stevengharms

I’m having an ideabuzz at the moment. What’s an ideabuzz, it’s a feeling that there’s a connection between things ( which spawns an ideabuzz which reminds me of a bit in one of the Dune books by frank herbert where herbert describes a mentat working through a very difficult problem shaking his hands and frothing because he was so close to the final calculation which resolved a very difficult series of unsolubles). An ideabuzz is when you type very fast and you’re not quite sure where the idea is going, but you keep typing very fast. So, i’m having one of those right now about fake things that are meant to be real.

I never much cared for Nathaniel Hawthorne, but there is a story of his called rappacini’s daughter (one of the first best gothic stories ever written) where he writes abotu a man who puts a poison in the lips of his daughter (who is of course, beautiful) and if she kisses someone she’ll kill the kissee.

In any case, there’s a story around that, but see she’s manufactured but natural.

In the end of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Deckard encounters a wild animal ( in this future vision, the animals are all gone: goats, horses, dogs, etc. Those that remain are venerated under the hyper Christianity of that world called “Mercerism”. The wild animal he encounters is a grasshoper, he turns it over and looks at the bottom and realizes that it is in fact a simulation, a machine grasshopper. This has some meaning relative to the previous experiences he went through.

Origami, origami is amazing. I found this page at Discovery and was amazed by this stunning dragon and then i was even more stunned by the origami flower. As amazing as the dragon is, the flower is more amazing because it’s natural, it’s unnatural natural. It’s like Zen gardens, the goal is to mirror the natural ways and assemblages of natural foliage, but to do it in a way with patterns that show human intervention was involved, the natural unnatural as it were.

And that’s a lot of typing without much sorting into a coherent post. Maybe it’ll turn into something more solid later.

Reddit has netted myself ( and the now hopelessly addicted Social Bobcat ) a real gem: The Ward Nerd.

“Gary Brecher” ( possibly a nom d’écrivain de guerre ) writes for exile.ru and has given non-military people a historical and geopolitical context in which to understand modern warfare. Gary’s text is bleak: tribal warfare makes sense, dying for nation-states is absurd; Hezbollah won, the war in Iraq will be quickly won, but occupation will see total loss.

In modern conflicts, where I’ve been more attentive of late, Gary is like a scalpel, cutting through the media spin and good feelings and photo ops with some goofball in a bomber jacket on an aircraft carrier saying it’s over. I’ve really enjoyed his writing on the topics related to African warfare through the 90’s. Many like to think that the 90s were pretty quiet times, no one flying planes into Manhattan and all, but, in reality, during years many violent people were building up their skills to do horrendously violent things. Furthermore inter-tribal warfare in Africa took no hiatus during the construction of the new economy; genocidal madmen pushed neighobring tribespeople into total extinction with the help of malarial swamps.

Brecher writes like a modern-day Machiavelli, a Spartan strategiest in an Athenian daydream. He chides those without ruthlessness to realize that war is hell, and hell is complete and total annihilation.

On politicians in Washington:

They want to make money or they want to push their own weird religious agendas, or both — usually both. But none of them really like America.

On Republicans:

The Republicans aren’t nationalists. They’re moneyists, as in they only care about money — oil money, mostly. And money is boring. War — fun. Money — boring. It’s time somebody said it out loud: “Fuck Free Enterprise, I just want America to kick ass!”

PJ O’Rourke could only dream of letting loose like that.

The president:

The name of the town where North Korea tests its missiles says it all about our reaction: “No-Dong.” That’s what US Presidents have been showing for almost 40 years, every time North Korea slaps us in the face: no dong whatsoever.

Caddyshack as metaphor:

And it has, folks. That’s why this is such a huge, huge war. No matter what the waterheads on CNN try to tell you, the IDF lost totally, and every force configured like it — such as, oh, the US Army or Air Force — lost too. The Gophers are beating the shit out of the gardeners on this course. The gophers just kicked the shit out of Tiger Woods.

It’s hard to say who gains in the long run. Short term, sure, Hezbollah wins big. But in the long run, maybe what’s happened is that the day when genocide replaces the farce called “CI Warfare” just got a lot closer.

You might disagree, but you will certainly ask yourself if you’re scared or complacent after reading a few.

This headline at MSNBC grabbed my interest.

Who’s to blame for your waistline? An in-depth report on Dateline NBC, August 18, 8 p.m.

You must be joking? Way to pander to the couch-potato demographic.

are we overweight because we are not trying hard enough, or are we overweight because somehow the food and marketing industries have eroded our ability to just say no?

I can’t wait to see this one work. I imagine the world in which the answer is not the individual shoving the calorie-laden sugary stuff into his maw, but the corporation that provides it.

“I’m sorry officer, I didn’t mean to drink and drive, but those irrizzzizztible beats from Lil’ John celebrating the crunk lifestyle have rendered me incapable of not opening my pie-hole and pouring high-octane rum down it.”

“I’m sorry, but while listening to Dre’s ‘The Chronic’ I am uncontrollably driven to burn fat trees like it was wildfire season in SoCal, yo.”

Gaggh!

It drives me nuts when sports fans talk about what they would have done had they been coaching.

“Well, if you’d called a time out at 48 seconds you could have run the clock etc.”

“Well, if you’d told your defense to step up their offense wouldn’t have had a chance to score.”

Most of these observations are absolutely vacuous. I’m pretty sure that the quarterback who just took cleet to the guts probably thought “Hm, perhaps I wouldn’t be in this position if my offensive line hadn’t crumbled. When I stand up again, I shall have to confer with these chaps about Bill Swarkowski’s keen observation that they should ‘Grow A Pair and Stop Defending Like a bunch of little girls’.”

I’d always hear people talking about this (particularly at Texas during the Macovic years, ‘twere dark times here in the Burnt-Orange belt). If I were so-and-so I’d fire the Defensive Coordinator and have called time out at 42 seconds and made a sneak play for an onside kick within the infield fly zone, blah blah blah. I mean, hell people, I’d like my team to have won, but it’s 9 a.m. and I’m trying by best to convince at least 3 brain cells to start thinking about the finer points of the Glass-Steagall act, can you put a lid on the Monday morning quarterbacking / offensive coordinating / defensive coordinating / ad spot programming?

Sweet goodness gravy, and this was in the days before Tivo. I can just see these guys now, rewinding each frame by frame becoming all the more sure in the superiority of their coaching.

But I suppose it’s easier to talk about sports than to discuss the merits of the free press as an agent of disclosure in modern times in opposition to selective leaking employed by shady governmental bodies.

Wow,

Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora: When the Rain Begins to Fall

The badness is absolutely insurmountable.

Note the excellent use of stage dancing as a martial art.

Come to think of it: Kevin Federline, Kung Fu, KF == KF. Coincidence? I think not.

Is it just me or is Posh looking a bit like Von himself here….

Mmmhmmm…

The first rule of Buzz Aldrin fight club is: you do not talk about Buzz Aldrin fight club.

Some quasi-revolutionary thinking in a place where revolutionary thinking is rarely found:

He [Brother Consolmagno] described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.

Brother Consolmagno is entirely correct. The human mind has sought to apply reason and narrative to the disorder of our world of experience since the very first humans. First we attributed the creation myths and the “why does X happen” myths to mysterious forces. We then structure those forces to have relationships to one another (The goddess of wisdom erupted whole and unborn outside of the ruler-god, etc.)

Ultimately a revolution happened in Greece a few millennia ago, these paltry explanations were set aside for the love of wisdom: philosophia.

I like to imagine it was the work of Xenophanes that undermined this “story-telling” as explanation of phenomena:

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blockquote>“Mortals fancy that gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves. Yet if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint and fashion images as men do, they would make the pictures and images of their gods in their own likenesses; horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen. Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; Thracians give theirs blue eyes and red hair.” (from Diogenes Laertes “Xenophanes,” iii.)

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Christianity, for many years, seemed to be at peace with a transcendent God. Yet the plausability of evolution chafes at them (why should you care, if you have faith, ask I) so they posit this nonsense called Creationism. Creationism goes back to making the Christian God a “maker god” not much different than Zeus. I don’t think that’s progress for the religion.

Well I feel like I would be horribly behind on the news of the internet if I didn’t comment on Stephen Colbert calling G.W. Bush “Arsenio” at the White House Correspondents dinner.

Colbert’s vicious use of irony served to show what a chummy, buddy-buddy, insular, self-congratulatory un-virtuous cycle the press’ relationship to the White House has become. He clowned the President, clowned the press, and basically dared say what about two-thirds of the country has come to realize.

Incidentally, it’s a really rough thing to watch. The jaw-dropping from the correspondents and the “is he really saying this?” look from the roastee is priceless; painful, but priceless. I think this may be the real tipping point.

Check out the footage or transcripts here.

Recently I’ve added another web zeitgeist story to my read: reddit. I heard about it at StartupSchool and I’ve really enjoyed it lately. Via the aggregator I found the following story about what happens when you take 50 civilians, dress them up like Best Buy employees, and then send them into the BB store in Union Square, NYC.

Let the mayhem ensue.