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last.fm playlist

2007:05:23

666

Tags: fnord

Saw the Omen; made me want to start a family.

Damn, I just never get tired of that joke.

What, you thought I was gonna really skip this? My freekin' pin used to be 666VMS (rabid Heinlein fandom'll do strange things to a fella.)

And a no-prize to the first commenter who can explain what I just said to me. B^)

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989 - no regex, no like, no love

I am annoyed. I cannot do as "select where like" statement in mysql. There's a nifty regex feature in php, but I'm being a custard head and doing it in perl. I deserve to suffer.

Anyway, take a look in the morning at fetchall_arrayref as the way to do what you're after, which is to check three or four letters of a potential field and return the rows that are "like" the three or four letters. (Wow, that's clear as mud...)

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836

Be
the open book
people want
to read
(c)2003ISR

Just a suggestion.

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From the Deck

Tags: The Deck

I guess I had
to hit some kind
of bottom before I
could shake Terry

Nothing profound there, just a touch of personal history best forgotten.

Reminds me, 'though, that I really need to get into the db and format the entries for the random card server in the upper right. Looks even worse in lynx.

In other thoughts, is there anyone over the age of 13 who still falls for that "pre-approved credit card" hook anymore? And if not then why is so much of our economy devoted to stuffing my mailbox with these stupid "offers"?

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922 - Wasted

Usually I am better with words, with nuances. But it just occurred to me, a wasted life might not be so much like an extra piece of paper one puts in the trash. It's more like the smell that oozes from your kitchen when the trash is full of seafood and hasn't been emptied for a couple of days in the middle of record breaking August heat. That's probably a more apt sense-track for "a wasted life."

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693

Tags: politics, recursion

Here is the classic "Which comes first" problem:

Before the Supreme Court may proceed to decide the Hamdan case, a test of the constitutionality of the war crimes tibunals (named "military commissions,"). it must decide that the Detainee Treatment Act did not take away its jurisdiction to rule.

The question, which I hope to find raised a little later in the article, is whether the legislative branch has the ability to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction. I'm not in conlaw yet, but I sure would think the answer was a resounding "NO!"

However, the extant GOPNAC stranglehold on all three branches of government may be such that the sitting High Court will decline to speculate that perhaps Congress hasn't the power to make the distinction: So long as GOPNAC has the Congress the Scalia bench (let's call it what it is) will blow with the majority and never smell the tyranny---because A.S. has made it frighteningly clear that majorities are only tyrannical when they vote against his hunting buddies in the PNAC.

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Asking the Oracle for wisdom and compassion

Tags: I Ching

- -
---
-x-
-x-
---
- -

Question asked: Help me act wisely and compassionately.

Tui over Sun changing to K'an over K'an; hexagram 28, by traditional reckoning, yielding to 29. Binary 30 changing to binary 18.

The sagging roofbeam is reinforced, and
thus the superior man walks, through
danger repeated,
in lasting virtue
teaching.

-0-

Hold on to your ideals, guide your life; stimulating words cheer and inspire; silent consent; leave the egg or bud; satisfaction through walking away; not the heart confined; cheer, delight, set out in words; strong intention fully expressed. You have all you need, if you try for more you will only see confusion and distress and lose what you have.

-->

Collect your forces, confront your fears, take the plunge. Hold fast to your heart and its growth. End the yin hemicycle by leveling and dissolving forms. Strong intention fully expressed, in the right time, profitably.

-0-

Make a transition to a new situation without delay, but without forcing matters. Pressure comes from relationships with others while emotions and insecurities run high. Carry out change gently and swiftly, without fear or anxiety. People will not always approve of your choices, but still do what is best for you now in the circumstances you alone face. Life is short and you cannot do everything. Listen to what others have to say, even if it is not what you want to hear. Ulterior motives bring humiliation, but sincere reaching out succeeds. --> Courage and devotion, summon up all your courage. Stand up for your beliefs and maintain your integrity. Safety lies not where you are but on the other side. Water in the gorge stops for nothing, pushing through every crack, never losing heart.

-0-

Through obstinacy one cuts oneself off from possible support. --> As water is constant in its flow, the chun tzu is constant in practice and teaching.

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More than ever I am convinced that at least part of the power of the oracle is simply the time given to the meditation, but also in the grinding of the back and forth, like scales coming to settle, first this side lower, then that side. It is the multiple reversals and constant shifting of contexts, in the larger context of the question asked, which brings wisdom. The book is just a tool for the rock tumbler of the mind.

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741

Tags: poetry

For R.W.

When you say
acey-ell-ewe
you're not talking about them
you're talking about me

When you say
lihbuhral
you're not talking about them
you're talking about me

When you say
fuhking-peese-nik
you're not talking about them
you're talking about me

And if you can not see
I am them
and they are me
perhaps best we let each other be.

Save that it is us
not you
who
who
who
fight for your right to be so let
it is us
not you
who will stand not just for our own
freedom
to speak
to think
to question
but yours too.

So you see
I don't have the luxury
of simply letting you be
I'm too caught up
in serving your right
to be so let.

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Transparency

Tags: regrets

I used to journal. Long before I heard the word "blog," maybe before it was coined. I used to write, pen to paper, and, as a budding writer, took at face value the advice of countless teachers to let the journal be a protected place where I could say anything, fearlessly, thoughtlessly, truthlessly, guiltlessly. It was my place.

Keep a diary and one day it'll keep you
--Mae West, in "The Portable Curmudgeon", Winokur, ed.

Amen to that. However miserable I may have been with my first wife there is every reason to believe she stayed the hell out of my journals. Sometimes I think if my second wife had been as honorable I would still be in Santa Barbara.

It happened while I was away on business, the only time I've ever been away on business, the first time a job had required me to travel and footed the bill. I was in Arlington, VA, for a week long conference of the Fielding Institute, where I was working at the time in some administrative function. It was a good team and a great time and I sometimes look back wistfully at the way I screwed up that particular gig. I've certainly had my share of chances and opportunities. Makes me wonder sometimes where I get off hoping for more. But that sentence will probably get stricken as the new editorial policy of this blog takes hold and I make new the distinction between private and public, which is, of course, the theme and aim of this post.

I was in Arlington, doing well, doing good. Being good. Very much not taking advantage of the time away to play the player as some men would and as some think we should. What kind of man doesn't hit every honey pot he can? Good question. Should I feel less-than just because that's not my style? And is that a proper question for a public blog?

I was in Arlington, doing well, being good. But my wife back home wasn't doing so well and definitely wasn't being good. She tells a story about a storm and thunder that spooked the cats and a frightened cat knocking over a pile of papers which included a journal. She says the journal fell open on the floor and from there she just couldn't help herself. She read through it. There must have been plenty of unkindness about her, because when I was angry, when we would fight, I would write, vent there, not gossip with a friend or go down to the bar and give the guys an earful. I'd put it in the journal where it belonged, get the release, and get on with making things better sooner rather than later.

I was working on a manuscript dealing with molestation issues, and part of that included an episode where I was not so much molested as seduced while not yet 17. And doesn't that bring back this issue of private versus public. I've solicited that manuscript, and been asked to send it to publishers, but chickened out each time. First, it's really not ready for a publisher. But second, and most important, I am not yet fully committed to putting it out there without some kind of camouflage to protect the innocent, or at least protect myself from libel suits. Truth is a defense, sure, but you can spend a lot winning such a case. Point being, this notion of public versus private isn't a new issue for me. I've been wrestling with it for a good decade, without quite realizing it.

I was in Arlington, doing well, being good, and my wife was reading my journal. Oddly, she was not so much upset by whatever venting she read. But she was devastated to read about my sexual fantasies. One of the parts of the molestation work was a seduction, and I felt the need to write it as evocatively as possible. And when I met a particularly fetching woman I used that opportunity to practice writing as evocatively as possible. She was hot, but smoldering rather than blistering. And that is the part of my journal which, as Mae would put it, kept me. I blew a fuse on learning my wife had invaded my privacy that way, and with so little understanding of what she was doing or what she was looking at. I don't think our marriage really ever recovered from it.

Later, when that marriage was completely broken and I was pretty much broken with it, I adopted a policy of complete transparency. I have my share of skeletons in the closet, and rather than ever let myself strive for a life or position which could be demolished by a well-timed disclosure of the previously undisclosed I preferred to craft whatever life I could while letting it all hang out.

And that is changing. As mentioned in a previous post, keeping different company changes us. I have spent the past six Friday mornings with the good people at Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. While folks there might be understanding and even tolerant of my foibles, nonetheless, there is nothing to be gained by highlighting those foibles. And so I find myself wondering again about this line between public life and private life and the strange paradox that to shine in the public light one must put certain things out of the way of casual inspection.

No answers today, not even a well articulated question. And this whole thing arguably would have been just as good as a private journal entry. But I've lost that space. If it can't be said in court, in church, before the people whose respect and approval I seek, then maybe it isn't worth saying anywhere?

But I am not used to being pent so. I am not sure I can allow myself to be bottled up that way. I am not sure I can support a world view that calls for it. It is not true to my beliefs. I might have to rethink exactly what I'm doing and where I'm trying to get to, might have to accept that certain doors are closed to me because of it. That still seems better, healthier, safer than a life lived in constant fear of of having built on sand, constant fear that the beautiful structure you've built is about to come crashing down because you tried to hide something.

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Humbled

Tags: self loathing

I went to my first American Constitution Society meeting yesterday. It was held in Century City, on the Avenue of the Stars, in the offices of the folks who send out cease-and-desist orders for Tom Cruise. Parking was $3 for 12 minutes. No self-parking, give your low-end Corolla that hasn't been to the car wash for three weeks to the valet. Don't think about going toward the elevators until you have shown some ID to the...doorman? reception desk? imposing 60-ish gent with eyes that would be at home on a hawk who looks at you like a mouse on the plain far below...but probably too scrawny a mouse to dive for. Get past this gate keeper and remember that in big buildings elevators are segregated; suite 2100 will be on the 21st floor and thus you need the bank of elevators that serves floor 16 and up. Wander back and forth between banks of elevators until the (suddenly kindly?) gent who copied down your driver's license number to grant you the privilege of breathing the air in this building tells you "the ones at the end". Finally recall that this isn't the first time you've been above the third floor, that you *want* the elevators that start at 16, get in, go up. You're late, got stuck at the dayjob and are running a full 45 minutes behind schedule; you had hoped to meet some people before the presentation started.

The panel is in full swing as you slide in, quickly appraising the room and deciding there isn't a seat at the big rectangle of conference tables where everyone else is just about finished with their sandwiches and cans of Pepsi. Luckily there are a couple of chairs in the far back (you entered in the front, stage right; no surreptitious sneaking in on this show) and you decide that is your best bet.

Try not to look at the clothes. Try not to look at the costly casual mode. Some of these folks are in jackets, no doubt on their way to or from court or a client meeting. Others are expensively relaxed, clothes that look like they've been out of the store just long enough to get the retail smell out (if ever these clothes had that smell) but are just one or two wearings short of the maximum allowed life span before they are sent off to goodwill for the needy. You've bought those clothes at the thrift stores; always felt good, superior, for getting those fine shirts for pennies on the dollar.

The panel is lackluster; not ACS members talking about ACS matters, but rather a panel of activists talking to this ACS chapter about bills on the upcoming ballot. Preaching to the choir, and not as well as the choir itself could preach. No souls were saved, all were already in that particular flavor of a state of grace. But a few members liked asking questions, lawyerly devils-advocate questions we must assume the opposition will ask. That was probably the highlight of the show. But it highlighted the same old story of tall white men dominating. As if there could be any other way in such a setting. When the woman pushing the "clean money" bill spoke of inadequate minority voices in political campaigns I could see all the tall white men nodding. Nobody laughed.

As the stated end of meeting time approached folks started sneaking out the back; no leave takings, no acknowledgments to even their neighbor seated next to them. Just up and gone. By the time the show was officially over perhaps 8 of the maybe 30 people who had been sitting around the conference table had already left. The rest spilled out quickly, only a handful of the women remaining to talk with the clean money lady, the Planned Parenthood speaker, young and lovely and inarticulate getting barely a glance, and the official moderator of the show talking briefly to the one tall white man on the panel, the environmentalist.

Determined to make some kind of human contact or die trying you hover near the moderator and the environmentalist long enough to ask about handouts others were looking at during the presentation. The environmentalist gives a card, the moderator points, none too charitably, at a table where the sandwiches had been, upon which the clean money lady had placed some flyers. You overhear that parking can be validated on the way out.

By luck your departure puts you in line behind the environmentalist at the front desk for parking validation, then again in the foyer waiting for the elevator. You press the button for the first floor, failing to take his lead and push for the valet level. Chit chat about Orwell and your fly-by-night lawshcool and maybe you can feed yourself with family law someday but it's conlaw you fancy; spit out all the recordings you've taped over the past 18 months while you have rebuilt a modicum of self-esteem all attached to this one vain pursuit---and see how shallow, how naive it all is. You are out of your league. You can't even get back to your car without first getting off on the wrong floor. You are a bumbling bumpkin; the valet just barely has patience enough to tell you to pay at the cashier before presenting your ticket, although he seems to soften when your car is actually approaching, as if the memory of your low-end Corolla which hasn't been to the car wash for three weeks suddenly collides with your barely forgivable rudeness in having addressed him earlier when you asked to whom you should give your ticket. The environmentalist is two steps ahead of you for the whole display, up to the point when his sky blue Z3 pulls up and you take a last look as his immaculately tailored suit and his studiously subtle pony-tail of white hair slides into the car and rolls away. Recall how embarrassed for you he looked when the valet sent you back in to the cashier. Spring for joy, inside, silently and invisibly, at the site of your own beater coming slowly down the lane. Imagine the valets are a little softer, kinder, gentler, as they realize you are much more one of them than one of the crowd that pays them. Think about your white trash roots and the incredible impertinence of your aspirations. Wonder that you can be shaken so easily. Remind yourself that if you want to accomplish any of the things you want to accomplish then you will simply have to deal with days like this, people like this. You are playing out of your league. But it is the only game in town.

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862

"Hey Mr. DJ"
'she mean
Bowie?

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

I mean, "...I am what I play...", right?

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981 - cost value analysis

I could hit the db again and set a conditional based on the result. Or I could just stick a flag in a loop. Which one costs the most? I don't even know how to know, except, mythically, to try it both ways with benchmarking, a feature about which I know even less than about debugging.

About which, by the way, I'm pretty frustrated. The times I've tried the debugger it has, understandably, stepped me piece by piece through the included modules, cgi.pm and dbi. I get lost pretty easily there, and can't help thinking, instructional as it will be generally to increase my knowledge of the guts of those modules, it's not as effiecient as the dot-com-bubble-days method of using print statements diagnostically. I confess: I'll feel more like a real programmer when I can make the debugger sit up and beg.

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Spoiling for a Fight

No real reason. Have sworn off Balkinization for at least the week. And so I find myself surfing around looking for other things about which to get riled and maybe write something here. I suppose I could go back to the new Hofstadter book, but it seems after the first few pages it's all that same humanistic fallacy again and again so there's little point in that. Besides, why should I be so into fighting?

No good answer for that today, other than the classic observation that a good fight passes the time and always feels important while it's in progress. I reckon I've got other fish to fry...

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675

Tags: blog, approach avoidance

Probably done all the blog tweaking I'm going to do for a good long while. Having the oblio's cap cards on the left seems to be the quick-and-easy way to approximate the layout they are supposed to have. I won't be taking the time to htmlify the source file on those anytime in the foreseeable future. So far there are only a couple that overlap into the body section of the layout.

What exactly is approach avoidance? Something like the opposite of cloying, something that attracts but from which we try, intend, mean to recoil (not necessarily because the thing is good or bad, just because.)

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927 - GKP Parses Cheney

Geoffrey K. Pullum has weighed in with some thoughts on the recent flap over what DickC said about November 2 and getting "hit again." GKP has been reading reports on both sides of the issue, as befits the scientist, and even offered a plausible argument based on attempts to discern shades of grey that are not represented in, say, the Associated Press article that started the row. But to what end?

At the risk of disagreeing with my betters (and make no mistake: Pullum is the dOOd) I think GKP's missed the boat and helped support arguments that would wrongly let Cheney off the hook for what truly was a terrible breach of taste and conduct. The important word here is connotation. Parse however one might the denotive value of the string of words quoted in this September 12 blog post, the unmistakable connotation is that on November second, when the nation chooses between the Republican portfolio and the Democratic portfolio we are choosing between being safe or getting "hit in a way that will be devastating." Quoth Pullum:

Naturally, you trust Language Log to provide a linguistic reading that will sort this out. Did he say what AP says he said, or not?

Pullum follows with an analogy that fails to create an isomorph for the connotations hinging on the reference to the day of the election and the existence of partisan sniping aimed at winning said election. Pullum offers his Olympic doping analogy as an example of how one might argue that Dick did indeed say-and-mean what AP says Dick said-and-meant. But since this example misses the main point, fails to include isomorphs for the connotations, Pullum quite effectively undermines the argument that Cheney indeed said-and-meant what he seemed to say-and-mean. Pullum goes on to discuss an example argument that lets Dick off the hook, namely that if one is allowed to recast the statements ever so slightly then we can do away with this nasty thing of implying "a vote for Kerry is a vote for another 9/11." Now, this is indeed part of what linguists do, trying to find different ways of understanding speech acts, often by rearranging the components. But Pullum's recast removes the vital reference to the election date and the viscerally charged phrase, "get hit again." By ignoring the semantically emotive bits, the inflammatory bits, one can indeed argue that maybe poor Dicky boy just shouldn't be allowed to speak without a tele-prompter. This is a variation on the "he can't be bad, he's just dumb (or a poor orator, or trying not to have a heart attack in the middle of the campaign)" argument. This is a a dangerous argument to support, because it pre-absolves any wrongdoing without need to resort to anything so unkind as calling such people on the carpet for their wrongdoings. Basically, Pullum has given credance to the argument that Cheney is not much of a speaker and what he *meant* to say was something completely rational and appropriate and not at all partisan or inflammatory. (Yeah, Cheney; Vice-President "Fuck yourself" Cheney. Didn't mean anything inflammatory at all. Has Pullum read Newt's anachronistic answer to the linguistics of Lakoff and Rockridge?)

Rove and Gingrich and their ilk continue to use semantically powerful, emotionally charged language with forethought and malice. More than one commentator has noticed how much more comfortable GWB seems with the rhetoric of war than the nomenclature of reason. This is no mistake; votes are won by words that move, not by words that cause the listener to scratch their head and think. There is no justification for sending myself to the hospital by bending over so far backwards in effort to give a Dick Cheney or a George Bush the benefit of the doubt. There's no science in letting a viper bite you, no hedging that maybe "he didn't mean it." We are dealing with a campaign that has a long standing history of smear tactics. We are dealing with a legacy of linguistic abuse of the voters, the press, the nation. And it saddens me to see anyone cut so much as a pico-meter of slack to these miscreants.

Of perhaps more concern, and possibly worthy of a separate post, one I could clean up enough for ISR is the big "so what" on the idea that what Cheney really meant is we'll be choosing between a continued "War on Terror" and the "mere" pursuit of criminals. This is a clear issue of framing; the war on terror frames our actions in a manner that makes disagreeing with the Rove team nigh unto treason and clears the way for gradual (or not-so-gradual) erosion of civil liberties. The notion of warring on something other than a state is utter nonsense, but it's nonsense that works, from the War on Poverty (also called "the war on the poor") to the war on drugs (thank God Viagra is a "medicine") and now the war on terror, people respond. It's more of that visceral language, it's more of that powerful connotation. The rhetoric of war makes dissent an act of either treason or pussilanimous conduct; that's the clear connotation, and people respond.

I suppose since Lakoff is already beating this drum neither I nor Pullum need to. Still, it would have been nice if GKP had at least tossed a nod in that direction, had at least referred to the power of connotation in statements such as Cheney's, rather than leaving us with:

...it's back to whether you trust [Cheney's] report of his intention, or you think he's dishonestly backtracking because of the furore. Language Log cannot help you with that.

Maybe I have a naive misunderstanding of the domain of linguistics, of science. Certainly the asking of questions is of value, the finding of distinctions. But there is also value in drawing conclusions and making testable assertions. Langauge Log can indeed help with that. One place in particular Language Log might help is by pointing out the incredibly powerful signal strength of Cheney's original connotations versus the relatively weak signal of subsequent retraction. Phrased differently, if we used google as our measure of truth, what do suppose it would tell us Dick "really" said: "A vote for Kerry is a vote for Terrorism" or, as Pullum has recast it:

If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is of a future in which, when we are hit again (as some day we surely will be, perhaps devastatingly), we will fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set where we take terrorist attacks to be just criminal acts, and not appreciate that we're really at war; and that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Looking at this again, my whole rant probably hinges mostly on that damned diminutive pejorative "just." That is definitely an ISR piece in the making.

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851

Shouldn't
PARTS PARTIES
    sell great near
tinsel town?

-- from the forthcoming
Caiaphas' Voice

Therapy joke, probably ought to link to an ISR glossary item, but that's probably not going to happen today. A "Parts Party" is a therapy technique, a kind of psycho-drama role playing not people from the client's past but various characters thought to be descriptive of the person's internal landscape. If the client were a trained Freudian there would only be three, id, ego and super ego. Likewise you'd only expect a Parent, an Adult and a Child for a Transactional Analysis trainee. But Virginia Satir, who came up with Parts Parties, had a nice way of defining a person not just as three stereotyped parts, but rather as many as she deemed fit for the individual and their current needs. Much more chaotic, much more flexible, in the end probably much more valuable, but also much more likely to be misunderstood and poorly used in the hands of someone who got the surface but not the depth of her work.

The Hollywood reference is probably pretty clear.

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852

Water to wine?
     or
"Talking to you is
like being on ACID"?:
which is nicer?
Which is Austin?

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

Had a thing about Austin for a while, dear friends were looking likely to move there, and it was hailed as a pretty nice place to be. As for the rest, I really have been told from time to time that talking to me is like being on LSD. Sometimes it's a compliment, but usually not from family; strange, no?

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757

Tags: swordplay, mattingly

The shark
skin of my
     KATANA
tells me Bob
wanted me For
my fingertips!

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

These cards are tangible representations of attempts to define myself in relationship to the world, part of this strange and silly writing project, Oblio's Cap, which is even less explicable to me than ever, except as a set of very personal and personalized writing prompts. There are enough cards covering enough topics that I will always be able to shuffle through and use them as writing prompts. Hell, at one a day there are a good three years worth. And I think they will each bear revisiting as time goes on. I can imagine a time when I've exhausted them, written to each one too often, but that time is a long way off, and in the meantime they give a strange kind of continuity and structure to my journalling, a structure grounded in physical artifacts. I like that. I like that what I am working on has physical, tangible manifestation. I lack that kind of physical manifestation in so much of my world.

I was listening to KPFK Sunday morning, the speaker was saying people who torture are humanoids but not fully human yet. Crazy paradoxical, because dehumanization is arguably the first and most important step in creating the perceptual milieu required to get someone to torture. One does not torture another whom she perceives as "just like me," no, it requires an "us or them" mentality to get folks to torture. And I expect the folks at KPFK to know this and know better than to dehumanize anyone.

I expect too much.

I don't really know where I was going with that one. Nor am I sure where I was going with today's card. I know that when I was spending a lot of time with the katana I toyed with a fingertip grip, because the feeling of the rough shark skin on the fingertip was great. I suppose that felt a bit like the feeling of some of the fine sanding I used to do on guitars, the 400 and 600 wet/dry sanding. Who can say?

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Cycling

When the bud is on the branch
I can feel the end of Winter
Not just because I watch the stars.

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639

I try to forget
how much of life
is who's got what
on who

-- from the forthcoming
oblio's cap

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841

Who did Kenny Roger
     think
he was calling
with all that fried chicken?

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

Kenny Rogers Roasters turns out to be related to the Coney Island legend. And I thought I was making connections.

That bit about "calling"? Think, "Every Elvis has his army," or "demographic segment defined by consumtion patterns."

And, just for the record, I don't really mean to be arcane, obtuse, abstruse. This is how I think. And this is my blog. And it's not like I'm saying this style of writing would ever work in a commercial setting. But isn't that part of the joy, and the hell, of the web, exploring some of the boundaries of acceptable prose? Aren't we all Joyces and Steins now, if only we have the will to try? And must that attempt then preclude anything as pedestrian as treating of weighty and academic subjects, or must it always be another day in Dublin?

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913 - Agendas for a New Just Era

A friend writes

I suspect, though, that the instant it, whatever it is [a better, shinier Democratic party], looks like it's going somewhere, it will attract too many participants, with too many Grail-like agendas, to sustain itself.

This would be as contrasted with the PNAC (read "ruling junta of the RNC") which rests on a solid foundation of greed, and will to power. So long as the world economy is an oil economy, so long as the U.S. is the 800# gorrilla, well, pie-in-the-sky reformers are in for a long haul. So long as our electorate (ie: consumer base) is willing to accept false advertising from the likes of Fox News (repeat: "Fair and Balanced" and "No Spin Zone" are not simply descriptions, but actionable consumer fraud; *that's* what Nader ought to be targeting) then you can bet the PNAC...I mean the RNC will keep it's strangle hold on the nation. Buy Haliburton; buy America.

Grail-like agendas? Which would those be? No illegal, imoral occupations of soveriegn lands? No treasonous leakings of agent's identies to the press? No lies about "don't think anybody could have predicted..."? Which agendas are Grail-like, actual education rather than teaching for standardized test scores? Actually giving impoverished folks of all stripes an honest chance at that education? True fairness in reporting? Jobs for those who can work? Equal work for equal pay? Freedom? Justice? Liberty? These are "Grail-like agendas"? Maybe instead of scoffing you should take a sip. Here, brother, have some of mine. It is heady. Here's what it says to me: you can never enslave a free man, only kill him. I oppose this adminstration and the lies and hatred it stands for with all my soul. I reject the police state it is building in the name of the Fatherland. I reject the zombification thrown at me from all channels. I may be ineffectual, but if the only effect I can have is to rail against the evils I see, well, that's a damned site better than putting my shoulder to their wheel in the name of effectiveness and a little whiter daily bread.

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987 - elsa

Be ye certain your else is an else and your elsif has a test...

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939 - Intellectual Property

Seems it's about time I started getting my head around this issue. What with GPL and Creative Commons and Artistic License it's getting to be a pretty muddled field. (The perl.com Artistic license link is bust as of this writing, you can find a copy here as well as a quick snapshot of what I mean by a muddled field.)

What I recall from research about 8 years ago is that copyright law is intended to increase dissemination of information by allowing creators to earn profits. Note that is not the same as intending the creators (much less non-creating property procurers) to earn profits; the profits are to aid the dissemination, but in modern times the cart has got in front of the horse. I'm looking forward to a deeper read here of Clause 8 of article I of the U.S. Constitution.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Clearly RIAA and MPAA haven't read this; they seem to think there's something about the fact that they've made a buck which means the government has to help keep them making bucks. But the intent is to further "the Progress of Science and useful Arts." P2P does this; induce does not.

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973 - Trackback test and cool, cool, cool theme site for blosxom

I am trackback-pinging Kozo Ayo's blosxom powered site. If your search of the blosxom home page didn't lead you to Kozo (via the flavour registry) then get over here right now!

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865

Failure to
    DEVELOP
    is the most
ConspicuousConsumption

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894

Why Bhoddisatva?
'Cause J.C. was a
    punk nepot.

Not attributed to any particular project, and an unkind way to say something interestingly true. Not that there aren't also logical problems with the idea of giving up all attachments except one's attachment to helping others give up their attachments. I haven't found a system yet that isn't subject to this unkind kind of nit-picking, but then why should expect the map to be the territory?

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904

Arghh! You'd think I'd remember: edit the file, change the timestamp. That's the default. So, my apologies for anyone wondering why suddenly a whole bunch of entries have myseriously (and bogusly) floated upwards in the listing. As I've made a daily post part of my seasonal routine this should happen less and less; I'm sure daily contact with the blog will help keep such things in the front of my mind where I can use them rather than in the back, where I can only wince in recognition after the pooch has been screwed. I hadn't checked my xhtml validation for a good long while, and came up with a bunch of errors, and fixed them, and the only downside is now blosxom thinks all those entries are from today. Mea culpa. Next stop: vim helpfiles for how to edit without changing access time.

B^)

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826

Didn't your Voice
                 Coach
teach the
  nothing-never
    induction?

-- from the forthcoming
Caiaphas' Voice

Carl Anderson gave these rules, but as is always the case the codified form varies a bit from what was actually said, which was, "I will make space, because nothin' neve' happens," with a great big grin. Put this way, in context, side-by-each with his voice, enunciation, smile, it's easy to see that "I will be willing..." is subsumed by this and "The Universe delights..." And it's all true.

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690

The new job requires email via Outlook. I hate outlook. I hate everything about it. So don't expect me to give you my work address---I don't want any more traffic there than humanly possible, 'cause I just don't, Don't, DON'T want to use outlook any more than utterly unaviodable.

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978 - Categorization? Not.

So, here I am, using blosxom 'cause it's got perly guts and it's minimalist and all that rot, but meanwhile I'm slowing going over to the darkside, via gmail's "search, don't sort" philosophy, and I'm following along with the idea of a searchable flatfile of links for bookmarking and there's the wiki conversation that goes "where's the menus?" and I'm starting to wonder if I conceptually approve of the tool I'm using.

Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

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909

My baby said she's travelin' on the one after...

Sure, that's gratuitous, but, hey, it's my blog. Them's what gets it gets it,them's what don't don't. I really only opened vim to say I've got Pasi Savolainen's figlet based wbcaptcha enabled, so maybe you can say "hi" and I won't have to see all the spam. Ain't life grand. Now all I have to do is likewise enable ISR, and then fix the format on both pages, y'know, get the lean-and-mean blogroll style, put in the calendar and find, take the stupid bullets offa the main nav. Soon, soon. Looking for the balance between "the blogosphere ate my brain" (which is very much where I was at in October) and the dry spell I've been on the past few weeks.

Again, please do give the comments a spin, let me know how it goes.

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703

Tags: blog, approach avoidance

So how come it's such a hassle getting a straight feed url from my pals? I don't *want* to read my feeds in a web-based 3rd party app. I'm already in love with "raggle"; fast, textual, console, sexysexysexy. But I had to initiate a subscription at bloglines to get an actual url to feed to raggle to sub to VM's "Running with Symbols," and it looks like I'm about to do the same for Ruminate. Now, I can dig the coolness of making all this other options available...but at the cost of console users?

I know, I'm just being contrarian. But that's not true. Five minutes with raggle and I'm feeling like rss is something I've pined for. It just works, fast and easy, like a good app should.

Oh well, enough bitching for now. Sip the last of this morning's coffee before it's too cold to enjoy...

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rhce99 - First exercise

I'm working through an RHCE book, the first exercise throws a nasty twist. You are instructed to use vi to add a user, by adding a line in /etc/passwd. Then run passwd for that new user. But because of shadow passwords you also need to add a line in /etc/shadow. What I did was simply copy the line for a known working user, then changed the username field of that line. Then I was able to run passwd to "change" the new user's password.

Luckily I'm a vim fanatic, and that exercise was really meant as a brief check on basic vi skills. No sweat. But I can't help making a log of this learning journey, and a list of resources. Can't assume you'll have vim in a rescue situation, so it's a good idea to look at some basic vi stuff. The Vi Lovers Home Page makes a great starting point, but is even better.

Next on the list is Linux Filesystem Hierarchy. Don't scoff. I ran into this a couple of weeks before deciding to bone up for RHCE, and it was revelatory. There are good reasons for lots of those otherwise take-it-on-faith directory names. Check it out.

Next on the whirlwind tour of things you should have already monkeyed with a time or two before attempting this test (or even to study for this test) there's fdisk, a command line partitioning app. Check out this intro, then go back and read the whole HOWTO, then spend a little time with the man page. (No, I am *not* going to provide links to web-version of man pages. Gotta draw a line somehwere...)

On to mkfs and fsck

I'll say up front, don't know that this is the best study guide on the market, the one that I'm working from. The day my benefactor was ready to plunk a wad of spare change to get me a book this was literally the only title in three large stores. Since I'm not saying something nice about it, I'll not provide the name or publisher. But do shop around. And if Exercise 1-2 is "Creating a New LVM Parition" then you've probably got what I've got.

This exercise annoys me...because I can't do it. "Add a new hard disk." Oh, yeah, right, I'm not supposed to be thinking about this test unless I've got cash to burn and am sitting on a pile of discretionary hardware. For those who find this page other than through personal knowledge, I'm studying on a *laptop* for goodness sake. A dual boot, knoppix3.6/centos-3 compaq presario 2105us. As my secondary machine, for practicing networking and such I've got an old dell 333mhz.

I won't be adding a hard drive. And I won't be doing this exercise today. Chapters 3 and 11 will apparently deal with the topic at greater lengths; hopefully without me having to install hardware. Meanwhile, here's a link to resources and a howto.

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842

Trance-Sylvanian:
adj: Hypnotic
         Forest

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

No, really, this is one of my absolute favorites. But then I'm the guy who said, "Grinder and Bandler's best work was coining the term 'transderivational search'."

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971 - Knoppix, WinXP and Paranoia

I don't know that I'm willing to assume micro-sludge intentionally set out to bugger knoppix; I can't imagine knoppix was enough of a threat. But I can imagine joy in mudville on learning some crufty kludge had such a happy side-effect.

Here's the link: Evidence WinXP "security updates" may break Linux

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Some Postulates, With Terms To Be Defined

Tags: politics

In the context of discussing Professor Levinson's "Our Undemocratic Constitution":

1. Voters typically haven't the sophistication to do their job competently in even the best of environments, but in the 21st Century information environment, dominated as it is by commercial interests and influenced as it is by an intelligence community capable of disinformation on the one hand and spectacular "October Surprises" on the other, voters are effectively less prepared than ever to competently wield the sovereign franchise.

2. Short of returning to a mythical idyllic hunter-gathering existence there can be no effective functional equality between people. The Agrarian, then the Industrial and now the Information ages each bring increasing levels of specialization in order to function. The greater the need for specialization of function and learning the greater the base inequity of the system. So we can either have our technological wonders and live with inequity and search for justice within, or we can bomb ourselves back to the stone age.

   Put differently, you can't have the information age without intense specialization of learning. Knowledge is power, and power often manifests as or is represented by money and property, so the uneven distribution of knowledge cannot but create an uneven distribution of power and wealth. Further, accumulation of wealth comes itself from knowledge---even knowledge as venal as where the family skeletons are buried. Knowledge of the inner workings of a power mongering family is itself a specialized kind of knowledge which must be taken into account when evaluating the realities of our world in the pursuit of making it a just world.

3. Some things cannot be fixed. Moltke (see Balkinization, http://balkin.blogspot.com for Sunday, October 8) preached truth and conscience to power. It got him killed, and may or may not have done some good. But the recognition that some things cannot be fixed is an absolute necessity to any who would pursue a just world and not go stark mad in the pursuit. We must work with the world as it is, and cultivate the wisdom to know what we can affect from what we cannot; that wisdom in itself goes a long way toward providing the much vaunted serenity sought by the 12-step cultists as well as shepherding the strength to change the changeable which seems so often undervalued by those same 12-step cultists.

4. Marx and Freud were idiots. In particular the doctrines of denial and "false consciousness" are anathema to useful analysis, as are all self-sealing prophecies (to be defined more fully, but in short, a prophecy for which evidence and lack of evidence can be construed as validation, such as when anti-Semites say of the historical research proving the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery and a hoax: Anti-semitic "believers" in the Protocols routinely take the historical record itself as proof of "the canniness of the the Elders at planting false history.)

5. Having ruled out mistakes of thought such as false-consciousness, we have to ask ourselves, if Joe Sixpack is happy with his mortgage, his 40-ouncer and his Monday Night Football, who are we to gainsay the validity of his happiness and contentment? Returning to the issue of specialization, someone has to clean the toilets and collect the garbage, and only the most fatuously naive can think these jobs can be equally distributed among the population---or, put differently, while perhaps anyone can (and should from time to time) scrub their own toilet and empty their own trash, not everyone can learn to solve simultaneous equations and the niceties of family politics in a banking family like the Gates of Redmond and the guitar virtuosity of Segovia. It is a marvel and a miracle that anyone learns any of these things, no one can be expected to be competent in all things, and yet that is precisely what would be required for a truly equal society.

   If, then, our society requires specialization, should it not then accord us some comforts and satisfactions at all stations? While there is no denying the rigidly enforced caste system of ancient India, with it's untouchables, was evil, nonetheless the realities of life are that in any society other than the mythical idyllic hunter-gatherer society we will segregate, if not in a linearly structured hierarchy then still in a multi-faceted system of fairly discontinuous subgroups.

6. Reasoning by analogy from the physical or biological sciences to the world of social phenomena (and, please, let's not risk fooling ourselves by labeling political studies, law, sociology or psychology as "sciences") is always risky and all too often produces junk reasoning. That said, here is one such potentially misleading analogy of which I have yet to disabuse myself: We think of ourselves as having five senses, although physiologically it might be more accurate to place the number as high as 17 (from four types of taste bud and two types of light receptor and different types of "feeling" nerves, etc.) Each of these systems, even if we accept for ease of discussion the classical "five senses", each reports or provides data about different aspects of our environment. When all five senses seem to report the same thing life is good. But it is possible for the visually appealing to smell foul, for what looks bad to feel good, for what sounds good to taste bad. When the various systems report differently, yielding disparate evaluations (which is most of the time) we are then faced with the challenge of proceeding in a fashion which arguably takes the ostensibly conflicting information into account and still serves our various needs/wants/plans/goals.

   Our political/economic system can be viewed similarly as a set of interconnecting, overlapping, interdependent set of systems that nonetheless each report on or provide data about a different portion of our body-politic/body-economic. In modern times it is common to elevate and even venerate economic information, much as verbal learning in individuals is currently aggrandized well beyond it's legitimate worth compared, say, to the ability to give a good back-rub or cook a decent meal, which are, in truth, much more important in the long run and are things each of us should be able to do---save that, returning to the point, we currently live in a society which denigrates the feeling and taste based arts in favor of the symbolic, especially with regards to the system symbolizing power transactions called "money."

   It stands to reason that if our society is comprised of people who are incompetent to wield their sovereign vote wisely (or even in their pragmatic self-interest) and our society cannot function without this stratification then simple democracy must fail.

7. Professor Levinson puts his arguments in the context of arguments between Jefferson and Madison as to the revisability of the Constitution, arguing, in a Jeffersonian manner, that the Constitution should not be venerated. But the title of his book and the sum of his arguments as I have read them to date seems to me to likewise venerate democracy. I suppose I take a middle ground; I like the idea of a living constitution in the Jeffersonian sense, but I tremble at the thought of the same public that put our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, that so willingly voted this administration wide sweeping war powers and limitations on their own freedoms, that continues year after year to vote in a party which continues year after year to widen the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of the nation, I fear with all my soul a constitution drafted for and ratified by this rabble. I have not enough faith in my fellow American, who could not, on the average, tell a valid premise from a virgin prim miss, much less be bothered to look behind Orwellian names like "USAPATRIOT" or "Clear Skies Act." No, I cannot sign up for a new constitutional convention; better that we pray the currently vested interests are sufficiently indoctrinated in the ideals of our founding documents and preach conscience to their power.

   Seriously, having passed the first AUMF, H.R. 3162 (the so-called "patriot" act), the war in Iraq, the new "habeas buster" just what kind of Constitution does Professor Levinson see this rabble ratifying? We've just passed legislation precluding recourse to Geneva; do you think today's fellow Americans would balk at disintegrating the Bill of Rights itself in service of "national security"?

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Comment at Balkinization

I have been spending far more time engaging folks at Balkinization than I have on repeal-aumf directly; I am at a bit of a stuck point for where to go with this project. I suspect it will get more attention in between topical flash points like the recent passage of the Military Comissions Act. MCA is truly but the latest symptom of the greater disease, the poison of the "war" concept as applied to bringing the nine-one-one attackers to justice.

Here's the excerpted comment, in response to this post by Scott Horton:

I'm trying to tie [Scott's post] to my more immediate and modest goal of better wielding the Schmitt example as a refutation of the Yoo influenced arguments of today's administration apologists. I can almost forgive Schmitt his perhaps naive admiration of Prussia's "silver age of efficient and enlightened authoritarianism". Likewise I can forgive Schmitt and all others for arguing that "constitutional ideals and legal concepts of [a nation's] foreign and domestic enemies" impair military and government efficiency. Which is to say I can forgive anyone coming to Yoo's conclusions or parroting his rationalizations---if they haven't read their history. But we know what became of Germany with the help of Schmitt's legal analysis; Germany turned to evil. Nor was Germany the first great example of a nation state to give too much power to, or place too much emphasis on, its military might only to crumble under the weight of oppression or go down in the mire of debauch.

The problem with Yooish thought and the terror laws passed (and in the works) by this administration are not found primarily in the laws themselves, but rather in the people who, looking at what they hope to accomplish with those laws, refuse or are unable to see the evils to which those same laws can be turned. Folks don't much like to think about good and evil these days; the ascendancy of "economic" analysis has foreclosed evaluation by that criteria set for most folks. But maybe it is time to refresh that view. No one can credibly disagree that the systematic wholesale slaughter of six million Jews was evil; there's a starting point. No one can credibly disagree that holding an innocent person for years without even hope of being charged or knowing the evidence against her is evil. And while we rightly shy away from judging evils on some simple linear spectrum, it is still fair, if not fully accurate, to say that the evil of the Holocaust is greater than the evil of wrongly holding one innocent person without due process. Slippery slope reasoning is suspect, but attacks on due process do not slide down a slope to the evils of genocide; rather such attacks plow the soil in which the seeds of fascism can find a fertile home. That is the danger of Schmittian or Yooish thought. It is also the danger of foolishly elevating "economic" or utilitarian analysis to the level seen in early 20th Century Germany, and found in Chicago School economic analysis. Certainly there is much in the Constitution, by whatever means of interpretation one chooses, to support insisting we adhere to criteria sets other than simple utility. Justice, Freedom and Liberty each appear in the Constitution; economy, efficiency and utility are notably absent. Schmitt's prime mistake, then, might simply be a childish preoccupation with the goods of the burgeoning industrial age to the detriment of a non-empirical but epistemologically sounder Good (secular or otherwise) to which we all must answer.

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749

Tags: approach avoidance, art, religion, subtext, translation, ~$~(c) We Are All Danes Now

Where's my t-shirt? Soon, I promise. Meanwhile, there's also the original online and a locked down copy at wikipedia.

What I want to know is why now? This has been brewing since September, last, but I only hear of it on the heels of the State of the Union? Paranoia will destroya, eh?

Oh, here's a fair-use copy of the pic. But visit the links, above---and accept cookies for the ads; they deserve the traffic and the support.

Hmm, wonder if the alt element of the tag is enough to piss of a blind jihadi? No matter, we are all Danes now.

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still lonely

Just last night
I told you I'm lonely
pent
avoiding
and have you, dear ones
had a thing to say
to brighten my day
to ease my pain?
No matter
it's not your job
but if you were wondering
I meant it
I didn't know how lonely I was
until I fantasized
that you care.

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686

Tags: perception influence, swordplay, sensorium

Smile: It's a verb!

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827

Well, that wasn't so bad. Not all the plugins work on the local site, but the main functions of the blosxom.cgi are working, so I should be able to tweak away locally. Good stuff, no?

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593

How do you keep it light
but still tackle the
heavy questions?

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840

Dancing my desert meditation
snowflakes
cactus needles
I saw you bullying the others
Grandfather's showpiece cutlass
almost more than you could swing with your two handed grip
but good enough to torment the other little ones
you striking with the hilt like the bulbuous working end of a club
I step in to face you and grab the hilt as you swing on me, leaving you with
        a scabbard in your hand and a point in your face
not a point good enough for leather
but bellies are not leather
we neither of us gave such a thought
for, no warrior, still, I am older, bigger; I must not harm little children
so I face you as you now swing the scabbard at me
thinking how to take it from you
without harm, without bruises to either of us
but the scabbard is bound to you, caught or fastened somehow on your wrist
        or sleeve.
and I have just noticed that one of the others, even littler than you
has pulled live steel from the katana's scabbard forgotten
        at my heels
Nicked here, razor sharp there, too big and heavy to hold properly even with
    both his tiny hands
That blade could cut me even as it spilled out of his control. Your scabbard
just a nuisance now, and I am red-faced with shame at letting such a
situation develop. Best to conk you each in turn
with the hilt of the sword in my hand
but I must not harm little children
nor even scare them needlessly
and so now what?
You swing the scabbard from your left to your right
I travel along the radius described by your right arm, inside the arc of your hand
spinning as I go
my free left arm comes in to assist your swing
my nearly adult muscles easily guiding you
your scabbard and my hilt strike together
and he is disarmed never knowing if it was you or me
spinning still,
I scoop up the katana, stiff arm the back of your knees
down you go and we are done
this dessert does not run
red with anyone's blood
for that thirst is not born of this moment with you
my dance melts, my meditation
lost in rage of not being able to not want to not run you through
but that thirst is not really born of this moment with you
It waits for another day

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907

Science
deals with the
      SUBSET
of Countables
      CALLED
Measurables

-from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

This tracks back to a theme from Bateson's "Every Schoolboy" in "Mind and Nature," the epistemological differences between counting and measuring. You can count the number of angels that sit on the head of a pin, if you are spiritually sensitive, or psychotic, but you can never measure them. Or, more in line with Bateson's actual writing, counting is precise, measuring is never fully accurate; along the lines of Zeno, there is always a finer setting one could acheive with better instruments, down to that inifity of points on any line segment.

Actually, I think it's less to do with "infinite number of points on a line segment" than with the inapplicability of linear measurment at the atomic, sub-atomic and quantum levels. One thing I hate beyond all measure is the use of quantum physics terminology to support wooly headed thinking in the New Age movement. I am a New Age minster, so I'm qualified to my opinion; when Deepak Chopra tells us that "sound creates matter and we know this from quantum physics" it makes me want to convert to some nice sensible religion, like Dianetics or Jehovah's Witness. I digress. And think I'll end thusly. B^)

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721

Tags: mind expansion, conceptual infrastructure, sun tzu, subtext

9 18 27 36 45   144 153 162 171 180
BATNA The violence in Getting to Yes
54 63 72 81 90   99 108 117 126 135

Yeah, sure, that works better in print, with the numbers oriented for the portrait setting and the text oriented for the landscape. But my css skills aren't that good yet, and, well, I'm still not sold enough on the ubiquity of css compliance to put too much time into it.

That kvetch notwithstanding, let me explain.

No, that will have to wait. Somehow I've fubared the search box; must fix. Might add a "recent comments" plugin while I'm diddling.

We should have shot the guy who invented the wheel and quit while we were ahead!

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748

Tags: approach avoidance, cat, sun tzu, fnord

Tonsilitis today, taking it easy, playing it cool. And, arguably, overloading the synapses with a bit too much fnord websurfing.

Why do these go together?

Now we turned [propaganda] to serve the state itself to find meaningful ways and flexible forms to immunize the people's thinking.

and

The Principia Discordia

and this

This space intentionally left blank

The thing about confusion is engagement, can't have the former without the latter. Likewise propaganda. Time for the good guys to stop wasting time talking to ourselves and fucking engage the people who need us.

Or fnord not.

Oblio's Cap *IS* a Love Song
about seeing the fnords.

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774

Was 39 a pattern
completion
        or
      interruption
in Pilates Numbers?

-- from the forthcoming
Caiaphas's' Voice

Heh. There was a time when i was inventing names for projects ever other day or so; This one came after doing the class with Carl. What a great day that was.

There was some talk yesterday yesterday in the cafe about artless art. My buddy Chris Lott said all poems are all artifice, and I disagreed. But when Paul Sampson said,

Art whose wellsprings we don't understand--sure. Artless art--never.

I found myself backing off a bit, because I have always had trouble with the term "Artless art." I can see it as a nice tongue-in-cheek paradox or self-defeater, or as self-delusion. How else? I don't want to be so calculating, all the time, always on, always thinking with that part of my brain, about how to get responses; that flies in the face of the "trust your protective unconscious" theme from all the Ericksonian reading. But the flip side is I do know that Milton's discussions of trusting the unconscious mean a lot more in the context of having that unconscious programmed, practically land-mined, with post-hypnotic suggestions, which better supports the "self-delusion" view of "artless art." What I prefer to do is surf the energy, use what comes my way, be here now. But that means more with training and practice and mindfulness.

I am out of the habit of writing, and the last few times I had the habit, well, let's say I wasn't at my best. Dipping back into this habit will require some rewiring. But I do think this is the direction to go. I need to write. If I write more I'll write better and get better at making my writing work for me because I'll have had plenty of space and time to vent, rant, wiggle and wobble and generally make no sense. I know this method of thinking is valuable and important for me. And I have been too scared of it for too long.

39 is 3 x 13, and 13 is a pretty significant number. I can't help wondering, when I listen to Jesus Christ Superstar, about the "40 lashes." Is it that Pilate just can't bear to give the last one? I wonder, because 39 seems a number fraught with meaning, being the product of three 13s. Pattern interruption is effectuated as well by unexpected repetition as by missing iteration, but better still, this would be a case of ambiguity through pattern interruption, right?

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761

Tags: breath, swordplay, music, cat

The breath that
emulates reaching to
make the hit
        WITH
the opponent's deadly point
        TOUCHING
your diaphragm

-- from the forthcoming
Travels with Roy

It is kind of endearing, but kind of weird, to have the cat sitting on my belly, licking my chest hairs. Tickles a bit too. Her head just under my chin, her tail draped over my right wrist, lick, lick, lick. Not too scratchy, as there is enough hair there to keep her busy without quite getting to skin.

Finally had to chase her off. It was too weird. And not entirely pleasant, certainly not comfortable. Maybe if I was just napping or resting, but not when I'm trying to type.

Picked up a new CD last night, at the Norton Simon museum of all places; "The Toledo Summit" by Orlando Consort. Coolest purchase I've made since Dowland's 3rd book of songs. Very happy.

As for today's card; just imagine it. Take a second and FEEL it. Or take an hour and really feel it.

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885

Wonder how Lila
         feels
about Trivial Pursuit?
"A Course in Miracles"?
Oblio's Cap?

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

Lila is Pirsig's follow up to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." The first book is the story of a schizophrenic English teacher traveling cross-country with his son who is showing signs of adolescent onset schizophrenia, couched in philosophical discussions and flash-backs to the narrator's total collapse. But that's not what most folks see, I suppose. Lila is the same narrator, floating down the Hudson on a boat, and dealing with someone else's schizophrenia, again couched in philosophical discussions, although the flash-backs here are less about the narrator's melt-down and more about his unorthodox methods of thinking prior to the melt-down and his efforts to make something useful of the pre-meltdown thoughts in his post-melt-down life.

Or am I dysphemizing? I was looking for a good "Lila" link, but realized as I toured the web, I don't much think I like the company I'd be keeping if I joined the Pirsig fan club. Strange, because I've taught from Lila, and, indeed, Oblio's Cap is largely inspired by Phaedrus' card file system from that book. But I don't take it all too seriously, and, frankly, I find some of his epistemology to be shaky at best if not downright shoddy. He's not much of an agnostic; he's a believer with no qualms about throwing a few thousand more words at the word-less, which, to me, seems rather like shouting for silence. Or am I dysphemizing?

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956 - Heresy du jour?

Cosmopoetica's poetry maven, Chris Lott, rants about Jean Houlihan. My thought:

Words don't mean; people do.

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795

Can Carl
forgive me for
seeing his face
while hearing Murray's
Voice. But Baby, that's
where the GOOD Christ
             was.

-- from the forthcoming
Zen to GO dos

We had the 8-track of the original album "Jesus Christ Superstar," with Murray Head as Judas, but that was because we had seen the movie, with Carl Andersson as Judas. It's really very simple.

I was getting ready to link, yet again, to the twelve-plus rules Carl gave in a class I took from him, but just noticed that I managed to fail to list rule one, the rule that obviates the others if practiced well enough:

I will stay in authenticity

Strange how these things slip by.

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771

Timing being so
important, could it _ever_
be a compliment to
Stephenson to say
"Snow Crash was cool,
it reminds me of Matrix"?

--from the forthcoming
Zen to Go ii

The answer, of course is, "No," except when it is, "Yes," or, "Maybe." Generally, I would think it would not be a compliment to the precursor.

Coffee may be a little strong today; should have measured more accurately.

Parrots are cruising, wailing, cacaphony cloud careening over the treetops. And Rumi is in my lap. It is very strange typing with the cat sharing my lap with the laptop, pinning my left wrist ever so slightly with her kiester, licking my right wrist. As long as she stays off the keys and touchpad we live in an uneasy but mutually pleasing truce. I very much do like having her on me. I just don't like her interfering with my keyboarding. But I can look her in the eyes and still write.

Ah...voice. Voice versus "my voice." Being able, as a writer, to convey the voices I hear around me directly, clearly, recognizably, versus writing in a voice that is directly clearly and recognizably mine. So there might well be times to experiment or even practice and exercise with any and all voices; there are also times to seek that voice which is free of all noticeable influence in favor of what is strictly me and my own.

I am as tired of my own "Trying Hard" game as I am anyone else's.

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738

Tags: approach avoidance

I think what I mean by the term approach avoidance is generally to think about the difference between "come hither" and "no trespassing", especially as applied to informavores and banner ads. Banner ads in particular make the point: we learn to avoid that which approaches us. But that's just a seed around thoughts are meant to crystalize.

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659 - useit.com says my post titles suck

Not my titles in particular, but blogs in general; it's the #3 top error in weblog usability. Guess I'll be making changes whilst GP is down South.

Looks like I'm spoiling for a electronic fight; I managed to get kicked off of the Howard the Duck group at yahoo, after calling out a pusillanimous fool---who turned out to be the moderator. Heh. Ya can't read the exchange w/o signing up as a group member, and unless you are a) really into HtD and b) willing to stipulate that "if you don't like Colan's work you don't like the magazine," you might not find it worth the bother.

Then there's this miscreant at the otherwise pretty cool thought mechanics holding forth on abortion. The most interesting part of the rant is

"Go ahead, repeat the tired arguments of others."

Strategically it is a shame to waste this line so early; it is more effectively used by an attacker after sucking their victim into pointless argument about the bait offered. Indeed part of the power of verbal attacks as wielded by masters is that this presupposition, that all of one's opponents arguents are groundless, remains unstated for as long as possible. But I'm itching for a fight and really had to bite back to keep from spending the morning working up an essay to post in the comments.

Why the desire to mix it up? Because it's better (marginally, arguably, but not really) than the ennui I suffered during GP's trip to S.F. last week. Now that she's in Argentina, and I have ten days to myself, I have to do something to keep myself engaged with my world. The day job is good for the hours it commands, but we're not in the kind of overtime crunch anticipated when GP planned this trip, and her absence leaves me with a true surplus of discretionary time.

How should I spend that time? Certainly not squabbling with comic fans nor legal (and moral) morons. Actually, I've got a growing desire to update my Prisoners' Dilemma write up and tackle doing something about all those promises to myself contained in the footnotes.

But first, it's an 11:50 showing of Clerks II. Yeah, I expect it to suck, but what with GP being gone a little mindlessness suits me just fine.

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849

Dance: the
     ARTISTIC
interaction with
     VARIOUS
tools of resistance
training

-- from the forthcoming
Oblio's Cap

One way to think of it, certainly.

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861

More time
distortion

(c)2003ISR

Y'know, I asked at cogling what the proper term was for semantic overload, but have completely forgot. Anyway, this one, if you play with the pause at the line break, and you contemplate hypnotic time distortion, or any other example you have of the subjective expansion and contraction of time's flow or duration or even direction, and repeat it, mantra like, with special emphasis on that break

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650

Tags: fnord

freaks like us
freaks like us
freaks like us
freaks like us
freaks like us
freaks like us
freaks like us
read the source

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830

In other news, this privoxy/tor thing sucks. I mean, sure, I like the thought of privacy, but the speed cost is just almost not worth the fucking bother. Am I the only one? Probably not. Am I going to be able to do something about it? Don't know. Is unplugging it all faster, easier, than fixing it? Can't say. But it's pissing me off. It's worse than when I was on dial-up; and I get pretty bugged with the frequency with which I get 503 "connect failed" errors. Grrr.

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828

Admitting I'm the complete dilettante I truly am (and trying to use that word often enough to finally pwn the spelling) I've decided: rsync to local as backup, then diddle on the server, ready to restore at a moment's notice. 'Cause I just don't have it in me to re-config my local server and virtual hosts and all that.

Just kidding. I'm frustrated by the reality that this is stuff I keep re-learning but never using enough to own; nonetheless, it has to be done.

Maybe it's a coffee all-nighter in the making? Get the virtual server stuff going, so I can test locally, then I can set the blosxom.cgi as my home pages and tweak the rest of the sites. In particular I'm looking to tweak the site to be a little more user friendly, get folks into the Brief Therapy with Achilles piece a bit sooner. It's possibly the most important thing in either domain. Pondering, always pondering.

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892

Siddhartha and the
Glass Bead Game
must be the same
story because I
can't seem to finish
them both.

-- from the forthcoming
Zen to GO ii

Happy to say I have since finished Hesse's Siddhartha. I've got only the last little bit of Magister Ludi left to go, the "lives of" section, which I'm guessing is the most important. Anyone who ever complained about me "opening loops" and feeling frustrated is welcome to try it from my end any time. And, yes, it all borders on private language.

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814

Today's entry, well, Monday's entry, is tardy and absent, which is to say that when, Tuesday, I got around to pulling a card for Monday, thinking to diddle the datestamp accordingly, I pulled a "Travels with Roy" card that I simply won't put up for public view. At least not today.

It is strange to see my taste in these things come and go. There are times when I just want to let it ALL hang out, devil may care, offend or not as the viewer chooses to be offended or not. Other days I feel a little more resonsibility for the overall effect of my words; I mean, isn't the whole point that words affect readers? I doubt I'll ever fully settle on one mode exclusively.

In my own defense, I remind myself that I've got a semi-professional domain, ISR and one of the reasons for placing content on one site rather than the other is exactly this issue of "social appropriateness versus freedom of expression."

Will all that said, if you really want to see today's card, view source.

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652 - a poem

such is the way of the world
and the efficacy of our media
that a military attack on a military target
under questionable circumstances of disputed surprise
is more lasting in our memories
our ears and our eyes and our hearts
than
the
one
hundred
thousand
civilians
killed
sixty years ago today

civilians
mothers
infants
incinerated
on that day of infamy

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688

Mostly this is just evidence that I took lunch today! But that in turn is because I passed a milestone (and, boy! did it hurt!!): I finished my first "solo" BA.

Truly enjoying the mass transit; L.A. is a lovely town, at least in moderate Spring weather. I like seeing all the downtown buildings---without actually having to pilot a vehicle through the nightmare that is downtown traffic.

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Welcome to Oblio's Cap...

Tags: self loathing

...home of one stop shopping for proof I have nothing to say, or what little I have to say is worth nothing, or at least that, whatever value some of my thoughts might have, they are in general so poorly put and put in the company of such utter nonsense that there really isn't any reason to take any of it seriously.

How can I not talk to you when you read this? How can it not be you to whom my messages are addressed? How can you not be the "whom this message may concern" this message isn't explicitly to?

Fucking words. More fucking useless words. Better to hit reload and listen closer to the looping 4'33".

I owe so many apologies, but mostly to Hofstadter, for not realizing how fucking _funny_ he is. Fucking John Cleese Michael Palin funny, Sahara dry and obfuscated.

Yeah, I'd like an audience. I'd like interlocutors even more. But my own tangled hierarchies seem to serve to keep us in this strange loop all alone.

Have you even looked at the changes in the upper right hand corner when you hit "reload"? Keep trying 'til you see one that makes sense...

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980 - clobberin' time

Just clobbered my public_html folder on the local dev machine. Not happy. Not smart. Happy Fathers Day.

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974 - rss, atom, xml, what?

I am swamped, lost all steam on the tracker project, am instead diddling with blosxom, del.icio.us and bloglines.

However, apostate that I am, I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by the blogiverse. It's like usenet without the structure. Read that again. Christ what a time sink, what a cluster shag. I'm still not convinced that a google search for a topic isn't the best way to go about finding what you need when you need it. And there are really only three blogs I've ever been to more than once:

• #!/usr/bin/girl
• skb's virtual cave which I think of first as a wicked cool link respository and only recently have come to look at for things blog
• Ruminate which I only found 'cause I'm lucky enough to know the guy

So, like I say, I'm not really a blog fan as yet, and I think the usenet comparison is apt, dead on.

So what's the answer? Well, I *am* here writing on this blog for you all to see, aren't I? And I set up comments and will figure out the rss thing soon too. Patience is a virtue.

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959 - Endowment, baby

Here's the link that lit_anon co-founder Spencer Morgan Day declares may be the death knell of American culture...wait, what culture. Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline This begs the question, is Dramatic reading in literal decline?

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898 - We do need those stinking badges

I am annoyed by my blosxom, xhtml strict, and css badges at the bottom of the page. I haven't yet switched to the currently-in-vogue badges, the ones about a fourth the size, because I'm waiting to see what will be vogue after that. I'll probably keep my clunkers through at least one more cycle of chic.

Anyone got an idea of what web badges will look like in the 2nd half of the first decade of the 21st century? Will we (and, please, note the judicious use of the inclusive pronoun) still be needing to show off like this? Or will such badges go the way of "Best Viewed in Netscape Navigator 3.0"?

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872

The idea of a secret
grip is stupid;
that's what tools 's all
            'bout

This actually was probably a follow up to thoughts about the foil as universal training tool; well, French grip anyway, about which more elsewhere in this mess.

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977

All beings are enlightened. All eternity is now. Free will is an illusion born of our ignorance of the future and our blindness to the many and subtle forces that control the exact timing of our every breath, our every heartbeat.

A favorite metaphor along these lines conjures up the 1972 World Chess Championship. From our vantage along the illusory track of so-called time there is no remaining doubt about the outcomes, so the matter of free will is less at stake. We know the moves, know who won, know who said what and when. Countless words have been written analysing each dramatic turn of play.

Even with the so-called 20/20 vision of hindsight (and all would-be historians know how far from true that old chestnut is) we don't know of a piece why Spassky scratched his chin at this point, or what effect that had on Fisher's thought processes, why Fisher raised his eyebrow there and how that made Spassky crow or cringe inside. We are blind to these influences, even despite knowing too well from a life of personal experience that indeed these are as much part of what triggers our every thought, move, desire as are any overarching matters of philosophy or religion. Most of us are incapable of seeing more than one cause in relationship to one effect; the truth is infinitely more complex, with every event serving as cause and effect to every other, forward and backward throughout the true now that we sometimes call forever.

From our vantage in what we foolishly and mistakenly call "the future" we can see the moves, watch the films, replay the games and even thrill a bit as they unfold, again and again as we like, as we choose. And Spassky and Fisher are still there in 1972 sweating and straining. Christ still hangs on the cross, the spear just breaching the muscles beneath the skin. And the last soul is making the journey in whatever sized raft, accross some intercultural Jordan to a promised land of salvation or freedom from rebirth or some other spiritual end place. All. Now. For that is all there is, now. All moments belong to now; now permeates all moments.

Our illusions of choice, of value, of compulsion, of non-choice, of valuelessnes, are nothing more than foolish illusions based on inability to see, to think, to understand; based on a system of representation that allows us to falsely treat homogenous groups as heterogeneous and vice versa, a system that allows us to prattle for centuries about whether or not the warrior can catch the amphibian because we mis-apply a given description of the world.

As it was in the beginning, is now, ever shall be, world without end. The fat lady has sung, even as she has yet to be born of the cosmic dust that coalesced into sweet Sol. Let all your prayers be prayers of thanks. Do what is given you, with all your might.

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833

Don't Fear the Reaper, by Prozak for Lovers. 'Nuff said?

Thinking about it, no, not 'nuff said; I found 'em through soma.fm, so buy 'em through soma.fm and do a GoodDeed(tm).

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755

The similarities
of religion and show
biz have to start with
making full use of the
instrument.

-- from the forthcoming
Zen to GO2

Back in Drama 101 there was some discussion of spectacle v drama. Seems apropos.

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768

It's best when friends
accept the face I give
them.

-- from the forthcoming
Zen to Go ii

Nothing much comes up for that one, except the ambiguity of "giving face" versus "showing my face." I guess it's true both ways, that when I give friends face it's best when they accept it, and when I show a given facet of who I am it's best when they accept that too.

Solstice today. Spinning "Breakfast in America." Still working on that "re-visioning" process, getting rid of the limits I accepted when I set my life-script in Jr. High. Reading "Stranger..." to Gabriela went a long way toward that end. I hadn't really thought about how much that book influenced me as a child. Imagine I had read "Job..." first, or even "Citizen of the Galaxy"; imagine I had taken either of those to heart instead. Imagine so many different ways my life could have played out, had I so chosen.

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784 - On the framing of Padilla's detention, on the eve of the anniversary

The case for detaining Jose Padilla in a military prison for over three years without benefit of due process rests on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (AUMF), which reads:

"[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons _he_ determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."(emphasis added)

If the above sentence is constitutionally valid, and it is constitutionally valid to be at war with a non-nation/state entity, then Padilla is lawfully detained.

I am not the scholar to say whether or not giving such broad and vaguely termed powers to the executive is constitutionally valid. However, given my limited understanding of the checks and balances built into that venerable document, our Constitution, it would seem this section of the AUMF violates constitutional principle.

Further, there exists no convincing argument that it is legal, reasonable or even sane to consider war to be applicable to non-nation/state entities. The rational and reasonable grounds for fighting al Queda as a collective and it's members as individuals is through a) conspiracy law where the issue is with a citizen of the United States, b) where the persons in question are not U.S. nationals, international diplomacy and assisting other nations with enforcement of their laws by which conspiring to kill innocents is universally prohibited.

Given that the current administration, as well as the majority of representatives in both the House and the Senate, subscribe to a "We are the world's policeman" ideology most articulately presented by the Plan for the New American Century (PNAC), and likewise given that so many of our elected representatives, and so too, presumably, our fellow countrymen, fail to see the evil and dangers of taking such a position, it is no surprise that few have the will to question the basic assumption, but I will phrase it for you nonetheless: Are there legal, reasonable, sane grounds on which to define as "war" our effort to bring to justice the architects of the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center?

The legal, reasonable, sane and moral answer is a clear and resounding, "No."

By allowing such efforts to be couched in terms of war we have allowed an immoral and power drunk element of our society to take the steering wheel of our nation and to frame all dissent thereto as treasonous, and so we have each of us become complicit in the crimes of that immoral and power drunk element. The "war" in Afghanistan never offered any hope of permanently defeating a shadow organization such as al Queda. Likewise for the war in Iraq, even if we credit such a goal as the motivation behind our continued illegal military occupation of that country. On the contrary, such acts of arrogance and belligerence can only fuel the fire, can only increase the perception in the eyes of people who might otherwise have shunned al Queda and their ilk that we are indeed the evil empire and that a blow struck against our citizens is a blow struck for justice.

I have used the inclusive pronoun throughout most of this, not because of any affirmative act or support on my part for these crimes committed and being committed in our names, but because my will to speak out against these crimes was overshadowed by fear. I have even been in fear of physical violence against my person, in late 2001, for suggesting then what I say now about the fruits of invading Afghanistan. I still would think twice before verbalizing what I write here.

Legally it is the flimsiest nonsense to grant war powers to the executive to pursue international criminals; it is dangerous nonsense, nonsense which puts you and me and all our fellow citizens at grave risk by deteriorating our civil liberties and by increasing the palpable anti-American sentiment that spreads like a plague wherever PNAC has its way.

Jose Padilla is clearly an international criminals, perhaps not directly involved with the destruction of the World Trade Center four years and one day ago, but clearly conspiring to bring more of same to the extent of his abilities; he should be accordingly charged, tried and punished. It is farcical, however, to even so much as declare his acts treasonous on their face; he posed no threat to the nation as a whole, whatever threat he posed to the individuals who would have been killed by his intended acts. To hold Padilla's acts as inherently treasonous, on the reasoning that to injure a citizen is to injure the nation, would expose every petty thug to the same charge. That the rhetoric of the organization of international criminals with whom Padilla affiliated is rhetoric of "destroying the United States" does not in fact mean that said organization approaches having any such power or in any reasonable fashion can be raised to the status of an entity with which the United States can legally or even rationally war. Padilla was in possession of no vital state secrets, was not privy to information that could reasonably or even arguably affect security of a legitimately national character.

Padilla's detention and the current legal proceedings related thereto are simply and clearly a case of history's most spectacular international crime being used to justify the world police ideology of PNAC and fellow travelers. Padilla qua Padilla may be of little strategic importance even in the goal of bringing to justice the international criminals of al Queda; the truly important issue raised by this man's three year detention without due process is how long America, my country, will stand to be run by representatives with such frighteningly deficient moral development, by men and women of such stunted thinking ability as to not cry out against the nonsense of granting war powers to combat international conspiracy, by fellow citizens who for one reason or another seem not to care for protecting the liberties that, if real and present, would give this nation it's only reason for pride, and if absent give this nation reason for nothing but shame.

References:
Padilla v Hanft: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/056396.P.pdf
PNAC: http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Framing: http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/gwot_rip/view?searchterm=frame

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982 - Time well spent

Okay, must have had a dozen and a half duplicate variables, which is to say variables declared at the sub level with "my", often with distinct names, but that really are served just as well with generic global variables declared at the top of the script.

So now I've got the variables under control, and also completely did away with two tiers of flags; the main block can do all my switching just fine with one flag.

Almost makes me feel like a programmer.

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931 - Blogging sucks

Part of this will eventually get clipped for ISR.

Normalizing relational databases includes ferreting out many-to-many relations and setting up a middle table having a one-to-many relationship joining each of the two original tables. Relevant to linguistics? Yes, but having trouble saying how. I'm thinking of something like Occam's razor in reverse, how to decide that indeed a problem as conceived has sufficient complexity to warrant the invention of an entity. In RMBD it's that many-to-many thing. Are there analogs for science? In a previous note there's reference to over-pruning a system in search of elegance; that's the bit that sparked this.

And all this is, really, is a question, the kind of thing that oughtta get pegged, 'cause otherwise once it falls off the blog it's effectively lost (as in, who has time to mine their blogs for all the choice goodies we meant to follow up on; blogging is too forward moving, no one cares about anything as three-femto-seconds-ago as an unfinished thought from an old entry. That's the part of blogging that just plain sucks. I've talked about this a bit at ISR

And, hey, look! That ISR post got trackback at vroop; must've happened while the domain was down (my notification mail goes through the oblios-cap domain, so nothing came from wbnotify for a couple of days) because of my dotster snafu earlier this week.

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993 - Feelin' studly

Was all whiny and moany about my sql, but finally figured out a double left join that did the trick. I'm especially proud 'cause I was sooo tempted to process in the cgi. But I know it's better to do the db wit h the db, so I bit the bullet and did the research. What finally solved it for me? The twins queries in the mysql manual. Let's hear it for the effin-manual.

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691

Tags: fnord

From EFF: Breaking