SCIENCE’S HUMANISTIC STANDARDS
In the book, Naturalist, by Edward O. Wilson, Wilson describes a colleague’s—Bert Hölldobler—standards for honesty and, in those standards, anyone can see that humanistic science offers standards every bit as rigorous as any moral code based on what kings hand down to their subjects as do religious standards.
“He was a scientist's scientist. He simply loved science as a way of knowing. I believe he would have practiced it without an audience or financial reward. He played no political games. If new data did not fit, he quickly shifted to a new position. He was one of the few scientists I have known actually willing to abandon a hypothesis. He was meticulous about crediting others, quick to praise research when it was original and solid, harsh in his rejection when it was slovenly. The tone of his conversation was explicitly and uncompromisingly ethical, a posture born neither of arrogance nor of self-regard, but from the conviction of his humanistic philosophy that without self-imposed high standards, life loses its meaning.” (p. 303)
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
AUTUMN???????
Strange morning. Cool but will be 80º by afternoon. And I imagined as I drove to Java House that fall had already arrived. The sun seemed bleached out and weak, hazy. Fall's certainly near but not here yet... I hope. Current bathroom reading is Art: a world history. I'll be reading it for a year or more I guess.
Edward Wilson's father was an alcoholic suicide. Wilson, of course, is the author of Naturalist, my current reading. He built up the concept of sociobiology. Wilson's father gave Edward a simple Southern code for life. Of course, these codes are more often honored in their breech rather than in the practice. "Never lie, he told me, never break your word, be always respectful of others and protective of women, and never back down if honor is at stake."
These codes are the reason the South is so full of guilt and shame because no one can live up to such codes imposed from the outside. This code was responsible for Wilson Senior's death if you ask me. Of course, they set the simple, honest man up for the duplicitous man who flaunts the codes in order to get ahead. In Southern churches, the rich leaders of the church team up with the parsons and preachers to dupe the Southern working man. That's why poor Southern men so crazily vote for neocon rich men who will not have a working man's best interests at heart. Until the average Southerner wises up, America will continue to fall behind the rest of the civilized world. You only have to listen to a Republican for a minute and you realize that nothing they believe in will help a struggling family get ahead.
Also, this code of honor is one of the chief reasons that there is so much gun violence in the South. I can no longer recall the book a couple of Southern psychologists wrote in which they identified these codes of honor as being the reason Southern men shoot each other so often. Of course, Southerners do have the highest rates of suicide, poverty and homicide in the country.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
THE ROBOTIC HUMAN THINKING MACHINE
I get a kick out of calling myself a robot in various social situations. Some think I’m joking. Others might be offended, and, as for myself, I don’t know how serious I am, but the evidence continues to mount up that this wonderful reasoning process we humans pride ourselves on is nothing more than an adaptation, an instinct for thinking. Well, if thought is instinctive, how much credit can we take for employing it consciously? If we are not really consciously applying logic and reason, then what does it mean to think? The following is an brief bit of a paper by two evolutionary psychologists which seems to indicate that thinking is instinctive rather than consciously employed. If you can, you should try to get ahold of the entire paper, if not the book in which it appears.
“Taken together, the data showing design specificity, precocious development, cross-cultural universality, and neural dissociability implicate the existence of an evolved, species-typical neurocomputational specialization.
“In short, the neurocognitive system that causes reasoning about social exchange shows evidence of being what Pinker (1994) has called a cognitive instinct: It is complexly organized for solving a well-defined adaptive problem our ancestors faced in the past, it reliably develops in all normal humans, it develops without any conscious effort and in the absence of explicit instruction, it is applied without any conscious awareness of its underlying logic, and it is functionally and neurally distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.” Leda Cosmides and John Tooby in “Neurocognitive Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange,” Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (p. 585)
I get a kick out of calling myself a robot in various social situations. Some think I’m joking. Others might be offended, and, as for myself, I don’t know how serious I am, but the evidence continues to mount up that this wonderful reasoning process we humans pride ourselves on is nothing more than an adaptation, an instinct for thinking. Well, if thought is instinctive, how much credit can we take for employing it consciously? If we are not really consciously applying logic and reason, then what does it mean to think? The following is an brief bit of a paper by two evolutionary psychologists which seems to indicate that thinking is instinctive rather than consciously employed. If you can, you should try to get ahold of the entire paper, if not the book in which it appears.
“Taken together, the data showing design specificity, precocious development, cross-cultural universality, and neural dissociability implicate the existence of an evolved, species-typical neurocomputational specialization.
“In short, the neurocognitive system that causes reasoning about social exchange shows evidence of being what Pinker (1994) has called a cognitive instinct: It is complexly organized for solving a well-defined adaptive problem our ancestors faced in the past, it reliably develops in all normal humans, it develops without any conscious effort and in the absence of explicit instruction, it is applied without any conscious awareness of its underlying logic, and it is functionally and neurally distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.” Leda Cosmides and John Tooby in “Neurocognitive Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange,” Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (p. 585)
Thursday, August 21, 2008
LIES MY TEACHERS TOLD ME
The following sentiment made me recall that book, Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, I mentioned several months back. In summary he pointed out that people with educations have not become liberalized (unlike me). Instead, they become more conservative. So why should Chinese citizens be any different? The passage is from Newsweek (Aug.18-Aug.25), p.31.
“Such sentiments are common on the mainland. But people like Zhang were supposed to be different: he's what Chinese call a hai gui—"sea turtle"—referring to someone who has lived overseas. (The phrase is a pun on haiwai guilai, meaning "returned from overseas.") Their numbers are growing by the tens of thousands every year, and as the sons and daughters of the elite, they have an outsize influence once they move back to China. In the West there's long been an assumption that this cohort would import Western values along with their iPods. They were envisioned as the bridge to a more open, liberal, Western-friendly China.”
ME AND WOODY, ATHEISTS, BUT I’M NOT DEPRESSED
The following passages are lifted from a Newsweek article occasioned by the release of Woody's new film, “Vicky Christian Barcelona”. I recommend it as one of his best. But what do I know? Anyhow, the themes of his life occur even in interviews. But do we really know since all we have is what the interviewer passes on to us?
[SNIP]
Allen says the indifference of the universe has obsessed him since he was a child. "My mother always said I was a very cheerful kid until I was 5 years old, and then I turned gloomy."
He can only attribute that shift to an awareness of death, which he claims to remember from the crib. "Now, maybe I stayed in the crib longer than other kids," he adds, with the well-timed cough of a former stand-up comedian. And there it is, that little spark of wryness, suggesting that the nihilism is just shtik. But it soon becomes apparent that when he says he agrees with Sophocles suggestion that to have never been born may be the greatest boon, he means it.
At 72, he says he still lies awake at night, terrified of the void. He cannot reconcile his strident atheism with his superstition about the banana [superstitious Woody must always cut his morning banana into 7 pieces], but he knows why he makes movies: not because he has any grand statement to offer, but simply to take his mind off the existential horror of being alive. Movies are a great diversion, he says, "because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine."
"Your perception of time changes as you get older, because you see how brief everything is," he says. "You see how meaningless … I don't want to depress you, but it's a meaningless little flicker."
As a filmmaker, he knows that audiences need a respite from the darkness of his vision—he wanted to end "Hannah and Her Sisters" with his character alone, having been dumped by Hannah's sister, but thought viewers wouldn't go for such a bleak conclusion. In real life, however, he believes there are no happy endings. "It's like the beginning of 'Stardust Memories.' The trains all go to the same place," he says. (And no, that place is not "jazz heaven," as a character in that film hopes.) "They all go to the dump."
[PASTE]
The following sentiment made me recall that book, Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, I mentioned several months back. In summary he pointed out that people with educations have not become liberalized (unlike me). Instead, they become more conservative. So why should Chinese citizens be any different? The passage is from Newsweek (Aug.18-Aug.25), p.31.
“Such sentiments are common on the mainland. But people like Zhang were supposed to be different: he's what Chinese call a hai gui—"sea turtle"—referring to someone who has lived overseas. (The phrase is a pun on haiwai guilai, meaning "returned from overseas.") Their numbers are growing by the tens of thousands every year, and as the sons and daughters of the elite, they have an outsize influence once they move back to China. In the West there's long been an assumption that this cohort would import Western values along with their iPods. They were envisioned as the bridge to a more open, liberal, Western-friendly China.”
ME AND WOODY, ATHEISTS, BUT I’M NOT DEPRESSED
The following passages are lifted from a Newsweek article occasioned by the release of Woody's new film, “Vicky Christian Barcelona”. I recommend it as one of his best. But what do I know? Anyhow, the themes of his life occur even in interviews. But do we really know since all we have is what the interviewer passes on to us?
[SNIP]
Allen says the indifference of the universe has obsessed him since he was a child. "My mother always said I was a very cheerful kid until I was 5 years old, and then I turned gloomy."
He can only attribute that shift to an awareness of death, which he claims to remember from the crib. "Now, maybe I stayed in the crib longer than other kids," he adds, with the well-timed cough of a former stand-up comedian. And there it is, that little spark of wryness, suggesting that the nihilism is just shtik. But it soon becomes apparent that when he says he agrees with Sophocles suggestion that to have never been born may be the greatest boon, he means it.
At 72, he says he still lies awake at night, terrified of the void. He cannot reconcile his strident atheism with his superstition about the banana [superstitious Woody must always cut his morning banana into 7 pieces], but he knows why he makes movies: not because he has any grand statement to offer, but simply to take his mind off the existential horror of being alive. Movies are a great diversion, he says, "because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine."
"Your perception of time changes as you get older, because you see how brief everything is," he says. "You see how meaningless … I don't want to depress you, but it's a meaningless little flicker."
As a filmmaker, he knows that audiences need a respite from the darkness of his vision—he wanted to end "Hannah and Her Sisters" with his character alone, having been dumped by Hannah's sister, but thought viewers wouldn't go for such a bleak conclusion. In real life, however, he believes there are no happy endings. "It's like the beginning of 'Stardust Memories.' The trains all go to the same place," he says. (And no, that place is not "jazz heaven," as a character in that film hopes.) "They all go to the dump."
[PASTE]
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
SCIENCE DECAYS IN US
I was reading through an article at ScienceNews.org about possible changes to our standard model of particle physics created by some not too recent observations “at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., from 1989 to 2002” when I came upon the following:
[SNIP]
Studies of the decay of kaons hint at possible flaws in standard model of particle physics.
Physicists had hoped to gather five times as much data, but budget cuts led the Department of Energy to abruptly end the Brookhaven experiment in 2002, Littenberg says. However, if the trend of finding a higher decay rate in this rare mode continues with other experiments expected to start at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai-mura — researchers are shipping their Brookhaven kaon detector there — as well as at CERN in Geneva, the standard model could be in for a revision.
By Ron Cowen for web edition : Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 (SN: 7/19/08, p.16).
[PASTE]
The experiment in question is not the important thing I want to call attention to here in my blog. Note the time frame of the experiments and who came into office when! What?! Budget cuts in the science programs of America? Who would have thought that such a thing would happen here? And look how we’re shipping our stuff to other countries so that these experiments can continue. Another major loss in prestige for America. And who caused it? The answer is obvious and self-explanatory.
Frankly, we can be happy that scientists believe in sharing resources and findings, though that is not always the case. I’m currently reading Naturalist by Edward Wilson and the departmental politics he describes does show that some members of the scientific community do have agendas based on personal pride. Which is natural, so why are we shipping our experiments to other countries?
I was reading through an article at ScienceNews.org about possible changes to our standard model of particle physics created by some not too recent observations “at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., from 1989 to 2002” when I came upon the following:
[SNIP]
Studies of the decay of kaons hint at possible flaws in standard model of particle physics.
Physicists had hoped to gather five times as much data, but budget cuts led the Department of Energy to abruptly end the Brookhaven experiment in 2002, Littenberg says. However, if the trend of finding a higher decay rate in this rare mode continues with other experiments expected to start at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai-mura — researchers are shipping their Brookhaven kaon detector there — as well as at CERN in Geneva, the standard model could be in for a revision.
By Ron Cowen for web edition : Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 (SN: 7/19/08, p.16).
[PASTE]
The experiment in question is not the important thing I want to call attention to here in my blog. Note the time frame of the experiments and who came into office when! What?! Budget cuts in the science programs of America? Who would have thought that such a thing would happen here? And look how we’re shipping our stuff to other countries so that these experiments can continue. Another major loss in prestige for America. And who caused it? The answer is obvious and self-explanatory.
Frankly, we can be happy that scientists believe in sharing resources and findings, though that is not always the case. I’m currently reading Naturalist by Edward Wilson and the departmental politics he describes does show that some members of the scientific community do have agendas based on personal pride. Which is natural, so why are we shipping our experiments to other countries?
Monday, August 18, 2008
MONDAY MORNING AT THE MON AMI
Service on the internet is pretty slow this morning.
Such weather—three straight days of hundred degree temps and, then, a 90 and, now it's 72 degrees, overcast with a nice drizzle to make things wonderful. Saturday, Mertie and I went to see Woody Allen's latest flick, "Vicky Christina Barcelona". Bardem is in it and he's really something (going from psychopathic killer in "No Country For Old Men" to intense Latin lover) as well as Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johannson. A marvelously complicated love triangle repeated in several combinations of three. Like shooting craps with five dice, three dice. Mertie and I loved it.
It's strange having this WiFi loaded computer with me this morning. I feel different. The pattern of reading and noting things down in my handwritten journal is all smashed to smithereens. And I notice how much I've changed when I try to write something creatively, like the review above. All the emotional tangles that used to inform and connect my words have disappeared. I'm completely well as far as my past darknesses are concerned. My mental kinks are ironed out and so, also, is my writing. When I was young, I was so filled with emotions that my mind couldn't sit still. When I wrote something, my mind grabbed ideas and images from everywhere at once. Not that this was particularly successful, but it was the way my brain worked. Now it's so different. I hardly feel connected to what I put down on this computer. Most of the time, I'm at peace and not driven by emotions to odd behaviors. This is either the aging process or it's the work I did all those years with John paying off. Or, it's having this computer which completely changes the initial impulse to write, distances it from the connection my hand/eye used to have when a pencil or pen is involved.
I don't know what to feel about the current mental situation. I'm so at peace. Last week I told my doctor, Sugarman, that I've never felt so healthy, mentally—and physically for the most part—that I think about death all the time, I mean, in the sense that I don't want my life, as it is now, to end. I recall the days when I thought I'd be dead by thirty years of age. Then, that turned into the time I crashed my car on purpose at around age 31 or 32 and tried to end my life in sort of a accidental way. Never mind the details, but I didn't send my car head on into a bridge abuttment or anything like that. I wouldn't be here. It was more of going around a curve too fast so that I rolled and crashed. Now, here I am today, sort of untroubled by deeply painful confusion and fears and feeling a little detached and not certain I like it.
Scarlett Johansson plays a women who doesn't know what she wants but who does know what she doesn't want. My words exactly when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. I'm sure I even said those exact words or some words very close to them. I must admit, though, to wondering just who I am these days. I'm not driven by anything. And when my emotions aren't telling me what to do, I don't always know what I am supposed to do.
AT THE MOVIES
Before I run on I need to exclaim some disgust with fellow movie goers' tastes in commercials. And stop there. The current onscreen ad about lollipops being used to tear off a man's body hair is stolen from "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and the ladies behind me still thought it was funny, chortling away. Also the vomiting baby stock broker disgusts me, but psychology has taught ad men that a baby's face draws attention like a pile of money. People who don't know this are, to me, suckers. Which brings me to an old thought of mine about how sad it is that in order not to be manipulated by the advertising of psychological con men and hucksters, we have to turn off so many psychological entrance points that influence other people that we are not able to interact with people who don't know when they're being manipulated and, frankly, probably don't even care about it like I do.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
IRONIC WILSON UNAWARES
Naturalist Edward Wilson was ironic in a statement he made in his memoir, Naturalist (pp. 168-69): “Much of the Pacific fauna has gone under in the path of pigs, goats, rats, Argentine ants, beard grass, and other highly competitive forms introduced by human commerce. Strangers have savaged the islands of the world.”
I’m sure Wilson would agree with what I’m about to say, but at the moment he wrote the previous sentences, he forgot what he now knows only too well. All one needs add to what Wilson wrote is the thought that the human animal is the most competitive stranger who has most “savaged” not only islands of the globe but the globe itself—water, earth and air. So these other competitive strangers are no worse and no better than humankind itself. Isn’t that ironic in the deepest sense—we and the other competitive species dominating the globe?
Naturalist Edward Wilson was ironic in a statement he made in his memoir, Naturalist (pp. 168-69): “Much of the Pacific fauna has gone under in the path of pigs, goats, rats, Argentine ants, beard grass, and other highly competitive forms introduced by human commerce. Strangers have savaged the islands of the world.”
I’m sure Wilson would agree with what I’m about to say, but at the moment he wrote the previous sentences, he forgot what he now knows only too well. All one needs add to what Wilson wrote is the thought that the human animal is the most competitive stranger who has most “savaged” not only islands of the globe but the globe itself—water, earth and air. So these other competitive strangers are no worse and no better than humankind itself. Isn’t that ironic in the deepest sense—we and the other competitive species dominating the globe?
Friday, August 15, 2008
NAV. SEC. BLUNDERS ON OBAMA
"... the feeling that there is a common humanity" even with adversaries "is deep in his own personal experience and his DNA," say Naval secretary Richard Danzig, speaking about Obama in a long past Newsweek I happened upon in my doctor's office today.
Okay! In his DNA? Who made this guy a Naval secretary? What kind of brain numbness does his statement show us? By what evidence can he claim to know Obama's DNA?
Besides the stupidity of such a statement at the surface level is the truth of what underlies it far beyond what a Naval officer actually knows. The truth is, and a very important truth is is, there is a "common humanity" in all of us just by the definition of "humanity". We all share it in common and to the same degree and depth. It is exactly that "shared humanity" that ought to show us humans the way to a world peace that is lasting and satisfying.
It's only when we see someone as an enemy that we forget the common humanity they share with us and begin to dehumanize them. That navy guy is ignorant as cow manure. He does not even realize the important truth that underlies his superficial analysis of Obama's character.
What we need is a world full of people who understand that we all share a common humanity and that if we were them (the other), then we'd see that they are doing just as we'd be doing if we were in their shoes and trying to deal with America's aggressive stance toward the world under neocon leadership. If that navy dupe would only use his own "common humanity" to interpret and understand his enemy's behavior, we'd soon see an end to violence in the world. He's got it all right at his fingertips, but he can't see it because of neocon blinders.
"... the feeling that there is a common humanity" even with adversaries "is deep in his own personal experience and his DNA," say Naval secretary Richard Danzig, speaking about Obama in a long past Newsweek I happened upon in my doctor's office today.
Okay! In his DNA? Who made this guy a Naval secretary? What kind of brain numbness does his statement show us? By what evidence can he claim to know Obama's DNA?
Besides the stupidity of such a statement at the surface level is the truth of what underlies it far beyond what a Naval officer actually knows. The truth is, and a very important truth is is, there is a "common humanity" in all of us just by the definition of "humanity". We all share it in common and to the same degree and depth. It is exactly that "shared humanity" that ought to show us humans the way to a world peace that is lasting and satisfying.
It's only when we see someone as an enemy that we forget the common humanity they share with us and begin to dehumanize them. That navy guy is ignorant as cow manure. He does not even realize the important truth that underlies his superficial analysis of Obama's character.
What we need is a world full of people who understand that we all share a common humanity and that if we were them (the other), then we'd see that they are doing just as we'd be doing if we were in their shoes and trying to deal with America's aggressive stance toward the world under neocon leadership. If that navy dupe would only use his own "common humanity" to interpret and understand his enemy's behavior, we'd soon see an end to violence in the world. He's got it all right at his fingertips, but he can't see it because of neocon blinders.
NEOCON GANGBANGERS
It occurred to me this morning as I noodled around in the shower, alternating between bursts of song and thought, that neocons and gangbangers have approximately the same idea about how to "win ? and influence people". If Americans elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, we will gain tremendous respect around the world. Our melting pot promise will once again be fulfilled, but neocons have a different idea about how to influence the world. They want the world to fear America. It's in that wish that one can see the gangbanger influence in neocon thought. Gangbangers talk about "respect" all the time, but as far as I can tell, they mean "fear" when they say respect because it usually accrues to the banger with the biggest gun. It's a typical confusion for emotionally immature children to confuse fear and respect. Nazis and Fascists also confuse those terms. Now... I'm not saying that neocons are fascists. It's just that they think like fascists. Now that wouldn't make them fascists, would it?
It occurred to me this morning as I noodled around in the shower, alternating between bursts of song and thought, that neocons and gangbangers have approximately the same idea about how to "win ? and influence people". If Americans elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, we will gain tremendous respect around the world. Our melting pot promise will once again be fulfilled, but neocons have a different idea about how to influence the world. They want the world to fear America. It's in that wish that one can see the gangbanger influence in neocon thought. Gangbangers talk about "respect" all the time, but as far as I can tell, they mean "fear" when they say respect because it usually accrues to the banger with the biggest gun. It's a typical confusion for emotionally immature children to confuse fear and respect. Nazis and Fascists also confuse those terms. Now... I'm not saying that neocons are fascists. It's just that they think like fascists. Now that wouldn't make them fascists, would it?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
HELLO OUT THERE!
I’m at the Mon Ami and making this entry from here. This is my first ever internet connection by means of WiFi. Ain’t it exciting? And it caused me a lot of trouble to do it. Every time I tried to copy and paste, my connection was killed and the text appeared outside the text box. What's up with that?
We’re expecting very unseasonable weather in the Portland/Vancouver area. 100 degrees. So I took an early walk down by the Columbia River and was full of depression about America, about the failing quality of its products (built in foreign lands) and its customer service work as exemplified by phone representatives from foreign countries. I recall the days when American products led the world in their quality and when American industry and retailers stood behind their products.
I was so depressed by my contact with phone representatives that I called American corporate headquarters of Hewlett-Packard and Sear’s and spoke to consumer relations representatives. The Sears lady listened and responded well, but the Hewlett-Packard woman (both women?) told me that we are living in a new world and that it will never be the same.
I know... I’m antiquated. An old fart. Obsolete. But... damn it? Where’s America gone to? And so quickly! It did not help to sit down, here at the Mon Ami, to read that by 2050 us Caucasions will be less than half of the American population. Look, I’m not prejudiced but only worried that the high number of children many of these Latins have will sink America even deeper into poverty. Many immigrated from countries where population increases are the primary reason for their poverty. So they come here, having learned nothing, and create the same conditions in America that they suffered from in their countries of origin. For goodness sakes, folks, learn something! Open your eyes and close your zippers. Or at least use contraceptives. Does anyone else get the connection between countries of origin, large families and religious affiliations?
I’m not proud of that last entry. Let me assure you that I’m not so fiercely antagonistic as all that, and I welcome newcomers as being the bravest of their country’s citizens, willing to go to a new country to further their lives. That means that they have much to offer us. But may I also remind them to keep in mind the poverty of where they came from and its causes, and to alter their past beliefs just a little so as to not recreate those conditions here.
What follows is some stuff I wrote in my new word processing program yesterday to enter when this Mon Ami internet connection was created for the first time:
This entry will be, when I get around to it, my first blog entry begun on my new MacBook, using its new software called iWork. I will probably wait until my next visit to Mon Ami, the espresso joint down on Main Street, to make this entry at Blogspot using, this Macbook’s WiFi capacity. This also marks a changing method for the peripatetic journaling I’ve been doing since around 1966. Soon I will discontinue my handwritten journal and this Internet and Computer journal will become my only entries.
Will I put down some boring thoughts in an online journal like I do in my penned journal? I’m not sure. Who could be interested in the daily wanderings and wonderings of an old man nearly ready to enter into the age of 71? I’m at an awkward age, still imaging that I’ll write some large work of literature that will see publication while, on the other hand, my fearful mind tells me that all the effort will prove fruitless so why try. Also there’s another voice in my head that wants me to slow down, take it easy, read and write at liesure, be a real retired person after all with nothing more to do than cook meals for my wife who is still in the work force making her living and her way in the career world she’s chosen. It’s she who encourages me to try once more to write a publishable longer work, reminding me that I enjoy the process of writing, that I have always been writing something, whether a haiku, a letter to an editor, a letter to a friend, a short story.... Yes, I write something almost every day so why not just keep at it out of force of habit? Damn the publication torpedo; full speed ahead.
DOWN AND DOWN WE GO, ROUND AND ROUND WE GO...
Headlines on “Money & Investing” section of Wall Street Journal (8/13/08) read “Skies Darken For Retailing As Spree Fades” and “Bank Selloff Halts Rally As Dow Falls 139.88 Points”. Yep... and it’s going to get hot in Vancouver, next three days with temps nearing 100. Us old folks are supposed to get out of that sort of temps pretty quick!
POISONOUS
“In the natural world, beautiful usually means deadly. Beautiful plus casual demeanor always means deadly.” —Edward Wilson, p.150, Naturalist
Does Edward realize the implications of his words when we also add that humankind is also part of the natural world?
I’m at the Mon Ami and making this entry from here. This is my first ever internet connection by means of WiFi. Ain’t it exciting? And it caused me a lot of trouble to do it. Every time I tried to copy and paste, my connection was killed and the text appeared outside the text box. What's up with that?
We’re expecting very unseasonable weather in the Portland/Vancouver area. 100 degrees. So I took an early walk down by the Columbia River and was full of depression about America, about the failing quality of its products (built in foreign lands) and its customer service work as exemplified by phone representatives from foreign countries. I recall the days when American products led the world in their quality and when American industry and retailers stood behind their products.
I was so depressed by my contact with phone representatives that I called American corporate headquarters of Hewlett-Packard and Sear’s and spoke to consumer relations representatives. The Sears lady listened and responded well, but the Hewlett-Packard woman (both women?) told me that we are living in a new world and that it will never be the same.
I know... I’m antiquated. An old fart. Obsolete. But... damn it? Where’s America gone to? And so quickly! It did not help to sit down, here at the Mon Ami, to read that by 2050 us Caucasions will be less than half of the American population. Look, I’m not prejudiced but only worried that the high number of children many of these Latins have will sink America even deeper into poverty. Many immigrated from countries where population increases are the primary reason for their poverty. So they come here, having learned nothing, and create the same conditions in America that they suffered from in their countries of origin. For goodness sakes, folks, learn something! Open your eyes and close your zippers. Or at least use contraceptives. Does anyone else get the connection between countries of origin, large families and religious affiliations?
I’m not proud of that last entry. Let me assure you that I’m not so fiercely antagonistic as all that, and I welcome newcomers as being the bravest of their country’s citizens, willing to go to a new country to further their lives. That means that they have much to offer us. But may I also remind them to keep in mind the poverty of where they came from and its causes, and to alter their past beliefs just a little so as to not recreate those conditions here.
What follows is some stuff I wrote in my new word processing program yesterday to enter when this Mon Ami internet connection was created for the first time:
This entry will be, when I get around to it, my first blog entry begun on my new MacBook, using its new software called iWork. I will probably wait until my next visit to Mon Ami, the espresso joint down on Main Street, to make this entry at Blogspot using, this Macbook’s WiFi capacity. This also marks a changing method for the peripatetic journaling I’ve been doing since around 1966. Soon I will discontinue my handwritten journal and this Internet and Computer journal will become my only entries.
Will I put down some boring thoughts in an online journal like I do in my penned journal? I’m not sure. Who could be interested in the daily wanderings and wonderings of an old man nearly ready to enter into the age of 71? I’m at an awkward age, still imaging that I’ll write some large work of literature that will see publication while, on the other hand, my fearful mind tells me that all the effort will prove fruitless so why try. Also there’s another voice in my head that wants me to slow down, take it easy, read and write at liesure, be a real retired person after all with nothing more to do than cook meals for my wife who is still in the work force making her living and her way in the career world she’s chosen. It’s she who encourages me to try once more to write a publishable longer work, reminding me that I enjoy the process of writing, that I have always been writing something, whether a haiku, a letter to an editor, a letter to a friend, a short story.... Yes, I write something almost every day so why not just keep at it out of force of habit? Damn the publication torpedo; full speed ahead.
DOWN AND DOWN WE GO, ROUND AND ROUND WE GO...
Headlines on “Money & Investing” section of Wall Street Journal (8/13/08) read “Skies Darken For Retailing As Spree Fades” and “Bank Selloff Halts Rally As Dow Falls 139.88 Points”. Yep... and it’s going to get hot in Vancouver, next three days with temps nearing 100. Us old folks are supposed to get out of that sort of temps pretty quick!
POISONOUS
“In the natural world, beautiful usually means deadly. Beautiful plus casual demeanor always means deadly.” —Edward Wilson, p.150, Naturalist
Does Edward realize the implications of his words when we also add that humankind is also part of the natural world?
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
I’M SORRY TO SAY: REPUBLICAN (CONSERVATIVE-CHRISTIAN-FUNDAMENTALIST-MCCAIN) PARTY IS FASCIST IN NATURE TOP TO BOTTOM! WHY DOES MCCAIN CONTINUE TO BE A REPUBLICAN?The evidence of vote tampering by Republicans continues to mount. The evidence pile is now about as tall as Mount Hood in the State of Oregon.
[SNIPPET]
Von Spakovsky, Schlozman's deputy, who has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury because of his refusal to speak to investigators, was also alleged to have to misused his official position by setting aside the law to take actions to help Republican candidates.
When von Spakovsky was nominated to serve on the Federal Election commission, six career officials of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section, who had worked under him, wrote the Senate asking that he not be confirmed.
The six alleged that "during the 2004 election cycle" von Spakovsky "broke with established Department policy by getting involved with contentious and partisan litigation on the eve of the election. Mr. von Spakovsky drafted legal briefs between the Republican and Democratic parties in three battleground states, Ohio, Michigan and Florida just before the election, all in favor of the Republican party's position." The six career officials further asserted: "These briefs ran counter to the well-established practice of the Civil Rights Division not to inject itself into litigation or election monitoring on the eve of an election where it would be viewed as expressing a political preference or could have an impact on a political dispute."
These briefs ran counter to the well-established practice of the Civil Rights Division not to inject itself into litigation or election monitoring on the eve of an election where it could be viewed as expressing a political preference or could have an impact on a political dispute.
[PASTEIT]
As reported by Murray Waas murraywaas@gmail.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Monday, August 04, 2008
I’MADUMMYI'MALSOSTUPIDANDIJUSTDON'TUNDERSTANDIT!!!!
I’m a dummy. I’m an ignoramus. I’m a dummy. Sunday at the humanist meeting, I was approached and castigated by an intense fellow humanist for my ignorance. My natural mind, it seems, is incapable of understanding statistical truths. I’m barely able to talk about it, I know so little about it.
How many times have I now disparaged the Monty Hall paradox? Several times now, I’ve claimed that it is not true that if you switch doors after Monty hypothetically opens one of the goat doors behind which two goats and one Rolls Royce wait, your chances of winning the Rolls will increase to two thirds as opposed to one-third if you stick with your first choice. I’m wrong. It’s beyond me. I know… I can barely make a straight statement about the situation. You must read it for yourselves. I’m linking you to a representation of the game show that demonstrated to me how wrong I am.
But let me be the first to state how wrong I am. Once I start to think about it, I do sort of understand the situation, but the mathematics of it does escape me. But I had to stop and think about the fact that Monty never shows me the door I have chosen first. He puts that aside and shows me whats behind another door, and in that failure to let me see my first choice all hell breaks loose in my blinkered intuitional brain. Perhaps I'm meant to be a believer.
I’m a dummy. I’m an ignoramus. I’m a dummy. Sunday at the humanist meeting, I was approached and castigated by an intense fellow humanist for my ignorance. My natural mind, it seems, is incapable of understanding statistical truths. I’m barely able to talk about it, I know so little about it.
How many times have I now disparaged the Monty Hall paradox? Several times now, I’ve claimed that it is not true that if you switch doors after Monty hypothetically opens one of the goat doors behind which two goats and one Rolls Royce wait, your chances of winning the Rolls will increase to two thirds as opposed to one-third if you stick with your first choice. I’m wrong. It’s beyond me. I know… I can barely make a straight statement about the situation. You must read it for yourselves. I’m linking you to a representation of the game show that demonstrated to me how wrong I am.
But let me be the first to state how wrong I am. Once I start to think about it, I do sort of understand the situation, but the mathematics of it does escape me. But I had to stop and think about the fact that Monty never shows me the door I have chosen first. He puts that aside and shows me whats behind another door, and in that failure to let me see my first choice all hell breaks loose in my blinkered intuitional brain. Perhaps I'm meant to be a believer.
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