free Publicity came quickly. A few people registered their expertise, a few more sought companions for a specified activity: guitar playing, for scream therapy ...
I circulated fliers around Manhattan, heavily around NYU, where I matriculated, and around Columbia, my Alma Mater, where I still lived. Columbia's initial response was good; NYU's was hostile: though faculty from both were on my board of trustees.
All this was detailed at Knatz.com, and then at InfoAll.org.
The public dribbled a few dollars toward FLEX. A Church group gave a bit more.
Time Inc saw my cable TV public resouce listings, and draggd me down to Madison Avenue. But meeting me, they changed their mind about publicizing any grass roots internet. IBM hailed my idea as a good one, then dismissed it as not for them.
Note above all: Illich's proposed network was that saint's Jessu-inspired invitation for titular Christians to become actual Christians. As a would-be disciple of Jesus, I recognized Illich as fully mature saint, closer to God than I: and I too was close. Churches which didn't help us are lying hypocrites, in defiance of Christ. But never mind, I continue my narrative:
I was already approaching middle age. I'd already been living on borrowed money for more than a decade except to a couple of years worth of slave-wages as a college instructor. I founded FLEX without any capital of my own. The public could have donated the necessary millions: and saved billions: plus, earned some measure of freedom from government interference. It didn't. The public rejects Jesus while claiming that Jessu will save them?
Should Jesus save those who block resources from his disciples?
Anyway: NYU had ignored my brilliance as a doctoral candidate, had seen that my ideas didn't prosper. NYU had ever right to ignore my offer of a cheap internet in 1970 and in 1971 ... but having done so, NYU had no right to make use of the kleptonet CERN and the US offered years later.
The US coopted my Jesus-inspired internet. My internet needed no PCs. The public needed to learn no programming unless it wanted to. The public rejected cheap, and bought expensive, wasteful, planned-to-be-obsolete garbage eagerly.
Dating services, Google, Yahoo, Amazaon, eBay ... all imitate features of FLEX; but without being FLEX.
Has CERN, MIT, SRI, Congress, MicroSoft, IBM ... once called Illich or me in for consultation? Not once. No more than the '49ers asked Sutter what should be done with the gold they were stealing from his land.
Anyway, impoverished, getting old, after an adulthood of thwarted reform, both of scholarship, of fiction, and of society as a whole, I decide I'd try one last device to try to win the attention of the thieves, to embarrass them if I couldn't correct or save them: I write to English professors at NYU, the group that first hadn't heard me there (even though all of the names had changed). I wrote a black satire: sayin that time was running out. If they didn't finally hear what I'd been trying to communicate with them since 1962, if they didn't hear by say 2007 or 2008, giving them another year or so, I'd come to NYU and bloody their nose, and maybe more than their nose.
Understand: this is satire. Satire is what pk did before pk invented the internet with Ivan Illich. Satire is what pk has ALWAYS written.
The postings, and the letters, were filled with meta-signals, with macroinformation, saying "This is not literal."
But NYU, MORE illiterate than decades before, called the FBI, and the FBI arrested me.
The Public Defender was a brilliant lawyer, perhaps the most intelligenct I'd ever encountered up close, but he made it perfectly clear: I'd get no more fairness from a trial than I'd gotten from my life. The US was determined to destroy me, and the truth, no relevant considerations, such as the meaning of what I wrote, would be admitted.
Well. I'd sought a stage. I wouldn't get one. Therefore, the best thing for me to do was to see if I could live long enough to be released: and tell more stories (for the public to ignore).
The lawyer told me that if I insisted on talking about deschooling, and about the stolen internet, the jury could be almost guaranteed to give the judge license for a long sentence. If I pleaded guilty, agreed with the government's falsehoods, I'd go home in a year.
On my return home, my landlord put it differently: "They saw they had made a mistake; but, being who they are, they couldn't admit it: so they gave you the shortest sentence they ever give: fifteen months. That translates as: Innocent!"
The judge could have asked me to take down the couple of files NYU was offended by. To stay out of jail, maybe I would have. But he didn't. He just censored the entire section of AgainstHierarchy.org. Why censor two files when you can censor two dozen?
Hell, already in violation of the Constitution, why not go for total irreversible damnation?
draft didn't progress, all getting moved to pKnatz blog anyway
In the summer of 2006 I decided to move all Knatz.com modules about factitious human hierarchies, that is, about authoritarian institutions — nation-states, governments, churches, compulsory school systems ... to a new domain: AgainstHierarchy.org. All of the files at InfoAll.org, my deschooling domain, would be absorbed there. So would all of Knatz.com's may Society modules on civilization, on kleptocracy ...
In 1962 I'd begun graduate school, dreading it, but wanting to teach college English — while also writing fiction, publishing scholarship ... But my graduate school, while utterly capable of dispensing known ideas, proved wholly blind, deaf, and dumb to my suggestions for improving those ideas. McLuhan's publisher told him that audiences can't absorb more than a tiny percentage of new material. Somehow McLuhan got published, and read, and rich, and famous ... anyway. There's no telling though how many original ideas die on vine, unheard by the society. I don't doubt that the more schools we have, the less we will hear; that the more governemtn funds "science," the sooner science will wither, replaced by authoritarian orthodoxy. The Temple will kill any son of god over and over. It's a "pope" societies want obeyed, not any god: unless the "God" is firmly in the control of the Church with its pope.
My graduate school hadn't understood a word I'd said, from 1962 thorugh 1970. By 1967 I was teaching: while trying to devise a way NYU might understand my thesis: my reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets in terms of orthodoxy versus experience. That never happened. But in 1970 I'd discovered Ivan Illich and his proposal to replace compulsory school systems with voluntary public cybernetic data bases, reinventing the ancient market place as it were. Such record keeping should belong directly to the public, without government interference. Post human resources, inannimate resources, match individuals based on expressed common interest ... and post feedback on the human and inanimate resources. That is, a colleage of a person listed as a resource, could evaluate the colleague: Plank commenting on Einstein, for example. Einstein's student could also comment on Einstein — as a teacher: tell if she thought he was looking up her dress more than he was concentrating on physics, for example. I offered to help Illich to realize the creation of such networks. I'd already been waiting for an internet for years, imagining such in fiction, in dreams. Illich told me to found such an institution myself, he was busy. I did. The Free Learning Exchange, Inc., NYC, 1970.
Free Publicity came quickly. A few people registered their expertise, a few more sought companions for a specified activity: guitar playing, for scream therapy ...
I circulated fliers around Manhattan, heavily around NYU, where I matriculated, and around Columbia, my Alma Mater, where I still lived. Columbia's initial response was good; NYU's was hostile: though faculty from both were on my board of trustees.
All this was detailed at Knatz.com, and then at InfoAll.org.
The public dribbled a few dollars toward FLEX. A Church group gave a bit more.
Time Inc saw my cable TV public resouce listings, and draggd me down to Madison Avenue. But meeting me, they changed their mind about publicizing any grass roots internet. IBM hailed my idea as a good one, then dismissed it as not for them.
Note above all: Illich's proposed network was that saint's Jessu-inspired invitation for titular Christians to become actual Christians. As a would-be disciple of Jesus, I recognized Illich as fully mature saint, closer to God than I: and I too was close. Churches which didn't help us are lying hypocrites, in defiance of Christ. But never mind, I continue my narrative:
I was already approaching middle age. I'd already been living on borrowed money for more than a decade except to a couple of years worth of slave-wages as a college instructor. I founded FLEX without any capital of my own. The public could have donated the necessary millions: and saved billions: plus, earned some measure of freedom from government interference. It didn't. The public rejects Jesus while claiming that Jessu will save them?
Should Jesus save those who block resources from his disciples?
Anyway: NYU had ignored my brilliance as a doctoral candidate, had seen that my ideas didn't prosper. NYU had ever right to ignore my offer of a cheap internet in 1970 and in 1971 ... but having done so, NYU had no right to make use of the kleptonet CERN and the US offered years later.
The US coopted my Jesus-inspired internet. My internet needed no PCs. The public needed to learn no programming unless it wanted to. The public rejected cheap, and bought expensive, wasteful, planned-to-be-obsolete garbage eagerly.
Dating services, Google, Yahoo, Amazaon, eBay ... all imitate features of FLEX; but without being FLEX.
Has CERN, MIT, SRI, Congress, MicroSoft, IBM ... once called Illich or me in for consultation? Not once. No more than the '49ers asked Sutter what should be done with the gold they were stealing from his land.
Anyway, impoverished, getting old, after an adulthood of thwarted reform, both of scholarship, of fiction, and of society as a whole, I decide I'd try one last device to try to win the attention of the thieves, to embarrass them if I couldn't correct or save them: I write to English professors at NYU, the group that first hadn't heard me there (even though all of the names had changed). I wrote a black satire: sayin that time was running out. If they didn't finally hear what I'd been trying to communicate with them since 1962, if they didn't hear by say 2007 or 2008, giving them another year or so, I'd come to NYU and bloody their nose, and maybe more than their nose.
Understand: this is satire. Satire is what pk did before pk invented the internet with Ivan Illich. Satire is what pk has ALWAYS written.
The postings, and the letters, were filled with meta-signals, with macroinformation, saying "This is not literal."
But NYU, MORE illiterate than decades before, called the FBI, and the FBI arrested me.
The Public Defender was a brilliant lawyer, perhaps the most intelligenct I'd ever encountered up close, but he made it perfectly clear: I'd get no more fairness from a trial than I'd gotten from my life. The US was determined to destroy me, and the truth, no relevant considerations, such as the meaning of what I wrote, would be admitted.
Well. I'd sought a stage. I wouldn't get one. Therefore, the best thing for me to do was to see if I could live long enough to be released: and tell more stories (for the public to ignore).
The lawyer told me that if I insisted on talking about deschooling, and about the stolen internet, the jury could be almost guaranteed to give the judge license for a long sentence. If I pleaded guilty, agreed with the government's falsehoods, I'd go home in a year.
On my return home, my landlord put it differently: "They saw they had made a mistake; but, being who they are, they couldn't admit it: so they gave you the shortest sentence they ever give: fifteen months. That translates as: Innocent!"
The judge could have asked me to take down the couple of files NYU was offended by. To stay out of jail, maybe I would have. But he didn't. He just censored the entire section of AgainstHierarchy.org. Why censor two files when you can censor two dozen?
Hell, already in violation of the Constitution, why not go for total irreversible damnation?
draft didn't progress, all getting moved to pKnatz blog anyway
pk's Society Modules
My home page opened in the early 1990s with a couple of biographical files, then quickly began adding scholarly, philosophical pieces, especially on science and epistemology. By 2006 when I was arrested and my online modules were censored, pk files numbered around 4,000. The bulk of them were housed within a folder I called "Teaching." My recent attempt to restore the most important of those files, the science files, the modules I call my Thinking Tools, got freshly frustrated, Google moving a blog out of my control. Meantime a few modules from the Teaching / Society folder are almost as important.
2011 07 19 Modules I recreated from Knatz.com here after my censorship I move to PKnatz blog.
2011 07 19 Modules I recreated from Knatz.com here after my censorship I move to PKnatz blog.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Thinking Tool Set update
Thinking will routinely seem warped to those using a different tool set. Advanced thinking will routinely seem warped to those using a primitive tool set.
Would the caveman follow Pythagoras' "proof"? Would Pythagoras have a clue what Godel had done? Or Mandelbrot?
If Popper and Wittgenstein freaked each other out, how would St. Augustine and Popper get along? How would God get along with Wittgenstein?
When I posted the above Knatz.com was alive and well. When the fed censored my AgainstHierarchy.org all my domains tumbled. I'd long regarded my Thinking Tools as the most important section of Knatz.com: I labored to recreate some of those modules at my subsequent pkTools blog, but never mind: all Tools are now being assembled and developed at the Thinking Tools section of pKnatz blog. (At WordPress I can make menus by category (and draw a web of Pages!))
Would the caveman follow Pythagoras' "proof"? Would Pythagoras have a clue what Godel had done? Or Mandelbrot?
If Popper and Wittgenstein freaked each other out, how would St. Augustine and Popper get along? How would God get along with Wittgenstein?
2009 11 22
When I posted the above Knatz.com was alive and well. When the fed censored my AgainstHierarchy.org all my domains tumbled. I'd long regarded my Thinking Tools as the most important section of Knatz.com: I labored to recreate some of those modules at my subsequent pkTools blog, but never mind: all Tools are now being assembled and developed at the Thinking Tools section of pKnatz blog. (At WordPress I can make menus by category (and draw a web of Pages!))
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Knatz.com: redirects
Knatz.com now brings browsers to this blog. I'm using PKnatz blog to recreate my censored domains: and when it's a bit better progressed we'll link "Knatz.com" there. [As of 2011 07 09 I begin to add all IonaArc posts to the menus at pKnatz: thus wedding them (without changing these URLs).]
IonaArc is my first blog, it has the most posts. Initially it was a supplement to Knatz.com, my main personal domain. Since the fed scuttled my five domains, IonaArc became the main remnant of my work online (or off).
2011 04 06 I'm very pleased by my new LineDanceAlliance blog.
PKImaging.com was my business domain.
Knatz.com was my first personal domain.
Macroinformation.org was my science domain, spinning off Knatz.com's information theory (Knatz.com / Teaching / Thinking Tools / Information / Macroinformation /).
InfoAll.org was my DeDe domain: DeRegulate — DeProfessionalize — Deschool: the three being my simplification/expansion of Ivan Illich's "deschooling."
AgainstHierarchy.org was the domain I initiated to give space apart from Knatz.com for the Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / subfolder Social Order /.
All five domains were destroyed by fed censorship in 2007 Feb.
The name AgainstHierarchy was intended to suggest opposition to factitious, politically-imposed hierarchines. Our idea of "the tree of life," or "vertibrates" reflect natural hierarchy. I'm all for it. Churches, temples, represent an idea of magical hierarchy — a creator, a boss, owning everything: I used to be for that. But The Church, this nation, the FBI, the army ... represent politically imposed hierarchies. I'm against all of them (and so should you be if you want surviving great grandchildren).
Knatz.com had nearly three thousand text files, posts I call modules, all hyperlinked, all part of a coherent view of life, the world, learning, wisdom ... survival opportunities: and thousands of graphics: logos, drawings, photos, art ... Knatz.com also republished persecuted and hard to find books: Illich's Deschooling Society, for example. Factitious hierarchies, from the school and university education system, to the the publishing industry, to plain old social homeostasis (tarring and feathering the god, the genius, the saint), the same system that elevated Pilat over Jesus, the Temple over God, had made sure than my teaching didn't transmit. My 1970 Free Learning Exchange, unlike my scholarship (or fiction) of the 1960s, found ready free publicity (hard cash needed to build infrastructure: an unregulated internet), but by 1973, FLEX had been successfully hooded. Fewer and fewer learned about our offering (even though volunteers increased for a while!) The government and its cronies, media and so forth, had successfully kept its sheeple in the dark: exactly the way the Temple kept God's new messages from the old faithful 2000 years ago.
Fed jails tortured me into confessing. My public "defender" passed on the government's threat to jail me for forty or more years, me being then sixty-eight years old, going deaf, half-blind, and wholly broke: a pariah for a lifetime: unemployable: partly due to my obligation to god (my promise to serve Christian conviviality by opposing all government coercion: after I'd made an alternate learning system functional (my efforts there sabotaged). This lawyer, admitting that he "may burn in hell for this," that is for not passing my perspective, relevant facts, to the court, freeing the court to pursue its persecution based on misinformation and blocked-information: he saw that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich and that we were a pair of disciples of Christ, but he would do nothing to disabuse the court from the false testimony of the FBI. (The FBI substituted its document, stitched from my words, but not being my prose, not being my meaning, missing my meaning.) I had seen my most important remaining opportunity to lie in staging a last hurrah for deschooling, using my trial as the stage. But no. My lawyer convinced me that nothing of the kind would happen. The fed would convince the common citizenry of Palm Beach, the county I'd be tried in, that I was a terrorist, plain and simple. No mention of deschooling would be allowed. The jury would not hear of my experience in university where not a thing I tried to communicate was received by the powers, the faculty, the administration, the student body. (Imagine a church in which the priests heard only Your sins and Never the Church itself's sins!)
I confessed believing it to be the quickest route to getting back on line, to add my experiences with the fed at Knatz.com (and elsewhere, as appropriate). But the FBI stole my computers. They were no longer properly synchronized once they returned them. The FBI had the key to my house, they ransacked everything. I still have some of my evidence against the system, against NYU, for example, but there's no telling what the FBI stole that I haven't discovered yet, may never discover (and if I don't, who will?) Anyway: the fed broke me, already broken, as they intended to. They wasted my last couple of thousand dollars. Now I'm on welfare: healthy, but helpless. I can't afford DSL. I can't afford to remount one let alone five domains.
I've been recreating some of Knatz.com files at my blogs. IonaArc was my first. Now there are a dozen or more. I'll list them in a moment: different blogs have different specialties, just as did different folders at Knatz.com.
The domain Knatz.com was originally purchased by my son, bkMarcus (Brian Knatz Marcus), intended as a birthday gift. Somehow title never transferred, which turned out to be a good thing.
pk blogs:
Iona Arc
Macroinformation
InfoAll
pkTools
PaulKnatz
InsTic
pkKlep
pkTheo
pKnatzQuotes
CybRev
And of vastly less importance:
pkBowdler
HSCSeniors
There's also a paulknatz blog at WordPress.com, but I haven't yet decided what, if anyting, to do with it.
Properly, with a smidgeon of funding, I'd reestablish everything at at resurrected Knatz.com! and grow it from there.
IonaArc is my first blog, it has the most posts. Initially it was a supplement to Knatz.com, my main personal domain. Since the fed scuttled my five domains, IonaArc became the main remnant of my work online (or off).
2011 04 06 I'm very pleased by my new LineDanceAlliance blog.
Knatz.com was my first personal domain.
Macroinformation.org was my science domain, spinning off Knatz.com's information theory (Knatz.com / Teaching / Thinking Tools / Information / Macroinformation /).
InfoAll.org was my DeDe domain: DeRegulate — DeProfessionalize — Deschool: the three being my simplification/expansion of Ivan Illich's "deschooling."
AgainstHierarchy.org was the domain I initiated to give space apart from Knatz.com for the Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / subfolder Social Order /.
All five domains were destroyed by fed censorship in 2007 Feb.
The name AgainstHierarchy was intended to suggest opposition to factitious, politically-imposed hierarchines. Our idea of "the tree of life," or "vertibrates" reflect natural hierarchy. I'm all for it. Churches, temples, represent an idea of magical hierarchy — a creator, a boss, owning everything: I used to be for that. But The Church, this nation, the FBI, the army ... represent politically imposed hierarchies. I'm against all of them (and so should you be if you want surviving great grandchildren).
Knatz.com had nearly three thousand text files, posts I call modules, all hyperlinked, all part of a coherent view of life, the world, learning, wisdom ... survival opportunities: and thousands of graphics: logos, drawings, photos, art ... Knatz.com also republished persecuted and hard to find books: Illich's Deschooling Society, for example. Factitious hierarchies, from the school and university education system, to the the publishing industry, to plain old social homeostasis (tarring and feathering the god, the genius, the saint), the same system that elevated Pilat over Jesus, the Temple over God, had made sure than my teaching didn't transmit. My 1970 Free Learning Exchange, unlike my scholarship (or fiction) of the 1960s, found ready free publicity (hard cash needed to build infrastructure: an unregulated internet), but by 1973, FLEX had been successfully hooded. Fewer and fewer learned about our offering (even though volunteers increased for a while!) The government and its cronies, media and so forth, had successfully kept its sheeple in the dark: exactly the way the Temple kept God's new messages from the old faithful 2000 years ago.
Fed jails tortured me into confessing. My public "defender" passed on the government's threat to jail me for forty or more years, me being then sixty-eight years old, going deaf, half-blind, and wholly broke: a pariah for a lifetime: unemployable: partly due to my obligation to god (my promise to serve Christian conviviality by opposing all government coercion: after I'd made an alternate learning system functional (my efforts there sabotaged). This lawyer, admitting that he "may burn in hell for this," that is for not passing my perspective, relevant facts, to the court, freeing the court to pursue its persecution based on misinformation and blocked-information: he saw that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich and that we were a pair of disciples of Christ, but he would do nothing to disabuse the court from the false testimony of the FBI. (The FBI substituted its document, stitched from my words, but not being my prose, not being my meaning, missing my meaning.) I had seen my most important remaining opportunity to lie in staging a last hurrah for deschooling, using my trial as the stage. But no. My lawyer convinced me that nothing of the kind would happen. The fed would convince the common citizenry of Palm Beach, the county I'd be tried in, that I was a terrorist, plain and simple. No mention of deschooling would be allowed. The jury would not hear of my experience in university where not a thing I tried to communicate was received by the powers, the faculty, the administration, the student body. (Imagine a church in which the priests heard only Your sins and Never the Church itself's sins!)
I confessed believing it to be the quickest route to getting back on line, to add my experiences with the fed at Knatz.com (and elsewhere, as appropriate). But the FBI stole my computers. They were no longer properly synchronized once they returned them. The FBI had the key to my house, they ransacked everything. I still have some of my evidence against the system, against NYU, for example, but there's no telling what the FBI stole that I haven't discovered yet, may never discover (and if I don't, who will?) Anyway: the fed broke me, already broken, as they intended to. They wasted my last couple of thousand dollars. Now I'm on welfare: healthy, but helpless. I can't afford DSL. I can't afford to remount one let alone five domains.
I've been recreating some of Knatz.com files at my blogs. IonaArc was my first. Now there are a dozen or more. I'll list them in a moment: different blogs have different specialties, just as did different folders at Knatz.com.
The domain Knatz.com was originally purchased by my son, bkMarcus (Brian Knatz Marcus), intended as a birthday gift. Somehow title never transferred, which turned out to be a good thing.
pk blogs:
Macroinformation
InfoAll
pkTools
PaulKnatz
InsTic
pkKlep
pkTheo
pKnatzQuotes
CybRev
And of vastly less importance:
HSCSeniors
There's also a paulknatz blog at WordPress.com, but I haven't yet decided what, if anyting, to do with it.
Properly, with a smidgeon of funding, I'd reestablish everything at at resurrected Knatz.com! and grow it from there.
EMail to:
pk@Knatz.com
pk@Knatz.com
Thursday, April 07, 2011
News
A woman attacked a Gauguin hanging in a museum!
According to court documents, Burns said she believed Gauguin was evil and objected to nudity in the painting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110405/ap_en_ot/us_painting_attacked;_ylt=AoF3p9Jxzs1eIq8eSB88uhxxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJoYzJ0N2t0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA1L3VzX3BhaW50aW5nX2F0dGFja2VkBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3BhaW50aW5naGl0Yg--
Did the Church keep records of people attacking crucifixes in church? maybe because they didn't believe in torture and murder?
What would the US do if someone attacked a voting booth as an inadequate communication tool between slave and kleptocracy?
the White House biographies offer an unusual history lesson. Some are examples of blatant boosterism and outdated scholarship. Others are oddly selective or politically incorrect.
George W. Bush's entry, for example, makes no reference to Hurricane Katrina or the economic collapse of 2008, but does find room for the names of his dogs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110405/ap_on_en_ot/us_white_house_biographies;_ylt=AiMQZzaMvfK9ApiffAldC8VxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJuZmx2Mm9kBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA1L3VzX3doaXRlX2hvdXNlX2Jpb2dyYXBoaWVzBHBvcwM0BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA2hpc3RvcmlhbnNxdQ--
While both the liver and the brain influence caffeine consumption, "It turns out that your liver, more than your brain, determines daily caffeine intake," said study researcher Neil Caporaso, of the National Cancer Institute.
"You might think, I drink caffeine to feel good, or not to feel bad, but that, in turn, is established by how fast your liver breaks down the caffeine," Caporaso said. "If your liver breaks it down very rapidly, then likely you drink more."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110407/sc_livescience/caffeinecravinglinkedtogenetics;_ylt=AtD20OP6594pejwxHI7mcAAPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNlNWVkc25qBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwNDA3L2NhZmZlaW5lY3JhdmluZ2xpbmtlZHRvZ2VuZXRpY3MEcG9zAzEzBHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDY2FmZmVpbmVjcmF2
The gigantic underground plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano might be bigger than previously thought, a new image suggests.
The study says nothing about the chances of a cataclysmic eruption at Yellowstone, but it provides scientists with a valuable new perspective on the vast and deep reservoir of fiery material that feeds such eruptions, the last of which occurred more than 600,000 years ago. [Related: Infographic - The Geology of Yellowstone.]
Earlier measurements of the plume were produced by using seismic waves — the waves generated by earthquakes — to create a picture of the underground region. The new picture was produced by examining the Yellowstone plume's electrical conductivity, which is generated by molten silicate rocks and hot briny water that is naturally present and mixed in with partly molten rock.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110411/sc_livescience/yellowstonesupervolcanobiggerthanthought;_ylt=AtKzSIbb74.bVRn7e9PmX20PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNlbzBrNml1BGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwNDExL3llbGxvd3N0b25lc3VwZXJ2b2xjYW5vYmlnZ2VydGhhbnRob3VnaHQEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDeWVsbG93c3RvbmVz
Almost 17 million years ago, the deep plume of partly molten rock known as the Yellowstone hot spot first breached the surface in an eruption near what is now the Oregon-Idaho-Nevada border.
As North America drifted slowly southwest over the hot spot, there were more than 140 gargantuan caldera eruptions — the largest kind of eruption on Earth — along a northeast-trending path that is now Idaho's Snake River Plain.
The hot spot finally reached Yellowstone about 2 million years ago, yielding three huge caldera eruptions about 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago.
Two of the eruptions blanketed half of North America with volcanic ash, producing 2,500 times and 1,000 times more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Smaller eruptions occurred at Yellowstone in between the big blasts and as recently as 70,000 years ago. ...
pk here now: I've been a doomsday fan since childhood. I've spent my adulthood warning us about dangers that no one wants to heed. (Never forget, it's not the boy-who-cried-wolf who owned the sheep the wolf killed! He was behaving badly when he called a false alarm, but the society is doomed that ignores real alarms. The boy was mortal anyway; but did the society have to be?
According to court documents, Burns said she believed Gauguin was evil and objected to nudity in the painting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110405/ap_en_ot/us_painting_attacked;_ylt=AoF3p9Jxzs1eIq8eSB88uhxxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJoYzJ0N2t0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA1L3VzX3BhaW50aW5nX2F0dGFja2VkBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3BhaW50aW5naGl0Yg--
Did the Church keep records of people attacking crucifixes in church? maybe because they didn't believe in torture and murder?
What would the US do if someone attacked a voting booth as an inadequate communication tool between slave and kleptocracy?
the White House biographies offer an unusual history lesson. Some are examples of blatant boosterism and outdated scholarship. Others are oddly selective or politically incorrect.
George W. Bush's entry, for example, makes no reference to Hurricane Katrina or the economic collapse of 2008, but does find room for the names of his dogs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110405/ap_on_en_ot/us_white_house_biographies;_ylt=AiMQZzaMvfK9ApiffAldC8VxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJuZmx2Mm9kBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA1L3VzX3doaXRlX2hvdXNlX2Jpb2dyYXBoaWVzBHBvcwM0BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA2hpc3RvcmlhbnNxdQ--
While both the liver and the brain influence caffeine consumption, "It turns out that your liver, more than your brain, determines daily caffeine intake," said study researcher Neil Caporaso, of the National Cancer Institute.
"You might think, I drink caffeine to feel good, or not to feel bad, but that, in turn, is established by how fast your liver breaks down the caffeine," Caporaso said. "If your liver breaks it down very rapidly, then likely you drink more."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110407/sc_livescience/caffeinecravinglinkedtogenetics;_ylt=AtD20OP6594pejwxHI7mcAAPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNlNWVkc25qBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwNDA3L2NhZmZlaW5lY3JhdmluZ2xpbmtlZHRvZ2VuZXRpY3MEcG9zAzEzBHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDY2FmZmVpbmVjcmF2
The gigantic underground plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano might be bigger than previously thought, a new image suggests.
The study says nothing about the chances of a cataclysmic eruption at Yellowstone, but it provides scientists with a valuable new perspective on the vast and deep reservoir of fiery material that feeds such eruptions, the last of which occurred more than 600,000 years ago. [Related: Infographic - The Geology of Yellowstone.]
Earlier measurements of the plume were produced by using seismic waves — the waves generated by earthquakes — to create a picture of the underground region. The new picture was produced by examining the Yellowstone plume's electrical conductivity, which is generated by molten silicate rocks and hot briny water that is naturally present and mixed in with partly molten rock.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110411/sc_livescience/yellowstonesupervolcanobiggerthanthought;_ylt=AtKzSIbb74.bVRn7e9PmX20PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNlbzBrNml1BGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwNDExL3llbGxvd3N0b25lc3VwZXJ2b2xjYW5vYmlnZ2VydGhhbnRob3VnaHQEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDeWVsbG93c3RvbmVz
Almost 17 million years ago, the deep plume of partly molten rock known as the Yellowstone hot spot first breached the surface in an eruption near what is now the Oregon-Idaho-Nevada border.
As North America drifted slowly southwest over the hot spot, there were more than 140 gargantuan caldera eruptions — the largest kind of eruption on Earth — along a northeast-trending path that is now Idaho's Snake River Plain.
The hot spot finally reached Yellowstone about 2 million years ago, yielding three huge caldera eruptions about 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago.
Two of the eruptions blanketed half of North America with volcanic ash, producing 2,500 times and 1,000 times more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Smaller eruptions occurred at Yellowstone in between the big blasts and as recently as 70,000 years ago. ...
pk here now: I've been a doomsday fan since childhood. I've spent my adulthood warning us about dangers that no one wants to heed. (Never forget, it's not the boy-who-cried-wolf who owned the sheep the wolf killed! He was behaving badly when he called a false alarm, but the society is doomed that ignores real alarms. The boy was mortal anyway; but did the society have to be?
Friday, March 11, 2011
Today's Thought
Recently I've been posting News files in which I share news from the web. I've been making a new one each month. Now I think I'll similarly post a Thought of the Day page.
What may be true in the long run lacks bearing on those of us in the short run.
The society says the cops are there to protect the weak: but the lynchers know that the cops are there to protect them: the lynchers.
What does Big Brother want us to think? ( ie, to pretend to think.)
I know, That we're Individuals! That we're intelligent! That we're honest!
Church: a conspiracy against god, to allow humans to declare that their group is saved, pretending to speak for god. Jesus couldn't get a word in edgewise with the Temple. Other angels can't get a word in against the claimant groups. (Similarly a citizen cannot get a word into a democracy: unless it's clear to all that he displays the prescribed delusions.)
What may be true in the long run lacks bearing on those of us in the short run.
The society says the cops are there to protect the weak: but the lynchers know that the cops are there to protect them: the lynchers.
What does Big Brother want us to think? ( ie, to pretend to think.)
I know, That we're Individuals! That we're intelligent! That we're honest!
Church: a conspiracy against god, to allow humans to declare that their group is saved, pretending to speak for god. Jesus couldn't get a word in edgewise with the Temple. Other angels can't get a word in against the claimant groups. (Similarly a citizen cannot get a word into a democracy: unless it's clear to all that he displays the prescribed delusions.)
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
News
News for March Mating game: Too much choice will leave you lonely Scientists have made a surprising discovery: The more options you have for choosing a lover, the likelier you are to end up with no-one. British investigators, in a new study released on Wednesday, looked at the strange dynamics of choice in speed-dating, a fashionable way for singles to meet. Speed-daters race through a rota of one-on-one meetings, judging each person for suitability after a conversation of a few minutes that ends when a bell sounds. Assessing large numbers of candidates was not a problem in itself, the researchers found. In fact, many speed-daters found more potential partners when they were able to cast their net into a larger pool. But this advantage only worked when the available candidates were all broadly similar. When candidates were too dissimilar, speed-daters became confused by many conflicting factors -- and often failed to choose anyone. "There are models of human 'rationality' which posit that variety is a good thing," said researcher Alison Lenton at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "What will be surprising to some people is that our results suggest that increasing option variety leads to chooser confusion. People are more likely to choose no-one at all when faced with greater variety." In short, variety is fine... but in manageable doses. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110302/ts_afp/sciencesexlifestyle;_ylt=AgSbziOT64DPyshG_bxI0iAPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJoZnQxNDhiBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDMwMi9zY2llbmNlc2V4bGlmZXN0eWxlBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA21hdGluZ2dhbWV0bw--
The above reminds me of shopping for clothes when I was a teen. My mother would take me to Robert Hall in Hempstead, there were hundreds of suits, I couldn't prefer one to another. I first became a good salesman when it occurred to me that the same problem might be preventing my prospect from making up her mind and getting out her checkbook. There were six graphics on the display wall, all by the same artist. Two were large, they were the same price. I just picked on arbitrarily, said "I think you'll see this best in better light," and carried it to the front window. That's all it took. Separated from the wall, separated from the display group, my customer saw that it was removable, transportable. It became clear to her that it could be hers: should be hers. From the window I carried it to the wrapping counter for her. I had broken its, and her, "suction."
Scientists skeptical of meteorite alien life claim Mar 7 Yahoo, links not working today WASHINGTON – NASA and its top scientists are distancing themselves from a space agency researcher who concludes that he found alien bacterial life in meteorites that were collected many decades ago.
pk adds: a pair of young German scientists examined meteorite fragments in the 1940s and reported finding marks that suggested fossils of bacteria-like things. (Sir Fred Hoyle told the story, repeatedly.) That was the end of their careers.
Things haven't changed since Galileo, human societies all still belong with Lilliput. Universities bear all the earmarks of human hubris, arrogance, not letting the other idea get heard.
The above reminds me of shopping for clothes when I was a teen. My mother would take me to Robert Hall in Hempstead, there were hundreds of suits, I couldn't prefer one to another. I first became a good salesman when it occurred to me that the same problem might be preventing my prospect from making up her mind and getting out her checkbook. There were six graphics on the display wall, all by the same artist. Two were large, they were the same price. I just picked on arbitrarily, said "I think you'll see this best in better light," and carried it to the front window. That's all it took. Separated from the wall, separated from the display group, my customer saw that it was removable, transportable. It became clear to her that it could be hers: should be hers. From the window I carried it to the wrapping counter for her. I had broken its, and her, "suction."
Scientists skeptical of meteorite alien life claim Mar 7 Yahoo, links not working today WASHINGTON – NASA and its top scientists are distancing themselves from a space agency researcher who concludes that he found alien bacterial life in meteorites that were collected many decades ago.
pk adds: a pair of young German scientists examined meteorite fragments in the 1940s and reported finding marks that suggested fossils of bacteria-like things. (Sir Fred Hoyle told the story, repeatedly.) That was the end of their careers.
Things haven't changed since Galileo, human societies all still belong with Lilliput. Universities bear all the earmarks of human hubris, arrogance, not letting the other idea get heard.
Are the long nights and financial burdens of parenting really worth the emotional benefits? New research is saying no: When confronted with the real economic costs of having children, most parents will exaggerate their happiness to validate their choice to have children.
"Many people believe that to be truly fulfilled in life, it is necessary to experience the joys of parenthood. Children are considered an essential source of happiness, satisfaction, and pride," Richard Eibach and Steven Mock of the University of Waterloo, wrote of their study in the March 2 issue of the journal Psychological Science. "However, the idea that parenthood involves substantial emotional rewards appears to be something of a myth."
But, times are changing. Since the 1920s, the economic value of having children has been dropping fast. Children can no longer work on farms or bring home paychecks, and they demand more financial support than ever before, the researchers say.
As children's economic value has plummeted, their perceived emotional value has skyrocketed, becoming, "the economically worthless but emotionally priceless child," as Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer wrote in her book, "Pricing the Priceless Child" (Princeton University Press, 1994).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110307/sc_livescience/momdadkidthemselvesoverthejoyofparenting;_ylt=AsI2FauerUp9zDkRVzQcHhAPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNlcm1scmwyBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwMzA3L21vbWRhZGtpZHRoZW1zZWx2ZXNvdmVydGhlam95b2ZwYXJlbnRpbmcEcG9zAzQEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDbW9tZGFka2lkdGhl
Elephants naturally understand when to lend a helping trunk much as people know when to lend a helping hand, displaying a complex level of cooperation confirmed only in humans and our closest relatives until now.
Elephants are widely regarded as possessing advanced brains, displaying levels of intelligence seen only in humans, dolphins, chimpanzees and others capable of higher forms of thinking. For instance, elephants recognize themselves in mirrors, learning that such reflections are images of themselves and not others, behavior apparently unique to species that show complex empathy and sociality.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110307/sc_livescience/elephantscooperateprovinghowsmarttheyreallyare;_ylt=Ag9kBfEbPHtxZo2bZdlLusEPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNzM3JuYmNqBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwMzA3L2VsZXBoYW50c2Nvb3BlcmF0ZXByb3Zpbmdob3dzbWFydHRoZXlyZWFsbHlhcmUEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNlbGVwaGFudHNjb28-
Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110308/sc_livescience/whynapsmakeyousmarter;_ylt=Av9WkenWXZgoA.ClhJkuU3EPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJycmZtOGc5BGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwMzA4L3doeW5hcHNtYWtleW91c21hcnRlcgRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawN3aHluYXBzbWFrZXk-
Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110308/sc_livescience/whynapsmakeyousmarter;_ylt=Av9WkenWXZgoA.ClhJkuU3EPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJycmZtOGc5BGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTEwMzA4L3doeW5hcHNtYWtleW91c21hcnRlcgRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawN3aHluYXBzbWFrZXk-
Hundreds of disaffected Anglicans left the Church of England to become Roman Catholics on Ash Wednesday, the Christian day of penance.
The day set by the church to welcome converts wishing to join the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a unique grouping created by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglicans left feeling isolated since the Church of England decided in 1992 to ordain women as priests.
seach Yahoo for the URL. I've been meaning to do something on the subject, I'll get to it:
briefly: should a church conform to the culture? or lead the culture to a standard?
The question conflexifies when we know that the church has altered and misrepresented evidence of the early church since the beginning; Specifically: Paul's epistles are far from honest about the role of women in Christianity. Now: do we want to conserve lies? do we want to stick up for choreographed oppression? apparently. Make sure that the religion can't be corrected, dissipate the feedback, repress, forget facts.
Christians pretend to believe in God, but are all atheists. We believe we can get away with anything!
We believe that an omniscient god couldn't possibly correct us! It's bad people who need correction, not the kleptocrats who stole the universe.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Singular TIME
I just wrote in my News item for this 2011 February:
The AI Singularity predicted for thirty-odd years from now may very much change things, I don't doubt that things will change; but will AIs produced by dishonest human institutions be honest as well as smart? What if the AIs learn hypocrisy from us as well as programming? The AIs may keep us around for reasons of their own, they may depend on us for some things no matter how smart they get, but will they be dumb enough to allow us political power? Power over them? I doubt it, I hope not.
I'll be back to explain, offer background, unpublicized facts.
The AI Singularity predicted for thirty-odd years from now may very much change things, I don't doubt that things will change; but will AIs produced by dishonest human institutions be honest as well as smart? What if the AIs learn hypocrisy from us as well as programming? The AIs may keep us around for reasons of their own, they may depend on us for some things no matter how smart they get, but will they be dumb enough to allow us political power? Power over them? I doubt it, I hope not.
I'll be back to explain, offer background, unpublicized facts.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
pk Online
I had five domains, several blogs, thousands of essays and other text files, thousands of images on line. The fed destroyed all that, all but destroyed me.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Cupid Conflict
After the dance Friday night my beloved Jan told me that Liz, her son's girlfriend, had commented on the behavior of Cybil, the woman who'd audaciously plucked me from Jan's side toward the end of the evening to invite me onto the dance floor with her. I'd never seen Cybil before in my life, but we did a foxtrot. Buddy Canova, our favorite one-man-band immediately went into a repetition of the Cupid Shuffle and I kept Cybil on the floor with me to do it too. Others, lots of others, got up also to enjoy this simple, highly syncopated line dance.
On the drive home Jan had showcased my attractiveness to women and this Cybil's chutzpah in snatching me right from under her. The next day Jan told me that Liz had commented further on Cybil's rudeness by reporting that during the Cupid Shuffle Cybil had repeatedly bumped into her.
Ah! I explained the situation, and some core of its significance, to Jan. I repeat it to you here – it has more than one moral.
Background details are necessary:
We were at the American Legion, Lake Placid FL.
Buddy Canova is a hell of a musician, playing and singing with digital support.
My dancing is celebrated at the Legion, and elsewhere, and has been since 1950 or so. I've been teaching line dancing around Highlands Country for three years now, having learned it myself only three years ago.
The Cupid Shuffle is a recording in which the singers call the dance steps. It's four basics to the right, four basics to the left, four kick and replace steps, and four funky twentyish degree turns adding up to 90 degrees: to face a new wall. The singing instructions don't begin till well into the number. I begin the dance as soon as I feel a clear "5, 6, 7, 8 ..." On the recording used at our Thursday night Legion session, I always come out in synch with Cupid, the song leader. When other bands play other recordings, most mixing their own singing and playing with the recording, karaoke style, I don't always come out in synch. Typically I'm the first one up, the dance leader. In that case, once the recorded "to the right" comes along, I loudly "correct" the group: and everyone joins me in synch.
When I thus "lead" a line dance, I take the center of the floor, face the audience, my back to the band, and begin.
Ball room dances are improvised. A bull could cross the dance floor during a number and skilled dancers can avoid both each other and the bull: like mosquites getting missed by your snatching hand. But not line dancing. In line dancing the whole line (or set of lines) have to synchronize: like the Rockettes. A bull crossing a line dance floor will cause havoc.
OK. Liz told Jan that Cybil had been bumping her. Here's what happened. Cybil asked me to dance. We did. Buddy went right into the Cupid Shuffle: for the second time: we'd already had twenty or thirty people up for that same line dance. Cybil and I were in the corner of the floor on the band stand side. Thus: I was already with a partner. There was no time for me to take the center of the floor. So Cybil and I merely began. Others arrived. But they didn't follow me (and Cybil): and they didn't coordinate with the wall rotation our dancing had already established.
Buddy's Cupid is one regularly out of synch with the dance if begun at his 5, 6, 7, 8. Buddy is a musician, not a dancer. He isn't coordinated with a choreographer, or a dance director. When Cupid began his "to the right," I loudly corrected everyone else's synch with my dancing, except that the others adjusted to my count but still stayed oriented to a wall not my wall.
I'm the first dancer on the floor. They should be oriented to my wall. The Christians should coordinate with the already established Jews, not the Jews adapt to the newcomer Christians. If MacArthur is marching the troops, and Rommel arrives with his troops on the same field, Rommel should coordinate with MacArthur, not just let the troops bump into each other: unless you want the practice to be the war.The last time I was in Vermont the modesty rule for the swimming hole was very simple: whoever got there first set the rule: nude, or bathing suits. If the girl and her data are at the swiming hole first thing in the morning, and some more guys arrive, they have to don suits. If the guys were there first and then the couple arrive, it's skinny hour. When I'm dancing the Shuffle facing the north wall, others arriving should adopt the same orientation, turning west with me.
The Big Bangers say that the universe began with a Singularity. There was nothing, infinite, eternal nothing. Then here was a Singularity. It happened. It could happen again. Not likely. But then the Singularity itself wasn't likely. Just possible. And given enough possibility, it will happen. So: I've enjoyed the thought for decades, What if: a new Singularity occurs, spontaneously, instantly, in the enormous expanse of empty space between the proton and the electron of a hydrogen atom in your elbow? Talk about a tumor! If that Singularity was like ours it would expand at its speed of light, very fast. That universe could rip this universe up pretty well. Or: that universe could, in time, obliterate this universe. Or: that universe could be absorbed by this universe.
Save for a separate meditation the dynamics of this universe being matter and the new universe being something like anti-matter ... and so forth. It could be a real mess. The old god could eat the new god, the new god could eat the old god ... or, after the new god had eaten the old god, the old devil could reach out and gobble the new god ... Physics could change. But, if there are still people, though their religion would change, it might not in any way reflect what actually happened!
On the dance floor, as elsewhere, I'm a natural leader. But kleptocrats hate natural leaders. Socrates got pressed to commit suicide, Jesus got arrested, got Rome's version of a fair trial, got scourged, crucified. And the people who stood with their thumb in their ass then join the priesthood and say they represent Jesus. Boy, I can't wait till a real Judgment where we hear what God and Jesus really say: if we let them get a word in.
Buddy's a musician. Music is counting in large part, so's dance. Buddy should know the dance steps and time his version so that "5, 6, 7, 8" will mesh with "to the right, to the right." Buddy should see me on the floor, and give me time to get to the center, where I'll be most visible: or, take me aside and say, "Paul, let someone else lead this one: you led the last one. You're always leading them. Take five."
I resist the temptation to corner the Legion's boss and suggest that he let me consult with his bands on coordinating music and dancing. In West Side Story, in any stage production, music and dance, have to coordinate. Leonard Bernstein has to be able to talk to and listen to Jerome Robbins. A director has to make them both behave (as a producer makes a director behave, and bankers make the producer behave). Lou is a musician, but I doubt that his training is very deep. He doesn't strike me as knowing the dances, or caring. The other musicians he hires screw up all the time, get their rhythms wrong, show that They Can't Count! without any correction from him, at least not any that's visible to me. I resist because I am not a member, don't want to become a member, can't afford the dues, but don't want to loose my main dancing venue. If Lou sees that I'm not a member I may get 86'd right there: lose my mine of alternate dance partners.
Picture this pacifist dancer dancing before an American Legion mural of war: ships burning, tanks burning, oil slicks aflame! Where else am I supposed to go? If my fellow Americans had simple murdered me the first time I complained about having to go to school, then the bomb droppers could do whatever they want to the Cupid Shuffle. They don't deserve to have me to coordinate them.
There isn't enough wealth in the history of the world to compensate me for what's already been done to me. And why would I get a penny's compensation before Jesus got compensated? or Socrates? or Crazy Horse? or John Sutter?
I post this: then rewrite it, from scratch: better, in better order.
On the drive home Jan had showcased my attractiveness to women and this Cybil's chutzpah in snatching me right from under her. The next day Jan told me that Liz had commented further on Cybil's rudeness by reporting that during the Cupid Shuffle Cybil had repeatedly bumped into her.
Ah! I explained the situation, and some core of its significance, to Jan. I repeat it to you here – it has more than one moral.
Background details are necessary:
We were at the American Legion, Lake Placid FL.
Buddy Canova is a hell of a musician, playing and singing with digital support.
My dancing is celebrated at the Legion, and elsewhere, and has been since 1950 or so. I've been teaching line dancing around Highlands Country for three years now, having learned it myself only three years ago.
The Cupid Shuffle is a recording in which the singers call the dance steps. It's four basics to the right, four basics to the left, four kick and replace steps, and four funky twentyish degree turns adding up to 90 degrees: to face a new wall. The singing instructions don't begin till well into the number. I begin the dance as soon as I feel a clear "5, 6, 7, 8 ..." On the recording used at our Thursday night Legion session, I always come out in synch with Cupid, the song leader. When other bands play other recordings, most mixing their own singing and playing with the recording, karaoke style, I don't always come out in synch. Typically I'm the first one up, the dance leader. In that case, once the recorded "to the right" comes along, I loudly "correct" the group: and everyone joins me in synch.
When I thus "lead" a line dance, I take the center of the floor, face the audience, my back to the band, and begin.
Ball room dances are improvised. A bull could cross the dance floor during a number and skilled dancers can avoid both each other and the bull: like mosquites getting missed by your snatching hand. But not line dancing. In line dancing the whole line (or set of lines) have to synchronize: like the Rockettes. A bull crossing a line dance floor will cause havoc.
OK. Liz told Jan that Cybil had been bumping her. Here's what happened. Cybil asked me to dance. We did. Buddy went right into the Cupid Shuffle: for the second time: we'd already had twenty or thirty people up for that same line dance. Cybil and I were in the corner of the floor on the band stand side. Thus: I was already with a partner. There was no time for me to take the center of the floor. So Cybil and I merely began. Others arrived. But they didn't follow me (and Cybil): and they didn't coordinate with the wall rotation our dancing had already established.
Buddy's Cupid is one regularly out of synch with the dance if begun at his 5, 6, 7, 8. Buddy is a musician, not a dancer. He isn't coordinated with a choreographer, or a dance director. When Cupid began his "to the right," I loudly corrected everyone else's synch with my dancing, except that the others adjusted to my count but still stayed oriented to a wall not my wall.
I'm the first dancer on the floor. They should be oriented to my wall. The Christians should coordinate with the already established Jews, not the Jews adapt to the newcomer Christians. If MacArthur is marching the troops, and Rommel arrives with his troops on the same field, Rommel should coordinate with MacArthur, not just let the troops bump into each other: unless you want the practice to be the war.The last time I was in Vermont the modesty rule for the swimming hole was very simple: whoever got there first set the rule: nude, or bathing suits. If the girl and her data are at the swiming hole first thing in the morning, and some more guys arrive, they have to don suits. If the guys were there first and then the couple arrive, it's skinny hour. When I'm dancing the Shuffle facing the north wall, others arriving should adopt the same orientation, turning west with me.
The Big Bangers say that the universe began with a Singularity. There was nothing, infinite, eternal nothing. Then here was a Singularity. It happened. It could happen again. Not likely. But then the Singularity itself wasn't likely. Just possible. And given enough possibility, it will happen. So: I've enjoyed the thought for decades, What if: a new Singularity occurs, spontaneously, instantly, in the enormous expanse of empty space between the proton and the electron of a hydrogen atom in your elbow? Talk about a tumor! If that Singularity was like ours it would expand at its speed of light, very fast. That universe could rip this universe up pretty well. Or: that universe could, in time, obliterate this universe. Or: that universe could be absorbed by this universe.
Save for a separate meditation the dynamics of this universe being matter and the new universe being something like anti-matter ... and so forth. It could be a real mess. The old god could eat the new god, the new god could eat the old god ... or, after the new god had eaten the old god, the old devil could reach out and gobble the new god ... Physics could change. But, if there are still people, though their religion would change, it might not in any way reflect what actually happened!
On the dance floor, as elsewhere, I'm a natural leader. But kleptocrats hate natural leaders. Socrates got pressed to commit suicide, Jesus got arrested, got Rome's version of a fair trial, got scourged, crucified. And the people who stood with their thumb in their ass then join the priesthood and say they represent Jesus. Boy, I can't wait till a real Judgment where we hear what God and Jesus really say: if we let them get a word in.
Buddy's a musician. Music is counting in large part, so's dance. Buddy should know the dance steps and time his version so that "5, 6, 7, 8" will mesh with "to the right, to the right." Buddy should see me on the floor, and give me time to get to the center, where I'll be most visible: or, take me aside and say, "Paul, let someone else lead this one: you led the last one. You're always leading them. Take five."
I resist the temptation to corner the Legion's boss and suggest that he let me consult with his bands on coordinating music and dancing. In West Side Story, in any stage production, music and dance, have to coordinate. Leonard Bernstein has to be able to talk to and listen to Jerome Robbins. A director has to make them both behave (as a producer makes a director behave, and bankers make the producer behave). Lou is a musician, but I doubt that his training is very deep. He doesn't strike me as knowing the dances, or caring. The other musicians he hires screw up all the time, get their rhythms wrong, show that They Can't Count! without any correction from him, at least not any that's visible to me. I resist because I am not a member, don't want to become a member, can't afford the dues, but don't want to loose my main dancing venue. If Lou sees that I'm not a member I may get 86'd right there: lose my mine of alternate dance partners.
Picture this pacifist dancer dancing before an American Legion mural of war: ships burning, tanks burning, oil slicks aflame! Where else am I supposed to go? If my fellow Americans had simple murdered me the first time I complained about having to go to school, then the bomb droppers could do whatever they want to the Cupid Shuffle. They don't deserve to have me to coordinate them.
There isn't enough wealth in the history of the world to compensate me for what's already been done to me. And why would I get a penny's compensation before Jesus got compensated? or Socrates? or Crazy Horse? or John Sutter?
I post this: then rewrite it, from scratch: better, in better order.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Authority: Gen / Degen
Generate / Degenerate
The language group says that "two and two is four." Any speaker of the language, teaching the language to a newbie or to a foreigner, has authority. In such a case the infant never knows better than the adult.
The case naturally and legitimately generates authority.
The situation is different where a human group does not know something for sure, but must make decisions. It's guessing. If I am crossing the Sinai I may guess that I'll reach my destination by night fall. If I and my brother are crossing the Sinai, he may guess that we will not reach our destination by nightfall. (My wife may think that we won't reach it by tomorrow night fall either, his wife may think that we'll arrive in an hour, but both women know to keep silent while we're speculating. Here we have no authority, or contested authority, or a default of male authority. Maybe my brother is older, maybe he has provisional authority.)
If brother is wrong, natural authority will transfer to me. If I am wrong, natural authority will transfer to our wives: or to one of our daughters, or one of our sons.
Human experience suggests a hierarchy. Human behavior may try to alter the natural hierarchy: men see women coming, and knock them back.
In such circumstances authority degenerates, but may yet hold its place by accumulated (or stolen) power.
The peasant saw that the priest could spew magical gibberish better than he, the peasant. So the Church acquired authority. The Church said that man owns the earth, by God's authority, that man is the center of creation, that the earth is the center of the universe. The Church went further: it said that the earth is the only physical center in the physical universe.
But Galileo saw moons around Jupiter. Authority split. Galileo's observation was based on experience: he saw it. The Church's position was based on authority, degenerated authority: they said it. So, as always happens in groups so large that they're disconnected form individual's experiences, authority and evidence came into conflict: conflict direct and open.
It's continued since: by simple experience one might think that bombing gooks was killing them. But no: state authority says that raining terror is helping them: is good: Christian, if you will. Of course the free press, which wants Fortune 500 advertising, backs authority. And we have an utterly dishonest public: with no rational hope of survival.
Never mind God's punishment: neither I nor my brother nor my wife nor my brother's wife, nor our daughters, nor our sons, know how to cross a desert in a group larger than one: not once a false state has knocked down a false church.
I'd be for starting over: if we could have a habitable biosphere left. But no: it's too late. In founding FLEX (see InfoAll) I (following suit with God, Christ) offered a last chance. The state-coerced public ignored it, stole and perverted it.
Gifts stolen by knocking Santa Claus down won't satisfy enduringly.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Politics
pk is the deschooler. With Illich dead, pk inherits. pk earned what he inherits.
Deschooling is the social stance which opposes compulsory ritual. The public got out from under the Church's compulsions; now it's past time that Americans, and the rest of the world, get out from under the alpha morons who run things: tell the state and the school board, and the draft board, to take a hike: indeed, just to ignore the state and the school board. If absolutely no one (who didn't actually want to) paid taxes, if people boycotted the products and services of corporations who paid taxes, and who lean on the alpha morons to guide them what to do with the taxes, who to bomb, the state would be bankrupted by the effort of putting everyone in jail: the jail walls would decay: and the schools would be inhabited by squatters, by people not compelled to be there: students and their state-paid guards, the teachers, the administrators.
So. You see: I've taken a step beyond deschooling. Or rather, deschooling represents (the most outspoken) part of my general anarchism: the belief that the state has no legitimate function: it doesn't matter which state. There's an irony there: pk is the guy who says that
There are no political solutions to our problems.
So it sounds like my politics is no politics. But it ain't true. No politics is the condition the species was born into. Everything being supervised by politicians, who wield not understanding, but power, is recent, factitious, artificial: not natural!
Anyway, Knatz.com (and all my domains, with their thousands of essays and articles and stories) had a section on Politics (in Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / NoHier /). I need to recreate that material on line, in a blog, where it should be archived regardless of whether I can pay to again host Knatz.com. I'll begin putting the materials into a vacant chronological spot. I was put in jail October 2006. 2006 October 13 onward for fifteen months is open. November will do temporarily: perhaps I should should all Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / materials not already archived to blogs into that temporal space: / Society / Social Epistemology, / Society / Survival /, and the rest of / Society / NoHier /.
A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
I'll say the same thing about lots of things:
A society is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
An institution is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
A church, a school, a university is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
Oh, Ben, for shame! For shame, pk, for repeating his solicism: where's the gender disclaimer?
An anything is never any better than the stupidest woman connected with it.
Deschooling is the social stance which opposes compulsory ritual. The public got out from under the Church's compulsions; now it's past time that Americans, and the rest of the world, get out from under the alpha morons who run things: tell the state and the school board, and the draft board, to take a hike: indeed, just to ignore the state and the school board. If absolutely no one (who didn't actually want to) paid taxes, if people boycotted the products and services of corporations who paid taxes, and who lean on the alpha morons to guide them what to do with the taxes, who to bomb, the state would be bankrupted by the effort of putting everyone in jail: the jail walls would decay: and the schools would be inhabited by squatters, by people not compelled to be there: students and their state-paid guards, the teachers, the administrators.
So. You see: I've taken a step beyond deschooling. Or rather, deschooling represents (the most outspoken) part of my general anarchism: the belief that the state has no legitimate function: it doesn't matter which state. There's an irony there: pk is the guy who says that
There are no political solutions to our problems.
So it sounds like my politics is no politics. But it ain't true. No politics is the condition the species was born into. Everything being supervised by politicians, who wield not understanding, but power, is recent, factitious, artificial: not natural!
Anyway, Knatz.com (and all my domains, with their thousands of essays and articles and stories) had a section on Politics (in Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / NoHier /). I need to recreate that material on line, in a blog, where it should be archived regardless of whether I can pay to again host Knatz.com. I'll begin putting the materials into a vacant chronological spot. I was put in jail October 2006. 2006 October 13 onward for fifteen months is open. November will do temporarily: perhaps I should should all Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / materials not already archived to blogs into that temporal space: / Society / Social Epistemology, / Society / Survival /, and the rest of / Society / NoHier /.
A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
Ben Hecht
Ben was a smart cookie, a great writer, a genuine wit. Could his statement be literally true? I don't see how; but it's delicious.I'll say the same thing about lots of things:
A society is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
An institution is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
A church, a school, a university is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
Oh, Ben, for shame! For shame, pk, for repeating his solicism: where's the gender disclaimer?
An anything is never any better than the stupidest woman connected with it.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Religious Mania
The woman's behind was plush. Her buttocks flexed like a champion horse as she strode the Catskills street. A slightly more natural pace might have signaled the tear in her shorts less. As it was, every step forced shining panty silk, and a good crest of gluteus maximus, into the breach. Her bottom winked at the world. I had tried to get my mouth near her ear to whisper, "Miss, you're pants are ripped," but even my runner's stride made discretion impossible. After a couple such attempts I stood my ground and watched her ass send its signals over diminishing distance. "She knows," I told myself: that's why she wouldn't pause to hear what I was telling her. It wasn't that she was being rude, it wasn't that she didn't hear me; she knows. She's fleeing: and thereby broadcasting her embarrassment the more. Female flesh.
I've remembered her distress since then not because her rump was classic so much as because her humiliation at the world seeing her underwear – and the health of what it covered, was so pronounced. She reminds me of me. Her manic modesty reminds me of my vain imitation of Christ: indeed it reminds me of Jesus' own passion: and of the publicity-conscious contortions of many a religious nut.
Mania: obsessive activity to no visible result. It's religious when the disconnection between action and result becomes manifest: the shaman praying over the cholera victim, the congregation praying for Hitler to be kind: Jesus going to the cross as a magical ritual of redemption for mankind: pk's paroxysms to warn his fellow man against state power. The state isn't saving us; it's making life impossible.
The woman with her heaving ass fled my attempts to tell her of her display. Mel Gibson showed a Hollywood Jesus getting scourged, persecuted, crucified – and even his own disciples denied they had anything to do with it. I protested the school silencing my alarms, and my family, the whole society, told me, "Shut up, Go back to school (the same school that doesn't listen, won't learn), Never mind that it's counter-intelligent, subversive of survival: Submission is the path to making money.
"Survival is not our object; money is."
If the woman had slowed down, she might have gotten back to her car without the entire population noticing her ass. For two thousand years the whole world has had Jesus-on-the-cross shoved in their eye. A lot of good it has done. Where's the salvation? Where's God's kingdom? Can God really still love us? when we haven't learned a thing?
The "holy man" in India standing on one leg, living on a pole, sticking needles through his balls ... What's transformed? Did spring come? Sure: but then winter followed. Did it rain? Yes: but then it got dry. People are the same: only there's billions more of us: all the more addicted to submission before the state.
Before 1870 we all had to bow down before the war lord, but we didn't all have to go to school: where teachers mindlessly repeat rituals of the state – I pledge the legions of the flag – never mind the farm chores.
Everything I've said to the public since junior high has just gotten me in trouble. The Temple would have left Jesus alone if he'd just practiced the same hollow hypocrisy the priests were already master of. No: it was Jesus actually cutting close to the bone that riled them, stirred them till the rabbis actually got the secular power, the Roman governor – according to the stories, to defy Roman laws to persecute the Jewish savior for them.
Today the United States dispenses with promises of spiritual salvation. It's claims are secular (Rome's were both sacred and secular). The US claims freedom: while abrogating it. It promises, it pretends to guarantee, freedom of speech.
How can I have freedom of speech and simultaneously be compelled to be in school x hours a day y hours a week? Wouldn't freedom of speech mean that the state couldn't interfere not only with my ability to speak but with what I said and where and when I said it?
The condemned can scream all he wants – down in the dungeon, where no one can hear.
But even if such impossibilities were possible: what good is freedom of speech when no one understands what's said or written? by key people? I tried to explicate Jesus. Rots of ruck. I tried to show that our reading of Shakespeare missed much of the potential. Uh uh, the professors were impervious. And the state backs the egregious experts.
So I tried to tell the public. I offered digital librarianship, an internet, that the public could have protected from the state. Major institutions blinked: IBM, Ma Bell, TIMELife. Might as well try to train chickens to juggle.
But, me – like the guy standing on one leg, like the girl jiggling full stride, me, still trying, four decades later, the US put me in jail! for what I'd written! They were embarrassed that I hadn't done anything. But that didn't stop them. And the media? Simply reported my satire by rote: as extortion: and forgot about it.
Jesus was convicted of blasphemy – translated as insurrection! I was convicted of extortion. Mocking my rapists is extortion!
Pad the Alarm
People who've padded the alarm so it can't be heard, who've drugged the watchman, replaced humans with robots ... can't be saved. People who stand by while their saviors get poleaxed sure don't deserve to be.
Understand: the Romans weren't atheists: they believed in Jupiter, and Mars: and Caesar. But the pope who put a contract out on Martin Luther, he had to be an atheist. He had to have disbelieved that God would judge! He had to have believed that the Church would do the judging, that he'd be exempt from judgment, that God would back the Church: a rotten church.
My contemporaries don't believe in God. Or, like the Pope, they believe that God won't hold the US to any standards the US doesn't volunteer to be held accountable to.
Atheism. Lawlessness.
(And never mind God: use Truth as a synonym!)
Back in her car, I hope that woman drove home safely, got changed into other pants without accident. That tush was still hers, ripped pants or whole: not quite all is evil in the world.
St Peter denied Jesus once he was arrested, getting mistreated by official power. Maybe he should have been crucified upside down for that. But the story tells it that he was crucified upside down for trying to tell people they could be saved. By the time he was crucified upside down, might he have learned that the state kind of didn't cooperate?
Every day I encounter people who don't have a clue who I am: despite my articulateness, despite my dozens of short stories, three novel attempts, thousands of essays, my public trail of offering community data bases, social networking, cybernetic alternatives to school, to government, to the Fortune 500 ... despite my having been jailed and censored!
That woman shouldn't have ignored my message. She'd have been less embarrassed had she slowed down, walked normally. Now I'm glad that my ministry was received no better than Jesus'. My lifelong behavior is manic: trying to save people even while being tormented for it. It's religious: totally removed from reason. I don't learn from my experience, so you don't have to learn from yours. That's mania, religious mania.
It's in vain. And I'm glad. Hooray for futility.
Jesus' suffering was over in a day. Mine too is evanescent. I'm seventy-two, I'll be gone soon. But human suffering is just getting a-going.
2011 06 23 Note the comment. Thanks, Buddy, glad to help, wish I could help more: also wish I'd gotten some help, a lot of help. Meantime though, please know that my PKnatz is gathering my dozen blogs into one coordinated place, and recreated my fed-destroyed domains.
related post at pKnatz blog
I've remembered her distress since then not because her rump was classic so much as because her humiliation at the world seeing her underwear – and the health of what it covered, was so pronounced. She reminds me of me. Her manic modesty reminds me of my vain imitation of Christ: indeed it reminds me of Jesus' own passion: and of the publicity-conscious contortions of many a religious nut.
Mania: obsessive activity to no visible result. It's religious when the disconnection between action and result becomes manifest: the shaman praying over the cholera victim, the congregation praying for Hitler to be kind: Jesus going to the cross as a magical ritual of redemption for mankind: pk's paroxysms to warn his fellow man against state power. The state isn't saving us; it's making life impossible.
The woman with her heaving ass fled my attempts to tell her of her display. Mel Gibson showed a Hollywood Jesus getting scourged, persecuted, crucified – and even his own disciples denied they had anything to do with it. I protested the school silencing my alarms, and my family, the whole society, told me, "Shut up, Go back to school (the same school that doesn't listen, won't learn), Never mind that it's counter-intelligent, subversive of survival: Submission is the path to making money.
"Survival is not our object; money is."
Survival is not our object;
money is.
money is.
If the woman had slowed down, she might have gotten back to her car without the entire population noticing her ass. For two thousand years the whole world has had Jesus-on-the-cross shoved in their eye. A lot of good it has done. Where's the salvation? Where's God's kingdom? Can God really still love us? when we haven't learned a thing?
The "holy man" in India standing on one leg, living on a pole, sticking needles through his balls ... What's transformed? Did spring come? Sure: but then winter followed. Did it rain? Yes: but then it got dry. People are the same: only there's billions more of us: all the more addicted to submission before the state.
Before 1870 we all had to bow down before the war lord, but we didn't all have to go to school: where teachers mindlessly repeat rituals of the state – I pledge the legions of the flag – never mind the farm chores.
Everything I've said to the public since junior high has just gotten me in trouble. The Temple would have left Jesus alone if he'd just practiced the same hollow hypocrisy the priests were already master of. No: it was Jesus actually cutting close to the bone that riled them, stirred them till the rabbis actually got the secular power, the Roman governor – according to the stories, to defy Roman laws to persecute the Jewish savior for them.
Today the United States dispenses with promises of spiritual salvation. It's claims are secular (Rome's were both sacred and secular). The US claims freedom: while abrogating it. It promises, it pretends to guarantee, freedom of speech.
How can I have freedom of speech and simultaneously be compelled to be in school x hours a day y hours a week? Wouldn't freedom of speech mean that the state couldn't interfere not only with my ability to speak but with what I said and where and when I said it?
The condemned can scream all he wants – down in the dungeon, where no one can hear.
But even if such impossibilities were possible: what good is freedom of speech when no one understands what's said or written? by key people? I tried to explicate Jesus. Rots of ruck. I tried to show that our reading of Shakespeare missed much of the potential. Uh uh, the professors were impervious. And the state backs the egregious experts.
So I tried to tell the public. I offered digital librarianship, an internet, that the public could have protected from the state. Major institutions blinked: IBM, Ma Bell, TIMELife. Might as well try to train chickens to juggle.
But, me – like the guy standing on one leg, like the girl jiggling full stride, me, still trying, four decades later, the US put me in jail! for what I'd written! They were embarrassed that I hadn't done anything. But that didn't stop them. And the media? Simply reported my satire by rote: as extortion: and forgot about it.
Jesus was convicted of blasphemy – translated as insurrection! I was convicted of extortion. Mocking my rapists is extortion!
Pad the Alarm
People who've padded the alarm so it can't be heard, who've drugged the watchman, replaced humans with robots ... can't be saved. People who stand by while their saviors get poleaxed sure don't deserve to be.
Understand: the Romans weren't atheists: they believed in Jupiter, and Mars: and Caesar. But the pope who put a contract out on Martin Luther, he had to be an atheist. He had to have disbelieved that God would judge! He had to have believed that the Church would do the judging, that he'd be exempt from judgment, that God would back the Church: a rotten church.
My contemporaries don't believe in God. Or, like the Pope, they believe that God won't hold the US to any standards the US doesn't volunteer to be held accountable to.
Atheism. Lawlessness.
(And never mind God: use Truth as a synonym!)
Back in her car, I hope that woman drove home safely, got changed into other pants without accident. That tush was still hers, ripped pants or whole: not quite all is evil in the world.
St Peter denied Jesus once he was arrested, getting mistreated by official power. Maybe he should have been crucified upside down for that. But the story tells it that he was crucified upside down for trying to tell people they could be saved. By the time he was crucified upside down, might he have learned that the state kind of didn't cooperate?
Every day I encounter people who don't have a clue who I am: despite my articulateness, despite my dozens of short stories, three novel attempts, thousands of essays, my public trail of offering community data bases, social networking, cybernetic alternatives to school, to government, to the Fortune 500 ... despite my having been jailed and censored!
That woman shouldn't have ignored my message. She'd have been less embarrassed had she slowed down, walked normally. Now I'm glad that my ministry was received no better than Jesus'. My lifelong behavior is manic: trying to save people even while being tormented for it. It's religious: totally removed from reason. I don't learn from my experience, so you don't have to learn from yours. That's mania, religious mania.
It's in vain. And I'm glad. Hooray for futility.
Jesus' suffering was over in a day. Mine too is evanescent. I'm seventy-two, I'll be gone soon. But human suffering is just getting a-going.
2011 06 23 Note the comment. Thanks, Buddy, glad to help, wish I could help more: also wish I'd gotten some help, a lot of help. Meantime though, please know that my PKnatz is gathering my dozen blogs into one coordinated place, and recreated my fed-destroyed domains.
related post at pKnatz blog
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
In Memoriam
News: Country music singer Doc Williams, who left coal mining as a teen to play in beer gardens and became a star radio act with his wife on Jamboree USA, has died. He was 96.
In Memoriam
When ever an asset to the culture dies, those who remember shim "should" tell what they remember. I loved Doc Watson and here I'll tell of a close encounter with him. In 1957 or '58 my buddy and I agreed to run the Si Como No Mexcian artifact gallery on MacDougal Street for the owner while he went to Mexico to gather more inventory. Al sold original pre-Columbian pottery picked up from the ground around the pyramids. He also carried Mexican-crafted sandals, tops, pants ... His stock was damn low, we wouldn't have much to sell, but hell, it would keep me from drinking beer in the White Horse every night. Supposedly I was working: studying, taking an extra lit class in summer school: neat: Columbia co-ed for a change.
Next door was an idle basement which would soon be converted into the Gas Light. Bob Dylan would half-live there for the next several years. Upstairs next door was the Caricature coffee house. Next over, going toward Bleeker, was a string music shop: guitars, mandolins, zithers, banjo ... Sales and repairs. My buddy Alan reported being in there when some blind guy was shown a twelve string guitar. "Gee, I've never played a twelve string," the blind guy said. They handed him the axe. Right off, he blew the roof off the place. First try, sounded more like Leadbelly than not.
Doc Watson. That's right.
I didn't see it, but I almost saw it. I was only a few dozen feet away, in the Si Como No.
PS. Distinguish between Al the store owner and Al my buddy. Esquire had a great full page color pick of Al the store owner that year: Al sitting with a guitar at the fountain in Washington Square. 1958 hippy beatnik: right on Woody Guthrie's turf.
More News: Willie Mays Aikens, who went from World Series star to federal prison inmate, has been hired by the Kansas City Royals as a minor league coach.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110201/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bba_royals_aikens;_ylt=AkA4lfd3bb7YNjKfHmQtv.QLMxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJtamthYWUyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjAxL2JiYV9yb3lhbHNfYWlrZW5zBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDcm95YWxzaGlyZXdp
I read this line because I knew Willie Aikens at Jesup fed jail, played chess against him. I was one of the best players, Willie was a bit better (at least I never beat him, though I'd regularly get a pawn up, then fade). He regularly got trounced by a guy called "Wall Street." I never played Wall Street, arrogant bastard. I went a step out of my way to befriend Willie because I though he trounced Wall Street regularly. Apparently it was the other way around.
I'm glad I was there no longer than I was: but I also would have liked to have strengthened my game to the point where I'd humiliate Wall Street. Then again, if I got better, so too could have he: he was younger. They were all younger, by quite a bit.
In Memoriam
When ever an asset to the culture dies, those who remember shim "should" tell what they remember. I loved Doc Watson and here I'll tell of a close encounter with him. In 1957 or '58 my buddy and I agreed to run the Si Como No Mexcian artifact gallery on MacDougal Street for the owner while he went to Mexico to gather more inventory. Al sold original pre-Columbian pottery picked up from the ground around the pyramids. He also carried Mexican-crafted sandals, tops, pants ... His stock was damn low, we wouldn't have much to sell, but hell, it would keep me from drinking beer in the White Horse every night. Supposedly I was working: studying, taking an extra lit class in summer school: neat: Columbia co-ed for a change.
Next door was an idle basement which would soon be converted into the Gas Light. Bob Dylan would half-live there for the next several years. Upstairs next door was the Caricature coffee house. Next over, going toward Bleeker, was a string music shop: guitars, mandolins, zithers, banjo ... Sales and repairs. My buddy Alan reported being in there when some blind guy was shown a twelve string guitar. "Gee, I've never played a twelve string," the blind guy said. They handed him the axe. Right off, he blew the roof off the place. First try, sounded more like Leadbelly than not.
Doc Watson. That's right.
I didn't see it, but I almost saw it. I was only a few dozen feet away, in the Si Como No.
PS. Distinguish between Al the store owner and Al my buddy. Esquire had a great full page color pick of Al the store owner that year: Al sitting with a guitar at the fountain in Washington Square. 1958 hippy beatnik: right on Woody Guthrie's turf.
More News: Willie Mays Aikens, who went from World Series star to federal prison inmate, has been hired by the Kansas City Royals as a minor league coach.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110201/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bba_royals_aikens;_ylt=AkA4lfd3bb7YNjKfHmQtv.QLMxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJtamthYWUyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjAxL2JiYV9yb3lhbHNfYWlrZW5zBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDcm95YWxzaGlyZXdp
I read this line because I knew Willie Aikens at Jesup fed jail, played chess against him. I was one of the best players, Willie was a bit better (at least I never beat him, though I'd regularly get a pawn up, then fade). He regularly got trounced by a guy called "Wall Street." I never played Wall Street, arrogant bastard. I went a step out of my way to befriend Willie because I though he trounced Wall Street regularly. Apparently it was the other way around.
I'm glad I was there no longer than I was: but I also would have liked to have strengthened my game to the point where I'd humiliate Wall Street. Then again, if I got better, so too could have he: he was younger. They were all younger, by quite a bit.
News
Last month I initiated a News post. Now it's February, so I commence a fresh one:
Leonardo
A male apprentice, longtime companion and possible lover of Leonardo da Vinci was the main influence and a model for the "Mona Lisa" painting, an Italian researcher said Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110202/ap_en_ot/eu_italy_mona_lisa;_ylt=AmtfpHTjxxdXOp8qqxwTiWBxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJqYXZoMjQzBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjAyL2V1X2l0YWx5X21vbmFfbGlzYQRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbWFsZW1vZGVsYmVo
VOC
You've probably heard the term VOC, which stands for volatile organic compounds. VOCs are chemicals that give off gas from certain materials and liquids. These chemicals hang around our homes, sometimes for years, polluting the indoor air and causing adverse health effects. VOCs are one of the main reasons that indoor air is often 200 times more polluted than the outdoor air.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20110202/ts_usnews/5waystofreeyourhomeofdangerouschemicals;_ylt=Atkp37VRDL5YoqWfDDdFlBIPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNncGFnOW01BGFzc2V0A3VzbmV3cy8yMDExMDIwMi81d2F5c3RvZnJlZXlvdXJob21lb2ZkYW5nZXJvdXNjaGVtaWNhbHMEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNmdWxsbmJzcHN0b3I-
Oysters
By averaging the loss among all regions, the researchers came up with an estimate that 85 percent of oyster reef ecosystems have been lost, but said that figure was likely low because some areas lacked historical records for comparison.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110203/sc_afp/environmentusfoodoceans;_ylt=Ap0T6iE_fq31o6upNnpscFIPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJsc2NnbnZpBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIwMy9lbnZpcm9ubWVudHVzZm9vZG9jZWFucwRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawNveXN0ZXJzZGlzYXA-
CO2
The Mongol invasion of Asia in the 1200s took enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset a year's worth of the world's gasoline demand today, according to a new study. But even Genghis Khan couldn't create more than a blip in atmospheric carbon compared to the overwhelming effect of agriculture.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110208/sc_livescience/mongolinvasionin1200salteredcarbondioxidelevels
Rape, Egypt, Lara Logan
Sexual harassment of women is an all-too-common occurrence on the streets of Cairo. But many women noted a complete absence of it in the early days of protests in Tahrir Square, where demonstrators made a point of trying to create a microcosm of the society without many of Egypt's social ills.
However, in the final days, and especially after the battles with pro-Mubarak gangs who attacked the protesters in Tahrir, women noticed sexual assault had returned to the square. On the day Mubarak fell, women reported being groped by the rowdy crowds. One witness saw a woman slap a man after he touched her. The man was then passed down a line of people who all slapped him and reprimanded him.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110215/ap_en_ot/us_tv_lara_logan_attack;_ylt=AjCl7R6F6KixeeWxccUMLAlxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJvam8xc2VnBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjE1L3VzX3R2X2xhcmFfbG9nYW5fYXR0YWNrBGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNjYnNuZXdzbG9nYW4-
Poisoned Oaks
Auburn: Oak trees poisoned at historic site
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_on_sp_ot/auburn_trees_poisoned;_ylt=AoFgKaBgummvYTPq4XoT_LcLMxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJpOGwzdTA2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjE3L2F1YnVybl90cmVlc19wb2lzb25lZARwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawNhdWJ1cm5vYWt0cmU-
I include this news item to declare that Knatz.com had a fair amount of material on differing attitudes toward trees in different times, places, cultures. The oak was especially revered: along with mistletoe, a common parasite of oaks.
pk wishes to emphasize: the ancient Teutons punished harm to trees severely. One convicted of cutting the bark of an oak had his belly button removed and tacked to the injured oak. The criminal was then driven around the tree in circles as his intestines were pulled from his guts by his passage. The trees wound was therefore bound by the attacker's flesh.
I love a number of aspects of Teutonic justice.
Little Replaces Big
"Humans have always fished. Even our ancestors have fished. We are just much much better at it now," said UBC scientist Reg Watson.
Examining the 2006 numbers, 76 million tons of commercial seafood were reported, meaning about "seven trillion individuals were killed and consumed by us or our livestock," said Watson.
Watson said fishing efforts have been growing over the past several decades, reaching a collective point of 1.7 billion watts, or 22.6 million horsepower, worldwide that year.
In terms of energy use, that would amount to 90 miles (150 kilometers) of "Corvettes bumper to bumper with their engines revving," he said.
"It looks like we are fishing harder for the same or less result and this has to tell us something about the oceans' health. We may in fact have hit peak fish at the same time we are hitting peak oil."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110218/sc_afp/environmentoceansfish;_ylt=Ap2GMjghMUgICjnSnQahPlMPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJqZWQzY2ozBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIxOC9lbnZpcm9ubWVudG9jZWFuc2Zpc2gEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZmV3ZXJiaWdmaXNo
pk adds: civilization formed a similar pattern on the land masses. Gatherer/hunters archeo-anthropologists tell us were bigger, stronger, healthier, had better teeth than the incipient farmers but were fewer. In conflict the toothless runt farmers beat the tiny team of better athletes. Numbers rule. So soon there was an earth full of spastic midgets with bad teeth: us: or at least us till very recently. Currently we're getting bigger again, healthier again, have dentistry even as we lose our teeth. But it's artificial, temporary, can't last.
The AI Singularity predicted for thirty-odd years from now may very much change things, I don't doubt that things will change; but will AIs produced by dishonest human institutions be honest as well as smart? What if the AIs learn hypocrisy from us as well as programming? The AIs may keep us around for reasons of their own, they may depend on us for some things no matter how smart they get, but will they be dumb enough to allow us political power? Power over them? I doubt it, I hope not.
Space Weather & Gadgets
A potent solar storm could disrupt these technologies, scorch satellites, crash stock markets and cause power outages that last weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220/ts_alt_afp/usastronomyspacetelecomweather;_ylt=AiuoqGuQduuZEp0kGGwLgo0PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJzMGtzdTdhBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIyMC91c2FzdHJvbm9teXNwYWNldGVsZWNvbXdlYXRoZXIEcG9zAzgEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDc3BhY2V3ZWF0aGVy
Leonardo
A male apprentice, longtime companion and possible lover of Leonardo da Vinci was the main influence and a model for the "Mona Lisa" painting, an Italian researcher said Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110202/ap_en_ot/eu_italy_mona_lisa;_ylt=AmtfpHTjxxdXOp8qqxwTiWBxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJqYXZoMjQzBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjAyL2V1X2l0YWx5X21vbmFfbGlzYQRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbWFsZW1vZGVsYmVo
VOC
You've probably heard the term VOC, which stands for volatile organic compounds. VOCs are chemicals that give off gas from certain materials and liquids. These chemicals hang around our homes, sometimes for years, polluting the indoor air and causing adverse health effects. VOCs are one of the main reasons that indoor air is often 200 times more polluted than the outdoor air.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20110202/ts_usnews/5waystofreeyourhomeofdangerouschemicals;_ylt=Atkp37VRDL5YoqWfDDdFlBIPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNncGFnOW01BGFzc2V0A3VzbmV3cy8yMDExMDIwMi81d2F5c3RvZnJlZXlvdXJob21lb2ZkYW5nZXJvdXNjaGVtaWNhbHMEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNmdWxsbmJzcHN0b3I-
Oysters
By averaging the loss among all regions, the researchers came up with an estimate that 85 percent of oyster reef ecosystems have been lost, but said that figure was likely low because some areas lacked historical records for comparison.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110203/sc_afp/environmentusfoodoceans;_ylt=Ap0T6iE_fq31o6upNnpscFIPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJsc2NnbnZpBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIwMy9lbnZpcm9ubWVudHVzZm9vZG9jZWFucwRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawNveXN0ZXJzZGlzYXA-
CO2
The Mongol invasion of Asia in the 1200s took enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset a year's worth of the world's gasoline demand today, according to a new study. But even Genghis Khan couldn't create more than a blip in atmospheric carbon compared to the overwhelming effect of agriculture.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110208/sc_livescience/mongolinvasionin1200salteredcarbondioxidelevels
Rape, Egypt, Lara Logan
Sexual harassment of women is an all-too-common occurrence on the streets of Cairo. But many women noted a complete absence of it in the early days of protests in Tahrir Square, where demonstrators made a point of trying to create a microcosm of the society without many of Egypt's social ills.
However, in the final days, and especially after the battles with pro-Mubarak gangs who attacked the protesters in Tahrir, women noticed sexual assault had returned to the square. On the day Mubarak fell, women reported being groped by the rowdy crowds. One witness saw a woman slap a man after he touched her. The man was then passed down a line of people who all slapped him and reprimanded him.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110215/ap_en_ot/us_tv_lara_logan_attack;_ylt=AjCl7R6F6KixeeWxccUMLAlxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJvam8xc2VnBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjE1L3VzX3R2X2xhcmFfbG9nYW5fYXR0YWNrBGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNjYnNuZXdzbG9nYW4-
Poisoned Oaks
Auburn: Oak trees poisoned at historic site
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_on_sp_ot/auburn_trees_poisoned;_ylt=AoFgKaBgummvYTPq4XoT_LcLMxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJpOGwzdTA2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwMjE3L2F1YnVybl90cmVlc19wb2lzb25lZARwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsawNhdWJ1cm5vYWt0cmU-
I include this news item to declare that Knatz.com had a fair amount of material on differing attitudes toward trees in different times, places, cultures. The oak was especially revered: along with mistletoe, a common parasite of oaks.
pk wishes to emphasize: the ancient Teutons punished harm to trees severely. One convicted of cutting the bark of an oak had his belly button removed and tacked to the injured oak. The criminal was then driven around the tree in circles as his intestines were pulled from his guts by his passage. The trees wound was therefore bound by the attacker's flesh.
I love a number of aspects of Teutonic justice.
Little Replaces Big
"Humans have always fished. Even our ancestors have fished. We are just much much better at it now," said UBC scientist Reg Watson.
Examining the 2006 numbers, 76 million tons of commercial seafood were reported, meaning about "seven trillion individuals were killed and consumed by us or our livestock," said Watson.
Watson said fishing efforts have been growing over the past several decades, reaching a collective point of 1.7 billion watts, or 22.6 million horsepower, worldwide that year.
In terms of energy use, that would amount to 90 miles (150 kilometers) of "Corvettes bumper to bumper with their engines revving," he said.
"It looks like we are fishing harder for the same or less result and this has to tell us something about the oceans' health. We may in fact have hit peak fish at the same time we are hitting peak oil."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110218/sc_afp/environmentoceansfish;_ylt=Ap2GMjghMUgICjnSnQahPlMPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJqZWQzY2ozBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIxOC9lbnZpcm9ubWVudG9jZWFuc2Zpc2gEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZmV3ZXJiaWdmaXNo
pk adds: civilization formed a similar pattern on the land masses. Gatherer/hunters archeo-anthropologists tell us were bigger, stronger, healthier, had better teeth than the incipient farmers but were fewer. In conflict the toothless runt farmers beat the tiny team of better athletes. Numbers rule. So soon there was an earth full of spastic midgets with bad teeth: us: or at least us till very recently. Currently we're getting bigger again, healthier again, have dentistry even as we lose our teeth. But it's artificial, temporary, can't last.
The AI Singularity predicted for thirty-odd years from now may very much change things, I don't doubt that things will change; but will AIs produced by dishonest human institutions be honest as well as smart? What if the AIs learn hypocrisy from us as well as programming? The AIs may keep us around for reasons of their own, they may depend on us for some things no matter how smart they get, but will they be dumb enough to allow us political power? Power over them? I doubt it, I hope not.
Space Weather & Gadgets
A potent solar storm could disrupt these technologies, scorch satellites, crash stock markets and cause power outages that last weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220/ts_alt_afp/usastronomyspacetelecomweather;_ylt=AiuoqGuQduuZEp0kGGwLgo0PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJzMGtzdTdhBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDExMDIyMC91c2FzdHJvbm9teXNwYWNldGVsZWNvbXdlYXRoZXIEcG9zAzgEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDc3BhY2V3ZWF0aGVy
Friday, January 28, 2011
Communications
Humans communicate. Humans communicated ideas more complex than mosquitoes communicate. It does not follow that a given human can communicate a particular idea to a specific individual or group.
The jailer tortures the guy, the guy screams: others hear the screams, they understand: someone is in pain. Einstein writes a formula, very few understand even the symbols used, then a few more understand, then a few more. Some ideas become widely understood; many ideas stultify.
The Old Testament tells stories of God trying to communicate this and that to humans: and not doing to well. The New Testament tells the same story.
Then how come kleptocracies are full of churches which pretend we're competent to talk about such things? that congregations understand what's said to them?
The implications seem clear to me. How come I know of no one who understands a thing I say five hours after they first seem to understand some part of it?
The jailer tortures the guy, the guy screams: others hear the screams, they understand: someone is in pain. Einstein writes a formula, very few understand even the symbols used, then a few more understand, then a few more. Some ideas become widely understood; many ideas stultify.
The Old Testament tells stories of God trying to communicate this and that to humans: and not doing to well. The New Testament tells the same story.
Then how come kleptocracies are full of churches which pretend we're competent to talk about such things? that congregations understand what's said to them?
The implications seem clear to me. How come I know of no one who understands a thing I say five hours after they first seem to understand some part of it?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sorry Sports Spectacles
Fed & Rafa
Roger Federer is the rare sports figure who commands superlatives: the way Bach, Mozart did in music, the way Michelangelo, Picasso did in art, the way Shakespeare ... Etc. Wagner, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis ... Jack Johnson, Ali ... I followed Rod Laver on the tennis courts in 1968. I've been saying he's the greatest ever since. I lauded Bjorn Borg, Pete Samras ... saying they are the greatest: after Laver. On the women's side I'd praise Chris, Martina Navrotilova, Martina Hingis .. saying they are the greatest: after Suzanne Lenglen.
With Federer I began saying that Federer was the greatest since Bill Tilden (whose quality we can't really know): so Federer is the greatest ever including Laver! People like me enjoy making such pronouncements: it's part of fandom, never mind that it's untestable, meaningless in more than one respect.
By a few years ago others began saying parallel things: John McEnroe to wit: on TV! But something unbelievable happened: before a consensus about Federer became universal, we all had to acknowledge that Rafael Nadal had become on clay what Federer was on grass and on hard court. Rafa beat Federer on clay. Fed beat everyone except Rafa, Rafa then beat Fed, repeatedly. So we had the ridiculous situation that Fed was the best, ever, but Rafa was better, in at least one respect.
The air was full of superlatives and some clowns started using simple analogies and declaring that Rafa was better than the best!
Currently, till today, we've had the giddy prospect of a Rafa Slam: Rafa holding all four major titles at once, even if spread over two calendar years: 2010, '11.
Now, before I continue, let me say: stars rob light from non-stars. A minor near-by star can eclipse a major far away star. Fed and Rafa are a step above the field. But there's a small crowd of great guys close around third place. Nadal just had a mediocre match against compatriot Ferrer. Excuses for Rafa dim Ferrer's accomplishment. That ain't right. Rafa had a chance for a Rafa Slam, but he didn't cash the chance. Fed had chances against Rafa: he cashed some, not all of them. Good, they're human. But there's a terrible pressure on the stars to be more than they are, to be more than possible. And much of the problem relates to the media pandering to the throng's yearning for certainty: in advance. Today's report from Australia includes this verbiage: "Murray won't have to get past Nadal this year, but he will have to beat Ferrer and either defending champion Roger Federer or 2008 champion Novak Djokovic to claim his first major title." Note again the diction: "Claim his first major title."
Murray has no major titles. Murray is not owed a major title. The golfer should score a birdie before being awarded the birdie. But no, the commentator will say "he's standing over the ball for his birdie." No: it's a birdie after it's been scored; not before. It's like Christians counting themselves in heaven's census while they're still alive. Will God have nothing to say about it?
The public "should" be allowed to grow up. I chastise the media. My own ridiculous claims about who's the greatest are relatively harmless. Awarding combatants prizes before the outcome is known retards our maturity: same as telling God what his judgment must be: before the facts can be established.
Roger Federer is the rare sports figure who commands superlatives: the way Bach, Mozart did in music, the way Michelangelo, Picasso did in art, the way Shakespeare ... Etc. Wagner, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis ... Jack Johnson, Ali ... I followed Rod Laver on the tennis courts in 1968. I've been saying he's the greatest ever since. I lauded Bjorn Borg, Pete Samras ... saying they are the greatest: after Laver. On the women's side I'd praise Chris, Martina Navrotilova, Martina Hingis .. saying they are the greatest: after Suzanne Lenglen.
With Federer I began saying that Federer was the greatest since Bill Tilden (whose quality we can't really know): so Federer is the greatest ever including Laver! People like me enjoy making such pronouncements: it's part of fandom, never mind that it's untestable, meaningless in more than one respect.
By a few years ago others began saying parallel things: John McEnroe to wit: on TV! But something unbelievable happened: before a consensus about Federer became universal, we all had to acknowledge that Rafael Nadal had become on clay what Federer was on grass and on hard court. Rafa beat Federer on clay. Fed beat everyone except Rafa, Rafa then beat Fed, repeatedly. So we had the ridiculous situation that Fed was the best, ever, but Rafa was better, in at least one respect.
The air was full of superlatives and some clowns started using simple analogies and declaring that Rafa was better than the best!
Currently, till today, we've had the giddy prospect of a Rafa Slam: Rafa holding all four major titles at once, even if spread over two calendar years: 2010, '11.
Now, before I continue, let me say: stars rob light from non-stars. A minor near-by star can eclipse a major far away star. Fed and Rafa are a step above the field. But there's a small crowd of great guys close around third place. Nadal just had a mediocre match against compatriot Ferrer. Excuses for Rafa dim Ferrer's accomplishment. That ain't right. Rafa had a chance for a Rafa Slam, but he didn't cash the chance. Fed had chances against Rafa: he cashed some, not all of them. Good, they're human. But there's a terrible pressure on the stars to be more than they are, to be more than possible. And much of the problem relates to the media pandering to the throng's yearning for certainty: in advance. Today's report from Australia includes this verbiage: "Murray won't have to get past Nadal this year, but he will have to beat Ferrer and either defending champion Roger Federer or 2008 champion Novak Djokovic to claim his first major title." Note again the diction: "Claim his first major title."
Murray has no major titles. Murray is not owed a major title. The golfer should score a birdie before being awarded the birdie. But no, the commentator will say "he's standing over the ball for his birdie." No: it's a birdie after it's been scored; not before. It's like Christians counting themselves in heaven's census while they're still alive. Will God have nothing to say about it?
The public "should" be allowed to grow up. I chastise the media. My own ridiculous claims about who's the greatest are relatively harmless. Awarding combatants prizes before the outcome is known retards our maturity: same as telling God what his judgment must be: before the facts can be established.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Patriotism
My woman died a couple of years before the Feebs arrested me. I sure wanted to meet a new woman once I got out. I started attending the Highlands Senior Society, met women galore. I made a whole new class of enemy, enemies galore – Americans hate whomever they've wronged – but at least my bed had two people in it more often than one. I even got into the dances for free, since I agreed to teach the dancing.
There was a penalty though that was hard to bear. Before lunch, we'd listen to announcements. Then a flag was wheeled out and we'd have to Pledge Allegiance to the Flag: then sing America the Beautiful. I was never a patriot. I couldn't have easily become a disciple of Christ if I'd been a patriot. If I'd been a patriot how could I have tried to debrief people on their enslavement via compulsory education? How could I possibly have invented an internet to offer as an alternative? Flag-saluters don't try to redesign everything.
Patriots stood behind me during the patriotic exercises, threatening me behind my ear: "America! Love it or Leave It!!" But by that time I was also dancing with a table full of widows a few miles south at the Lake Placid American Legion. There these days I mostly dance with the girl I met at the Senior Social, but we dance before murals of tanks blowing the shit out of everything, ships sinking in oil slicks ... And, more often than not, before we finish for the night, the band plays patriotic songs. The socializers stand in a circle. The lyrics proclaim, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free."
Free? Since when? I was forced to go to school. There was no law that compelled university attendance, but it's all-but compulsory in this culture: certainly it was in my family. In my life time I've watched people become even more illiterate than they already had been while garnering ever more degrees, at ever higher prices: while wages skyrocket. Too bad there's ever less worth buying. Was getting put in jail for what I'd written an example of freedom? Was getting censored?
I suppose putting Jesus on the cross was an exercise in freedom as well.
Wasps sting whatever is not wasp that's intruding on the nest. Mama risks her life to grab baby from under the truck; momma does not risk her life to get the truck from under baby. So: I can understand Hatfields preferring Hatfields to McCoys. Even more fundamentally I understand me preferring me to you.
Sure we should give aid to our own, but try being a Good Samaritan to the other guy now and then. That's the way I see sense in a Christ saying, Prefer other to self. Just as a counter-measure! Not, Let's turn everything upside down; but, Why not not go whole hog every damn time.
I can understand Hatfields preferring Hatfields to McCoys: both families may be Scots-Irish, but any Hatfield genes will likely be closer to the genes of any other Hatfield than will any McCoy genes. Not absolutely necessarily, but probably, in general, you know? I can understand Hitler wanting to advance the blue-eyed: kind of Christ-like actually, since Hitler was himself far from blue-eyed, was anything but fair. I can understand Hitler hating the Jews: so did nearly everybody else in Christian Europe, right? I can understand Hitler wanting to kill the Jews: my life might have been easier if I'd wanted to kill anyone standing ahead of me on line to get into Birdland.
I wrote the latter first, then inserted the former. Next session I'll merge them better.
Nobody dances like you, Paul.
Joyce, LineDancingMarine
Joyce, LineDancingMarine
There was a penalty though that was hard to bear. Before lunch, we'd listen to announcements. Then a flag was wheeled out and we'd have to Pledge Allegiance to the Flag: then sing America the Beautiful. I was never a patriot. I couldn't have easily become a disciple of Christ if I'd been a patriot. If I'd been a patriot how could I have tried to debrief people on their enslavement via compulsory education? How could I possibly have invented an internet to offer as an alternative? Flag-saluters don't try to redesign everything.
Patriots stood behind me during the patriotic exercises, threatening me behind my ear: "America! Love it or Leave It!!" But by that time I was also dancing with a table full of widows a few miles south at the Lake Placid American Legion. There these days I mostly dance with the girl I met at the Senior Social, but we dance before murals of tanks blowing the shit out of everything, ships sinking in oil slicks ... And, more often than not, before we finish for the night, the band plays patriotic songs. The socializers stand in a circle. The lyrics proclaim, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free."
Free? Since when? I was forced to go to school. There was no law that compelled university attendance, but it's all-but compulsory in this culture: certainly it was in my family. In my life time I've watched people become even more illiterate than they already had been while garnering ever more degrees, at ever higher prices: while wages skyrocket. Too bad there's ever less worth buying. Was getting put in jail for what I'd written an example of freedom? Was getting censored?
I suppose putting Jesus on the cross was an exercise in freedom as well.
Wasps sting whatever is not wasp that's intruding on the nest. Mama risks her life to grab baby from under the truck; momma does not risk her life to get the truck from under baby. So: I can understand Hatfields preferring Hatfields to McCoys. Even more fundamentally I understand me preferring me to you.
Sure we should give aid to our own, but try being a Good Samaritan to the other guy now and then. That's the way I see sense in a Christ saying, Prefer other to self. Just as a counter-measure! Not, Let's turn everything upside down; but, Why not not go whole hog every damn time.
I can understand Hatfields preferring Hatfields to McCoys: both families may be Scots-Irish, but any Hatfield genes will likely be closer to the genes of any other Hatfield than will any McCoy genes. Not absolutely necessarily, but probably, in general, you know? I can understand Hitler wanting to advance the blue-eyed: kind of Christ-like actually, since Hitler was himself far from blue-eyed, was anything but fair. I can understand Hitler hating the Jews: so did nearly everybody else in Christian Europe, right? I can understand Hitler wanting to kill the Jews: my life might have been easier if I'd wanted to kill anyone standing ahead of me on line to get into Birdland.
I wrote the latter first, then inserted the former. Next session I'll merge them better.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Times Square Warranty
I buy a toaster, a GE, at the WalMart, it comes with a two year warranty. After twenty-five months a heating element fails, or the plastic foot falls off the bottom and there's no way to reattach it without taking the whole bottom off, a procedure that requires tools I don't have and experience I don't have either. Oh well: I got two years out of it.
The Swedish sailor has shore leave in Manhattan. He goes to Times Square. Oh, Boy! movies! whores! drug dealers! The avenue is lined with electronics store fronts. The sailor buys a boom box with a five year warranty, for $9.98 plus tax. The sailor puts in on his shoulder. It's not very loud, but what the hell. By midnight the boom box doesn't play at all, it has zero volume. The next day the sailor takes the boom box back to the little store front. There's the same window display, the same counter display, the same Sephardic Jew who sold it to him. "That warranty is no good here. The company you bought it from is out of business, bankrupt. This is a different company. We have nothing to do with that other company."
(The sailor's mistake was that he didn't have the whole Swedish navy with him in the little store front. I bet his warranty would have been good if the ship's gun were aimed through the store window.)
I was an art dealer. But before I was an art dealer, I was a student, and a teacher: perpetually poor, almost as it were deliberately poor: a monk of sorts. As a student I always had art prints on my cell wall: big Rouault, big Klee, big Picasso, I'd bought for $1 each, put up with thumb tacks. I never spent more that $1 for any art (until I sold pre-Columbian originals, and they were consigned to me, I didn't have to pay for them until after I'd been paid for them: I sold one for $40, I owed the guy $20: back in 1958) until one day, coming back from the dentist, on Third Avenue just below Fifty-Seventh Street, in the 1960s, I saw a gallery with $10 framed art prints jamming the sidewalk. I got another Picasso. It was a small reproduction, but it was framed: the first framed anything I'd ever bought! Years later, in the 1970s, in the graphics business myself, a publisher, distributor, artist-rep, I noticed that "same" gallery. It seemed to be exactly the same. It seemed to have the same huge banner over the door: 50% Off: Everything Must Go. This time I was going there deliberately, to see the owner, one "Alan." I had an introduction from "Artie," the owner of a string of crumby schlock galleries downtown. Artie was an Ashkenazi Jew who'd married into a Sephardic family: Alan was Artie's brother-in-law. Artie always gave me a hard time, then bought dozens of things from me, always four-figures worth, always paid cash on delivery (always almost-always: I did get a bad check from him once). (I had Ashkenazi customers who would have cut me off permanently if they known I'd so much as spoken to a Sephardim!) The framed junk on the side walk was still the same size, still $10. But this visit I noticed that by the entrance to the store began a series of huge price tags all slashing everything in "half": $50 crossed out / $25; $100 crossed out / $50; $150 crossed out / $75 ... and so forth. As one progressed into the store the crossed-out prices escalated to $200, $250, $300 ... $500 ... $1,000. Now: here's the hook: toward the back of the store one began to encounter Calders, and Dalis: and there were no price tags. Alan bought four-figures worth of stuff from me, I delivered on the spot, he paid me on the spot: cash, $1,400 or so. I came back a month or two later to see how he was doing. There was my stuff. Things on my price list for $100, Alan had up with a huge tag: $200, crossed out / $100! He was offering my stuff at retail, pretending it was half-price. I'd sold at Alan at 50/20. In other words: if my list price was $100, any retailer understod that they'd pay me $50 for it. $100 was what they sold it for, not me. I always quoted retail prices so their custumer would only hear one price: the public's price. Any retailer also understood that if they bought in volume, they could expect a special consideration: 50/20: fairly standard. Alan, Artie, sold, relying on ignorance. But here's the thing: in the back of the store, where only Alan himself reigned, where none of his Sephardic baseball team of salesmen trespassed, there were all these Calders, Dalis, I knew the list price of almost all of them. One Dali I didn't recognize. "Alan," I said, "What do you sell this one for?" Alan answered that Levine had it on his list at $500: he'd sold one that morning to a New Jersey lawyer for $1,200. The lawyer probably thought it was $2,400! The lawyer had been set up toassume a 50% discount. Actually Alan got him to pay whatever Alan thought he could get for it. The store's structure softened the sucker up: no one had to say anything to him.
Please don't misunderstand: I am not saying that the Sephardic Jews are crooks, and no one else is; no, I am saying that some Sephardic Jews teach their children some standard business swindles early: they don't wait till they're middled aged and discover them for themselves.
But what I'm really saying is that the culture is full of swindles while the culture pretends to represent law and order! It doesn't. It hasn't. It never will.
These are stories intended to suggest general patterns, not absolute structures. We live in a far from honest society. We live in an economy of planned obsolescence. But of course there are also durable goods, honest merchants ...
My girlfriend gets incredible service from Harry and Davids, from LL Bean ... Decades ago a friend lived with his wife in Colorado in a Coleman tent: they lived way out in the woods, 24/7 for a series of years. The tent had a three year warranty. Having no other home, two adults, going in and out of the tent, in all weathers, finally, after two years and eleven months, managed to get the tent entrance zipper stuck. Coleman apologized that it had discontinued that model which had sold for $100: So, sorry, but would you accept our Olympic model as a replacement? It's bigger and sells for $150. My friends had the balls to accept!
It isn't just merchants who are crooks.
The Swedish sailor has shore leave in Manhattan. He goes to Times Square. Oh, Boy! movies! whores! drug dealers! The avenue is lined with electronics store fronts. The sailor buys a boom box with a five year warranty, for $9.98 plus tax. The sailor puts in on his shoulder. It's not very loud, but what the hell. By midnight the boom box doesn't play at all, it has zero volume. The next day the sailor takes the boom box back to the little store front. There's the same window display, the same counter display, the same Sephardic Jew who sold it to him. "That warranty is no good here. The company you bought it from is out of business, bankrupt. This is a different company. We have nothing to do with that other company."
(The sailor's mistake was that he didn't have the whole Swedish navy with him in the little store front. I bet his warranty would have been good if the ship's gun were aimed through the store window.)
I was an art dealer. But before I was an art dealer, I was a student, and a teacher: perpetually poor, almost as it were deliberately poor: a monk of sorts. As a student I always had art prints on my cell wall: big Rouault, big Klee, big Picasso, I'd bought for $1 each, put up with thumb tacks. I never spent more that $1 for any art (until I sold pre-Columbian originals, and they were consigned to me, I didn't have to pay for them until after I'd been paid for them: I sold one for $40, I owed the guy $20: back in 1958) until one day, coming back from the dentist, on Third Avenue just below Fifty-Seventh Street, in the 1960s, I saw a gallery with $10 framed art prints jamming the sidewalk. I got another Picasso. It was a small reproduction, but it was framed: the first framed anything I'd ever bought! Years later, in the 1970s, in the graphics business myself, a publisher, distributor, artist-rep, I noticed that "same" gallery. It seemed to be exactly the same. It seemed to have the same huge banner over the door: 50% Off: Everything Must Go. This time I was going there deliberately, to see the owner, one "Alan." I had an introduction from "Artie," the owner of a string of crumby schlock galleries downtown. Artie was an Ashkenazi Jew who'd married into a Sephardic family: Alan was Artie's brother-in-law. Artie always gave me a hard time, then bought dozens of things from me, always four-figures worth, always paid cash on delivery (always almost-always: I did get a bad check from him once). (I had Ashkenazi customers who would have cut me off permanently if they known I'd so much as spoken to a Sephardim!) The framed junk on the side walk was still the same size, still $10. But this visit I noticed that by the entrance to the store began a series of huge price tags all slashing everything in "half": $50 crossed out / $25; $100 crossed out / $50; $150 crossed out / $75 ... and so forth. As one progressed into the store the crossed-out prices escalated to $200, $250, $300 ... $500 ... $1,000. Now: here's the hook: toward the back of the store one began to encounter Calders, and Dalis: and there were no price tags. Alan bought four-figures worth of stuff from me, I delivered on the spot, he paid me on the spot: cash, $1,400 or so. I came back a month or two later to see how he was doing. There was my stuff. Things on my price list for $100, Alan had up with a huge tag: $200, crossed out / $100! He was offering my stuff at retail, pretending it was half-price. I'd sold at Alan at 50/20. In other words: if my list price was $100, any retailer understod that they'd pay me $50 for it. $100 was what they sold it for, not me. I always quoted retail prices so their custumer would only hear one price: the public's price. Any retailer also understood that if they bought in volume, they could expect a special consideration: 50/20: fairly standard. Alan, Artie, sold, relying on ignorance. But here's the thing: in the back of the store, where only Alan himself reigned, where none of his Sephardic baseball team of salesmen trespassed, there were all these Calders, Dalis, I knew the list price of almost all of them. One Dali I didn't recognize. "Alan," I said, "What do you sell this one for?" Alan answered that Levine had it on his list at $500: he'd sold one that morning to a New Jersey lawyer for $1,200. The lawyer probably thought it was $2,400! The lawyer had been set up toassume a 50% discount. Actually Alan got him to pay whatever Alan thought he could get for it. The store's structure softened the sucker up: no one had to say anything to him.
Please don't misunderstand: I am not saying that the Sephardic Jews are crooks, and no one else is; no, I am saying that some Sephardic Jews teach their children some standard business swindles early: they don't wait till they're middled aged and discover them for themselves.
But what I'm really saying is that the culture is full of swindles while the culture pretends to represent law and order! It doesn't. It hasn't. It never will.
These are stories intended to suggest general patterns, not absolute structures. We live in a far from honest society. We live in an economy of planned obsolescence. But of course there are also durable goods, honest merchants ...
My girlfriend gets incredible service from Harry and Davids, from LL Bean ... Decades ago a friend lived with his wife in Colorado in a Coleman tent: they lived way out in the woods, 24/7 for a series of years. The tent had a three year warranty. Having no other home, two adults, going in and out of the tent, in all weathers, finally, after two years and eleven months, managed to get the tent entrance zipper stuck. Coleman apologized that it had discontinued that model which had sold for $100: So, sorry, but would you accept our Olympic model as a replacement? It's bigger and sells for $150. My friends had the balls to accept!
It isn't just merchants who are crooks.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Population, Politics
Knatz.com had a complex while still incipient Society section on politics, still not yet recreated here. Right now though I add something implicit throughout Knatz.com that I here state explicitly, and I hope succinctly. Humans live in groups. Politics is natural to groups. But beyond a certain threshold the benefits of groupness can turn toxic. Beyond a certain population size, politics are toxic.
I believe that humans in groups no larger than two hundred, two hundred and fifty, are cute (until they run into another group). Chieftainships, nations, super zoos ... Uh, uh. I don't want it. Poison.
Left alone, we'll kill ourselves. Super groups will disappear. I hope.
But we're not left alone. The Church puts us in church. The state puts us in school. The economy puts us in the market: where we destroy the earth, destroy the earth, destroy ourselves, riding roughshod over natural limits: putting penny (after penny) in the fuse box, and then the next fuse box.
But that's all right. Just wait long enough. We'll destroy everything. And then there won't be any more of us. Or, we'll fail to exceed populations of two hundred. Or, the number is actually 225, 500: I don't know: some number. Some modest number. (There must also be a limit on how many correctly sized groups there can be: the earth could lose two hundred groups of two hundred; but could a million groups of "two hundred" remain unknown to each other?)
Or I'm wrong. And we'll spread to the stars. And then we'll run out of fuel, out of food, out of breathability.
pk's point all long has been that there are no political solutions to these problems. One can talk Nazis into killing Jews, but not likely into tightening their chastity belt.
We sterilize mosquitoes. We castrate niggers. Why don't we try a population politically self-restrained at two-fifty? Politics. Human nature.
Hey: everything's gotta die. How else can anything better develop?
I don't believe there are any political solutions to our problems.
I believe that humans in groups no larger than two hundred, two hundred and fifty, are cute (until they run into another group). Chieftainships, nations, super zoos ... Uh, uh. I don't want it. Poison.
Left alone, we'll kill ourselves. Super groups will disappear. I hope.
But we're not left alone. The Church puts us in church. The state puts us in school. The economy puts us in the market: where we destroy the earth, destroy the earth, destroy ourselves, riding roughshod over natural limits: putting penny (after penny) in the fuse box, and then the next fuse box.
But that's all right. Just wait long enough. We'll destroy everything. And then there won't be any more of us. Or, we'll fail to exceed populations of two hundred. Or, the number is actually 225, 500: I don't know: some number. Some modest number. (There must also be a limit on how many correctly sized groups there can be: the earth could lose two hundred groups of two hundred; but could a million groups of "two hundred" remain unknown to each other?)
Or I'm wrong. And we'll spread to the stars. And then we'll run out of fuel, out of food, out of breathability.
pk's point all long has been that there are no political solutions to these problems. One can talk Nazis into killing Jews, but not likely into tightening their chastity belt.
We sterilize mosquitoes. We castrate niggers. Why don't we try a population politically self-restrained at two-fifty? Politics. Human nature.
Hey: everything's gotta die. How else can anything better develop?
Animal House In Absentia
Animal House: 1978 recalling the 'Sixties: 1968 - through the early 1970s. The United States was insisting on conducting war without regard for law or decency or morality or ethics or political support from home not hijacked by Nazis. The setting was a college: not a "good" college (high class educational fraud); a totally fraudulent C-tier college. The (anti)heroes are the animals of the title. (Or are they? Everyone connected with the culture the film depicts/imagines were disgusting hypocritical animals: in point, Dean Wormer, Mayor "Carmine," the other frats and sororities posed as superior to the blatantly venal, degenerate Delta house. Hell, instead of explaining why Milton was assigned, the lit prof insults Milton and hides behind authority!) (In my Free Learning Exchange, 1970, you could study Milton or not study Milton. It was up to you, to your parents, to your ambition, your talents: there was no curriculum!)
The king is bad, so is the pope, so are the barons, so are the peasants. Sodom and Gomorrah. Dead-on American satire: disgusting and proud of it. It's well cast (but not nearly as well made as it could have/should have been). I just want to recall it to introduce my real topic: the concept of In absentia. Dean Wormer has it out for the Deltas. (A civilized society would have had it out for Dear Wormer long before it bothered turning on the scum of Delta House.) (Picking on Delta House is like squashing rat turds instead of capturing the rat.)
Faber College fulfills multiple roles in the society: it keeps semi-privileged young adults out of the job market, it separates future management candidates from present turn-the-bolt robots, it ripens (while degenerating) future dropout cannon fodder ... Once upon a time colleges developed to keep young nobles out of the hair of the reigning nobles: simultaneously the colleges trained a few talented peasants to read, write, take dictation, convey messages, maybe even give advice: Thomas Becket getting prepped by and for Henry II, Chaucer being trained for Richard II ... John Jay learning law for the young US.
Any college can do that: the ones that are relied on to do it are Harvard, Yale ... John Jay's Columbia. "Faber" College has no such role. Faber College is kin to WalMart's Sam's Cola imitating Pepsi's imitation of Coke: somebody gets rich selling mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz to the public, somebody else can right away sell some imitation mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz to the public, then somebody else can manufacture a really cheap mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz and sell it to the public. Thus: Cambridge, Harvard, Faber.
Is intelligence involved anywhere? Sure. Intelligence isn't entirely absent from anything humans do; but don't expect much intelligence, don't expect quality intelligence. Do expect cut corners. Expect hypocrisy, fraud. You look for God, you get the Church.
Anyhow: Dean Wormer has it in for Delta House. He shows that he has Nazi powers, that he's the CIA as well as the White House / Congress. Dean Wormer is also the Court. He reads some charges to some proxy Deltas. A Delta rep begins to respond. "That's enough of that!" says Little Hitler.
In Paths of Glory French officers intend to "make an example of" a few soldiers. They chose three soldiers by lot, then they charge them with cowardice, then they execute them. The condemned are given legal representation, imprisoned, and shot. Why the legal representation? Why not just shoot them?
Same reason I was given legal representation after the FBI arrested me. Same reason the son of Allah eats with his right hand and pisses with his left, same reason the Jew avoids pork. Empty ritual: while thieves and frauds maraud the earth: destroying the possibility of our kind of life, bringing our species to a much-deserved, long-overdue end.
America wanted to bomb whoever it wanted to bomb. In the words of Hollywood's Stone's Richard Nixon: "I'm the President of the United States: I can bomb whoever I want!"
Harvard / MIT was important to such a goal, but so was Faber College. Full fraud needs Coke and Pepsi and Sam's Choice: and a huge helpless narcotized public with teeth as rotten as their awareness. Harvard, Faber, and Hollywood. And the Times. And don't forget TV!
The idea behind judgments in absentia is that "everyone" is supposed to be entitled to a fair trial. A fair trial in civilization is a replacement for the defeated General Custer putting the victorious Crazy Horse in jail. The US has to pretend to give Crazy Horse a trial, it has to pretend that the trial is "fair." It has rituals one has to attend law school for a decade to learn to pretend that facts or truth or reason has something to do with Manifest Destiny, with reelecting "the President." And those rituals are best carried out if the "coward" to be convicted is drugged during the trial. But it's then important to wake him up for his execution. Paths of Glory is elaborate in showing the care with which the unconscious soldier is revived so he'll be conscious at his own murder.
I suggest that kleptocracies conduct most of their rituals with the possibility of truth or reason held in absentia. Christians will be most brilliant in refuting Jews if no Jews are present: or, if those Jews present have first been castrated, lobotomized, sanitized.
It happened to me all my life, since childhood, long before the US court convicted me without having read the thousands of essays of mine that they censored, without having understand a thing I said: to my attorney, or all my life. My attorney strongly advised me not to speak at the trial except to answer direct questions from the judge, and then to answer, Yes / No: or they'd rig a trial that would convict me for forty years. How much writing would I be able to do when I was 108? How at 108 could I overcome the gap of Knatz.com having been silenced from 2006 to 2046?
Of course it didn't really matter: I already knew, not three people out of four billion had understood what I was saying: and those that did pretended not to.
Boy, has Knatz.com been refuted over the years: but always with Knatz in absentia.
2011 01 11 There's a marvelous line in Animal House that I didn't work in yesterday. The Delta turds con some girls from a sorority at a college other than Faber to go out with them. At their own Delta toga party they'd contracted Otis Day and the Knights: they spot a marquee advertising that group, but the bar proves to be a "black" bar: our college kids are stuck as an unwelcome minority. Trying to fit in, to look harmless, to make conversation, one Delta schmuck asks a threatening local, "Where do you guys go to school?" !
The blacks are not college kids. They are not the privileged. They are the bolt turners, the canon fodder. They are not being held apart from the job market, the delay sure to be made up to them later via compensatory privileges.
The king is bad, so is the pope, so are the barons, so are the peasants. Sodom and Gomorrah. Dead-on American satire: disgusting and proud of it. It's well cast (but not nearly as well made as it could have/should have been). I just want to recall it to introduce my real topic: the concept of In absentia. Dean Wormer has it out for the Deltas. (A civilized society would have had it out for Dear Wormer long before it bothered turning on the scum of Delta House.) (Picking on Delta House is like squashing rat turds instead of capturing the rat.)
Faber College fulfills multiple roles in the society: it keeps semi-privileged young adults out of the job market, it separates future management candidates from present turn-the-bolt robots, it ripens (while degenerating) future dropout cannon fodder ... Once upon a time colleges developed to keep young nobles out of the hair of the reigning nobles: simultaneously the colleges trained a few talented peasants to read, write, take dictation, convey messages, maybe even give advice: Thomas Becket getting prepped by and for Henry II, Chaucer being trained for Richard II ... John Jay learning law for the young US.
Any college can do that: the ones that are relied on to do it are Harvard, Yale ... John Jay's Columbia. "Faber" College has no such role. Faber College is kin to WalMart's Sam's Cola imitating Pepsi's imitation of Coke: somebody gets rich selling mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz to the public, somebody else can right away sell some imitation mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz to the public, then somebody else can manufacture a really cheap mildly narcotic tooth-rot fizz and sell it to the public. Thus: Cambridge, Harvard, Faber.
Is intelligence involved anywhere? Sure. Intelligence isn't entirely absent from anything humans do; but don't expect much intelligence, don't expect quality intelligence. Do expect cut corners. Expect hypocrisy, fraud. You look for God, you get the Church.
Anyhow: Dean Wormer has it in for Delta House. He shows that he has Nazi powers, that he's the CIA as well as the White House / Congress. Dean Wormer is also the Court. He reads some charges to some proxy Deltas. A Delta rep begins to respond. "That's enough of that!" says Little Hitler.
In Paths of Glory French officers intend to "make an example of" a few soldiers. They chose three soldiers by lot, then they charge them with cowardice, then they execute them. The condemned are given legal representation, imprisoned, and shot. Why the legal representation? Why not just shoot them?
Same reason I was given legal representation after the FBI arrested me. Same reason the son of Allah eats with his right hand and pisses with his left, same reason the Jew avoids pork. Empty ritual: while thieves and frauds maraud the earth: destroying the possibility of our kind of life, bringing our species to a much-deserved, long-overdue end.
America wanted to bomb whoever it wanted to bomb. In the words of Hollywood's Stone's Richard Nixon: "I'm the President of the United States: I can bomb whoever I want!"
Harvard / MIT was important to such a goal, but so was Faber College. Full fraud needs Coke and Pepsi and Sam's Choice: and a huge helpless narcotized public with teeth as rotten as their awareness. Harvard, Faber, and Hollywood. And the Times. And don't forget TV!
The idea behind judgments in absentia is that "everyone" is supposed to be entitled to a fair trial. A fair trial in civilization is a replacement for the defeated General Custer putting the victorious Crazy Horse in jail. The US has to pretend to give Crazy Horse a trial, it has to pretend that the trial is "fair." It has rituals one has to attend law school for a decade to learn to pretend that facts or truth or reason has something to do with Manifest Destiny, with reelecting "the President." And those rituals are best carried out if the "coward" to be convicted is drugged during the trial. But it's then important to wake him up for his execution. Paths of Glory is elaborate in showing the care with which the unconscious soldier is revived so he'll be conscious at his own murder.
I suggest that kleptocracies conduct most of their rituals with the possibility of truth or reason held in absentia. Christians will be most brilliant in refuting Jews if no Jews are present: or, if those Jews present have first been castrated, lobotomized, sanitized.
It happened to me all my life, since childhood, long before the US court convicted me without having read the thousands of essays of mine that they censored, without having understand a thing I said: to my attorney, or all my life. My attorney strongly advised me not to speak at the trial except to answer direct questions from the judge, and then to answer, Yes / No: or they'd rig a trial that would convict me for forty years. How much writing would I be able to do when I was 108? How at 108 could I overcome the gap of Knatz.com having been silenced from 2006 to 2046?
Of course it didn't really matter: I already knew, not three people out of four billion had understood what I was saying: and those that did pretended not to.
Boy, has Knatz.com been refuted over the years: but always with Knatz in absentia.
2011 01 11 There's a marvelous line in Animal House that I didn't work in yesterday. The Delta turds con some girls from a sorority at a college other than Faber to go out with them. At their own Delta toga party they'd contracted Otis Day and the Knights: they spot a marquee advertising that group, but the bar proves to be a "black" bar: our college kids are stuck as an unwelcome minority. Trying to fit in, to look harmless, to make conversation, one Delta schmuck asks a threatening local, "Where do you guys go to school?" !
The blacks are not college kids. They are not the privileged. They are the bolt turners, the canon fodder. They are not being held apart from the job market, the delay sure to be made up to them later via compensatory privileges.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)