网上上课该如何
我现在理解为什么上正常课程对我更方便.
网络课程就看不到老师,不知该怎么对付他,该用什么话拍马屁, 也没人经常提醒我啥事儿要啥时作.
有个老师扣我学分因为我没有好好的谈白板概念,原罪,原善, 遗传和环境 都 对我养孩子的想法有什么影响!!!! 我一看到这些简简单单废话我很不可思议. 让我回答这些呆呆的问题就像他问我加菲猫会不会影响我买那一猫粮牌子!!!!!!!
这个星期估计每天过了四个时搞三个网络课程.
我学习还是可以, 其实自己不赚钱是现在最难受的问题. 因为不赚钱老婆就绝望要回中国. 因为自己没有工作, 我也绝望, 就变成绝望之house husband.
企不了my业也不最大问题,只是最难受. 最大的问题就是这几个月故事都没写.
谭琛等了好久恢复我email, 后来打电话给我说call me back, 但没有给我留他的号码. 她在中国, 号码没有在手机出现!!!
我要回家收拾房子, 否则丹丹主人会不舒服
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
FICTION: Wire Class Destructed part one
This one fool was all online making his website for class, and it was only two days to go till our group, which included me, him, Sarah and Tilly, had to do the presentation for Wire 114, which was half of our grade for the whole frickin' semester.
I put my hand inside the screen of his laptop and waved it back and forth. The hand icon on the screen appeared and got his attention.
From inside, he ejected himself out of the laptop and back on to the chair, next to me, in the science building.
"How much longer is taht website gonna take you?"
He answered "Regardless of how long it's gonna take me, I still have no idea what to do for the project. It's a whole lot more sound of a plan if you just go ahead and do it with Tilly. You guys are the one taking the lead and trying to dominate."
I didn't want to get stuck in arguing about who was or wasn't expressing dominance; and I did know what he was getting at. But it's just that I'm focused on getting this done and making sure we reference every source for this Wire project.
"Just tell me what have you left for the website."
He leaned his head back. "Converting some of the old XML and HTML to 3d, writing the genes for the pigs and flowers, and figuring out how to increase interactivity for the other students."
"Okay, I can help with that, I think. So, did you go to the outline I made on the class site?"
"I went by it yesterday, on the way to my email. But it's still kind of vague to me."
Of course. That's what we all do. Instead of aggressively attacking the subject, breaking it down piece by piece, we just get deflected and cruise on by to something already accessible. I pictured him, in his laptop, walking past the outline and giving up so easily, and then checking his email to see what new places had been sent to him. Probably the kind of second to second updates to social network parks and cities that those other people spent their time with.
I said to Luke, still anxious to dive back into his laptop, "Anyways, the first thing we have to do is to go see examples of wires, in person."
So obvious, and what everyone tried to work their little brains around. Just going and seeing the damn things we were supposed to be learning about in Class.
But again, it was vague, and there was no readily accessible connection to wires for most students, so they just glazed over and retreated to the familiar.
I didn't like Wire class either. They were stupid little pieces of metal and copper. Minor points of technology in the vast and ecerp expanding univers. little bits of dust that had accumulated on the library of universal knowledge.
But I had to get through the class, had to attack the subject and break it down until my brain diegested every bit and I could own the subject.
I realized Luke had just said "Okay, where's the closest hard site with a wire exhibit."
I had already looked it up. "There's one in Carson. You live in Long Beach, right? That's on the way."
I put took all my books and shoved them back into my laptop and said "Let's go."
I put my hand inside the screen of his laptop and waved it back and forth. The hand icon on the screen appeared and got his attention.
From inside, he ejected himself out of the laptop and back on to the chair, next to me, in the science building.
"How much longer is taht website gonna take you?"
He answered "Regardless of how long it's gonna take me, I still have no idea what to do for the project. It's a whole lot more sound of a plan if you just go ahead and do it with Tilly. You guys are the one taking the lead and trying to dominate."
I didn't want to get stuck in arguing about who was or wasn't expressing dominance; and I did know what he was getting at. But it's just that I'm focused on getting this done and making sure we reference every source for this Wire project.
"Just tell me what have you left for the website."
He leaned his head back. "Converting some of the old XML and HTML to 3d, writing the genes for the pigs and flowers, and figuring out how to increase interactivity for the other students."
"Okay, I can help with that, I think. So, did you go to the outline I made on the class site?"
"I went by it yesterday, on the way to my email. But it's still kind of vague to me."
Of course. That's what we all do. Instead of aggressively attacking the subject, breaking it down piece by piece, we just get deflected and cruise on by to something already accessible. I pictured him, in his laptop, walking past the outline and giving up so easily, and then checking his email to see what new places had been sent to him. Probably the kind of second to second updates to social network parks and cities that those other people spent their time with.
I said to Luke, still anxious to dive back into his laptop, "Anyways, the first thing we have to do is to go see examples of wires, in person."
So obvious, and what everyone tried to work their little brains around. Just going and seeing the damn things we were supposed to be learning about in Class.
But again, it was vague, and there was no readily accessible connection to wires for most students, so they just glazed over and retreated to the familiar.
I didn't like Wire class either. They were stupid little pieces of metal and copper. Minor points of technology in the vast and ecerp expanding univers. little bits of dust that had accumulated on the library of universal knowledge.
But I had to get through the class, had to attack the subject and break it down until my brain diegested every bit and I could own the subject.
I realized Luke had just said "Okay, where's the closest hard site with a wire exhibit."
I had already looked it up. "There's one in Carson. You live in Long Beach, right? That's on the way."
I put took all my books and shoved them back into my laptop and said "Let's go."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Translation: A bit of Han Fei Zi
Two weeks ago I was lucky to find a wonderful book on classical Chinese in the dollar bookstore in Lakewood. Each chapter has short selections from classical texts followed by a brief description of their origin, then a list of classical Chinese words with modern Mandarin explanations. There are also a set of questions for comprehension and a contrasting simplified to traditional character list.
Here are three selections from the author Han Fei Zi, from a couple hundred years B.C.
ONE. Shoe Size
鄭人有且置履者，先自度其足而置之其坐，至之市而忘操之，已得履，乃曰：“吾忘持度。”反歸取之，及反，市罷，遂不得履，人曰：“何不試之以足？”曰：“寧信度，無自信也。”
A man from Zheng was going to buy shoes, so first he meausured his feet. He set the measurement down. He went to the market to buy the shoes, and realized he forgot his measurement. He said "I forgot to bring the meausurement."
So, Instead of buying his shoes, he went back to get the measurement he had made. But, by the time he got back to the market, it was already closed. Someone asked him "Why didn't you just try the shoes on to see if they fit?"
He said "I trust measurements, not myself."
TWO. Waiting for Rabbits
宋人有耕田者，田中有株，兔走，觸株折頸而死，因釋其耒而守株，冀復得兔，兔不可復得，而身為宋國笑。今欲以先王之政，治當世之民，皆守株之類也。
There was farmer of the Song Kingdom. In the middle of his field was a tree.
He saw a rabbit run right into that tree and break its neck.
He was so excited at the idea of getting free rabbit meat, that he threw down his plow and sat all day and night by that tree.
The people of Song all laughed at this farmer.
So too does the government of today seek to rule us through the policies of emperors past, all like that farmer guarding his tree.
Three. Spears and Shields (In modern Mandarin, these two words mean 'Contradiction'. This usage comes from this very same story.)
楚人有鬻楯與矛者，譽之曰：‘吾楯之堅，莫能陷也。’又譽其矛曰：‘吾矛之利，於物無不陷也。’或曰：‘以子之矛陷子之楯，何如？’其人弗能應也。夫不可陷之楯與無不陷之矛，不可同世而立。
The was a man of the Chu Kingdom who was selling spears and shields. He boasted of them, saying "My shield is strong, there is nothing that can pierce it!" Again, he boasted of his spear, saying "My spear is charmed, there is nothing it cannot pierce!" Among those listening, one asked "Can your spear, then, pierce your shield?" The man had nothing to say in reply. An unbreakable shield and all powerful spear cannot both exist in one world.
Studying Classical Chinese is laborious, as it requires constant checking of archaic usages, but, for anyone wanting to be fluent in Mandarin, it is rather urgent, because for Chinese people, this is stuff kids already know around the time they enter puberty.
As hard as it is, the only time being able to read this two-three thousand year old stuff is gonna be cool, is when your around people who don't speak Chinese.
Here are three selections from the author Han Fei Zi, from a couple hundred years B.C.
ONE. Shoe Size
鄭人有且置履者，先自度其足而置之其坐，至之市而忘操之，已得履，乃曰：“吾忘持度。”反歸取之，及反，市罷，遂不得履，人曰：“何不試之以足？”曰：“寧信度，無自信也。”
A man from Zheng was going to buy shoes, so first he meausured his feet. He set the measurement down. He went to the market to buy the shoes, and realized he forgot his measurement. He said "I forgot to bring the meausurement."
So, Instead of buying his shoes, he went back to get the measurement he had made. But, by the time he got back to the market, it was already closed. Someone asked him "Why didn't you just try the shoes on to see if they fit?"
He said "I trust measurements, not myself."
TWO. Waiting for Rabbits
宋人有耕田者，田中有株，兔走，觸株折頸而死，因釋其耒而守株，冀復得兔，兔不可復得，而身為宋國笑。今欲以先王之政，治當世之民，皆守株之類也。
There was farmer of the Song Kingdom. In the middle of his field was a tree.
He saw a rabbit run right into that tree and break its neck.
He was so excited at the idea of getting free rabbit meat, that he threw down his plow and sat all day and night by that tree.
The people of Song all laughed at this farmer.
So too does the government of today seek to rule us through the policies of emperors past, all like that farmer guarding his tree.
Three. Spears and Shields (In modern Mandarin, these two words mean 'Contradiction'. This usage comes from this very same story.)
楚人有鬻楯與矛者，譽之曰：‘吾楯之堅，莫能陷也。’又譽其矛曰：‘吾矛之利，於物無不陷也。’或曰：‘以子之矛陷子之楯，何如？’其人弗能應也。夫不可陷之楯與無不陷之矛，不可同世而立。
The was a man of the Chu Kingdom who was selling spears and shields. He boasted of them, saying "My shield is strong, there is nothing that can pierce it!" Again, he boasted of his spear, saying "My spear is charmed, there is nothing it cannot pierce!" Among those listening, one asked "Can your spear, then, pierce your shield?" The man had nothing to say in reply. An unbreakable shield and all powerful spear cannot both exist in one world.
Studying Classical Chinese is laborious, as it requires constant checking of archaic usages, but, for anyone wanting to be fluent in Mandarin, it is rather urgent, because for Chinese people, this is stuff kids already know around the time they enter puberty.
As hard as it is, the only time being able to read this two-three thousand year old stuff is gonna be cool, is when your around people who don't speak Chinese.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Contra: Tim Wise's Tiresome Racism
What is the difference between grouping individuals into races and other comparatively homogeneous groups and disliking individuals based on their supposed group affiliation?
Generally speaking, Americans, regardless of race, creed or color, tend to view ascription of racial characteristics to any individuals as racist, although this is usually not the case when members of a given race make proclamations of the properties of their race.
When I heard Tim Wise on NPR today talking about how white people were 'really' still racist and that racism hadn't gone away, my first thought, after "No shit", was that this was the kind of view that only someone immersed in an all white community, or academia (the two would tend to coincide) would hold.
People like Tim Wise don't reflect on the difference between ill treatment of individuals based on group membership ascribed to them and characterizing individuals based on their supposed group affiliation.
For instance, Tim Wise maintains that white folks want to deny their racism. This, of course, is a negative statement about a race of people.
In another article, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth: Of National Lies and Racial America, whose title promises a rant written by one who lacks confidence in anyone listening to him, we are told that indignation does not suit white folks.
Although it is just a device to delve into his main article, this is also a characterization, if not a stereotype, of a race.
I, who am on the lighter side of whiteness, am quite suited towards indignation, not to mention outrage and bitchy sniping.
What I have noticed about many Americans, is that we are extra ordinarily focused on race, and are also all part of the same culture.
The children and grandchildren of immigrants here become irreversibly Americanized. My Vietnamese cousins, who came here as teenagers or younger, do not very much resemble contemporary Vietnamese, in anything but facial features and skin tone. The Koreans, Indians, Chicanos and Chinese kids I grew up with never confused people born here with recent immigrants. The recent immigrants were often mocked and made the subject of many funny stories. In high school, they were called fobs, which stood for Fresh Off the Boat.
White Americans, like me and Tim Wise, have all sorts of things in common. Like, we both probably need sunblock more often than black people.
But me and any given person of any given shade, from albinos to the darkest Africans, might have all kinds of things in common.
One thing all humans, regardless of race have in common, is a lazy tendency, due to brain limitations probably, to fail to distinguish between groups and individuals, large scale commonalities and specific instances.
For academics like Tim Wise, the important things is getting up a convenient group label with which to display their aggression, rather than using objective analysis to get things done.
Generally speaking, Americans, regardless of race, creed or color, tend to view ascription of racial characteristics to any individuals as racist, although this is usually not the case when members of a given race make proclamations of the properties of their race.
When I heard Tim Wise on NPR today talking about how white people were 'really' still racist and that racism hadn't gone away, my first thought, after "No shit", was that this was the kind of view that only someone immersed in an all white community, or academia (the two would tend to coincide) would hold.
People like Tim Wise don't reflect on the difference between ill treatment of individuals based on group membership ascribed to them and characterizing individuals based on their supposed group affiliation.
For instance, Tim Wise maintains that white folks want to deny their racism. This, of course, is a negative statement about a race of people.
In another article, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth: Of National Lies and Racial America, whose title promises a rant written by one who lacks confidence in anyone listening to him, we are told that indignation does not suit white folks.
Although it is just a device to delve into his main article, this is also a characterization, if not a stereotype, of a race.
I, who am on the lighter side of whiteness, am quite suited towards indignation, not to mention outrage and bitchy sniping.
What I have noticed about many Americans, is that we are extra ordinarily focused on race, and are also all part of the same culture.
The children and grandchildren of immigrants here become irreversibly Americanized. My Vietnamese cousins, who came here as teenagers or younger, do not very much resemble contemporary Vietnamese, in anything but facial features and skin tone. The Koreans, Indians, Chicanos and Chinese kids I grew up with never confused people born here with recent immigrants. The recent immigrants were often mocked and made the subject of many funny stories. In high school, they were called fobs, which stood for Fresh Off the Boat.
White Americans, like me and Tim Wise, have all sorts of things in common. Like, we both probably need sunblock more often than black people.
But me and any given person of any given shade, from albinos to the darkest Africans, might have all kinds of things in common.
One thing all humans, regardless of race have in common, is a lazy tendency, due to brain limitations probably, to fail to distinguish between groups and individuals, large scale commonalities and specific instances.
For academics like Tim Wise, the important things is getting up a convenient group label with which to display their aggression, rather than using objective analysis to get things done.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Selections From The Epiphalaries of D. Mckenzie Taylor
How can a man sit down to rewrite, without a steady source of drink ready, be it honey-ginger tea, milk tea, coffee, chrysanthemum tea, or even green tea, which gives me a tummy ache?
To have a good morning crap, while friends or guests dwell about, requires more inner comfort than standing up to a gang of angry men.
When a thing is made an enemy, it thereby acquires allies.
A million things together form a mirror, when you want to reveal someone, throw them a thousand different cues.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
REVIEW: Distress by Greg Egan
I was so ready to condem Greg Egan, in his novel Distress, of manipulating all these intersting cosmological discussions into just another “it's all in our subjective experience” type of metaphysical doctrines.
But, he managed to create a philosophically intersting theory of cosmology. But,one thing I can feel safe in disliking is modern intellectuals' continued elevation of “information” to a metaphysical status.
Modeling our understanding on metaphors or analogies has never been more than a temporary advantage, allowing us to see phenomena in a new perspective, emphasize a new aspect, and thus give us and increasingly integrated, and dynamic view of existence.
The problem is that intellectuals confuse the metaphor for the phenomena it describes. This is what produces such ideas as The Universe is Information. In Distress, this causes the theory that humans can 'mix with information.'
Thinking of 'information' more than the actual phenomena, that is, discussing the category 'information' as a set referent, almost as a substance, encourages people to forget that they are actually describing discrete occurrences of discrete entities. Thus the category is emphasized and over emphasized, until a new model attains popularity.
The over-emphasis on the category is what causes it's overthrow. For example, Meachanism came about around the time when machines started gaining prevalence in Europe.
Then, and on through the Industrial Revolution, it became more and more interesting and useful to talk of the body as a machine, the natural world as a machine, the cosmos as a machine, with great wheels and pullies, with each part doing its part for the greater process.
But, in its way, this also led to the excesses of Behaviorism, which tried to reduce human behavior to something comparable to the simple machines our species produced in the last five hundred years or so.
But, Behaviorism, and the Vitalism-Mechanism debate, along with Bergson, our no longer much thought of.
Now, all the denial of consciousness and innate cognitive functions has created the new paradigm, which is often modeled on the new, dominant machine: the computer.
Anyways, the universe is not a huge information system. It is a bunch of different things which we can sometimes regard as single and sometimes as several.
But, aside from Egan's causing me to rant on the above topic, he made me happy with Distress.
The cool things are as follows:
-He puts the distress illness up front and then gets the reader focused on the final theory of everything being debated at a T.O.E. Conference, and the plot to attack the most prominent theorist.
There's a bunch of back story too, then, after all this theory and action, he ties in Distress with all these silly radical physics/mystical groups, and the T.O.E.
-He didn't make the anarchist utopia aspect two prominent. Once in a while, I go back and read The Disposessed to partake of that beautiful hierarchy free society, or The Cassini Division with the even better abundance-economy based on an anarcho-capitalism gotten from egoist-materialist philosophy.
But, usually I'm more concerned with new ways of seeing things, and understanding new ideas. So, for me, authors don't need to do the Bellamy trip. And I think most serious readers don't need to be pitched on the benefits of utopia. It's more comfortable to deal with the problems with one's own ideas (that is what's good about Macleods Fall Revolution series.)
Thats what Egan gets right in this one. I tried another one of his books, in audio form, but I couldn't get into it. I forgot the name, but the beginning had a glossary. It was all on .mp3 file, so I had to skip past it and when I got to the actual story, it was a bit confusing.
-This book helped me to get a better sense about what might be the significant part of modern physics. Usually, it's hard for me to get into strings and all that, and I just think: Structurally, we are no further than Democritus and Zoroaster, in as much as we still down to the ultimate substance of reality being smaller smaller composite elements (atoms, strings) or a bigger version of us (god).
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
NON-FICTION: I want to be Michael Chabon, not a Phillip Roth.
I thought of a great analogy/method of overcoming my writing problems, particularly narrative and description.
Stephen King is like Shannon, Michael Chabon is like Tim/Misael/Jerry
What Stephen does that I can't is, like Shannon, he decorates better than me.
Every time I write something, there is always insufficient information, and with this novel I've been revising, now that I've added more description and plot information, it still doesn't seem very good.
It's like now I've prettied up my novel, but it's still unimpressive, something I invite all my friends over to see, and then console myself by saying “The place is still awkwardly put together, and uninspired, but it's good for Darren.” and thinking that it's because my other strengths that they still like me, inspite of the house I live in, when my friends fail to show anything but polite agreement.
It's not because I'm lazy, as the common folk might say. 'Lazy' is a concept only meaningful in coexistence with 'duty'. Otherwise, all you have is a desire not to do something, which then may conflict with a desire to do something.
But I am not 'lazy' about not wanting to go outside naked, I am 'lazy' about the things I don't think of or don't want to do. And, with decorating my house, I am just not aware enough.
I think this is because I am either dissociated due to my abuse trauma, or a natural tendency towards particular perceptual orientations, or both.
As it turns out, you can have fun coming to my house for the conversation, but it's not comfy, and not somewhere where you want to live.
I can't just let go and give the reader all the information they might need, I'm too condescending.
Like, just now, I thought “Should I indicate to the reader of this post that I am talking about my house to describe my story?” And the answer was “If they stupid enough not to get it, I might need to offer a little hint!”
So, in an attempt to overcome, to some extent, my sparse stories, I will try to figure out how I would compete with Shannon, Tim, Jerry, and Misael, if I had to have a few friends over and make them think that hanging out, and staying the weekend or longer was more fun at my place then at other people's places.
Let's look at the bowl I just took a bit out of. I made a 'soup' by butting bananas in a little boiling water and then peeling oranges and putting them in one wedge at a time.
I didn't plan it out ahead of time, I just repeated what I did yesterday. I didn't use the same amount of each fruit, nor did I consider the idea of using the same proportions.
And in my house, there are too many things, which I am not good at organizing.
So, if guys were coming over to my house, I would best to clean two days before they came, and then again, the day they came.
I would have to clean the kitchen extra well, and I would have to make the bowls, spices, vinegar, soy sauce, and every else non-essential to what they need to see in a kitchen. I would also, if I had them, put some flowers over the sink in the window.
So far, not at all creative.
One thing I would do, which I usually don't, is pay attention to my personal appearance when my friends came over. I would shave, shower, where nice, clean clothes, make sure I didn't have too many ingrown hairs, and that my hair wasn't too meessy.
Oh, I would have to think about where they were gonna be sitting, how far apart from each other, what they would be sitting on, what they would have to choose from, in turns of comfort versus utility. I would also think about what they were going to looking at while they were sitting.
I would do well to hide all but a few, nice looking, cosmetic bottles and tubes, maybe leave out the tube of light velvet lotion, or the dark red chanel perfume bottle.
If it was Jerry, Misael, or Tim, I'm sure they would like to have something fancy, like a special kind of beef for dinner, fancy silverware, a cigar, or wine.
Shannon would like to have something somewhat novel, exotic, or something very traditional and authentic.
I would like prepare something light, and with treats, like cakes, pies, or fruit. I would also give them tea rather than wine, or coffee. I might also offer them to get high, to enhance our experience.
Well, let's see what lessons I have so far:
King does traditional story types better than I do, he likes the exotic, but not too exotic, like Douglas Adams, Mieville, or Egan.
Chabon wants to dazzle his readers, and the last time I had guests over, I just made jokes, let them choose a dvd to watch, and made sarcastic comments. I was wearing my thermals and my purple Eagle Point, Oregon sweater that I've had for ten years but won't throw away because it's so comfy.
NON-FICTION: The Conservatives Linguistic turn.
I just saw the new keypoint in the Republican's anti-Gay marriage campaign: The end to future etymologies. I saw it on one of the new daily shows that Steve downloaded.
After trying to say that gay marriage would mean the redefining of the venerable old institution of marriage, which has always been about men and women, they have now decided that the meaning of marriage is not as crucial as how it's struggle relates to the greater struggle against lexiconic progression.
In the course of Daily Show, Mike Huckabee, who was advocating this position, used several words the course of the interview which have in the recent century been assaulted by the mutations of language evolution.
And just as the Republicans are promoting an ideology that denies biological evolution, so too have they acquired sufficient intellectual consistency to deny the theory that claims it 'natural' for the meaning of words to expand, or for any word, like 'matter' to randomly evolve into a different word, through altered meaning, pronunciation, or writing.
Instead, they are advocating the respect for unwavering, eternal language, and, as with Plato, they know that the only eternal language is in the mind of God.
While God may have changed his own meaning of marriage to suit the present times, this is not the work for the polluted will of humanity. Leave it to God to change the definition of marriage!
As Huckabee said, 'word's matter' and you can't just go changing words all over the place.
Now that it is uncool to say that homosexuality is a disease, perversion, or choice, it is much wiser to retreat from the standpoint of evaluating homosexuals, the individuals who want to get married, and focus your renewed attack on linguistic theory and it's evolutionary bias.
You can't be called a homophobe for holding a platonic view of concepts. And that is as it should be, philosophy, and all other voluntary behaviors that cause no harm to others should be allowed by the citizens of any nation.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Movie Review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno The path of comedy fails to move on, but shuffles it's feat a bit.
When I started watching this movie, I didn't know who had made it. I was happy to see that they gave Darrel from The Office more dialogue. I was suspicious right away that his opening 'nigger' joke was written by a white person, indulging in what he considered to be a bold, politically incorrect depiction of how things really are.
I didn't make the connection from this clue, nor from the fact that the story was taking place in a coffee shop where people spent more time speaking in sentences structured on the witty banter of screwball comedies, noir, and hitchcock, than cleaning the counters, stocking, or looking busy.
When it got to the first crucial plot point: Seth Rogen convinces the Miri chick to make a porno, I was impressed at the believability of Rogen's rationalization, but not at the fact that he actually convinced her.
Then, it gets interesting when they start to make the first porno, because that's something you don't see friends doing in these movies. (Of which sort 'these' refers to, I will get to in a minute.)
Then, they jack it up with more self indulgence. In addition to the Star Wars (a knight/samurai/cowboy film with a sci-fi look) obsession evident in the porno itself, they add a horrible song, apparently made by Alvin and the Chipmunks after they got out of rehab and were trying to make a comeback.
The song was offensive because of the indulgence of the song's lyrics, which were about Star Wars, but also because the music and vocals sucked shit. When I found out who the director was, this made sense, but at the time, I thought, perhaps, that this embracing of the stereotyped nerd culture was spreading.
I forgot to mention that this movie follows that same tired plot which, I understand, the director learned from the guy who made the Breakfast Club (excuse my ignorance of his name, I'm not sophisticated enough to pay attention to the fine art of semi-literates)
Some friends, who turn out to be soul mates, get into a jam and come up with a scheme, unlikely friends soon form a group of solidarity, and it all works out.
The innovation in this film was that the porno never actually got made. But, then after a spell, the male heroine finds that his estranged, true love is still there waiting for him, with her vagina unsoiled by other males.
Guy flicks have undifferentiated, hot women, whom the protagonists never really understand, although Kevin Smith tries a lot harder than other directors, and the Miri Chick wasn't without substance, while chick flicks, have hot, undifferentiated guys, who only want to do the right thing, in the end, and are always willing to tolerate those unlikeable quirks of the stereotyped woman.
Does Kevin Smith spend more time thinking up justifications for this unremarkable film, or does he spend more time idealizing things of the past instead of looking for things of the future?
The Passion of Mao: Countries are much simpler when you analyze them simplistically.
What do the Chinese think about Mao? Or to be more specific, what do a billion people think about Mao? My guess would be, a lot of different things.
But, Lee Feigon has made things easier by taking the traditional American, anti-communist, Mao Is Bad position and countering with, Mao was a great and brilliant leader (though heavily flawed.)
This is okay and I was eager to hear a defense of Mao. I got that defense and it has made me reassess my view of him, in some ways. Like, I'm open to the idea that he had a positive influence on the economy of the fifties and sixties, and that he was in favor, in word only, of democracy and opening up.
But, the unforgivable element of this documentary, is that it tries to represent the views of those billion or so people by selecting only three or four that agree with the guy's positive view of Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
Lee Feigon is a professor of Chinese History. I, on the other hand, am nothing more than a high school graduate who has lived and worked with Chinese people for the last six years. I'm also fluent in Mandarin and I read the newspapers (very slowly) and watch the T.V. here regularly.
The most common view encountered is that Mao is a hero for his liberation of China from the clutches of the KMT (GuoMinDang) 国民党and the Japanese.
People don't say “I love him because he was a Communist.” They admire him like Americans admire the founding fathers, as distant figures who preached good things that we appeal to but never follow. A couple weeks ago, I asked my mother-in-law about what it was like when she was a kid, which was around the start of the cultural revolution. Her family were dirt poor farmers.
She said they didn't have anything to eat or anything else. Some people wood go into the woods, or to the mountains, to dig up plants for medicine, but they would do it in secret or at night. If they got caught, they would be accused of being capitalists. Also, people would meet in secret at night to trade things, since this was also capitalistic.
She said the teachers sucked in those days, and when the cultural revolution started, nobody cared about school anymore.
She said a lot of people went to ChuanLian 串联, to unite and go do the work of communism.
She said a lot, but she never reflected on the ideology of any of it. She didn't like not having anything, but she didn't conclude that Communism or Maoism were failed ideologies, or that capitalist democracy was the way to go. Nor did she have much good to say about it.
A woman who works at a mandarin training center where I teach (English), said it was a 灾难 disaster. But she said she was from a wealthy family, and that she didn't like Mao at all. She said her family was destroyed by communism.
What you will be hard pressed to find here, are people who admire Mao because they are socialists or communists.
Feigon says that Chinese people have moved on, while westerners stay fixated on the communist era. He doesn't mention is that there is no free press here, and a lot of older people don't easily talk about it with their children.
He also doesn't mention the fact. That what Chinese people have moved on from, is that thing that Mao was trying to do, but never practiced in his own life: Communism.
You will find people in China who have all kinds of views on everything, much as it is with the rest of the world. I've heard people say they love Bush Jr., they love Hussein, they hate Americans, they love Jesus, they hate Japanese, they study Japanese. But what you don't hear, and what I have tried in vain to find for the last six years, are Chinese socialists/communists who admire Mao as a socialist/communist hero.
This is something easily found in most western countries. And there is no freedom of speech here, so it's fair to argue that the real problem is that people are afraid to speak up. But, if you spend long enough with people, you will here all kinds of illegal talk, like “America should attack China”, “I really want to know more about TianAnMen square, but the government won't let us.” “I think Hu Jintao is a criminal.” “The Communist Party is bullshit.”: and so forth.
I have heard many people here say “I am capitalist” and a few say “I'm a socialist”, but none say “We really have to fight these bosses and mobilize the poor people to strike and seize power” What you do hear, everywhere, from children to t.v. shows, is “I want to be a boss.” and “I want to start my own business.” In fact, I think the frequently expressed desire to have one's own business is just about as high on my Annoying Things I'm Tired of In China as all the business books I see, translated from English and featuring white guys with ties on the covers.
But, as I am tired of having to repeat, there are no socialists/communists here to be found.
The last two things.
How can you represent Mao, by using the sympathetic testimony of four Chinese people? If you don't have contrary views, than you are implying that these people represent the views of The Chinese, and that is the view that most viewers will take away. Never speak for a country, unless your damn sure you know what they think. Otherwise, you cause confusion and make yourself look dishonest.
The other thing is, this movie really made me realize that Mao was born into a upper peasant family, became a student (his tuition paid for by his father), then became a businessman and a principal, then a military leader, then an emperor. But never did he live as a classless citizen, a struggling proletarian, or a worker under the rule of the Comunist Party. He was, in the end, after power.
That is something he has in common with most of history's great leaders. And in this sense, Feigon's defense of Mao is worthy of it's attempt, for it shows that he really was not so different from any other leader, preferring hierarchy over god, country, socialism, and the rest.
But, Lee Feigon has made things easier by taking the traditional American, anti-communist, Mao Is Bad position and countering with, Mao was a great and brilliant leader (though heavily flawed.)
This is okay and I was eager to hear a defense of Mao. I got that defense and it has made me reassess my view of him, in some ways. Like, I'm open to the idea that he had a positive influence on the economy of the fifties and sixties, and that he was in favor, in word only, of democracy and opening up.
But, the unforgivable element of this documentary, is that it tries to represent the views of those billion or so people by selecting only three or four that agree with the guy's positive view of Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
Lee Feigon is a professor of Chinese History. I, on the other hand, am nothing more than a high school graduate who has lived and worked with Chinese people for the last six years. I'm also fluent in Mandarin and I read the newspapers (very slowly) and watch the T.V. here regularly.
The most common view encountered is that Mao is a hero for his liberation of China from the clutches of the KMT (GuoMinDang) 国民党and the Japanese.
People don't say “I love him because he was a Communist.” They admire him like Americans admire the founding fathers, as distant figures who preached good things that we appeal to but never follow. A couple weeks ago, I asked my mother-in-law about what it was like when she was a kid, which was around the start of the cultural revolution. Her family were dirt poor farmers.
She said they didn't have anything to eat or anything else. Some people wood go into the woods, or to the mountains, to dig up plants for medicine, but they would do it in secret or at night. If they got caught, they would be accused of being capitalists. Also, people would meet in secret at night to trade things, since this was also capitalistic.
She said the teachers sucked in those days, and when the cultural revolution started, nobody cared about school anymore.
She said a lot of people went to ChuanLian 串联, to unite and go do the work of communism.
She said a lot, but she never reflected on the ideology of any of it. She didn't like not having anything, but she didn't conclude that Communism or Maoism were failed ideologies, or that capitalist democracy was the way to go. Nor did she have much good to say about it.
A woman who works at a mandarin training center where I teach (English), said it was a 灾难 disaster. But she said she was from a wealthy family, and that she didn't like Mao at all. She said her family was destroyed by communism.
What you will be hard pressed to find here, are people who admire Mao because they are socialists or communists.
Feigon says that Chinese people have moved on, while westerners stay fixated on the communist era. He doesn't mention is that there is no free press here, and a lot of older people don't easily talk about it with their children.
He also doesn't mention the fact. That what Chinese people have moved on from, is that thing that Mao was trying to do, but never practiced in his own life: Communism.
You will find people in China who have all kinds of views on everything, much as it is with the rest of the world. I've heard people say they love Bush Jr., they love Hussein, they hate Americans, they love Jesus, they hate Japanese, they study Japanese. But what you don't hear, and what I have tried in vain to find for the last six years, are Chinese socialists/communists who admire Mao as a socialist/communist hero.
This is something easily found in most western countries. And there is no freedom of speech here, so it's fair to argue that the real problem is that people are afraid to speak up. But, if you spend long enough with people, you will here all kinds of illegal talk, like “America should attack China”, “I really want to know more about TianAnMen square, but the government won't let us.” “I think Hu Jintao is a criminal.” “The Communist Party is bullshit.”: and so forth.
I have heard many people here say “I am capitalist” and a few say “I'm a socialist”, but none say “We really have to fight these bosses and mobilize the poor people to strike and seize power” What you do hear, everywhere, from children to t.v. shows, is “I want to be a boss.” and “I want to start my own business.” In fact, I think the frequently expressed desire to have one's own business is just about as high on my Annoying Things I'm Tired of In China as all the business books I see, translated from English and featuring white guys with ties on the covers.
But, as I am tired of having to repeat, there are no socialists/communists here to be found.
The last two things.
How can you represent Mao, by using the sympathetic testimony of four Chinese people? If you don't have contrary views, than you are implying that these people represent the views of The Chinese, and that is the view that most viewers will take away. Never speak for a country, unless your damn sure you know what they think. Otherwise, you cause confusion and make yourself look dishonest.
The other thing is, this movie really made me realize that Mao was born into a upper peasant family, became a student (his tuition paid for by his father), then became a businessman and a principal, then a military leader, then an emperor. But never did he live as a classless citizen, a struggling proletarian, or a worker under the rule of the Comunist Party. He was, in the end, after power.
That is something he has in common with most of history's great leaders. And in this sense, Feigon's defense of Mao is worthy of it's attempt, for it shows that he really was not so different from any other leader, preferring hierarchy over god, country, socialism, and the rest.
BOOK REVIEW: Apologetics instead of Exploration
I don't know if the authors of The Spiritual Brain are Christians, but their methodology of advancing their ideas is close enough to Creation science. I'm on cd5 now and so far all I have heard are attacks on materialist ideas of the brain; accusations of dogmatism, the angry attacks on heretics by materialists, intolerance and persecution of pure hearted, well intended, scientific explorers of the soul.
The less than amusing feature of this method is that, so far, I have yet to hear any new ideas about the spiritual brain.
In all honesty, I recall feeling stimulated by a few points, but they are buried in my mind by the inundation of anti-materialist science rhetoric.
Actually, I do remember one bit mentioned a couple of chapters ago, Karl Popper said that there is something called 'promisory materialism' and this sounds like a very interesting critique of certain tendencies in science, especially considering Popper's reputation as a skeptic interested in epistemology.
But that's not from the authors of the book, they just employ the quote in the process of showing that atheists and people who explain god through neurological phenomena are, suprise suprise, the real practitioners of faith.
The earliest I can recall hearing this “So you believe in science! Ah hah! You have faith in science!” was from the head of the Christian club at Cerritos High School. Science is a religion! Well, there goes my denial of the Christ's, who is the same substance as god, according to experts, came back to life and ascended to heaven. In actually, my response then is still more than sufficient for me: The concept of god as I it is generally defined is self-contradictory, and it's proponents say as such, thus it has no clear meaning, or way of evaluating it's validity. Therefore, as a metaphysical proposition, it's nonsense.
I'm listening to the book now, and I just heard another tired point: that materialist explanations of god take away right and wrong, and leave only our base desires. A bit after that comes the logical conclusion of scientific explanations, who all we atheists know and love: Pol Pot.
Pol Pot dehumanized his victims, and do you know why? Not because of some analytic interpretation of the workings of his mind. Not because people, on the whole, are equally capable of helping and hurting each other. Of course, the reason is that Pol Pot didn't have a spiritual view of the soul and morality.
Religion, on the other hand, upholds the value of each life, except for when the gods kill us in their wars, or when the Judeo Christian God is offended and floods the planet or tells his star pupil Joshua to kill his disobedient neighbors.
Christianity, whose anti-science apologetics this book resembles, has many strands that claim that man is unworthy of redemption, unworthy of God's forgiveness, but only saved through the grace, the charity, the whimsical forgiveness of God. Why are we unworthy? Because, we disobeyed!
I think the God family needs counseling.
Anyways, this book is still going on about how materialism is wrong. I was really interested in hearing scientific evidence for a non-materialist view of the mind, but apparently these guys have been too busy crouching under the assault of Dennet, Dawkins, Ramachandran, and all the other unscientific adherents of the religion of materialism.
This is why the authors of the Spiritual Brain have, halfway through the book, declined to mention one single testable hypothesis.
It's the same old shit: You guys can't PROVE we are wrong, so therefore... you know, stop being mean.
Meanwhile, the scientifically rigorous advocates of the, apparently scientific content-less Spiritual Brain continue to attack scientists who take the brain as being identical with the mind.
I thought he was going to get to some evidence just now, but he's just going off again on how scientists who claim to have identified neural correlates of consciousness, at various times, have been shown to be wrong, or drawing false conclusions from their experiments.
He's talking about OCD now, and the cingulate, ganglia, and neuronal plasticity. Let's see... I'm guessing something's coming about how the scientists who thought they could fix OCD by identifying the NCC's of OCD failed, and therefore, the default implication is god!
I have recently listened to the audiobooks Unweaving the Rainbow and Ancestor's Tale.
(Now he's arguing for free will......I assume that's what his opponents are denying and what can only be located in the non-material spirit)
Anyways, in the two Dawkins books, he didn't spend his time attacking non-materialist views of biological diversity. On the contrary, he talked about the topics indicated by the title of each book. He also spent a fare amount of time criticizing certain aspects of thinking among scientists. He spends even less time attacking religion.
Of course, there is a book in which Dawkins attacks all religion. That is The God Delusion. Here again, the book is about the title. And, although he does, at times, make strong, declarative statements against religion and it's adherents, he is also reasoned and precise in his description of what he opposes and why he opposes it.
I became an atheist for philosophical, primary epistemological reasons, back when I was into Ayn Rand and Objectivism, so I was always inwardly dismissive of scientists speaking on the issue of God.
It was, for me, what it still is: an issue to be analyzed on the grounds of it's assertions, which are fundamentally and eternally non-empirical. Thus, the whole discussion of religion in conjunction with the realm of science is offensive and shameful, unless they are finally going to say. “We think God is real, this experiment will test it. If the data conclusively holds up in contradiction of our god hypothesis, we will give it up.” Theists don't think this and, insofar as they discuss or revere Science in conjunction with religion, they are nothing but frauds.
But, after hearing Dawkins, I forget where I first heard him, I was impressed by his way of talking and listened to the The God Delusion. I was even more impressed by the lovely, beautiful diction and accuracy with which he discussed everything. As far as the content, he dealt with many accusations against evolution and science by religious people in a way that I hadn't thought of.
I ve listened to hours and hours of anti-evolution, Christian lectures.
(this guy on the book just said something to the effect of In the decade of the brain, it had already been shown that the Mind can significantly influence the Brain!!!! That's fucking great. On one hand, we have an idea that what we experience is actually a phenomena of the brain. On the other hand, we have this guy saying that the brain is not the mind, and he demonstrates that by showing errors of scientists. Oh dear, while I was typing the previous few sentences, he has been showing how much medical treatment of psychological conditions are placebo effects! Mind over matter. That hasn't been working as indiscriminately as our African ancestors must have had faith it would, when they were faced with death, the neanderthals closing off the northern border of the continent, or any of the little shit that we still face every day. Insofar as it has been verified, it has been verified by quantitative measurement, and empirical observations. Once again, it reminds of me Dawkins, when he says that if a headline announcing that scientists had proof of God appeared tomorrow, you can be sure that the vast majority of theologians would be trumpeting it to their flocks, but, otherwise, they will deny the right of science to evaluate religious claims.)
Anyways, listening to all that Christian Anti-evolution, even though I was listening to it out of enjoyment of ideological apologetics of all kinds, started to grow on me, and I began to think Evolution was insignificant. But I had never thought of it as significant anyways. Now I have really begun to see the beauty and intellectual pleasure of contemplating the complexity of the natural world. But how would I have acquired this if I believed that the most important source of understanding of the world is faith, which, is not demonstrable or experienced as anything other than an emotion or feeling?
(he's still on the placebo effect!)
Alright I'm tired of this now. I want to find a text version of this book so I can scan it to see if there are any interesting conjectures about the actual spiritual nature of the brain. These assholes opened the book with a promise to tell me about the brain in conjunction with it's spiritual nature. But, now it seems to be the typical, oh so typical boasts of those who oppose science in the name of defending ideas they have no intention of giving up, and for which they declare the impossibility of reason to deny.
The fucked up thing is that I am really, sincerely interested in God, that was my first topic on this Blog. But I cannot stand to be cheated with the promise of scientific discussion of a spiritual brain when I'm all I'm getting is stale, logically embarrassing, criticisms of various scientists.
If the authors had said that's what they were going to do for half, or all of the book, then I might still be interested, since it is always useful to go over old criticisms of the things that seem correct to me. I have a bunch of new Advanced HSK books in front of me. I shall let them comfort me. There are also Greg Egan's Distress, which has finally dragged me in, and the Mandarin version of The Yellow Lighted Bookshop to fall back on if studying fails me.
The less than amusing feature of this method is that, so far, I have yet to hear any new ideas about the spiritual brain.
In all honesty, I recall feeling stimulated by a few points, but they are buried in my mind by the inundation of anti-materialist science rhetoric.
Actually, I do remember one bit mentioned a couple of chapters ago, Karl Popper said that there is something called 'promisory materialism' and this sounds like a very interesting critique of certain tendencies in science, especially considering Popper's reputation as a skeptic interested in epistemology.
But that's not from the authors of the book, they just employ the quote in the process of showing that atheists and people who explain god through neurological phenomena are, suprise suprise, the real practitioners of faith.
The earliest I can recall hearing this “So you believe in science! Ah hah! You have faith in science!” was from the head of the Christian club at Cerritos High School. Science is a religion! Well, there goes my denial of the Christ's, who is the same substance as god, according to experts, came back to life and ascended to heaven. In actually, my response then is still more than sufficient for me: The concept of god as I it is generally defined is self-contradictory, and it's proponents say as such, thus it has no clear meaning, or way of evaluating it's validity. Therefore, as a metaphysical proposition, it's nonsense.
I'm listening to the book now, and I just heard another tired point: that materialist explanations of god take away right and wrong, and leave only our base desires. A bit after that comes the logical conclusion of scientific explanations, who all we atheists know and love: Pol Pot.
Pol Pot dehumanized his victims, and do you know why? Not because of some analytic interpretation of the workings of his mind. Not because people, on the whole, are equally capable of helping and hurting each other. Of course, the reason is that Pol Pot didn't have a spiritual view of the soul and morality.
Religion, on the other hand, upholds the value of each life, except for when the gods kill us in their wars, or when the Judeo Christian God is offended and floods the planet or tells his star pupil Joshua to kill his disobedient neighbors.
Christianity, whose anti-science apologetics this book resembles, has many strands that claim that man is unworthy of redemption, unworthy of God's forgiveness, but only saved through the grace, the charity, the whimsical forgiveness of God. Why are we unworthy? Because, we disobeyed!
I think the God family needs counseling.
Anyways, this book is still going on about how materialism is wrong. I was really interested in hearing scientific evidence for a non-materialist view of the mind, but apparently these guys have been too busy crouching under the assault of Dennet, Dawkins, Ramachandran, and all the other unscientific adherents of the religion of materialism.
This is why the authors of the Spiritual Brain have, halfway through the book, declined to mention one single testable hypothesis.
It's the same old shit: You guys can't PROVE we are wrong, so therefore... you know, stop being mean.
Meanwhile, the scientifically rigorous advocates of the, apparently scientific content-less Spiritual Brain continue to attack scientists who take the brain as being identical with the mind.
I thought he was going to get to some evidence just now, but he's just going off again on how scientists who claim to have identified neural correlates of consciousness, at various times, have been shown to be wrong, or drawing false conclusions from their experiments.
He's talking about OCD now, and the cingulate, ganglia, and neuronal plasticity. Let's see... I'm guessing something's coming about how the scientists who thought they could fix OCD by identifying the NCC's of OCD failed, and therefore, the default implication is god!
I have recently listened to the audiobooks Unweaving the Rainbow and Ancestor's Tale.
(Now he's arguing for free will......I assume that's what his opponents are denying and what can only be located in the non-material spirit)
Anyways, in the two Dawkins books, he didn't spend his time attacking non-materialist views of biological diversity. On the contrary, he talked about the topics indicated by the title of each book. He also spent a fare amount of time criticizing certain aspects of thinking among scientists. He spends even less time attacking religion.
Of course, there is a book in which Dawkins attacks all religion. That is The God Delusion. Here again, the book is about the title. And, although he does, at times, make strong, declarative statements against religion and it's adherents, he is also reasoned and precise in his description of what he opposes and why he opposes it.
I became an atheist for philosophical, primary epistemological reasons, back when I was into Ayn Rand and Objectivism, so I was always inwardly dismissive of scientists speaking on the issue of God.
It was, for me, what it still is: an issue to be analyzed on the grounds of it's assertions, which are fundamentally and eternally non-empirical. Thus, the whole discussion of religion in conjunction with the realm of science is offensive and shameful, unless they are finally going to say. “We think God is real, this experiment will test it. If the data conclusively holds up in contradiction of our god hypothesis, we will give it up.” Theists don't think this and, insofar as they discuss or revere Science in conjunction with religion, they are nothing but frauds.
But, after hearing Dawkins, I forget where I first heard him, I was impressed by his way of talking and listened to the The God Delusion. I was even more impressed by the lovely, beautiful diction and accuracy with which he discussed everything. As far as the content, he dealt with many accusations against evolution and science by religious people in a way that I hadn't thought of.
I ve listened to hours and hours of anti-evolution, Christian lectures.
(this guy on the book just said something to the effect of In the decade of the brain, it had already been shown that the Mind can significantly influence the Brain!!!! That's fucking great. On one hand, we have an idea that what we experience is actually a phenomena of the brain. On the other hand, we have this guy saying that the brain is not the mind, and he demonstrates that by showing errors of scientists. Oh dear, while I was typing the previous few sentences, he has been showing how much medical treatment of psychological conditions are placebo effects! Mind over matter. That hasn't been working as indiscriminately as our African ancestors must have had faith it would, when they were faced with death, the neanderthals closing off the northern border of the continent, or any of the little shit that we still face every day. Insofar as it has been verified, it has been verified by quantitative measurement, and empirical observations. Once again, it reminds of me Dawkins, when he says that if a headline announcing that scientists had proof of God appeared tomorrow, you can be sure that the vast majority of theologians would be trumpeting it to their flocks, but, otherwise, they will deny the right of science to evaluate religious claims.)
Anyways, listening to all that Christian Anti-evolution, even though I was listening to it out of enjoyment of ideological apologetics of all kinds, started to grow on me, and I began to think Evolution was insignificant. But I had never thought of it as significant anyways. Now I have really begun to see the beauty and intellectual pleasure of contemplating the complexity of the natural world. But how would I have acquired this if I believed that the most important source of understanding of the world is faith, which, is not demonstrable or experienced as anything other than an emotion or feeling?
(he's still on the placebo effect!)
Alright I'm tired of this now. I want to find a text version of this book so I can scan it to see if there are any interesting conjectures about the actual spiritual nature of the brain. These assholes opened the book with a promise to tell me about the brain in conjunction with it's spiritual nature. But, now it seems to be the typical, oh so typical boasts of those who oppose science in the name of defending ideas they have no intention of giving up, and for which they declare the impossibility of reason to deny.
The fucked up thing is that I am really, sincerely interested in God, that was my first topic on this Blog. But I cannot stand to be cheated with the promise of scientific discussion of a spiritual brain when I'm all I'm getting is stale, logically embarrassing, criticisms of various scientists.
If the authors had said that's what they were going to do for half, or all of the book, then I might still be interested, since it is always useful to go over old criticisms of the things that seem correct to me. I have a bunch of new Advanced HSK books in front of me. I shall let them comfort me. There are also Greg Egan's Distress, which has finally dragged me in, and the Mandarin version of The Yellow Lighted Bookshop to fall back on if studying fails me.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Next-Dimension Editorial: Bro Taylor on Anti-Christ Arrived.
Around the time when the radical leftist so called 'free media' in the US was carrying out the farcical debate of whether Hillary or Obama was going to get nominated, i told my brother (a non-believer, and stubborn enough to resist ten years of my witnessing) that if this Obama was elected, the Christians would be saying he was the Antichrist. Anyone who has studied the Scriptures and the Left Behind series like they should be, would have seen it coming a mile away.
So I made myself a google alert for 'obama antichrist' and, sure enough, there were all kinds of links everyday.
Also like I expected, now that he is going to be president, the elitists in the Christian movement have intimidated everyone to back off, lest they intimidate the new leader.
This, plus all the accusations, which are laughed at in the extremist, liberal media, of Obama being a secret this and a secret that, are setting the stage for the greatest hoodwinking the world has ever seen: The ascension of the antichrist as the man in charge of the world's greatest nation.
The problem is that nobody bothered discussing the real 'secret' Obama: The secret Satanist.
I don't want to bore my readers, so I won't go into the copious documentation and evidence of Obama's Satanic affiliation. Do the research, its all there in the public records.
The powers that be in the Satanic Illuminati are going to bring in the next phase of their 'New World Order' as predicted by former president, George Bush.
His son was the one who paved the way for Obama. But something about being around all those Christians rubbed off on Little Bush, who is a fake Christian.
Bush got just a little bit of light, even though he isn't really saved. And that little bit caused him to rebel against the globalist Agenda, by doing things like foregoing restrictions on torture, set forth by the Geneva Accords, (which only hamper moral nations like us, since the terrorists don't give a damn about any accords!.)
This is why Bush Jr. has been so thoroughly vilified in the Zionist/Socialist controlled American Media.
Recently, an even more shocking event has taken place in that same Media that vilified Bush Jr. for his disobedience.
Like it or not, we are all familiar with the Daily Show, a show that as fellow radical lefty and illegal immigration advocate, Geraldo, put it "Makes fun of old woman falling down the stairs."
Well, the boys at the Daily Show had a ball lying and scolding George W. for his occasional honesty.
Now it seems that this "liberal salon" (as Brian Williams called it,) is reaping the reward of supporting Antichrist Obama.
During the special Colbert Report/Daily Show coverage of the presidential elections, two black members of the show openly announced that they were taking control of the show. Now that there supposedly peace loving and bi-racial hero was taking power, they were being rewarded for their support of the great racist.
The two non-black hosts pretended that it was a joke. Unsurprisingly, one of them, Colbert, is a Catholic (probably Opus Dei) and the other is an atheist Jew, married to a Catholic (probably overseeing the two shows for the higher ups in the illuminati.)
Although they tried to play off the hijacking of their propaganda ridden shows, it was all to clear that the too black extremists were not at all joking.
This is all the more evident in the lack of humor in the bits performed by Colbert and Stewart. The funny bits are all being done by Jason Jones, John Oliver and Wyatt Cenak. The first two are white and have no doubt been inspired by Obama's promise to let them stay on the show after the other whites are exiled. The other Wyatt, is black and will be the new host of the Colbert Report, a show which is solely there to take unfair shots at a false conservative, Bill O'reilly. If O'reilly was as much of a conservative as he claimed, he wouldn't support the Papacy and he wouldn't cover up the obvious Illuminati conspiracy going on.
The two soon to be racially cleansed hosts, Colbert and Stewart are not so funny anymore now that their fate is so close and hovering over their godless heads.
The powers that be will be letting the accusations of Obama's well documented Satanism come up pretty soon, but they will be laughed at by the cynical press, brought and paid for by the Anti-Israel self-hating Zionists that control Hollywood and the entire country's media.
Stay tuned. Stay Saved.
Brother Taylor out.
So I made myself a google alert for 'obama antichrist' and, sure enough, there were all kinds of links everyday.
Also like I expected, now that he is going to be president, the elitists in the Christian movement have intimidated everyone to back off, lest they intimidate the new leader.
This, plus all the accusations, which are laughed at in the extremist, liberal media, of Obama being a secret this and a secret that, are setting the stage for the greatest hoodwinking the world has ever seen: The ascension of the antichrist as the man in charge of the world's greatest nation.
The problem is that nobody bothered discussing the real 'secret' Obama: The secret Satanist.
I don't want to bore my readers, so I won't go into the copious documentation and evidence of Obama's Satanic affiliation. Do the research, its all there in the public records.
The powers that be in the Satanic Illuminati are going to bring in the next phase of their 'New World Order' as predicted by former president, George Bush.
His son was the one who paved the way for Obama. But something about being around all those Christians rubbed off on Little Bush, who is a fake Christian.
Bush got just a little bit of light, even though he isn't really saved. And that little bit caused him to rebel against the globalist Agenda, by doing things like foregoing restrictions on torture, set forth by the Geneva Accords, (which only hamper moral nations like us, since the terrorists don't give a damn about any accords!.)
This is why Bush Jr. has been so thoroughly vilified in the Zionist/Socialist controlled American Media.
Recently, an even more shocking event has taken place in that same Media that vilified Bush Jr. for his disobedience.
Like it or not, we are all familiar with the Daily Show, a show that as fellow radical lefty and illegal immigration advocate, Geraldo, put it "Makes fun of old woman falling down the stairs."
Well, the boys at the Daily Show had a ball lying and scolding George W. for his occasional honesty.
Now it seems that this "liberal salon" (as Brian Williams called it,) is reaping the reward of supporting Antichrist Obama.
During the special Colbert Report/Daily Show coverage of the presidential elections, two black members of the show openly announced that they were taking control of the show. Now that there supposedly peace loving and bi-racial hero was taking power, they were being rewarded for their support of the great racist.
The two non-black hosts pretended that it was a joke. Unsurprisingly, one of them, Colbert, is a Catholic (probably Opus Dei) and the other is an atheist Jew, married to a Catholic (probably overseeing the two shows for the higher ups in the illuminati.)
Although they tried to play off the hijacking of their propaganda ridden shows, it was all to clear that the too black extremists were not at all joking.
This is all the more evident in the lack of humor in the bits performed by Colbert and Stewart. The funny bits are all being done by Jason Jones, John Oliver and Wyatt Cenak. The first two are white and have no doubt been inspired by Obama's promise to let them stay on the show after the other whites are exiled. The other Wyatt, is black and will be the new host of the Colbert Report, a show which is solely there to take unfair shots at a false conservative, Bill O'reilly. If O'reilly was as much of a conservative as he claimed, he wouldn't support the Papacy and he wouldn't cover up the obvious Illuminati conspiracy going on.
The two soon to be racially cleansed hosts, Colbert and Stewart are not so funny anymore now that their fate is so close and hovering over their godless heads.
The powers that be will be letting the accusations of Obama's well documented Satanism come up pretty soon, but they will be laughed at by the cynical press, brought and paid for by the Anti-Israel self-hating Zionists that control Hollywood and the entire country's media.
Stay tuned. Stay Saved.
Brother Taylor out.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
FICTION: OF ALL THEY COULD'VE LEFT US
First someone would have to find the clue. Under all that dirt in the desert, is one little piece of technology. But that little piece is far from where anyone comes. Nobody comes there, but it wasn't planned to be this way. It's just that nobody happened to set up any residence near the area in the two million years since they went away.
And now, it's far from any inhabited areas in Nevada or California. If anyone found it, and could reverse engineer it, there would surely be at least five or six reasonable scientists who debated that it was a human made object. The creation scientists would use this as an argument for intelligent design, its structure right on the line between organic and inorganic.
That's because the material used to build it closely resembles the behavior and biology of slime moulds. This was because the people who had invented it based it on slime moulds. They lived in a world, much as we do, surrounded by ingenious mechanisms proceeding through history blind to anything but eating fighting reproducing and dying. They were as blind to the world they lived as was the history that had produced them.
But those people were not blind. They saw far clearer than we have, and they saw it a lot sooner.
The reason for this was, in principle, the same reason that the slime mould achieved such novelty. They called it history, we called it evolution.
Their history is mostly the same as ours. Right up until a group of hominids, south coast of Africa, started spending more time in water than their neighbors. They were the victims of psychological warfare. Over a few millenia, their neighbors were producing an ever greater number of individuals who could contort their faces in ways that frightened the hominids living near the beach. These guys were superior swimmers.
Whenever these face contorters would spring out of the forest, screaming and making the scariest of faces, these guys would swim out far enough and wait for their attackers to leave.
Sometimes the face guys would attack at night. Many of the water guys were sleeping, and thus easily killed. But the ones who weren't sleeping and the ones who woke up fast enough fought back. And since it was dark they couldn't see the frightening faces of their enemies. The face guys, being used to their advantage, would be unprepared and were easily killed by the water guys. When morning came around and the water guys would see the dead enemy, they realized that fighting at night was the way to win.
This meant that the individuals who could stay up later, or sleep only in small naps and be ready to wake up faster had a greater chance of reproducing.
So, these two groups reached a little balance for awhile, the face guys became trickier in attacking the water guys, and the water guys became more nocturnal, better fishers, and better swimmers.
But, as the face guys became better at chasing the water guys into deeper and deeper waters, the water guys started dealing with the predators on their other side, mostly sharks and, sometimes, killer whales.
More and more they were sandwiched into shallow waters. They became fatter and fatter in comparison to their freaky faced neighbors. Their females got used to giving birth in the ocean.
They water guys also became stronger, as spending most of their time in the water required more muscle.
This process continued until they lived almost exclusively in the water. Their enemies had gotten much smarter, and much better at articulating their facial muscles. They lived farther from their water dwelling neighbors, now, moving into the grasslands and out of the forest.
And now, it's far from any inhabited areas in Nevada or California. If anyone found it, and could reverse engineer it, there would surely be at least five or six reasonable scientists who debated that it was a human made object. The creation scientists would use this as an argument for intelligent design, its structure right on the line between organic and inorganic.
That's because the material used to build it closely resembles the behavior and biology of slime moulds. This was because the people who had invented it based it on slime moulds. They lived in a world, much as we do, surrounded by ingenious mechanisms proceeding through history blind to anything but eating fighting reproducing and dying. They were as blind to the world they lived as was the history that had produced them.
But those people were not blind. They saw far clearer than we have, and they saw it a lot sooner.
The reason for this was, in principle, the same reason that the slime mould achieved such novelty. They called it history, we called it evolution.
Their history is mostly the same as ours. Right up until a group of hominids, south coast of Africa, started spending more time in water than their neighbors. They were the victims of psychological warfare. Over a few millenia, their neighbors were producing an ever greater number of individuals who could contort their faces in ways that frightened the hominids living near the beach. These guys were superior swimmers.
Whenever these face contorters would spring out of the forest, screaming and making the scariest of faces, these guys would swim out far enough and wait for their attackers to leave.
Sometimes the face guys would attack at night. Many of the water guys were sleeping, and thus easily killed. But the ones who weren't sleeping and the ones who woke up fast enough fought back. And since it was dark they couldn't see the frightening faces of their enemies. The face guys, being used to their advantage, would be unprepared and were easily killed by the water guys. When morning came around and the water guys would see the dead enemy, they realized that fighting at night was the way to win.
This meant that the individuals who could stay up later, or sleep only in small naps and be ready to wake up faster had a greater chance of reproducing.
So, these two groups reached a little balance for awhile, the face guys became trickier in attacking the water guys, and the water guys became more nocturnal, better fishers, and better swimmers.
But, as the face guys became better at chasing the water guys into deeper and deeper waters, the water guys started dealing with the predators on their other side, mostly sharks and, sometimes, killer whales.
More and more they were sandwiched into shallow waters. They became fatter and fatter in comparison to their freaky faced neighbors. Their females got used to giving birth in the ocean.
They water guys also became stronger, as spending most of their time in the water required more muscle.
This process continued until they lived almost exclusively in the water. Their enemies had gotten much smarter, and much better at articulating their facial muscles. They lived farther from their water dwelling neighbors, now, moving into the grasslands and out of the forest.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
NON-FICTION: SUN IN TAURUS, A FRIEND, HITLER, JACK JOHNSON
I know astrology's bullshit, but just consider the following similarities and see if you can't, at least, see the value it offers us in regards to analyzing personality components.
This old buddy of mine has alot in common with me, though our astrology doesn't have much in common.
We both have chronic paranoia, a tendency to think in terms of deceptive strategies to guarantee our security in relationship with others. We both are highly analytical and prefer directness when dealing with problems. We both have a sense of victimization sustained in childhood which causes us at times to forget that we are now formidable and intimidating, and this in turn causes us to come off as monsters.
But this friend of mine, Jar Jar, has a sun in taurus and a moon in leo. And he always somethings in common with famous taurus's like Hitler, cromwell, saddam, hussein, tony blair, lenin, and marx.
The goals of my life revolve around encompassing the world through understanding, resolving erroneous thinking and theoretical excessiveness, and creating harmonious relationships.
Jar Jar, on the otherhand, is always struggling between creativity and the quest for power.
Like Hitler and lenin, he posesses a highly calculating and austere attitude to his role in society, he sees himself as singled out by destiny for power. He does not openly second guess himself too much, 0r admit weakness. He is personally cynical of ideology, but nonetheless feels an excitement at the sight of uniforms and crowds of humans organized under the same banner, with one mind and one leader. He admires the hegemony of communist china and the soviet union, even if he hasnt ever conscioulsy thought so.
He thinks the key to power over others is the form of the organization, and the proper influencing of the organizations methods.
Like all the aforementioned, he is unlikely to understand or dwell on whats really going on in his psyche, rather, he constantly reinterprets other peoples ideas and ideology into justifications for his own will to power.
Like cromwell and the rest, he values loyalty and therefore sees betrayal everywhere imminent, except when committed by himself.
The other day I saw Tony Blair on the daily Show, and I was reminded of Jar Jar. Particularly, in the way that Blair resisted openly disagreeing with John Stewart, trying instead to charm by being reasonable and calm, while at the same time showing no admission of error or regret, and sneaking in the implication that the invasion of Iraq was justified by the current prescence of terrorists there, which showed that the war on terror was a pan middle east epidemic which we should engage on that scale.
Jar Jar is also constantly worried about sanitation and his own health, like Hitler. Another commonality is a lack of sexuality. It's nice to have a friend who doesn't constantly make dirty comments, not that i have many friends who do. But, beyond that, Jar Jar has never exhibited a typical male obsessions with sex, never showed any interest in porn, never commented on a girls boobs or ass, and never showed any interest in men. In this regards, he reminds me of Morrissey.
Well, this is not comprehensive, but we do see paranoia, interpretation of relationships in terms of strategic plays for power, a lack of self awareness, a disinclination toward regret and expression of apology, and a single will and determination to achieve organizational power.
This old buddy of mine has alot in common with me, though our astrology doesn't have much in common.
We both have chronic paranoia, a tendency to think in terms of deceptive strategies to guarantee our security in relationship with others. We both are highly analytical and prefer directness when dealing with problems. We both have a sense of victimization sustained in childhood which causes us at times to forget that we are now formidable and intimidating, and this in turn causes us to come off as monsters.
But this friend of mine, Jar Jar, has a sun in taurus and a moon in leo. And he always somethings in common with famous taurus's like Hitler, cromwell, saddam, hussein, tony blair, lenin, and marx.
The goals of my life revolve around encompassing the world through understanding, resolving erroneous thinking and theoretical excessiveness, and creating harmonious relationships.
Jar Jar, on the otherhand, is always struggling between creativity and the quest for power.
Like Hitler and lenin, he posesses a highly calculating and austere attitude to his role in society, he sees himself as singled out by destiny for power. He does not openly second guess himself too much, 0r admit weakness. He is personally cynical of ideology, but nonetheless feels an excitement at the sight of uniforms and crowds of humans organized under the same banner, with one mind and one leader. He admires the hegemony of communist china and the soviet union, even if he hasnt ever conscioulsy thought so.
He thinks the key to power over others is the form of the organization, and the proper influencing of the organizations methods.
Like all the aforementioned, he is unlikely to understand or dwell on whats really going on in his psyche, rather, he constantly reinterprets other peoples ideas and ideology into justifications for his own will to power.
Like cromwell and the rest, he values loyalty and therefore sees betrayal everywhere imminent, except when committed by himself.
The other day I saw Tony Blair on the daily Show, and I was reminded of Jar Jar. Particularly, in the way that Blair resisted openly disagreeing with John Stewart, trying instead to charm by being reasonable and calm, while at the same time showing no admission of error or regret, and sneaking in the implication that the invasion of Iraq was justified by the current prescence of terrorists there, which showed that the war on terror was a pan middle east epidemic which we should engage on that scale.
Jar Jar is also constantly worried about sanitation and his own health, like Hitler. Another commonality is a lack of sexuality. It's nice to have a friend who doesn't constantly make dirty comments, not that i have many friends who do. But, beyond that, Jar Jar has never exhibited a typical male obsessions with sex, never showed any interest in porn, never commented on a girls boobs or ass, and never showed any interest in men. In this regards, he reminds me of Morrissey.
Well, this is not comprehensive, but we do see paranoia, interpretation of relationships in terms of strategic plays for power, a lack of self awareness, a disinclination toward regret and expression of apology, and a single will and determination to achieve organizational power.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
NON-FICTION: COMMENTARIES ON TWO EXCERPTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Nietzsche's excerpt: The greatest weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing more new in it, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?"
This is a great case for the futility of time machines. Further, if i were to know this recurrence but have no chance to alter, thus becoming a ghost in my own conscious, that would be both trippy and frustrating.
As for an actual corollary to this eternal recurrence, I have been present to it many times. Feeling my body begin to hit someone, feeling my thoughts work themselves up into provoking an argument, feeling myself go back on my prohibition of cigarettes and food.
At this times I am a consciousness trapped in a time loop, and at times I do feel apart from myself, alienated. I don't think this is existential however, but neurological. I have endured sufficient trauma to give my consciousness an reason to distant itself from its own process and those of my body.
And to regard the eternal recurrences of history as inevitable would be just as justified as to regard the personal type as inevitable, and for all the wars and massacres that are happening even now as 'we' think of 'ourselves' as beyond our primitive past, and for all the resignation that the brilliant and the ignorant both throw up at the disgusting things that permeate our societies, I can only reply with the sort of thing I often tell myself and my wife: It's good to know our problems and complain about them when we need to alleviate pressure, but if we are to acknowledge that it is in fact a problem, we must eventually come to the question of what to do about it.
I sometimes get the feeling that Nietzsche liked the excuse provided, by the awesome tragedy he created out of his brilliant words and ideas, not to deal with the petty problems of his common tragedies, such as poor health, rejection and shame.
For these he would have had to write a self help book, without any oppurtunity to describe things as tragic, fearsome, awesome, trembling, etc. You know Nietzsche, I too live in the land of high plateaus and caves, but, at the same time, somehow, and with fearful inexplicability, i live in a little apartment which I cannot organize, and in a body that is not tall enough, and has surplus stores of fat. I also have often feared my sexual and romantic inadequacy. I also have suffered migraines and have asthma. These are problems that do not go away with the comprehension of idolatry, the dawning of psychological genealogies, or getting at the heart of rationalism. Is it left to the future man, the being free of the chains put upon him by the apollonian moralists, to solve the very last of our problems, and has the overcoming of man in the spirit not yet surpassed the utility of cardio vascular exercise and a lesbians tips on oral sex? Whoa onto me.
Hayden White's Excerpt:
In my view, a historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment, argument, and idelogical implication. [He then goes to describe that the elements of these categories have exclusive bondings and are imcompatible with other sets Like Romantic Mode of Emplotment implies the Formist mode of argument, and the Anarchist mode of idelogical implementation.
I like this categorical, abstract mode of theorizing, because I too have employed it. But, I think his mode of exclusion leads to an embarassing mode of consequence.
Another thing that is interesting in White's chart is that he associates comic, with organicist, and conservative. The organicist and conservative we can see in conservatives of the edmund burke or hayek variety. As for the comic, we can see it's accuracy when contrasted with what he posits for liberal, that is, contextualist and satirical. The four mode of emplotments are romantic, tragic, comic and satirical.
As a test of this, lets look at shows that are only incidentally historical.
What are the best expamples of satire in America? Real Americans know that they are the daily show, the Colbert Report, the Simpsons, and South Park.
South Park is more Libertarian, but tries to be apolitical. The Daily show and colbert report are liberal, and the Simpsons.
But why no good Conservative satire? I guess its because White's conception of Historical styel holds true for t.v. Did you see the Fox news parody of the Daily show, the half hour news hour or something, it was so sad. It made me feel shame, even though I'm an anarchist.
As for historical style, lets look at some people I'm familiar with: Vidal, Zinn, and Bakunin. Zinn and Bakunin are anarchists. Zinn I can see as Romantic, as White maintains is implied by the Anarchist Mode of Ideological Impication. Bakunin, though, seems more tragic, at least in God and the State. He doesnt spend a lot of time building dreams, and he employs a dialectical or Hegelian style of reasoning. Vidal is a liberal, and, at the same time, a Conservative. But he is rather formist in his Mode of Argument, constantly referencing the inconsistency of American history with it's original principles, but he's also supposed to be socialist. His mode of emplotment, in his historical novels, is comic, if a little satirical.
Well, the more I think about these categories, the more interesting they are to me, as possibilities of actual tendencies of correlation. But as for the general necessary combination of these forms, you will find that many will use whatever mode of emplotment they can to advocate their cause. It's often called branding or marketing today. And it is not outside historical narrative.
I have to say though that, while most contemporary anarchists are overly romantic, they are less likely to be romantic about anarchist history, and there approach is definitely organic. I think we will find that as anarchists develop more stable approaches to history, they will and (and do) find the formist mode of argument less compelling.
This is a great case for the futility of time machines. Further, if i were to know this recurrence but have no chance to alter, thus becoming a ghost in my own conscious, that would be both trippy and frustrating.
As for an actual corollary to this eternal recurrence, I have been present to it many times. Feeling my body begin to hit someone, feeling my thoughts work themselves up into provoking an argument, feeling myself go back on my prohibition of cigarettes and food.
At this times I am a consciousness trapped in a time loop, and at times I do feel apart from myself, alienated. I don't think this is existential however, but neurological. I have endured sufficient trauma to give my consciousness an reason to distant itself from its own process and those of my body.
And to regard the eternal recurrences of history as inevitable would be just as justified as to regard the personal type as inevitable, and for all the wars and massacres that are happening even now as 'we' think of 'ourselves' as beyond our primitive past, and for all the resignation that the brilliant and the ignorant both throw up at the disgusting things that permeate our societies, I can only reply with the sort of thing I often tell myself and my wife: It's good to know our problems and complain about them when we need to alleviate pressure, but if we are to acknowledge that it is in fact a problem, we must eventually come to the question of what to do about it.
I sometimes get the feeling that Nietzsche liked the excuse provided, by the awesome tragedy he created out of his brilliant words and ideas, not to deal with the petty problems of his common tragedies, such as poor health, rejection and shame.
For these he would have had to write a self help book, without any oppurtunity to describe things as tragic, fearsome, awesome, trembling, etc. You know Nietzsche, I too live in the land of high plateaus and caves, but, at the same time, somehow, and with fearful inexplicability, i live in a little apartment which I cannot organize, and in a body that is not tall enough, and has surplus stores of fat. I also have often feared my sexual and romantic inadequacy. I also have suffered migraines and have asthma. These are problems that do not go away with the comprehension of idolatry, the dawning of psychological genealogies, or getting at the heart of rationalism. Is it left to the future man, the being free of the chains put upon him by the apollonian moralists, to solve the very last of our problems, and has the overcoming of man in the spirit not yet surpassed the utility of cardio vascular exercise and a lesbians tips on oral sex? Whoa onto me.
Hayden White's Excerpt:
In my view, a historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment, argument, and idelogical implication. [He then goes to describe that the elements of these categories have exclusive bondings and are imcompatible with other sets Like Romantic Mode of Emplotment implies the Formist mode of argument, and the Anarchist mode of idelogical implementation.
I like this categorical, abstract mode of theorizing, because I too have employed it. But, I think his mode of exclusion leads to an embarassing mode of consequence.
Another thing that is interesting in White's chart is that he associates comic, with organicist, and conservative. The organicist and conservative we can see in conservatives of the edmund burke or hayek variety. As for the comic, we can see it's accuracy when contrasted with what he posits for liberal, that is, contextualist and satirical. The four mode of emplotments are romantic, tragic, comic and satirical.
As a test of this, lets look at shows that are only incidentally historical.
What are the best expamples of satire in America? Real Americans know that they are the daily show, the Colbert Report, the Simpsons, and South Park.
South Park is more Libertarian, but tries to be apolitical. The Daily show and colbert report are liberal, and the Simpsons.
But why no good Conservative satire? I guess its because White's conception of Historical styel holds true for t.v. Did you see the Fox news parody of the Daily show, the half hour news hour or something, it was so sad. It made me feel shame, even though I'm an anarchist.
As for historical style, lets look at some people I'm familiar with: Vidal, Zinn, and Bakunin. Zinn and Bakunin are anarchists. Zinn I can see as Romantic, as White maintains is implied by the Anarchist Mode of Ideological Impication. Bakunin, though, seems more tragic, at least in God and the State. He doesnt spend a lot of time building dreams, and he employs a dialectical or Hegelian style of reasoning. Vidal is a liberal, and, at the same time, a Conservative. But he is rather formist in his Mode of Argument, constantly referencing the inconsistency of American history with it's original principles, but he's also supposed to be socialist. His mode of emplotment, in his historical novels, is comic, if a little satirical.
Well, the more I think about these categories, the more interesting they are to me, as possibilities of actual tendencies of correlation. But as for the general necessary combination of these forms, you will find that many will use whatever mode of emplotment they can to advocate their cause. It's often called branding or marketing today. And it is not outside historical narrative.
I have to say though that, while most contemporary anarchists are overly romantic, they are less likely to be romantic about anarchist history, and there approach is definitely organic. I think we will find that as anarchists develop more stable approaches to history, they will and (and do) find the formist mode of argument less compelling.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
NON-FICTION: FOUNDING FATHERS AND BENEFIT OF "NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO PARTIES"
I was listening to a series of lectures on American party history put out by what might be becoming the largest provider of secondary education, thanks to public spirited websites like BTjunkie and mininova: The Teaching Company.
The thing that caught my attention was a discussion of the problems of factions in the plans and thinking of the founding fathers. I remembered hearing about this in reading standard us history and gore vidal. But i hadn't thought of the fact that the constant complaint of third party, non-mainstream and many other Americans is that the two parties accentuate their differences but end up advocating equivalent systems of government.
From the point of the view of some of the founding fathers, this is exactly the thing we want.
When we look at the understanding of Rome and Greece that Europeans have formed in recent centuries, we see that factions are quite dangerous to Republics. They forfeit and oppose the general interests of liberty and the good of the citizen in favor of power struggles with other cliques.
On the other hand, Obama and Mccain need to get a majority of voters to accept them, and, more importantly, they need a broad coalition of support from industry and all levels of government. Thus, they cannot alienate themselves by advocating ideas or proposals which are too extreme, or of interest to small cliques (unless those cliques make up for their lack of people with a surplus of dollars.)
So, the two party system that must use individuals with more ideologically consistent strains of political nonsense to mask their fundamental kinship as massive organizations of control, or stewardship, as Bakunin might say, is actually close to what some of our founding fathers had in mind.
Perhaps the main difference would be that some of them, like Jefferson and Clinton, presumed to dissaprove of the massive, plutocratic Empire that the United States has become.
But, then, I like the idea that Hamilton was the plebeian in fact, and Jefferson the plebeian in theory, and both men's love of their opposites led to their ideologies.
In line with this reasoning, perhaps Obama will outlaw interracial mingling and successfully reshape the middle east into secular democracies through bomb therapy.
The thing that caught my attention was a discussion of the problems of factions in the plans and thinking of the founding fathers. I remembered hearing about this in reading standard us history and gore vidal. But i hadn't thought of the fact that the constant complaint of third party, non-mainstream and many other Americans is that the two parties accentuate their differences but end up advocating equivalent systems of government.
From the point of the view of some of the founding fathers, this is exactly the thing we want.
When we look at the understanding of Rome and Greece that Europeans have formed in recent centuries, we see that factions are quite dangerous to Republics. They forfeit and oppose the general interests of liberty and the good of the citizen in favor of power struggles with other cliques.
On the other hand, Obama and Mccain need to get a majority of voters to accept them, and, more importantly, they need a broad coalition of support from industry and all levels of government. Thus, they cannot alienate themselves by advocating ideas or proposals which are too extreme, or of interest to small cliques (unless those cliques make up for their lack of people with a surplus of dollars.)
So, the two party system that must use individuals with more ideologically consistent strains of political nonsense to mask their fundamental kinship as massive organizations of control, or stewardship, as Bakunin might say, is actually close to what some of our founding fathers had in mind.
Perhaps the main difference would be that some of them, like Jefferson and Clinton, presumed to dissaprove of the massive, plutocratic Empire that the United States has become.
But, then, I like the idea that Hamilton was the plebeian in fact, and Jefferson the plebeian in theory, and both men's love of their opposites led to their ideologies.
In line with this reasoning, perhaps Obama will outlaw interracial mingling and successfully reshape the middle east into secular democracies through bomb therapy.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
NON-FICTION: AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE 'FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUENT' NOTION OF THE UNIVERSE
What if the universe is like a two headed cone, with disparate phenomena on the micro and macro scale and cohesion and uniformity mainly at some middle point?
Humans are up in the macro, and, perhaps the particle zoo is down in the micro.
How has the standard model, or string theory, escaped the infinite regress?
NON-FICTION: IS BIG AN ILLUSION?
Why humans see solidity
According to the contemporary scientific consensus, we see solidity because our eyes have evolved among organisms of a certain size, a range between whales and fleas.
I also think it is relevant to consider the size of the composite organisms and molecules that make up our sensory organism.
Could a complex nervous system have evolved on a sub-cellular scale?
What we 'really' see?
It's an old oddity by now that what we see as solid is 'actually' just the aggregate effect of billions of atoms whose fields are in contact with each other.
Everything you are looking at now, these words, are just aggregates of molecules that cannot be said to be physically touching.
The new age cliche about how everything is 'really just' energy is based on this idea. The difference is that the new age conception uses the outdated conception of energy, which existed contrast to solidity, which is outmoded by modern physics. So, to say that everything is energy means that the solidity we normally perceive is also energy, and therefore not so permeable and mutable as the new age wish-fulfillment conception would have it.
But the energy that comprises everything is said to be comprised of still smaller, ultimately uniform constituents. So that, according to the general idea of strings, the universe proceeds from tiny uniformity to larger and larger disparity.
So, what we perceive as objects are actually aggregations of molecules, and those molecules are composed of elements, and those elements are 'really' atoms, and those atoms are really all kinds of different sub-atomic particle, and those particles are really just strings, than we are really dealing with an ultimate, irreducible reality. Imagine having these strings, and they are somehow observable by super super imaging devices, and we can render them as solid-like objects, but we can't divide them, can't identify them as composed of different sections.
That is incomprehensible. Every thing is divisible, every thing science has ever verified as existing is divisible. Can you imagine these little rings or strings being observable but not having a top or bottom? If they had a top or bottom, or left side or right side, than we could break them up, if only analytically, and it would therefore be a composite entity.
As a composite entity, we would then have to break it down to it's constituent parts, and what would they be?
The problem seems to be with the very phenomena of 'object.'
Anytime we can perceive an object, we can then cut it up, again, even if only analytically.
According to the contemporary scientific consensus, we see solidity because our eyes have evolved among organisms of a certain size, a range between whales and fleas.
I also think it is relevant to consider the size of the composite organisms and molecules that make up our sensory organism.
Could a complex nervous system have evolved on a sub-cellular scale?
What we 'really' see?
It's an old oddity by now that what we see as solid is 'actually' just the aggregate effect of billions of atoms whose fields are in contact with each other.
Everything you are looking at now, these words, are just aggregates of molecules that cannot be said to be physically touching.
The new age cliche about how everything is 'really just' energy is based on this idea. The difference is that the new age conception uses the outdated conception of energy, which existed contrast to solidity, which is outmoded by modern physics. So, to say that everything is energy means that the solidity we normally perceive is also energy, and therefore not so permeable and mutable as the new age wish-fulfillment conception would have it.
But the energy that comprises everything is said to be comprised of still smaller, ultimately uniform constituents. So that, according to the general idea of strings, the universe proceeds from tiny uniformity to larger and larger disparity.
So, what we perceive as objects are actually aggregations of molecules, and those molecules are composed of elements, and those elements are 'really' atoms, and those atoms are really all kinds of different sub-atomic particle, and those particles are really just strings, than we are really dealing with an ultimate, irreducible reality. Imagine having these strings, and they are somehow observable by super super imaging devices, and we can render them as solid-like objects, but we can't divide them, can't identify them as composed of different sections.
That is incomprehensible. Every thing is divisible, every thing science has ever verified as existing is divisible. Can you imagine these little rings or strings being observable but not having a top or bottom? If they had a top or bottom, or left side or right side, than we could break them up, if only analytically, and it would therefore be a composite entity.
As a composite entity, we would then have to break it down to it's constituent parts, and what would they be?
The problem seems to be with the very phenomena of 'object.'
Anytime we can perceive an object, we can then cut it up, again, even if only analytically.
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