I just stumbled on an interesting "discussion" at Flickr, someone submitted a photo from Henri Cartier-Bresson into a group where users can vote to have bad photos deleted, the submitter did not say who originally shot the photo, nor the context from which it was culled. It was voted to be deleted, with many of the people pointing out the bad technical quality of the shot, and its ambiguous subject matter.

This is an interesting real world application of Alasdair MacIntyre's idea of context as the means of judging aesthetic meaning, and ethical fitness. The people who understood who took the shot, and the historical context in which it was placed seemed to overwhelmingly enjoy it, while the more novice of users didn't like it on almost purely technical aspects. We can judge, primarily, from this response that context does play a large role in aesthetic appreciation, as MacIntyre claimed. We can see, also, that in a state of contextual ignorance, we judge things on its technical ability more so its meaning (as evident by the Flickr users ignoring the subject, and paying more attention to the "blurriness" of the shot).

For more on my take on MacIntyre, and the contexts of aesthetic judgement, please read:
NonServium: Alasdair MacIntyre And Pompous Art.
and
NonServium: The Paradigm problem.

iuunhiunin

I've been pondering ways to to present ideas to the masses beyond the single person blog ideal for some time. A single person blog is nice, but one person cannot offer the amount of content, nor the range of views and topics to make a truly interesting display. More content, of a more diverse and frequent type would draw a higher readership, and thus generate a larger audience, and more awareness of the topics held important to the authors, which in turn would generate (my main goal) more discussion of vital issues. A good format, or forum, requires collaboration from many diverse people, and a large body of active readers who are active in their participation.

Thus my goals are finding more people willing to contribute content and ideas, and finding a way to disseminate these ideas to as wide an audience as possible, and to a receptive and active audience, more importantly.

Back in the 90's when I was the editor of a modest online "'zine", I discovered that the most important aspects of interesting online publishing was an active forum, or bulletin board, with an intelligent and engaged body of contributors, the forum forms the literal backbone of the content presented on the front page, through engaged discussion with ones readers, one can flesh out better ideas and content to present, which in turn draws in more readers. It also allows the readers to play a greater role in the content, even going so far as to have their own works published, which keeps the level of engagement, and the feeling of belonging high. Readers should not feel like passive consumers of ideas, they should also be fully engaged in the production of ideas.(1)

Another important aspect of keeping engagement is having frequent updates. New content must be constant, and interesting.

The problem with most blogs, and forums today is that they are wallowing in the comforting ooze of groupthink. Never are their members FORCED to critically confront other views, or seriously question their own views. To avoid this problem any form taken would have to emphasize the Question, over the answer. It would have to confront the community with questions to which they are forced to answer without the help of groupthink or local dogma.

Tossing about this idea earlier today, I came to the conclusion that a good format would be that of a peer-review journal, as seen in the land of academe. Except for the masses, and not just the intellectual elite. Socializing the academic journal would have many benefits, including the feeling of participation, and manufacturing quality content.

The format I'm leaning towards, currently, would be mostly a bottom up online journal, driven by the readership. Users would submit their own exclusive content to a body of fellow users, and the editorial staff, for review, and publication would be a process of suggestions for improvement, and voting. Much like the existent website Kuro5hin.org, but with a higher degree of top-down control to keep to a topic, and within certain standards held to the site as a whole.

I view this peer-reivew as part of the process, but not the whole process, of content generation. A staff of quality contributors would submit a large body of the content, to maintain the frequency, quality, and consistency of the top-level content. Thus their should be "trusted" contributors, who would peer-reivew among themselves, and who also would have the final say on user based submissions by the same process that their own content is presented. A healthy forum system would serve as an informal vetting process towards submitted content as well, since the editors (or trusted contributors) would be engaged in the community, and indeed, members of it. Positions of "trust" would be allowed to all, given certain criteria, and would be democratically given by the current body of editors.

Content should follow a certain theme, and should be somewhat constricted by this theme, keeping it from devolving into random discussion of random things. In other words the medium needs to be defined by a purpose. This purpose should be broad enough to offer an engaging array of content and ideas, but narrow enough to keep destroy a sense of coherence. We must actively promote signal over noise, so important ideas always remain the key focus, and not how cute your cat is, or how much your mothers pie recipe rocks.

My tentative idea is that of an area for FREETHINKERS, and ideas. A place for people to actively confront the ideas of others, and engage them critically and rationally, thus forcing them to confront their own ideas and preconceptions. This would force people to look at the world around them with their own eyes, and preferably come back to us and tell us what they saw. Of prime interest would the the discussion of our relation to the world, thus including the topics of philosophy, politics, and the various social sciences, with the emphasis on re-evauluating the status quo in these areas.

Great care must be taken, though, to keep groupthink at bay. No one idea should be represented above any other. The internet makes it very easy for groupthink to happen, and this must be prevented at all costs, thus comments critical to the views presented must be welcome, and easy. Dissenters must be encouraged, as must actual discussion and not just mutual back-patting and sentiments amounting to "I agree". Dissent and disagreement is more important, going along with my idea that the Question is prime.

In this the site, along with promoting freethinkers, would promote revolution, in all its forms, a formless revolution against all forms of dogma and group think.

Also the whole thing must be non-intimidating, and egalitarian. Especially with the fact that much of America, and the world, is anti-intellectual, and anti-analytic. We must fool people into becoming guerrilla intellectuals, and thus giving them a voice, even if it is against their initial will. We must work to harbor a free-form revolution by sowing doubt, and not providing answers, by forcing people to accept their own voice and value systems, to empower them to see the world, and its injustices and beauty for themselves. Our job is to harbor the tools for them to remove their own Maya.

So, outside of one of you, who is with me?

"Qui Plume a, guerre a!"

----
(1) - What prompts this current discussion is the thought of activism. Contrary to popular belief I don't think that merely talking about something is adverse to getting something done, in fact I think it is the most important part of action. Every revolution had thinkers behind it who guided the actions of the passionate. Was Marx a lazy slacker in the various communist Revolutions? Was Jefferson and Franklin lolligaggers in the cause of American freedom from the Crown? No, they provided the intellectual background, and structure, for action. Discussion is the precursor to action. I realized I'm sick of discussing, and want to DO something about the myriad problems evident to me, and somehow generating thought is the action that I would most want to accomplish, teaching people to think for themselves. Professorship is available, but distant, and still is confined under the trappings of academic elitism, people outside of universities DO have something to say, and should not be barred from ideas.

I want to be a guerrilla educator.

Ethics, themselves, are probably universal, but it is what we define as worthy of their consideration that changes.

These universal ethics are probably the result of evolutionary pressures, and thus completely innate, meaning any theory of ethics would have to be descriptive, not normative. Also meaning that there are not to be confused with "Morals" which are socially, or institutionally prescribed (normative), and thus can vary from place to place and time to time.

These universal ethics would have to somewhat resemble Kant's Categorical Imperative, in that they are broad, and requires treating others as you would be treated. Including reciprocity and altruism, both of which contain an essence of mapping yourself onto others.

Thus ethics becomes a game of similarity, we map these ethics onto those we can feel familiar or similar too, people (and things) that we can identify with. This allows their application to vary from place to place, and from time to time. This would also explain why dehumanization is an important part of atrocities, and often precedes unethical behavior. We apply ethics to that which we consider "human-like", and things that do not fall into this class do not have to be treated ethically.

Anecdotally we can see this in various behaviors that we see as unethical today, such as slavery and the historical mistreatment of Jews. Slave owners were justified in treating blacks as animals because they saw them as such, whereas they still treated their, white, families and neighbors humanely, and ethically, precluding any real lack of ethics. This can also be applied to more modern situations, like how one can say "I believe in the sanctity of life", and "I believe in war" without a tone of irony.(1)

The paradoxical solution to universal ethics is that they are BOTH universal, and situational. Though it shoves "humanity" into a more nebulous form of being, one that can exclude similar beings, and include the animals and the inanimate (if suitably complex and familiar).

Universal ethics could be seen to by synonymous with "Human Rights", or at least the intrinsic basis to Human Rights. The basis for a system of universal human rights has been eluding me for some time, and this seems to be a potential answer to this problem, while avoiding a concept of human rights being merely socially constructed.

Again, this is a tentative idea, needing much more work and research. I just figured I throw it out there and see what nibbles.


---
(1) As in many of the participants in the recent GOP Debates.

First, yes I'm awake at 5:30a, a unique and strange occurrence if there ever was one. Don't ask me why this has happened, but it does signify that today is going to be a strange day under the condition that it is Alice Lidell's birth day. For those of you not in the know, this is Alice the pedolicious inspiration of Charles Dodgson's (aka Lewis Carroll, his street name, as the homies call him) Alice in Wonderland. Also on this day a bunch of people discovered the rabbit hole in Chicago, and the people of England officially announced their stupidity to the world. In related news (?) today is also No Pants Day... which boggles my mind with a mere one cup of coffee in my belly.

In more serious news, the AACS people have decided to attack some 800,000 people who published that fateful number. Proving the utter arrogance of our corporate masters, obviously a significant portion the population is against this but this does not matter to them, since, as always, it is profit above people. Let it rest, when DVD encryption was hacked the DVD format did NOT die, actually it became more popular because people could exercise their rights and back-up their legally purchased copies, and play it on non-officially supported platforms. As purchasers of their PHYSICAL product, don't we have the right to use it as we please? The common sense answer would be: "yes!", but in the Bizzaro World of Big Media it is obviously "No!". [see the Boing Boing article for more background]

This issue is more important than most understand. It is a fundamental question about property rights, and under our current system, for good or ill, property is God. Should a corporation tell you what your allowed to do with your purchased property, this is the fundamental question. Ignore all the computer and nerd talk, and focus on the fact that large media cartels are invading your life, and influencing government and law. Big Media is the most prominent aspect of the current corporate overthrow of our government and freedoms. This, in jingoistic terms, is the vanguard in the corporate war on freedom.

Third, I managed to actually sit through the Republican Debates without dying of some odd rage influenced aneurism. These people scare the living shit out of me, especially Mormon Mitt Romney who was probably the most eloquent and presentable of the full array. It also affirmed the fact that Libertarians (Ron Paul in this case) would be silly, if not for the fact that they take themselves to seriously. Paul must have been in there for comic relief, much like the Democrat Mike Gravel was in the Democratic Debates, or Chim Chim (the monkey) from Speed Racer. There was much anti-abortion talk, anti-stem-cell talk, God talk, and more worrisome the common theme was increasing hostilities and military involvement, especially against Iran (with McCain almost implying that we should be at war with them now, just for the fact they mention the term "nuclear"). Oddly the don't understand that the public is sick of war, but yet they must run on a pro-war stance. "Pro-war", this phrase is strange, who in there right mind COULD be pro-war, especially when this is coupled with the idea much bandied last night of the sanctity of human life (even if only two undifferentiated cells). Wanting to kill thousands of American troops and Iranians, and saying you "like life" is oxymoronic to the extreme.

In the whole debate Giuliani scored highest. He even ranked higher, in my terms, than most of the Democrats, and especially the democratic front-runners. If it came down to Obama or Clinton against Giuliani, I'd be forced to vote for the the republican. Most of the republican candidates came across almost as Daleks, screaming "EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!", while Rudy came across as at least somewhat human, being pro-choice, and pro-science, surviving tough questions on these topics. The commentary afterwards bashed Giuliani on his abortion stance, since it was not a sound-bite "No", but belayed some complexity amounting to "I am pro-life, personally, but still believe that it is a personal decision, so women have the right to choose".

I'm done. Does anyone actually read these things?

I don't know why I've been so politicized of late, it seems that everytime I open my mouth lately some political polemic pours forth with the requisite amount of piss and bile. This post is no exception.

The beloved co-frontrunner of the mainstream Democratic party, and media darling, Barack Obama has decided to hijack a MySpace page from its rightful creator and owner, and then commenced (or at least his campaign has) to spread rumors about the sites original creator being "in it for the money", and allegation that he denies vehemently.

Yes, this is a rather small thing, MySpace is extremely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yet we can learn a lot about someone by their small actions, how they treat their associates. They original guy's MySpace page represented a genuine grassroots effort, developed independently from the campaign, and only out of a genuine passion for Obama's politics. The 160,000 "friends" were genuine and organic, representing people who actually are interested of Obama, without any political manipulations or machinations. For the Obama campaign to ruthlessly seize control of this shows that they value victory over ethics, or treating people fairly. A sad statement on the morals and ethics of Obama. Victory is not, nor ever, worth stomping on the common man, especially one who devoted his time and energy to your cause with no want or expectation of re-compensation.

It also highlights how "grassroots" is now being supplanted by the IMAGE of "grassroots", leading me to be wary of anything that appears as an organic popular movement, since increasingly it only is a manipulation by some powerful entity to get its way. Increasingly there is nothing genuine in the world, everything is some manipulation trying to use us as tools. Perhaps we shouldn't stand for this.

Obama, tangent aside, has never been my favorite, he actually is in the bottom of the heap, just above Hillary, as far as democratic contestants go. But thats a story in the works, my analysis of the democratic debates. I'm slacking, I know. To many causes to write about, too little time. But if I was a fence sitter, this would throw me off that fence, and into someone else's yard. Obama is against people, and for his own power, or at least that is the image that this fiasco presents.

For more reading, please see:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/2/93621/10103
http://www.techpresident.com/node/301

Its odd when you realize that there is a strange informational ethic involved with geeks on the internet. Every-time something is censored, over covered-up geeks propagate the information to the point where enforcement becomes futile. This can be seen with web-pages such as The Memory Hole, which serves to document changes in records, and disappearing public records. And most lately in the "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" fiasco.

To explain, "09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0" is half of the digital key to decrypt HD-DVDs (the other half being unique to each HDDVD), allowing it to be played on unlicensed platforms. Much the same thing happened with regular DVDs a long time ago, allowing them to be playable on older Macs and Linux machines(since the encryption is copyrighted, only authorized paying vendors are/were allowed access legally, which amounts to extortion, and precludes smaller vendors from supporting the ubiquitous technology). This code (and the one hidden within the HD-DVD itself) make it possible to rip HD-DVDs to data files, playable on all platforms.

Some noble hacker discovered this, and now it has lead to a cascade of DMCA take-down notices, burying its mention in blogs and large news services such as Digg, basically government enforced censorship. Censorship of a NUMBER. Yes, for all its cryptic looks it is a simple number encoded in hexadecimal. For a silly analogy, lets say that someone develops a new technology based on a circle, they copyright this. Then some intrepid Greek hacker known as Pythagorus on the internet finds the secret number that makes this "wheel" possible, lets call his number π. The cartel that brought you the wheel decides to censor this number, banning all public use of it under threat of legal attack.

But here comes the internet, a group of libertarian amoral egotists who read to much William Gibson books, and for all their faults still buy the old hacker adage "information wants to be free". Nothing pisses of the internets like censorship. Thus EVERYONE spreads it, copies it, makes poems and videos of it, and thus transform it into the common place, and make it so ubiquitous that no one could ever remove its mention, ensuring its free existence in the public domain. For all their faults, geeks have this one thing going for them.

EDIT: Even Wikipedia is riding the censorship train. Which is VERY shameful. Wikipedia is supposed to be a repository for knowledge that is useful, and not just that knowledge that a corporation or government decides we should see for their convenience. This is very much like the China issue I talked about the other day, where American online companies behave unethically for their own interests.

Happy May-Day. In related news. Odd, mayday is classically a pagan fertility holiday which got converted to a day celebrating the working man, and is important to various socialist and communist movements... But... in the U.S. it is "Loyalty Day", in which we all should "reaffirm out loyalty to the United States", a move to actually destroy the communist undertones of the day. Bullshit, I say. Viva la proletariat! Also, ironically, today is the day that Arizona enacts its draconian, and totalitarian anti-smoker laws.


(1001 11111001 00010001 00000010 10011101 01110100 11100011 01011011 11011000 01000001 01010110 11000101 01100011 01010110 10001000 11000000)

(or in haiku, ripped from Digg:
oh nine eff nine one
one oh two nine dee seven
four ee three five bee

dee eight four one five
six see five six three five six
eight eight see zero)

I love the amount of American online companies moving to represent themselves in China, and there utter disregard for any idea of ethics. It started with Google, who, upon moving to China decided it was a good idea to enforce China's strict censorship policies against their citizens. Now MySpace has decided to join the game, but upped the ante by not only automatically censoring political and religious posts (what ever you do, don't say "Tibet!"), but allowing good patriotic Chinese users to REPORT other bad (doubleminus ungood) Chinese users to not respecting the motherland enough, which could lead these dissidents in a nice Chinese prison. It's nice to see that these enterprises are so helpful to such a nice government, with such sane practices, and regard for its citizens.

Google was surprising, since this was an entity with the slogan "Don't be evil", and they still carry this motto, and rightfully so, since WE did miss the memo redefining the term "evil" to stop contain such things as censorship, and supporting the legitimacy of a repressive government. MySpace, though, isn't too suprising since MySpace is owned by media mogul (and Dark Lord of the Sith hopeful(1)) Rupert Murdoch, who seems does seem to have an odd habit of sponsoring official government mouth-pieces.

I suppose this is a nice example of how well the grand Libertarian idea of how unbridled corporate freedom leads to ethics. Ayn Rand would be smiling at yet another example of self-interest leading to the good of the people. And by The People, we of course mean the aptly named "Peoples Party". The waters fine, come on in.

So, kids, those of you using Firefox makes sure to download Adblock, and block the living shit out of Google (something I would have frowned on awhile back), and please also consider using it to kill all the ads on MySpace, something you should have done long ago since MySpace is ad infested crap. A side benefit of this is to remove all the annoying videos, music, and flash from badly designed personal pages, large chunks of your occipital lobe will thank you. For those of you not running Firefox, do so now, there is no excuse.




---
(1) This Murdoch/Sith hypothesis can be easily seen with a quick illustration:
Mr. Murdoch

Mr. Darth Sideous

One must admit the difficulty in distinguishing between them.

Go congress, telling Bush to get the hell out of Iraq, and NOW trying to impeach Cheney. Its about time that the politicos got in line with the majority of the American people. Perhaps the Dems won't be as ineffectual as we all feared.

Though I still wonder at the wisdom of pulling out of Iraq, fully, without someone else to take our place. If we just leave the religious violence will just increase. We should leave only when some non-partial body (the UN, for instance) steps in to maintain stability. What is really needed is a redefinition of the goal in Iraq, since it obviously is unwinnable that should no longer be our goal, instead it should be the stabilization of the country, moving events to the point where we can safely withdraw.

I do understand the sentiment of wanting to leave, since every day amounts to a heap of corpses, and dead Americans, for futile purposes. But if we were to just leave we would create a bigger mess, a power vacuum. This would first lead to further bloodshed, and perhaps even genocide.(1) When equilibrium is reached, the vacuum will be filled with an extreme islamic religious government (much like the Taliban), which will lead to epic human rights violations, and quite possibly will come to bite us in the ass at some later date, leading to further American bloodshed.

We need to look at the total human toll for our actions, and not just the American toll. Our perspective is myopic still, even if we are shifting slowly into the realm of reason.

From Chat: I think one of my goals is to kill religion. But unlike many in that stance, I don't even want to replace it with science, since science doesn't have the answers, and has it fair share of atrocities behind it. I want to replace it with art, zen, and dada. With a big fucking question mark, making us realize the beauty of our own damn existence, and the beauty of the world (universe) we live in.

Replace all dogma with wonder.

No one has ever been killed by art or zen

Oh, anyone want to buy a used 20gig iPod?
---
(1) Friends don't let friends use the term "ethnic cleansing", call it what it is.(2)

(2) life should not imitate Nethack.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

While I think it is overly alarmist, I must say that she has some very VERY good points. As someone said “He who doesn’t know history is doomed to repeat it”, and this is a good application of this principle. While I do think that our still functional system is a little bit more “fascism-proof” than most historical systems, we do have some risks, and are going through some bad changes that have VERY scary historical precidents.

A lot of this is owed, of course, to the complete failure of the media, and the growing apathy and ignorance of the American public. The media has turned into pure entertainment, and psychological confort (we like to hear news that fits our world view, non-partison reality might be disturbing!), leading to both a liberal AND a conservative bias in news, yet another thing to bind us to groupthink, and block out independent free thought. Thanks to the media the idea of politics has become one of bickering, and not one of action. We have become complacent, and this is scary. (1)

Also the rise of mindless nationalism is scary too. Nationalism gives rise to attrocity, generally. We might not see this, but that is because we misbranded “patriotism” to become synonymous with nationalism. Patriotism is love of country, nationalism is killing people because they are not you. In brief, nationalism is xenophobia.

A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government.
-Edward Abbey

America is worth protecting, even if it is from its government. This is true because America is an essence (embodied in documents like the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution) that is divorced from whoever is in charge at any given time. Just because we are ruled by x does not mean that they stand for the things that make America, America. We forget this, America is bigger than anyone who rules it at any given time. Currently we’re vearing away from what America actually is and committing evil deeds. When someone says we MUST support these actions because we’re Americans, and that an American says we should (like Tom DeLay saying that questioning our war is “close to treason”) they are embracing a pure nationalist line, and not a patriotic line of thought.

We must stand back for a moment, and REALLY think about what makes us “America”, what about this country is worth loving, I’m sure that you’ll actually find a pretty good list, most of which are being threatened under the guise of “patriotism”, and “homeland security”. What will there be left to protect? We are becoming “anti-American” in our faux “patriotic” zeal.

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to recommend that all of you go read Douglas Hofstadter’s book “I Am a Strange Loop”, so far it is one of the most beautiful works of the generally objectionable field of cognitive science. Instead of dehumanizing us into purely mechanical processes as is the vogue of the field, Hofstadter makes the whole process of being into something of strange beauty, and makes our connections with other people into a truly profound phenomena. Instead of resorting to pure reductionism to make the higher level function of selfhood (or “soul”) irrelevant, he does the opposite (in his way), putting the perspective on OUR level, and not mere atomic causality. The whole work is wonderously done, inspiring us to feel a little bit of the awe he must feel for his exploration of self-hood and being. Much like his ealier Pulitzer winning book (”Gödel, Escher, Bach”, or GEB) he ties together seemingly random feilds and phenomena into a complex metaphorical network, all serving to show both the beauty of knowledge, AND of our self-hood. I’ll write a fuller review when I finish.

---
(1): tangentially, this might be why “blogs” are growing in influence, since all they do is cite a primary source, then overlay it with shear opinion. The one thing most of us don’t see about the internet is that it allows groupthink on unparalleled levels, we can rap ourselves in hundreds of websites and sources that ONLY cater to the opinions that we already embrace as true, without ever being forced to confront something contrary to our beliefs. Sometimes choice is a bad thing, since we choose what makes us most comfortable, and not what makes us better people/citizens.

15:41:26 Gordon: this thing is retarded
15:41:38 Gordon: it’s like the real world
15:42:03 Ego: Yep. I really don’t get the point. At least in WoW I can kick the shit out of people
15:42:16 Gordon: lol
15:42:41 Gordon: shit, this place actually has taxes
15:43:13 Ego: Isn’t it about the gayest thing you’ve ever seen.
15:43:23 Ego: I tried it once. And quit in ten minutes.
15:43:43 Gordon: almost the gayest. i am in theater
15:43:53 Ego: LOL
15:44:19 Ego: But gay theater folk REALLY are gay, their not virtual gay
15:44:28 Ego: Meaninging they’re slightly less gay
15:45:19 Ego: There is some deep philosophical law of gay behind this. Anything virtual MUST be more gay than something real and gay.
15:45:40 Gordon: lol
15:46:17 Ego: Even not-gay things are gay, if they’re virtual. Look at sex. Real sex is not gay (unless you are gay), but virtual sex is just gay. Virtual gay sex is GAYER, meaning it actually shreds the space-time continuum each time it happens.

(edited for... well, to make me look slightly less retarded)

Posted this to my MySpace, you might be amused.

Go See for Yourself.

Or skip the bull, and see it on Flickr.

Looking at my archives, I've noticed that April is my most productive month. I'm blaming unattached mockingbirds. This is no acceptation, Non Servium has been updated, this time with a LOOOONG post about how our view of ourselves is changing (and not in a good way), it weighs in on about five pages, but I think it would be good reading. Of course I'm impartial! Hey, at least there will be some fun disagreement. Running with my theme of productivity I have another update in the works, I'm too fatigued to run with it, but it will be getting back to my pedantic arguments about science, and away from the rather depressing topic of the day (anomie).

---


I suppose I should say something about that college massacre yesterday: the truly sad thing is that my first reaction was "oh shit, what stupid thing is the government going to do now?", and not sympathy for the dead, or their relatives. Has our poitical climate really gotten to the point where fear is stronger than empathy? It is a tragety, and sad, but sadder that I worry more about the government using it as a tool to oppress us further, rather than worry about the poor families that forever lost a loved one (and a promising asset to society, at that).

That said, I'm afraid we're all conditioned to this, dead innocents. We are innundated with them every day. How do these deserve our sympathy more than the thousands of dead Iraqis we're leaving in our wake, or the people starving to death in the middle of our cities, while we sip of expensive coffees at Starbucks ranting about Christian values? Life is becoming news coverage of one unending massacre, it sort of dulls the impact any single one can have on us.

I'm just wondering now, what is it about the middle of April. Waco, Oklahoma City, Colombine, the U of A shootings, the shootings at some community center in Sun City three years ago. Generally they all cluster on the 19th and 20th, but the 17th is close enough. April is the month for going postal. Joy!

Seriously though, it is sad. But we must ask the essencial question "what caused this individual to become desturbed enough to kill 30 some innocents?" This isn't idiotic highschool angst, like Columbine (if you say video games I'll personally slap you), but might be another symptom of an underlying problem. What causes people to wake up one morning, and decide to slaughter people they see everyday, for nothing that these people are guilty of? Can you empathize? I can't. That is the truly frightening thing, is what terrible thing lurks within these people's minds, and where does it come from.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. What is left? Hunter S. is dead, Jean Baudrillard is dead, who is left? Why do all the people out in the side-lines of reality depart before the wanker who screw it up for the rest of us? I was never a fan, but he still will be missed, another humanist dead.

Perhaps this is what my failing leached wifi was telling me.

the person I'm leeching wifi from sucks ass.

The other day I had a sobering thought. If today, right now, the U.S. government decided to round up all the Muslims in America, and put them in interment camps, no one would really take steps to stop it. Sure we might give lip service to it, and have some angry bloggers and protesters, but no one really would bother. I'm just using the U.S. as an example, but increasingly it seems that the ideological climate of the world might be leading towards another holocaust, or at least the type of circumstances that would allow it. I could as easily imagine the Israelis doing it to the Palestinians, or the radical Muslims in Saudi Arabia or Iran doing it, but the frightening thing is that it is imaginable.

Just like before WWII the world is steeped in idealism and nationalism. Instead of the opposing forces of fascism and communism, we have liberalism and religious zealotry (with a good heaping of pure economic greed clouding our ethics and foresight, thrown in for fun). It scares me. The western world (the U.S. and Britain, mostly) are devolving into corporate police states. The U.S. is in the throws of a totalitarian religious movement. The middle east has already devolved into totalitarian theocracies, and worse, warring ones. Everyone is affected by severe xenophobia, and ideological blindness.

If something terrible didn't happen in our life times, I would be very (pleasantly) surprised.


(to give credit where due, this is motivated by the J.Dizzle, the harbinger of sociopolitical dread, thanks a lot! I just needed to worry more about the idiots who rule the world, and no, that does not mean only the politicos, but also the ignorant masses. Also motivated by Richard Dawkin's scathing attack on religion "The God Delusion", which I would suggest whole heartily, even if there is some disagreeable bits. Review will follow when its done. And also the truly pre-apocolyptic movie "Jesus Camp". So many sources of dread...)

First, for the more daring among you Non Servium has been updated with a polemic inspired by the film "Jesus Camp", following is also a slightly more technical critique of Richard Dawkins stance against agnosticism. Yes, religion is the theme of the day.

Wow, I've just realized I've been writing for over 5 straight hours, not counting the notes I was taking earlier, on the aforementioned blog update.

I was going to include a rantlette as a bonus, but its 4am, and I suddenly realize that my fingers are cramped. Joy! To not be a complete asshat, I'll summarize:

There is no grounding of perception, the further down we look there more complex things become. Following this, there too, is no grounding for knowledge, the more we analyze our ideas the more ideas we find we use to justify them (coherence, not correspondence, in the lingo). Our own subjective perception of meaning follows this trend, each meaning we impart on an object (external or internal), we find on observation breaks down.

Our life is also equally empty! We are bracketed by the incomprehensibility of our own ultimate finitude on one end, and by the determinism imparted by the vehicle for our being on the other. In a more immediate sense we get much of our self-meaning, and much of our actions are derived from arbitrary actions which are almost wholly symbolic.

What does this lead to? Existential angst, or the deep joy of the philosopher? We could bask in our own futility, or realize that all of existence is a puzzle, infinite in its depth and beauty. We can revel is the shear grandeur of experience, and the fact that our minds have the ability to constantly be in a state of childlike wonder and discovery thanks to the incomprehensibility of nature.

It was longer, more poetic, but I'm tired. Go read the damn blog for depth, sorry.

I listed my old iBook 12" G4 laptop on craigslist. This required one to use the phone, which many of you, I'm sure, realize I'm loath to do, which also means I sold it to the first person who offered to buy it, just too get over with the hastle. Yes, I am the worlds worst salesman. This of course meant that much phone tag commenced, culminating at 9am this morning. Around 10am, right before this guy showed up at my door, all of my disparate friends decided that I would be a very pleasing voice to hear at the other end of a wretched telephone. This means I got to field about 10 phone calls in the space of an hour, AND try my damnedest to make a broken laptop look like a good $300 investment. By around noon I was burnt out. Sure, you mock, but this is coming from a guy who rations himself one phone call a night, since I find telephones to be the most obnoxious and intrusive invention made by man (the cell-phone, of course, achieving the ascendent position).

Then follows a bus ride to Fry's Electronics (electrogarbage in, electrogarbage out), some time after a hurried lunch day with my father. Then follows dealing with incompetent idiots, a necessary part of the Fry's experience. Then follows the purchase of a new 30Gb iPod (white since I now want to be different), a new case since the 5.5g iPods are skinnier, and a copy of the Elephant Man, moving my David Lynch collection one step closer to completion (3 more to go). On the busride home, I had the joy of slapping some emo bitch with a japanese tattoo on her neck (of which she certainty couldn't read), and the requisite homeless guy wearing a woman's sweater, and smelling vaguely of poo. Followed by an hour conversation about how much humanity (and slipped disks) suck because Tool sold out in Tucson.

Now it is around 5pm. Sleep. Blissful sleep, followed by blissful bed-head and near delirious disorientation. Now here I sit, writing this, new iPod, new case, listening to music from the future, quaffing a pint of Guiness rather too fast, left with the message of why I hate telephones, selling things, and pretty much everything else (except bed head). And knowing the dread of the prospect of selling my old 20Gb iPod. Any takers, it may or may not come with 20Gb of music on it, depending on how legal/ethical I'm feeling at the moment.

/by the way, the upcoming Nine Inch Nails CD is going to be worth buying. No longer is Trent Reznor trying to expand his audience to 13 year old radio listening morons. The new Pelican CD will also be a wise purchase, for those of you who like post-rock influenced drone metal, all one of you (to be generous).