Astrology

I've been revisiting Grail mythology with a long time collaborator, which got me back to reading Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols. I picked up a free copy at the new Theosophy Library digs out on Beaverton-Hillsdale highway that time. I mean to go back the lifetime register for library privileges.

Lets start out by mocking the idea that celestial [sic] bodies program human behavior and/or thinking, in the sense of influence or affect, noting there's no evidence of encrypted information in moon beams (bounced sun beams). There's no evidence for an encodable region in the brain that would be especially sensitive to coded starlight.

Now lets say that was a straw man cosmology, and that the way cosmic bodies influence our daily lives is right before our eyes: through astrology. 

The very language, of typifying personality traits (e.g. stubbornness, control freaky...) by birth chart, and/or putting world events against a backdrop of this or that cosmological state, has been uber-influential in human affairs, self evidently, without any appeal to "secret" physics.

Now that we've settled on this shallow truism, that astrology is influential, lets also remember that people have used it to encode some reliable astronomical information. 

Astronomy would not be where it is today without astrology as a runway long enough to launch its bulk, as an instrumentally endowed discipline, able to theorize about and detect the likes of neutron stars.

A neutron star forms when the atoms are no longer able to put up a fight, as protons with a defensive shield of electrons, a perimeter, a fence. 

The crushing force of gravity overcomes the compressive push of electromagnetism at these extremes, whereas at most frequencies gravity is as diaphanous and evanescent as light pressure, relative to magnetically charged electrochemistry. 

The end result is a ball of neutrons, one could say a giant atom of a kind, and its radial broadcast impact on the environment is not negligible. We detect them as pulsars and see them as rapidly spinning, perhaps at over 42K RPM.

Current cosmology suggests that neutron stars, if sufficiently massive, further collapse into quark stars and then black holes, potentially in a kind of Jitterbug transformation (a squeezing inward).

The link I'll make here is to "epigenetics" in the context of the Synergetics Dictionary in particular. Astrology would be part of the epigenetic feedback loop whereby genetically encoded biological patterns get channeled forward in time by mental processes associated with civilizations.  Humans self program such that their more slowly evolving biological avatars get involved in space travel and/or scuba, with aerospace in between.

Brinkmanship

brinkmanship

brĭngk′mən-shĭp″
noun

The practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit rather than concede.

-- Wordnik

We're seeing a lot of talking heads suggesting that a psychotic breakdown leading to a nuclear exchange is looking ever more likely, as mostly old people in various social circles start to throw up their hands regarding the current situation.

In my counter narrative, citizen diplomacy is in high voltage mode and has lots of bandwidth. The younger crowd is engaged in mutual study and is not finding those irreconcilable differences the old farts insist on preserving. We're not seeing any impasses, in Europe, Asia or anywhere else.

However, the veteran pundits don't want to pass the torch to a happier generation that's less likely to destroy civilization. They cling to power, despite their obsolete educations.

Meaning the young will have to pry the torch away from them? 

One way to do that is to let them keep their torch while lighting another one. Let them think they're still the torch bearers.

Along similar lines, I've got an alternative to that infamous clock put out by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. What do they know right? Are they aware of and/or working on a Trucker Exchange? Asylum Cities? Martian Math? 

We shouldn't allow their laziness to govern our perceptions. Let them keep to their clock, but when it comes to asking the time of day, we have other sources, such as our Clock of the Long Now.

Project Renaissance

I hear a lot of analysts dissing public-private partnerships as unholy. I think back to my early days, as a think tanky type, working for CUE (an NGO, in partnership with the USG), and even including NATO in my Project Renaissance paper.

I suppose I was more of the golden boy in those days, courted by the intel community, wined and dined, living in DC off and on. No wonder I considered myself some kind of "NATO professor". Pretty nutty right?

In my defense, I had the childhood and young adulthood of an expat, i.e. I was Third Culture, living my identity as a USAer from the outside, one could say from various "alien" perspectives.  No wonder I'd write about the ET point of view (ETPV I called it).  I was seeing Earth as a whole.  

I was (and still am) a globalist, meaning I can't help but think I live on a planet (is it different for you?).

I'd like to have longer conversations with these analysts, as I'm sure they have a lot of special case instances to go through, of when and how NGOs, funded by governments and other donors, were used for evil ends. CUE was working on refugee resettlement, in the aftermath of the American War in Indochina.

However, the whole pattern, of players in the public and private sectors, getting along and even coordinating to some degree, doesn't seem by definition wrong-headed.

I'll leave the door open, in other words, to people who want me to stop with the Project Renaissance talk already, which has evolved, but still has some of the same elements. 

I still throw around GST as competitive with the more LAWCAP-oriented thinking most think tanks still traffic in (yawn).  I still keep the Bucky stuff on the table and play the game of XYZ vs IVM (insider jargon).

But as a globalist, and a believer in various kinds of inter-sector (public and private) coordination, I'm not thereby turned into a clone of "the globalist" as if we're talking about some single mentality. Do we think nationalism is one, and only one, school of thought?  That'd be ridiculous right? I rest my case.

Back to School

As we resume our studies towards the end of August, Portland's grade schools just starting to open, we're still all thinking about ergonomics, i.e. how to configure the personal workspace, or "bubble" as the case may be (different schools, different lingos).

My school was using distance education tech in the 1980s, branching off from New Jersey Institute of Technology circuits I'd joined when at St. Peter's doing grad school stuff. I got switched to a front line position, as a full time faculty member, before I completed the degree. They could tell I was qualified. So I was getting classroom experience as well.

Fast forward and that combination has continued. Prior to the pandemic, I was driving around town dropping in on many schools, both public and private, for Coding with Kids, a company based near Seattle. I helped the word spread in Portland and did a combo of in-person and Zoom-based content, as we entered into the "lockdown" period. 

But I was doing Zoom content anyway, as Amazon (the company), for example, would pay for kids on the other end to take our classes. I had students in Compton, part of Greater LA. I had students in Ohio. We did Codesters a lot, which is Python in a browser sandbox, with enhanced graphics capabilities.

The Multnomah Friends (Quakers) are still doing Zoom too, and wearing masks, but I'd say not entirely because of concerns about contagions. Fuel prices, commuting, having to get all the way across town, or into town, is a real burden for many.  Having closed circuit ways of dropping in means more Quakers are able to attend more Meetings all around.

In other words, WFH (working from home) is tantamount to WRP (work in remote places) i.e. you're able to show up at offices all over, not just at the one building downtown or along the beltway someplace. The WFH person might have hours in Dubai, Beijing, Omaha, all in a 48 hour period. In my case, I've been syncing with places in Greater Europe e.g. to offices in Turkey. That was for my data science class.

Civil War

Tucker Carlson recently asked former US president Trump if he thought the country was headed for civil war. Mr. Trump said he didn't know.

I think (a) "civil war" is an oxymoron and (b) that old fashioned idea of "entirely localized to within a nation" no longer obtains in a world with no insulation twixt nations. Even the US civil war had its external trackers and backers. The revolutionary war was civil, until it was won. As is so often the case, the very point of contention is whether we're talking two nations or one.

Take the case of Ukraine: when was it ever a "civil war" in the sense of "not also a proxy war"? Never. External interests were weighing in on both sides, upping the ante. Plus as I said "civil war" is an oxymoron. War is the very opposite of civil.

However, we now have the notion of "culture wars", a kind of psywar that has the ability, at least on paper, to stay a war of words and memes, forms of name-calling. As to the question of whether the US is headed for a culture war, that's a no brainer: the US is a motherboard for culture wars, and computing through them. That's what a "melting pot nation" (not all of them are) is all about.

Meaty Math

I wouldn't say this video is freely associative in a rambling, wandering sense, like one of mine. However  I would say it connects a lot of dots nevertheless, especially when it comes to wiring in some CT (Category Theory). 

We have the generic sense of "coordinate system" to play with, i.e. making a hard problem solvable may involve using a different coordinate system, with a path to and from. 

Convert to, solve, convert from. 

However we might also think in terms of "namespaces". 

Translate into, solve, translate out of. 

But then what's lost in translation and do the analogies hold?

A good example from the high school level is the basis for the slide rule: turn a multiplication problem into an addition problem by adding the exponents instead, using lookup tables (in the old days) to go both ways.

Take the logs of the two numbers you want to multiply, add those, and get the anti-log of the sum to find the corresponding product. We sometimes draw that as a rectangle, like in the video.

 

Genius Bar

I'm using the better of my two MacPros on battery. Upon clicking on the battery icon, upper right, I'm informed said battery has degraded capacity and I'd do well to schedule a maintenance visit. So I did. I'm into being compliant these days, almost a good doobie.

However I'm not considering myself a genius as I tend to surround myself with sources of genius, such that I feel relatively low on the totem pole, and that's a good thing, as complacency about one's intelligence is clearly a pitfall when hoping to stay sharp.

People have different strategies for staying sharp. I know YouTube knows my demographic info and therefore the targeted commercials tend to guess at what might be concerning me these days, health wise. No doubt said commercials pay attention to my search history as well. Even if I'm searching on Alzheimer's "for a friend" (or relative) the fact that I searched means the topic is topical.

However, I'm not signing up for all the brain teaser programs that want to charge me for playing around in their obstacle course. Rather, I just need to keep using O'Reilly's Safari service to (a) get my money's worth from that subscription and (b) to tackle skills building in some way, shape or form. Today, that meant unplugging from power and enjoying the new aircon Dr. D installed, in the living room (where I could plug in, but why bother), and tackling Haskell.

I've tackled Haskell before, but not with a Jupyter Notebook open in Binder i.e. in the cloud. I don't need to install the program locally to get some mileage, some practice. I need practice at what I'm preaching in my YouTube:  developing the cuboctahedral (icosahedral) number series in a number of computer languages, not just Python.

Tackling Haskell does not require me to venture far outside my comfort zone, as rock climbing might require me to do. I've been a programmer for decades and am used to thinking in terms of types. So I'm exercising within a familiar gym.

The next task after getting battery service from Apple, is to take my car through DEQ, which is closed tomorrow. I've customarily used my blogs to chronicle car stuff, so look for a subsequent entry soon.

Momenta

We know the word "memento" meaning more like "souvenir" or "reminder" whereas I mean "momenta" in the sense of "momentum" yet pluralized. Mass in motion, basically, a phenomenon with some conservation properties. Momentum likes to be conserved, one could put it.  Sometimes, however, we say it's not, because "heat doesn't count" i.e. the ability to do any more work goes away after the explosion.

Then we have the more subtle momenta of what I've called "word meaning trajectories", which in a rather concrete sense characterize the many commercial brands that experience boom and bust economies. A brand will veer, sometimes based on advertising. Did we read the market wrong? Or maybe we got it really right this time. And so on.

From commercial brands we get to nation-states, the so-called sovereignties. Individuals seek out agents in any narrative, in hopes of moving said narrative forwards in a way that alleviates and/or avoids suffering by these individuals. "Make the story be me-friendly" is a prayer with which most will empathize.

A keyword here is "identification" which comes up a lot in "identity politics". Who or what does one identify with and with what level of agreement? Anyone might step forward and claim to be a spokesperson for X, but that's why we have titles and credentials, to keep control over who gets to speak for whom. Words like "legal" get their momentum, their trajectory, from real special cases involving this principle of representation and identification, as in "she is my legal representative".

In coining a term like "dymaxion" like Bucky did, with a little help from his friends, one is throwing one's hat in the ring as an influencer. However coining neologisms is but one of many tools. More commonly one seeks, in media campaigns, to wire in associations, such that if one thinks about A, one is likely to move on to B, whereas B might not have been an oft chosen option, previous to a campaign.

A lot of companies, starting with Cambridge Analytica around the time of the 2016 US presidential election, claim to be using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in coming up with strategies for swaying votes or repositioning political leaders. However, in this subtle world of spin doctoring, Real Intelligence (RI) is still regarded as more likely to succeed in coming up with winning spins. Using "AI" for marketing advantages is itself a case in point. I'm using AI too then (in addition), in not planning to be left behind in RetroLand.

Speaking of RetroLand: I hadn't been to Seattle Center in a long time and my narratives have become unsynchronized with various new realities. For example, the Experience the Music Project, and the Museum of Science Fiction, have been amalgamated into the newer Museum of Popular Culture. The institution has rebranded itself in a longer term form, with an easier to grok meme and mission. Pop culture encompasses anticipatory design science (future studies) as well as music mnemonics (where we've been, the way we were). The museum's momentum is largely preserved.

M4W Pow Wow

Ryan's bus from Roseburg was running early, so Andrius and I were able to pick him up downtown, not far from Union Station, and return to headquarters in time for the broadcast.  Math 4 Wisdom (M4W) was hosting a talk on Pascal's Triangle and the Binomial Theorem, but from a novel viewpoint.  

I was the "warmup band" doing something Pythonic. I introduced the idea of a Python generator. We had five participants on the two part call (with 10 minutes intermission), with three of us (Ryan, myself, Andrius) all here in the one node (house), with Bill and Jerre in widely separated locations.

Next, after 80 minutes of program (40 + 40), we were ready for breakfast. I treated my guests to a house tour first, only to have the door lock behind us on the second floor deck. I could call Derek, who was on his way anyway with the Monday haul, but my cell was inside and I hadn't memorized his number. 

Would I have to slice the screen or risk climbing down?  Neither prospect was enticing. Then I realized I had my keys. Duh. Sigh of relief. It's just not a door I usually close behind me.

Breakfast at Tom's was great, a business expense for Oregon Curriculum Network for sure, as I was having really high level discussions with these guys. 

Ryan is quite young (in his early 20s) and is as yet unspoiled by academia, unlike Andrius and I, thoroughly spoiled by some in-depth brainwashing, though not the same brainwashing. 

My claim: none of us gets but a dumbed-down version of the others, given how this world is put together. I'm not saying without exceptions.  Sometimes another seems more comprehensible than one's self, at least with regard to some specific topics.

Our foray into Category Theory was experimental. I was using the language of Supermarket Math, considering what sounded like special case workflows (e.g. adding to a shopping cart, checking out), unique to supermarkets, but I was using them metaphorically, more operationally. 

Like the idea of "paying for it at checkout" had corresponding actions in both worlds (our local Fred Meyer's and a supermarket in Vilnius), such that a Functor between them would carry the weight of translating and/or mapping between the two. In ordinary reality, CT tends to be about sets, vector spaces, real numbers, and like that -- not supermarkets per se.

Oregon Curriculum Network has a four-fold approach to maths in its inventory, the four aspects being:

* Supermarket Math: transportation, logistics, databases, pricing, marketing (how shall we live?)
* Casino Math: probability and permutations, risk taking and avoidance (what's worth trying?)
* Neolithic Math: maths from the present day looking backwards (where have we been?)
* Martian Math: casting maths predicatively forward, as in science fiction (what's coming up?)

From a posting to TrimTab Book Club this morning:

How about, as an experiment we (some workshop group) don't credit humans for any of our concepts for a change? In this "new" way of thinking, humans only "channel" ideas but never "create" them. I put "new" in quotes because this model is more like in the old days, in ancient times, when divine beings (e.g. Athena) did all the thinking and humans were mere mouthpieces, spokespeople. Lets say Athena coined the word "radio" which a number of humans then picked up on and shared. "Credit the gods and only the gods" might be the language game in this WestWorld. Most so-called westerners learned to stop crediting the Holy Spirit in the so-called Enlightenment Period, a time of many colorful revolutions e.g. the American and French ones.

Without having read any of the above, Ryan spontaneously shared his sense, after breakfast, that mathematics was using him, pretty much as a puppet, to think out loud to himself. We then sat around the table, sharing concepts, more in the mode of channelers than as originators, of our concepts. The various math-informed viewpoints got to iteratively interoperate, whether we as individuals comprehended, was another matter. Sort of. To a degree.

I've been having a similar conversation with Richard Hawkins, regarding AI. 

Lets look at language as a non-sentient pattern or program of action, an evolving dance. We get carried along, perhaps away. ChatGPT (the generative large language model implementation) is not that different in principle, even if following different rules. ChatGPT aspires to be predictable, whereas some plans or stratagems discourage predictability.

The centerpiece of M4W is not the Bucky stuff, which I talked about some today anyway, but Wondrous Wisdom, a cognitive framework developed by Andrius Kulikauskas over several decades. 

He's looking to build a network of close collaborators. I'm doing what I can on a logistical level at least, and institutionally as well, as the Oregon Curriculum Network guy. I'm helping more people become aware of their option to work with Andrius, without insisting that they do so, as some kind of prerequisite for working with me. I'm independently accessible.

For example today's meetup dealt with the theme of a Bell Curve of combinations between extremes, all or nothing, as demonstrated by successive rows of Pascal's Triangle.  All and/or Nothing bracket a permutation space of alternative scenarios, sometimes characterized in a binary manner, as left versus right, or positive versus negative. Forks in the road. Roads not taken.

At the extremes though, we're getting more existential, talking about the difference between Being or not Being, versus the many distinctions inside of Being.  

Pretty abstract huh?  M4W is like that. An acquired taste.

The Role of USA President

I like that Shoe on Head did a Barbie movie review. I'm a fan of hers. She reminds me of New Jersey girls, whom I got to know as a high school faculty guy at an academy for young women.  And elsewhere.  A certain toughness and irreverence, with an accent...

However my rant today is not about Barbie, although one could argue it's about social roles, and the role of US president in particular.  I'm one of those who thinks a president should not go in with a fixed agenda of all the stuff she or he wants to change, some crusader reformer.  Rather, a president should simply preside, observing the machinery of government, and report back to the people what's going on, like an insider with outsiders for an audience.

Instead, voters think the president is some kind of monarch with overarching powers to make stuff happen. That stereotype helps effect wars, as presidents get to play commander in chief in a war situation. The USA likes to keep a war simmering, sometimes boiling over, just to give the president a semblance of power that voters understand. 

Outward war is a way of dumbing it down enough for everyone to follow.  That's my elitism showing. War is a cheap way to prop up a chief executive. "Cheap" in the sense of tacky.

Presidents are going to get educated and their views will change. More important than sticking to their guns, is explaining to voters what their transitions are all about. Why the shift? What did you learn?

Unfortunately, what a lot of careerists want to do with a president is use scare tactics. Frighten this elected leader into obeying the right cues. Presidents with a high degree of suspicion versus automatic trust, are more likely to create a conscious record of how they're being influenced...

In practical terms, it doesn't matter much to me exactly what RFK Jr. believes about vaccinations. I see that he believes in doing his homework and he's willing to take some unpopular positions. However the details don't matter much, because as president RFK Jr. would have very limited authority over future health policy. 

Presidents are not authority figures in my book, so much a witnesses to history. Of course they may see themselves differently.

Barbie (movie review)

I at first had problems relating to the target tween, the reputedly sharp-witted and worldly young woman whom I also consider the movie's core target demographic.  

I also saw Hollywood (a proxy funhouse mirror reflection of Corporate America aka USSA) turning itself inside out to meet this protagonist half way. 

"Young LA woman of hispanic heritage (meaning native American, Spanish-colonized) we love you and want to reach out to you, let us be your mother / father / friend" (big brother).

Then it turned out the Boomer dad in me was supposed to find the young woman's mom more relatable, as she is (a) closer in age and (b) more likely to have played with Barbie in the golden age of same.  

It turns out the mom has been playing with stereotypical Barbie while having dark thoughts, not the least of which stem from having an ostensibly unloving daughter (the one I started out having problems with).

I realized part of my issue with the daughter tween was she had the reputation among her peers for being the razor sharp class forensics champion i.e. she was the leader of the debating team, so to speak, and Barbie didn't have a chance against her. 

She was competition in other words. I wanted her to debate me. I'd show her I wasn't defenseless.

Barbie, on the other hand, walked right into a knife fight not knowing she was in way over her head, and was emotionally injured. The tween was able to identify her target complex and aim directly, by calling Barbie a fascist. That really hurt, causing ripples in the space-time continuum.  Even Mattel could feel it, like a punch in the gut.

Ken, in the meantime, has been deprived of fatherhood opportunities all this time. What critics don't remark on much is that Barbie World is devoid of children and babies, and of grandparents. That would entail a Pregnant Barbie, pointedly discontinued. 

Barbie Land is a world wherein inter-generational communication no longer has to take place.  Shades of Logan's Run. 

Stereotypical Barbie starts to get more of the culture's oral tradition at least, when encountering Weird Barbie. Her immersion in the real world is getting more edgy, more adult.

Ken discovers patriarchy in LA, which in this day and age is likewise gay culture, with what looks like a lot of Village People singing macho, macho man. Around the ticklish conundrum "it's gay to be manly" is where this movie most enjoys goofing off.

The movie is satirizing the glamorized Chippendales male figure that women might hope to find in strip clubs. Except these Barbies are not into that. Their lust switch is turned off (by design). 

They're into power and administration (ironically) and, up to the end of the film, we see Barbie has yet to be a fully adequate partner for Ken. She doesn't find Ken attractive hormonally. 

What's a guy to do, when the babes don't wanna be wowed or wooed?  

The all-Ken Kendom is still pent-up and gay, without a mature connection with the Barbies. She's not yet a real mom either. Barbie is a puppet Pinocchio at first, lying if she says she's fully human. She's a bot, a phony.

Later, a wiser Barbie gets a talking to by the Ruth Bader Ginsberg like character, but somewhat off camera.  From a spectator angle, we're not privy to any complete "working out" of life. There's no grand resolution, more just a framing of the problems (which is half the battle).

We learn more respect for elders, meaning empathy for them as earlier versions of ourselves. The daughter realizes her mother is on the same side, fighting the same fight, against the unrealistic expectations and demands associated with stereotypical beauty and unattainable cultural idealizations.  

An everyday human, trying too hard to be a perfect Barbie and/or Ken doll, might do some ego-damage, thereby subverting the very self-esteem objectives this product line seeks to achieve.  

Why not just do an "ordinary girl" Barbie, less statuesque? The movie plays with these options, reflecting its audience more directly, giving glimpses.

I know working class hero Krystal Ball hated this film (Saager found it more entertaining) for being little kid inappropriate. Maybe so. However tweens are very worldly these days, watching the adults fight over whether they should get to be around adult fairies (mostly harmless) or whatever. 

If Freud taught us anything, it's that children self-sexualize without much need of adult help i.e. the idea that adults are in charge of some on and off button is a bit self aggrandizing.

Many children develop an early aversion to being "treated like children" whereas others adore such treatment and hope it continues indefinitely. Our target tween is in the former category. She sees her mom as babying her, being condescending, versus having an adult need for friendship and affection.

Barbie is for mature PG-13 year olds in the same way the Joss Whedon stuff is, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even more appropriately, Dollhouse on the family television.

I found Ken's journey into patriarchy ("I wasn't so into it once I found out it wasn't really about horses") truly hilarious. I had a good time with this film. I don't usually go for musicals, but I'll make this an exception.

The mother-daughter tension in this movie reminded me of what was going on in Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAO).

Device Stories

Speaking of personal devices, e.g. guns, I think the qualities of high desert water, mineral rich, shampoo conditioner and whatever, conspired to send my Apple Watch to the graveyard this morning. It put up a good fight, sputtering on, showing logos, but ultimately the casement disengaged, revealing guts.

What guns come with apps I wonder?  I’m not even gonna bother to check right now. Telescopes and cameras do. Anywhere precision aiming, and recording, comes in…

Today Judy upgraded her phone, from an ancient flip model, to an entry level Samsung that’s none too shabby. They shrink the price of the phone while piling on with necessary add-ons, like a charger, technically not needed if you have USB in your power strip. The shock case. We opted for not using protective glass. They were out of the low end version. Maybe later?

Will I purchase and AW replacement, now that I’m accustomed to “closing my rings” (or not), or using the heartbeat app to track my bradycardia? My heart thumps along at a low rate but I’ve been adapting, and so present as asymptomatic for the most part. The blood thinner I get after the pulmonary embolism episode some years back, is also the accepted remedy for my kind of heart beat (with flutter not fib).

Probably I’ll get one, costing some weeks at work (part time gig), but counting as a health expense for my one employee, me. If you wanna find new ways to do tax cuts, get more people seeing professional development, including tourism through conferences etc., as business expenses. Everyone is by default a sole proprietor of whatever they own, starting with a body (check) and a few devices (check). Capitalize on that!

I’ve tended to crack jokes about butt cheeks containing ample room for implanted devices, provided they’re properly encased in squishy bio-safe materials. You’d have apps on your watch and phone for these butt apps, some of which could be health monitors. I leave it to science fiction writers with medical and/or bioengineering degrees to let their imaginations run wild. A bun-based Theranos…

Sydney the dog has been a pleasure to work with.  Another business expense if you ask me, if not a full partner and/or sidekick proprietor. Tomorrow we’ll take our business over the Cascades in the company car.

The AW was a family hand-me-down from my youngest, Dawn’s last, a Christmas present some years back. She’d already learned the lifestyle so coached me expertly in how to integrate it into my routines.  Judy, a musician, agrees learning to use her new smartphone has “learning an instrument” similarities (muscle memory plays a role).

Gun Talk

Given my programming, in Quakerism, you might assume I'm "anti-gun" right out of the gate, and you'd be right in a way, except that being "anti-gun" doesn't mean anything super obvious. The guns don't just disappear.  Quakers are against outward violence i.e. knives and maces, bombs and catapults, bows and arrows, all fall into the same category as guns, when used as anti-student / anti-faculty devices.

However, these same tools may have other uses, obvious in the case of dynamite and cutlery, the sports of archery and target practice. The devices themselves are less relevant than the mindset with which they're taken up.  What's the psychology? Are we hunting humans again?

George Fox talked more about swords as carrying firearms in his day and age was not as customary.  "Wear it as long as thou canst" is how it comes down to us, in archaic language.  He was betting that those convinced of Quakerism would eventually likely cease wearing weapons as a part of their costume. They would become persuaded that the real battles were more hidden (in the sense of occult), more invisible.  Outward weapons are of limited utility when what needs to be countered is more intelligent, a programmed pattern, a meme virus of some kind.

When President Eisenhower warned Americans about the MIC (military-industrial complex), a rather egghead thing to do (but generals are eggheads by and large, and presidents always), he was talking about a form of bureaucratic legalese, laced with whatever values.  Bucky came along and called it LAWCAP, which morphed into Grunch in his writings.  Everyone matures and distills their own lingo, paradoxically expressing meanings more clearly when idiosyncratic. Bucky's language is nothing if not idiosyncratic even while treating of the "generalized principles".

The MIC is a "complex" in the sense a psychology or mindset is a complex.  We can call it groupthink, i.e. these complexes are not confined to the brains of single individuals.  Which is why guns are ineffective in countering complexes. 

Shooting the patient, the one with symptoms, only feeds the paranoia of those targeted, which stimulates genetic searches for antidotes, ways of coping.  A system under attack learns to defend.  Telling all the gun owners that Big Brother has plans to take all their guns away, is a way of scaring up a reaction, such as more funding for the NRA.

I prefer a more anthropological approach.  How do guns play a role in coming of age narratives, and in rites of initiation?  How does one ascend the hierarchy in some gang, company, or priesthood?

I'm suggesting that Quakers tend to get snobby, thinking those resorting to outward war have yet to grapple with root causes.  But rampant malign neglect of one's duty, to deep think instead of group think, may result in atrophy within an intelligence community overall.  Lights grow dim at 1501 Cherry Street (Philadelphia), if / when the AFSC stops analyzing the MIC.

God Talk

Let’s talk about “God talk”, and here I picture a congregation, hats off, heads bent, eyes closed in some cases, giving thanks to God for a lot of important stuff in their lives, and asking for greater wisdom and attentiveness. What’s good about this attitude is that it’s in principle the opposite of authoritarian, a fact which many critics have a hard time seeing.  

“God talk” is often characterized as authoritarian by definition and usually highly patriarchal in practice, given the Roman experience (pervasive even today). Certainly subcultures (cults) may be heavy-handed, and sometimes escaping them and their influence is the best course.

However, in thanking God, one is pronouncedly not thanking the Emperor for one’s daily bread. It’s not the party, the company, the boss, leaders, visionaries, scientists, or my betters, to whom I am beholden.  

If we don’t have our daily bread, some humans are in the way from a systems point of view, maybe the very humans who decided to hike up this unforgiving mountain or dare whatever odds, given physics.  

God represents the idea that humans are not the be all end all and that sensibility is vital to keeping the humans-playing-God syndrome from becoming a pandemic.  

God represents synergy at a very high level, meaning intelligence flows “above our heads”, “among the angels” say, or “unconsciously” if you’re more a Freudian, or “in demonic realms” (the trope of an “underground,” the chthonic).  

There’s Ouija Inc. and its many board rooms. Monster U. Wisdom plumbs the deeper depths. It’s not anti-science to say so.

The prayer of thanks comes from a cybernetician who understands Nature is automated to provide, and humans are a part of that automation. Using the term “automation” comes across as derogatory perhaps, too mechanical.  But then humans exult about being in the flow, in the zone, where everything “just goes” without a lot of overthinking and ego involvement.  

That feels like God’s will (Thy will) being done, and it’s a Kingdom of Heaven type experience. The cybernetician is nodding along with all that, likewise prayerful and grateful.

The fork comes with “divine right”.  

Some revolutionaries talk as if we finally closed the door on “divine” period full stop, in depriving even kings of this status.

Others say our notion of “divine” was extended in Democracy, to all, from King to Beggar. That’s where the Quakers came down, around the 1600s.  

The idea is our equality, the sense in which we’re equals, is built in to our sense of God’s love.  When we apply the idea of unconditional love to all humans equally what viewpoint do we get back?  One that beacons away from putting peers on pedestals, as idols, as God’s competitors.

Enshrining other humans as the source of all that’s good in our lives, including life itself, is a first step down a wrong path.  Yes, thank your peeps, and be grateful for them.  But don’t confuse that thankfulness with a growing debt.  Think of the Sun’s energy.  Enough of that was meant for you, that you shouldn’t have gone wanting without a scholarship.  The Sun doesn’t charge a debt to its students.

Thank the Sun for your being adequately energized, as a teacher and student in the Global U, not other students or faculty.  The Sun and the plants impound carbon dioxide and other nutrients, providing the raw ingredients for your cafeteria plan.

“Oh so you’re justifying monarchism by using God in a purely political sense, irrespective of His existence”. First, I’m not “justifying monarchism” or at least not for free.  You’d need to pay me. Next, I don’t think the political sense would have such staying power if it weren’t also people’s experience that whom they owe for life itself is not the landlord, but the same Lord to whom the landlord owes his own life. That’s more democratic.  

There’s no King as Ultimate Landlord model. We each have our private “image i nation” (private sky). That of God in each of us. Quaker jargon.

The main debates hinge around laws or rules. Where do “rights” come from? Again, I see the reason behind having inalienable rights come from God, and then maybe affirmed or codified in some widely agreed upon document, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

There’s no problem enshrining these rights, just with thinking we owe specific people thanks for providing them in principle.  Defending them is again different.  However to what extent is one’s effectiveness, as a defender, dependent on having the right attitude?  When too much ego gets into the mix, effectiveness may be at risk. So we’re back to Transcendentalism, not as a hindrance to American democracy, but at its foundation. 

Dialing In More Indiana Jones

Leela liked this one, Dial of Destiny, a lot.  We'd done our homework, catching up by watching the Crystal Skull prequel the previous night.

She arrived by bicycle around 6 PM PDT, ate some of my Trucks Not Bombs inventory, and then we walked up to The Bagdad, getting to our seats before 7 PM and in time for the McMenamins history slides.  I'm a fan.  

I returned to Portland in 1985 as an adult, and grew up in parallel with this brewpub business, starting up around the same time, weaving it together with so many memories.  

Then came previews e.g. of Mission Impossible on IMAX -- although The Bagdad ain't IMAX.

I felt like a smarty pants (somewhat Wombat like -- what he calls her) because I'd included the Antikythera in a "history of math" timeline I did for McGraw-Hill in the 1980s (Rockefeller Center, 28th floor, Nola Hague my super).  

Good luck finding it. Big publishers do low circulation prototype textbooks kind of like big car companies make concept cars, ones that are drivable and everything.  I'm forgetting the title, but did at one time have a copy.  That's when I worked with Ray Simon, having met Ray and Bonnie in my Jersey City chapter.

Anyway, big deal right?  Of course that device should and would be included in any such timeline.  In the real world, the Antikythera has been X-rayed and recreated.  The movie may have embellished here and there, but didn't make up everything.

I've read or watched lot of the criticism of this movie, and know how some take exception to its way of taking the bull by the horns, the bull being aging.  

Unlike some of these god-like superheros, which get passed generation to generation (e.g. The Flash), Indiana Jones is an ordinary mortal and mortality is inevitably a theme.  He won't live much beyond the 1960s.  The Bond franchise went there too, with lots of overlap in the action between these two (jumping from a bridge etc.).

People take exception to the grandfatherly wisdom versus upstart young woman dynamic, even though she wises up, and he gets to meet Archimedes.  Of course he wanted to study the past up close, that was his profession after all.  Just getting to visit was certainly a privilege, though the circumstances were chaotic. However Wombat needed a more stable family matrix in the present.  Archimedes got to keep the watch and have airplanes remembered on his sarcophagus.

I'd recently been immersed in Phoenician studies i.e. watching a long documentary reviewing what we know about the rise and fall of Carthage in particular.  I felt like a smarty pants again, in recognizing the phenomenon of naval warfare, as Romans waged it, well before the Christian Era.

Leela liked it because she's pried open the lid on Astrology, not surprising given her background in religious studies (OSU), and base of operations in Nepal.  Ancient cultures up to almost the present time are somewhat impenetrable if you can't decode what they believed about stars and planets, which doesn't mean believing it all yourself. But you sort of have to half belief it just to get into it enough to see how it all works.  The anthropologist in me, such as I have one, has a well-developed sense of make-believe.

The real Antikythera is of course not a time machine so much as a predictive pocket astrolabe.  Its geared mechanism, oft attributed to Archimedes himself, replicates the movements of the heavenly bodies relative to one another.  

I'm not such a smarty pants when it comes to the details.  You wouldn't want to hire me as your Antikythera reader.  I confess I'm no Indiana Jones, fluent in several tongues.  My Stetson is way more beat up than his hat is.  I should get mine to the shop.

The Bagdad proved a rich atmosphere for an Indiana Jones film, given its What the Bleep decor.

Asteroid City (movie review)

 :: automat ::

I saw this movie a few nights ago.  

Some things were special:

• The guy I went with hadn't slept much and was drifting in and out, which turned out to coincide with a theme of the movie (or "play");   
• Oppenheimer was previewed, thematically connected; 
• the slide deck of ads at The Laurelhurst, pre movie, featured a chocolate lab much like Sydney, my dog.  

What I'm trying to say is: the atmosphere was one of fourth wall breakers.  Very meta.

The movie's colorful kernel has a playhouse, movie set, sound studio look to it, with the movie trick of feeling infinite and outdoors, as the police chase flies by (more than once), diminishing to a speck.  Very Bagdad Cafe in flavor, a favorite already.

A mushroom cloud in the distance. Strangers thrown together by the exigency of having brainiac kids.  A military. A meteor crater. Soda fountain. A UFO with ET.... Very 1950s. So many of the stereotypes so well rendered. We've all been there in our dreams.  Some of us never left.  This place is perfect, like an animated Norman Rockwell painting.

We have the stoic National Geographic type mostly combat photographer.  The school teacher.  The handsome cowboy Montana man.  Another principal is the tough but heart-of-gold 2nd tier actress, played by superstar Scarlett Johansson.  She and the photographer each have offspring.  

The photographer has four kids:  three little girls and a brainiac son.  The actress has her 15 year old daughter in tow.

A next layer out, the way I think of it, between the colorful kernel and we the audience, is a black and white apparatus having to do with the making of the play we're currently enjoying.  There we have the writer, the director, the actors auditioning for a part.  Some go on to become well known!  

This is where the sleep scene comes in.  The cast of auditioners sits in the bleachers facing the writer, who is explaining he wishes to insert a sleep scene wherein everyone in the play falls to sleep simultaneously, without exception.  Then he's like "OK do it!" and everyone pretends to pass out, except for the one sleep walker guy (there's one in every crowd).

We're the outermost layer, the audience, made self-aware by the play-within-a-play aspect, also favored by Shakespeare.

This is a film I'd like to own or at least have easy access to, as I'm already looking forward to a next viewing, while still munching on all it gave me the first time.  I got the above picture off Facebook, not from the movie.  It helps suggest the atmosphere, which includes the diner, gas station, automats, motor court village...

Pre Primary Politics

I think Marianne is on track with her rhetoric, in terms of preserving a sense of continuity, to the extent that's possible in the United States of Amnesia (Gore Vidal's phrase).  

She's like most DCers (although not a DCer herself) in wanting to start the NATO war narrative on February 24th, 2022, when the lid got taken off a situation that was already quite kinetic.  The shelling of the Donbass had to be admitted as world historic.  

Not everyone agreed on the tale to tell, leading to some serious bifurcations in the storyteller tree.

The hype around presidents has become farcical, with the candidates expected to promise way more than that office might constitutionally deliver.  Citizens with no imagination for democracy fall back on monarchical tendencies mighty quick.  That's the reflex base humanity has the most experience with.  

Democracy is science fiction, or might as well be, from the standpoint of how we're accustomed to behaving.

In that sense, I think Marianne is playing her cards correctly, in wanting to dial back expectations.  Americans should not assume such an entitled position, as one time victors in wars long ago.  

In these new chapters, history gets hammered into shape from a wider (more spherical) set of angles.  We get a more unshielded view of the inner workings.  It's more like having X-ray vision, and seeing more clearly where the bodies are buried (so many!).  We see a lot more of those skeletons, lurking in their respective closets, hoping to stay secret.

Thanks to a juvenile fascination with an imperial presidency on the part of the populace (neo-Romans in large degree), those posing to become president have to genuflect to this President on a Pedestal so many Americans carry around as egoic-iconic, closet monarchists that many of them be.  

Marianne is no exception.  She doesn't have permission to just be herself, while running for the right to staff the White House with a lot more of her people.  That means she too has to pretend she has a magic wand.  "Look, I can make all your debts go away and make your rent or mortgage affordable again."

What democracy requires is a great deal more time spent on study, which is where a UBI might come in handy.  However giving them time to appreciate their real situation, with its quasi creaky UBI, is what the pandemic did already, thereby sowing discord around whether working from home might be OK.  

That wasn't supposed to become such a hot topic, messing up the real estate market big time.  Before the middle class goes down with all hands, it's making a stand in the suburbs, defending what was sold, not that long ago, as the American Dream.

The good news is many more democratically minded than ever are doing their homework more assiduously.  

The Pizzagaters have entered adulthood by now, and realize it's not enough to just give lip service to "doing your own research".  Its time to wise up.

The Flash (movie review)

I'll say up front I was charmed by this film in many ways, once I remembered it was a comic book, its own genre, and if you haven't submerged yourself in that literature, you're right away out of your depth. In my case, I'm not an avid comic or graphic novel reader these days, but I'm a veteran scuba diver into comics to many depths.

I think what we have to remark on is that Parallel (actually, intersecting) Universes are the talk of the town this scifi season.  We had the Academy award winning Everything Everywhere All at Once to kick it off, then Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and now The Flash.  All are about a spaghetti monster meta-verse (SMM) wherein many permutations of the current reality get tried  -- perhaps some or all are dead ends.

The Flash is true to the comic genre in being geared for teens thinking seriously yet fantastically about their next self, the adult they're "leveraging into" (if that's a way).  

I always think of the comic-borne generational teachings (mimetic DNA) as feeling "home grown" but also coming from an adult, a peer human, in touch with her or his inner teen and also a master in some mode of expressiveness (a comic book author, which might be a team).  

The opportunity, as always, is to teach some important life lessons, or at least echo the inter-generational thoughts about such philosophical topics as: "what if it were otherwise?".  More concretely:  "what if I could fix the past?".

The way these movies flicker between realities, and get you thinking in terms of swapping in different actors ... 

[ a way Flash knows he's in a different future, is different actors star in the same movies;  Michael J. Fox is not Back to the Future guy in this future.  Oh no!  That's a motif.  A kind of Mandela Effect as in this world you're the only guy who remembers "the way it was" unless maybe you came with companions (Dorothy had her Toto at least) ]

... develops a more easy come easy go relationship with reverie literature.  

The big budget versions do not necessarily seek to monopolize, only guide and suggest, and no convergence on a single telling is required.  Batman is like this in this movie, like that in this other.  Indiana Jones keeps shape shifting.  Astrologers sometimes have a better grip on this kinds of slidings.  Words like "woke" don't begin to capture all the turning wheels.  Culture is at least complex, if not complicated.

This film has to shine as a star in the universe in which film explores the same self in the form of two arguing brothers, one the older and more mature, the other the messed up kid, going nowhere.  Yet the superpowers must be passed on.  "The adult I hope to become versus the train wreck I am now" -- picture the thought balloon, above a teen reading some comic.  The recursion motif.  Pray to your future self for rescue, might be one version of bootstrapping.

I'm going to admit enjoying some of the action, the high kinetic first person physics type stuff, heavy game engine.  Like batman on that motorbike, chasing bad guys in a dense city.  Then there's the signature scene of the whole movie, alluded to in the credits, where Flash faces low nutrition limits, one of his vulnerabilities, thinks fast, solves the puzzle.  No babies die.  A universe we don't have.

Flash's mother was archetypal, and the family matrix well rendered, offsetting the rest of the movie: obvious super-real level fantasy, the stuff of Greek legends.  Flash is the comic book Mercury, back to Hermes with winged shoes.  We all know that, right?

The movie flirts with gender and ethnicity bias (is one or more of those bad?), all the morphic qualities teens wrestle with and of course not only teens.  As a perennial aspect of life, we're confronted with all these pivot points (Dawn liked coming of age stories), it's just that comics have been traditionally pitched to a specific (one could say stereotyped) target demographic.  

I'm saying the best way to enjoy The Flash -- and why not if you paid your money -- is to be a teen. Perhaps be yourself specifically, if you're able to connect, or be a generic teen, for at least a couple of hours.

Debunking Conspiracy Theories

I am aware of the theory that the Biden administration is in cahoots with the Russians in seeking the demilitarization of Ukraine.  

Dangling the mirage of a military victory against Russia, by feeding Ukrainian fantasies of military superiority, is what it took to inspire an all out assault with lots of junk weapons and no air support.  

Ukraine, left to its own devices, would not have undertaken its own self destruction without being egged on by the White House and its cabal of irresponsible so-called pro-Ukrainians.

I understand why many Ukrainians have doubted the proxy war was ever architected with their best interests in mind.  These qualms were present from the beginning.  Nobody thinks a tank war in Europe is appropriate in the 21st Century. 

The sense that the bottom of the bell curve, intelligence-wise, has way too much decision-making authority, runs strong.  If we have any smart folks in the room, why don't they end this madness?  Because they're so vastly outnumbered?  Isn't the Bell Curve semi-symmetrical?  Why does the Planet of the Apes contingent seem to have the upper hand?

I think many in The District are sincere in thinking they're in some kind of historic showdown, and they are. I empathize with diplomatic types who sense a lot of the investment banking discussions are no longer accessible to them.  When it comes to planning future infrastructure, you don't want juvenile bomb-happy types in the room.  They're too anti-social.

DC has opted out of the civilian control structure, having militarized its foreign policy to the point of having no friends in high places anymore.  This probably accounts for the specter of Papa Biden being cheered on by a tiny cabal of unilateralist ideologues with a track record of being wrong about everything. The dummies have been isolated to a set of swank addresses.

Multi-polarity was an inevitable result, with business relationships forming around the ongoing task of subverting and circumventing all the dark ages sanctions being imposed by the lower half (the anti-intelligentsia).  Europe has been buying gas from Russia, piped through Ukraine, throughout the entire misguided campaign.

Claiming it's a terrible thing for Americans, that China and Russia are sorting out their differences, is highly short-sighted, and is mostly a mantra among the low-brows on cable.  Americans have a role to play as well, when it comes to cracking down on unbridled, uncontrolled militarism.

Regarding UAPs, we all know the adage that strong claims require exceptionally strong evidence, and what does not count as "strong evidence" is first person testimony from the security clearance crowd.  We already have mountains of that fluff.

Having a top secret clearance is a bureaucratic rank, and does not automatically confer evidentiary weight.  In practice, having clearances relates to sharing database logins, rumors, gossip.  Claiming the super-secret nature of UAPs is what adds to their believability seems a kind of circular logical fallacy, an appeal to an evanescent type of authority.

The higher the security clearance, the more far-fetched the narrative, and the blurrier and less satisfying the actual evidence.  That seems to be the pattern anyway.  Stay tuned.

Speaking of the lower half of the Bell Curve (a snobbish tendency of Ivy Leaguers), I disagree that we’re not having a pre primaries debating round. True, there’s no League of Woman Voters staging an event on cable, and the corporate media aren’t interested in democracy, but we have our new internet-based news services and the debates are happening daily, albeit asynchronously, with interviewers we already know.

I've been tuning in RFK, Dr. Cornel West, and Marianne Williamson.  Only Biden seems uninterested in the political process, suggesting he's not a serious candidate this time around.

The older more synchronous debating format was made for cable TV viewers, a demographic that no longer subscribes to real news.  The corporate TV folks have opted out of democracy and want spoon-fed pabulum and rubber stamp candidates.  Politics is a spectator sport for them.  A debate would be somewhat pointless in that medium.

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