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!

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."

Paris Hilton, genius

A few years ago, I suggested geniuses were people who had an inability to make a facial expression, and long-term channeled that expression into other behavior.

With my usual dense writing, I included

• how to spot geniuses
• why they have a positive impact
• what the face is for normally

What I didn't write - but could have - is that this definition expands the set of geniuses surprisingly. There just are people with this minor disability, but no particular math,writing or social skills. And some of these sublimate long term their frustrated facial expressions - finally converting them to something else.

For instance ... Paris Hilton.


Paris has trouble expressing things with her eyes.

If you don't believe this, click here, to see her talk.
(btw, I didn't get the idea from video, it's Paris dimly recognizing and self-deprecating this aspect of herself)

I suggest two things have flowed from Paris' minor disability

• her playing the role of someone who doesn't care what other people see
• I wouldn't say Paris volunteered to be the butt of sexual humor, but ultimately I think her sublimated face is converting the situation of her celebrity into something good.
  Just as you do pre-consciously, with your eye movements every day

All this is how Paris has found herself playing the role of the sacrificially degraded - humiliated for others sins (in their minds). Millions project their own guilt about sex onto Paris Hilton and this makes them happier about themselves.

Which is a good.

I designed a t-shirt and a mug

You can add/change text, and change some of the details.^*

They're not great, more like a first try. I don't expect any sales. But if you buy one I will get a percentage!

*The unique part is the pattern I designed (not for the blog originally). You can even get rid of that.

the hands in a manga Futurama, w 3 Simpsons links

An artist called Spacecowboy has done a drawing, colored with markers, of what the cast of Futurama would be like if rendered as manga.


big image at link
Click to the wallpaper-sized image and notice how the artist rendered the hands of each character differently.

*
The drawing of the hands that way reminds me of the MLK quote:

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

now for 3 Simpsons references
The artist's 'The Simpsonzu' and 'Dysfunctional Neighbour Totoro' remind me of a famous Matthew Diffee cartoon mocking t-shirts like these.

For further reading I recommend the WaPo article subtitled 'What Makes a Cartoon New Yorker-Worthy?'. It includes a short profile of Diffee (it will only be available for free for little while longer).

the BlackAdder Shakespeare sketch

The series of 1980s British Blackadder sitcoms have many fans. If you are one, you might not have seen some of their extra performances.

For instance YouTube has their 'Shakespeare Sketch'^*, from 9/18/89



I wanted to post one video that wouldn't be interfering with sales of anything. It fits with this website, even though it's more 'post-modern' than new age.

*but as an Oxfordian I cannot wholly endorse it!

definitive new solar system mnemonic

How do you remember the names of the planets?
Responding to a Zembla post, I just invented a mnemonic for our newly-8-planet solar system:


'many vegetarians eat meat  - just show up naked!'
After posting this, I worried it might not be original. So  I Googled to see. The closest I found was:


'Many Vegetarians Eat Meat,  Just Secretly (Under Nourished)'
Mine is clearly superior, and may even be definitive.  And so I want permanent credit.
Or blame. Whichever.

genius actually explained

I haven't read 'Genius Explained' but a (thumbs-up) review says the book says

“genius is the product of environment, personality, and sheer hard work, not a mysterious property that can't be analysed”

It sure sounds like the book doesn't explain diddley, and its title is a lie.

That's the kind of thing that happens when you stick to historical figures, all of which you necessarily read about in documents. How can an un-genius figure out what genius is via such indirect evidence?¹

As it happens, geniuses are around now, too. One encounters them occasionally.² There is no need to peer into books and extrapolate from extrapolations of observations made centuries ago.

that gut feeling you get
When someone says something to you two things almost always will occur to you:

• the mundane content of what they said
• why the person said it, in the most general way

Let's call the latter the 'the general cause', and abbreviate it 'GC'. In life, you will understand GCs. You may only process these pre-consciously, but nevertheless at some level you will be aware of which category each GC you hear belongs:

1. rote learning
2. fight (introjected)
3. flight (introjected)

To be specific, let's say you are talking to your best friend. He (or she) utters some opinion, let's say they angrily say: 'In high school everyone should be taught to drive'. Whatever.

You can tell (right?) from you friend's anger that their statement is about their underlying introjected fight against the universe (#2 on the list above).

In other words, you will always get the societal subtext of what people say.³ That is ..except for the thinking of geniuses. Some of their statements are exceptions. These expressions have have a free, origin-less quality. This may seem to you like a miracle or blessing, so you may respond: 'man, you are a genius!'

crazy but true - it's about faces!
To actually explain genius, additional terms are needed, which do not appear in psychology textbooks. Specifically 'Prana', 'prana-face', and 'will'.
prana is energy that cells use to relate to each other.

In my opinion, geniuses are the few individuals whose prana-face is not entirely connected to their will. This means, in practice, that they have trouble expressing some societal feelings that are normally expressed by the face.

The profound social nature of the face is in the prana, too - and naturally gets transferred to the genius. This is why these people characteristically have a hopeful, optimistic quality, because the face itself is optimistic.

For two examples, the flaring of the nostrils or the raising of the eyebrows. If - in any person - the myriad entirety of these expressions is not available, then the quasi-facial expressions can remain internal, like memories.

Because, for these individuals, these quasi-thoughts are not in any of the 3 categories above (not fight, flight or rote), but emerge instead from the 'good' aspect of the primate (the human face) these individuals over time can produce not just oddly free statements, but also works of art or craft which can transform the world and sometimes seem to shine with their own light.

To sum up
Genius is real and emerges from a particular minor disability (which cannot be defined without the recognition of prana). It is because they are disabled that geniuses are usually treated as second-class citizens.

one historical example!
A turn-of-the-century postal worker named Albert Einstein is the most famous genius. What characterized the prana of his face was a loose center and solid periphery.

In terms of his animal existence - Albert probably did not produce the full range of expressions with the nose and characteristic of this type of prana had an angelic expression which was reassuring because it held firmly without being at its center dogmatic.

His scientific theory formally matched the prana of his face (and is also - to intellectuals - angelic and reassuring). This theory - relativity - is firmly grounded yet not dogmatic.


notes

1. Imagine a field-goal kicker in the back of a van is gotten drunk and is blindfolded. He is taken to an empty stadium that has crowd noise piped in. The kicker thinks it's a real game. He is told where the ball is and where the goal posts are (very close, just ten yards away). He makes the kick. Cheers from the piped in crowd noise!! The kicker is told he made the kick. On the way back in the van the kicker feels surges of pride. More drinks!


2. But it is a mistake to tell someone they are a genius (or what they just thought of was genius). If if you do they might interpret this as an insult. They might get the impression that you are calling them an idiot, that you are really saying: "that moron figured something out I cannot, therefore it must be some attribute, seperate and uncreditable, called: 'genius". ..And you really might be saying that.


3. unless you are a moron