Years ago I made the claim genius existed and related to the human face. 

I was not saying all geniuses are right. I am quite sure, most are not.  For example, Paris Hilton. Just that it is a real biological quality.

negative accelerations in Earth's climate

CAGW is certainly a least a little bit exaggerated.

A large consensus claims CO2 will cause the Earth to warm, at some climate sensitivity. A smaller consensus also claims positive accelerations will increase this effect, namely: polar amplification,  humidity, and methane release.

Less often spoken of are the negative accelerations. I have collected here a few hypotheses.

This first group is for housekeeping.

thermodynamics

• logarithmic property of radiative transfer
• increased absorption rate of CO2 into oceans (greater percentage, extra heat, extra air pressure due to CO2 being heaver than oxygen)
• thermal expansion of troposphere 1 
• UV breakdown in the stratosphere of C02 at a greater rate

Now the true negative accelerations:

basic life

• more plants because of more CO2, humidity, and warmth
• CO2-fixing coccolithophores 
• methane-fixing bugs in the tiaga

complex synergies

• increased CLAW production (by pelagibacterales) of dimethyl sulfide on ocean surface (creating more cloud albedo)   
• extra CLAW in the Arctic (directly working opposite of polar amplification)
• tropical cyclones (causing more water to fall onto plants than usual)
• ocean rise increasing volume of water exchanged with the  sill-protected Arctic (creating more open water, increasing lake-effect NH snowfall,  slowing NH glacier melt (Ewing, Donn, 1956) leading to deceleration of ice albedo loss)
• heavier atmosphere will lead to enhanced rock weathering when rain hits the rock (some chemical reaction I do not understand).

notes

1. or is this counteracted because CO2 is heaver than O which it displaces?

A lot of Western liberals have all these guilts

[EDITED 2016-05-25]

Bronze Age, genomic, racial, climatic, personal, synergistic

I am not a reactionary conservative. For example, I support gay marriage.

 And also sometimes guilt can be real (or least a path to something real). 

This is not a condemnation of liberals, it's just what they feel guilty about.

Now, let's go through the types.

- Bronze Age guilt is when you own something you know your society could not produce, and you know it arrived in your life on the back of Power.

start at the 6 minute mark

It is why Western liberals love farmers markets a bit more than they merit.


- genomic guilt is when you have better genes than other people. Usually included is a rule that separate groups who are protected by PC  must not be referred to together. For example, if you tell liberals at a party that Political Correctness protects both gays and people with Downs syndrome they will see you as evil. IMO, because you aren't feeling the genomic guilt they think you should be, even if it makes no difference . ... upshot: genomic guilt creates cognitive dissonance.


- racial  guilt. Usually this is referred to as white liberal guilt. Everyone is familiar with it.

It exists both in the individual also in collective liberal ethics. A rule forms that everyone can be proud of their race, except whites. Another rule forms that whites cannot co-opt other cultures but anyone non-white should get a little help to reach a position of power in what was used to be mostly white culture. A white actress cannot play a Japanese role, but a black person should play James Bond - or that proves racism, or "it's their turn", or something

mind, I am not saying this is wrong, or even that multiculturalism is necessarily an unworkable plan, I am only saying its motivation is guilt.

racial guilt on steroids is the idea that whites are to blame for everything bad.  And never give credit to Western culture for anything good.

racial guilt's doppelganger inside the individual white liberal is their constant noticing of what race other people are. ie their racination. They are sure they can end racism by upping the energy level of their guilt, but this also increases that doppelganger inside of them. ... This double energy is weirdly admirable.  And to a leftist any white who does not have such a duality is  called 'white trash' , which they are sure it not a racist term because those whites are choosing to be like how leftists of other races are, Or something.


- climatic guilt.   .. requires it's own essay ...those seriously afflicted with it are closeted, meaning they are turned on by what they say they are against, and seek out to experience the issue, so much so we can call it climate porn (soft-core, of course).

Some leftists that feel that humans are an evil ape, a cancer who by our very existence are endangering (Mother) Earth. The think that (Father) scientists say so.  And yes, with liberals climatic guilt is linked to gender identities. There is is even a Feminist Glaciology paper (paid for by US federal funds) that complains about how drilling into glaciers to get core samples is too masculine. Now that's guilt!

note that the only huge consensus is about radiative forcing.  There is also a consensus on downwelling radiation ... not about the accelerations. not about the presumed catastrophes ...  I actually know the topics well   ... Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but leftist catastrophism has become pathological.

Some with the most serious cases of climatic guilt want humans to go extinct to save the planet and simultaneously want fossil fuels to be illegal because they collectively fantasize it will kill billions. These same types think oil companies are conspiring against them while being sure skeptics (who are typically buttoned-down retired engineers), are the conspiracy theorists

Calling the belief system climatic guilt has spawned a cult or a new religion is irrelevant. Its merged  with a special dual fuel of closeted apocalypse fantasy and out-in-the-open radical restructuring of every culture on the planet, for "climate and social justice"

This may be its true origin: that liberals planned resolution to their climatic guilt allows for the resolution of many of their other guilts ....  This would explain a  lot . Why for example, it's totalitarian quality is apparently seen as a plus by liberals... if a normal person says to a typical liberal that they are more afraid of eco-totalitarianism than sea-level rise the liberal will probably pretend they didn't hear. Why? ... because the resolution to their other guilts is harking to them in their head.


- personal guilt - this typically takes two forms

1.  a liberal did something they are ashamed of (like not recycling that old computer, let's pretend that's the worse thing)
2. they voted for somebody who did something clearly immoral (this type of personal guilt is more common that one might think, and occurs with conservatives, too)

For example, Dan Liberal votes for Hillary Clinton  in the NY State Senatorial election. She then votes for the invasion of Iraq, which led to the death of millions. What does Dan do? ... he goes all  EJTM (ends justify the means logic) and becomes a liberal asshole. He searches out logically-bankrupt-but-seemingly-convincing reading material to use to defend himself in case anyone normal & moral challenges him in a social or cyber setting.  To alleviate his personal guilt of that vote.

- synergistic guilt - the most complicated one.

Say some famous, admired author whose every book is about fear, and has written a couple pervy scenes, looks a little pervy on the jacket cover. Or some famous admired Hollyood actress admits to doing something pervy to her sibling, or lies about being raped. Or an ex-President was a lech, or worse.

Suppose in all these cases the celebrity is admired and is also liberal. What does the liberal decide?

In these cases the collectivist in the liberal means they fell the need to share guilt (that might exist, they shut out of their minds), by which this means, normalize it. 'Cultural Marxism' - a kind of subversion - is enjoyed compulsively and unconsciously. Decade after decade. Hollywood makes movies mocking normal people, These movies are praised by the liberal since the liberal is a 'social being' and has wanted to be like (or friends with) the admired celebrity in the movie and other people who admire that celebrity.

Synergistic guilt occasionally means fairly normal and successful liberals talk to a psychiatrist once  a week for forty-years, forever convinced they have a individual problem, when they don't.

conclusion

In my very humble opinion Western liberals have lost their minds, collectively. I think, at best, they are over-burdened with feelings of guilt.

Are they useful idiots? Are they now the #1 stupider-than-they-should-be group in human history? Are they seemingly working towards having the Western world commit suicide? ... I am not sure.

There is the phenomenon of liberals who see some of what is going on. eg socialist Chris Hedges,

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.”

which is a bit exaggerated

addendum

A few times I have wondered about something I call "the hominid unconscious", which would exist more in people who are an admixture of hominids ... white (Cro-Magnon + Neanderthal).  Asian (Cro-Magnon + Denisovan). something along those lines ... if this were true there might be  something parallel to guilt, very very deep, metaphorically about the wipeout of the destroyed hominid .. this would be trace, and take the form a 'taboo against the knowledge of existence' (Watts) ... those afflicted would not have REM dreams about it. but would feel less natural, less able to have a personality, more attracted to celebrity, much more prone to guilt, more desirous of a 'return to nature', more drawn to crossword puzzles and to yoga ... simultaneously other ethnicities would see their culture as not  worth preserving, since the people involve were kind of 'ghosts' due to the duality of the admixture... I really am not sure about this bit

What Esker and Noel have in common: planetary formation/buoyancy/atmospheric loss/surface expansion

For years, occasionally I mused on the  'expanding Earth hypothesis' (EEH), as an amateur. It is a fringe idea.

One reason was the continents do seem to fit together as the cover of a smaller Earth. A geologist  a hundred years before had blown up a balloon to illustrate the idea, but in the age of computers cartoonist Neal Adams has done the service of animating it.

 Don't be hung up that the continental shelves are not in the video (too much too explain).

The alternative, supercontinent theory, is seemingly ad hoc.  Having just one that broke up (called Pangaea)  did not do the trick. Apparently based on the need explain data like matching geologies on the parts of Antarctica to the otherwise-wrong places, there had to have been 5 or 6 super-continents that contorted themselves on the ocean (imagine a teenager making a snow angel and sliding on the snow as well).

part 2

There were dual questions involving dinosaurs ...

• how could they have done the impossible and moved around?
• why did they became extinct?

For this reason, most EEHs held that an increase in mass can happen at the center of  planets!

But it seemed to  most there was no reasonable way the Earth could have been gaining mass.

part 3

In this part I mention two more fringe theories.

Davie Esker's has a seemingly bizarre buoyancy hypothesis about the dinosaurs:

1. 250 millions years ago Earth's atmosphere density was 2/3 that of water, and big animals just sort of floated around.
2. that the thinning of the atmosphere caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (as well as the huge insects)

J Marvin Herndon's even-the-sun-was-a-gas-giant hypothesis (criticism)

• the Sun and all four inner planets were gas giants,
• the sun exploded and blew the atmospheres off the four inner planets

part 4

All this was why last week I blogged about David Noel's fringe mega-theory, including a EEH. opinion. He hypothesized that - among other things  - Earth's atmosphere then was like Venus' is now, (inter alia 90 times as dense).  It has virtues the other EEHs do not:

• the inner planets don't have to be gas giants, they can be gas normals
• no sun explosion is necessary, simply atmospheric bleed off (and accepted geology has the creation of the moon that could have triggered it)
• no weird addition of mass at the center of the Earth
• no need for the Earth to be expanding much at all now, a  natural end to expansion
• two sources for EEH, atmospheric bleedoff, and growing tidal motions, putting lateral stress on the surface
• minor expansion cracks on the moon due to it only having its bled over atmosphere for a while

part 5

Googling, I ran across this article about the same topic as this blog post from 18 months ago. This guy agrees there a problem with the mainstream but thinks along gravity/cosmology lines (sort of like I  used to), not realizing that recently discovered exoplanets have probably  busted the textbootk 'cold line' theory of planetary formation (gas giants have been spotted closer to stars than Earth is to the sun), probably leaving planetary formation up for grabs.

part 6 

Mars has expansionesque cracks, probably (that could be an other post), but no moon remotely big enough to explain atmospheric bleedoff...Not that I know anything ....  a NASA spacecraft did detect debris around Mars two tiny moons ... the asteroid belt is nearby .. maybe Mars small size meant its gas atmosphere was a) less dense b) doomed (especially with big asteroids flying by on a regular basis) leading to a bit of expansion, but not so much as bigger Earth with the thicker atmospheric, bleedoff and tidal rocking

part 7

One could, I suppose, look at this videocapture, which is someone rotating  the planet  on Google Earth using a Geology overlay showing the age of the crust.

He claims floods - you can turn down the sound.

part 8

back to Noel and Esker (remember them?) comparing the two air density claims:

• buoyancy hypothesis:  an ancient air density about 520 times higher than now 
• Noel EEH: an ancient air density 90 times higher than now

Was the Earth-moon barycenter once outside the Earth?

I recently read another 'expanding Earth' hypothesis. Again, from an Australian.:)

Anyway, this one is the most sensible so far.

From memory, with some garnish.

part one

The core hypothesis is that Venus is the norm for terrestrial planets, and that Earth billions of years ago was similar, namely thick atmosphere, very high in CO2, extreme barometric pressure (~90 times Earth), and basically no atmospheric oxygen.

Then the normative freak collision, a huge celestial object (that itself broke up) plowed through the atmosphere and got a big chunk of crust, too. Thus creating a vast halo of particulates which accreted into a moon.

Anyway here is where it gets interesting, with some of Noel's timing being uncertain (maybe because it is impossible).

The moon back then was closer (scientists agree), and if the Earth was also sufficiently smaller than it is now then the barycenter of the moon-Earth together would have been outside the Earth! Meaning as a pair they would technically have been dual planets.

But because Earth had an atmosphere, there would have been (for at least hundreds of millions of years) a shared gravity well, and the Earth's atmosphere would have bled over to the moon's.

Meanwhile the moon, being too small to retain lighter gases, would then have bled gas to outer space.

part two

Since the Earth would be slowly losing atmosphere, the barometric pressure at the surface would be constantly dropping. This would allow the gravity-compressed Earth to begin to expand. Cracks would form in the crust, destined to become oceans (inter alia: why current ocean floors are so young).

Noel does not say this, but maybe something about the special situation allowed edge-of-space micro-rain.

As I read it, this hypothesis holds the lowering surface barometric pressure allowed the creation of anaerobic life similar to coccolithophores. Namely protozoa that fixed CO2 with calcium (on the ground) into calcium carbonate.

This early life - Noel suggests - isolated oxygen. Which did not get a chance to all float into space ...

part three

Meanwhile the moon is still moving away. And the Earth is bigger. So eventually, the barycenter moves inside the Earth,  meaning the gravity well disappears, there is no more atmospheric bleed-over, and the planet has a true moon.

Thanks to new atmosphere, oxygen-based life appears, which fixes even more CO2 out of the air. 

Now here we are, hypothetically, on a planet that once had maybe as much as 95% CO2 in its atmosphere, but is now a trace gas.

notes

• I guess since CO2 is heavier than N or O, the surface barometric pressure would have continued to drop? Thus, even after the moon became a true moon, there would have been expansion, albeit at a a slower rate
• re: micro-rain: the hydrogen for the water apparently from outer space (too light to be atmospheric), combining with the oxygen (freed up by the protozoa) only the H adding to Earth's mass, thus about 0.01% not 0.02%
• in this Earth Expansion hypothesis (EEH) the expansion has a natural cessation point
• the lithosphere being real, the loosest bit nearest the equator would move away the fastest, centrifugal force, hence the Himalayas -- the first EEH that is satisfying on this point
• the onset (which the planet is still in) of glaciation not just because of the position of Antarctica but because of all the CO2 fixing?
• All the changes guaranteed periodic mass extinctions. Poor Barney.
• the planet has a vast amount of limestone. That from CO2 permanently fixed out of the atmosphere, the #volcanoes adding CO2 during the billions of year is unknown, ASFAIK

ADDED 2016-04-25

In 2013 famous NASA Venusian & Earth climatologist James Hansen clarified his remarks about Earth's potential future. Because his opinion is strikingly like an opposite of Noel's (and because, frankly, he is the type of negativist who sometimes turns out to be an opposite indicator) I will quote a big bit.

“I get questions from the public about the Venus Syndrome: is there a danger of
'runaway' greenhouse warming on Earth leading to Venus-like conditions?”

then

“Venus today has a surface pressure of about 90 bars, compared with 1 bar on Earth. The Venus atmosphere is mostly CO2. The huge atmospheric depth and CO2 amount are the reason Venus has a surface temperature of nearly 500°C.”

“Venus and Earth probably had similar early atmospheric compositions, but on Earth the carbon is mostly in Earth's crust, not in the atmosphere. As long as Earth has an ocean most of the carbon will continue to be in the crust, because, although volcanoes inject crustal carbon into the atmosphere as CO2, the weathering process removes CO2 from the air and deposits it on the ocean floor as carbonates. Venus once had an ocean, but being closer to the Sun, its atmosphere became hot enough that hydrogen could escape from the upper atmosphere, as confirmed today by the extreme depletion on Venus of normal hydrogen relative to heavy hydrogen (deuterium), the lighter hydrogen being able to escape the gravitational field of Venus more readily.”

“Earth can "achieve" Venus-like conditions, in the sense of ~90 bar surface pressure, only after first getting rid of its ocean via escape of hydrogen to space”

As an amateur I am skeptical.

Note the 'similar early atmospheric compositions' bit. Hansen does not say what those are, precisely. (Noel has more guts). Then he changes tenses very quickly. He seems to want Earth as the more archetypal, with a kind of preCopernican feel.

where you think Life came from - where you think you came from

These questions are normally grouped separately as questions of evolutionary biology,  developmental psychology, and political ideology.

1. how you think Life originated billions of year ago
2. how you think your personality formed
3. what you want society to be like

For the purpose of this post, I look at them as linked.

how did Life start?

• abiogenisis, the athiest's choice (lightning hit a swamp or something)
• God did it
• you don't want to think about it

how does personality form?

• genes + environment
• God did it
• you don't want to think about it

what should society be like?

• one big nurturative safe space the world over, except for dissenters (whose careers should be destroyed)
• everyone strives for themselves
• you don't want to think about it

Long story short, I don't agree with any of these answers. 

What I think at this moment

1. we would not fight over our beginning if humans weren't an admixture of different hominids (the simplest evidence is, the more admixtury a group is, the more they care)
2. personality forms from original will, by each one of us, not a miracle but a phenomenon of what time is, what reality is
3. 'society' is a secondary question which people are not ready for

this post is about spirituality. I mean it was. Since it is over.

It's 2016

FWIW Since I last posted on this blog I have changed some of my opinions.

And why is there no way to tab the first line of paragraphs?

NASA surprised to find stretch marks on the moon

Here. The moon is not dead!

Last August I posted about the surface of Mars, about a photo then in the news. Following this (seemingly crazy idea) I suggested the lines -supposedly from water- were stretch marks, that the moon had them, too.

A photo from the moon showed up since then:

Of course, astronomers do not consider the moon might be growing.

Note the article includes this depiction of a graben

The likely way the earths's oceans formed, according to a few renegade scientists. Too bad the majority cannot emotionally handle the idea.

XKCD comes up with a few mnemonics, including one for the solar system

Years ago, right after Pluto was demoted, I created a juvenile new mnemonic for remembering the solar system.

solar system:
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

The mnemonic was:
Many vegetarians eat meat, just show up naked.

See, the first letters match.

Finally, someone else, someone actually talented, has taken up this pressing problem. Of course, I refer to the XKCD guy. Who else?

He says the "traditional" was
My very excellent mother just served us nachos

He invents
Mary's "virgin" explanation made Joseph suspect upstairs neighbor.

Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

study: "autistic facial characteristics identified"

Heck, I suggested there was a link between autism and the human face 12 years ago.  Originally in my defunct website, later here.

And now there is this. Which seems likely to be trashed, as bigoted or something.

Note how they describe this as "a step toward understanding cause of autism" (sic). What the fuck do they think the cause could possibly be? It's as if they do not understand existence at all.

If we take the study at face-value, a third-eye would not be enough, the autistic would have to go on to violate another a deep breath taboo at least, to change the shape of their face.

one about politics, again about liars, and about TED

Today, Reddit has a thread about a video called "How to spot a liar".

No commenter in either forum seems to get that in the 21st century the actuality of the liar is waved like a red cape to maneuver dumb animals.

Of course, running through a list of actual liars is called 'brilliant'.

To me the subtext seemed to be:  you, the lovely audience, with your fake sciences, fake anthropology, fake history, bad economics, and relentless spin are not the problem, those bad people who blatantly lie are!

I admit I did not watch all of it. TED makes me grit my teeth.

I will try to be succinct - with a few exceptions the world is not poker. It is more like, poker but where most of the other players hallucinate each time they glance at their hole cards.

audio podcast - me talking about 3 types of yoga

Which is the most enlightened - to meditate on a mountaintop, go with the flow, or be your face?

An unscholarly comparison of Raja yoga, Kripalu yoga, and a yoga that nurtures personality.

autism/human face metaphor

I wrote the following in the 1990s :

"Those without internal faces - that is, those whose internal face is inaccessible to their original·will - cannot speak.

There is only one true cure - not to force speech out of disconnected face - but rather to produce (with a third eye) the conceived,enlightened face; which can come shimmering up from seeming nothingness like Athena was said to have done (out of the foaming ocean) (as one of the voices of God)."

I posted this on the internet around 1999  on a page titled "autism and the human face". I was not being literal.

Reading it aloud now it has a kind of snap, a frisson of something that might be true.

Funny thing, I had got my Greek goddesses mixed up. It was Aphrodite who was born out of the foaming ocean.

Athena's birth? Well, Zeus (the god of gods) had headaches, and she finally burst out of his head. As wisdom! As empowered!

I was suggesting then, and am saying it explicitly now, that this myth is not so much about a father and daughter, but much more about competence arising from something like developmental disability.

I am also suggesting the genders are not significant in this myth. Note that someone has rendered Athena's birth gendered-reversed. (the meaning of myth is what other people think about it).

P.S.
By "original will' I meant my opinion that children choose their own personality from the ephemera of existence

just as they are understanding dimensionality and time.

the kind of idea that grows on you

Does this look like something that is expanding?

Oh, but that's from water. It has to be. Everyone says so.

Possibly in your mind water on the moon and water on Mars is the same story. Or that, you munched it down: water on both. But since it was there after most of the asteroids hit, just, mirabile dictu, a semi-ancient solar system spritzing of some kind?

Or maybe you think, they are just planetarians and have to chase some tail. Jobz, n'est-ce pas?. (it's almost as if Moon water was Bin Laden and Mars water is Saddam Hussein. Or something.)

Now check out the (computer generated) videos here. You will be amazed.

My ultimate point is: Why don't they even consider the idea? Could it be their subconscious sees stretch marks, and this freaks them out?

P.S. for twenty years I have engaged in a special yoga practice, quite likely the deepest yoga ever. I will not divulge much about it. I will say this: there are breath taboos. Oh, and one of them involves growth.

World, get off the lying meme

Many believe the world is full of liars.

A couple of years ago a few of these believers made a movie, creating an opposite world.

I guess they thought this would be funny, and would resonate with the irony of the opposite. And maybe even be uplifting. Not to mention educational.

Right?

Well, No. The conceit failed. Despite featuring charismatic and popular stars, The Invention of Lying barely covered its costs.

I could have told them this would happen. I could have told them the irony would be feckless.

Guys, the reason the movie did not make money is your premise was wrong. The world is not made corrupt by being full of liars.

Yes, the world is full of people who say untrue things. But they believe in truth and consciously believe the things they say are true.

It is only subconsciously they know what they say is false.

And now a picture of some kids. Because kids [Hollywood's #1 audience] know.

They can tell that many of the adults in their world are not completely honest human beings. But also that they are not liars.

The lying meme is feckless. Please, world, get off it. That would be step 1 for you to begin to work out what is really wrong.

audio podcast update of the Horton Hears a Who post

I've been getting a couple of hits a day on my Horton Hears a Who analysis. I have no idea why. So I have done an update. This time it's audio. A podcast, basically.

(direct link)

The recording is about 14 minutes long, but I don't really get into it until around the 7:30 mark. I apologize for the places in the recording where I ramble. I did it without notes or preparation - nobody is paying me for this!

The original was too dense, and too unfriendly. This is better (but still not that good).

The Rise of Passive-Agressive Infrastructure

It is everywhere.

Every train station, airport, and highway has it.
Packaged consumer goods have it.
The famous Windows® operation system has it.

It is passive-aggressive infrastructure.

Our world now demands of us our time. it constantly says
-Look at me!
-Listen to me!
-Pay attention to this!

You might think that the world is simply filling up with needy people, helpless children (of all ages), and desperate governments. But no. It is worse. These people have collectively created a world to match their passive-aggression. They are inflicting their neediness on the world, and they have critical mass.


To get a measure of the extremity of what I talking about, imagine being transported to world where all males walk around carrying their balls in a jar. Men who gave up being men so long ago they forgot that there is better way. You would be shocked and saddened being transported to that place.

That I how I see this world, a world where everyone has been castrated of anthropological knowledge. Anthropology is easy, and simple. Yet an entire world has allowed this genuine path to wisdom to be surgically removed (metaphorically).

All the colossal dipshits on TV. All the whorish pundits (every single freaking one) thinks in terms of KNOWING. their minds are constantly thinking vainly
- I know this!
- I know that!
- I know that other thing!

and they are everywhere.

Leaving aside that half the stuff they think they know is not true, simply limiting themselves to knowledge, to being receptacles of received truth has made them morons. It is easy to spot, notice that they never, ever, ever talk in terms of WISDOM.

And so the world they so lead in their sad, bloated, insipid style (despite all the yelling and all the frenzies) is heading off a cliff.

Our world.

Let everyone have a moments peace. Stop being intrusive! Stop trying to be helpful so much!
Let us think! Leave us alone! Leave us in peace! Stop trying to control everything! Stop pretending you know what is best for someone else. My life is my own. Entirely and completely.

I finish with a couple of examples of stuff I cannot stand.

popup operating systems

It is not the internet or video games that are destroying the hope of the world (via crippling of the mind). It is the TV in the airports. And their cyber-equivalent, the popup operating systems. The idea of "always on top" for windows is as bizarre an idea as a "war on drugs" and so on, but no one gets this. Only a world of anthropological eunuchs would end up with an operating system with this principle. Nothing should be able to pop up on top of what I am doing. Ever (and thus "always on top" would not be needed).

headlights on cars in the daytime

Simple anthropological instincts would stop this practice. Destroying the sense of the daytime sky. Some even put up racks of brights, trying to compensate for their dullness brought about by their lifetimes of obedience. Pathetic, really. Just look at the drivers, it's usually the dullards and the creeps that do this (when they are opting for it).

the Olympics and the love of humanity

Someone at the LATimes asks

"Are London's Wenlock and Mandeville the most bizarre Olympics mascots yet?"


Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, anticipated this somehow, cleverly saying long ago

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

I am kidding. btw.

a heaven wish is mixed in with the breath-death wish

About 5 years ago I gave my opinion on whether the West has a death-wish. I had been spurred on by a Frank Rich column.
About the coverage of the then-recent death of the Pope, Rich said:

"What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living."

Rich went on to reference CSI, the Passion of the Christ, and the Terri Schiavo controversy. He finished his column with:

"...the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade"

Forget the ideology for a second, this is about anthropology.
In my post I spacily argued that what Rich was calling a 'cultural embodiment" was more accurately a "breath-death wish". I then launched into a deconstruction of the birthday party ritual. But I managed to miss something important. Namely, the Western desire for non-existent existence, eg for some form of heaven.
I mean, you all aren't just mourning the early murder of your own enlightment (which you did yourself!), or just trying to be Settlers 'n Warriors at the same time. At some level you find existence to be humiliating and ugly.

Image by cutestkidever via Flickr

To summarize, I now think there are TWO collective "cultural" strategies happening:

--a wishing of a specific breath-death on others (a willing that others not breath to produce their own enlightenment)

and also

--a desire for a heaven

a movie about DeVere as Shakes-speare! Yippee!

In just a week or so, principal photography will begin on the first movie ever made about the actual author of Hamlet (& all that other stuff). It will no doubt show up in a few theaters in a few years + quickly end up on high-brow cable.

The working title of the movie is Anonymous (a good title for the story, and it might even resonate now, in the internet age).

The director is Roland Emmerich, an A-lister who most famous movie is Independence Day.
I imagine he got the money by agreeing to do the Isaac Asimov Foundation movie too.

William Shaksper could hardly sign his own name
The filming of the movie is historic, IMO. Considering how many movies have been made from "Bard" plays, and how much influence they have had.

Btw, the case for DeVere has gotten even stronger in the last 15 years or so.


a couple of starter links
'byanothername' blog
'Shakepeare fellowship'

As it happens, I never liked reading Shakespeare. I have followed this story simply because I hate bullshit. and the story of the Stratford man ("Shakespeare" without the hyphen) is grade A crapola.

from

And the timing gives me a buzz, too. A few years ago I happened to surf on TV into Shakespeare in Love, to me a mind-boggling work of unintentional disinformation (and it actually had won Best Picture!). It pissed me off so much I went to the trouble of writing the outline for a screenplay of DeVere's life. Not that I was (or am) much of a scholar.

I had planned a close-to-factual scene where a teen "noble" Edward DeVere was making out with a good-looking maid in the garden of his estate (not clear how seriously), and a "lowly" gardener who had eyes for the young woman, went up to them and said to the girl "Why are you making out with that queer?" and then DeVere gets up, fences with the gardener, and stabs him to death. Trained in fencing. was young Ed. And of course, he gets off, because he was aristocracy.

Then later (in my outline) DeVere is at Oxford and pens a juvenile play where a lover stabs an imagined rival. The ur-Hamlet. Again - this actually happened.

The Oxfordians know all about this link, and about many others. The life of the Oxford man and the words of the bard match just as you would expect if he was the author.
Which he was.

DeVere, btw, signed his name like this

Anyway, I am thrilled someone took up the task of writing of a bio (that matches the life the signature and the works) at the same time I did my halfass bit, and I am thrilled that someone finished that task.
No doubt that they did a way, way better job than I could have done.

But will the world learn something? I guess I have to quote Shakes-speare

"Well, if Fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear."