snippets

So, they've officially declared my computer a superfund sight (as in we're waiting for government funds to do anything about the problem). So totally fuct. Yeah, well, whatcha gonna do.

The first month of computerlessness was quite nice, but things have devolved. I got the television out of the closet and occasionally will watch. I think Charlie Rose is losing it. Maybe it's just one of those things where you don't see something for a long time (like Voltron or Get Smart or Speed Racer) and you have these memories of how awesome it was and then you see it again now that you're older and more experienced and you do all kinds of mental gymnastics to not say that this thing you loved actually sucks. I was wildly unimpressed by the softball nature of his interview with Peter Orzag (director of the Office of Management and Budget). I remember Charlie being the greatest moderator of a political roundtable ever. I'm afraid to have to discover that that was starry-eyed youthful nonsense, cause I still love Charlie like I still love Speedracer (no amount of reviewing can change the place that Speed has in my heart).

In Boston it's cheaper to get internet with a cheap cable option which consists of the broadcast channels and some home shopping channels and some Spanish language channels and the Catholic network (or something). I'm hooked on the Catholic network (also telanovellas). There's this priest who is like your wierd uncle who tells long, boring, tedious stories with absolutely no point, except your uncle is on TV. And all collared up in his priest gear. I'm oddly fascinated by this man.

I kind of want to read Hank Paulson's new book about the financial meltdown. It should be good for a laugh and some amateur psychological profiling. Also Joe Stigliz's new book Freefall or Downfall. That one'll just be good.

There is nothing worse than when smart people dumb it down for a general audience. I started in on Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works to try and get reacclimated with cognitive sci. and neuroscience, but couldn't make it through the introduction. There is no quicker or more complete way to lose my respect than to write a book in that smarmy tone that smart people seem to be so good at when they try to 'popularize' science. It used to be that the really smart people couldn't contain their insights in the journals and so they needed a longer form or used a longer form to organize their work at a higher level. Now its seems the only reason smart people write books are to cash in with these smarmy works that are 'accessible'.

I'm gonna geek out on comics for a minute in order to unnecessarily complicate what should be a pretty straightforward anecdote. The third X-men movie was loosely based on the Phoenix Saga (I use the word loosely very loosely [as in the name they gave Jean Grey was the same and pretty much that was the end of that]). The flashback to when Professor X goes to meet with her and bring her to the academy was an actual scene from the comic, but in the comic she can't stop herself from hearing other people's thoughts. There all bombarding her mind everywhere she goes, and it's freaking her out. It's been kind of like that recently when it comes to narratives. I see narratives everywhere. Everytime I pass someone on the street, every car, every window of every house. Everywhere there are narratives. What is this person's life, where are they going, what are they doing now, are they happy, are they married, divorced, dying, have cancer, just won the lottery, just got fired? Except that the narrative questions go more specifically with the particularities of the person, car, situation, window. My favorite is to look at a building and try and get some sense of what's happening inside through pure imagination. Mostly I get this sense of the overwhelmingness of the narrative possibilities. Sometimes I just tell myself enough already, shut it.

Ava's Man by Rick Bragg-sad and beautiful, beautiful and sad. It makes me nostalgic for a time and place and way of being that almost certainly never really existed or existed in the briefest of moments amongst the slightest range of people. It's a beautiful sentimentality, if also sentimental nonetheless.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is kind of affected. Her writing is so elegant that the affectation of the approach gets kind of papered over, but ultimately, so far at the half way point, my opinion is that she should've gone for a straight narrative instead of the mish mashed slightly multi-perspectival approach.

I do want to go through and write up some of my thoughts about big B's first year as El Prez, but I'll save that for another day when I can work in my own home on my own computer.

Also, Karl Rove is a dick.

reading list

Currently reading:
Saul Bellow- A Theft
Rick Bragg-Ava's Man
Arthur Marx-Goldwyn
The Transformation of Myth through time-Joseph Campbell
History of the kings of Britain- Geoffrey of Monmouth (1139)
The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan- Theodor DeBerry
The Lacuna-Barbara Kingsolver
The Great Unravelling-Paul Krugman
Microenonomics- Somebody other than Mankiw who was cheaper (even the prices of old editions go up when you happen to buy a textbook right when the schoolyear is starting. Duh, Homer.)
Research Methods in Social Psychology-Dana Dunn
On Hold for a month or so-
Political Liberalism by John Rawls( coming back to it in the spring to help gear up for a summer of Rawls [the first summer of non-fiction {and seriously hard core pilosophical non-fiction at that}])
On sort, of hold- The Mists of Avalon-Can't think of it
T book- The laws of the evening-Mary Sukari Waters
Just Finishing- Interaction Ritual Chains randall Collins (with Sociology of PHilosophies next on the agenda)
Just finished-
The Conscience of a liberal-Paul Krugman
Upton Sinclair presents William Fox-Upton Sinclair

Some analysis of the work and politics and a bit about how the creative/conceptual work for the full rewrite of the first book of Mythic Structures; Book One: In the Abstract that represents the form of the hands (and yes I am aware of what you must think of that sub-title, and you can stuff it in a gaint italian sandwich right in between the salami and the red onions). So that's coming soon. Here's a link back to a post I started several months ago that I just posted, for whatever that's worth (not much, but pollution and some climate accord have to be addressed and organized).
So, here's that thing I wrote a month or so ago about The Journal Op-ed page.

patience and presence

My new year's resolution, from which with luck much else will flow, is the maintenence and furtherance of those two aspects/ perspectives. For the last several months most especially, I've been getting impatient. Like, really, really impatient to be further along than I am. And the result has been mostly to lose the sense of being present as I push for some place in the future where I'd like to be, and the result of that has been the loss of creative inspiration and the lack of retainment or much real coordination of the reams of scholastic research that I've been engaged in.

So, something to work on. I'm getting there. Also, making all this seem radically unimportant, 120,000 dead in Haiti. I first heard that number on NPR on my way home the other day, and I thought, this has to be a mistake. Then I heard it again last night, and everything just started swimming. What an immense tragedy. There are no words to express.

But still, life must continue. Still though also, the helplessness is overwhelming. Donating money is something, but you just want to do more. There's no skills I have that would be in anyway useful.

Anyway, helping some friends move today, and then starting the process myself (luckily I have a three week window, which makes things much easier). Looking forward to some new space within which to work. I feel like this is the year that I write my masterpiece (or the first of many, many, many). So, to breakfast and moving.

Fihi Ma Fihi, or KMRIA

Fihi Ma Fihi, which is the title of a collection of poems by Rumi, and it translates as 'in it what's in it' or 'it is what it is' (the latter of which has been my go to expression ever since I was told that I had to stop saying 'sucks to be you' everytime someone would commence to griping, way back in like high school). I really love the idea of a sufi mystic poet cracking wise. It makes me ever so happy. Probably because that means there's still hope that I can keep a grain of causticness even as I pursue a path toward mystic illumination. Or some such.

Also KMRIA was one of the headlines in Joyce's Ulysses. And it stands for kiss my royal irish arse. Which was the funniest moment in the book so far. I admit, I get what Joyce is doing conceptually. The whole recreating the true nature of life's narratives and the way we create those narratives and the jarring and uncoordinated and not entirely smooth nature of the reality of those narratives, but A) that's not entirely true because of the nature of memory and identity in which we do smooth out those narratives even as they in reality are jangled and messy and B) holy what? I've gotten so lost in the moment to momentness even as I can keep the overall narrative and conceptual idea kind of clear (which maybe is kinda the point, I guess).

So, I had to take a break and send Joyce back to the library, since I've got about a dozen books going right now, and it was just not possible for me to read it as a just before going to bed trying to relax and zen out kind of book. Which says more about me than the book. My mind would just wander away and not pay any attention to the rythms and stay present with the thing. Which, fihi ma fihi and, if you don't like it, KMRIA.

So again, I saw a question posted on Dooce's community about the best books read last year, and I was trying to go through my brain and catalogue all the books I read last year, and it just wasn't happening. There were just too many to count. So, I thought I'd just catalogue the book reading here every now and again. So, current crop:
Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Macroeconomics by Gregory Mankiw
Native American Religious Traditions: Dancing for Life by Jordan Paper
Tango and the Political Economy of Passion by Marta Lavigliano
History of the Indians of Connecticut by somebody DeForest
Interaction Ritual Chains by Randall Collins
The Shape of Light by Suhrawardi
Structural Yoga Therapy by Mukunda Stiles
a couple of short imagery and relaxation technique books (one with a pelvic focus and other w/ neck and shoulders) by Eric Franklin
A book of algebra and trig to reground my math so I can get back into game theory, which I had to chill out on when they got to calculus, which I'm getting ready to tackle this coming fall perhaps.
Political Liberalism by Jon Rawls
The Mists of Avalon by I forget the author's name and don't have the book handy.

And that's about that. I know boring and ridiculous, but I think you can see the organizational difficulties as it's been like this for the better part of a year and a half since the virtual economic collapse focused my attention on the superstructural project that I've been informally working on for the past ten years. Collins is a significant addition, which I knew from having started his Sociology of Philosophies, but his radical microsociological model is a powerful one, if also incomplete and missing significant neurologic, psychologic, and philosophic pieces. He also overvalues the sociologic, claiming, in a way, that agency is primarily in the social. An understandable statement from a sociologist but just showing once again how difficult true interdiscplinary work is for someone trained specifically in one discipline. The abstract coordination of the varying faceted levels of consciousness can be thought of metaphorically as a series of venn diagrams in which each abstract layer has both it's own area of sole existence and overlapping areas of interrelation that need to be integrated in our understanding.

So, there's that. And the New Year. And possibly moving in a month. And a computer with a video card that's fritzed out, which is why I've been away from blogging for like a month and a half (and also a chance to unplug which is always good). So, lots of fun things. And a month long purificatioin ritual of no alcohol or caffeine or meat or meat products and possibly a fast and maybe I'll do a week of silence (not a vow exactly but just some quietness [I did a week about five years ago of no talking, and it was intense]). It's a fluid thing, no dogmaticism or rigidity, more of a flowing toward the numinousity. Or something.

And if you don't like it. Well, KMRIA. Time for nieces and play and the eight thousandth reading of Where the Wild Things Are (which my niece loves, and I will never tire of reading). Yo, Seacrest out.

The Journal

One of the guys I work with gets a subscription to the Wall St. Journal and brings it to work and then leaves it around when he's done. (Even as this blog is mostly unread, I'm still not gonna be dumb and talk about my job, except to say that I have a lot of time to read. I've already said too much.)

Anyway, so I think the Journal is a fine newspaper and is the best source of financial news this side of London's Financial Times and all that, but their Op-Ed section just gets me steamed every time. Every freakin' time. And I can't ever leave it alone. I try and just read the world news or the business and investing, but I'm like the moth to the flame. I can't help myself. I always go right for it. And I'm always ranting away in my head as I read.

Like when Karl Rove, who's a semi-regular contributor, talks about how politicized the Obama administration is. That guy has got some titanium cojones, I'll tell you. He takes this tone of impartial concern, like he's just calling it like he sees it. No agenda here. Yeah, thanks for you're pearls of wisdom there, Karl. You're a real pal.

Lately they've been hammering what they're calling climategate. This whole slate of e-mails that got hacked from the university of East Anglia's (which, come on, this isn't exactly the center of the dang climate science universe [edited to say, actually it kinda is]) Climate Research Unit. And the e-mail's appear to be pretty damning in one sense, that scientists were trying to manipulate the data for political reasons.

The journal's boys have been arguing that the sole reason is to increase funding of the researcher's own work, and that this goes beyond just this one instance. Just to be clear here, this means there is a worldwide conspiracy (that goes way beyond the university of west bumblenard) of quite insane proportions. The entire IPCC, some 2500 scientists, made all this stuff up just to get money for research.

What I would suggest is that really these researchers may in fact be concerned about the politicizing of the data the other way. And with valid reason. Concern over climate change started back in the early 1980's, but Republicans and the the Oil boys used and still use the tobacco strategy. The science isn't in. It hasn't been proved. The link isn't there. Blah-de-blah-de-blah. And the fact that there's been some leveling trends recently that most of the models didn't predict would be some serious ammunition for the let's-continue-to-externalize-pollution-costs crowd.

Technically, there still isn't absolute proof that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. But here we're talking about the weather. One of the main applications of chaos theory is weather systems. Chaos theory. Need I say more?

And after one of their regular guys goes after this e-mail stuff, a meterologist then says basically that. That the models didn't predict it, that we don't understand the effects of clouds and water vapor, that the weird weather (the once in a hundred year shit that's now happening with regularity) is just our perception and the media's tendency to over blow things.

Here's my point. Okay, say climate change is bullshit. Pollution is still bad. If we fill up our atmosphere with carbon, it'll be like smoking cigarettes when we breathe. So, the planet'll be fine. But we'll all have lung problems and cancer and shit because we don't have clean air. Super. You've really convinced me. I'm gonna write my congressman and tell him not to support the carbon trading scheme.

Which I am, but just to say that carbon trading is nonsense and the Euro market is so full of holes their not really getting anywhere with it. A graduated carbon tax, which, yes, is a tax that consumers will have to pay, is the way to go. We've been externalizing the costs of environmental and social aspects of consumables for a long time. Sometime ya' gotta pay the piper, as my grandma says.

Scientific American recently had an article suggesting that the technology currently exists to legitimately use solar, wind, and wave power to satisfy our energy needs. It's just political will and about 50 trillion dollars (worldwide) that we need. That's a scary number, but just imagine what happens if the reinsurers in London have to stop reinsuring catastrophic insurance. If the governments had to take over reinsuring corporations.

Anway, I'd just ramble right at this moment, so I'll drop the numbers and so pretty hard core scholarship that's getting integrated well. So just now. Just not just right now. Okay then.