i wish i took the time to clean this up a little more, but i don't think i thought i'd be sitting here 17 years later talking about it...
so, i'm trained as a blues guitarist. everybody knows that the way to prove you're a real blues guitarist is to do a cover of little wing. that's just how it is.
however, i kind of felt a generational disconnect. i mean, i love hendrix and everything; that's kind of obvious, if you listen. i just felt little wing needed a bit of a punk rock update, and i thought it might be neat to merge it with a more contemporary piece - the opening track on the smashing pumpkins' double disc opus.
so, that's what this is. mellon collie and the infinitesimal wing.....
recorded in nov, 1996. remastered on oct 15, 2013.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Christian Imagery in George Orwell’s “1984”
Christian Imagery in George Orwell’s “1984”
Few books have made as much of an impact on the
political world in the last 100 years as George Orwell’s 1984. It is
usually revered for its stark depiction of a world gone mad and for its stern
message that communism has evolved to be the anti-thesis of its early Marxist
ideologies. It is a brilliant warning that, unless people realize the dangers
of the far left, we may end up in a world similar to that described in the
novel. However, there is another underlying message that is rarely touched
upon. It is a message of religious mockery that brings out Orwell’s own leftist
leanings. Orwell seems to be warning us that the political movements of the
thirties and forties are digressing Europe back to a state of totalitarianism
unknown since the days of Innocent III and the Papal Empire. This was an
extraordinarily efficient form of despotism, commonly called fundamentalism,
which propels its leader to a godlike status; or in the case of the Catholic
Church, God itself. Any form of deviation that the leader may not agree with is
met with either excommunication or extreme torture leading to false confessions
and eventually death through violent means. This reign was so total that the
consequences of it can still be felt in Europe today. Throughout the book,
Orwell draws several parallels between the society created by the Roman
Catholic Church and the society depicted in the novel.
The undisputed leader of the country
of Oceania, and of the religiously strict ideology of English Socialism, is Big
Brother. Posters of his face plaster walls all over the country, with the
underlying caption “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”. However, nobody knows where
Big Brother lives. Nobody has ever seen him in public and nobody knows how old
he is. The protagonist, Winston, even doubts his existence. He has been falsely
attributed with inventing both the airplane and the automobile. “It was not
true, for example, as was claimed in the party history books, that Big Brother
had invented aeroplanes and automobiles’ (p. 38). Before Big Brother and The Party (there is no
need to specify which party, as only one political party is in existence) there
was nothing. Big Brother is all knowing and all-powerful. The parallels to the
medieval concept of God, as propagated by the Catholic Church, are numerous.
They are both supposedly omnipotent beings who will exist until the end of
time. Neither of them can be proven to exist. However, they are both
unquestionably loved by the majority of the populace based on nothing but pure
faith and propaganda. Both are used as a means to control the population into
doing what the government wants through written propaganda and fear. The
Catholic Church’s written propaganda was the Bible, whereas The Party has an elaborate
system of altering all written documents, by means of recalls, in the Ministry
Of Truth where Winston works. “ It was thought necessary to alter, or, as the
official phrase had it, to rectify (the document).” (p. 40). The Bible has no
doubt been altered incredibly in the last 2000 years due to people hand copying
and translating it countless times into what was the most desirable prose each
time. It is hypothesized that this is the source of the many contradictions
held in its many pages. Winston performs the same operation by altering the
same statistics over and over to coincide with The Party’s current position.
Any defiance of the will of either results in torture and death, or as in the
case of Goldstein, excommunication. Both have ‘secret services’ to track down
heretics. The Catholic Church had the Spanish Inquisition and Oceania has the
Thought Police. Both have attempted to stall scientific growth. The Christians
suppressed the work of Copernicus and Galileo (and later on Darwin and Mendel) because
they contradicted the stories in the Bible. In Oceania, scientific study is
impossible because there are no scientists! Science is freedom of thought,
which is dangerous in a totalitarian society, so it has been eliminated. “In
Oceania, at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to
exist. In Newspeak, there is no word for ‘Science’.” (p. 201). As Big Brother
represents God, O’Brien represents Jesus. He is a teacher and a role model to
Winston, who grows to love him like a father. Winston’s name is taken from
Winston Churchill (most important and most liked English politician of the
time) and the most common surname in England, Smith. His full name becomes
Winston Smith. In this sense, Winston represents the common man who agrees with
the most liked politician. He also represents the common man in the Europe run
by the Papal Despots. O’Brien is viewed as a very high ranking official in the
Inner Party, second only to Big Brother. Jesus is second only to God. Jesus
preached a forgiving God over the Jewish concept of a vengeful one. He also
encouraged repentance of sins instead of the old Jewish concept of killing
those who do not follow the laws of the Talmud. O’Brien revealed that the Party
does not kill its thought criminals until they have repented and been granted a
full pardon. “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.” (p. 265).
To fulfill the Christian analogy, we need a Holy Spirit. This is symbolized by
the spirit of Ingsoc. Both are vague concepts that people do not understand
fully, and both are supposed to lead the people and give them strength against
their enemies.
The Christian religion believes in one monotheistic
omnipotent God. It also believes in a trinity concept: Father + Son + Holy
Spirit = 3 Gods in 1 God. This theory contradicts itself, as three gods are
surely polytheistic in nature and polytheistic beliefs of any kind break the
first commandment. However, the population of much of Europe was forced to
believe this without questioning it for close to one thousand years.
Eventually, people came to see it as completely logical. Orwell came up with a
word for this phenomenon: doublethink. It is more or less a way for
fundamentalist governments to say something (that originated from the leader,
of course) and then completely contradict it with something else; yet allow
them to both be true depending on whether the circumstances suit one meaning or
the other. This brainwashes the populace into believing that the leader, and
therefore the government, is completely infallible. The religion of English
socialism, or Ingsoc, also believes in a trinity concept supported by Oceania’s
three official slogans. They are WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS
STRENGTH. These are also expressions of doublethink, as they all are
contradictions of each other. The first slogan is meant to convince the
population that war is essential to the wellbeing of the nation. It is
accompanied by propaganda showing false atrocities by the enemy, Oceania
bombing itself and blaming it on the enemy, dragging humiliated POW’s through
the streets of London and public executions of hostages. This creates an
attitude in the proletariat that these nations are the enemy of Ingsoc. As a
result, people feel compelled to fight a war out of fear because they do not
want Ingsoc to be destroyed and because the enemy is portrayed as pure evil.
The Party needs this because if the people were not at war all the time they
may expect better living conditions. Also, the war serves as an excuse to unload
an incredibly heavy load of work on the populace, creating an incredible amount
of wealth for the inner party members because the war is in reality virtually
non-existent. The raw materials that are collected by the proletariats and are
supposed to be used to make war materials are in reality used to make luxuries
for the Inner Party. This represents the Crusades and the church’s widespread
propaganda that Muslims were destroying Christian shrines in the Holy Land. It
also represents the multiple ruthless massacres that the church ordered in the
name of God, the widespread pillaging and raping of middle eastern cities
during the Crusades and the racism towards non-Europeans (especially Jews) that
developed after the first Crusade and is still present today. Most of the
wealth stolen from pillaging ended up in the hands of the Church, and much of
the Church’s wealth originated from this pillaging. Many people have questioned
the Church’s motives since Pope Urban II suggested the idea in a speech outside
a small city in France, 1095. The second slogan is meant to trick people into
believing that freedom of expression is wrong and those who deviate from
orthodoxy are enslaving themselves in false conceptions of human nature. Of
course this is nonsense, but using the principals of doublethink it is
impossible to disprove. Freedom of expression will ultimately lead to the
destruction of Ingsoc, so it is watched very closely in Oceania. Ultimately,
Winston and Julia are sent for ‘reintegration’ because they exhibit freedom of
expression through the sexual act. Thoughts that do not coincide with what The
Party says are called thoughtcrimes and the act of repressing them is called
Crimestop. Crimestop should not be a conscious process; it should be controlled
by the autonomic nervous system much as digestion and the beating of the heart
are. Freedom of expression was also watched very closely in the height of the
Papal Despotism. Thoughts that disagreed with Church doctrine were called
‘heresies’ and were punished quite harshly. The word heresy itself is a Greek term that originally meant a belief
that one arrived at by oneself (Greek hairesis,
“choosing for oneself”). An example of the Church’s destruction of independent
thought is when Pope Innocent III ruthlessly crushed the Albigenses because
they thought of the Church, with its cruel methods, as evil. Another was the
Inquisition, which burned suspected heretics and sorcerers often without so
much as an unfair trial. In both societies, the oppressors thought that they
were helping their victims. The Christians believed that, by burning heretics,
they were cleansing them of evil and saving their soul. The Party believes that
those who display independent thought are insane, and that they must be cured.
“Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane!”
(p. 265). The third slogan is designed to keep the masses uneducated. If the
populace is ignorant to a better way of life than they will never want one.
Therefore, any form of education not in line with Party teaching is disallowed.
The Party accomplishes this feat by writing all the books available in Oceania
and recalling them all for editing whenever they change their views on
something. All literature with democratic ideals in it, like Goldstein’s book,
is also prohibited. This is similar to when the Church published The Index
of Forbidden Books, which was a collection of books that were banned by the
Church under penalty of excommunication. It is also reminiscent of the book
burnings that the Catholic Church sponsored until at least the late 1800’s when
the church burned all of the works of the founder of genetics, Gregor Mendel.
There also seems to be an animosity towards the Christian concept that we are
all sheep and that God is our shepherd. Sheep are known to blindly follow the
shepherd wherever the shepherd may lead because they don’t know any better.
Similarly, the populace in Oceania was made to lead Big Brother wherever he
wanted them to because they were ignorant of where they were being led.
You can’t create a
successful allegory of Christianity without a Satan figure. This role is
fulfilled by Emmanuel Goldstein. According to Judeo-Christian mythology, Satan
was originally one of God’s favorite angels. Eventually, this went to his head
and he began to believe that he was an equal to Yahweh. When He saw this, Satan
was expelled from heaven. As time wore on, those of the Jewish faith began to
blame all evil on this fallen angel and he became a scapegoat for all the evil
things that occur in the world. In a similar way, Goldstein was expelled from
Oceania for preaching democratic ideals. He also became the scapegoat and enemy
of The Party. There is an irony in that the way which Orwell chose to portray
his Devil was in the form of freedom. This represents the topsy-turvy world of
a totalitarian government, where good becomes evil and evil becomes loved. His
name is also ironic. Emmanuel is Jewish for ‘Messiah’ and Goldstein is a Jewish
surname. This is further representative of the backward ideals of Oceania.
Most people fail
to see that Orwell is not only warning us of the future but also of the past.
It is clear that he believes that totalitarian ideals are not only a problem of
the future but also one that we have defeated in the past when we freed
ourselves from the oppressive Papal regime. He is warning us that if our
society cannot learn from its mistakes, then we won’t have a future. Orwell
expresses this through the character of Winston:
[O’Brien] filled
the glasses and raised his own glass by the stern.
‘What shall it be
this time?’ he said, still with the same faint suggestion of irony. ‘To the
confusion of the Thought Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To
the future?’
‘To the past,’
said Winston.
‘The past is more
important,’ agreed O’Brien gravely. (p. 184)
grade 12 english class
may 30, 1999
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/orwell.html
RE: out of ideas for the shower
From: the initial landlord
To: "'Jessica Murray'" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
I will come by and we will figure out how/ when we will get this done.
Please be patient, I will have to go and look where I can buy another shower that will fit just in case when we pull it out it gets destroyed.
To: "'Jessica Murray'" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
I will come by and we will figure out how/ when we will get this done.
Please be patient, I will have to go and look where I can buy another shower that will fit just in case when we pull it out it gets destroyed.
russia has been on the brink for a long time, and putin's attempt to co-opt this rather than debate it isn't helping.
(what cnn forgot to mention was that those protesters on the street were largely far-right nationalists, and that it's a youth-driven movement)
http://libcom.org/blog/police-arrest-1600-victims-anti-immigration-riot-moscow-14102013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/14/francois-hollandes-missteps-put-france-on-levant-sidelines/
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/tea-party-yankees/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/14/egypt-end-of-hope/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-wwii-memorial-protest-sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing/280542/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24528306
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/new-emotional-clues-to-human-and-ape-evolutionary-links
(what cnn forgot to mention was that those protesters on the street were largely far-right nationalists, and that it's a youth-driven movement)
http://libcom.org/blog/police-arrest-1600-victims-anti-immigration-riot-moscow-14102013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/14/francois-hollandes-missteps-put-france-on-levant-sidelines/
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/tea-party-yankees/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/14/egypt-end-of-hope/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-wwii-memorial-protest-sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing/280542/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24528306
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/new-emotional-clues-to-human-and-ape-evolutionary-links
as an aside, you can see the fertility cult in the celto-germanic substratum. consider freyja. that's a southern deity, not a northern one.
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-modern-relatives-otzi-alive-austria.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/otzi-the-icemans-genes-central-europe_n_2099809.html
everything i've seen on the topic merely upholds the cavelli-sforza component analysis that saw two pre-historical migrations into europe: farming coming from the middle east, and the indo-european languages coming in from the north, ala gimbutas.
(fuck renfrew and his biblical reconstruction)
this tells the story of the conflict...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86sir%E2%80%93Vanir_War
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-modern-relatives-otzi-alive-austria.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/otzi-the-icemans-genes-central-europe_n_2099809.html
everything i've seen on the topic merely upholds the cavelli-sforza component analysis that saw two pre-historical migrations into europe: farming coming from the middle east, and the indo-european languages coming in from the north, ala gimbutas.
(fuck renfrew and his biblical reconstruction)
this tells the story of the conflict...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86sir%E2%80%93Vanir_War
putting aside the fantastical arguments by foucault, which aren't
worth dissecting other than to assert that mental illness is a real
thing, i just don't understand why liberals are so blind to the
realities of mental illness and why they hold so hard to these false
ideals of inherent rationality. the sun may have ulterior motives, but i
don't have an issue with the factual basis of the headline.
asylums are a good idea - it's society taking initiative of the issue of mental illness and constructing the necessary infrastructure to deal with the problem. and it is a problem, whether you choose to remain blind to it or not. anarchists should be rejecting the idea that the responsibility for care should be atomized to individual families, not spouting liberal nonsense.
http://libcom.org/blog/sun-mental-patient-07102013
a quick google search demonstrates that he's misapplying foucault, anyways. foucault's argument was that "madness" is a social construct, distinct from mental illnesses like schizophrenia.
*that* i can more or less agree with...
asylums are a good idea - it's society taking initiative of the issue of mental illness and constructing the necessary infrastructure to deal with the problem. and it is a problem, whether you choose to remain blind to it or not. anarchists should be rejecting the idea that the responsibility for care should be atomized to individual families, not spouting liberal nonsense.
http://libcom.org/blog/sun-mental-patient-07102013
a quick google search demonstrates that he's misapplying foucault, anyways. foucault's argument was that "madness" is a social construct, distinct from mental illnesses like schizophrenia.
*that* i can more or less agree with...
remarkable paraphrase from a rabble article that i cannot get over:
"anarchism follows from the work of enlightenment philosophers like edmund burke."
http://aaeblog.com/2007/10/24/burkes-semi-serious-anarchism/
burke was a freedom-seeker? maybe if you were at the top of the hierarchy.
that astoundingly pretentious failed attempt to seem intelligent aside, this is fairly accurate. i'm willing to cautiously pull jefferson into the left-libertarian tradition...
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/government-shutdown-this-really-anarchist-dream
actually, i think that would be a good monty python skit - burke secretly prancing around with jacobins, secretly plotting for the king's overthrow...
ok. i think i got this. bravado, yes; quoting something without actually reading it...
"anarchism follows from the work of enlightenment philosophers like edmund burke."
http://aaeblog.com/2007/10/24/burkes-semi-serious-anarchism/
burke was a freedom-seeker? maybe if you were at the top of the hierarchy.
that astoundingly pretentious failed attempt to seem intelligent aside, this is fairly accurate. i'm willing to cautiously pull jefferson into the left-libertarian tradition...
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/government-shutdown-this-really-anarchist-dream
actually, i think that would be a good monty python skit - burke secretly prancing around with jacobins, secretly plotting for the king's overthrow...
ok. i think i got this. bravado, yes; quoting something without actually reading it...
calvinist nonsense; arbeit macht frei? you speak of freedom as though it is a sin...
http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/11/another_casualty_of_venezuela_s_revolution_work_ethic
"This means the link between hard work and reward is broken. "
i doubt this is actually true, but if it were true it would practically be an evolutionary jump to a new species....
it would be the biggest social step forwards since the nineteenth century.
http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/11/another_casualty_of_venezuela_s_revolution_work_ethic
"This means the link between hard work and reward is broken. "
i doubt this is actually true, but if it were true it would practically be an evolutionary jump to a new species....
it would be the biggest social step forwards since the nineteenth century.
Monday, October 14, 2013
demo #9: terrorists
i really don't want to upload this, but i want to be comprehensive in getting everything up, and i actually really like the musical aspect of parts of this (especially the end section, which is one of the creepiest things i've ever managed to successfully get out).
lyrically, this is the most embarrassing of these tracks, and not because i was being a goof on purpose (which is true for most of this stuff), but because i was trying to be insightful for a change and failed badly. i have no idea why i mixed the vocals so loudly but it's irreversible....
well, again, i was 15. systemic analyses were a little beyond me, and further beyond the people surrounding me.
i guess i could at least say that the version of things i was exposed to didn't make sense to me. hence the first-person satire, in misguided biting punk rock prose.
i should also point out that 'terrorist' in 1996 had a different meaning that younger people may not be able to connect with. terrorists were people that blew up abortion clinics in the deep south, gay night clubs in germany, federal buildings in oklahoma, churches in northern ireland and synagogues in montreal. while terrorists always identified as religious extremists, the religion they connected to was not certain and, at least in the mind of this individual, the assumption was that they were usually christians and probably white supremacists. i didn't get properly programmed after 9/11 because i avoided media; to this day, i still assign white supremacist christian groups as the primary suspect in any kind of attack , and tend to hold to it until evidence surfaces. when you keep that in mind, the song makes a little more sense.
recorded in october, 1996. remastered on oct 14, 2013.
lyrically, this is the most embarrassing of these tracks, and not because i was being a goof on purpose (which is true for most of this stuff), but because i was trying to be insightful for a change and failed badly. i have no idea why i mixed the vocals so loudly but it's irreversible....
well, again, i was 15. systemic analyses were a little beyond me, and further beyond the people surrounding me.
i guess i could at least say that the version of things i was exposed to didn't make sense to me. hence the first-person satire, in misguided biting punk rock prose.
i should also point out that 'terrorist' in 1996 had a different meaning that younger people may not be able to connect with. terrorists were people that blew up abortion clinics in the deep south, gay night clubs in germany, federal buildings in oklahoma, churches in northern ireland and synagogues in montreal. while terrorists always identified as religious extremists, the religion they connected to was not certain and, at least in the mind of this individual, the assumption was that they were usually christians and probably white supremacists. i didn't get properly programmed after 9/11 because i avoided media; to this day, i still assign white supremacist christian groups as the primary suspect in any kind of attack , and tend to hold to it until evidence surfaces. when you keep that in mind, the song makes a little more sense.
recorded in october, 1996. remastered on oct 14, 2013.
Midterm Rebuttal
Midterm
Rebuttal
Part 1
Question
1
I
was given a mark of one out of two for defining the term novum. We agree upon
the definition, so there’s no point in discussing this further. Nonetheless, I
would like to assert that your claim that a “novum” separates science fiction
literature from non-science literature is baseless and invalid, negating your
justification for decrementing a mark.
I
am a mathematician, so I think and talk in math (I’ve been told that I don’t
buzz like a fridge, but if you listened to some of my music then you’ll likely
agree that I am like a detuned radio). One of the things that mathematicians do
is define and write theorems for algebraic structures. Usually, the first goal when it comes to
understanding a new algebraic structure is formulating a characteristic theorem
that determines whether or not some related algebraic structure is really the
algebraic structure that is desired. On page 1 of the midterm, you claim that:
Also, distinguishes SF from non-SF
dis - tin - guish [di-sting-gwish]
–verb (used with object)
2. to recognize
as distinct or different; recognize the salient or individual features or
characteristics of: It
is hard to distinguish her from her twin sister.
So,
your claim is clearly that a work of literature is science fiction if and only
if it has a novum. I will prove this false by contradiction in both directions,
completely collapsing any claimed causal relation between “novum” and “science
fiction”.
First,
the assumption that it is even possible to define literary genres at all is
required to even consider whether or not your claim has any meaning. Now,
consider the genre of political theory. Clearly, the genre describes works of
fiction as texts that describe ideal political structures are also describing
fictional political structures. Often, these texts are written with an attempt
to construct an ideal that is hoped to be almost workable, this is even the
goal within the genre; but, as the proposed implementation is an abstraction it
cannot, regardless of how realistic the implementation, ever be considered as
non-fiction. Who could argue that the attempt to write a new political system,
even if it is a synthesis of existing ideas, is not the presentation of a new
idea? So, then, is The Republic science
fiction? The Constitution of the United
States of America? The Magna Carta? The works of Marx and Engels? Il Principe?
This list could grow quite long but five counter-examples are more than
sufficient.
Further, what of the case of
historical revisionism? While the term itself has negative connotations, the
idea is actually quite scholarly. Anybody working in the fields of linguistics,
archaeology, geology, evolutionary biology, palaeontology or physical
cosmology, to name a few, is essentially a historical revisionist. These people
too are constructing works of fiction as eventually they will all be
overturned; science has no absolute end point and is itself fully aware of the
impossibility of constructing a perfect model of the universe because the
mathematicians have informed them, through the works of Gödel, that this
is impossible. They have even, as they desire to do, compiled experimental
evidence that “proves” this by experimenting with particles and formulating the
various quantum theories from their observations. The newest idea coming out of
cosmological physics is actually that the universe breathes in the way that
Empedokles envisioned, that it cycles through creation and destruction
indefinitely, which renders free will to precisely the place that Vonnegut
describes it on p. 241 in the small text. I tried to write my first honours
thesis about that by the way, this was another text that I read long ago, but
the School of Mathematics wouldn’t let me; I ended up
exploring a kind of abstract algebra that I (incorrectly) thought may be useful
in attempting to describe events in time in precisely the way that Vonnegut
did. A group is an associative loop. I’ve digressed too far. Scientists thrive
on knowing that nothing in science is absolute, it is what excites them at
their core, they are always hoping for some new discovery that’s going to let
them rewrite the books that have already been written. What future was there in
rewriting notes to Newton
for the next thousand years? Who would have been content? Do you think they
want to write notes on Einstein for the next hundred, let alone thousand? He’s
already being questioned loudly. Everything in science is fiction, even if it
does roughly describe the way that things almost are. Does a profound novel not
roughly describe the way that things almost are, albeit using different methods?
In the context of timelessness, what
the historians write is even inevitably relegated to fiction. Consider the case
of Claude Debussy. We are close enough to his life to be able to state with
great certainty that Claude Debussy never learned to read or write. Recently, a
very popular dime store novel was written that has the fanciful notion within
it that Debussy was a learned statesman near the head of a powerful secret
society. As Debussy will long be remembered as the greatest composer of his
era, if remnants of this popular text survive, say, a nuclear war, then the
fantasy that Debussy had powerful links to the real structures of power in
western Europe could very well find it’s way into historical documents
discussing his life, at which point something that was intended to be purely
fictional will have become real history. If we go back a little further, we can
already see the blurring of myth with history when it comes to the lives of
Alexander Hamilton, H.G. Wells, Ludwig Beethoven and Evariste Galois. There was
some discussion in class about how one of the defining characteristics of the
steam-punk genre is that it is deceptively historically revisionist. Still even
further back, we have genealogical records housed in sagas that only abstractly
describe history in the form of short stories and symbolic links and still
further back we have texts such as The Iliad,
The Upanishads and The Bible that
are only capable of describing history in the form of elaborate and sometimes
epic poetry. All history eventually reaches this end state of poetry where it
can be regarded as nothing more than symbolic fiction. Today, the writings of
Herodotus are nearing that point. All that is required to take them over the
edge are a couple of really well written adaptations, some sloppy record
keeping, the collapse of western society and a subsequent new renaissance when
the texts are translated back in the version of epic poetry that was maintained
in, say, Chinese. The temporal relationship that describes how history becomes
poetry could be understood by observing the following graph, which sets pi
equal to the coefficient of poeticity because pi is a poetic number.
The new idea in the case of Debussy is
that he was a learned statesman. As it is the idea that is important here and
not the text, let w be a romance novel set in Nowheresville, Ohio
in the nineteen-fifties that’s about crew cuts. Yes, crew cuts; w is the most
elaborate and profound novel ever written about crew cuts, a novel where the
author concludes with an epic analogy between the crew cut and the
transmigration of souls through the process of rebirth, concluding that deep
within our subconscious nirvana is achieved and discarded as boring during the process of every trim. In the
alternate reality invoked by such a text, Debussy could be said to have lived
into the fifties and to have, due to his deep esoteric study within the priory,
have come to understand the process of rebirth attached to each trim and to
have attempted to undergo weekly crew cut trims in order to trap himself within
the discarded nirvana, to break this cycle; if successful, this would likely
render him a vegetable, but senility does strange things. Such a text could be
argued to be science fiction.
So, forget about crew cuts, what about
pogo sticks? Yes, a novel about the enjoyment that humans derive from pogoing,
one where it is claimed that even a powerful and connected man with a deep
understanding of the collection of compiled esoteric wisdom, one like Debussy,
who was the master of the Priory of Zion, can derive enjoyment from the simple
act of pogoing and listening to Rachmaninov.
We can’t have Debussy listening to Debussy as that could create an infinite
loop, which could be science fiction. If this text is written without discussing
the technology of the era, we are in Nowheresville, Ohio after all, and has no
interest in anything other than the personal relationships between Debussy, a
few locals and a pogo stick (which could not have it’s own personality as that
would be science fiction) then in what way is this text science fiction? It
could perhaps be called steam punk, but a story about personal relationships
that happens to have a few new ideas does not science fiction make.
So, if having a new idea doesn’t
imply that a text is science fiction, does a text being science fiction imply
that it contains new ideas? The large majority of science fiction is based on
mythological archetypes. Adapting Greek, Roman, Babylonian, German and Celtic
gods and heroes to roles is not just a common approach to writing science
fiction, it’s practically the template. Furthermore, the vast majority of
technological gadgetry utilized in science fiction comes from existing, older
science fiction. Consider the character of Marvin the Martian, which is based
on the aliens from The War of the Worlds.
Clearly, this silly cartoon strip was science fiction, but the technologies
were mostly adapted from Roadrunner
cartoons; they were not describable by the term novum because they already existed in Roadrunner. Less absurdly, consider all of the alien abduction
texts and films, almost none of which contain any ideas that weren’t developed
within the first few attempts at writing about alien abduction. There are
countless spin-offs of spin-offs of spin-offs of Star Wars that contain no new ideas or technologies but are
unquestionably science fiction.
So, if the concept of a novum is of
no value in constructing a characteristic theorem for the genre of science
fiction then what is? Nothing is. Literature cannot be defined in this manner;
only algebraic structures, i.e. numbers and things that contain numbers, can be
defined by characteristic theorems. In literature, every original work defines it’s own
genre, of which imitations may follow or even transcend but which cannot be
placed within the same category as any other original work. I would argue that Gravity’s Rainbow transcends Slaughterhouse-Five but I would place
them in the same genre as one is an imitation of the other; I would claim the
same thing for Star Trek and it’s
“American Colony In Space” derivatives and War
Of The Worlds and it’s alien invasion derivatives, if an earlier text about
alien invasion cannot be found. Using this approach, one may construct a set SF
that contains all of the original science fiction texts that have ever been
written (arguments will undoubtedly arise over the contents of such a set) and
then define science fiction in the following manner:
Science Fiction: All texts
that are or are derived from texts within the set SF.
And, if I was German, or at least Swiss, I could write a
Zscience-Fiction Characteristic Theorem:
ZFC
Theorem: A
text is zscience fiction if and only if it is either in the set ZF or it
derives from a text within ZF.
The arguments over which texts are
to be included in the set SF can never deny this process of legitimacy as the
contents of this set are trivial and of no relevance to the process, which is the novum of this
rebuttal. I think I deserve the full mark on this one, but I’ll stop whining
for a half a mark.
Question 3: I should type up
my precise response.
“Uncanny: Yes, from the German,
which is probably linguistically (ed - etymologically) sound as English is a
German language. Translated, it means “unhomely”, from outside of the home,
alien, “the other”.
You claim:
“Ã Ok, but signifies both strangeness +
familiarity at same time. More than just strange or alien.”
The definition that you handed out
to the class is:
Uncanny: Loosely speaking,
the term is applied to that which is strange, unnatural or disturbing. In
German the equivalent term is “unheimlich”, which can translate as “unhomely”.
You then continue on with the
following.
Freud argues (ed - emphasis added) that the uncanny in literature and in
the psyche refers to phenomena that evoke
(ed - emphasis added) sensations simultaneously of familiarity and strangeness.
As a psychoanalytic term, the uncanny can also refer to that which has come to
light which should have remained hidden or suppressed.
What you presented to the class is
clearly broken down into two parts. The first is a definition of uncanny and
the second is a tangential comment that Freud has explored the concept,
probably right after he explained that Exotropia is the result of being
abandoned as a child (where’s mommy?). Let’s see what the dictionary says…
un-can-ny [uhn-kan-ee]
–adjective
1. having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis;
beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary.
2. mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably
strange.
Origin: 1590–1600
As a mathematician, I’m qualified to
state that 1590 < 1856 and I don’t see anything about the
strangeness/familiarity thing there. Freud actually appears to have written an
entire text analyzing the uncanny. I haven’t read the book (although I have
read two texts by Freud, including the opus; I find his writing to be creative
and thought provoking but irrigourous and ultimately pure philosophy with
little scientific grounding), so I’m not about to claim that I know what Freud
wrote in it, but that’s not really important as you didn’t present the Freudian/arbitrary
analysis as part of the definition, you presented it as tangential in the form
of a Freudian/arbitrary analysis. To be clear, what you said is “Freud argues that the strange and alien in
literature and in the psyche refers to…”, which is an analysis of the human reaction to the uncanny, that it evokes
contradictory sensations, and not a definition of the uncanny itself. How Freud
(arbitrarily) analyzes the human response to the strange/uncanny doesn’t alter
what the uncanny is defined as! So, I should again have 1.5 for this one, I
think, if you want to knock me a half point for not presenting the Freudian/arbitrary
analysis of how humans react to the uncanny, which is itself entirely baseless
as you asked for a definition of the term and not a Freudian/arbitrary analysis.
Question 4
First, my response was “Grotesque:
Imperfect; not conforming to idealizations or not having imaginary/ideal
characteristics.”
Your response: “No sense that this
is drawn from our class discussions or definitions.”
The mark was 0.5/2.
First, I deny the relevance of what
was discussed in class. Neither defining a concept within the class nor handing
out a sheet with a definition on it, regardless of where it was sourced from,
provide any evidence whatsoever for the validity of the views presented.
Quoting a pre-written text is not a valid way to provide evidence as the
existence of a view neither implies nor negates it’s correctness.
Furthermore, had I shown up to class
and presented this view then it would
have been drawn from the class, which means that your argument is equivalent to
allowing us to arbitrarily construct our own exams.
If the question was “What are the
arbitrary and largely irrelevant viewpoints of Mikhael Bakhtin when it comes to
the grotesque?” then I would accept the mark as I did not regurgitate the
arbitrary and irrelevant views of Mikhael Bakhtin. The question was to define
the term “grotesque”, which was actually done quite admirably; my definition is
an adaptation of the one that John Ruskin defines in The Stones Of Venice when discussing the grotesque nature of the
renaissance and it was actually presented that way as an attempt to present an alternate view of the grotesque body
that I found more convincing. I made repeated reference on the exam, directly
and indirectly, to various things that were of various interest during the
Victorian era because you made your interest in that time period clear during
class. Did you not recognize it?
The definition was drawn from class
because it was drawn from a view that was widely held during the Victorian era
and because it was drawn from what I would have presented to the class had I
decided to bother showing up.
Still, just because John Ruskin says
it is so does not necessarily mean that it is; there is likely an anti-Ruskin
lobby in existence that would actually claim that truth is defined precisely by
negating the words of John Ruskin and that periodically both burns effigies of
him and defaces his tombstone. While I would label such views and actions as
extreme, I cannot deny them of any sort of legitimacy. Ruskin’s views are no
less arbitrary than Bakhtin’s. Yet, deductions are impossible without
assumptions and if we’re going to discuss a definition at all we have to start
from somewhere. This is what the dictionary says about the word grotesque:
gro-tesque [groh-tesk]
- adjective
1. odd or unnatural in shape, appearance,
or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre.
If
we have a shape, how do we know that it is odd or unnatural in shape? Is it
truly arbitrary and of no consequence? Within a collection of slightly
different spheres, which ones are of an odd and unnatural shape?
It
could be naively argued that sometimes the difference between shapes is so
obvious that any discussion as to which is natural and which isn’t is a waste
of time. “Clearly”, these imaginary people say, “there is a profound difference
between a donut and a coffee cup.”. A mathematician that has spent time
studying topology would claim otherwise; such a person would claim that there
is absolutely no difference between a donut and coffee cup, that they are
exactly the same thing and that one can always be continuously transformed into
the other. A donut, then, is a grotesque coffee cup and a coffee cup is a
grotesque donut. If the donut is a coffee cup, is it not a coffee cup that does
not conform to an idealization of a coffee cup, both in shape and in function?
How
unnatural is unnatural enough to be grotesque? Consider a cube, one made of
granite. If you slowly chip away at this granite cube in a controlled manner
with the intent of constructing a sphere, taking photographs at intervals of
five seconds, when does the photograph cease to be of a cube and begin to be of
a sphere? With every chip, the block of granite is less cubical than it was,
meaning that even a single chip renders the block an imperfect cube, one that
is unnatural in it’s shape of being a cube, one that does not conform to cubic
idealizations, one that is indeed a grotesque cube. So, I’m completely
flabbergasted here and quite certain I deserve the full two marks. Unlike the
others, there was nothing missing
from my definition, you just didn’t follow the Ruskin reference as I assumed
you would.
summer, 2009
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/2107rebuttal.html
aloha
hey.
i'm not entirely piecing together those apparent wedding (?) pictures, but i do hope you're happy. and safe.
life here is sort of quietly hectic. like, i don't have a worry in the world. i love it. but i've got so much stuff to do.
i've got my website up here:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/
it's a primary focus. i hope to finally have the shell done in the next few hours. it's taken far too long to sort through. then, music...
...and reading.
i guess we always had different perceptions on the value of existence. you were all about the body, and physicality; i was all about the mind, knowledge, abstraction. maybe it's funny that i'm the empiricist and you're the spiritual one?
...but i'm happy here. i've found something.
erin is still in ottawa, if you're curious. i wanted to have my own place, i was clear about that from the very start. i didn't really trust her, and i didn't really like the other people that were planning on coming down. she ended up unable to find somewhere to stay in windsor, so she stayed there. honestly, i'm sort of happy about that. our friendship was based on being mutually antagonistic. we're both always right. etc. so we just fought, and maybe we both enjoyed it on some level. yet, she's a lot more competitive than i am and it brings out this really mean streak. near the end, i got kind of *afraid* of her and wasn't really sure how to cut off communication.
that seems to be over with, now, and i'm very relieved about it.
if you're ever in the 'hood, you should drop me a line.
but this email is to say congratulations. i think.
jess
i'm not entirely piecing together those apparent wedding (?) pictures, but i do hope you're happy. and safe.
life here is sort of quietly hectic. like, i don't have a worry in the world. i love it. but i've got so much stuff to do.
i've got my website up here:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/
it's a primary focus. i hope to finally have the shell done in the next few hours. it's taken far too long to sort through. then, music...
...and reading.
i guess we always had different perceptions on the value of existence. you were all about the body, and physicality; i was all about the mind, knowledge, abstraction. maybe it's funny that i'm the empiricist and you're the spiritual one?
...but i'm happy here. i've found something.
erin is still in ottawa, if you're curious. i wanted to have my own place, i was clear about that from the very start. i didn't really trust her, and i didn't really like the other people that were planning on coming down. she ended up unable to find somewhere to stay in windsor, so she stayed there. honestly, i'm sort of happy about that. our friendship was based on being mutually antagonistic. we're both always right. etc. so we just fought, and maybe we both enjoyed it on some level. yet, she's a lot more competitive than i am and it brings out this really mean streak. near the end, i got kind of *afraid* of her and wasn't really sure how to cut off communication.
that seems to be over with, now, and i'm very relieved about it.
if you're ever in the 'hood, you should drop me a line.
but this email is to say congratulations. i think.
jess
i really don't think that morality works in the brain at all. i think it's an arbitrary human construction. and i think we've wasted sixty years exploring the consequences of liberal nonsense.
http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnint.2013.00065/full?utm_source=NPG&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=FBK_SM_1310_FHNR&WT.mc_id=FBK_SM_1310_CON13
the proper scientific study of morality is in the context of evolutionary biology.
(and the things in this article would then follows as adaptive traits. but it eliminates morality as something altruistic, reducing it to a reproductive strategy. this *ought* to be the great insight! instead, people view it as something negative. getting beyond that break in abstraction is important, moving forward.)
http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnint.2013.00065/full?utm_source=NPG&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=FBK_SM_1310_FHNR&WT.mc_id=FBK_SM_1310_CON13
the proper scientific study of morality is in the context of evolutionary biology.
(and the things in this article would then follows as adaptive traits. but it eliminates morality as something altruistic, reducing it to a reproductive strategy. this *ought* to be the great insight! instead, people view it as something negative. getting beyond that break in abstraction is important, moving forward.)
this may be useful in the near future.
every columnist has a different perspective on this, which just demonstrates that nobody really knows what's going on. there's an apparent consensus around a bipartisan move to cut social services, and little beyond that.
let me as you this question: if the tea party comes out of this discredited, who benefits the most?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/11/the-economic-consequences-of-us-debt-default/
every columnist has a different perspective on this, which just demonstrates that nobody really knows what's going on. there's an apparent consensus around a bipartisan move to cut social services, and little beyond that.
let me as you this question: if the tea party comes out of this discredited, who benefits the most?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/11/the-economic-consequences-of-us-debt-default/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/14/gree-o14.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/12/afgh-o12.html
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/10/redrawing_the_map_for_democracy
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19179-syria-and-our-educational-system-a-discussion-with-noam-chomsky-richard-falk-lawrence-davidson-and-ilan-pappe
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/11/civil_surge_syria_moderates_government
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19334-the-tragedy-of-greece-as-a-case-study-of-neo-imperial-pillage-and-the-demise-of-social-europe
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5742/did-a-huge-impact-lead-to-the-cambrian-explosion
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/12/afgh-o12.html
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/10/redrawing_the_map_for_democracy
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19179-syria-and-our-educational-system-a-discussion-with-noam-chomsky-richard-falk-lawrence-davidson-and-ilan-pappe
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/11/civil_surge_syria_moderates_government
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19334-the-tragedy-of-greece-as-a-case-study-of-neo-imperial-pillage-and-the-demise-of-social-europe
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5742/did-a-huge-impact-lead-to-the-cambrian-explosion
ok. but that's why they used to teach greek philosophy. i guess, in the end, the two are so similar that it doesn't really matter...
"But in Chinese, the word for “mind” and “heart” are the same."
i can't remember which greek thinker realized we think with our mind (empodokles?), but he was overturning the view that we think with our heart. the poetic usage here is interesting, but the linguistics here are rooted in bad science.
"Recent research into neuroscience is confirming that the Chinese philosophers are correct:"
lol. no. you didn't understand what they meant. they meant to state that your heart is the centre of thought in your body, that it's where decisions are processed.
nor does the heart have anything to do with emotions. the brain, on the other hand, does.
i'm taking a step back from this now...
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-students-studying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/
"But in Chinese, the word for “mind” and “heart” are the same."
i can't remember which greek thinker realized we think with our mind (empodokles?), but he was overturning the view that we think with our heart. the poetic usage here is interesting, but the linguistics here are rooted in bad science.
"Recent research into neuroscience is confirming that the Chinese philosophers are correct:"
lol. no. you didn't understand what they meant. they meant to state that your heart is the centre of thought in your body, that it's where decisions are processed.
nor does the heart have anything to do with emotions. the brain, on the other hand, does.
i'm taking a step back from this now...
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-students-studying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/
Sunday, October 13, 2013
i just want to point out that one of the more important things i learned from studying aristocracies is that the official genealogies are largely suggested by hierarchical realities. that is to say that the offspring of queens and other aristocratic females were not always also the offspring of their forced partners. it's hard to blame aristocratic women for this, given that marriage in this period was a sort of process of being sold into slavery.
the flip side of this is that male aristocrats weren't always willing to force themselves onto their assigned partners, either.
what the dna demonstrates is that there isn't a patrilineal relationship. that doesn't necessarily mean that these heads aren't the kings that they're thought to be. conversely, it could be that the living bourbons are not actually bourbons, genetically.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013211a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG_EJHG_1310_KING
it was kind of a devastating moment when i realized that, actually. i spent a lot of time with that only to realize at the end that human beings are inherently promiscuous.
the flip side of this is easier to document: most powerful aristocrats had many children with women that were not their official partners.
they've done studies on this in the general population and the numbers are astounding. something like 30% of people are raised with fathers that they are not genetically related to.
all those kids that don't look like their fathers? the truth is....
the flip side of this is that male aristocrats weren't always willing to force themselves onto their assigned partners, either.
what the dna demonstrates is that there isn't a patrilineal relationship. that doesn't necessarily mean that these heads aren't the kings that they're thought to be. conversely, it could be that the living bourbons are not actually bourbons, genetically.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013211a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG_EJHG_1310_KING
it was kind of a devastating moment when i realized that, actually. i spent a lot of time with that only to realize at the end that human beings are inherently promiscuous.
the flip side of this is easier to document: most powerful aristocrats had many children with women that were not their official partners.
they've done studies on this in the general population and the numbers are astounding. something like 30% of people are raised with fathers that they are not genetically related to.
all those kids that don't look like their fathers? the truth is....
historical questions aside, my interest lies more in determining a true carrying capacity surrounding a hypothetical shift to permaculture.
listen, there's only so much oil. we're going to have to reform our farming practices significantly. permaculture is one proposal.
the thing is that there are serious questions surrounding the ability of permaculture to actually produce. there's a sort of nightmare scenario of depopulation, warfare...
i like the idea of moving to hydroponic like arrangements where produce is grown indoors, perhaps with the aid of gmos that are not patented by mosanto. i realize that's sort of a heady pipe dream that relies on a high level of co-operation. permaculture is maybe more attainable.
but how many people can it actually feed?
http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-ecology-footprints-in-the-forest-1.13902?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
listen, there's only so much oil. we're going to have to reform our farming practices significantly. permaculture is one proposal.
the thing is that there are serious questions surrounding the ability of permaculture to actually produce. there's a sort of nightmare scenario of depopulation, warfare...
i like the idea of moving to hydroponic like arrangements where produce is grown indoors, perhaps with the aid of gmos that are not patented by mosanto. i realize that's sort of a heady pipe dream that relies on a high level of co-operation. permaculture is maybe more attainable.
but how many people can it actually feed?
http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-ecology-footprints-in-the-forest-1.13902?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
the imf has been retreating from it's austerity position for a while now. the results have been horrific. and the math underlying their policies was wrong. i guess give them some credit for not being an entirely constructed body? for having a shred of integrity?
unfortunately, it's going to take a few years to reverberate, politically. fuck, decades, maybe...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/11/international-monetary-fund-strongly-suggests-countries-tax-the-rich-to-fix-deficit/
unfortunately, it's going to take a few years to reverberate, politically. fuck, decades, maybe...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/11/international-monetary-fund-strongly-suggests-countries-tax-the-rich-to-fix-deficit/
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a typical conversation with my psychotic mother
mom
How come you deleted my comments off your post? Or did you? I do think though that one needs a passport these days to get across the border....But, I may be wrong....
I finally broke up with "you know who"....I am afraid though.....I am almost afraid to even leave my place...But, I don't think he would strike so soon......If anything ever happens to me...It would be him, as he has threatened me on numerous occasions.......I just don't know how to handle this situation....Perhaps listing his name was not so smart, or maybe it was??......I just don't know what to do......
It could be him, or other(horrible characters) he knows....He has threatened me about them...But, I don't even know who "they" even are?
I have witnessed some insane behaviours(sp?what is the right spelling then) from him on numerous occasions....He is a very scarey man!
I think he may have keys to my apartment..Because when he left the other night, I locked the door promptly behind him, and when I got up the next morning....My door was unlocked!.......
Keys, that I NEVER EVEN GAVE HIM!.........
I guess the first thing, I should do, Is change my locks....I have two of them...
jessica amber murray
the spell check is american spelling. i never liked the guy at all, although we only met briefly. that's about all i can say. if changing your locks would make you feel better, you should do it.
mom
Yes... I will have to wait till next week to put the order in down at the main office here in my building...Although, I wonder if they would do it sooner...Prolly Not....I think it costs $100.00...Not Sure...Think so though....They(management) kinda think I am nuts already though...LOL....
Who cares what they even think at this point....If it will save my life or the contents inside here....
Yes, I know...Sounds a bit on the melodramatic side....But, I have been dealing with someone who is truly insane...I believe....
I am going to share something that might sound insane....But, on nights when he leaves here all angry and stuff...A dead prostitute shows up somewhere...Or goes missing....He used to make this horrible joke about putting a person in his septic tank.....That, that would be the best way of disposing of a body....
He has even claimed that alive ones were put in there!
He screamed at me that I knew too much!...Whatever that means??
jessica amber murray
that sounds really creepy, mom. if you have some information about missing prostitutes, or you think your life is in danger, you should really go to the police.
mom
Yes... I know...But he has threatened me with my life if I even mention the police...
jessica amber murray
btw, there are a number of 'normal' pieces of id that the border cops will accept. they'll even accept a parking card. i don't have anything like that, though. health card isn't listed. getting a passport should be easy, it says it takes ten days, so i'll go down on tuesday.
mom
And if I was to go to the police...What do you even think they will even do? They really are rather useless for the most part.....He even has police friends.....
jessica amber murray
i think that if you have evidence of a serious threat against you then you can put a restraining order on him and possibly get him tracked. i think you have to be pro-active in some sense, though. you can't just sit there and wait for him to come get you.
mom
I don't really have any evidence of any sort at all....
jessica amber murray
i mean, this guy isn't in the mafia or something is he....? hell's angels? if it's something like that, you're maybe right. you should maybe be thinking about finding a way to move. staying at nana's for a bit. i dunno. otherwise, it's probably the best choice.
if you claim he's threatened you, a judge might believe you. probably, even. it's a risk, sure. but, if the other risk is waiting around, i'd personally take the pro-active option.
mom
He's not hell's angels or mafia...But he claims that he knows people from this exact class of people....
He has mentioned names to me before...but I can't remember them...
Never thought I would have to..
jessica amber murray
those types of organizations are very professionally run. if you want to use that word. but you get the idea. they're businesses. the hell's aren't going to randomly hit somebody. it would put their operation in jeopardy. and if the boss found out somebody was fucking around like that, their own life might be in danger.
mom
He just has a really big mouth!....And I would just ignore what he was blithering about for the most part.....
jessica amber murray
in order for him to be able to follow through with a threat like that, he'd need to front some serious cash, and he'd have to find somebody that's on their way out. it sounds like he's bullshitting to me. still, it's hard not to take it seriously.
mom
He has money...
Stashed away....He is into all kinds of illegal shit!
He knows that I know this...
How come you deleted my comments off your post? Or did you? I do think though that one needs a passport these days to get across the border....But, I may be wrong....
I finally broke up with "you know who"....I am afraid though.....I am almost afraid to even leave my place...But, I don't think he would strike so soon......If anything ever happens to me...It would be him, as he has threatened me on numerous occasions.......I just don't know how to handle this situation....Perhaps listing his name was not so smart, or maybe it was??......I just don't know what to do......
It could be him, or other(horrible characters) he knows....He has threatened me about them...But, I don't even know who "they" even are?
I have witnessed some insane behaviours(sp?what is the right spelling then) from him on numerous occasions....He is a very scarey man!
I think he may have keys to my apartment..Because when he left the other night, I locked the door promptly behind him, and when I got up the next morning....My door was unlocked!.......
Keys, that I NEVER EVEN GAVE HIM!.........
I guess the first thing, I should do, Is change my locks....I have two of them...
jessica amber murray
the spell check is american spelling. i never liked the guy at all, although we only met briefly. that's about all i can say. if changing your locks would make you feel better, you should do it.
mom
Yes... I will have to wait till next week to put the order in down at the main office here in my building...Although, I wonder if they would do it sooner...Prolly Not....I think it costs $100.00...Not Sure...Think so though....They(management) kinda think I am nuts already though...LOL....
Who cares what they even think at this point....If it will save my life or the contents inside here....
Yes, I know...Sounds a bit on the melodramatic side....But, I have been dealing with someone who is truly insane...I believe....
I am going to share something that might sound insane....But, on nights when he leaves here all angry and stuff...A dead prostitute shows up somewhere...Or goes missing....He used to make this horrible joke about putting a person in his septic tank.....That, that would be the best way of disposing of a body....
He has even claimed that alive ones were put in there!
He screamed at me that I knew too much!...Whatever that means??
jessica amber murray
that sounds really creepy, mom. if you have some information about missing prostitutes, or you think your life is in danger, you should really go to the police.
mom
Yes... I know...But he has threatened me with my life if I even mention the police...
jessica amber murray
btw, there are a number of 'normal' pieces of id that the border cops will accept. they'll even accept a parking card. i don't have anything like that, though. health card isn't listed. getting a passport should be easy, it says it takes ten days, so i'll go down on tuesday.
mom
And if I was to go to the police...What do you even think they will even do? They really are rather useless for the most part.....He even has police friends.....
jessica amber murray
i think that if you have evidence of a serious threat against you then you can put a restraining order on him and possibly get him tracked. i think you have to be pro-active in some sense, though. you can't just sit there and wait for him to come get you.
mom
I don't really have any evidence of any sort at all....
jessica amber murray
i mean, this guy isn't in the mafia or something is he....? hell's angels? if it's something like that, you're maybe right. you should maybe be thinking about finding a way to move. staying at nana's for a bit. i dunno. otherwise, it's probably the best choice.
if you claim he's threatened you, a judge might believe you. probably, even. it's a risk, sure. but, if the other risk is waiting around, i'd personally take the pro-active option.
mom
He's not hell's angels or mafia...But he claims that he knows people from this exact class of people....
He has mentioned names to me before...but I can't remember them...
Never thought I would have to..
jessica amber murray
those types of organizations are very professionally run. if you want to use that word. but you get the idea. they're businesses. the hell's aren't going to randomly hit somebody. it would put their operation in jeopardy. and if the boss found out somebody was fucking around like that, their own life might be in danger.
mom
He just has a really big mouth!....And I would just ignore what he was blithering about for the most part.....
jessica amber murray
in order for him to be able to follow through with a threat like that, he'd need to front some serious cash, and he'd have to find somebody that's on their way out. it sounds like he's bullshitting to me. still, it's hard not to take it seriously.
mom
He has money...
Stashed away....He is into all kinds of illegal shit!
He knows that I know this...
Saturday, October 12, 2013
demo #8: boogeyman / depressed
listening to this all these years later has been sort of interesting. my influences on this track are really blatantly obvious...
it's actually a pop song. honestly. it's also maybe the only song in this collection where i give my age away clearly. this couldn't have been written by an adult.
the instrumental at the end is also something i spent many hours playing, by myself, and is also much older than 1996.
recorded in oct, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.
it's actually a pop song. honestly. it's also maybe the only song in this collection where i give my age away clearly. this couldn't have been written by an adult.
the instrumental at the end is also something i spent many hours playing, by myself, and is also much older than 1996.
recorded in oct, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.
demo #7: phased out / blue
this is actually two tracks, but one sort of functions as an intro to the other. sort of.
the instrumental beginning is something i used to play for hours at a time in my room by myself as a sort of calming mechanism. it's much older than this demo....
the second part is, lyrically, an obvious homage. again: i was 15. on the other hand, i think it captures my idiosyncratic sense of humour quite well. musically, it's a noisy, messy and yet catchy thing - one of my favourites in this group of tracks.
recorded in october, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.
the instrumental beginning is something i used to play for hours at a time in my room by myself as a sort of calming mechanism. it's much older than this demo....
the second part is, lyrically, an obvious homage. again: i was 15. on the other hand, i think it captures my idiosyncratic sense of humour quite well. musically, it's a noisy, messy and yet catchy thing - one of my favourites in this group of tracks.
recorded in october, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.
out of ideas for the shower
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
i've tried the things i know how to do and they haven't been successful.
i think i've narrowed it down to the drain, but don't know how to fix it beyond that. i don't know if it can be fixed without pulling it out.
i need to reiterate that it gets worse with each shower because the grout is slowly dissolving. at first it was only leaking near the toilet. now it's leaking near the front, and dangerously close to the kitchen. so, there's a factor of time involved in fixing it.
j
To: the initial landlord
i've tried the things i know how to do and they haven't been successful.
i think i've narrowed it down to the drain, but don't know how to fix it beyond that. i don't know if it can be fixed without pulling it out.
i need to reiterate that it gets worse with each shower because the grout is slowly dissolving. at first it was only leaking near the toilet. now it's leaking near the front, and dangerously close to the kitchen. so, there's a factor of time involved in fixing it.
j
not exactly a smoking gun. but this general idea is not new, and it's probably mostly right.
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/11/budg-o11.html
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/5580/
http://www.nature.com/news/diamond-drizzle-forecast-for-saturn-and-jupiter-1.13925?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/11/worse_than_nixon_committee_to_protect
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/10/desert_fury_egypt_sinai
https://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_GreatUnwind_policybrief_RosenbergKahl.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/truth-in-the-age-of-niallism/280507/
what is the synthetic oil made from?
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-arizona-solar-hours-sun.html
i applaud the move towards empiricism, but i think the question they need to be asking is about whether the idea still makes sense in a globalized economy focused on cheap labour.
http://mitne.ws/GTmJb4
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-device-self-biased-solar-hydrogen-microbial.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=beeing-there-the-search-for-pesticides-effect-on-declining-bee-colonies-moves-to-the-fields&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/politics_and_policy/a_muted_milestone_for_the_national_ignition_facility\
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/11/budg-o11.html
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/5580/
http://www.nature.com/news/diamond-drizzle-forecast-for-saturn-and-jupiter-1.13925?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/11/worse_than_nixon_committee_to_protect
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/10/desert_fury_egypt_sinai
https://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_GreatUnwind_policybrief_RosenbergKahl.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/truth-in-the-age-of-niallism/280507/
what is the synthetic oil made from?
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-arizona-solar-hours-sun.html
i applaud the move towards empiricism, but i think the question they need to be asking is about whether the idea still makes sense in a globalized economy focused on cheap labour.
http://mitne.ws/GTmJb4
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-device-self-biased-solar-hydrogen-microbial.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=beeing-there-the-search-for-pesticides-effect-on-declining-bee-colonies-moves-to-the-fields&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/politics_and_policy/a_muted_milestone_for_the_national_ignition_facility\
this article made me laugh. it's just base tribalism, playing off the different abrahamic frauds against each other. what's she trying to do, start a jihad?
perhaps she should have spent some time analyzing how power creates and cultures christianity, rather than play right into the division strategy. yet, when your brain has already been conquered by religion, such abstractions may remain out of reach.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/10/islamophobia-or-anti-muslim-sentiment-uncovering-roots-anti-muslim-discourse
perhaps she should have spent some time analyzing how power creates and cultures christianity, rather than play right into the division strategy. yet, when your brain has already been conquered by religion, such abstractions may remain out of reach.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/10/islamophobia-or-anti-muslim-sentiment-uncovering-roots-anti-muslim-discourse
it was always about containing russia and china. it's not a shift in policy so much as the launch of a new objective. once assad is removed from power, the americans will have control over all of the former soviet allies in the region (iraq, libya, syria). i think they're going to stop with syria, though. i don't think invading iran is possible....or at least it isn't at the moment....
the next stage is africa, and it's going to be more violent as the proxies are more developed. the americans will want to contain the conflict. how long before china figures out that their better strategy is escalation?
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19349-old-game-new-obsession-new-enemy-now-its-china
the next stage is africa, and it's going to be more violent as the proxies are more developed. the americans will want to contain the conflict. how long before china figures out that their better strategy is escalation?
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19349-old-game-new-obsession-new-enemy-now-its-china
the other message inbox. just checked it for the first time in a while...
some spam. expected. but the kind of messages that randoms send off out of nowhere, like, i just don't get it. just trying to flip it around, like, could i ever ever ever see myself just randomly suggesting a bdsm hookup to a total stranger over facebook? not that i'm into that in the first place (definitely not), but the sheer gall required to actually make that request is just.....
maybe it's just more evidence that i am not a member of your species.
some of them are sort of cute and funny. no, i don't think i'm going to iran any time soon, but i appreciate the compliment.
most of them, though, are just......i don't understand how people can actually have the nerve for this.....
some spam. expected. but the kind of messages that randoms send off out of nowhere, like, i just don't get it. just trying to flip it around, like, could i ever ever ever see myself just randomly suggesting a bdsm hookup to a total stranger over facebook? not that i'm into that in the first place (definitely not), but the sheer gall required to actually make that request is just.....
maybe it's just more evidence that i am not a member of your species.
some of them are sort of cute and funny. no, i don't think i'm going to iran any time soon, but i appreciate the compliment.
most of them, though, are just......i don't understand how people can actually have the nerve for this.....
Friday, October 11, 2013
deleting 95% of my facebook "friends"
i actually deleted almost everybody, so don't feel singled out. the list is down to family (or people that are practically family) and people that i feel post content that i find to be interesting. it's just a handful of people.
it's not really personal, it's mostly about moving on and leaving the past behind. chances are that i just decided i wasn't interested in what you were posting and didn't really want to read it anymore. so, chances are that i don't dislike you, and that wasn't the reason i deleted you. it's just that the past is the past and i'd like to place it there explicitly.
however, i've also come to learn that the vast majority of people in this world have broken hearts. by that, what i mean is that they are fundamentally broken people. broken by a system, perhaps, but jaded to the point where they are fundamentally unable to be 'good'. they may not even realize that, or how their views and actions have been so deeply shaped by the paradigms of neo-liberalism. the optimist in me wants to believe that we can all work through this together, that the solution is some kind of group therapy, but the realist in me understands that the vast majority of people are simply too far gone. i've come to understand that 'friends' are consequently more often liabilities than assets, and that nobody can ever really be trusted in our society beyond a very base level. i've been burned, pretty hard, and need to take the initiative to stay away from people that i'm convinced will eventually stab me in the back. think of it as preventive action.
i have my feed set for public updates. it's set up that way because i'm not opposed to people subscribing, or people i've deleted continuing to read my feed. if you don't want to continue receiving my posts, you can click the little rotated > in the corner of the post and choose to hide all updates from me. alternatively, you could block and unblock me.
i wish people luck in the future. i just want to get away from the past.
i'll remind people that i'm on odsp for ptsd and, whether the diagnosis is rigorous or not, there's no question that i had a profound mental breakdown that was largely driven by a reaction to how other people discarded me. i'm still struggling with how to cope with that, and how to adjust, but i remain convinced, looking back, that i ignored a lot of warning signs under the misguided hope that goodness of heart would prevail in the end. i may be overcompensating, but i can't risk triggering myself backwards, and i request that people simply respect my decision in the context of me feeling it's a necessary step to maintaining my mental health. i feel i can get out now largely unscathed and without collapsing into any sort of episode. just respect that, please.
it's not really personal, it's mostly about moving on and leaving the past behind. chances are that i just decided i wasn't interested in what you were posting and didn't really want to read it anymore. so, chances are that i don't dislike you, and that wasn't the reason i deleted you. it's just that the past is the past and i'd like to place it there explicitly.
however, i've also come to learn that the vast majority of people in this world have broken hearts. by that, what i mean is that they are fundamentally broken people. broken by a system, perhaps, but jaded to the point where they are fundamentally unable to be 'good'. they may not even realize that, or how their views and actions have been so deeply shaped by the paradigms of neo-liberalism. the optimist in me wants to believe that we can all work through this together, that the solution is some kind of group therapy, but the realist in me understands that the vast majority of people are simply too far gone. i've come to understand that 'friends' are consequently more often liabilities than assets, and that nobody can ever really be trusted in our society beyond a very base level. i've been burned, pretty hard, and need to take the initiative to stay away from people that i'm convinced will eventually stab me in the back. think of it as preventive action.
i have my feed set for public updates. it's set up that way because i'm not opposed to people subscribing, or people i've deleted continuing to read my feed. if you don't want to continue receiving my posts, you can click the little rotated > in the corner of the post and choose to hide all updates from me. alternatively, you could block and unblock me.
i wish people luck in the future. i just want to get away from the past.
i'll remind people that i'm on odsp for ptsd and, whether the diagnosis is rigorous or not, there's no question that i had a profound mental breakdown that was largely driven by a reaction to how other people discarded me. i'm still struggling with how to cope with that, and how to adjust, but i remain convinced, looking back, that i ignored a lot of warning signs under the misguided hope that goodness of heart would prevail in the end. i may be overcompensating, but i can't risk triggering myself backwards, and i request that people simply respect my decision in the context of me feeling it's a necessary step to maintaining my mental health. i feel i can get out now largely unscathed and without collapsing into any sort of episode. just respect that, please.
i'm surprised - i finally found an example of zizek saying something of substance, and it turns out i even agree with him, and for the right reasons.
badiou's preposterous attempt to seek absolute truth through the use of set theory is indeed a hare-brained exercise in bankrupt kantian idealism. for, as kant was rambling away about the perfection of geometry, gauss (at least according to the popular mythology, it was gauss) was demonstrating it's arbitrary nature. badiou seems to have missed the memo.
what's missing in this presentation is a discussion of hilbert and russell and why the deductions of mathematics are only as valuable as the axioms underlying them. so, first badiou must prove his axioms. cue godel...
badiou actually has the gall to talk of deciding the undecidable. it's reckless absurdity, and can only be met seriously with a laugh.
(link apparently lost)
badiou's preposterous attempt to seek absolute truth through the use of set theory is indeed a hare-brained exercise in bankrupt kantian idealism. for, as kant was rambling away about the perfection of geometry, gauss (at least according to the popular mythology, it was gauss) was demonstrating it's arbitrary nature. badiou seems to have missed the memo.
what's missing in this presentation is a discussion of hilbert and russell and why the deductions of mathematics are only as valuable as the axioms underlying them. so, first badiou must prove his axioms. cue godel...
badiou actually has the gall to talk of deciding the undecidable. it's reckless absurdity, and can only be met seriously with a laugh.
(link apparently lost)
Thursday, October 10, 2013
so, this sort of reads off like somebody sourcing my anti-work rants. i should park this somewhere for future use...
i should point out that these are not at all the sources i'd actually cite.
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/
maybe a theme, actually. this provides a better argument against work than for it. i think it realizes that, too.
http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013
i should point out that these are not at all the sources i'd actually cite.
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/
maybe a theme, actually. this provides a better argument against work than for it. i think it realizes that, too.
http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013
Re: shower again, and check
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
just an update on this...
i think i've been able to determine it *is* the drain and it *isn't* the pipe. the experiment that i did was that i dumped pot after pot after pot of water into the drain. this reproduced the problem of water under the platform (i could tell by pushing on it and hearing it squish). i stopped before i created a leak, but that was enough to convince me of the nature of the problem.
i've also observed water draining into the crack around the drain. in fact, the crack seems to fill up and then spill over into the drain. i don't think it should be doing that, so i'm going to seal it tomorrow. i don't want to seal in moisture. i'll let you know if that works.
i have a good feeling about this working. if it doesn't work, i'm going to have to agree that ripping it apart would be necessary. that would really reduce the problem to a drain issue under the platform.
but i'm confident i've ruled out pipes. that's good news.
j
To: the initial landlord
just an update on this...
i think i've been able to determine it *is* the drain and it *isn't* the pipe. the experiment that i did was that i dumped pot after pot after pot of water into the drain. this reproduced the problem of water under the platform (i could tell by pushing on it and hearing it squish). i stopped before i created a leak, but that was enough to convince me of the nature of the problem.
i've also observed water draining into the crack around the drain. in fact, the crack seems to fill up and then spill over into the drain. i don't think it should be doing that, so i'm going to seal it tomorrow. i don't want to seal in moisture. i'll let you know if that works.
i have a good feeling about this working. if it doesn't work, i'm going to have to agree that ripping it apart would be necessary. that would really reduce the problem to a drain issue under the platform.
but i'm confident i've ruled out pipes. that's good news.
j
enjoying the new night birds record
this is something else i probably would have written a review of back in july if i was living on this planet at the time.
the reason night birds are so refreshing is indeed nostalgic. this was one of my favourite sounds growing up. it basically doesn't exist anymore. finding these guys sorting through reviews a few years ago was like coming face to face with a leprechaun.
the reason night birds are so refreshing is indeed nostalgic. this was one of my favourite sounds growing up. it basically doesn't exist anymore. finding these guys sorting through reviews a few years ago was like coming face to face with a leprechaun.
i just need to point out again that 'dry' and 'boring' are relative terms. i find most mainstream media to be boring - it's just all about twisted perceptions of sex and money. i find competition to be boring, yet others make it the central focal point of their existence. people could try and be a little less normative in their analysis.
well, ok. 'boring' does have an objective meaning. i'll use it in music reviews to talk about things that are uneventful, repetitive, meandering...
it's not used that way very often, though. it's usually just a close-minded insult that equates differences in interest with inferiority. it's a very arrogant term to throw around.
rather than say "you're boring", why not say "we have differing interests"? i'll tell you why - it's some kind of disdain. it's usually not fair to direct that at other people...
just realize that, most of the time, the feeling is mutual.
well, ok. 'boring' does have an objective meaning. i'll use it in music reviews to talk about things that are uneventful, repetitive, meandering...
it's not used that way very often, though. it's usually just a close-minded insult that equates differences in interest with inferiority. it's a very arrogant term to throw around.
rather than say "you're boring", why not say "we have differing interests"? i'll tell you why - it's some kind of disdain. it's usually not fair to direct that at other people...
just realize that, most of the time, the feeling is mutual.
just to clarify: it used to be that there were proxy wars happening in libya and syria, and a revolution happening in egypt, and an uprising happening on the peninsula, and that these things weren't actually related. with all the manipulation behind the scenes, egypt has been reduced to another proxy conflict.
(well, libya and syria were related, and the uprising on the peninsula took inspiration from egypt. but they're three separate things.)
(well, libya and syria were related, and the uprising on the peninsula took inspiration from egypt. but they're three separate things.)
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/genetic-studies-reveal-ancient-makeup-of-modern-european-populations
http://chomsky.info/interviews/20131010.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/false-equivalence-that-leans-on-public-opinion-is-still-false-equivalence/280448/
http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/820463/vancouver-mulls-how-to-get-rid-of-fossil-fuel-investments/
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/09/no_country_for_anyone_syria
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/10/changes-allowing-ontario-to-handover-of-crown-land-to-companies-snuck-into-liberal-budget-watchdog/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/obamacare-worse-than-doing-nothing/
http://chomsky.info/interviews/20131010.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/false-equivalence-that-leans-on-public-opinion-is-still-false-equivalence/280448/
http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/820463/vancouver-mulls-how-to-get-rid-of-fossil-fuel-investments/
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/09/no_country_for_anyone_syria
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/10/changes-allowing-ontario-to-handover-of-crown-land-to-companies-snuck-into-liberal-budget-watchdog/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/obamacare-worse-than-doing-nothing/
so, i'm still trying to unravel this, and it's constantly shifting.
if the coup was backed by the ksa, and there's this struggle going on between the ksa and qatar, this suggests the whitehouse taking the side of qatar in preparation for....
...for what. fuck. LEAVE EGYPT ALONE.
we'll have to see how syria lines up. the thing is that playing them off against each other isn't incoherent.....
there's always the left-field possibility that the policy is actually transparent. but, the idea of the united states coercing a foreign power into democracy is sort of hard to take at face value.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/3_months_after_morsi_coup_hundreds
if the coup was backed by the ksa, and there's this struggle going on between the ksa and qatar, this suggests the whitehouse taking the side of qatar in preparation for....
...for what. fuck. LEAVE EGYPT ALONE.
we'll have to see how syria lines up. the thing is that playing them off against each other isn't incoherent.....
there's always the left-field possibility that the policy is actually transparent. but, the idea of the united states coercing a foreign power into democracy is sort of hard to take at face value.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/3_months_after_morsi_coup_hundreds
this is worth reading, as a case study. i've perceived a lot of similar things, and heard a lot of push back, but this is one of the more clear examples i've seen somebody articulate. the intentions may have been just (if scientifically unsound), and it's not abused by everybody that talks in these terms, but when you hear the language of critical race theory coming from white people, it's often being used as a way to mask racist beliefs and racist actions. it's a type of crypto-racism, or socially acceptable racism, put through this hyper-orwellian filter.
well, read the article.
my comments...
"Too often, the IFs assume the inferiority of those who are PoC/female/gay etc which is in itself racist/sexist and homophobic. More so, by making assumptions prior to knowing someone, they ignore the complexities of humans and human relationships."
this is the crux of my issue. she's describing something she's experienced, but it's not really fair to assign those characteristics to other people with the same views. there's no logic there. this, on the other hand, is a good point, and a scary one.
more concerning to me is that it seems as though it often functions as a mask for actual racism. all of a sudden, it's ok to argue for racial purity or for segregation (albeit using different jargon) - from the left. sometimes, i think this follows from a level of naivete or a level of emotional repression. but i've met people who i think are actually deeply racist and just hide behind the language to justify that racism.
if people are curious, the internet is saturated with essays like this by supposedly "unprivileged" people. the unpeople. i've read quite a few. the commonality is a feeling that the boundaries being placed around them are artificial, and a sort of desire to push back against it.
http://melissa-fix.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/privileged-problems.html
well, read the article.
my comments...
"Too often, the IFs assume the inferiority of those who are PoC/female/gay etc which is in itself racist/sexist and homophobic. More so, by making assumptions prior to knowing someone, they ignore the complexities of humans and human relationships."
this is the crux of my issue. she's describing something she's experienced, but it's not really fair to assign those characteristics to other people with the same views. there's no logic there. this, on the other hand, is a good point, and a scary one.
more concerning to me is that it seems as though it often functions as a mask for actual racism. all of a sudden, it's ok to argue for racial purity or for segregation (albeit using different jargon) - from the left. sometimes, i think this follows from a level of naivete or a level of emotional repression. but i've met people who i think are actually deeply racist and just hide behind the language to justify that racism.
if people are curious, the internet is saturated with essays like this by supposedly "unprivileged" people. the unpeople. i've read quite a few. the commonality is a feeling that the boundaries being placed around them are artificial, and a sort of desire to push back against it.
http://melissa-fix.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/privileged-problems.html
this seems to suggest the plausible hypothesis that the united states is selling egypt to saudi arabia. to speak crudely.
is that 'decolonization'? well, 'decolonization' was always somewhat of a misleading term. 'consolidation' maybe captures what actually happened better.
it fits the narrative of obama fulfilling the ww1 era promise of helping construct a united arab state, anyways. which is what al qaeda was really all about. i think there's a lot of truth to that narrative.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10857
is that 'decolonization'? well, 'decolonization' was always somewhat of a misleading term. 'consolidation' maybe captures what actually happened better.
it fits the narrative of obama fulfilling the ww1 era promise of helping construct a united arab state, anyways. which is what al qaeda was really all about. i think there's a lot of truth to that narrative.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10857
i like pam's politics. she has a sense of sincerity that is rare. but, unfortunately, she's sputtering underneath the evidence in front of her. but i think she's equipped to come to terms with it, eventually.
i think there's something to be said about the co-modification of dissent and i think it's a necessary consequence of the tactics being used. there's been much said about the use of social media or media in general. i think there's been less analysis regarding how people interact with media.
i think everybody understands the whole deconstruction of advertising, how it works on a subconscious level....and more importantly how easily it's co-opted.
activists have been jumping from one cause to the next, driven by the media that was supposed to be to their great advantage. it seems like it's less that activists have raised awareness using twitter and more that political dissent has been reduced to a type of fashion as a result of it taking over twitter. some kind of systemic analysis here is worthwhile.
idle no more? that went out of style a few months ago.
that speech could have been produced, verbatim, at an occupy (insert city) movement about a year ago. same issues. same approaches.
so, it is now the responsibility of social theorists to sit down and study the data regarding these movements and try and figure out some patterns. to me, it's obvious: viral marketing has a high initial return driven by the way it converts ideas into trends (and that kind of support is dependent upon it being a trend), followed by a slow slide into obscurity defined by the trend going out of fashion.
conclusion: this isn't a smart approach. it just leads to movements getting burnt out, exploited and co-opted.
as soon as it got to twitter, it became fashion.
as soon as it became fashion, it became temporary.
it's a systemic problem, one so profound it's enough to throw your arms up in the air and give up. you can't get their attention *unless* you use viral marketing techniques. yet, doing so *necessitates* that they'll abandon you by the next marketing strategy.
so, the bastards win.
well, maybe there's two hopes.
the first is deprogramming people. i've read very little foucault. the guy was a fascist, he just pisses me off. but, if you can capture them with a viral technique and then turn them off...
the biggest problem would be keeping them turned off. i've barely watched any tv over the last 15 years. i'm fully cognizant of the reality that my entire perception of existence would change dramatically if i opened myself back up to that kind of suggestive mind control.
the second is to somehow keep spitting out more and more effective viral hooks. but this is hard to contemplate, given that the competition is endless.
i think there's something to be said about the co-modification of dissent and i think it's a necessary consequence of the tactics being used. there's been much said about the use of social media or media in general. i think there's been less analysis regarding how people interact with media.
i think everybody understands the whole deconstruction of advertising, how it works on a subconscious level....and more importantly how easily it's co-opted.
activists have been jumping from one cause to the next, driven by the media that was supposed to be to their great advantage. it seems like it's less that activists have raised awareness using twitter and more that political dissent has been reduced to a type of fashion as a result of it taking over twitter. some kind of systemic analysis here is worthwhile.
idle no more? that went out of style a few months ago.
that speech could have been produced, verbatim, at an occupy (insert city) movement about a year ago. same issues. same approaches.
so, it is now the responsibility of social theorists to sit down and study the data regarding these movements and try and figure out some patterns. to me, it's obvious: viral marketing has a high initial return driven by the way it converts ideas into trends (and that kind of support is dependent upon it being a trend), followed by a slow slide into obscurity defined by the trend going out of fashion.
conclusion: this isn't a smart approach. it just leads to movements getting burnt out, exploited and co-opted.
as soon as it got to twitter, it became fashion.
as soon as it became fashion, it became temporary.
it's a systemic problem, one so profound it's enough to throw your arms up in the air and give up. you can't get their attention *unless* you use viral marketing techniques. yet, doing so *necessitates* that they'll abandon you by the next marketing strategy.
so, the bastards win.
well, maybe there's two hopes.
the first is deprogramming people. i've read very little foucault. the guy was a fascist, he just pisses me off. but, if you can capture them with a viral technique and then turn them off...
the biggest problem would be keeping them turned off. i've barely watched any tv over the last 15 years. i'm fully cognizant of the reality that my entire perception of existence would change dramatically if i opened myself back up to that kind of suggestive mind control.
the second is to somehow keep spitting out more and more effective viral hooks. but this is hard to contemplate, given that the competition is endless.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/10/03/pq_stung_by_jacques_parizeaus_rebuke_of_values_charter_hbert.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/budg-o09.html
http://fpif.org/jellification-politics/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/08/president-clintons-close-colleague-joins-us-oil-sands-board/
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19287-in-conversation-with-noam-chomsky-on-us-politics-global-affairs-and-capitalist-reform
i would expect this to come up in my feed. it didn't.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1nxtyb/nuclear_fusion_milestone_passed_at_us_lab/
http://warrenkinsella.com/2013/10/gary-mchale-crowd-sourcing-a-lawsuit/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/apec-o09.html
http://fpif.org/nsa-isnt-foiling-terrorist-plots/
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19323-it-is-time-to-recognize-the-national-sovereignty-and-human-rights-of-native-indians
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/sheila-block/2013/10/its-not-just-ontarios-youth-on-minimum-wage
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19296-empire-under-obama-part-1-political-language-and-the-mafia-principles-of-international-relations
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/08/campaign-against-fossil-fuel-growing
http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/brooch-of-tutankhamun-holds-evidence-of-ancient-comet
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/09/17/justin_trudeau_taps_toronto_centre_candidate_chrystia_freeland_for_economic_advice.html
this is a far more important event regarding shifts the country may take over the next generation than any election or protest....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/paul-desmarais-remembered-as-visionary-entrepreneur-with-great-influence-1.1931144
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/01/16/the-messy-link-between-slave-owners-and-modern-management/
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/what-does-obama-think-they-were-doing-at-stonewall/
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/sensible-bc-takes-big-strides-campaign-to-decriminalize-marijuana
brave, but rather foolish.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10846
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/pers-o09.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/08-7
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/companies-that-use-bribes-abroad-rarely-prosecuted-at-home-1.1929649
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/
i've seen a few experiments like this recently. good to see that the technology is catching up to the point where we can finally study this properly.
http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
mostly a summary of the higgs ramifications, but also the first article i've seen that hints at what i've been saying: by conforming so perfectly to the standard model, the higgs result is actually essentially debunking it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=could-the-higgs-nobel-be-the-end-of-particle-physics&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cosmic-strings-cracked-cosmos&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.nature.com/news/two-laser-boron-fusion-lights-the-way-to-radiation-free-energy-1.13914
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v19/n10/full/nm1013-1204.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pamela-palmater/2013/10/defer-deflect-deny-destroy-harper%E2%80%99s-first-nation-education-ac
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/budg-o09.html
http://fpif.org/jellification-politics/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/08/president-clintons-close-colleague-joins-us-oil-sands-board/
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19287-in-conversation-with-noam-chomsky-on-us-politics-global-affairs-and-capitalist-reform
i would expect this to come up in my feed. it didn't.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1nxtyb/nuclear_fusion_milestone_passed_at_us_lab/
http://warrenkinsella.com/2013/10/gary-mchale-crowd-sourcing-a-lawsuit/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/apec-o09.html
http://fpif.org/nsa-isnt-foiling-terrorist-plots/
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19323-it-is-time-to-recognize-the-national-sovereignty-and-human-rights-of-native-indians
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/sheila-block/2013/10/its-not-just-ontarios-youth-on-minimum-wage
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19296-empire-under-obama-part-1-political-language-and-the-mafia-principles-of-international-relations
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/08/campaign-against-fossil-fuel-growing
http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/brooch-of-tutankhamun-holds-evidence-of-ancient-comet
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/09/17/justin_trudeau_taps_toronto_centre_candidate_chrystia_freeland_for_economic_advice.html
this is a far more important event regarding shifts the country may take over the next generation than any election or protest....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/paul-desmarais-remembered-as-visionary-entrepreneur-with-great-influence-1.1931144
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/01/16/the-messy-link-between-slave-owners-and-modern-management/
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/what-does-obama-think-they-were-doing-at-stonewall/
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/sensible-bc-takes-big-strides-campaign-to-decriminalize-marijuana
brave, but rather foolish.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10846
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/pers-o09.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/08-7
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/companies-that-use-bribes-abroad-rarely-prosecuted-at-home-1.1929649
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/
i've seen a few experiments like this recently. good to see that the technology is catching up to the point where we can finally study this properly.
http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
mostly a summary of the higgs ramifications, but also the first article i've seen that hints at what i've been saying: by conforming so perfectly to the standard model, the higgs result is actually essentially debunking it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=could-the-higgs-nobel-be-the-end-of-particle-physics&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cosmic-strings-cracked-cosmos&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.nature.com/news/two-laser-boron-fusion-lights-the-way-to-radiation-free-energy-1.13914
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v19/n10/full/nm1013-1204.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pamela-palmater/2013/10/defer-deflect-deny-destroy-harper%E2%80%99s-first-nation-education-ac
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