Choice - choosing the Chooser

There are many perfectly helpful concepts for which we have no "word". There are many words we actually use, but which have lost all usability; they no longer "apply". Choice is clearly a residual "word" used by people who no longer believe in the concept. Or we do "believe", but we understand that the "chooser of the chooser", or the chemistry of desire, and the inner embedded story-teller, are all things that negate or neutralize the concept of "choice". It is of no consolation that the concept of "belief" is also horning the dilemma of our sit.

I want to suggest that the brain/personality is up to the task of finding "choice". Do not let yourself off this hook: You are choosing your life. Look at the exceptions that prove rules. And those desires -- how many of us would lose a head if our dreams were judged? How bitter, how salted, how merciless are our whims. Are they to be irresistable as well?

We are inside our story. Still, that next page is blank. There is really no law, no chemistry inside, and no judge, no tyrant, which can force the ending. Who knows.

Larry Craig, booked and pled guilty, taking a "wide stance" in a men's room

Curiously, a Republican Party which almost unanimously took the position that a Blow Job was "sexual intercourse" -- which would surprise most people who look up actual definitions and the definitions which were in play during Clinton's deposition -- is now claiming that expressly signaling for a Blow Job from a cute blonde police decoy is not "solicitation". I do not know why we bother with "definitions". People make up their minds based on ideology, prejudice and politics.

It is obvious that "family values" are not, and probably never have been, maintained by the elites who run things.

Where is the "moral outrage" of the Conservatives now? Jesus never directly decried the practices of Man-Loving. Read carefully about John the Beloved. It is not good enough to say that he adverted to the teachings of the Prophets, and some of them lived in a society which made homosexuality a capital offense. Or not -- there is a huge translation issue here, but it should be obvious to everyone that homosexuality is simply NOT one of the Ten Commandments. By ANY interpretation.

Jesus was not subtle, however, in condemning hypocrisy. Or untempered condemnation -- "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone", is the sound bite most of us come away with.

Pavarotti and the Requiem, Panis Panorum

The Music at Pavarotti's Funeral -- in Italy which adored him and had time to prepare -- these things do not always provide that luxury coupled with political opportunity -- should be listened to. I think they performed the LIBERA ME from Verdi's Requiem. It is almost an Opera on its own. The Introit, Dies Irae, the joy of the Sanctus. I think Placido Domingo was conducting it. Sting was there - did he sing? And I hear they played a video of two Pavarottis singing the Panis Panorum -- done as a duet with his Pappa. Andrea Bocelli sang deeply. And then there is that final C-major chord of the Requiem.

Origins of Language - and the Brain

How much of human language is actually "innate"? People seem to be able to speak "automatically", replaying tapes, much akin to the pigeon coo, the cat caterwaul, the wolf howl, and the monkey chatter. Elephants, bats, cetacea, and three orders of birds (parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds) have the ability to remember and reproduce sounds.

Yet humans, at least when young, are able to do more than "imitation", and can create different meanings from new sounds, a skill set no other creature has. The response of horses and dogs to specific vocal commands, the "sign language" learned by some Bonobos, and the mimicry of mynahs, all come short of the mastery which is the unique cultural artifact of humans, our Language.

Still, chemistry seems to lie at the heart of Language. Are there other brains we can study which would reveal the chemistry involved in producing Speech?

Enter the Zebra Finch. A native of Australia, with a brain smaller than most seeds, it has much to teach us about "vocal learning". The bird brain is in many ways more similar to a mammalian brain than first thought.

Erich Jarvis, 41 year old neurobiologist out of Duke University, is studying the chemistry of the Finch's songs. He asks: "What's the most complex thing a brain can do? Language." He says: "I am starting from the naive position that if you can decipher the most complex thing about how the brain works, everything else will fall into place."

Fashion and the Renaissance we are inhabiting

In our contemporary times, we are sharing an enormous number of attributes that arose during the European Renaissance of the 1400's, including lack of central authority, creativity across a number of "arts", danger and disorder.

Take "fashion". Four hundred years ago, textile manufacture and arts were reaching "extreme" forms in Italy, France, England, Austria and Germany, breaking out of the black robes and white ruffles of medievaldom. In the last 50 years, again, we see extraordinary creativity in Fashion -- with the dominance of Fashion Houses and the living legends of Valentino (red evening gowns), Giorgio Armani (chic suits for men), Karl Lagerfeld (reinventing the Chanel suit), and the international powerhouses of Dior, Lacroix, Prada, Gucci as brands.

It is insensible, but it is part of "renaissance".

Unsung role of Dinner in the Historical rise of Cooperative Action

Why is it that at particular times and places, a certain collection of individuals set aside their competitive natures, their feuding, and take collective action? The otherwise inexplicable "union" of disparate peoples into Mongols (from feuding tribes), or British, or Americans, for example, how does this happen?

We know that Ghengis Khan met with the man who had killed his father and who, by all the traditions of race and tribe, he should have avenged in blood. We know that instead of combat, the two met over Dinner, again and again, and invited others to the feast, and instead of continuing centuries of blood feuds, they formed a new and unitary concept -- the "Mongol" meme was formed.

More recently, we are able to give names to the people who were in charge of the unifying Dinner. For example, the American Colonies were extremely fractious. Even after cobbled together in the sinews of War and Treaties of Trade, each "State" was jealous and a creature of its native and competitively loyal sons. In particular, the "Southern" Virginians (Jeffersonians) and the "Northern" New Englanders (Federalists) were riven by major cultural and economic divisions. Yet the "United" States held together through the War of 1812 in spite of the total destruction of its capital, its economy, its Navy, its military, and the loss of every possible ally. France did not come on this occasion. The best explanation for the residual survival of the Americans as a unified country is...Dinner! Dolly Madison, the wife of the President during this "final" destruction of the Revolutionary impulse, was such a great hostess, we are still familiar with her name to this day as a Dinner enabler.

Again, a hostess serves as the best explanation for the ascendence of the "British" people in their most golden hours. At the turn of the century in the 1800-1900's, Dinner became a profound event in England. The viciously competitive scions of the nasty little prep schools -- widely and uniformly described by a variety of writers (C.S. Lewis, Shaw, Chesterton, Dahl) -- set aside their squabbles and dominated the world in a thinly-spread unitary action. Why? In the same period, it was the golden age of Dining. Jenny Churchill would deliberately invite arch-enemies to dinner, and somewhere between the chery and the cheroot, they would put aside their hostilities, and proceed to govern ungovernable India, build railroads in Bolivia, and trade centers in Africa and Hong Kong.

Of course, the hostess was a woman, and the "event", Dinner, was hardly monumental. Nothing is left in stone. Still, the China is there.

Speaking of "the China", the discovery of ceramic techniques in China is itself a large and as yet unexplored explanation for how the Chinese civilization unified. Again, it was a Dinner event. The appeal to graces and the belly, under the auspices of a hostess whose name, and whose critical role, has been overlooked.

The Legacy of a Secret Regime

A curious paradox has emerged from the heretofore VOLUME of books written by the officials who have fled their erstwhile positions in the Bush Administration: First of all, the expositions fly in the face of the insularity which characterized their office. It is so bizarre to hear this spectacle of song -- blabbing like gossips gathered at a watering hole -- after their service in the obsessively secret and press-shy administration of Bush-Cheney-Rove.

As Tim Rutten noted in his Bush-of-the-Month Club suggestion, "It's impossible to recall an administration in which quite so many people -- from the President on down -- were so eager to rat each other out." LAT 9/7/2007 book review.

Secondly, the number of song-birds are UNPRECEDENTED. In history, has there ever been such a wholesale effort to exploit Public Service -- however paltry the accomplishments, however insignificant the achievements -- for private gain? Even to the degree of trying to sell books "about" this Administration for royalties!

Apparently the secret is out. There were No Secrets. There was never a Plan, never a Good Idea, never a Vision. We were hoping, behind the non-disclosures, the secrecy, that our leaders had a vision. That hope is now in the waste-bin, put to rest by a tidal wave of eye-witness accounts giving comprehensive details to an Administration which has destroyed America with deliberate, consistent, and unflinching incompetence. It is a secret no more.

The Invasion of Iraq - Clear Error; an equipoise of Idiocy

There is a part of me still carrying DE OPPRESSO LIBER in my pocket. This is not only to honor my Green Beret brother, Hayden, but also because I know there are many victims of tyranny whose only hope is that someone will SHOOT the tyrant. There is no "dialogue" of words which a tyrant can understand. Tyranny is all about Power. Getting physical. That is the only language which tyrants speak.

So many of us were openly in favor of invading Iraq after 9/11. We were told, by the Bush Administration, that it was an appropriate action to take. We were dealing with a tyrant who was oppressing the people of Iraq, and he had clearly telegraphed his intentions to extort wealth from others. Thus, the Bush "rationale" appeared to be plausible.

It is now time to be Real Clear about Why the invasion of Iraq was exactly the Wrong Thing to do.

Those of us who thought that the President of the United States had a Plan and was surrounded by intelligent people who could understand Public Policy, were not only misled by the express lies of President Bush, but also by our own assumptions. But our assumptions were informed by the lies. For this, the Administration is quadruply responsible -- they were idiots (making decisions without information), they held Public Office only to benefiting themselves (in the actions and failures to act), they made us believe a "scapegoat" was the danger, and they lied to us.

Our knowledge that we are in dire straights and in danger is continually corroborated . Now add to this, the knowledge that our Administration is not going to help, is not capable of helping, and cannot "understand" the concept of Public Good. We are in REAL danger.

The only thing that "saves" us is the fact that virtually all the so-called "Terrorists" coming out of the so-called "Islamic tradition", are ALSO idiots. They are not "real" Terrorists -- most of these losers could not terrorize a nursery school. They are incapable of fighting and so they resort to blowing up unarmed civilians and children, in their own villages. They should not be elevated by comparison with real warriors -- for example, the American Indians on their Warpaths, the kidnapped Unitarian children in the Janissary cavalry of the Ottoman Empire, the Bedouin raiders, the Roman Infantry.

Iraqis are a brave people. Many are warriors. Real warriors have a distaste for arbitrary killing of unarmed women and children -- it is not honorable, it is a perversion of battle -- marketplace bombings are not worthy of a plan, monuments will not be built in commemoration of perverts and cowards. A bombing of a Mosque during prayers is not something a "believer" could do. It almost defines "idiot" -- sort of equivalent to the bombing of Saddam Hussein's palaces by Bush, who destroyed the country he was invading.

So what we have, what we end up pinning our hopes on, is the equipoise of idiocy. We who are caught between idiots, are only saved by the fact that on both sides the perpetrators of idiocy are hag-ridden by their own ignorance, incompetence, and wild devotion to blaming others. Their attention seems to drift except when finding fault. Whether it is Bush, or Bin Laden, or their utterly depraved minions, the only thing they seem to accomplish is blame. What are they capable of building?

When a "scapegoat" is persecuted, we are in danger

Sad day. I happened to Google "Jews", and discovered that many nakedly "anti-Jew" points of view are current. Why is this of Great Concern? Because in history, when someone starts picking on someone else who is for whatever reason relatively defenseless, it is a Very Bad Sign. It is a sign of tyranny.

In the last few centuries in Europe, The Jew has been a target of calumny. The defamers have used the Jew as a Scapegoat to avoid their own responsibilities as persons in Power. Scapegoating is NEVER a solution, final or otherwise, to any actual problems. The Tyrants always have an ulterior motive, and in the case of calumniation against the Jew, a fiendish cowardice. For centuries, tyrants have been picking on a group who are for the most part unarmed, poor, and powerless. The exceptions -- the Rothschilds, the Zionists -- actually prove the rule.

One of the first and largest sites with this invidious interest in "Jews", claims to be "the Internet's Largest Scholarly Collection of Articles on Jewish History". However, instead of being scholarly or historical, it meticulously reprints the most fiendish frauds and vicious calumnies. The result is to create an irrational hatred against an "other" group. Why would anyone do this?

First, because unlike attacking Power, an attack on a race almost guarantees that a warrior will not seek reprisal or justice against the defamer. No direct physical "counter-attack" is likely. Thus, the perpetrators of race calumny are the ultimate cowards.

Secondly, the calumny justifies theft. Describing the oppressed group -- the native people, ex-slaves, starving Irish, Huegenots, Moros, gypsies, Jews -- AS IF THEY WERE THE OPPRESSORS is done specifically so that a private person can benefit himself at their expense. A tyrant will get the mob to terrorize the victim into abandoning everything and fleeing. And then who gets the abandoned "stuff"? It has always gone directly into the private pockets of the defamer. This is Theft.

The bottom line here is that there are CURRENT attempts to duplicate the Nazi achievement: Hiding their cowardice behind the bullying of those who are helpless--making false accusations against "scapegoats" -- tyrants seek to enrich themselves at the expense, ultimately, of all of us. Will it work?

Thank God for Jews. They continue to serve as the "canary in the mine" of liberty. When they are attacked, we should all take immediate action. The air is souring, we are losing oxygen. It is getting dark. Life and Liberty for all is threatened. "The Jews" have never been the CAUSE of all the wars, diseases, famine and plagues. In fact, as relatively powerless and formerly stateless people, they suffered MORE from these events. The gratuitous name-calling of course, simply aggravates the suffering of poor people.

For the record, WE ARE ALL JEWS. We are all native people. We are all immigrants. We are Gypsies, Apaches, Aboriginals. We are Arabs. We are all a proud and distinguished race.

I am a Welsh Guardsman at the bridgehead, a Scottish claymore swung at the throat of tyrants, and a gentle Buddhist monk with his tire and a can of gasoline. I stand with the oppressed. If a tyrant thinks, for a minute, that he will ever, ever, take the stuff belonging to another, or benefit himself at the expense of others, or cause harm to another person, then he must also KNOW that he will never have peace while I live....

Keeping the pig in the epigram - archeology

The pig is not only an intelligent creature, remarkably similar to homo sapien in many ways. We share a similar digestive tract, omnivorous diet, curiosity, and ability to live alone or in herds.

We also share a long history of living together, although this relationship is recently betrayed on our part, now we are raising pigs in "factories". Pigs were probably the first "domesticated" animal after humans first domesticated themselves. In the Near East (Sumer, with possible earlier domestication at sites in Israel and Scythia), agriculture began 10,000 years ago, and only after a relationship with pigs was begun.

The migration routes of humans into Europe -- mainly along the Mediterranean and the riparian banks of the Danube -- are marked with pig bone. The Near Eastern pigs reached the Paris area in the heart of Europe around 4000 BC, and were thereafter displaced by a domesticated European boar, which was then taken back down the migration routes to the Near East and the rest of the world. By 600 BC the European pigs, the ancestors of our modern friend, had spread throughout the Near East and beyond, into Asia.

The earliest voyagers in the earliest ships, from the Phoenicians plying the Mediterranean, to the Portugese exploring Africa, to the fleet led by Ferdinand Magellan which first circumnavigated the globe in 1519, all carried pigs.

Today, many people, from Switzerland, through Turkey, and as far off as Indonesia, the Philippines, and South America, live with pigs in their homes. They are more than pets, and the relationship remains crucial to human survival.

You can hardly speak of human history without noting the fact that we share it with so many other creatures. Only three species on the planet lived so closely together, grew so attached, and are now no longer capable of being feral or living independently: the domestic human, dogs, and hogs.

Linguistically, our ancient connection to pigs survives to this day. Second only to the "dog" words, the "swine" words and expressions are the most commonly invoked animal words we use: pig in a poke, pig's eye, piggyback, piggybank, pigtail, hog-wild, whole hog, hogshead, hogtie, high off the hog, roadhog, pearls before swine, etc.

The Biblical expression "fat of the land" actually refers to the swine that provided lard for light and heat, and thick leather for shoes, even for those whose diet did not include pork. In fact, the relatively recent dietary restrictions by the Semites (Hebrews and Arabs, among others) apparently reflects a hatred of the Hittites, whose homes were entirely shared with the domestic pig, and an independent recognition of the economic value of pigs. The Bible is filled with proverbs and accounts of "swine-herders" -- showing that the relationship is more complex and nuanced than a simple dietary exclusion.

"Pork-belly" and "hog futures" have long been and continue to be one of the leading growth areas of the Markets across the planet. Unfortunately, some piglets are raised in horrid factories. We torture our food. This is surely unnecessary and ultimately unwise. Not just from the moral POV, which apparently does not exactly shine among us, but from the economics. How long will our late experiment with Urban Life last, where we have excluded our closest allies of 10,000 years of domesticity.

Our friendship is obviously betrayed. To what extent is this wholesale betrayal ultimately self-defeating? We are exposed to "market" forces which do not preserve long-term values. Piglet is hidden away with a million sows in a NIMBY factory polluting our water. The scale is distorted. We have become the fat of our land, overweight and useless people apparently destined for the same restricted "factory" life. We seem to have become our animals.

The purposes of language: Thoughts, Feelings, AND....

It is a warm day. Wife is off creating Quilts with a dear friend. Stunning textile tiles, BTW. So it occurs to me that my Aristotelian-Hegelian diadic dialogue is just another one of my categorical imperatives which should be gently shown the door, or I will brake another wheel in the great mud-rutting of my already swung-too-low ram-chariot and be further nowhere faster.

I am caught, of course, on the idea that Language is the handmaiden of Thought and Feeling - according each in their measure, as the candle flickers its light and sputters heat. This is surely a mistake. Another "theory" which hag-rides the Data, distorting the actual facts. It should be obvious to anyone actually trying to herd the word-cats, that The Great Communicator, Language, gives a rat's ass for either thinking or feeling. Nobody thinks about what others say or write -- most of what Plato wrote was lost out of indifference, and what remains, is it guiding our lives?

It is as obvious as gravity that our leaders are as ignorant of any wisdom tradition as it would be possible to be, and our "artists" are more concerned about expressing themselves through their agents for a bigger shot at wealth than about any contributions to beauty or esthetic "experience". No. Language is not the servant of Thinking and Feelings. Most people go blank, they play tapes, they speak what they learned as 4 year olds in a sandbox magically contracting grammar like a disease. We spend out lives in an echo-chamber, like birds "winging it", and profiling our Who-ing we Are-ing, largely for the purpose of perpetuating genes, breeding the breeding of our breeding. As lofty as any other life form. As responsible as a worm, and with as many clues about the sources of validation, the meaning of life, the arc of choice growing like a wild rose on the tangle-trellis of choosing.

Language. No. It is not necessary to quote Buddha/Socrates/Jesus/Mohammad/Smith, none of whom wrote ANYTHING. It is not necessary to invoke the experts, the Harvard faculty, the Blue-bloody Ribbon Committee, the Congressional Record. Each Word is another brick in the Wall. Words are no more vehicles of "thinking" or "expression" than they are obstacles to thought and feeling. Words are more Are than the linguists admit. The Language has much more to do with Singing, with being able to "go on" after a death, with moving into Imaginary Worlds, with the disposition of "a" on the XYZ dimensional grid, with foreplay. The Words just Are. There was the Beginning of them, and the painting of them on skull-caves, and the elaboration of them in giant Guilt-tiles we sew together in color and in designs and in patterns we can explain we do not know why.

Language has a lot to do with us. The television of it is an insult to your residual intelligence and my hopeful dreams. The radio of it falls on my head and suddenly the gravity of words motivates a thousand Newton you's to devote all of them/yourselves to algorithmic mad math-ness, to "prove" the core, to score the more and worry the less. The computering of words is the General Rule that proves the exceptionals, the purple people-eating hypothemus, the death of understanding and long-live understanding!

Eat my syllables. Got milk? Eat in rememberance of milk. The language you learned at the nipple, hoping for more.

Hegelian Dialectics, where is it when we need it?

What I loved about Hegel (1770) was the understanding that opposites are not merely "attractive" or repellent; opposites are generators: They create new things. This creativity is what makes a conversation fun, as opposed to simply a dialogue of replayed tapes and recitations of tiresome details. The "thesis" -- what one person says, anything -- leads to "anti-thesis" there is always the "other" thing -- and then as it swings back to the thesis, there is that new thing SYNTHESIS.

For Hegel, the conversation was about sin and salvation, earth and heaven, church and state, finite and infinite. The emphasis of Jesus on love as the chief virtue was because love can bring about the marriage of opposites. Love aids the conversation, the charism for A and B, for their co-existence, is what brings C into play. Bring it.

The Hegelian dialectic, in which human progress is generated by the meeting of opposites, has almost been forgotten. Synthesizing dynamics barely survived the stormy unilateralism, intolerance, and virulence of the Nazi/Communist Party. Where Hegel argued that each political movement is imperfect and therefore gives rise to a counter-movement, which, if it takes control, is also imperfect and therefore gives rise to yet another counter-movement, and so on to infinity, what actually occurred was imperfection locked into its errors -- because imperfections did not "give rise" to an effective means of balancing.

Where has the "conversation" gone? People speak in one-liners, and devote themselves to their things, telling us about the Stuff....Where is the dialogue upon which Civilization depends? Gone to gamers, gone to extremists.

Haleh Esfandiari, imprisoned in Tehran's Evin torture block

Since May 8, 2007, Haleh Esfandiari has been held in Section 209 of Tehran's prison for political prisoners. Esfandiari is a scholar, affiliated with the Wilson Center. The Center is not only not an arm of the United States or any government, it is remarkably hostile to the present administration. Esfandiari is herself a grandmother and was in Iran visiting her 93 year old mother. For the government of Iran to accuse her of "spying", in the absence of any motive, opportunity, benefit, or evidence, is not merely criminal. It is "proof" that there is No God, that these thugs in Tehran are not Believers, and any one who authorizes the interrogations of grandmothers is not a religious by any definition. These men are not motivated by spiritual values. Her interrogators could not possibly have any genuine "religious" beliefs.

I can but be reminded of the fact that Mata Hari was accused of "spying" by another group of thugs claiming to be pious. In France, when things were not going well on the war front, some religious fanatics went after Mata Hari, an independent woman who had introduced Middle Eastern "belly dancing" to the corsetted and bustled society of Paris. Ironically, with no evidence against her other than that she loved men and women, she was executed by firing squad as the World War began taking its pointless toll. There was never any evidence of espionage on her part, and few women in Europe were LESS conspicuous than this theatrical performer.

Now the "Ministry of Intelligence" in Iran goes after another independent woman. Apparently, war mongers find it convenient to go after UNARMED WOMEN. The Ayatollah claims to find some justification in the Quoran for doing the worst things to an unarmed grandmother? They have insured the immortality of this great martyr to truth, the scholar, the seeker of evidence and truth, who could have served as a great bridge of understanding between civilizations. Tney put her in a filthy prison.

Tenacity and Success?

This is another pathetic belief, which is peculiar in its "hold", the way it is repeated, and which is demonstrably wrong: If you want success, just keep at it; there are smart, talented, resourceful failures, but even without intelligence, talent, or good looks if you just have tenacity...you will succeed!

Tenacity. Sure. I know dozens of people living in poverty, whose lives are abject failures, and there they are still clinging "tenaciously" at it. What part of this is the "success" part?

Some People are never lost, never not Home

This is one of the odd and most consistent things my father taught me just by the way he lived: He was always never "lost", and never "not home". It was not just Not Planning. He would plan. He would have objectives. But he was never single-minded about it. I would be on a Quest, looking for something important, and he would just be looking. And there would be something offered, something half-full that he would fill, and then there it was, overflowing.

Civil Rights and Duties

One of the universal values--expressed in virtually all mature cultures--is the Basic Right to "do as you please" so long as what you do does not cause harm to others. What is curiously defended against, however, is any respect for the Basic Duty, which is, to take responsibility for what you do.

How many institutions, how many officials, how many "corporations" are doing this?

Mata Hari's Dance, old Flamenco, new Lumbres and Alegrias

This is the 100th anniversary of Mata Hari's execution in 1917. Under her married name, she is the most famous of the MacLeods, and although well-known, completely unsung and misunderstood.

The MacLeods were a Scots clan that pretty much annihilated the Keys, a sept of the McKay clan, but by some oversight, they missed my progenitors on that branch of the tree. Still, I remember all MacLeods, with a kind of gratitude that they have calmed down considerably. And Mata Hari is simply one of the greats.

And this comes up opportunely in 2007, with the first biography I have seen of her. Pat Shipman authored a significant Biography of our dearest MacLeod, known to us by her stage name, "Mata Hari". [Shipman, Femme Fatale; Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari]. Born in Holland in 1876, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle married Rudolf Macleod, an army officer stationed in Indonesia. She eventually returned to the Netherlands, divorced, and penniless, sought the attention of wealthy men. With an instinct "for what would succeed", she developed a series of "sacred dances" ostensibly learned in the Indies. The Malay phrase she adopted as her name, means "the eye of the day", or "sunrise".

As World War I broke out, the Belle Epoch tied off, and it got hard for a dancing lady to earn a living. She was approached by French and German diplomats, all males, with advances in cash and kind. Eventually she was hounded mercilessly by a French double agent, Georges Ladoux--he was himself playing both sides--and prosecuted for spying, although the evidence was completely based on her supposed "immorality", her transparently eager willingness and patent ability to drain men of their bodily fluids. Her skills had really nothing to do with espionage, and it is difficult to imagine a lady less likely to be able to go un-noticed than Mata Hari.

She was imprisoned in the filth of the prison at Saint-Lazare until her execution by firing squad in 1917. And this is but another example of a miscarriage of justice in the magistrate system under the Napoleonic Code; see also Dreyfus. Preconception and scapegoating, religious piety, the need to do "something" when another thing--the War--is not doing well, all tainted the pretense of a trial.

Now, about the dancing....!

The costume alone, of course, was worth the price of admission: Beautiful brunette in a shining metal bra, spangly tiara, and transparent veils. We have no choreographic descriptions although the men who watched her have related fairly specific bits. Their journals were set atremble by the intoxicating mixture of exotic music, striptease, and veiled anatomy. These accounts, all by men, "are a hoot" in their way, but we have no way of reconstituting the dances. Nejla Y. Yatkin is one professional who does a great contemporary depiction.

I want to suggest something more. The descriptions of the rhythms--from slow liquid gestures to swirling and shaking--are in many forms of dance. However, it is hard for me not to think of Romani women and small flamenco performances. First of all, the performance itself was a series of alegrias, with taranto stylings, at one with the music, sumptouous. From her poverty in the Spanish portions of the Netherlands, and in Europe, there would be exposure to the Gypsy solo dances. And the veils? This is not really a "sacred" or traditional element in Indonesian dance. It is moorish, Arabesque, belly-dancing. She provided content to the interest Europeans had in the Middle Eastern cultures -- with veiled women.

It is documented then (!): Mata Hari drew from the nyai traditions of Malaysian mistresses, gypsy performers, and Middle-eastern exoticism, to capture an audience.

Sabotage and Terrorism

Suppose a terrorist decides to blow something up. Say a bridge, or a building that took years to build. And he blows it up and people get injured. He would be culpable. We would not hesitate to hunt him down and hold him responsible.

Suppose a terrorist runs for Congress. And he gets elected by promising to reduce taxes and the size of Government. However, instead of reducing the size of Government, he actually reduces its regulatory functions but increases its budget. He votes so as to cut funding for the repair and maintenance of a bridge, or a building. But he increases taxes and redirects tax money into the coffers of a "capitalist" company to do nothing at great public expense. (I have to put quotation marks around ANY "private enterprise" company which is set up to take money from the Government, because any company that takes public money while pretending to be engaged in private enterprise, is a scam.)

For example, say the company operated as a "power broker" like Enron--whose "service" did nothing but increase the cost of electricity without providing any other value or producing any product whatsoever. Or like one of VP Cheney's multi-national corporations. Halliburton buys fuel oil in Iraq and sells it to the US military for more than twice as much as fuel oil costs anyone else in Iraq--another company that actually offers no service and produces no product except to expense the Government.

Anyway, your terrorist Congressman, dismantles the infrastructure of this country, each Government Department at a time, by defunding the regulators. No one inspects the bridge, no one repairs the bridge....and because of Entropy, and because earthquakes, floods and droughts occasionally do occur, pretty soon the bridge just collapses. Or buildings burn down, or for lack of Air conditioning or plumbing repairs, it just becomes unusable.

Now, are we going to hunt down this terrorist? Hold him responsible for his deliberate acts? Can we fix blame and responsibility for his Votes, his grip on our Public Purse Strings? Hunt him down and hold him responsible. Hold his "leaders" responsible. Hold his voting machines responsible?

One after another of the Bush appointees have been found to be incompetent at best, and deliberately predatory in benefiting themselves at public expense. The fact that Kenneth Lay was not only the founder of Enron but a long-time family friend of the Bushes reveals the complicity of Bush in terrorism. Another one of President Bush's relationships is with a billionaire Saudi Prince. These relationship reveal the scale of Bush's complicity with predators. It is true that the Saudi royals and the Lays are not "suicide bombers", but they are effectively WORSE in terms of the billion-dollar damage they have caused.

Road Kill -1.2 million - the facts of vehicular slaughter and maiming

Why are people willing to spend trillions of dollars and years of "waiting" at airports and court houses waiting to pass through "weapon" inspections, when it is thousands of times more likely that any one of us will be killed or maimed by a car than by a terrorist? Each year since 9/11/01, more pedestrians have been killed in cross-walks than in the entire death toll in the buildings attacked by terrorists.

There are Islamic Arabs all over the world. Many of them drive cars and trucks. As drivers, they are thousands of times more likely to kill and maim, than as "jihadists" or bombers. Put another way, America IS under attack, but not from Arabs. The world is under assault from manufacturers. From drivers.

Let's look at the actual numbers:

UNITED STATES - TRAFFIC DEATHS. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 42,642 Americans DIED in traffic accidents in 2006. (NHTSA was de-funded by the Bush Administration and placed in the hands of appointees with no expertise, so the numbers must be considered extremely "conservative" and unreliable on the low side.)

GLOBAL - TRAFFIC DEATHS. Traffic deaths are the fastest-rising cause of death in the world, in every nation, and exceed 1 million per year for the last 5 years. By comparison, last year's combat deaths have been estimated at 100,000. Roadways pose a greater danger to human beings than war.

VEHICLES AND RAILROAD CROSSINGS. In America, a train collides with a vehicle every two hours. It is never pretty. In 1996, there were 415 deaths and 1554 serious injuries. The average victims were sober, driving within 25 miles of their homes. Since 2004, there has been almost no "infrastructure" improvement, and the crossings are worse than ever, with more traffic exposures.

VEHICLE MILES. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in the last three years, vehicular travel has increased 170% in the last three decades in America. (The EPA was de-funded by the Bush Administration and placed in the hands of appointees with no expertise, therefore the figures should be regarded as extremely conservative.) Mobility is clearly linked to prosperity, productivity, and even freedom. However, this is not true of the vehicle mile increase in the last 6 years, during which America has suffered decreased prosperity, less vacation time, reduced productivity, and less freedom.

FATALITIES PER MILE. Curiously, in spite of dramatic improvements in vehicle safety engineering--anti-lock brakes, air bags, impact engineering, inclined roadbeds--casualties per mile traveled have not significantly fallen. (Note, fatalities are slightly decreased, but injuries have actually increased.) It appears that cell phone usage and other driver distractions have increased. In addition, the horsepower has dramatically increased. Twenty years ago the average consumer vehicle had 119 "under the hood". Now, almost doubled, to 210 horsepower. The Porsche Cayenne SUV has 520 horsepower. The 2008 Toyota Camry with 268 horsepower does zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, equivalent to the acceleration of a racing Corvette of a generation ago. Thus, we are STILL killing and maiming people at the same pandemic rate in spite of the additional and extraordinary "safety" features.

THE MYTH OF PROSPERITY AND PRODUCTIVITY. The transportation-industrial complex dominates the lion's share of advertising, and is an important contributor to the diversification and prosperity of the world. This complex, consisting of vehicle manufacturers, roadway builders, fuels, and insurance, is also a major lobbying power. Government regulators are run by appointees of the Executive branch which has de-funded and marginalized scientific expertise across the board. Just as significantly, the complex is responsible for suppressing the facts, and promulgating distortions--for example the myth that lax regulation of transportation contributes to prosperity.

It is of course true that mobility and transport are critical to prosperity. However, it is criminal to make decisions based on only partial truths. The fact is, Medical Treatment costs have sky-rocketed. Why? More people need more care, because THEY ARE INJURED. 2.6 million Americans were injured in traffic crashes in 2006. JUST IN ONE YEAR. Many of them suffered spinal injuries which leave them in chronic pain for decades.

I was rear-ended three times in a three-year period, and I have never recovered. I live in constant pain. And my "productivity" rapidly declined, although I continue to work and appear presentable. My pain is not in any statistics. The fact that I am producing 1/10th what I used to before the accidents is not going to influence the policy of studied indifference to 2.6 million injuries per year. And the traffic deaths-- 1.2 million in the world, annually.

The suggestion that the "convenience" of taking a car to pick up groceries should include a statistically significant risk of death and maiming is insane. If I hear anyone suggest that the pain is worth twice the horsepower I will ever need, or that our nation is prosperous because it ignores traffic casualties, I am very likely going to physical with that person.

At the least I will leap up and breathe into their nostrils--and tell them that whiplash is contagious. Well, it isn't really. And I would not wish debilitating whiplash pain on anyone. Still, it might help my chronic pain to get the message out.

Nazi Gold

According to a report released by the US government in December 1997, less than 20% of the gold looted by the Nazis across Europe and placed into officially "neutral" national banks has ever been returned. Nazi officers and German government agents deposited GOLD (not including cash) into national banks in Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. Those countries' banks STILL HAVE THE GOLD.

In addition, Switzerland only recently reports that it has $475 million worth of GOLD which was removed from other countries and deposited in Swiss banks during the war. $132 million was removed from occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia, and $146 million from Jews. Argentina is also reported to have Nazi Gold, all of which it has kept.

The Report was presented to the 41-nation conference on Nazi gold, giving figures FOR THE FIRST TIME.

In a separate revelation about the origin of the looted Gold, as a result of recent investigations begun by the World Jewish Congress, newly-discovered documents now confirm that 60 tons of gold were stolen from the Jews. Does it seem just crazy that no one went after these records earlier? And that even now, only Jews themselves, the disenfranchised victims, have to put the investigation together?

To put this in perspective (?), the Allies recovered 337 tons of plundered gold, and returned all but 5.5 tons to the Central Banks of the respective countries from which the removals were traced. None of this gold went back to any individuals, although significant amounts were looted from "private persons" [Jews].

Negotiations with the "neutral" countries continue--and they continue holding over $170 million in looted gold.

These are "GOLD" figures. Not cash, or the cash from the sale proceeds raised by the Nazis when they sold the property confiscated from millions of people. Where did the cash go?

Reward for Killing Taslima Nasrin is $2400

What is wrong with True Believers? Today, clerics in eastern India offered a cash reward of 100,000 rupees ($2,400) to anyone who murders TASLIMA NASRIN. This is really appealing to easy money greed, since the beautiful TASLIMA is an unarmed helpless woman without guards, army or police protection. She does not even have a political protector or the aegis of the Press. The Death Warrant is also money-grubbing on the part of the mosques, since her life is worth, frankly, millions.

TASLIMA is a writer. Novels, little stories. The novels barely touch upon any "religious" criticism. She certainly does not criticize clerics with the passion exercised by Mohammed against pretenders. Her life is worth more than Bin Laden. If the clerics seriously want to appeal to money greed, and they clearly are, surely there are a thousand money-grubbing clerics to kill a thousand Bin Laden's for the $50 million dollar reward, before even one would kill TASLIMA. They should offer at least $100 million to kill an unarmed woman.

What decent self-respecting warrior would kill an unarmed woman for less? Especially when a righteous warrior would be willing to fight honorably against a formidable and dangerous opponent for free?

I can just see the expression on the faces of the brave jihadists in heaven. And their astonishment when they come across this woman-killer among the peerage of valiant Warriors: "Ah, here is Hussein who killed the Great Devil. And Saladin, lived for years in combat against hordes of heavily-armed Crusaders. Yes. Oh, and you? What? You murdered an unarmed woman who was writing stories? For Money? Well, was it for a Lot of Money? No? Just 100,000 rupees! [Big Pause.] Do you know how that makes US look? Do you think that the Great Warriors of Heaven are assassins of women for money?"

Clearly some of the Mullahs are so deeply depraved, so caught up in hatred, they cannot be trusted to understand their own instincts. Their greed, their hysteria, their wild jeering at a person who has done them no harm, and is harmless, their need for a scapegoat in the crisis of their own management of the mosques....

The life of one TASLIMA NASRIN is worth so much more. Alive or dead, for she will never die. Never. Never. She has already entered into the pantheon. She is not threatening the clerics, not with stones or guns. She has terrified them with understanding and courage.

Lonely, Un-tethered, Un-loved, as a waste of...Freedom

I seem to be surrounded by people living productive lives with warm and loving families. They really ARE thriving, although few are "ambitious" or striving. They "struggle" with minor ailments, chores, and even relationships, schedules, and occasional death. But the natives are remarkably happy. These are cheerful and helpful people. They are prepared for their lives.

Still, there is that low-level depression, some of them, only some, seem to suffer. And they do not seem to know exactly Why. In an entertainment age, they seem a bit bored. Is there almost a "waste" of Freedom here? People have it "for granted", and do not feel engaged in the urgency of its preservation?

Seeing sadness fills me with empathy and great concern. I get edgy. When I see suffering it makes me really really edgy. Every suffering person is a canary in the mine. This is Our Mine.

Fortunately, my wife and most of our family friends and neighbors do not seem to mind having an "edgy" guy in town. I am just grateful that the Inquisition and Party Members have calmed down and I do not have to fend off packs of Red Guards, wolves, lynch-parties or witch-burning villagers. Real grateful.

The Two Solutions to Political Conflict

Offering "peace" or "justice" is never a Political Solution, where a conflict is in play. All sides are always in favor of general ideals, which have universal appeal. The Nazis and Saddam Hussein constantly invoked Justice, and Pol Pot made a "theme" of Peace, a leitmotif of the Killing Fields.

Conflicts tend to break down into two competing strategies, both equally available to all sides: Unity and Partition. All sides will invoke both strategies. Both sides attempt to "unify" enough people to prevail, and to "separate" themselves from those they want to be seen as fighting.

It turns out as a matter of genes, "personality" profiles, and even "culture", a person will have more in common with a large segment of the population in any part of the world, than with his or her immediate neighboring group. In other words, if you take a statistically significant group of people out of ANY fighting element, many of the individuals will have MORE IN COMMON with their assigned "enemies" than with their designated fellow-combatants.

This is why UNITY almost always makes the most "scientific" sense. However, where there is injustice, there is always the tendency to revolt, and this leads to revolution, the "separation" dynamic. For people to be free, they must free themselves FROM a coersed "unity".

In spite of the fact that the "groups" overlap, Partition remains a vital strategy, and in the absence of a political opportunity for participation of a minority group in the Unity, it should be recommended. Partition was used by European colonial powers in 1920 in Ireland, in South Asia in 1947, in Palestine in 1948, in Cyprus in 1974, and in the Balkans in the 1990's. Should it be used in Iraq? Sudan? Chechnya? Montana?

Holy City of Karbala, Ashura festival

As many as 2 million mostly men gathered in Karkala, south of Bagdad, just last March. They shared cell-phone and TV images of themselves, flagellating their modestly-exposed shoulders, heads, and backs with bundles of chain "zangeel", and cutting into their heads and necks, to mourn the 7th century defeat and killing of Hussein during Islam's civil war of the 7th century. The grandson of Muhammad PBUH was pushed aside by the lords of Mecca and Medina. But what is the meaning of the Ashura today? The Golden Mosque in Samarra was destroyed by Al Quada militants in February 2006. Al Quada is Sunni. Now the devotees are shouting KUL YOM ASDHURA! KUL ARD KARBAL! "Every day is Ashura! All land is Karbala!"

Americans seem to keep wondering when the Iraqis will "step up" to fight for their country. This is a terrible question. Iraqis are already fighting, bravely, thoughtfully. And savagely. They are imbedded in a history which is not taking prisoners.

The Bush-Cheney-Rove trinity will be forgiven by the merciful Arabs and the remarkably civilized Persians long before they will ever be forgiven by "religious" Americans. No follower of Jesus Christ is permitted to lie, much less to harm so many innocent people pretending to fight enemies who are in fact unscathed and strengthened. In other words, no follower of Christ would invoke Christs' name as a cover up or excuse for stupidity and greed. Bush could not "lead" a penitent to a wailing wall. Even one Word, a single Zangeel of remorse and humility, even one step toward a pilgrimage of peace, would help.

Animals not in the Ark: griffin, basilisk, unicorn

Unforgivable. Noah was clearly commissioned by God to float the progenitors of ALL forms of life out of harm's way. Why did Noah-thinks-he's-God turn away the majestic griffin, the intense basilisk, and the graceful unicorn? What was he thinking when he refused them entry, and let in the flies? The mosquitoes? The chiggers. The fire-ants. Ticks! Now it is reported that bed-bugs are making a big come-back. If only Noah had not taken the trouble to furnish nasty little compartments in the Arc for blood-suckers!

Give someone a fast blog; someone willing to go into harm's way....

John Paul Jones went to the Continental Congress--which was meeting in black sessions under cover of night and secrecy, with his ragged commodore hat in hand, with a plan to break the blockade imposed by the Royal Navy. The illegal body was moved to provide funds to outfit a clipper ship by these words: "Give me a fast ship. For I intend to go into harm's way!"

Someone needs to go into the face of pirates, of tyrants, of fear itself. The thing that gives me the most fear is that we are surrounded by the craven quaking paltry fear -mongered alarmists on the one hand, and the be-numbed sleeping short-termers on the other, and so very few, so few are stepping up to the plate of responsibility, the launching wharf, asking for a fast ship!

We are far more likely to be slain by ignorance as by any other means -- dysentery from bad water, vehicles that should never be built, diseases ramping up in over-crowded cities -- more are killed and maimed by these than by wars and terrorism.

"The law" pretends to be what it is not.

At all levels of adjudication, the judge tries to appear as a "standard bearer" or even the "servant of law", as if his or her discretion was bound by its letter. Rule of Law is often presented as the alternative to a Tyrant's Will. In fact, however, the "rule of law" is not well understood. Like "justice" it is a concept that all sides invoke, simultaneously and from conflicting interests. There is universal and profound ignorance of "The Law", an abstraction, no matter how lengthy its recitation.

And if a Rule appears to apply, it has subjective exceptions which can, and often should, swallow it up. For example, there is the principle that the specific rule "prevails" over the general expression -- which is an admission that the law is swiss cheese. Semantically, words have no objective meaning - not a single word can survive deconstruction, and nor can the law.

In addition, judges are keenly aware of the maxim that "the spirit prevails over the letter" of the law, which is another way ultimately giving sway to the subjective will of the judge over any possible theoretical objectivity in the realm of semantics.

And of course, one is always left wondering what the Legislative Law-maker intended in the first place? Where lobbyists write most of our laws, where many of the laws are simply reactions to extreme cases of abuse, where there is No Lobby willing to fund objectivity, order, common sense, and "public good" where factions write the rules.

However, there are a number of institutional self-correcting mechanisms "at work" in the legal system. One is the Separation of Powers, the "independence" of the judiciary from legislative and executive power. Another is the "due process" cluster of rights in which the conflict is ventilated by professional advocates with Notice and Opportunity to respond to each other; this creates a kind of "record" or precedence which give validity to the derivative decision.

Finally, there is the concept of EPIKEIA, which dates back to Classical Greece. This is rooted in fairness -- whatever the law says, its application must go beyond mere policing its margins, or automatically spitting out a result. Epikeia commands the consideration of application: In addition to the letter of the law, the executive police work, the matching up of the facts of the case to the laws which "apply", the Epikeian Step requires consideration of the result in the particular case in its possibly unique circumstances. Without throwing out or amending the law, is it sensible and fair to apply it to the parties before the court now?

Modern courts, however, are paralyzed by the accusation of "subjectivity" -- most judges want to hide the political facts of their appointment, the lack of merit in the "choice" made in seating them. They are sensitive, after all, to the mystery of how they ended up in such a seat of power; they understandably do not invite scrutiny into that example of a process of "application". Judges cling to the appearance -- and it is pure fiction -- of "objectivity". Now, Judges rarely discuss "fairness". Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of the last great judges to test the outcome against this segment of the franchise of the court. He understood the Epikeian burden, the importance of that pause before application of the Rule, to ask if it works appropriately in the particular case.

Just as Plato wrote that "Without an Absolute, the particulars are meaningless" -- and 2500 years of philosophy is the footnote consequence, and the phenomenon of angst is as fresh today as then-- so is every judgment meaningless without Justice.

Without an Absolute...footnote 43: A. Personal attachments, B. Dreams, C. Beauty

The Platonic Particulars are Meaningless. And there is not a Moment to Lose.

People with time--never too much, tirelessly infinite--on their hands are necessarily confronted with the meaninglessness of their lives. Not life in general, but in particular. We draw three solutions from what others have found:

A. PERSONAL ATTACHMENTS. As gentle as starlight, the twinkling of a hot ball at far remove, there is the comfort of personal attachments. We may be born alone, sharing no limbs, no organs, or even undertanding, and yet, there is no one and nothing "complete". Everything is incomplete. Even Unity is undone. So your life has meaning in its exile from the womb, from its being part of that partition, that multiplication off the introduction of sperm and egg, that contact. And contact continues. As gentle as starlight, however great the remove.

B. DREAMS. The meaning is not only in the twinkling massage of starlight. The consciousness goes to sleep and awakens to its Dreams -- and why is this? Why is Dreaming happening? The meaning of life is bundled with the exilic mass, and sits astride the saddle of the corpus colosum, as a headless horseman holding his head, holding in his hands the meaning of his ride. In our sleep, we work out the route of our purposes. In the tidal cycle of sleep and awakening, one draws out the other, which pushes in turn. This is the hall of mirrors bespoken by poets, the reflection of of the push to pull virtual to virtual, sleep/awakening. The meaning is in the rising and falling, in the reflection of the cycle on itself.

C. BEAUTY. And why does the imagination have the ability, the desire, to appreciate moments of beauty, often so fleeting? The Inuit family trapped in the dark privations of winter, minutes from death, will resort to Art - from child-like giggle songs, to story-told scrimshandering. Beauty is a refuge in difficult times. And so the explanation for the phenomenal impulse of wealthy people to pay millions to other wealthy people to acquire mosaics made by slaves (the Greek decorations displayed in the nonpareil Roman ugly Getty Villa) and the stretched and colored canvas of poverty-ridden painters (Van Gogh). How can beauty be bought? And its accumulation is so mandatory for the powerful, not because they can, for they cannot, but because they must, for they are not living without it.

IT - can we plug historical data into algorithms to predict future?

Software developers have long been offering "tools" for a broad range of issues. For example, we are offered programs which prepare taxes, assure compliance with regulations, route shipments, or even predict outcomes given different scenarios.

The Government (Bush administration) now claims it has software that can even predict terrorist strikes. In 2004, the Government Accountability Office revealed that our Administration was running over 199 "data mining projects", many of which involved private sector information provided by private aggregators. The National Security Agency has amassed a database upon which it supposedly performs pattern-based analyses to hunt for terrorists.

There is no doubt among the marketing cognicenti that mathematical algorithms can identify trends and patterns of consumer shopping habits. In addition, IT experts can match voter proclivities, and even reveal financial fraud and crime. However, can running algorithms through consumer data predict where a terrorist strike will occur? Of course not. The NSA is using an enormously expensive tool -- data mining of every citizen's private data -- which will never provide the results needed. The people supposedly assigned to "hunt terrorists" are now sidelined in unproductive but almost infinitely time-consuming endeavors.

Specifically, instead of learning Arabic or interviewing Bin Laden's relatives, huge truckloads of numbers are being "analyzed" for patterns that will never reveal who will hit what target with what type of destruction. The NSA does not need to analyze the phone calls of 300 million Americans, for any reason, ever. The fact that they admit they are doing so is an admission that they have lost their way. They need to analyze the phone calls of a few thousand "fund-raising" religious fanatics -- and again, they HAVE to learn Arabic. The fact that the Government has populated its database with information about every citizen in the United States, and is not accountable for what it is doing, raises serious concerns about "abuse of power".

Remember how Nixon compiled Tax Information concerning his "enemies". What precautions have been taken to prevent private information from being used by people in positions of power to harass their personal "enemies"? Has Rowe used the "data-mining" to compromise his enemies -- by threatening to disclose the fact that they have visited Porn Sites, etc. What safeguards against manipulation of IT by people in power are in place? Do you think Rowe has any kind of restraint that prevents him from using Consumer Information against Senators who might otherwise be troublesome if they spoke out?

As a matter of fact, Why is the Senate so silent? Recall that when Hoover took over the FBI, we now know that he maintained "files" on all of his enemies, and collected information to compromise them. He went so far as to plant "communist" agitators in Martin Luther King Jr.'s churches, and then accuse MLKJ of being a communist! Did any Senator or Congressman question Hoover's budget? There were Journalists who spoke out, only to be suppressed -- they lost their jobs, because their Editors were threatened.

There is virtually no institutional criticism from any person in any part of our Government who is questioning why we are spending billions of dollars probing into the private information of citizens, while Al Quada is still actively and successfully training terrorists all over the world. The CIA has not bothered to learn Arabic or engage the Mullahs on the subject of what the Quoran does nor does not say! All over the world, people are cheering Bin Laden -- while we seem to have elected a President who is incapable of understanding, much less directing, actions appropriate to the circumstances.

I have to go farther: Does it not appear true that the Terrorists who are penetrating our "soft" and exposed parts with the most potent and portentious threats to our safety and security are not Arabs, or Islamicists? Those people seem to be largely occupied with their own problems. The Arab warrior, blessings upon him, is a model of restraint, fairly and openly expressing himself and his intentions. The Islamicist, assuming some have read the text, is living for a hereafter, and the Quoran specifically proscribes suicide, homosexuality, and killing of innocents. Clearly the world has little to fear from Arabs or Islamicists as a whole -- a few idiots aside, who can be found in every region and under every Religion.

The group which can clearly be seen actively grabbing our stuff, and threatening our future, is the cadre gathered about the person of George W. Bush. The waste is criminal, but there is more going on than mere "waste of public resources". There is a deliberate plunder -- the billions going into "IT" is simply pouring into the coffers of these pirates -- there is simply no expectation that "analysis" of consumer data will ever pin-point a terrorist strike. The billions are being spent to enrich the Bush family, the secret Cheney corporations, and the "legacy" institutions set up to provide for Rowe and his minions.

Parable of the Pounds, with Slaying for Jesus

Did Jesus exhort his followers to kill his enemies? On his way for the last time to Jerusalem, Jesus tells the Parable of the Pounds. This message is broadly delivered to the crowd, not just to Zacchaeus, his host. The wisdom character in the story -- and it is clear that it is not Jesus, but this King in his parable -- says "As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me!" [RSVP, Luke 19:27; in Phillips, "execute them in my presence"; in NEB "slaughter". Clearly it is physical, murderous, without a tribunal, and personal.]

First, we should note that this murdering bit is unique to Luke, and not any of the other Gospel authors who tell the same story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, with all which that implies.

The ending verse appears to have no relationship to the somewhat strange "Parable of the Pounds" which Jesus has just related to people who were hanging upon his every word. Remember that this parable of the pounds, given to us only by Luke, is similar to the parable of the talents related by Matthew--25:14-30. Some scholars think that Luke combined the Matthew story with another involving gaining of a kingdom. In any event neither of the related parables, nor this synthesis, seem to need to have anyone getting slaughtered, and the risk appears unrelated to the matters at stake--talents and pounds (equivalent to the Greco-Syrian mina, or about 100 drachmas, worth 20-35 dollars).

I cannot help but mention that Christian scholars for the most part simply ignore the last verse. (Harpers' Bible Commentary 1037). Perhaps during wildly retributive episodes in the past, the good Church Fathers dearly invoked this instruction. But lately, Christians have calmed down. Not much slaying, in spite of what Jesus said.

The next thing Luke turns to in his story of Jesus' final trip to Jerusalem, with all that implies, is stealing a virgin colt for the ride into town. Did we mention going into Jerusalem, with all that implies? The sight of the city moves Jesus to tears. But other than that, it is peace and joy all around. By the time Jesus mounts the colt [in Luke it is a colt, not an ass], the crowd is rejoicing and throwing their clothing down on the ground, as they do, 2 Kings 9:13. Luke does not mention olive or palm branches, but the disciples were raising a great praise, and when Pharisees tell Jesus to rebuke the noise-makers, Jesus assures them that if the disciples were silent, then "the very stones would cry out" [RSV; "burst out cheering" Phillips]. Did we mention Jerusalem? Jesus predicts that the city would be destroyed "and they will leave not one stone upon another in you". Of course Luke is privy to fact that Rome's "final solution" was to enslave all the Jews, force them to dismantle the largest fortified city in the world, and then exile all of them, and rename Judea (the land of Jews), "Palestine".

Did we mention the great entrance into Jerusalem?

My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light.

My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light. July 31, 2007

We live with three laughing cats. Well, smiling cats, not quite laughing. I have not actually heard them chuckle, but it's as close as cat-belly gets. They smile because of Rebecca's jokes and attention to comforting details. Each cat wears two whiskered jewels above their smiling jaws. These jewels are the pigmented choroid coat of their eyes, the iridescent tapetum which gathers the palest scatters of light and communicates its shapes to the relatively enormous medula oblongata of felinity. Of course, with all these collected flickers of light, the cats cannot discern the details next to them. They need to be touched, and to hear the soft mouse-munch bird-flutter kitty-food noises which are of interest to cats. And they need to hear Rebecca's voice in order to make sense of this habitat: The way she loves them and the light.

We visited an aquarium by the sea. Rebecca stood in amazement as she beheld behind glass an armada of jellyfish gently pulsing. Their many eyes were hung on streamers, all keenly observing the details of the dangle, while at the same time gathering the scatters of light under swimming waves. Here were creatures with really no brain at all, but with perfect eyes, and some part of their tented tendrils, the persistent grace part, the hydrozoan direction toward light indifferent to fate and the tides, that part, shared an understanding with Rebecca even without her touch. There was the annointing love of the luminous to which they gently aspire.

My life is shared with Rebecca. With her, even though I am without perfect eyes, and without much light, I am able to make sense of this habitat, and as close as my belly gets, I laugh at fate, and even tides. Even...tides.

Prostitute? Never met one. But I can play a few tunes....

Just got back from a trip to the District of Columbia. There are some excellent jazz clubs and sidewalk cafes. All night. And something occurred to me....

I've been all over the world, and in all but two States of the United States. Never met a "prostitute". Never been solicited. Oh, there were people dressed funny, and a guy looking for money someone else would earn, and there were people who were poor, hungry, and some just lonely and untethered. Many looked afraid, many looked like they needed help. Many had a "knowing" confidence. A few folks asked if I was "looking for a good time". I always was. So were they I suppose, and they moved on. The point is that Prostitution is a haunting, a ghost of flesh. A "sense" of "other women". http://www.drik.net/calendar2k/english/index.html. It is not fair to say it is "reality" -- it is no nowhere.

The "prostitute" is like a unicorn: rare if not entirely fictional. Granted, we push for extremes -- and there is an edge off of which, are places in which, it is impossible to be. Perhaps in a new tide of "stepfjords", or in the middle class suburbs depicted by a "John" Scissorhands, in the courtesanity we seek for balancing lives of disparity, there is this perpetual idea of paying for what we would like to want. The money does not makes it clean, so it is always something the man did not do. The money does not touch the person, so it is always something the woman is not being.

By offering our body orifices to unrelenting gods one at a time we live case by case, losing the theory, swallowing the night monsters seriatim so they go away. Following a trail, our successor covers our own tracks as we leave. Nothing so basic, so unnecessary, so un-eradicable, so common and so improper. We try to live by our instincts, but it is our instincts which try to rise above ourselves: So far, no, but -- this man will be different; this woman will satisfy me. The whip of desire turns into a whingeing complaint, the precation of hope is handed its own head on a platter of certainty as blindness fills the body and displaces the desire itself. Sensation becomes insensate.

There is no "act", no "being", no possibility of hope for consummation, no beginning and no end; hence, no Reality. This is an entire industry built upon the back of unicorns and women who are not "there". The "traffic" of sex is simply more than mere prostitution can ever bear.

The hunting/gathering tribes warring against each other around my childhood were always trying to end up with the "surplus women", the last minute attempt to get some kind of "victory" out of the effort. To get something, to come back with something. As if this part in that part was going to explain the pushing and pulling, the war-path nested in the hostility, caused by the desire, caused by the love.

When the Iroquois finally defeated the Hurons, they had captured so many widowed women, that half their warriors were actually Huron blood. When the Romans exterminated the Sabine men, they returned with Sabine women, and from that moment on, they could never return "home"; all of Rome was doomed to keep conquering, and now they were actually half Sabine when they did it.

There is that begging conversation between the egg and the sperm. You think it is Mind over Matter? The body will participate in this thought: There is the egg-flea, swimming, and the egg is the furred rock, rolling. People thrive by dancing together, rock and roll. Pay the musician, hire the hall. Ladies are free in the fireman's ball.

Getting Back to God the Forgotten Son and wholly irrelevant Spirit

The leadership of this bustly world is involved in many interesting things and most of them have "got it" that there is a connection, and probably a valid one, between their manifest notions of success and money. What is abundantly clear, of course, to anyone with eyes and ears picking up the signals all about, is that the leadership of the entire globe is busy doing things other than what was taught, painstakingly, by The Buddha, Jesus Christ, or Mohammad, to name but three of the "spiritual" leaders who continue to be invoked, and who could not be less relevant to anything that is happening.

Can this be any clearer? No one can miss this. The observation is Fact -- What was taught, the content, by the so-called Spiritual Guides, is now utterly forgotten if it was ever remembered, AT THE TOP. The rest of us, the fumbling masses, the tired and hungry, the lotus-eaters among us, the retired, the spun-dry, whether we "believe" or have Faith, or not, at least we must see that our Leaders, across continents, across cultures and classes, none of them have what could be called any "religious Faith".

An example? You were waiting to hear from George Bush? He has claimed that Jesus Christ, no less, is his "model" and "hero". Yet, in his Presidency, in his decision-making as the "Decisioner", has George Bush performed a single act consistent with The Message of that Messiah? What part of "War" do you not understand?

Bush makes empty claims to a "religious" basis or justification for what he has done. It is impossible that anyone, even he, could "believe" there is any connection however remote or slight between what he has done and what Christ taught.

Another example? Bin Laden, of course. He claims to invoke the Quran, and even more than Bush (who almost never cites the Bible or indicates the slightest familiarity with the Gospel text), often quotes from the Quran. Unfortunately, his "quotes" are often inapt or incorrect. Not a single line of God's guidance delivered to Mohammad justifies suicide, war against unarmed innocents, repression of women, drug-profiteering (opium in Afghanistan!), tribal slaughter among Sunni and Shiite, or even the outright theft from the Jews who were only recently hounded out of their ancient homes to the profit of the Mullahs and other hypocrites after centuries of peaceful and prosperous cohabitation with the descendants of Mohammad from Persia through Babylon all the way to Granada. Jews Greeks Arabs Scythians and other smaller groups lived for Centuries of peace, literally creating a Golden Age presided over by a poetic and Learned Islam which EARNED the laurels upon which the ignorant Wahabi "warriors" now seek to sit.

There is no doubt that Arabs are important people. Not their warriors -- their old men waving weapons. The important Arabs are the engineers. Building the most beautiful cities in the world. They will hang gardens in Babylon once again. Gilgamesh Found.

Wisdom project - Solway's description of something BIG. I like the "larger self" part.

"I settled on a purpose for my life: the survival of wisdom. I always wanted to do something BIG, and this was the biggest anyone could ever do. It meant that not only would I have to become as wise as possible, but I would have to drag other people with me, who are my larger self. The problem was, I had only met one or two people in my whole life who had any genuine interest in truth and wisdom. So my first task was, and still is, to get people to a level where they at least have some respect for reason and truth." - Kevin Solway, http://members.optusnet.com.au/~danrowden/Profiles/kevin.htm

When Power "acts", it creates new realities...

When Bush was first sworn into the Whitehouse, I recall several interviews with staff in which the "new reality" fix was expressed--Karl Rove boasting that they intended to "cause" the future; they moved from mere prediction to creation. David Suskind reported the neo-con nonsequitur:

"When we act, we create our own reality...
We're history's actors...and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do".

Of course, this generative Reality is not new, it has always been the prerogative and responsibility of Power to work and ravel with "reality". What Rove missed is that Reality is a physical "what" without which his sine is non. Even if Reality is a gerund, it is interactive and reflexive. Reality is not just a plastic fundulum of "meaning different things to different people". Reality is not Rove's dog to hunt, and now it is a chicken coming to the home he ruined to roost. Rove was as wrong as those who claim there is a "Jewish Physics" or an "Oriental medicine". Sorry, it's just Physics, or Medicine, or not. Many have taken Rove's words to be merely hubristic. Actually, they show criminal culpability.

The criminal syndicate running the Whitehouse was right about many things, mostly in an ironic fashion. Our present circumstances--our Reality--IS the result of their actions. They did MAKE history, with remarkable speed and thoroughness: When Bush came into office, the US Government had a budget surplus; now, we are faced with a larger debt than all previous administrations combined. When Bush came into office, Americans could travel virtually all over the globe with a fair degree of respect and admiration; now, we are universally despised, our values viewed as "myths", and we hate ourselves. When Bush came into office, Al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan had been bombed (while Republican's Senators screamed "wag the dog"!) and Bin Laden went into hiding; now Al Qaeda is an international franchise of forces striking at will throughout the world which has become its training ground and Bin Laden is one of the most popular and recognizable faces on the planet--an almost Christlike figure (for those who can still stomach irony).

Of course there is more. When Bush came into office, the US Constitution was viable and invoked; now it is irrelevant and moot, and made so by our own Supreme Court. Two other great democracies -- England and Israel -- have been pulled down with America by their loyalty. Desperately-needed land reform in Africa and South America has been institutionally delayed. Genocide is practiced with impunity. Drug companies and so-called "insurance" corporations have destroyed the "health care" system so that poor care has become extraordinarily dear. Manufacturing jobs are outsourced to a degree that has become a national security concern (buying tank and aircraft parts from China). The NYSE is itself propelled into a leveraged buy-out boom in which virtually all companies are takeover targets for "flipping" with cash borrowed from lenders freed of any "regulation" or accounting. The lenders themselves extend "creative" credit to "new homeowners" who cannot afford to repay the loans because the average wage is dropping. Corporate CEO's are making stratospheric salaries unrelated to actual "business" or productivity (as those words are commonly understood). Energy and power utilities have been caught pillaging consumers on a scale never before approached. Government power and assets have been put into the hands of people who have no inkling of "public service", but who do have a robust sense of self-interest.

The point is that Rove was right about "making history". We now have a history of self-defeating greed and overreaching from which recovery is not likely or even possible in the circumscribed space and foreshortened time frame left to us. If it is of any consolation, we who are about to die have the comfort of knowing that at least we did not "elect" Bush to office. Twice. He stole the election. Twice.

Remembering the Planning, Forgetting the Gotten

So often I work with detailed and fairly fast-moving plans involving inter-connected pieces. For example, I need to do A which requires B and C and C requires D and E to complete, and now A has been set aside, and now I need to do X Y Z....Meanwhile, I am hanging onto A in my memory, although it was never done, I am remembering my Plan or intention. Soon enough, that "memory" becomes what I remember. At numerous points, then, I can actually "remember" A, although I never did it. Scarey. Meanwhile, my memory of what actually took place, what actually happened while I was making the over-run Plans, starts dimming. Memories fade quite rapidly as new details and observations take up attention. What I actually "got" out of the whole layered process insofar as it is either unintended or simply superceded, then fades. My work is completely over-run: Even I do not recognize the results of what I do.

The Wit of the Staircase 3

Gottlieb's TNYer review of the Atheists ascension

Not content with reviewing the most important of the post-911 string of best-selling books written by atheists, Anthony Gottlieb [for the love of God!], has also provided historical perspectives, statistical comparisons, and poll data....I summarize:
Since the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamicists on September 11, 2001, Religion has definitively fallen. Not a single saint or revivalist has arisen, from a single cognizable "Religion", with a single publication. The date is significant, however, for creating a publication outbreak for militant atheists throughout the world which had previously been peculiarly silent -- tolerant to the point of complete deference.
In 2004, THE END OF FAITH, by Sam Harris, was on the Times paperback best-seller list for 33 weeks. Then came BREAKING THE SPELL, by the evolutionist Daniel Dennett, and THE GOD DELUSION, by Richard Dawkins, a biologist and Britain's preeminent science writer. In 2006, Harris again entered the virtually un-opposed list, with his LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION. And this year, the nonpareil columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, Christopher Hitchens has published GOD IS NOT GREAT. Gottlieb does not expressly mention this, but there is NO OPPOSITION to the "points" submitted by this triumvirate who have disposed of the virtual reality in which Religion flourishes. Of course, the biology and the economics remain intact.
And the statistics are bizarre. A significant survey in pre-911 2001 found that more than half of the Christians belief "that Jesus sinned" -- a rejection of a central dogma of their own churches. Religious polling is now established as completely untrustworthy or verifiable. Sociologists estimate that only half the Americans who report "regular church attendance" actually do so, and belief in God is almost certain to be a small minority the world over. Curiously, even non-Christians in America responded to a Newsweek poll, telling them that "they too, expected Jesus to return", possibly within the next 50 years. In a Gallup Poll, 83% of Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God, but virtually none of them have a clue what the Bible says. Most respondents do not know who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and almost none can state what point Jesus was trying to make in his last public appearance.
Gottlieb however, is able to "balance" this one-sided onslaught with history and biology -- he himself is writing a book on "nothingness". While the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa maintained apartheit, its priests also protected protestors. While Pope Pius XII appeased the Nazis, many clerics (among the Protestants as well) were almost alone in their condemnation of the thuggery which was permitted by the Intelligentsia, the Universities, the Army, the Courts, and the Political Parties. The Communists seemed just as interested in thuggery as the Nazis. In Latin America and Brazil, the "liberation theology" of the Church, has been important in safeguarding qualities which decidedly would have been lost at the hands of "atheist" conquerors and thugs. While not mentioned by Gottlief, the great work of Las Casas, Sor Juana Inez, and Armentin under the Cross of Christ in previous centuries has been the only formidable obstacle to the Sword of Tyranny. Gottlieb points out that "The idea that people would have been nicer to one another if they had never got religion...is a strange position...For if man is wicked enough to have invented religion...[to suppress others] he is surely wicked enough to have found alternative ways of making mischief." [79b]
Gottlieb points out, with no little irony, that Christians started out as the "atheists" on the scene in the early days of the Christian era. The first surviving anti-Christian polemic consisted largely as an attack on their failure to worship the accepted Gods -- referencing Celsus, ON THE TRUE DOCTRINE, 178 A.D.
Celsus proclaimed the contradictions of a "personal God" who is in fact indifferent to the triumph of wickedness over good. He did not even send his Son to help until long after many terrible things had been happening to really good people -- "Did He not care before?" This student of Plato noted that Socrates had already expressed most of the wisdom supposedly drawn from "biblical" sources, long before Christ. And continuously, ever since Celsus, Christian and Islamic mobs have sought out and destroyed tons of wonderful Pagan and secular texts.
Gottlieb reviews the work of Voltaire, one of the "fiercest critics of superstition" who was in fact a man of deep "religious feeling". The satirical tale, CANDIDE, is an attack on the idea that all is for the best in a world watched over by a concerned God -- the work was inspired by the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon which killed some 30,000 "believers" while worshipping in crumbling cathedrals. However, Voltaire was awed by the ordered beauty of the universe which he thought pointed to a supreme designer, as a watch implies a watch-maker.
Gottlieb sums up not only the systematic ideas, but also the careful presentation style, of David Hume. In the 1779 DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION Hume prized apart the analogy between the natural universe and a designed artifact. He argues that if it is necessary to ask Who made the world, it is also necessary to ask Who made the maker. But while undermining the concept of a God, and of zealotry in general, Hume avoided inflammatory statements, never replacing dogma with intolerance.
Why does Religion persist, when the arguments against Belief have been so widely published for so long a time? Hitchens says it is born of Fear. Harris holds that there is a genuine biology in play, although the creeds are meaningless. Dawkins devotes a chapter, and Dennet most of his book, to a functionalist account of Religion. However frayed, the propensity to Belief is "hard-wired".
Of course, if Belief is hard-wired, what about the large number of Non-Believers? Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College in Claremont, reviewed studies of some 50 countries with varying social pressure to believe or not believe, and puts the figure of Non-Believers at more than 500 million. While Non-Belief in a God may constitute the 4rth largest "persuasion" in the world today, it is also necessary to understand that we still may all be "believers". Looking at this landscape historically, and personally, from country to culture, and from ignorant to educated, the following facts remain clear:

(1) God does not exist.
(2) Everyone believes.

Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of suffering fools with "the intolerant zeal" which offended Hume and Gibbon 300 years ago among the Believers or their detractors known as the Philosophes. Now, the dialogue is conducted with bombs. The Improvised Explosive Devices invariably exact "collateral damage" including the loss of life and limb. Many suffer who were otherwise not interested in the conversation. The zeal which offended Hume is armed, and is not content with killing opponents. We are facing a period in which "ludicrous mammals" [Hitchens] prefer to destroy everything rather than build anything. It is not just that the "argument" is over, or that it will no longer take place. People will always argue. This is the subtle part of that "hard-wired" Belief.

The difference today is that the argument will take place in bunkers instead of gardens. Al Quada is not interested in Virgins. The Taliban is not interested in wine, women, and song -- all major constituent elements of a good conversation. The Shia and Sunni warriors are blowing up each other's communities, starting with the some of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

Of course, the Arabs are under pressure. It is demographic. It is a terrible pressure, to be faced with teenagers everywhere, and more coming. In the past, Rome endured it, the Vikings had it, the Huns went through it, and those tragic people trapped on Isla Pascua almost died from it.

Ultimately, the Arabs will reclaim the bedrock of their civilization, which is, of course, the bedrock of ALL civilized people: Wine, Women and Song! As late as 100 years after Mohammed PBUH, the Arabs were still designing the most beautiful stone, ceramics, mozaics, and fountains in the world. We know archeologically, from the evidence of the ceramics, that the Arabs made wine. We know ideologically, from the text, that neither the Bible, nor the Quran, nor any Hindu Gita, teaches anything about race hatred or bombs.

We find only evidence of the people trying to raise their families and educating their children to have a better life, here, now. Civilization has antedotes to chaos, fear, and ignorance.

Riparian: "By the shores of Gitche Gumee..."

Looking back on a busy life, one can see that certain heuristic events had great "mileage" or impact. For me, the Song of Hiawatha [Longfellow]has a resonance, a pull upon me, beyond anything that can be explained or reasoned out. A child is open to influences one cannot predict, and which may even be arbitrary or contrary.

BY THE SHORES OF GITCHE GUMMEE,
BY THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER,
STOOD THE WIGWAM OF NOKOMIS.

DARK BEHIND IT ROSE THE FOREST,
ROSE THE BLACK AND GLOOMY PINE TREES,
ROSE THE FIRS WITH CONES UPON THEM;
BRIGHT BEFORE IT BEAT THE WATER,
BEAT THE CLEAR AND SUNNY WATER,
BEAT THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER.

Of course, we CAN compare and "explain" post factum.
The poem was my first reading primer. And life is
clearly a desertified jungle, famine-flood, and gitche gummee
with beatings. So many gloomy pines later --
"no quiero acordarme" [Cervantes]-- here I am "Nel mezzo del cammin
di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" [Dante].

Oloudah Equiano - ex-slave whose autobiography detailed horrors of the "Trade"

First of all, the term "Slave Trade" is not appropriate. Very little "exchange" was involved, on anyone's part. The very core of this criminal enterprise was theft and usurpation.

Secondly, we note that the existence of a "2d class" of humanity was and is impossible to justify, on any cognizable "ground" other than criminality -- to take what can be taken from those unable to prevent the taking.

I was amazed to see the name Oloudah Equiano resurrected in the film, AMAZING GRACE (written by Stephen Knight, directed by Michael Apted 2006). Equiano was one of the "disappeared" -- an accurate and brave historian of the facts, who wrote an autobiography detailing the horrors of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. And then , as was done to Frederick Douglas, and countless others, those who stole the lives of those who were enslaved, very successfully deleted the evidence. Almost. Almost.

Is there a single Great Movie about our Founders?

There is no question that the Founders of the United States in the late 1700's were a brave and interesting bunch. Americans seem to recognize this fact, and its significance TO THE WORLD, by buying a huge number of books about the Founders. Does it seem odd, at all, that NOT ONE good movie has been made devoted to the achievements and sacrifices of a single one of the Founders? Methinks it would be huge, if only The Business would take the trouble to make it.

Confessions of a Bottom Feeder

Truth to tell, my reputation is bad. For one thing, this sort of "goes with the territory" for attorneys. We are drawn into conflicts where mud is currency. Even the finest characters find themselves covered with splatter, especially those with courage who are not filled with fear for their precious "reputation" as the fur begins to fly. An "attorney" who has never been savaged, never accused of ANYTHING, has probably done very little, or has never represented anyone in any kind of trouble.

Secondly, I have actually TRIED to get into trouble. I was looking for it. Interestingly, I thought lawyers had a sort of public duty to ferret out the wrong-doers. Not content with helping "victims", someone has to actually PURSUE the wrongdoer, make them accountable. Well...that is not going to go down quietly. Wrongdoers do not hesitate, in fact they are the first, to scream accusations. Oh, how "injured" they pretend to be, how the foulers cry "foul", when caught.

Finally, I STARTED my career by offending, entirely inadvertently, Justice Gardiner's highly-developed sense of self-importance. As the incorporator of the first professional "paralegal" organization in Orange County, my name was brought to his attention, and he has punished me ever since. Even now, decades after "paralegals" have become widely-accepted members of the team across every field of law practice, my name was already "associated" with an ancient impropriety -- something unauthorized THEN, albeit acceptable now.

Others are now able to benefit from the development of a more complex, layered, multi-professional practice using "paralegals". But once Justice Gardiner condemned our efforts, my career became a political football, as other judges seeking Gardiner's approval, caught the short-sighted and baseless hysteria.

As President Wilson said, if you want to make powerful enemies, just try making things better.

Hence, to shorten the long story, the reduction of my practice. From work in the office of the counsel to the President of the United States (Kalmbach's librarian when he counseled Nixon in Newport Beach), I am now picking up the cases which are resting on the bottom. And it is a surprisingly rich flow. There is more here, in the darkness, than ever meets the eye....

Theme: To screed or not to screed; why, why not?

TO NOT WRITE:

1. Great Ones do not write
For example, Jesus, Buddha, Socrates.
The more recent religious leaders who
appear to have written certain texts,
actually have an accepted tradition
to the contrary: Mohammad, Smith.

In Mohammad's case, the Quran was
dictated by him to women who could write.
He said he received the revelations
directly from the angel Gabriel.

In the case of Joseph Smith, the
Book of Mormon (1830) was a compilation of
of many ancient prophets, abridged by a
prophet historian named Mormon,
supplemented by his son Moroni (421 AD),
and revealed to Smith through translation
by two stones (the Urim and Thummim).

2. Look at the numbers. Scholars were already
at their limit in Gutenberg's day. Now, with
miles of books/writings pouring in DAILY...it
is obvious there is no great need for more.
Few can apply knowledge; few have ever
been much improved by reading of morals.
The engine of improvement has been compilations
of Science and How To Books. And it's a
bit late in the day to mark your contribution
to this deluge.

3.

TO WRITE:

1. The small and unaccomplished do not write.
As for the Great Ones who supposedly did not
write, SOMEBODY next to the Great Ones,
DID write. And it is implausible, however
it is preached, that "oral" teachings were
somehow memorized, transcribed, or taken down.
The quality of The Written is remarkable and
invariably worthwhile to someone in some function.

2. It is RELATIVELY SAFE to read and write.
As Chesterton put it:
["The Man Who Was Thursday" (7)].

..."Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read."

3. It is wildly therapeutic; nonpareiled.

4. Writing, with the benefits of speech, but
inside the alpha recording of a Time-Machine which
allows us to Go Back, reflect; in this sense,
it may even be "progressive", enabling one
to reflect on error and improve.

5. It is certainly collegial. You get a "jury"
of comments, many of which are breath-taking
in their insight.

Hope as a Strategy (when ALL is hopeless)

ceteris paribus - all other things being equal - Pandora's Vox

THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF HOPE

Two aspects of "hope"--confidence in one's ability and the
determination to succeed--are powerful predictors of performance in
teams, but determination may play a more important role in success,
according to University of Arkansas education researcher Kathleen
Collins.

Determination is what motivates individuals to use their abilities and
may be a better predictor of success in team settings than individual
levels of confidence, Collins suggests.

In studies of graduate students working in teams, Collins and her
colleagues found that groups with higher determination scores produced
higher quality work. Groups in which individuals were more varied in
their motivation scores had poorer group performances.

"Hope is not just wishful thinking," says Collins. "When we break hope
into its components and look at the senses of motivation and ability to
reach goals, we can predict how well a group will perform." She
concludes that "hope, academic procrastination, and anxiety are
inextricably intertwined in determining achievement among cooperative
learning groups" and recommends future research focusing on "the role
that these and other personality variables play in the cooperative
learning group process."

SOURCE: University of Arkansas,
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/10544.htm

We believe things are Better/ Worse than they are

Our ability to see the world and eachother as it is and we are is much impeded by a kind of "accelerator" within our thinking. We hear what we expect, and we expect bad news and hope for recognition for our efforts. This expectation distorts every noise coming in, and that is just the beginning. Our brain processes exigent information first. Crisis comes in with the most "interest" taken. We run with it before we know what "it" is.

The world is not so bad; of course it is worse. People are good; of course, they are divine.

Library of Congress - the Monster in the Information Room

It was burned twice -- once by the British in 1812, and once by mistake in 1952. The Library of Congress has grown into the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts. This should give anyone who thinks they should write something...at least pauze.

Martin Luther King Jr - the genuine leader

HATE BEGETS HATE

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violaeence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken."

POWER / JUSTICE

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."

From WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?" 1967 address.