A couple random thoughts

I support the right of women to serve in battle in the millitary, actually I consider it less a right than an obligation, not that everyone need do it as I certainly have no intention of serving in the military under any circumstance but that women should, if they want to serve in the military, be expected to do any job that the men are expected to do... However I think we do need to address the truth of at least one of the arguments against women in combat, that they will disturb the unity of the unit, which is not a sufficient reason not to have them serve but it is a legitimate concern worthy of consideration. The fact is that men are trained by our society to be protective of women and respectful to them... or at leas they should be... shouldn't they? What I mean is that I don't believe in hitting anyone but I am certainly less likely to hit a woman than a man and that is supposedly a good thing. But at the same time I believe that woman are equal in all ways to men and worthy of equal treatment, so why do I treat them like they are some weak little thing that can't take a punch when they are being an asshole? Ultimately when the gunfire starts I would be more likely to throw myself in front of the woman next to me to protect her than I would the man on the other side and I would expect the man to be more likely to throw himself in front of me than I would expect the woman to do the same thing... Equality needs to swing both ways and sometimes being equal can be kind of shitty. Women should be active participants in combat, and they should have to register for the draft the same as every man, but we need to impress it on everyone that it is just as much the woman's responsibility to throw herself on the grenade as it is any man's, and given the number of grenades men have taken over the years maybe we can make an active effort to even that shit out...

And Another Thing: I am not a Christian, I was born into a Christian family but it was one of those super cool laid back liberal ones where the real message of Jesus was understood to be about love and peace and not about sin and damnation of the unbeliever.... That being said I have to admit that if I were a Christian and did believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he came to save humanity but ended up on a cross for his trouble I could understand how I might hate the jews... I don't think it would make sense to extend that feeling down to their descendants today but I can see resenting the people who were there at the time and saw the person I believed to be God incarnate and denied him, rejected him... I suppose this is one of the many reasons I am not a believer, I think that believing something like this half way is kind of weird. I mean I guess my Dad who is someone I love and respect, even admire, kind of believes this stuff half way in these terms... I mean if he was the actual incarnation of God how can you not be like 100% I'm going to do exactly everything he says to do and deny my family and give up all my possessions etc. Although I suppose I also do get the argument about those being metaphors and parables not to be taken literally but again I get those arguments if he was a human teacher and all of that but if he was GOD just say what you FUCKING mean and be clear. Lay it out for humanity do x don't do y... and mean it. If you really mean that no rich man can get into heaven then when I get up there it better just be a homeless encampment... Anyways I don't believe any of it. AND FURTHERMORE SUSAN... how about a little further clarification GOD? I get that maybe to don't want to stick your neck back out after the whole nails through the hands thing and get involved in the whole what religion is right thing.... You came you told us the whole Jesus thing now you are done... but what about just letting us know which Jesus course to follow... Is it the Catholics, the Lutherans? And if it doesn't matter can't you just tell them all that so they will shut up and leave the rest of us out of it... It's always fun to engage in arguments with fictional beings... And on that note can we acknowledge that there are 2 imaginary friends involved in Christmas and only one of them brings us presents so its really at this point more Santa's day than it is Jesus's...

I meant to write something of substance today but it just wasn't happening so I did this instead... why is it so much easier to fuck around than to be serious?

I Would Like to Think a Bit of a Nietzschean Attack...

Pompous Statement Of The Day: The problem with all philosophy prior to myself is the inability or unwillingness to recognize the fact of or acknowledge the implications of the non-existence of an essential nature to anything, and the prominence of perpetual change as the only truely essential truth. The Universe is in a constant state of flux as energy becomes matter and matter breaks apart to become energy and all energy and matter interact in a constant chaotic cycle without beginning, end or direction. Entropy being the only guiding principle of the Universe. This all sounds so fucking nebulous and pointless, and it is most certainly the second and probably the first. It is now a basic characteristic of humanity to seek order and patterns in the world around us and to look for meaning in all things. This last sentence of course points to one of the core problems with not only the idea I am attempting to express but the limitations of the language available to me to express it. I say NOW because this characteristic is one which has developed in humans and as such is not essential in that it has not always existed. The desire to find meaning is a result of the growth of the size and complexity of our brains over time. We as animals found it beneficial to find patterns and connections in the world around us as some of these do in fact exist and the recognition of them allows us to better navigate the complexity of the world. As those ancestors of ours who were best able to navigate the world succeeded and procreated we became ever better and seeing patterns but also ever more reliant on them. We began finding patterns, connections, and meanings in the world which were not supported by fact, some of these connections no doubt had negative impacts on individual survival but this of course was not enough to outweigh the benefits and so pattern finders continued to outsurvive non-pattern finders such that eventually there were no non-pattern finders left or those few who continue to appear through random chance are, rightly, identified as developmentally retarded. Ultimately religion and much of philosophy, a pursuit I have devoted my life to, are evolutionary bi-products without any stable basis in other words: Mistakes.

Core Assumptions and Principles #13

13. Our "laws" of logic and rationality are not fundamental to the universe a priori

I feel like this might be one of my more controversial positions, so I will attempt to explain it clearly, which I am not at all certain I can do. The basic idea here is that we should not discount our experiences on the basis that they do not fit our logical rational expectations. This is not to say that we should accept them pure on face value, but rather that when we encounter the illogical or irrational we need to take a step back and investigate, accept that these things might very well be true, most likely they are the result of some error either in perception or understanding, but it is important to understand what error if any is responsible and not simply assume the error and force our experiences to fit with our expectations. Our so called "laws" of logic are simply the accumulated predictive guidence of past experience both our own and that of those who came before us and passed their knowledge down. As such these laws are highly useful for predicting the likely future and for recognizing when we may be in error, but they are also subject to change as the result of new experiences and interpretations of past experience. The danger is that we too often allow our understanding of logic determine our understanding of experience rather than treat it as the useful but not final tool that it truly is.
The best example of the importance of this idea comes out of the field of quantum mechanics. With the new discoveries of the aspects of the quantum world we face the possibility of particles occupying more than one location at a given point in time, having two contradictory attributes simultaneously, and having interactions across space instantaneously. All of these things do not fit into the established logical structures but that does not mean they are not true. These new discoveries require new methods of thought and understanding and adjustments to our pre-existing understadings to the limits of what is possible.
A second aspect of this thought is that even the ideas which we have derived from experience and serve us without fail are only true in so far as they accurate represent the case as it is not as it must be. This relates back to the Goldilocks hypothesis that the universe in which we live is only one of an infinite number of possible universes such that those things which we perceive as necessary are only appear that way because we came about within them, and had they been different we would not have come about as we did. This hypothesis usually comes up in the discussion of the existence of God to explain why a creator is unnecessary to explain a universe precisely suited for our own existence. This does not however require the actual existence of these alternate universes only the recognition of their possibility.

Slinking Back

Hello....
So yeah I kind of went away there for a while. I wish I had some great excuse or story to explain my failure to keep this up but the truth is I don't. I wasn't busy, I mean I had a houseguest one weekend, an out of town wedding the next, and an out of town family birthday the weekend after that. HAPPY 65th DAD! since you are the only person I know of who has ever looked at this blog let's see if you ever see that... But none of that serves as an explanation at all as the weekends are the time when I was least likely to be keeping up with the posting anyway... I was going to tell this story about being depressed and not having motivation but I though that was bullshit until I realized that it was hitting closer to home than I had realized or was comfortable with and I'm not sure which I less want to do lie or admit the truth... Ultimately it was an extention of my typical shooting myself in the foot which has lead to being a dog walker with an unread philosophy blog rather than a philosophy professor with an unread philosophy manuscript... I would also like to claim that I have at least been keeping up and advancing the agenda of getting some necessary reading done but that has barely happened either. I started in on a new course of research The Cynics, which I think could be fruitful but it is just a toe in the water and is mostly at this point a distraction from finishing the other 10 books I have started. The real reason ultimately I think is that I remain conflicted about the purpose of the blog. I announced my intention to write something of substance and then I completely folded up, I did nothing on the paper about Schopenhaur's On Suicide, I spent a lot of time thinking about it and I have a clear idea what I would say but I never put fingers to keys to write any of it... mainly I think because I was not prepared to do an academically serious job of it and anything less seemed like a waste, so I did nothing which I think is probably the best example of what is wrong with me as a human being. Or maybe that is just and excuse, I like to claim that I am a secret perfectionist, that I don't do things unless I think I can do them perfectly but that is mostly an excuse not to do things, I am not a perfectionist I am lazy. In fact the biggest laugh I ever got out of a crowd was when I accepted my National Merrit Honorable Mention Award and attributed it to my tireless devotion to perfection, even my Grandmother laughed at that one. In truth most things come pretty easily to me and as a consequence when I see that I am going to have to put in that little extra bit of work to make it that little bit better I just decide that what it is is good enough...
So I have been gone for nearly a month and I see that I have 369 page views which is about 300 more than when I left and most of those were me, so now I feel that little extra pressure because apparently other people really are seeing this. How many other people I have no idea but maybe they saw that I had promised to post everyday and then disappeared so they assume I am dead and have moved on to other blogs so I don't have to worry about it. I can hope can't I?  Ok so for the time being no big projects just posts everyday, get the ideas down and don't make claims about coming back to fix them, Nietzschean Aphorisms... Also I am trying to get it up to apply to Grad programs again... but I feel even less qualified than in the past when I failed... I did a year at CUNY, and didn't really do all that well... I mean I did OK I guess but its not like I blew the doors off or distinguished myself at all, I don't have anyone there to write me a recommendation and I don't think I can reach back 8 years to NYU, or 4 to American and none of those people seem to have writing me very good recs anyway seeing as they only got me into American and CUNY out of the 30 some applications I submitted over all those tries... This blog actually was intended to serve as a way to get something to impress these schools, as was the idea of writing about Schopenhaur, I think that the disappearance was probably a reaction to the fact that the deadlines to get started working on those things was coming up and a way to self-sabotage those efforts. I know what I want but I don't think it is possible so its easier to shoot myself in the foot and ensure failure than to put myself out there and risk real failure in having actually tried... Ok so I have been pretty down on myself here as well as admitting some things about myself which I usually keep repressed, hopefully I have exorcised the darkness and can get my shit back together... Yesterday I was supposed to go to Zen meditation as that is something I have been telling myself I was going to start doing for years and I carried my comfy Zazen pants which I bought specifically for that purpose with me all day as well as my books and laptop to use in the time between ending my work which is essentially a part time job and going to a nice quiet place to meditate with me all day only to bail and go home to watch crappy tv on my computer... so thats gotta stop too. Last week I did see some really good movies thoughso thats a good thing, I should write about them here as that was one of my purposes for this blog and is a good excuse for using so many hours watching movies... so I will try to do that later... later later later.... as it stands I have a walk in 20 minutes which will pay me money I soarly need because I have an essentially part time job that doesn't pay well at all so I have no money... and what money I do have I spend watching movies... Ok so things I need to do... get my NY State ID. for which I need a copy of my lease which I got my room mate to email to me so I have to print it out and sing and all that crap... passport renewal... PhD program applications, I need to research faculties more extensively and write letters to people I might want to work with to see if there is any chance I can get a champion, but if I want to do that I need something to interest and impress them which I don't have and which was supposed to be what this was going to produce but that is the pressure which caused me to recoil from this etc etc etc. Ok also I need to stop being down on myself, or at the very least react more positively to my own negativity by proving myself wrong. also I have to end this so I can go walk a dog named Iggy Pop.

Core Assumptions and Principles #1: There Is No God

Ok, so I set myself an obvious task of taking my professed core assumptions and expanding and exploring them each one by one. This however is a huge task and one that will hopefully never be truly exhausted, or at least that is what I am going to tell myself to let myself off the hook of having to complete it... I am starting with what I listed as #1 though I assume in the future I will jump around on the list. Also in the future I will attempt not to pad the top of the post with this kind of reflection on the project itself though that is far from a promise. Obviously arguing against the existence of God is a massive task in and of itself given the number of centuries spent arguing the subject and mostly in the pro direction so I will not attempt to take on each argument and refute them all because I do not consider the burden of proof to be on me and mine. I cannot prove God doesn't exist nor do I really want to persuade believers to come to my perspective. It is my intention merely to establish the fact that the existence of God is not necessary to my broader philosophical project and that through the removal of this belief I have opened the door to a deeper and I maintain more accurate understanding of the world around us. I do not deny that faith in God or a higher power may serve a function in the human experience, though I do question its value and whether its negative effects do not outweigh whatever good it might be doing us. My arguments no doubt owe a deep debt to many who have come before me and it is one I hope to catalogue in the future but at least for the moment I will simply acknowledge that it exists and say that it is owed most deeply to the works of Nietzsche, Dawkins, and Hitchens, as well as no doubt to many others I will think of as I go.

One of the key arguments in favor of the existence of God is the necessity of a creator as nothing can come from nothing. This is a compelling logical assertion but it contains its own downfall. Where did God come from? If the universe could not have sprung spontaneously from a void how is it that God existed, what was before him? The answer commonly given to this is the mystical response that God, by the virtue of being God, does not need to be created because he has always been... But then why could not the Universe have always been? I do not necessarily consider this answer to the question of how the Universe came to be, that it simply has always been, satisfying but it certainly seems more appropriate than that there is a consciousness which has always been which brought the universe into being through powerful means which themselves are essentially unknown.

God is a creation of the human mind, but most importantly God is a weakness of the human mind, and for lack of a better term the human spirit. It is a fundamental aspect of humanity to desire knowledge and understanding, this is the well spring of the concept of God, as explanation for the unknown, but God is a poor explanation because it is no explanation at all. [Perhaps it is no weaker than my own existentialist explanation, that there is no why behind it all only the fact that it is as it is... but I would maintain that rather than closing the debate with the steel trap of God the contention that there is no essential why to it all leaves the course of wonder wide open encouraging the mind to explore further to understand all that there is which can be understood before the void of chance meets the limits of human capability.] In the early days of human intellectual investigation it might have seemed sufficient to say that the rain came from a man in the sky, but once people began to learn what really caused the rain we moved beyond this. Interestingly many of the earliest mythic systems contained a creation story about the Gods themselves coming into existence, or even had the earth and universe pre-existing the Gods, it was only as the need for the Gods to explain phenomena in the world did people begin to give the Gods eternal natures and make them the creators out of fear of eliminating any need for the existence in the first place.

I am publishing at this moment as I have promised to post once a day, but this is far from finished... I have noticed that I have promised to come back and rework many things in the past and have not really been doing it but I definitely will be back to this...

The Big Paper Topic Announcement

Yes it is finally here, after 3 days of radio silence, in which I would love to claim I was doing all sorts of important things which precluded me from keeping my promise to post at least once a day but instead I was just being lazy and avoiding even this minimum level of responsibility which I put onto myself in the first place..., I have decided on my topic. It should come as no surprise that I have chosen to go with the only thing I put forward as an option which had any actual content to it. I will be writing about the inherent value/valuelessness of human life in regards to Schopenhaurs essay On Suicide in terms of modern ethical questions surrounding end of life care and physician assisted suicide. I am going to look to keep the content contained and the work short. I will also however be looking to make the whole thing a well considered and constructed piece.

Too Late Mitt

This first appeared as a Facebook Status Update but I wanted to put it here too.

It is simply too late for Mitt Romney to try to move toward the center. Everybody understands that in a primary a candidate will position him or herself further from the center than they will be in the General Election and we all take account of this, however the Candidate needs to begin their move toward the center around the time of their Party's convention. Mitt Romney continued to hold to his hard Right positions well after the convention and only took a hard move toward center in the first Presidential Debate. This is simply too late to be taken seriously. It was a smart strategy if we let him get away with it, because it put President Obama in the position of having no idea where Mitt Romney stood going into the debate. Obama took Mitt Romney at his word on all of his positions and sought to engage with that man on those positions, Mitt Romney simply stood there and said, "No thats not what I believe", even though it was exactly what he had been saying he believed for the past 2 years. I know I have been saying this a lot but Mitt Romney only seems to have won the first debate if you do not consider the extent to which he was lying and radically changing his established positions. Mitt Romney's positions are those he has professed for the last 2 years or at least those he held at the end of the week following the end of his convention, this goes for President Obama as well, any position shifts which come after this point should be acknowledged as a change in postion and accompanied by an explanation of why the position has changed, otherwise the candidate is asking people to vote for them blind as to what their actual actionable position is once they are elected and that is simply no way to run a democracy.

A list of Core Assumptions and Principles

Every person carries with them a set of core assumptions and principles through which they filter all of their thoughts and experiences. It is important to become conscious of these such that you can check them and determine their effect on your experiences and whether perhaps you need to make a conscious effort to counteract and change them. I am sure this list I am about to provide is far from complete and it is my intention to add to and edit these as time passes. I will not remove any from this list but should any of these change I will note that they have either been amended or abandoned and attempt to explain how and why. I will also attempt to take each one in turn and make it the subject of its own post or series of posts exploring their source and implications. This post will be simply a list in order to keep it focused but please if you wish to question any of these let me know that is the point of making them public.

1. There is No God.

2. The basic nature of the Universe is one of random chance and consequences dictated by the principle of cause and effect.

3. The Principle of Cause and Effect is itself a coincidental result of the random and chance physical make up of the Universe as determined in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang or Great Expansion or whatever name we give to the beginning point of the Universe (as we know it.)

4. The only road to truth or knowledge is empirical experience.

5. Truth is the accurate representation of observable empirical fact.

6. Knowledge is merely a level of certainty about the truth of a statement.

7. Absolute certainty is impossible. It is entirely a question of relative certainty as it approaches but never reaches 100%

8. Human beings do not occupy any special position either in the Universe, or on Earth.

9. Humans are merely one species of primate which has superiority in some aspects and inferiority in others and it is only through the over emphasis of our strengths and underemphasis of our weaknesses that we have deluded ourselves into believing we are special.

10. There are no fundamental morals.

11. "Moral" behavior is culturally determined and is based on the needs and best functioning of a given society.

12. Differing moral stances can be assessed on how they affect the lives of those people subject to them on an empirical level.

13. Our "laws" of logic and rationality are not fundamental to the universe a priori

14. "Laws" of logic are derived from experience and as such are subject to change consequent to new experience.

15. Logic is predictive not proscriptive.

16. Logic is merely useful for understanding the most likely outcome and for identifying likely instances of mistakes in perception

17. Should outcomes differ from predictions consistently and after the elimination of likely error the prediction and the "laws" from which it was derived must be changed.

18. There is no a priori truth, everything we know we know a posteriori.

19. Existence precedes essence.

20. All men (and women) are not created equal.

21. No individual or group of individuals is in any position to determine what inequalities are of any real consequence so society and particularly Government must treat all people as equals.

22. The world as we perceive it is for all intents and purposes accurate enough to be considered real.

23. There is no essential truth hidden behind the illusion of reality.

24. All of our perceptions and experiences are filtered through our conceptualizations about the world.

25. Our conceptualizations are the result of our past experiences and the structures of our brains and organs of sense perception which have been determined by the process of evolution.

It was in no way intentional for this to be 25. It was 14 in almost these same words but then I split some of them up to get to the fundamental statement of what I meant and to not allow 2 assumptions to support each other as one point such that they contained their own internal support... I suppose however actively trying not to have a multiple of 5 would be as artificial as actively trying to achieve such a number so I won't just come up with another right now but seeing as I do not consider this a final and complete list it really doesn't matter.

26. The future is determined and cannot be known. (I am just going to put this not here to remind myself what I mean by this so I can remember and try to expand it later: The future is determined by the laws of physics which on the quantum level contain a level of uncertainty and chance... Human future is determined by our reactions and interactions with the world around us, the nature of which is determined by our past experiences and make up, this is not a denial of free will because it is exactly these past expereinces and internal make up which is what we refer to as the I making the decisions we perceive as free will we cannot choose differently than we do because to do so with necessitate that we be a different person, we are free to choose as we wish and the way we wish is determined by who we are such that the I chooses freely... or some bullshit like that)

I need to write a philosophic paper...

I think I need to write something of some length and substance. About 10-15 pages of a philosophical nature. I just need a topic, and then I am going to give myself a deadline of 2 weeks for a first draft and a month for a final-ish product, I did it all the time when I was in school but this time it will be good. Some possible ideas are: Schopenhaur's essay On Suicide in the context of the modern debate on physician assisted suicide and end of life care, I was listening to Tuesday's Fresh Air discussion of these issues... As well as several presentations of Tig Nataro's Largo set from August about her recent cancer diagnosis... Which of course is not about her imminent death because she has had successful double mastectomy and all the cancer has been removed giving her an estimated 7% chance of recurrence... but at the time she performed the set none of this had happened yet and all she knew was that she had stage 2 breast cancer in both breasts and it might have spread to her lymphnodes... the point being that it was a brave assessment of her own mortality and the pain life can throw at you... This topic would allow for the introduction of some Nietzsche and Sartre... though I would also need to actively keep things contained and succicnt... Ok another possibility would be to try to find an opening to begin to explore some questions of Deep Ecology which I find interesting, but this is obviously a new area of study for me and perhaps not the best thing to attempt an academic level paper on at this time. It would however open some interesting doors to Anarchist political theory which is another area I want to do more to explore. Maybe I can find an article or selection from No Gods No Masters to use as a jumping off point... but again this is an area in which I have an incomplete base from which to start. I don't want to pick something which will require a large amount of preliminary research mainly because I will use that as an excuse to postpone the doing in favor of reading which will then slip as the deadline becomes shaky and so the need to push to make it will lose force... In the context of that last statement perhaps I should pick some aspect of Nietzsche to work on being as that is my most sturdy area... Maybe take something from my college work and break it into pieces to find something worth expanding on. The problem is the continual grail of the integrated theory... especially because I do not believe in the possibility of an integrated theory and am opposed to the task of system building... that being the base of my integrated theory. There is an intersection point of Existentialism, Zen, and Quantum Theory / Modern Cosmology, in an atheistic comprehension of the world around us, and it is one which provides a compelling starting point for various Anarchistic/Libertarian Socialist political beliefs including a Deep Ecology stance but ultimately that is a series of book length projects which I am in no way prepared to even begin at the moment, especially considering that I can't even seem to get a simple 10 pages of quality philosophical writing done... It was my intention to promise you all a paper posted on here by X date in this post and tell you the topic... I don't know the topic but it is the 11th so lets say that by Nov. 1 I will have my first draft posted... and in order to make that happen I will be announcing the topic in this space on or before Monday October 15th!!!

A bit of a loose ramble about the Direct Democracy Scheme

This is kind of rambling and stream of consciousness but I wanted to get it out there and flowing. I hope to come back and make something more of it soon.

One of the key problems in this concept is trying to think how it might be modeled so as to be studied and improved. This program would require an established culture of political involvement as well as essentially universal internet and communications access. The first requirement stems from the need of a high level of active involvement in the political process. In the current American system the low level of active political involvement throughout the populace is masked by the fact that the same number of legislators fill congress regardless of how few people vote in any given election. Also because elections are held at least 2 years apart in the immediate run up to and aftermath of each election there may be a great deal of discussion about the low percentage of people participating but this fact is quickly obscured and forgotten by the time the actual work of the Government is being done. This situation would become immediately obvious once a more direct democratic process is put in place as the number of votes cast on each issue would directly reflect the interest and concern in the population for that issue. This would likely lead to the need for a floor or minimum number of votes to be cast in order for any issue to become law, we could not have a small number of people with a high level of interest being allowed to pass laws effecting the larger population which might not immediately draw the interest or notice of the majority at the time of voting.

The second issue of universal internet access is a more technical/practical hindrance. In order for this system to work people need access to large amounts of information as well as the ability to make instant and possibly frequent changes in the division of their voting power, as well as to vote for themselves on issues which they have not established a proxy. Voting periods would need to be open for several days if not longer because while all people would need to have access to vote at any given time to expect them all to be able to do it on a regular basis in a limited window would be overly optimistic. This might also open the door for the ability of a person to withdraw their proxy vote after it has been cast should they disagree or feel that they were mislead. This possibility would need to be closely examined to determine whether it should be allowed as well as if it is how to do it and avoid complications and possible corruption.

One possible example of the effects of direct democracy which might immediately come to mind is that of the state of California and other municipalities which allow for ballot initiatives. Generally speaking these examples have not functioned to bring about the best possible outcomes. California's current budget problems stem at least in part from the propensity of the population voting in favor of both spending bills and tax cuts without proper concern over the balancing of the budget. This is however a problem of human nature not necessarily limited to direct forms of democracy. The budget problems in much of the rest of the country stem from the same cause only with the intermediate step of elected officials voting for increased spending and tax cuts simultaneously in the belief that it is the most sure way to gain favor with the voters needed for reelection. The hope under my plan would be to encourage more responsible voting behavior through a closer connection of the voters with the consequences of their decisions. One other possible benefit would be that the writing of legislation might be put into the hands of experts whose jobs do not depend on their suggestions being popular or even enacted. Another possible outcome, although one which might fairly be seen as overly optimistic, is that perhaps we will find people more willing to make sacrifices and hard choices than the elected officials have given them credit for.

Some opening thoughts about Quantum Mechanics

This is really just a collection of the things scribbled on the pieces of paper shoved inside of my copy of the Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. I have no idea whether any of it is of any value or what but I wanted to put it up here as something I can come back to and take pieces of and expand on...

Questions: Gravity described as a curvature in space/time but why do objects roll “down” the curve toward the earth...? Close to the Earth or any object the curvature would become greater lessening as you move away from the object so the second object of lesser mass would follow the more dramatic curvature??

In string theory: are subatomic particles ect. vibrating strings moving through space? Or vibrations moving along/between strings which themselves are staying locationaly fixed in space? Are the strings themselves the constituent basis of space itself?

What force does the curvature of space/time exert on an object? None, the object and space are not pushing against one another there simply is no other elsewhere for the object to be... but doesn't the idea of curvature imply a dimension through which the space is curving? The earth is only edgeless in 2 dimensions we can move along the surface forever and arrive back at our beginning but if we blast off the surface in a rocket or dig down we will not be brought back to our beginning point. The same would be true of a 3D manifold universe which curves back on itself, this would require a 4^th dimension through which the curve is made, just because we currently cannot move in or perceive this 4^th dimension does not remove it from the Universe under discussion nor does it mean that our technological abilities will not someday progress to the point that we will be able to interact with the 4^th dimension. On the contradictory side any theory which requires the existence of imperceptible extra dimensions to work properly cannot be held to be true, until the existence of such dimensions has been proven empirically and not merely by mathematical equations... in this way we can say that as our current understanding of the universe stands it would be ridiculous to say it is spatially finite but once a fourth dimension is proven to exist we would need to show how that dimension is curved back upon itself which might require a 5^th etc. etc. although perhaps the 4^th is curved through one or more of the known dimensions, but if this is possible why would it not be possible for the three known dimensions to curve back upon themselves through one another removing the need for the 4^th in the first place...

Quantum Entanglement (I think): What if a particle's spin changes according to a pattern such that at any given point in time rotation around a randomly chosen axis is the same... I am not entirely sure what I mean by this as I don't have a clear reference back to what brought this thought up....

The expansion of space might be going on constantly at all points but at the nano-meter scale it is so small it cannot be effectively measured but summed up over distances at the light-year scale they become great, such that individual particles are being pulled apart but it can't be measured where as galaxies are being pulled away from each other at great speed. (This I think is intended to respond to the problem of explaining the source of expansion) There might also be something to be said for the fact that at the quantum scale or even the everyday scale there are forces sufficient to pull matter back in upon itself countering the internal expansion of space particles and objects are experiencing on the galactic scale such forces do not exist or are insufficient to counter the expansion of space and so we are able to measure and perceive the expansion...

Our horizon expands at the speed of light, but if space itself were to expand at a rate faster than light, not impossible as nothing would be moving within space faster than light, areas once within the horizon would be moved beyond it and we would not have any proof of their ever existing...

It's not my fault I swear

Hello Loyal Readers,

I know I promised you all daily posts and swore that no matter what I would put something up here everyday even if it was just some weak rambling about how I was supposed to put something up everyday and didn't have anything good to post so I was just going to ramble about how I was supposed to put something up everyday but since I didn't have anything good to post I was just posting this ramble about... Ok so obviously you noticed that there was this glaring hole in the timeline from last tuesdayish until this morning and I know from all the angry phone calls and nasty comments left on the blog that you were all going through nasty withdrawl from lack of my brilliance... but the site went down in this super annoying way that it wouldn't let me write any text in the new post window... Problem fixed! I am back! (pause for applause) Ok what is my fault is that as much as I kept telling myself that I should just write a shadow set of posts to be ready to bomb the site when it came back online, I did not do that...  This of course proves the importance of the blog to my process because for years I could have been writing such material and not posting it on the internet but I was not doing it so thats why I got myself this rocking blog and am making myself post something everyday as I have so laboriously described so many times instead of actually posting things... but now I have proven to myself and the world that the system works, or at least is necessary to whateve small amount of success it has brought as as soon as the sight went down I ceased to produce... Also I have decided to start pretending that I have an audience clamouring for my thoughts... Perhaps I will have to actually go out and get said audience eventually as the self delusion wears increasingly thin but in order for the delusion lose its effect I need to embrace it and let the effect wash over me so as to build up a resistance, you will never be completely free of the hold as long as you never let it grab on so that you can break it... like heroin...

Response to George Will of 10/2/12... More to Patience with Obama than Race

In this morning's Washington Post George Will advanced the opinion that the American people are being overly patient with President Obama because we are unwilling to vote out the First African American President... I cannot deny that some including myself might be less patient with a white president, but I hardly think that it is a determinative factor. I would be voting for whatever candidate the Democrats put forward in this election, I think this is probably true of 40 something percent of the population, just as it is true of about 40 percent that they would vote for whoever the Republicans put forward. All of this is true regardless of the color of the candidates in question. The real question is whether that remaining 15-20% is giving President Obama a break they would not give to any other President. In this case I think the answer is no, or at least they would grant the same level of patience to any President who came into office with the situation he had to confront and who faced the kind of opposition he has faced, the second of these circumstances can be legitimately linked to some extent, if only a small one, to his race. The Republican Party was bound to be the bunch of obstructionist a-holes they have been over the past 4 years regardless of the who the Democratic President was but it is hard to imagine they would have been able to muster such levels of vehemence and bile for anyone else, with the possible exception of Hilary Clinton. But even in her case, despite being exactly as legally qualified to be President of the United States, it is hard to believe they would have been able to bring themselves to deny her basic legitimacy. The real issue at hand in this election and the reason why the American people are still so decidedly behind President Barack Obama is that no matter how insufficient the argument that things could have been worse may sound we know it is undeniably true. Had John McCain been elected in 2008 the nation would be in significantly worse shape, primarily because Democrats lack the obstructionist backbone of the Republicans and we would be facing the results of 4 more years of disastrous Republican policies. Also we can see that things could be much better than they are today. We can see that the failures of the last 4 years and of Obama's policies are the result of the policies themselves but rather of the Republican obstructionism and the extent to which the policies were compromised upon in the apparently futile attempt to avoid such childish refusal to work together. Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are offering nothing of substance to the American people except a return to the failures that lead us into our current predicament. They dug the country a giant hole and then spent 4 years knocking down every attempt to get us out so as to position themselves to yell and scream about the hole we are in and demand to be put back in charge so they can continue digging. Barack Obama is not being given a break because he is black he is being given a break because the only other option on the table is a group of assholes who got us into this mess in the first time. President Obama has done a better job than anyone could have expected given his circumstances and maybe if the Republicans had not spent 4 years trying to make everything harder they would be in a position to say that he hasn't done good enough.

A Program for Direct Democracy Through a System of Proxies 2

One of the key aspects of this program is an attempt to redefine the roll of government or rather to return it to its democratic origins. There is a lot of fighting in current American politics, and I would imagine in other developed democratic nations as well as to what Government should be doing and should not be doing. The issue ultimately boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly a democratic government is, those who argue for a limited Government are conceptualizing the Government as an entity separate from the people which can be seen to be opposed to the People in an antagonistic relationship. Perhaps this has become the case in certain respects and where that is true a change needs to be made. In truth the Government of a democratic nation is, and should be, nothing other than the organ through which the collective will of the citizens is expresses, the collector and manager of the shared resources to which all contribute and within which all collectively decide on what is in the best interest of the group and how best to achieve these goals and what resources to devote to them. One of the problems facing our current system is the growth of the bureaucracy and the institutional inertia it has brought about. Some argue that the Government has gotten Too Big, in some respects they may be right, but they are over simplifying the problem, size is not fundamentally the problem. The Government needs to be as big or small as is necessary to achieve the goals as they have been determined by the collective will of the people. In this way there is something to be said for a smaller more dynamic entity with the flexibility to respond to changing situations without being overly tied to continuing the course and policies of the past. Bureaucracy will continue to be a problem as institutional memory and experience is an important part of any functioning organization and comes with both positives and negatives which will need to be balanced. The advantage which can be exploited by bringing the voting and legislative power closer to the people is to remove the incentive currently dominating the political process of retaining power. The power will much more widely spread out and also much less stable. This instability will also have negatives to it which will need to be identified and consciously mitigated. The goal will be to give the Government the ability to change quickly when needed without allowing it to swing wildly at the changing whim of the people. It is my contention that such swings are unlikely as the general opinion of the populace is unlikely to change quickly without significant cause. Further it will be important to limit the power of the Government regardless of the public opinion as even the will of the majority can be tyranny. The outcome desired by the majority is to be assumed as the best outcome but it must still abide by the generally agreed upon ideals of the society to be determined as guiding principles above the particular opinions of any given moment.

Response to Washington Post FactChecker Column of Sept. 30th by Glenn Kessler

The Washington Post Fact Checker Column today was about the upcoming Presidential Debates and holding the two candidates to the truth... I am not a fan of the column, mainly because I find that it has a tendency to equate minor miss-statements with bold face lies in a misguided attempt to achieve balance by reporting the same number of events on both sides of the aisle regardless of which side is lying more, and more blatantly. For this reason I have reprinted the column in its entirety below and will be addressing it piece by piece in a feature I may attempt to make a regular feature of this blog. My comments will be in bold...

There has been a campaign to arrange for independent fact-checkers to be present at the presidential debates. We’re not sure what that would accomplish. Would we be like Olympic judges, holding up signs after each exchange with a numerical score for truthiness? No, it would not be some system of Olympic judges, but would I think simply be the ability of the moderator to say, “that is not entirely true, this is why, would you like the opportunity to re-answer so as not to be a dirty liar,” or perhaps as that might be a little hard to accomplish and harsh, a running commentary, or perhaps immediately following the debate, a segment laying out the untruths put forward, and naming the untruths as what they are, either possibly innocent misstatements, those which might be a mistake in wording or debatable interpretation of facts, or as LIES, which we can all identify and should not let our leaders get away with. I am in favor of this because aside from Fox News which I do not trust and which has been proven to be a purveyor of lies on enough occasions, I have never heard any source describe a statement out of the Obama administration as something which would qualify as an out and out lie. This is the source of the conservative claim that the media has a liberal bias, the fact that it calls the right on more lies than it does the left, a direct result of the right lying more than the left along with the fact that the facts the media reports support the liberal world view more than they do the conservative, the reason for the right needing to lie more than the left... And having read the comments below I believe that will continue to be true. Although I do admit to living in a Liberal echo-chamber which from what I can tell from sticking my head outside is much closer to reality than is the conservative echo-chamber of my opponents.

But we do applaud the idea of keeping the conversation grounded in facts, with either the moderator or the candidates themselves challenging misstatements, half-truths and exaggerations that have appeared in campaign ads and speeches throughout this election season. All too often, neither man has been directly challenged about their misleading statements. So here are some questions we would like to see.

Budget

Romney to Obama: You claim to have a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, but every nonpartisan analyst has said that figure is based on suspect accounting. In particular, you claim $800 billion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for nation-building at home, even though you have repeatedly criticized President George W. Bush for running those wars on a credit card. Aren’t you simply claiming a nonexistent peace dividend in order to keep running up the tab on the same credit card?

The money spent in improvements here instead of overseas are an investment in our future rather than in the future of other nations which would not need so much building had me not needlessly bombed and invaded them... I don't know if the Obama administration intends to spend all $800 Billion here at home but any money we can stop spending on these pointless and at least in the case of Iraq immoral wars will be worth-while. As much as I would like to see my side using unquestionable numbers the fact is that any future predictive accounting is by its nature suspect, further any accounting which included an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would include these savings, and Romney has not said anything about his intentions in Afghanistan and has expressed regret over the end of the war in Iraq...

Obama to Romney: You claim to have a plan to greatly reduce the size of government while boosting defense spending and reversing a needed slowdown in Medicare spending, yet every nonpartisan analyst has said the numbers don’t add up unless you are willing to cut to the bone any non-security-related function of government. Since you have given few details of your cuts, I have been free to speculate they will be draconian. Here’s your chance: What will you specifically cut, and by how much, in order for your numbers to add up?

The only reason this has not come to light as a point of complete failure and dishonesty for Mitt Romney is the fact that he has completely refused to provide any sort of detail which might be investigated or questioned to reveal how completely false his entire plan actually is.

Romney to Obama: You earned Four Pinocchios last week for claiming that 90 percent of the deficit on your watch comes from policies promoted by President George W. Bush. PolitiFact and FactCheck.Org also rated that claim “false.” We all know you took office during a poor economy, but when will you take responsibility for the actions that happened on your watch? Is there any decision you regret making regarding the economy?

If you read the Politifact analysis you learn that the numbers as Obama has explain them show that the 90% claim only works for the past 10 years not for the past 4... So that looks bad but maybe we can give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he misspoke or mixed up two sets of facts, I would like to think I would give the same treatment to my opponents and in fact believe I have, though to be honest no specific examples jump to mind... Well if the truth Obama was covering up with his possible misstatement is bad enough we can know he was trying to mislead us... So what was the split for the 4 years? 83% is Bush... oh ok that isn't bad at all that isn't worth lying about... so I would suspect that Obama misspoke rather than lied, 7% hardly seems like enough to lie about... The other point on which they criticize him in the article is on the policies which both he and Bush supported... well to me that's no problem at all, because his point is that the other side is attacking him when they are complicit. He is not saying it is all their fault only that they were digging a whole for 8 years and then the minute they were out of power started screaming about the size of the whole we were in and criticizing Obama for not having gotten us out over night... There were a lot of things the Bush Administration did which should not have been done but once done cannot be just reversed... The country would be much better off if the surpluses had continued for the past 11 years and had been invested in moving the country forward rather than being squandered on tax cuts, but in the state the country is in now it would not be good to raise middle-class taxes. Also Obama takes responsibility for the spending programs he instated to respond to the economic collapse the Bush Administration caused... In reality that spending could rightly be counted against the Bush Administration rather than Obama as it is a direct result of Bush's policies but I respect Obama for taking it on his tab... Ultimately I think the only correct answer to this question about what decision he regrets is having not pushed for and gotten more spending in the recovery package which would have gotten us out of the Bush Depression much faster.

Obama to Romney: You have attacked me repeatedly for looming defense cuts that congressional Republicans, including your running mate, supported as part of a budget deal that was designed to spread the pain and force hard choices on the budget. Will you concede that both parties are responsible for this dilemma — and you have offered no plan to resolve it?

I have to admit I thought the sequestration scheme was one of the dumbest things I had heard in a really long time but ultimately it is not Obama's responsibility, it is the result of congressional Republicans absolute refusal to make responsible decisions on the budget. The entire idea was to put a time bomb out there in the future so bad that both sides would be forced to act responsibly and make a better plan before it came to blew up. The safety net cuts were the incentive for Democrats and the Military cuts were the incentive for Republicans. We can hold the Democrats responsible for the domestic social program cuts which are about to happen, and we should, because they were the ones who were supposed to compromise to avoid them, but conversely it is the Republicans who are responsible for the defense cuts because it was them who were supposed to be scared in compromising on that side. Further the real mistake was in not putting tax increases into the time bomb as it has been shown that the only thing Republicans care about is lowering taxes... This was our one chance to make the Grover Norquist pledge work for the benefit of the nation and we squandered it.

Taxes

Romney to Obama: You have long said you want to raise taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 a year while retaining the Bush tax cuts for people making less than that. But that’s not going to raise nearly enough money to fix our budgets woes, even with your rather vague “Buffett Rule.” Can you admit that’s the case?

Yes he can and he has. He combines his upper bracket tax increases with spending cuts and cost saving measures, and while those all together probably do not add up to enough to fix all out problems they come a lot closer than does Romney's plan and once the economy has recovered more having asked the top to contribute more gives us the position to look at those who have benefited from our policies and are now once again in a stable comfortable position and ask them to contribute more as well and eventually return to the boom time tax rates of the the 1990's. Some might attack Obama for not announcing now that some time down the line he might be forced to increase more people's taxes... but given the workings of our national politics he can hardly be blamed for down playing future possible sacrifices the size of which and timing of which cannot possibly be estimated and which might need to be undertaken by his successors not him...

Obama to Romney: You expanded your tax plan in the midst of the Republican primaries, and clearly no one on your team double-checked the math. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that there was no way you could keep it revenue-neutral, as you promise, without eliminating tax deductions that will force taxes up for middle-class families. Don’t bother claiming that five other studies say otherwise, because they don’t. Will you concede that the numbers don’t add up — or at least explain which tax deductions are actually off the table.

The Romney Tax Plan is one big lie. Or maybe it is not, as it includes absolutely no facts which can be said to be untrue. It is essentially a description of a magic trick which passes the Magicians Code test by not revealing in anyway how it supposedly works. Romney will cut rich people's taxes and close loopholes which might be used by rich people and middle-class people alike, and the total amount of money at the end of the process will be the same without the middle-class paying any more... When you close loopholes used by everyone you have to assume it effects everyone... Plus thanks to Republican tax policy the majority of loopholes and deductions go to the middle-class, also whatever loopholes and deductions exist after the changes will be exploited disproportionately by the rich as they will have the benefit of using knowledgeable accountants to find them.

Medicare

Obama to Romney: You have promised to reverse what you call $700 billion in Medicare cuts, even though your running mate adopted virtually the same cuts in his budget plan. I realize his excuse is that he was going to use the money to save Medicare, not expand health care to Americans, but let’s face it, government money is fungible. Besides, don’t you agree we need to look for savings in Medicare in order to get our budget in shape?

Firstly the savings are there in both plans as this question states, but the Ryan budget does not use them to “save medicare” it uses them to lower taxes on the rich moves forward the bankruptcy date of Medicare by 8 years from 2024 to 2016 and then should we somehow manage to keep the program alive an extra couple years dismantles it in favor of a coupon system which caps the government responsibility for senior citizen's health-care at $6000 a year so that if it costs them more than $6000 to save their life they can either pay the extra out of pocket or die... oh well that's what's called Personal Responsibility....





Romney to Obama: You keep running attack ads claiming my running mate’s Medicare plan is going to raise annual costs for seniors by $6,400. But when you spoke at the AARP convention, you conceded that this number — which is only a guesstimate far in the future — was based on an old version of the plan, not the more generous current version that adopted the same growth path as your budget. Will you stop using that figure?

Hmmm, it is an estimate and if there is more than one estimate as long as the estimates are judged to be approximately equally reliable and accurate I see no reason why ether side should use the estimate most favorable to their opponent... I do like the idea of presenting the best contradictory argument in order to strengthen your own but I don't necessarily expect either side to disarm unilaterally. I would love for my side to be the one which acts better but after years of doing so and getting our asses kicked by the liars and game players on the other side I also want my side to push as hard as they can to win because ultimately once in office I trust them to do he best job. And yes I recognize that this is an argument frequently used by creeping fascism but the other side really is creeping fascism and it is using this approach so lets fight fire with fire.

Health care

Obama to Romney: You keep saying that health insurance premiums have gone up by $2,500, as if “Obamacare” had anything to do with it. You know most provisions of that law have not gone into effect yet, so experts say that only a small portion of the increase is because of the law. Your number is also wrong. Insurance premiums have gone up, by about $1,300, but that is largely because of higher health-care costs. So, why blame me for something that is not my fault?

The real mistake of Obamacare, and I am proud to use that term as in 20 years whatever is left of the Republican Party will be campaigning on saving Obamacare... , is that it does not include a public option which could be used to force prices down. Instead of using as his template the program Romney was forced to sign by the people of Massachusetts, Obama should have used the single payer program from Vermont. I say that knowing almost nothing about the Vermont program except that it was based on the Canadian system which works very well.



Romney to Obama: You keep claiming that health-care premiums will go down for people in the individual and small group markets. But isn’t it correct that, because of a variety of provisions in the law, premiums are going to go up for young Americans and healthier individuals? In fact, a survey of states found that many expect premiums will go up for individuals, although tax subsidies might mitigate some of the increased costs. Why haven’t you been straight with Americans about the trade-offs inherent in the law?

He has been straight with us. As a younger healthier person I have known the entire time that the system as he proposed it was going to cost me more money most likely. Prior to the introduction of the mandate I knew that if rates went up more than I wanted I had the option of gambling on my good health and going uninsured. I supported his system of getting everybody in the pool of participants not because it would lower my own personal rates but because it would make the system work better for the most people. I won't be young and healthy forever and eventually I will move from my slightly higher rate, compared to before Obamacare on to a rate which, while higher than the one I was paying when I was young and healthy, will be significantly lower than it would have been without Obamacare. My generation supported Obamacare more than any other generation not because it would lower our own personal insurance rates, many of us had no insurance costs, but because unlike our parents' generation we are not selfish and believe in the idea of personal sacrifice for the good of the whole society as well as for our own future.

The Naming Ape Introduction Pass 1.5

INTRODUCTION:

The idea to be explored here in the entries which will for the time being be connected under the title (perhaps too cutely) The Naming Ape, is that Humans are simply animals fundamentally indistinguishable from other animals. In this regard one of the things which does distinguish humans in our use of language, and specifically how we filter our experiences through language and naming living more within out conceptualizations than the actual world we inhabit. This for the time being raises three prime questions in my mind, many more no doubt to be added as I go. Firstly how did we develop our systems of naming and how does it influence and effect our experience of the world? Secondly how do animals experience the world around them without the mitigation of language and conceptualization? Thirdly how might we understand those aspects of the world which we currently comprehend in a conceptualized fashion free of these concepts and filters? These are all complex questions which no doubt draw on various areas of study which are outside of my expertise, historical, anthropological, neurological, and I will attempt to address them as best I can, but it is of course also important to identify and accept the limitations inherent in any project.

The Usefulness of Conceptualizations

I do not mean for my attack on the human action of conceptualization to be taken as a devaluing of it. The truth is that on a day to day basis conceptualizing the world around us is not only a necessary part of living in the world but is most likely the cause of the success of the human species in competing with other possible apex species on the planet. The use of concepts is what has allowed us to store large amounts of information in our brains and draw conclusions about current and likely future experiences from those in our past. We do not need to remember all parts about all things but can instead extrapolate from the particular to the general. We are able to categorize and systematize our knowledge about the world. The problem comes in through our mistake in believing our concepts, categories, and systems reveal essential truths about the world and are more than the useful tools developed through generations of trial and error, and empirical investigation, through the process of evolution as those ancestors whose brains favored certain mental processes over other succeeded and passed such preferences down to us today. [This claim of an evolutionary source for our mental processes may seem strange, perhaps it does not, I intend to discuss this further later on but to quickly address it; Those ancestors whose brain structures allowed them a more accurate and complete mental representation of the world around them succeeded to a greater extent than did others and so had more children etc. This is how human beings came to be predominantly visual in their experiences of the world, no doubt somewhere along the chain there were those who relied more on their hearing, or sense of smell perhaps, to tell them about the world. There are obvious benefits to these systems and obvious detriments, bats and dogs for example have found a niche with in them.] (This section will likely be removed and expanded elsewhere) We mistake our limited understanding of the world around us, filtered through our preconceived categories, concepts, and systems, for reality because we mistake our categories, concepts, and systems for reality. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this behavior is found in our system of categorization for animal life. In the 18^th century our brightest minds led by Linnaeus began replacing the Aristotelian taxonomy with a standardized binomial system for naming all organisms. This was a noble effort and one which provided the foundation for many great advances of our understanding of the world around us, including Darwin's revolutionary description of how such distinctions developed over time. Now however through the discovery of genetics and DNA we are able to map this development more precisely and see where our past system of classification broke down placing animals together according to physiological similarities which in truth developed independently of one another most likely in response to similar external factors. It was the discovery of the process of change over time itself however which put the nail in the coffin of the system of categorization as an accurate depiction of reality. This does not negate the essential usefulness of the system, but only its reliability as a source of truth.

The Vomit Was A Bit Much

I saw Perfect Pitch. No shame in it... ok a little but hey I'm comfortable in my sexuality or something like that. The idea that a movie whose main characters are predominantly female cannot appeal to a male audience is not only stupid but offensive, I like good movies regardless of whether I bear any resemblance to the protagonists. The reason I cannot stand Tyler Perry movies is not because the characters are black and I am white, it is because the movies, to the extent that I have seen them are horrible. Not only that but they are racist, I'm sure toward white people, but in my experience mostly toward African Americans. This is well trod ground and seeing as I have seen a sum total of 20 minutes of all of his movies I will not continue along it, I being it up merely to contrast it to the much better movies starring other people who do not resemble me which I enjoy. In the nineties there was a whole series of "Gangsta" movies which I quite enjoyed and still do even if I am now more aware of how they did not show the African American community in the best light, but they were well made and told compelling stories about characters they managed to get the audience to care about. The two best were of course Boyz N the Hood, and Menace II Society. These were particularly dark films which carried a strong social message much like the "Gangsta Rap" music which provided their soundtrack, informed their sensibility, and provided a significant part of their cast. There of course was also Friday which was a great movie and carried no important social message, though it also starred Ice Cube... "It's Friday you ain't got a job you ain't got shit to do..." Friday of course was a great stoner movie, which at the time was something I had in common with the characters... It does however point to two other great stoner movies Cheech and Chong which I first enjoyed before my discovery of the wonders of Marijuana and Harold and Kumar which I watched after I had ceased to be a regular smoker... All of these movies star characters of different races than me but with whom I shared other more important connections. I have gotten a little off track, as I was speaking originally of good female centered films. The three most recent which spring to mind are all comedies, and all include Rebel Wilson in the cast interestingly enough. Firstly there is Bridesmaids, which everyone and their mother has seen and talked about ad nauseum, I know this because I recently managed, with the help of two female friends, to get my male room mate who refused to watch it on the basis of it being a chick movie to sit down and watch it and then admit to having enjoyed it... The third movie is the one I have already mentioned which kicked off this whole rant, Pitch Perfect. This was actually a really good movie, I mean don't get me wrong it was not a tour de force of cinematography or anything, but then who really wanted it to be. On the most shallow level it had 5 really attractive actresses in it, which might seem counter to my point to bring up but I'm not going to lie, my attraction to the women on screen is an important part of my experience. Sometimes I am identifying with the character as an aspect of myself, which I am capable of doing with both male and female characters, and sometimes a am identifying with them as a person I would like to have some form of relationship with, whether as a friend or in a romantic context or both. The two odd choices made in the movie were the weirdly rapey depiction of the one lesbian character who took every opportunity to grope the overtly sexual Stacie, any male character who did the same would have been the obvious villain of the film leading to charges being filed and intense bonding over the evils of sexual assault. The other of course is the afore mentioned vomit, not so much the first time which worked well but the recurrence which I won't spoil but it was over the top and out of place tonally as the only true gross out moment, perhaps a nod to the dress shop scene in Bridesmaids, but that did somehow fit with much of the rest of the movie.
Ok so I said three movies and then mentioned a first and a third. What happened to second, and why call what was obviously the first movie mentioned the third etc. Well the second was probably the best and certainly the least well known, Bachelorette. Perhaps it is most telling, and perhaps reflects badly on myself and my associations, that this movie rang most true to me. I highly recommend it. In fact as much as I think you should pay to see this movie in order to encourage people to make more like it I will tell you that if you just go here: http://www.sockshare.com/file/55A827DA0EE001AE you can see it right now. Aside from having a great performance by Kirsten Dunst, whose mere presence on the side of 7th street in Manhattan once caused me to almost crash my bike and most surely die, and the always amazing on screen chemistry of Lizzie Caplin and Adam Scott the loss of whom in the guise of Party Down has greatly lowered the value of owning a television... the film is quite simply funny as shit. The three main characters could have come off as complete train wrecks, which in some ways they are, but they are also subtly imbued with the humanity to make their flaws endearing, and again Kirsten Dunst, Lizzie Caplin and Isla Fisher are all gorgeous women. Ultimately the point of all of this is that you can have any number of relationships to the characters in a movie, as with any work of fiction or art for that matter. You can identify with them as a representation of yourself, or as a person you would enjoy knowing, or as a person you are glad not to know, as a representation of someone you actually do know... And involved in all of these complex relations are innumerable other factors such as the fact that of all the representations of Elizabeth Bennett I have encountered from the Original, to PBS, to the BBC, to film adaptations both faithful and loose to the point of Bollywood, I have identified with all of them but none as much as Kiera Knightly the one I would most like to have sex with, but that might just be my own narcissism... or not.

A pointless post I used to get my fingers moving

As it turns out it is possible to oversleep on a day when you have nothing to do. That is not to be taken to imply that I just woke up right now at 3:37pm but suffice it to say that the amount of time that has passed since I awoke and rigt now is embarrassingly short, especially for a person who is attempting to do a thing he is refusing to call "self-improvement" As to some of the things I promised last night to do today I am still planning on attempting to do that. I have reached a starbucks, so thats one thing down, and I am typing so that should count for something. At this point I am holding to Truman Capote's description of Kerrouac's work as "not writing but typing" that might not be an exact quote, but seeing as I prefer Kerouac to Capote I have no problem with it, not to say I do not enjoy Capote... I have to say that the Book Breakfast at Tiffany's was very good although I was picturing Audrey Hepburn rather than as Capote intended someone more like Marilyn Monroe...

A second and FINAL failure to post in a timely fashion which doesn't even count cause I got soemthing up last night after I posted about not getting anything up...

I really haven't decided on the rules of this whole thing yet, so I am trying to decide whether I need to get something up before midnight to count as having posted today or merely before going to sleep. For the time being I am posting this in case midnight turns out to be the deadline which seems arbitrary given the fictional nature of our conception of time... Although the non-arbitrary line would need to be linked to either sun up or sun down, and sun down perhaps would make the most sense so in that case I would have already missed it, thought there is much to be said for sun up as the distinction which leaves me almost 7 hours... Ultimately the reason for my failure today might be slightly more acceptable than were my reasons yesterday, not that what I was doing was any more valuable but it was not on my couch which should count for something right. Ok I went to a double feature and I guess if I write about the movies that falls within the guidelines of this nebulous project as it stands at the moment and I cannot write about movies without seeing movies... But I am not going to do that today but perhaps tomorrow when I have nothing on the schedule but reading and posting and drinking coffee. I'm going to try to go back and add to something already here, as well as cover those movies and get some reading done which I have been neglecting in favor of using that time to write, not that I have been writing well but I am trying to get my flow and style back... So with 10 minutes left until the arbitrary cut-off of midnight I solemnly pledge to cover at least one movie reviewish type thing, a response to at least one of the two things I am currently reading, and to work on something already here tomorrow. Oh also I was thinking on the subway tonight about instituting a further program of actions apart from the blog, to include returning to Zen meditation, and active conscious exercise, which as I write it sounds ridiculous, I hesitate to use any words which might imply self-improvement as one of my core mottos is "Self-Improvement is Masturbation" and I recognize the ridiculousness of any motto, but my point being that one should be outwardly oriented toward the world and not become overly inward motivated only concerning one's "self" with the fiction of the "self"which in reality is merely the convergence of biology, physiology, and experience with no essential truth other than that which it brings into being through interaction with the external world. Ok see these rambling meaningless posts serve a purpose as I am going to take that sentence out and expand on it in my attempt to define my ideas surrounding the concept of self. Again however I will be doing that tomorrow...

The Impossibility of the Soul Given Evolution (Just a quick beginning)

The belief in an immortal soul is nothing more than the convergence of two core weaknesses of the human species; the fear of death and the desire to believe in our own privileged position in the universe. I suppose there is no revelation in attacking the existence of the soul, however most people seem to hold onto some remnant of the concept no matter how rational they are in the rest of their thought. It is my intention here to discuss the one of the many reasons to abandon the belief in the soul, not merely as outdated but as proven to be ridiculous and/or impossible. The starting point of my argument is the belief in Evolution. Those who deny Evolution will be un-swayed by my arguments but given their refusal to accept scientific evidence I can't be bothered with them.

The questions I will be asking of those who hold with the soul among many others as I get going will include: what has a soul what doesn't? Plants vs. Animals? One species vs. another? When and why did the soul evolve? These questions, I believe have no answers and without sufficient answers to such questions continued belief in the soul is untenable.

Failure to Post

Ok so its only day 3... of the pledge to post at least one thing everyday and I am already falling down on the job. I am still going to try to put another substantive post up since I don't want to count these filler posts about posting. I learned however that as much as I might claim that I am going to post from home, I am not... I need to go to Starbucks or something to be productive. I had good reason for lying to myself and going straight home from work... I missed last nights Daily Show, Colbert, and Rachel Maddow so I told myself I would watch these shows and they would provide fodder for posting... Well that half happened... So the other thing going on in the world of talking about posting instead of actually posting is that I am worried about the fact that this might end up being a lot of starts of things and very little finishing of things. All things considered the starting is a big step forward from the thinking about starting, so maybe I should just call that a victory and try to take the next step forward of attempting to finish which might ultimately lead to actually finishing... Also the way I see it the more things I start the better the chances of finding something worth finishing...

My Public Brain Goes Public

As of 30 seconds ago this blog is now available to be read by anyone! I still have not mentioned it to anyone... but theoretically it is out there to be read. It is obviously not ready to be read but that is kind of the point, were I to wait for it to be ready I would never put it out there... so to those of you who have found this enjoy and for those who I have told about this blog you can ask yourself how long after this post went up did I mention the blog to you and judge accordingly.

A Modest Proposal Post One

A Program for Direct Democracy Through a System of Proxies

This is by necessity far from complete and is at the moment little more than a thought experiment not yet well thought out. I hope you (the imaginary readers of my blog) will take it in that light and think and respond accordingly.

One of the projects I have been thinking about for a while now is a new political paradigm exploiting new technologies and communication to allow for a system of direct democracy allowing all citizens to have a more direct voice in Government but also allowing for expertise and flexibility free of traditional political divisions. This would be accomplished by digital online voting allowing every person to log in and vote on any given issue... This of course would be a complete and utter mess... There are many problems with this system which I will be outlining and addressing over future posts and as such here I am going to try to lay out the system in broad strokes and acknowledge the essential problems inherent in the idea which will be expanded on and hopefully in some way answered in the future.

First the basic structure. People would be able to place their vote into a system of proxy where-by they will designate a person to vote on their behalf. They could do so on a blanket basis, handing over their vote on all things to a single person, as they essentially do now to their congress person and Senators. Or they would be able to designate different people to vote on their behalf according to the area of policy being addressed. This would allow the representation to more closely reflect the opinions of the populace as there would be no reason to balance one's opinion on economic issues with those on social issues in order to find a single representative who is acceptable on both, let alone on various social issues, the environment vs. gay marriage...

Ok, so you place your votes in the hands of different representatives on different issues, this raises the first possible problem:we would need to clearly define the areas of policy and categorize the policy proposals in order to determine who has how many votes to cast on each issue. Also people would have the ability to withdraw their proxy at any given time and vote for themselves, or place their proxy in another person. This level of flexibility is only available to us now through the development of information technology eliminating the need for scheduled elections and campaigning, no longer would people be forced to place their power in the hands of another for years at a time and watch helplessly as it is mishandled. Also representation would no longer be geographically defined such that all a person needs to do to gain 1/435^th of the voting power is convince 50.01% of the people who show up on a given day to vote, or less in the case of a plurality, in a given area to invest it to them essentially ignoring the opposite will of the rest of that constituency...

Further we would set a cycle by which every year, or perhaps another time period as seems appropriate all proxies revert and people must choose who if anyone will be empowered to vote on their behalf. In this way we could ensure that those voted are being actively invested and not sitting with any given person out of apathy. Those people who are not interested in the issues will simply not be voting their vote nor investing it with a proxy, however should an issue come up which awakens their political interest they will not be locked out until the next election cycle but will have the choice either to vote on individual issues or should they feel that their knowledge does not meet the level of their concern or interest choose a proxy who they believe knows the correct answer or at least trust to have a good idea what needs to be done.

There is obviously much more work to be done on this proposal and I will be returning to it frequently both adding new entries and editing this one. I am cutting it off here primarily due to time constraints of the day. I am posting it because rather than waiting for a sense that something is finished and thereby allowing myself to never post anything I am going to post works in progress forcing myself to improve them as they exist in public and people will be judging me based on them.

On the Death of Richie Cunningham

SPOILER ALERT

 

Ok, so I'm not sure why I bothered to put the spoiler alert at the top as at the time of writing this the blog is still not available to the public, and also I famously do not believe in spoiler alerts because I doubt the possibility of things being spoiled by knowledge of the end and if you are concerned with that happening you have a moral responsibility to see things when they become available and not wait... I see many things before they are widely available or at least as soon as possible but that is because as you might have guessed by the fact that I have a blog, I have no life... But yeah last night on Sons of Anarchy they killed the coolest character on the show, and one which was being criminally under emphasised all along. OPIE IS DEAD! and by the way did you like my tricky way of titling this post so that those cry babies wouldn't be able to say I spoiled it before the spoiler alert... oh you don't get it? well you see Richie Cunningham from Happy Days was played by Ron Howard (I'm almost sure having never actually watched Happy Days), who played Opie on the Andy Griffith Show (I am completely certain despite having never watched this show either, so for the love of God don't tell me how either show ends, I'm told one involves pie and the other a jukebox...) Ok yeah so I am still processing the fact that they killed off Opie and wondering who I am going to dress up as for Halloween this year... Maybe get myself a prison uniform and some fake blood and go as Opie from the end of the episode...? He had kids for god sake and that hot porn star (ex-?)wife who I was sure he was going to get back together with. And I don't think he ever found out that it was Clay who ordered the hit on his first wife... so much story to be told there. He was Jax's real moral center even more so than Tara plus he just looked the most Fucking Bad-Ass even more so than Chips with the face scars... Tig or Happy might be the real most Bad-Ass but I mean really being Bad-Ass and still a good human being is more Bad-Ass than being a scum bag like Tig. Happy seems cool enough, with all the tattoos commemorating people he has killed obviously a socio-path but nice enough... Also just the fact that he was the same actor as the defensive captain in Remember the Titans is amazing and he served as the greatest possible proof that beards make people cooler...

 

 

 

Boom.

 

Rest in Peace Ope. All things considered sacrificing yourself to save your best friend is a BAD ASS way to go.

 

Naming Ape Intro Pass One

The Naming Ape

INTRODUCTION:

The idea to be explored here in the entries which will for the time being be connected under the title (perhaps too cutely) The Naming Ape, is that Humans are simply animals fundamentally indistinguishable from other animals. In this regard one of the things which does distinguish humans in our use of language, and specifically how we filter our experiences through language and naming living more within out conceptualizations than the actual world we inhabit. This for the time being raises three prime questions in my mind, many more no doubt to be added as I go. Firstly how did we develop our systems of naming and how does it influence and effect our experience of the world? Secondly how do animals experience the world around them without the mitigation of language and conceptualization? Thirdly how might we understand those aspects of the world which we currently comprehend in a conceptualized fashion free of these concepts and filters? These are all complex questions which no doubt draw on various areas of study which are outside of my expertise, historical, anthropological, neurological, and I will attempt to address them as best I can, but it is of course also important to identify and accept the limitations inherent in any project.

More to Medical Choice

The Republicans simply cannot conceive of any issue outside of the confines of money. They frame their discussion of Medicare as "putting seniors back in control of their own healthcare decisions." By which they mean letting seniors pay for their own healthcare. It does not seem to have occurred to them that the senior citizens could possibly be making their own health decisions in consultation with their doctors even though Medicare was paying the bills. Now they would no doubt say that with Medicare paying the bills a Government Bureaucrat is sticking his nose into the decision making process. But the fact is that while giving seniors a check for $6000, or however much is finally agreed to, to spend on health insurance might take the Government out to of the equation it sticks a corporate bureaucrat right in its place. The Republicans are blind to the problem in this because to them the market is magic and can only make things better and the government is evil and can only make things worse. However, the Government Bureaucrat is at least to some extent beholden to the American people as his/her boss, or boss's boss is following the direction of an elected official. The corporate bureaucrat is beholden only to the stock holders of the company who seek only profit. The government is at least on some level concerned with the best possible health outcome, the insurance company only with cost. To the Republicans only if the money is coming out of your own personal pocket can you be said to be taking full responsibility for your healthcare decisions. They see Medicare as limiting seniors freedom to choose because they have not considered the restrictions which these seniors would face outside medicare which they are being freed from by the Government. The Republicans do not consider the lack of choice faced by people who cannot afford to take all the available options because they either have never faced such a circumstance and/or they blame the individual for having gotten themself into such a position. In this way the Republican party has lost both its concept of the reality of the daily lives of Americans as well as its hold on the underlying social contract.

Posting Strategy

It is my intention to force myself to post at least one thing a day everyday! I think this was my intention on Saturday and it is now Tuesday and this is the first thing I have posted and it hardly counts as it is not anything of substance or interest but is only about the internal functioning of something which as of right now has neither any interior nor is it functioning. However my thinking is that I did not put it into words on Saturday that I was going to post something everyday no matter what and so I felt no real pressure to do so, and by writing this here, even though I have not made this blog public yet, despite the name, I will cause myself to take responsibility for sticking with the now publicly stated goal... It also stands to be said that I will be re-working and editing the "real" posts, meaning those about something other than the act of posting, so while here,in this one I have run on sentences and you all, meaning the future readers who hopefully will not bother to come all the way back and read from the start and hence will not see this, will just have to deal with it. At this point the aim to make words come out of my brain into my hands and then through a series of tubes into your eye holes... Ok anyways I actually intend to put up at least one other thing today of substance if not value so I should stop using this act as an excuse for avoiding doing that one as that is the real point, and this is not...

Test Post

I am trying to figure out the best way to get this blog to work the way I need it to work in orde rto use it. so this is a test of using labels.