Witnessing the same
evidence, we derive the same
conclusions, with uncanny (and unwarranted)
likeness. Quine calls it the scandal
of induction. Shackle the stars in electric chains
of imagination, name an outline
a horse with wings,
or a scorpion’s tail,
and humanity cannot
fail to fill in
the rest.
The lessons we
plagiarize from the night
sky, headlines from the scandal sheet
of record, how sure are we
their tense is not
fixed in the archive,
where here and there are
nothing but the remove
of centuries? How sure are we
that eternity can be measured
by the billions of
lightyears the present is past
or that the future, having happened
yesterday, will arrive
when it was supposed to?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Picture of the Day
At first you don’t even notice
the absence of red in the sunset
over the Gusev crater. Caused
by the absence of
air I presume; our home star,
pure white. Made so
small and so
cold by its
extraterrestrial distance. But
beneath the missing ear
of the Cape
Buffalo (it’s been gnawed off)
the ruby carnage of the split
ribcage, the small
squirt of blood drying near
the lion’s whiskers, red
abounds. And although they call the turtle
green, the thin coat of
algal slime on its
ovoid carapace as it ballet-dances
through the transparent
ballast of blue ocean resembles
the color of rust,
even as its tesselated
head and flapping
(or are they paddling)
forelegs (or are they arms) verge
to purple.
It is because of not despite
the fact there are so many
places I will never
know, that I am so
jealously grateful for these
copylefted pixelmatrices,
these photospassports to
Sochi in 1915 Abkhazia,
to the alluvial
fans of the Taklamakan as seen
from a satellite, the half-buried
dust-bowl jalopies in Dallas,
South Dakota, the
psychedelic paisley
of the mandarinfish’s garish
obi.
Beauty asking
nothing in return;
for a femtosecond, revealing
the permanence of difference
and the differences of recorded
permanence.
the absence of red in the sunset
over the Gusev crater. Caused
by the absence of
air I presume; our home star,
pure white. Made so
small and so
cold by its
extraterrestrial distance. But
beneath the missing ear
of the Cape
Buffalo (it’s been gnawed off)
the ruby carnage of the split
ribcage, the small
squirt of blood drying near
the lion’s whiskers, red
abounds. And although they call the turtle
green, the thin coat of
algal slime on its
ovoid carapace as it ballet-dances
through the transparent
ballast of blue ocean resembles
the color of rust,
even as its tesselated
head and flapping
(or are they paddling)
forelegs (or are they arms) verge
to purple.
It is because of not despite
the fact there are so many
places I will never
know, that I am so
jealously grateful for these
copylefted pixelmatrices,
these photospassports to
Sochi in 1915 Abkhazia,
to the alluvial
fans of the Taklamakan as seen
from a satellite, the half-buried
dust-bowl jalopies in Dallas,
South Dakota, the
psychedelic paisley
of the mandarinfish’s garish
obi.
Beauty asking
nothing in return;
for a femtosecond, revealing
the permanence of difference
and the differences of recorded
permanence.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Burn Babies Not Flags
It's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.
--- REM
“No blood for oil,
no blood for oil,
no blood for oil,”
no war for oil, they say
no killing for oil, they say
this war is about oil,
they say this war is about
SUVs, they say this war is about to destroy
the country, they say
the economy will
collapse, they say it is already
collapsing, they say
the stock market hasn't gone down like this since the
Great Depression, they say the stock market is
going down farther than
Monica Lewinsky, they say
we're losing hold of our
moral compass, they say that we have to stop
behaving like international criminals,
they say think of the Iraqi babies, the Iraqi
children, the Iraqi mothers,
they say we're going to destroy … ourselves,
they say there will be nothing but
war once Saddam is
gone, Shiites versus Sunni,
Sunni versus Kurds, and
insurgents from Iran
against all three, vendettas everywhere,
grudges against Saddam and his ruling elites,
they say we can't afford this,
they say the dollar will plummet,
they say there won't be enough money for jobs,
for health care,
for AIDs research,
for schools,
they say the schools have already started
shutting down one day a week
and they've already cut
funding for universities,
they say the military is already
running out of money,
the military will need
more, they will need
more because they always want
more
and more
and more
and more and more, they say they will
protect us until we've got
nothing left to protect, so we can keep our free
elections even if there's no one left
to elect,
and I say, I say, I say,
bring
it
on.
Bring it on bring it on bring it on.
Because if it takes a victory in Iraq to destroy this
country, if it takes a victory in Iraq to destroy America then
let's go get Saddam. If it takes supporting
Bush to destroy this country, if it takes supporting
Bush to destroy a country that spends trillions on weapons
while billions starve, that covets millions of
megatons, so they can drive giant trucks to replace their giant
cars, if it takes an unremitting and blind patriotism
to destroy this empire that will live
in infamy, then let me salute,
call me yankee doodle dandy, and
enlist me in the infantry so we can put an oh so
patriotic end to this offensively offensive pretense of
defensive invasion and the lip service praise of the sanitized
storebought history of a nation
boxcutting the poor to taxcut the
wealthiest of the wealthy and to subsidize their trans-national-
corporations. Call me an uber-patriot,
because I want this sickness
to end.
I want us to be so poor we can't afford so much as a
butter knife for a weapon. So poor we will never again
threaten the country next door much less one ten thousand miles
away because we won't be able to afford the
bus fare, and we'll just have to forget about the
computerized, ballisticized,
mansion-priced remote control
explosive devices that smash
the orbits and globes of young children's
eyes into blood dried shreds
spattered across carbonized torsos
their mothers can't
recognize.
If our schools haven't taught us by
now how to stop this slaughter let them
fail, for they have bought us nothing worth calling
an education. If our doctors have no tonics to stop this
then smile when they shut down the hospitals
for they surely possess no cure for what most truly
ails us. If this is what we've made of freedom,
that we murder and enslave for the almighty dollar
a gallon, let them jail us
for from such lips the word freedom
will most certainly corrupt not just the
ears that meet it,
but the air that carries it
away.
(diminuendo)
It's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.
it's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.
--- REM
“No blood for oil,
no blood for oil,
no blood for oil,”
no war for oil, they say
no killing for oil, they say
this war is about oil,
they say this war is about
SUVs, they say this war is about to destroy
the country, they say
the economy will
collapse, they say it is already
collapsing, they say
the stock market hasn't gone down like this since the
Great Depression, they say the stock market is
going down farther than
Monica Lewinsky, they say
we're losing hold of our
moral compass, they say that we have to stop
behaving like international criminals,
they say think of the Iraqi babies, the Iraqi
children, the Iraqi mothers,
they say we're going to destroy … ourselves,
they say there will be nothing but
war once Saddam is
gone, Shiites versus Sunni,
Sunni versus Kurds, and
insurgents from Iran
against all three, vendettas everywhere,
grudges against Saddam and his ruling elites,
they say we can't afford this,
they say the dollar will plummet,
they say there won't be enough money for jobs,
for health care,
for AIDs research,
for schools,
they say the schools have already started
shutting down one day a week
and they've already cut
funding for universities,
they say the military is already
running out of money,
the military will need
more, they will need
more because they always want
more
and more
and more
and more and more, they say they will
protect us until we've got
nothing left to protect, so we can keep our free
elections even if there's no one left
to elect,
and I say, I say, I say,
bring
it
on.
Bring it on bring it on bring it on.
Because if it takes a victory in Iraq to destroy this
country, if it takes a victory in Iraq to destroy America then
let's go get Saddam. If it takes supporting
Bush to destroy this country, if it takes supporting
Bush to destroy a country that spends trillions on weapons
while billions starve, that covets millions of
megatons, so they can drive giant trucks to replace their giant
cars, if it takes an unremitting and blind patriotism
to destroy this empire that will live
in infamy, then let me salute,
call me yankee doodle dandy, and
enlist me in the infantry so we can put an oh so
patriotic end to this offensively offensive pretense of
defensive invasion and the lip service praise of the sanitized
storebought history of a nation
boxcutting the poor to taxcut the
wealthiest of the wealthy and to subsidize their trans-national-
corporations. Call me an uber-patriot,
because I want this sickness
to end.
I want us to be so poor we can't afford so much as a
butter knife for a weapon. So poor we will never again
threaten the country next door much less one ten thousand miles
away because we won't be able to afford the
bus fare, and we'll just have to forget about the
computerized, ballisticized,
mansion-priced remote control
explosive devices that smash
the orbits and globes of young children's
eyes into blood dried shreds
spattered across carbonized torsos
their mothers can't
recognize.
If our schools haven't taught us by
now how to stop this slaughter let them
fail, for they have bought us nothing worth calling
an education. If our doctors have no tonics to stop this
then smile when they shut down the hospitals
for they surely possess no cure for what most truly
ails us. If this is what we've made of freedom,
that we murder and enslave for the almighty dollar
a gallon, let them jail us
for from such lips the word freedom
will most certainly corrupt not just the
ears that meet it,
but the air that carries it
away.
(diminuendo)
It's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
it's the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.
Background
What follows, or through the weird timing of blog posts, what precedes, is a poem I wrote in January 2003, about two months before the invasion of Iraq.
The alarming title was inspired by the artist Barbara Kruger.
In the years since it was written, it has been very interesting to compare it to the times.
Although it is wrong in several details, the general picture presented here is alarmingly true, although events have unfolded much more slowly than they are portrayed.
The alarming title was inspired by the artist Barbara Kruger.
In the years since it was written, it has been very interesting to compare it to the times.
Although it is wrong in several details, the general picture presented here is alarmingly true, although events have unfolded much more slowly than they are portrayed.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Russert, Springsteen, Steinbeck, McCain, Obama all pullin’ outta’ here to win
As my mom tells the story, she was doing light chores at her mom’s house shortly before I was born.
When her sister Gayle, a registered nurse, asked how far apart her contractions were she said, “five minutes.”
Gayle, whose temperament was mercurial in the laziest of times, went apeshit. “GET, TO THE HOSPITAL, NOW ”
This was a second pregnancy, and my mom who had had a long delivery with her first didn’t realize that second pregnancies are a whole different animal. Express delivery.
But there was no car. My dad was out buying a surprise (washing machine, two in diapers.) So the only thing to do was to get a lift from the neighbor, Mr. Toohey.
By trade he was an undertaker. His car, a hearse.
I was ferried into this world in a shiny new hearse.
It was my birthday. Friday the thirteenth.
I was reminded of this juxtaposition when, on my fiftieth birthday, I heard the news that Tim Russert had died at 58. Another Friday the thirteenth.
To tell the truth, I was never much of a Russert fan: too centrist for my taste, too obsequious to power. If you want to see the world from a viewpoint of about six inches distance from a politician’s ass, he’s your political genius. But if that’s an aroma and an ambience that fail to entice you, Russert holds little charm.
Nonetheless, I think his demise pinched a nerve in the body politic, a sense of the ubiquitous proximity and unpredictability of death. How you can go out even when you’re at the top of your game.
In the final analysis, I could easily have forgotten the whole incident had I not chanced across the follow-up report on his funeral on the evening news, where John McCain and Barack Obama were forced to sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, at his funeral. Two men vying for what soon will seem an inevitability, the title of the most powerful man on the globe, forced to submit largely in silence, by the power of the grave.
As they rolled the credits on the NBC Nightly News, they played a clip from the funeral: it was Bruce Springsteen by satellite hook-up performing “Thunder Road.” The payoff for a lifetime of political butt-aroma: Springsteen performing at your funeral, and the most powerful men in the world pretending to be friends, or at least behaving civilly.
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to Springsteen, and I got the idea of checking out “Born to Run” from the local library. But they didn’t have it when I went, and so I made due with what they did have: “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
From the first incredibly poignant wail on the harmonica, steel wool tumbleweed with spangles of silver, he had me. And the echoes of Steinbeck’s original...
“Now Tom said Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries...
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me.
... I was just enthralled. And I started wondering, why hadn’t I thought about Tom Joad in such a long time? “The Grapes of Wrath” was such a wonderful book, why has it been almost completely forgotten?
And I was reminded that despite a couple of decades of Steinbeck’s being surveilled by the FBI for possible communist sympathies, he ended his life as a prominent supporter of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the Vietnam War. He actually wrote dispatches for the Long Island newspaper Newsday from Vietnam, and provided intellectual cover for Johnson at a time when intellectual cover for the war was sorely lacking. The creator of Tom Joad as cheerleader for the napalming of millions of Vietnamese Okies.
The switchbacks of history are truly myriad.
Which brings me back to the National Cathedral with John McCain, and Barack Obama, how McCain the war hero and POW would not be who he is but for America’s invasion of Vietnam, how he was, at least to some small degree, the product of Steinbeck’s political cover.
How Obama had the foresight to try and head off another Vietnam, George Bush’s Vietnam, by opposing the invasion of Iraq.
And I ask myself, when I look in their eyes, do I see Tom Joad?
Nothing of the sort.
These ideas have been rambling around in my head for months now, but just a little short of complete, as if the jigsaw was missing just one piece. And then this past week, it hit.
After 80 years, the specter of the Great Depression has risen from the rubble-pile of history lessons and paraded onto the theater marquis of front page headlines, and evening newscasts. As the sons of Vietnam’s Steinbeck vie for the presidency in Tim Russert’s lee, Tom Joad, the son of Oklahoma’s Steinbeck, stirs from his stock-market-crash grave.
Who will foreclose on the Joad family farm? Who will bail out the billionaire bank-sters?
Of course, in the end, it wasn’t “The Ghost of Tom Joad” that Springsteen was singing, but “Thunder Road,” a different Springsteen altogether : “it’s a town full of losers, I’m pullin’ outta here to win.”
Perhaps, in a hearse.
When her sister Gayle, a registered nurse, asked how far apart her contractions were she said, “five minutes.”
Gayle, whose temperament was mercurial in the laziest of times, went apeshit. “GET, TO THE HOSPITAL, NOW ”
This was a second pregnancy, and my mom who had had a long delivery with her first didn’t realize that second pregnancies are a whole different animal. Express delivery.
But there was no car. My dad was out buying a surprise (washing machine, two in diapers.) So the only thing to do was to get a lift from the neighbor, Mr. Toohey.
By trade he was an undertaker. His car, a hearse.
I was ferried into this world in a shiny new hearse.
It was my birthday. Friday the thirteenth.
I was reminded of this juxtaposition when, on my fiftieth birthday, I heard the news that Tim Russert had died at 58. Another Friday the thirteenth.
To tell the truth, I was never much of a Russert fan: too centrist for my taste, too obsequious to power. If you want to see the world from a viewpoint of about six inches distance from a politician’s ass, he’s your political genius. But if that’s an aroma and an ambience that fail to entice you, Russert holds little charm.
Nonetheless, I think his demise pinched a nerve in the body politic, a sense of the ubiquitous proximity and unpredictability of death. How you can go out even when you’re at the top of your game.
In the final analysis, I could easily have forgotten the whole incident had I not chanced across the follow-up report on his funeral on the evening news, where John McCain and Barack Obama were forced to sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, at his funeral. Two men vying for what soon will seem an inevitability, the title of the most powerful man on the globe, forced to submit largely in silence, by the power of the grave.
As they rolled the credits on the NBC Nightly News, they played a clip from the funeral: it was Bruce Springsteen by satellite hook-up performing “Thunder Road.” The payoff for a lifetime of political butt-aroma: Springsteen performing at your funeral, and the most powerful men in the world pretending to be friends, or at least behaving civilly.
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to Springsteen, and I got the idea of checking out “Born to Run” from the local library. But they didn’t have it when I went, and so I made due with what they did have: “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
From the first incredibly poignant wail on the harmonica, steel wool tumbleweed with spangles of silver, he had me. And the echoes of Steinbeck’s original...
“Now Tom said Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries...
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me.
... I was just enthralled. And I started wondering, why hadn’t I thought about Tom Joad in such a long time? “The Grapes of Wrath” was such a wonderful book, why has it been almost completely forgotten?
And I was reminded that despite a couple of decades of Steinbeck’s being surveilled by the FBI for possible communist sympathies, he ended his life as a prominent supporter of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the Vietnam War. He actually wrote dispatches for the Long Island newspaper Newsday from Vietnam, and provided intellectual cover for Johnson at a time when intellectual cover for the war was sorely lacking. The creator of Tom Joad as cheerleader for the napalming of millions of Vietnamese Okies.
The switchbacks of history are truly myriad.
Which brings me back to the National Cathedral with John McCain, and Barack Obama, how McCain the war hero and POW would not be who he is but for America’s invasion of Vietnam, how he was, at least to some small degree, the product of Steinbeck’s political cover.
How Obama had the foresight to try and head off another Vietnam, George Bush’s Vietnam, by opposing the invasion of Iraq.
And I ask myself, when I look in their eyes, do I see Tom Joad?
Nothing of the sort.
These ideas have been rambling around in my head for months now, but just a little short of complete, as if the jigsaw was missing just one piece. And then this past week, it hit.
After 80 years, the specter of the Great Depression has risen from the rubble-pile of history lessons and paraded onto the theater marquis of front page headlines, and evening newscasts. As the sons of Vietnam’s Steinbeck vie for the presidency in Tim Russert’s lee, Tom Joad, the son of Oklahoma’s Steinbeck, stirs from his stock-market-crash grave.
Who will foreclose on the Joad family farm? Who will bail out the billionaire bank-sters?
Of course, in the end, it wasn’t “The Ghost of Tom Joad” that Springsteen was singing, but “Thunder Road,” a different Springsteen altogether : “it’s a town full of losers, I’m pullin’ outta here to win.”
Perhaps, in a hearse.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The United States of Goldman Sachs
Reversing course yet again, Secretary of the Treasury and former head of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, announced today his intention to scrap his $700 billion bailout plan for the financial services industry, and instead ceded the government’s power to print money directly to his former employers. Said Paulson, “everybody knows Goldman owns the government. Who’s kidding whom? Let’s just make it official.”
Reaction has been swift. Senator Barack Obama’s top financial advisor, former Clinton Treasury Secretary and former Goldman head himself, Robert Rubin, proclaimed the proposal “full of merit,” and “a meaningful improvement over the current system.” Said Rubin, “although the credit default swap market was pretty much a license to print money, this should streamline the process, and I think markets will react positively to this innovative new approach from Treasury.”
Famed deregulator and top economic advisor to Senator John McCain (at least until the “Whiner-gate” dust-up) Phil Gramm announced from his marbled offices at Swiss Investment Bank UBS that he “believed the fundamentals of the plan are sound, but a few of the details of sharing the currency printing power among major investment banks remain to be worked out.”
Markets were up sharply, with its 11,000 point gain being both the single biggest one day percentage and point gain in the Dow’s history. Similar increases were seen on both the Nasdaq and S& P 500.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi buoyed markets with her comments that “I am so tired of writing a blank check for George Bush’s pointless wars that I am seriously entertaining the idea of at least writing a blank check for someone else, and, after all, they own our party.”
Some dark clouds did loom on the horizon. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd expressed substantial pique that none of the 4,742 text messages he had sent to Secretary Paulson in the past week had been responded to. Said Dodd, “ I know we’re an irrelevance, but couldn’t he at least have the common courtesy not to rub it in?”
Asked for comment McCain running mate Sarah Palin said she was fed up with economic distractions from the real issues of the day and challenged either Senators Joe Biden or Barack Obama to a “moose dressing competition,” saying “that’s what the American people really care about.”
Alan Greenspan, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve was wildly enthusiastic, saying “at last we can begin to pull back on the underperforming aspects of the economy and focus on only the most productive sectors.” Said Greenspan, “by focusing on the printing of money we will be able to prune, substantially, unproductive activities, like agriculture, manufacturing, medical care, transportation, education, and construction.”
Congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich expressed outrage: “They are selling out our country. They are betraying our country. George Bush, and Henry Paulson could not have done more damage to our economy if they had handed it over to Osama bin Laden.”
Reached for comment in his remarkably palatial residence in a hidden location in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden begged to disagree. “What I did to the Twin Towers of your World Trade Center, Bush, and Paulson, and Clinton, and Rubin, and McCain and Gramm, that is what they have done to the economy of the whole planet. Even I couldn’t begin to compete with that.”
Reaction has been swift. Senator Barack Obama’s top financial advisor, former Clinton Treasury Secretary and former Goldman head himself, Robert Rubin, proclaimed the proposal “full of merit,” and “a meaningful improvement over the current system.” Said Rubin, “although the credit default swap market was pretty much a license to print money, this should streamline the process, and I think markets will react positively to this innovative new approach from Treasury.”
Famed deregulator and top economic advisor to Senator John McCain (at least until the “Whiner-gate” dust-up) Phil Gramm announced from his marbled offices at Swiss Investment Bank UBS that he “believed the fundamentals of the plan are sound, but a few of the details of sharing the currency printing power among major investment banks remain to be worked out.”
Markets were up sharply, with its 11,000 point gain being both the single biggest one day percentage and point gain in the Dow’s history. Similar increases were seen on both the Nasdaq and S& P 500.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi buoyed markets with her comments that “I am so tired of writing a blank check for George Bush’s pointless wars that I am seriously entertaining the idea of at least writing a blank check for someone else, and, after all, they own our party.”
Some dark clouds did loom on the horizon. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd expressed substantial pique that none of the 4,742 text messages he had sent to Secretary Paulson in the past week had been responded to. Said Dodd, “ I know we’re an irrelevance, but couldn’t he at least have the common courtesy not to rub it in?”
Asked for comment McCain running mate Sarah Palin said she was fed up with economic distractions from the real issues of the day and challenged either Senators Joe Biden or Barack Obama to a “moose dressing competition,” saying “that’s what the American people really care about.”
Alan Greenspan, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve was wildly enthusiastic, saying “at last we can begin to pull back on the underperforming aspects of the economy and focus on only the most productive sectors.” Said Greenspan, “by focusing on the printing of money we will be able to prune, substantially, unproductive activities, like agriculture, manufacturing, medical care, transportation, education, and construction.”
Congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich expressed outrage: “They are selling out our country. They are betraying our country. George Bush, and Henry Paulson could not have done more damage to our economy if they had handed it over to Osama bin Laden.”
Reached for comment in his remarkably palatial residence in a hidden location in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden begged to disagree. “What I did to the Twin Towers of your World Trade Center, Bush, and Paulson, and Clinton, and Rubin, and McCain and Gramm, that is what they have done to the economy of the whole planet. Even I couldn’t begin to compete with that.”
Sunday, September 14, 2008
"American conservatives are a bunch of liberal sissies"
So one conservative says to another conservative:
“In my country there is a wonderful new conservative candidate running for the vice presidency.”
And the second conservative responds to the first, “That is wonderful. What is his name?”
And the first conservative says, “Her name, actually. It is a woman, and her name is Sarah Palin.”
Second Conservative: “I thought you said it was a conservative candidate.”
First Conservative: “Oh, she is, she is. She has the most wonderful conservative positions on all the issues.”
Second Conservative: “In my country, a true conservative would not allow a woman to run for government office. It is a contradiction in, how you say it, oxymorons. It is a contradiction to say that a woman is a conservative candidate.”
F.C.: “Ah, well, your country is just backwards when it comes to women. In our country a woman can aspire to the highest office in the land.”
S.C.: “But this is not a conservative idea. This is some liberal heresy. Even in your own country it was illegal for women to vote not that long ago, and a true conservative would not allow his woman to vote, much less to run for office.”
F.C.: “I’m a conservative, but I’m not a Neanderthal. In our country women are entitled to all of the same rights as men.”
S.C.:”So in your country it is possible to believe in evolution and to call yourself a conservative.”
F.C.: “Say what?”
S.C.: “Neanderthal. Where does it mention Neanderthal in the holy written word of God?”
F.C.: “It’s just an expression.”
S.C.: “An expression that came into being because of evolution, because of the idea that humans are descended from apes, and that Neanderthals were a step in the evolution of modern man. In our country, God created man, and that is final. God said so in his book. Only a heretic would believe in Darwinian evolution. This is the total opposite of what it means to be a true conservative.”
F.C.: “Well of course no true conservative believes in evolution.”
S.C.:”And so no true conservative believes in letting women vote. No true conservative believes in letting women hold political office.”
F.C. “But that just seems backwards.”
S.C.: “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot call yourself conservative and say that a woman can hold political office.”
F.C.: “But what about Margaret Thatcher? Everyone called Margaret Thatcher conservative.”
S.C.:”This is merely advertizing and public relations. Mrs. Thatcher did not believe that abortion should be illegal.”
F.C.: “She what?”
S.C.: “She believed that government had no business intervening in a fundamentally personal decision like abortion. Can you believe that such a woman would be called a conservative. Would you call such a woman a conservative in your country? Would you call anyone a conservative in your country who did not believe that abortion is murder?” (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103793).
F.C.: “Well that’s one place where Sarah Palin has shining conservative credentials. She had a baby with Down’s Syndrome despite knowing the baby had Down’s Syndrome. And her 17 year old daughter is going ahead with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and intends to marry the father.”
S.C.: “Her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?”
F.C.:”But she intends to marry the...”
S.C.: “In my country a true conservative does not have an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. In my country we do not elect such people; we stone them. We bury them alive. But we do not elect them.”
F.C.: “That’s inhuman. That’s immoral. She’s only a 17 year old girl.”
S.C.: “No, it’s conservative. That’s what it means to be a true conservative. There has been a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things for all of time. They never change. That is what a conservative believes. A true conservative.
You, with your woman’s right to vote, your woman’s right to rule a government, your woman’s right to engage in sex outside of marriage, you are nothing but, nothing but, I hate to say this, but you are nothing but a liberal.”
F.C.: “What?”
S.C.: “I am afraid so. A liberal. You may flatter yourselves that you are pit bulls with lipstick. I see the lipstick, but not the pit bull. American conservatives are a bunch of liberal sissies.
In my country an unmarried girl who is pregnant is stoned to death.
That is a pit bull. That is a person who is unafraid to execute the will of God.”
F.C.: “I’m glad we’re bombing your countries.”
S.C.: “And now your true character comes out. You are bombing us for our conservative beliefs. You are bombing us because we are conservatives. You call yourselves conservatives, and bomb the true conservatives. You call yourselves conservatives and are ruled by whatever liberal principles are convenient for your ruling classes, and you then call these conservative.
This is true hypocrisy.
But who here is true to the word of God?
Who really has the courage, to execute God’s will?”
“In my country there is a wonderful new conservative candidate running for the vice presidency.”
And the second conservative responds to the first, “That is wonderful. What is his name?”
And the first conservative says, “Her name, actually. It is a woman, and her name is Sarah Palin.”
Second Conservative: “I thought you said it was a conservative candidate.”
First Conservative: “Oh, she is, she is. She has the most wonderful conservative positions on all the issues.”
Second Conservative: “In my country, a true conservative would not allow a woman to run for government office. It is a contradiction in, how you say it, oxymorons. It is a contradiction to say that a woman is a conservative candidate.”
F.C.: “Ah, well, your country is just backwards when it comes to women. In our country a woman can aspire to the highest office in the land.”
S.C.: “But this is not a conservative idea. This is some liberal heresy. Even in your own country it was illegal for women to vote not that long ago, and a true conservative would not allow his woman to vote, much less to run for office.”
F.C.: “I’m a conservative, but I’m not a Neanderthal. In our country women are entitled to all of the same rights as men.”
S.C.:”So in your country it is possible to believe in evolution and to call yourself a conservative.”
F.C.: “Say what?”
S.C.: “Neanderthal. Where does it mention Neanderthal in the holy written word of God?”
F.C.: “It’s just an expression.”
S.C.: “An expression that came into being because of evolution, because of the idea that humans are descended from apes, and that Neanderthals were a step in the evolution of modern man. In our country, God created man, and that is final. God said so in his book. Only a heretic would believe in Darwinian evolution. This is the total opposite of what it means to be a true conservative.”
F.C.: “Well of course no true conservative believes in evolution.”
S.C.:”And so no true conservative believes in letting women vote. No true conservative believes in letting women hold political office.”
F.C. “But that just seems backwards.”
S.C.: “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot call yourself conservative and say that a woman can hold political office.”
F.C.: “But what about Margaret Thatcher? Everyone called Margaret Thatcher conservative.”
S.C.:”This is merely advertizing and public relations. Mrs. Thatcher did not believe that abortion should be illegal.”
F.C.: “She what?”
S.C.: “She believed that government had no business intervening in a fundamentally personal decision like abortion. Can you believe that such a woman would be called a conservative. Would you call such a woman a conservative in your country? Would you call anyone a conservative in your country who did not believe that abortion is murder?” (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103793).
F.C.: “Well that’s one place where Sarah Palin has shining conservative credentials. She had a baby with Down’s Syndrome despite knowing the baby had Down’s Syndrome. And her 17 year old daughter is going ahead with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and intends to marry the father.”
S.C.: “Her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?”
F.C.:”But she intends to marry the...”
S.C.: “In my country a true conservative does not have an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. In my country we do not elect such people; we stone them. We bury them alive. But we do not elect them.”
F.C.: “That’s inhuman. That’s immoral. She’s only a 17 year old girl.”
S.C.: “No, it’s conservative. That’s what it means to be a true conservative. There has been a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things for all of time. They never change. That is what a conservative believes. A true conservative.
You, with your woman’s right to vote, your woman’s right to rule a government, your woman’s right to engage in sex outside of marriage, you are nothing but, nothing but, I hate to say this, but you are nothing but a liberal.”
F.C.: “What?”
S.C.: “I am afraid so. A liberal. You may flatter yourselves that you are pit bulls with lipstick. I see the lipstick, but not the pit bull. American conservatives are a bunch of liberal sissies.
In my country an unmarried girl who is pregnant is stoned to death.
That is a pit bull. That is a person who is unafraid to execute the will of God.”
F.C.: “I’m glad we’re bombing your countries.”
S.C.: “And now your true character comes out. You are bombing us for our conservative beliefs. You are bombing us because we are conservatives. You call yourselves conservatives, and bomb the true conservatives. You call yourselves conservatives and are ruled by whatever liberal principles are convenient for your ruling classes, and you then call these conservative.
This is true hypocrisy.
But who here is true to the word of God?
Who really has the courage, to execute God’s will?”
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Someone is Stealing My Television Set
Someone is stealing my television set.
In the global scheme of things (11 million children dying each year of easily preventable illnesses for example), this is not a big affair. But still, a television is a television.
I remember after the levees failed in New Orleans, stealing a television set seemed to mean something. It seemed to count for something. It seemed to signify the demise of Civilization-as-we-know-it. It seemed to merit coverage on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News. Saturation coverage.
But then the term was “looting”, and people of the wrong complexion were observed with televisions that did not belong to them. In the aftermath of a “natural disaster” people were preying on their fellow man. Not for food. Not for survival. But for profit. It was, “horrible”.
The main problem with this picture of course is that it was not a natural disaster. The failure of the levees in New Orleans was a man-made disaster, caused by negligence, incompetence, and corruption: a failure of governance on an epic scale. It was not Katrina, but misrule that savaged the city, and subjected it to a kind of meteor-ideo-logical waterboarding. As thousands of people, (almost all black people) outside the New Orleans Convention Center chanted for “help, help, help, help,” and the man in charge of disaster relief asked “where is the convention center,” major news media found time for saturation coverage of a television being stolen.
But if the problem here was an abandonment of governmental responsibility, if the problem here is misrule, then stealing a television set is an entirely appropriate reaction (you do what you can to survive, I’ll trade you a television for a ticket out of the city). After decades of rule by an ‘every man for himself’ philosophy, it is hardly a surprise to find the occasional everyman acting for himself.
Which brings me back to my television set.
The same government that waterboarded the people of New Orleans has ordained that my television will stop working on or about February 2009. Whereas you may say this is not stealing in the technical sense, preventing the proper functioning of my television set by changing the broadcast standards amounts to theft just as much. You could say they are stealing the function of my television set, not the set itself. But I never would have bought the television in the first place if it wasn’t going to function.
Of course there are converter boxes. There are subsidies for buying converter boxes. But these are sops to try and make me less angry that my television set is being stolen.
But my real point is how amazing it is that no one calls this theft.
Not just one or two televisions are being taken in an environment of emergency, up to your ass in water-moccasins as the case may be, but millions, tens of millions of television sets being looted by the same people whose negligence caused the New Orleans flooding in the first place, and so far as I know not a single word of protest or objection is being raised anywhere.
When I was a child my parents would often tell a tale from Konrad Lorenz’s book “On Aggression.”
If a low ranking monkey was trained to operate a machine that gave out bananas, other members of the monkey tribe would go to that monkey and demand a banana from the machine. But if a high ranking monkey was trained, he would teach other monkeys to operate the machine for themselves. Which is to say that whether or not something is “theft” depends on the social rank of the people doing the stealing.
For over a decade now we as a society have been planning the development and delivery of HDTV, and the biggest of big players have been sharpening their cleavers for an appropriately-sized share of the action. When large corporations with names like Sony, and GE, and Panasonic, and Philips get together and agree on a schedule to reallocate the nation’s bandwidth resources, the result, whatever it is, is not theft.
Certainly it will not be reported as such in the news media that are owned by Sony, and GE.
And so on the third anniversary of the waterboarding of New Orleans, watching the faith-based coverage of the faith-based political conventions that amount to democratic thought in our soon to be HD world, I am not much worried about my television being stolen. It has been a long time since there was anything on worth watching. Come next year there will be nothing but noise, and static, fuzz and blur.
Over all, a big improvement.
In the global scheme of things (11 million children dying each year of easily preventable illnesses for example), this is not a big affair. But still, a television is a television.
I remember after the levees failed in New Orleans, stealing a television set seemed to mean something. It seemed to count for something. It seemed to signify the demise of Civilization-as-we-know-it. It seemed to merit coverage on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News. Saturation coverage.
But then the term was “looting”, and people of the wrong complexion were observed with televisions that did not belong to them. In the aftermath of a “natural disaster” people were preying on their fellow man. Not for food. Not for survival. But for profit. It was, “horrible”.
The main problem with this picture of course is that it was not a natural disaster. The failure of the levees in New Orleans was a man-made disaster, caused by negligence, incompetence, and corruption: a failure of governance on an epic scale. It was not Katrina, but misrule that savaged the city, and subjected it to a kind of meteor-ideo-logical waterboarding. As thousands of people, (almost all black people) outside the New Orleans Convention Center chanted for “help, help, help, help,” and the man in charge of disaster relief asked “where is the convention center,” major news media found time for saturation coverage of a television being stolen.
But if the problem here was an abandonment of governmental responsibility, if the problem here is misrule, then stealing a television set is an entirely appropriate reaction (you do what you can to survive, I’ll trade you a television for a ticket out of the city). After decades of rule by an ‘every man for himself’ philosophy, it is hardly a surprise to find the occasional everyman acting for himself.
Which brings me back to my television set.
The same government that waterboarded the people of New Orleans has ordained that my television will stop working on or about February 2009. Whereas you may say this is not stealing in the technical sense, preventing the proper functioning of my television set by changing the broadcast standards amounts to theft just as much. You could say they are stealing the function of my television set, not the set itself. But I never would have bought the television in the first place if it wasn’t going to function.
Of course there are converter boxes. There are subsidies for buying converter boxes. But these are sops to try and make me less angry that my television set is being stolen.
But my real point is how amazing it is that no one calls this theft.
Not just one or two televisions are being taken in an environment of emergency, up to your ass in water-moccasins as the case may be, but millions, tens of millions of television sets being looted by the same people whose negligence caused the New Orleans flooding in the first place, and so far as I know not a single word of protest or objection is being raised anywhere.
When I was a child my parents would often tell a tale from Konrad Lorenz’s book “On Aggression.”
If a low ranking monkey was trained to operate a machine that gave out bananas, other members of the monkey tribe would go to that monkey and demand a banana from the machine. But if a high ranking monkey was trained, he would teach other monkeys to operate the machine for themselves. Which is to say that whether or not something is “theft” depends on the social rank of the people doing the stealing.
For over a decade now we as a society have been planning the development and delivery of HDTV, and the biggest of big players have been sharpening their cleavers for an appropriately-sized share of the action. When large corporations with names like Sony, and GE, and Panasonic, and Philips get together and agree on a schedule to reallocate the nation’s bandwidth resources, the result, whatever it is, is not theft.
Certainly it will not be reported as such in the news media that are owned by Sony, and GE.
And so on the third anniversary of the waterboarding of New Orleans, watching the faith-based coverage of the faith-based political conventions that amount to democratic thought in our soon to be HD world, I am not much worried about my television being stolen. It has been a long time since there was anything on worth watching. Come next year there will be nothing but noise, and static, fuzz and blur.
Over all, a big improvement.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Surge in General
Should we surge or should we go
Gen’ral Petraeus let me know
Should we stay or should we go?
If you say the surge is fine,
We’ll be there til the end of time,
So you got to let me know,
Do we surge or do we go?
It’s all these I-E-Ds,
they’re busy blowing off my knees,
all the insurgents dressed in black,
so if we want to steal Iraq,
well come on and let us know
should we surge or should we go?
This indecisions killing me,
If you want torture set me free,
Exactly whom we’re s’posed to be
Do these electrodes even fit me?
Come on and let me know,
Should we surge or should we blow?
Should we surge or should we go now?
Should we surge or should we go now?
If we leave there will be trouble,
and if we stay it will be double,
so you got to let us know
should we surge or should we blow?
Gen’ral Petraeus let me know
Should we stay or should we go?
If you say the surge is fine,
We’ll be there til the end of time,
So you got to let me know,
Do we surge or do we go?
It’s all these I-E-Ds,
they’re busy blowing off my knees,
all the insurgents dressed in black,
so if we want to steal Iraq,
well come on and let us know
should we surge or should we go?
This indecisions killing me,
If you want torture set me free,
Exactly whom we’re s’posed to be
Do these electrodes even fit me?
Come on and let me know,
Should we surge or should we blow?
Should we surge or should we go now?
Should we surge or should we go now?
If we leave there will be trouble,
and if we stay it will be double,
so you got to let us know
should we surge or should we blow?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Should we surge or should we go now
Video is available from the Literary Cafe reading on 9/13. My reading/performance is grouped together with one from Jack McGuane and Marcus Bales.
http://literarycafe.net/blog/
http://literarycafe.net/blog/
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Guns for Jesus
Terror for Christmas
Well the terror alert had been raised to high,
so our F-15's were patrolling the sky.
Keeping us safe, keeping us free,
protecting the homeland security.
Every day of the week, every week of the year,
we're armed to the teeth so we got nothing to fear---
except maybe,
fear itself.
Except maybe,
fear itself.
The kids were asleep all snug in their beds,
while visions of Predators shot through their heads.
They were slaughtering badguys like you wouldn't believe,
with their Hellfire missiles there on Christmas Eve.
They were pint-sized heroes in an army of one,
and for Jesus's birthday all they wanted was guns;
guns for Jesus,
and fear itself.
Guns for Jesus,
and fear itself.
Well the terrorists are always around,
so you better never lower your guard.
So while we celebrate the baby Jesus,
you know they're trying extra hard.
It was just after midnight and NORAD radar
showed that something big was coming in fast.
There was no time to think, and no time to argue,
act now or it might just be your last.
And they mighta thought twice,
and they mighta thought better,
but the terror was already so high,
well that was the night that the US Air Force
blew Santa Claus outta the sky.
We blew Santa Claus outta the sky.
And it was raining bits of blown up reindeer
for hours and hours on end,
and none of our jets,
and none of our missiles
could put Santa back together again.
And though fear and hate,
may keep you safe,
from everything the enemy sends,
the problem with answering fear with guns,
is that you're gonna end up killing your friends.
The trouble with answering fear with guns,
is that you always end destroying your friends.
With nothing to fear,
and nothing to love,
except maybe
fear itself.
Except maybe,
fear itself.
Well the terror alert had been raised to high,
so our F-15's were patrolling the sky.
Keeping us safe, keeping us free,
protecting the homeland security.
Every day of the week, every week of the year,
we're armed to the teeth so we got nothing to fear---
except maybe,
fear itself.
Except maybe,
fear itself.
The kids were asleep all snug in their beds,
while visions of Predators shot through their heads.
They were slaughtering badguys like you wouldn't believe,
with their Hellfire missiles there on Christmas Eve.
They were pint-sized heroes in an army of one,
and for Jesus's birthday all they wanted was guns;
guns for Jesus,
and fear itself.
Guns for Jesus,
and fear itself.
Well the terrorists are always around,
so you better never lower your guard.
So while we celebrate the baby Jesus,
you know they're trying extra hard.
It was just after midnight and NORAD radar
showed that something big was coming in fast.
There was no time to think, and no time to argue,
act now or it might just be your last.
And they mighta thought twice,
and they mighta thought better,
but the terror was already so high,
well that was the night that the US Air Force
blew Santa Claus outta the sky.
We blew Santa Claus outta the sky.
And it was raining bits of blown up reindeer
for hours and hours on end,
and none of our jets,
and none of our missiles
could put Santa back together again.
And though fear and hate,
may keep you safe,
from everything the enemy sends,
the problem with answering fear with guns,
is that you're gonna end up killing your friends.
The trouble with answering fear with guns,
is that you always end destroying your friends.
With nothing to fear,
and nothing to love,
except maybe
fear itself.
Except maybe,
fear itself.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Text the Page
Text the Page
Well you watch the parents testify,
‘Til your day is through,
Out there in the hearing room,
what are they to do?
Victims of some predator,
but if they only knew-ew-ew
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
You know they might not follow you,
all the friendly words you said,
you’re hoping that they’ll swallow you,
you both want to get ah-head.
You’ve got your towel all ready,
as you climb into your be-he-head.
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
Other congressmen are busy,
there’s important work to do,
taking bribes from Abramoff,
making torture legal too.
No bid contracts for the oil wars,
but none of that’s for you.
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
Well you watch the parents testify,
‘Til your day is through,
Out there in the hearing room,
what are they to do?
Victims of some predator,
but if they only knew-ew-ew
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
You know they might not follow you,
all the friendly words you said,
you’re hoping that they’ll swallow you,
you both want to get ah-head.
You’ve got your towel all ready,
as you climb into your be-he-head.
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
Other congressmen are busy,
there’s important work to do,
taking bribes from Abramoff,
making torture legal too.
No bid contracts for the oil wars,
but none of that’s for you.
There I go,
grabbing my Blackberry,
Don’t I know
I should act my age.
There I go,
with the explicit emails,
There I go,
text the page.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
"A Guy Named Arkhipov Just Saved the World"
"A Guy Named Arkhipov Just Saved the World"
There are times when I wonder if I've ever achieved much, or anything really, anything worth mentioning in my entire life.
Remarkably these times occur most often when I'm applying for a job, or working on my resume. Which is to say, not so much when I'm just living my life, but most often when I'm trying to express the meaning of my life to others in terms that I think will most duly impress them. It's the business of what ought to impress others, or what they think most ought to impress them, it's at exactly those times that I'm most lost as to the meaning of my own life.
Which has made me covet a killer resume, one chock full of easily encapsulated nuggets of indisputable achievement, and which has given me a highly acute perceptiveness about what would make for the most awesome resume fodder.
Who wouldn't be thrilled, for example, to be able to claim, like Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union: First Woman in Space. Think of how you'd always be surprising potential employers, whetting their interest with the fact that you'd made it to space nearly 20 years before Sally Ride, and people would never know why Sally Ride's name was on the tip of their tongues, but Tereshkova would be almost anonymous.
Tim Berners-Lee, now there's a real jaw-dropper in my estimation. Imagine being able to line-item the entry on your resume: Invented the World Wide Web. This multi-media extended and enhanced electronic consciousness accessed by billions of people a day: we're talking boffo resume material here.
It's even to the point where I ponder resume entries for non-human life forms. I think back to those early methane-eating bacteria that first excreted oxygen and think what awesome bullet points that would make:
* first successful emission of atmospheric oxygen
* created the sky.
We're talking quadruple bold underscored italics here.!!!
But for some reason lately, I'm not sure why, the one line item that's been preoccupying me lately is for Vasily Arkhipov.
That's right, Vasily Arkhipov.
He was an officer on a Soviet submarine back during the Cuban missile crisis.
Unbeknownst to the boy-geniuses and turd blossoms of the Kennedy White House, the Russians had succeeded in putting nuclear warheads on their submarines by then, the same submarines that were escorting ships carrying nuclear missile technology to Cuba.
Moscow had given authority to the subs to launch their nuclear torpedoes if all three of the officers on board were in agreement that there was an all out war which would justify a nuclear response.
A U.S. ship, while supporting the "quarantine" of Cuba dropped depth charges to warn Arkhipov's sub away from approaching. Not recognizing this as a warning rather than an attack, two of the three Russian officers voted to launch their nukes. But Arkhipov said nyet. As Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archives puts it: "A guy named Arkhipov just saved the world."
How's that for a resume builder: SAVED THE WORLD.
Or would it be better as "Personally and singlehandedly saved the world."
"Prevented nuclear Armageddon?"
"Assured the continued survival of human life on this planet, temporarily at least."
Maybe it's because the God squad wackos in the White House these days keep talking about putting all sorts of crazy weapons in space, like putting plutonium up there, or putting giant bundles of kinetic tungsten in space to create Hiroshima equivalent instant death missiles they call "rods from God" in near earth orbit. Maybe its because they want to build a whole new generation of "bunker busting" nuclear weapons. Maybe its because one of the Pentagon's ten over-arching "commands" is called "space command", and the guy in charge of it is named General "Lord". Or maybe it's the sound of the words "full spectrum dominance", or the fact that 15 years after the end of the Cold War the U.S. still has a hare-trigger launch-on-warning posture meaning that nuclear war could easily be triggered by a radar-glitch. Maybe it's because of none or all of these, but lately the killer resume entry I can't stop thinking about is that one of Arkhipov's: SAVED THE WORLD.
SAVED THE WORLD.
Something even those methane-eating bacteria might be impressed by.
There are times when I wonder if I've ever achieved much, or anything really, anything worth mentioning in my entire life.
Remarkably these times occur most often when I'm applying for a job, or working on my resume. Which is to say, not so much when I'm just living my life, but most often when I'm trying to express the meaning of my life to others in terms that I think will most duly impress them. It's the business of what ought to impress others, or what they think most ought to impress them, it's at exactly those times that I'm most lost as to the meaning of my own life.
Which has made me covet a killer resume, one chock full of easily encapsulated nuggets of indisputable achievement, and which has given me a highly acute perceptiveness about what would make for the most awesome resume fodder.
Who wouldn't be thrilled, for example, to be able to claim, like Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union: First Woman in Space. Think of how you'd always be surprising potential employers, whetting their interest with the fact that you'd made it to space nearly 20 years before Sally Ride, and people would never know why Sally Ride's name was on the tip of their tongues, but Tereshkova would be almost anonymous.
Tim Berners-Lee, now there's a real jaw-dropper in my estimation. Imagine being able to line-item the entry on your resume: Invented the World Wide Web. This multi-media extended and enhanced electronic consciousness accessed by billions of people a day: we're talking boffo resume material here.
It's even to the point where I ponder resume entries for non-human life forms. I think back to those early methane-eating bacteria that first excreted oxygen and think what awesome bullet points that would make:
* first successful emission of atmospheric oxygen
* created the sky.
We're talking quadruple bold underscored italics here.!!!
But for some reason lately, I'm not sure why, the one line item that's been preoccupying me lately is for Vasily Arkhipov.
That's right, Vasily Arkhipov.
He was an officer on a Soviet submarine back during the Cuban missile crisis.
Unbeknownst to the boy-geniuses and turd blossoms of the Kennedy White House, the Russians had succeeded in putting nuclear warheads on their submarines by then, the same submarines that were escorting ships carrying nuclear missile technology to Cuba.
Moscow had given authority to the subs to launch their nuclear torpedoes if all three of the officers on board were in agreement that there was an all out war which would justify a nuclear response.
A U.S. ship, while supporting the "quarantine" of Cuba dropped depth charges to warn Arkhipov's sub away from approaching. Not recognizing this as a warning rather than an attack, two of the three Russian officers voted to launch their nukes. But Arkhipov said nyet. As Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archives puts it: "A guy named Arkhipov just saved the world."
How's that for a resume builder: SAVED THE WORLD.
Or would it be better as "Personally and singlehandedly saved the world."
"Prevented nuclear Armageddon?"
"Assured the continued survival of human life on this planet, temporarily at least."
Maybe it's because the God squad wackos in the White House these days keep talking about putting all sorts of crazy weapons in space, like putting plutonium up there, or putting giant bundles of kinetic tungsten in space to create Hiroshima equivalent instant death missiles they call "rods from God" in near earth orbit. Maybe its because they want to build a whole new generation of "bunker busting" nuclear weapons. Maybe its because one of the Pentagon's ten over-arching "commands" is called "space command", and the guy in charge of it is named General "Lord". Or maybe it's the sound of the words "full spectrum dominance", or the fact that 15 years after the end of the Cold War the U.S. still has a hare-trigger launch-on-warning posture meaning that nuclear war could easily be triggered by a radar-glitch. Maybe it's because of none or all of these, but lately the killer resume entry I can't stop thinking about is that one of Arkhipov's: SAVED THE WORLD.
SAVED THE WORLD.
Something even those methane-eating bacteria might be impressed by.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Rhetorical Pediatrics --- The Slam Edit
Rhetorical Pediatrics
Baby baby baby
baby baby baby
baby baby baby
light my way
--- Bono, U2
Baby. I love you so much I can't even begin to tell you.
Baby. I love you like
the ultimate four by four,
some cliff-climbing piece of Detroit V8 muscle machine,
the kind of thing that could scale the Matterhorn in cruise
control towing a god-damned 747 behind it like a paper plane.
Baby, yer just like that
but without the catalytic converter.
Baby. Yer like the ultimate calzone.
Some crisp-crusted mozarella-stuffed hunk of
scorching-oven, monkey-tongued, belly-bust basted
in dragon-flame tomato sauce.
Baby. I love you like (heh hah heh hah) Lamaze.
Baby. The minute I see you I start hyperventilating harder than
a phone-stalker on an ether binge, my pelvis contracting in rhythmic
spasms so strong I'm sure I'll give birth.
Baby. I love you like some mythological Greek river of forgetfulness.
Some Lethean passage into the afterlife, coz when you're near
I feel newly braced from that river, can't remember anything
or anyone else now I'm washed up here on the other shore of you.
Baby. I love you like some high-end supercomputer with more giga-hertz
than the Pentagon, more disc space than Motown, more Ram than a
shepherd, more cache than the Federal Reserve, --- totally
WYSIWYG.
Baby. I love you like Osama bin Laden loves his cave.
Baby. Not the way some world banker loves some bantustan's
bagman, some sadistic Sese Seko-an psycho, but like a
French existentialist loves fast food and slow women, but
really loves the opposite.
Baby. I love you like Frank Gehry loves architecturally undulating titanium.
Baby, the way a charged particle loves a magnetic storm,
some foreign born invader thrashing through the atmosphere
in glowing swarming turbulence of borealis solar wind, some
cosmic kayaker churning in the dance of a whitewater sky.
You're my annihilation radiation.
Baby. I love you like the Bomu river, flowing 500 miles through a
central African republic to join the Uele and form the Ubangi.
Baby. I love you like a body builder loves a pose off.
Like a cigar loves a humidor.
Like a fight promoter loves trash talk.
Baby, baby, baby. I love you like some soot-caked dust-drenched, air-dropped
mountain wild-fire fighter loves a cloudburst, an effortless natural answer to a threat
with no human solution, a liquid prayer come true unifying the land, the sky,
the forest and the flame, man and woman in a single rain, like tears of joy,
eroding clean channels on thankful skin, soothed and cooled, a smile within a desperate and often aching life, a soft surcease from this world of pain.
--- Terry Provost
Baby baby baby
baby baby baby
baby baby baby
light my way
--- Bono, U2
Baby. I love you so much I can't even begin to tell you.
Baby. I love you like
the ultimate four by four,
some cliff-climbing piece of Detroit V8 muscle machine,
the kind of thing that could scale the Matterhorn in cruise
control towing a god-damned 747 behind it like a paper plane.
Baby, yer just like that
but without the catalytic converter.
Baby. Yer like the ultimate calzone.
Some crisp-crusted mozarella-stuffed hunk of
scorching-oven, monkey-tongued, belly-bust basted
in dragon-flame tomato sauce.
Baby. I love you like (heh hah heh hah) Lamaze.
Baby. The minute I see you I start hyperventilating harder than
a phone-stalker on an ether binge, my pelvis contracting in rhythmic
spasms so strong I'm sure I'll give birth.
Baby. I love you like some mythological Greek river of forgetfulness.
Some Lethean passage into the afterlife, coz when you're near
I feel newly braced from that river, can't remember anything
or anyone else now I'm washed up here on the other shore of you.
Baby. I love you like some high-end supercomputer with more giga-hertz
than the Pentagon, more disc space than Motown, more Ram than a
shepherd, more cache than the Federal Reserve, --- totally
WYSIWYG.
Baby. I love you like Osama bin Laden loves his cave.
Baby. Not the way some world banker loves some bantustan's
bagman, some sadistic Sese Seko-an psycho, but like a
French existentialist loves fast food and slow women, but
really loves the opposite.
Baby. I love you like Frank Gehry loves architecturally undulating titanium.
Baby, the way a charged particle loves a magnetic storm,
some foreign born invader thrashing through the atmosphere
in glowing swarming turbulence of borealis solar wind, some
cosmic kayaker churning in the dance of a whitewater sky.
You're my annihilation radiation.
Baby. I love you like the Bomu river, flowing 500 miles through a
central African republic to join the Uele and form the Ubangi.
Baby. I love you like a body builder loves a pose off.
Like a cigar loves a humidor.
Like a fight promoter loves trash talk.
Baby, baby, baby. I love you like some soot-caked dust-drenched, air-dropped
mountain wild-fire fighter loves a cloudburst, an effortless natural answer to a threat
with no human solution, a liquid prayer come true unifying the land, the sky,
the forest and the flame, man and woman in a single rain, like tears of joy,
eroding clean channels on thankful skin, soothed and cooled, a smile within a desperate and often aching life, a soft surcease from this world of pain.
--- Terry Provost
Friday, June 23, 2006
Arbeit Macht Frei
Last time I consulted the annals of ex post facto casus belli in Iraq, our official rationale for slaughtering 200,000 Iraqis was to free the Iraqi people. Hence the brand name, Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Why then are we using slave labor in support operations there?
To be precise, why are we paying Halliburton subsidiary KBR for its slave operations promoting freedom? Note in particular the fate of the 12 Nepalese mentioned by the Tribune at the above link.
Why then are we using slave labor in support operations there?
To be precise, why are we paying Halliburton subsidiary KBR for its slave operations promoting freedom? Note in particular the fate of the 12 Nepalese mentioned by the Tribune at the above link.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Unwarranted warrantless totalitarian police state spying
The performance of the propaganda system in covering(up) the Bush/NSA totalitarian police state surveillance program is highly impressive. I just did two Google News searches, one using "warrantless surveillance" and the other "unwarranted surveillance."
1,690 hits for warrantless surveillance. 2 hits for unwarranted surveillance.
"Unwarranted" is a far more common word, as shown by 10 million hits, as opposed to 3.4 million for "warrantless" (a number that was probably much smaller before the propaganda system began evading the unwarranted nature of the current police state program.)
Using "unwarranted" makes clear from the get-go that the program was bogus. This however is not what the propaganda system is paid to do. Hence, "warrantless" is 845 times more likely.
1,690 hits for warrantless surveillance. 2 hits for unwarranted surveillance.
"Unwarranted" is a far more common word, as shown by 10 million hits, as opposed to 3.4 million for "warrantless" (a number that was probably much smaller before the propaganda system began evading the unwarranted nature of the current police state program.)
Using "unwarranted" makes clear from the get-go that the program was bogus. This however is not what the propaganda system is paid to do. Hence, "warrantless" is 845 times more likely.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Primum Non Nocere
Although not in the Hippocratic oath, the principle "first do no harm" does trace to Hippocrates.
The principle is not "first do no net harm."
Doing harm while not doing any net harm is a morally tenuous proposition routinely abused by for-profit medicine. Net harm cannot be honestly assessed by for-profit medicine, or by "non-profit" research funded by for-profit medicine.
For-profit medicine invariably stilts the terms of debate to favor for-profit harm.
This is how you get, for example, Vioxx. (See the VIGOR study.)
The principle is not "first do no net harm."
Doing harm while not doing any net harm is a morally tenuous proposition routinely abused by for-profit medicine. Net harm cannot be honestly assessed by for-profit medicine, or by "non-profit" research funded by for-profit medicine.
For-profit medicine invariably stilts the terms of debate to favor for-profit harm.
This is how you get, for example, Vioxx. (See the VIGOR study.)
Monday, May 08, 2006
Amplified Noise Censorship
Everyone has the right to speak.
Only the rich have the right to be heard.
Information theory requires a signal-to-noise ratio of 1.0 or higher for signal to be detected. Thus any message signal can be effectively censored by amplifying the noise that surrounds it. Corporate media, i.e. the corporate propaganda system, functions to drown meaningful signals in meaningless for-profit noise.
I call this process “amplified noise censorship”.
Only the rich have the right to be heard.
Information theory requires a signal-to-noise ratio of 1.0 or higher for signal to be detected. Thus any message signal can be effectively censored by amplifying the noise that surrounds it. Corporate media, i.e. the corporate propaganda system, functions to drown meaningful signals in meaningless for-profit noise.
I call this process “amplified noise censorship”.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Combating Poverty
In "Failed States", Chomsky notes the Bush administration reduced the projected budget for the Millenium Challenge Corporation "by billions of dollars." It had been set up to "combat poverty in the developing world."
(Chomsky, p.4)
What remarkable homonymy that "Millenium Challenge" refers also to the major U.S. war game preparatory to the invasion of Iraq, of which General William Wallace ("The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against") apparently mis-spoke.
Not only that, but the war game was apparently rigged.
Combating poverty indeed.
(Chomsky, p.4)
What remarkable homonymy that "Millenium Challenge" refers also to the major U.S. war game preparatory to the invasion of Iraq, of which General William Wallace ("The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against") apparently mis-spoke.
Not only that, but the war game was apparently rigged.
Combating poverty indeed.
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