3
January
2005
09:20 Pacific Standard Time
Apologies in advance for any bugs,
since it's a new month and I have to change
a few lines of code to make everything work right.
3
January
2005
09:36 Pacific Standard Time
Yesterday I went to a CD Store and got a bunch
of dicount albums ($9 each) since I couldn't bear
to pay the retail price of $17 for the CD that
I really wanted
(Tegan and Sara's So Jealous).
Here's what I got:
The They Might Be Giants CD is a replacement for
my lost copy. I've looked almost everywhere it could be.
Since I've purchased a replacement, now it will show up
within the week, I predict.
That seems to be how it happens.
Also, I thought Jeff Buckley was the father,
but it turns out Tim Buckley was the father
and Jeff was his son.
Since they both drowned and both sing sad songs,
it can be a bit confusing to remember who's who.
Nellie McKay, who I've read about on numerous occassions,
turns out to be the mystery singer that I heard
when I was sitting in a theatre during intermission
at the play Proof, soon to be a movie
with Anthony Hopkins and Gwenyth Paltrow.
It's about math and fathers and daughters.
There was a lot of screaming and yelling and,
well, drama.
5
January
2005
07:13 Pacific Standard Time
Warning: This entry contains some philosophy,
so skip it if you're too tired to do much thinking.
Last night I read a really cool article in the
New York Times
where a bunch of scientists were asked the question:
What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
and although I found several responses interesting,
there was one I liked the best, quoted below:
Donald Hoffman
Cognitive scientist, University of California, Irvine; author, "Visual Intelligence"
I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being.
The world of our daily experience - the world of tables, chairs, stars and people, with their attendant shapes, smells, feels and sounds - is a species-specific user interface to a realm far more complex, a realm whose essential character is conscious. It is unlikely that the contents of our interface in any way resemble that realm.
Indeed the usefulness of an interface requires, in general, that they do not. For the point of an interface, such as the Windows interface on a computer, is simplification and ease of use. We click icons because this is quicker and less prone to error than editing megabytes of software or toggling voltages in circuits.
Evolutionary pressures dictate that our species-specific interface, this world of our daily experience, should itself be a radical simplification, selected not for the exhaustive depiction of truth but for the mutable pragmatics of survival.
If this is right, if consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience.
Suppose a person, though endowed with the strongest faculties of reason and reflection, to be brought on a sudden into this world; he would, indeed, immediately observe a continual succession of objects, and one event following another; but he would not be able to discover anything farther. He would not, at first, by any reasoning, be able to reach the idea of cause and effect; since the particular powers, by which all natural operations are performed, never appear to the senses; nor is it reasonable to conclude, merely because one event, in one instance, precedes another, that therefore the one is the cause, the other the effect. Their conjunction may be arbitrary and casual. There may be no reason to infer the existence of one from the appearance of the other. And in a word, such a person, without more experience, could never employ his conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact, or be assured of anything beyond what was immediately present to his memory and senses.
As an aside, for a really trippy take on consciousness,
glance over Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,
where Jaynes claims people used to have split minds,
and one mind would "speak" to the other, giving orders.
He says that's why you read about ancient people
talking to the gods, because they knew no difference
between their inner voice and gods.
And even if you think his argument is full of shit,
there are some really interesting bits there
about defining what it means to be conscious,
since there is so much we do automatically. Example:
are you always conscious of which keys you press
when you're typing an email? If you think about it
too hard, you'll actually make more mistakes.
Consciousness seems to be detrimental, there.
On an unrelated note, my laptop has been repaired
and returned. I was a bit embarrassed about fucking up
part of the case with my Dremmel (sp?) tool when I was
trying to take off the chippy paint,
but the parts that I mauled have been replaced!
And the motherboard and processor have been replaced.
Apple's customer service really does kick ass.
Now I can forgive them for not fixing it right
when I sent my laptop in for repair the first time,
a few months ago.
7
January
2005
10:50 Pacific Standard Time
What irony that the Live Music Capital of the World
has so few decent rock bands.
I like the Butthole Surfers, and they put on a great show
when I saw them. (At Libery Lunch, circa 1997, before the
city of Austin took away Liberty Lunch's lease and threw
them out in the cold. Or hot. Whatever.)
A lot of people like the band Spoon,
but I haven't heard enough to make a decision.
Other than that, well, stick to the more folksy musicians
like Alejandro Escovedo or Trish Hinojosa.
Or the Asylum Street Spankers.
I'm happy enough with the other CDs. The old AC/DC CDs
sound very bluesy to me. I would never call it heavy metal,
but perhaps that's just me. Sepultura would be
a good example of what I consider heavy metal.
The Nellie McKay CD is pretty good, but a little
hit-and-miss. What can I expect from a debut album
from such a young person? Not perfection, certainly.
You are stuck in a room
with only a bed and a calendar. How do you survive?
Answer: drink water from the springs in the bed and
eat the dates from the calendar.
Anyway, I think the fact that the comics (the only part
of the newspaper that I read, in general) are being stolen
or destroyed in order for someone to do the retarded
crossword puzzle is what really makes the theft so bad.
It would be like someone stealing your wallet so they
could wipe their ass with your dollar bills.
At least I can always read Get Fuzzy online.
I believe I've gone and made myself all worked-up.
I'm going to go read the comics, assuming some asshole
hasn't taken or mutilated them today.
7
January
2005
15:22 Pacific Standard Time
A coworker told me about a fucked up movie called
The Piano Teacher about a concert pianist who is
so devoted to perfecting her music that she neglects her
social skills and spirals into a more and more perverse state.
But as Lamar Burton would say on Reading Rainbow,
"You don't have to take my word for it."
(found on the
Internet Movie Database, posted by
James McNally from Toronto)
Isabelle Huppert won a well-deserved Best Actress award at
Cannes for her portrayal of a woman who, in her efforts to
attain the artistic ideal, loses her humanity. Trapped by
her talent, she suppresses her emotions and her sexuality
until they can only be expressed in twisted and terrifying
ways. When a younger student falls in love with her, our
hopes rise, but are soon dashed by the realization that she
cannot experience love the way others can. It is too late
for her, and the film's final 30 harrowing minutes are,
tellingly, devoid of the beautiful music that carried the
first 90 minutes. The message seems to be that the music
itself is not enough without the life and beauty it's
describing.
10
January
2005
08:59 Pacific Standard Time
Bodrell 75% Off All New Software
Bodreaujoenc Popular software at
low low prices
Bodref Photoshop, Windows, Office, CHEAPY.
Other names in spam subject lines have been
Bodreax, Bodreau, etc.
The really funny part for me is that all these ads are
for Windows software, while I now use a
Mac at home.
I guess that isn't any more funny than a woman
whose inbox is cluttered with Viagra ads.
In other news, I'm planning to offer an email subscription
so those who are interested don't need to visit the site,
or even use a computer (if they have cell phone email).
I'm also looking into making RSS feeds, but I know
I would be more inclined to subscribe to an email list.
Then again, I still don't have a cell phone, and I tend to
be a late adopter to new technologies (let others do the
beta-testing, please).
If anyone is interested in either email subscriptions
or RSS, drop me a line (email or comment).
11
January
2005
12:38 Pacific Standard Time
11
January
2005
13:58 Pacific Standard Time
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness'
sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Happy those persecuted for righteousness' sake -- because
theirs is the reign of the heavens.
13 You are the salt of the earth; but if
the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is
then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled
underfoot by men.
14 You are the light of the world. A city
that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
15Nor do they light a lamp and put it
under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to
all who are in the house.
16 Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works and glorify your Father
in heaven.
5 And when you pray, you shall not be like
the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may
be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their
reward.
6 But you, when you pray, go into your
room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father
who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in
secret will reward you openly.
17
January
2005
16:16 Pacific Standard Time
Powerhouse,
The Toy Trumpet,
Tobacco Auctioneer,
New Year's Eve In A Haunted House,
Manhattan Minuet,
Dinner Music For A Pack Of Hungry Cannibals,
Reckless Night On Board An Ocean Liner,
Moment Musical,
Twilight In Turkey,
The Penguin,
Oil Gusher,
In A 18th Century Drawing Room,
The Girl At The Typewriter,
Siberian Sleighride,
At An Arabian House Party,
Boy Scout In Switzerland,
Bumpy Weather Over Newark,
Minuet In Jazz,
War Dance For Wooden Indians,
The Quintet Plays Carmen,
Huckleberry Duck,
Peter Tambourine,
Egyptian Barn Dance (Rehearsal),
. . .
She still grows uncomfortable when discussing this period,
and heroin in particular. At one point, she tells me that
her parents are Observer readers and she doesn't want them
to be confronted with all this stuff again. She has never
directly answered questions about her own involvement with
the drug, though she has discussed Donna Matthews's very
public battle with it, and her own dalliances with other
substances. What follows may be drawn from direct
experience, or observation. She begins by describing why she
considers the topic so dangerous.
"The problem with heroin is that the connotations are so
strong that you do tend to generalise. There's a stigma
attached to it, which is in some ways irrational."
It's considered evil in a way that most other drugs aren't
any more. It's not about recreation. And recreation is OK.
"Well, that's because it does actually remove your spirit.
It really does take your life force away. And it takes your
fight away."
20
January
2005
12:23 Pacific Standard Time
Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only
contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to
reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in
a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study.
Experts agree that the startling result provides the
strongest support yet for the controversial hypothesis that
the language available to humans defines our thoughts.
So-called "linguistic determinism" was first proposed in 1950
but has been hotly debated ever since.
Is it possible that there are some concepts that we cannot
entertain because of the language we speak? At issue here
is the strongest version of Benjamin Lee Whorf's
hypothesis that language can determine the nature and
content of thought. The strong version of Whorf's
hypothesis goes beyond the weaker claim that linguistic
structure simply influences the way we think about things
in our everyday encounters. For example, recent studies
suggest that language might affect how people mentally
encode spatial relations, and how they conceive of the
nature of individual objects and their material substances.
However, none of these studies suggest that linguistic
structure prevents us from entertaining the concepts
that are available to speakers of alternative linguistic
systems.
Some cultures use a finite number of body parts to count
20 or 30 body tags. Many cultures use particular body
parts like fingers as a recursive base for the count
system as in our 10-based system. Finally, there are
cultures that base their counting system on a small
number between 2 and 4. For example, it is claimed that
the Gumulgal South Sea Islanders counted with a recursive
binary system: 1, 2, 2'1, 2'2, 2'2'1, and so on.
. . .
The Pirahã counting system consists of the words:
"hói" (falling tone = "one") and "hoí"
(rising tone = "two"). Larger quantities are designated
as "baagi" or "aibai" (= "many").
. . .
I was also interested . . . that there might be taboos
associated with counting certain kinds of objects as
suggested by Zaslavsky in her studies of African
counting systems.
Czech
litost [lee-tosht] (noun)
This is an untranslatable emotion that only a Czech person
would suffer from, defined by Milan Kundera as "a state of
torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery."
Devices for coping with extreme stress, suffering, and
change are often special and unique to cultures and born
out of the meeting of despair with a keen sense of survival.
Japanese
tatemae [tah-tay-mye] (noun)
A term often translated as "form," but it also has the
specific cultural meaning of "the reality that everyone
professes to be true, even though they may not privately
believe it." For privately held views, the Japanese have a
different term, honne, meaning, "the reality that you hold
inwardly to be true, even though you would never admit it
publicly." The British civil servant muttering the reproach
"bad form, old boy" over a drink in the club, may be
expressing something very close to the quality of tatamae.
26
January
2005
11:49 Pacific Standard Time
I had a discussion about legalization with one of my
dumbass women friends. She wouldn't even consider any
of the possible benefits.
and many people have had personal experiences
(i.e., a relative who was hooked on some drug)
that make them incredibly biased.
and it's hard for many people to come to terms
with the facts that their parents either lied to them
or were themselves seriously misinformed about drugs.
i'm sure those idiotic anti-marijuana ads don't help.
like the one where the guy lets a toddler drown
because he's smoking pot while babysitting.
that's pure irresponsibility.
if he had left the house and gone to the movies
while he was supposed to be babysitting,
the end result would be the same.
that's like having an anti-alcohol ad
with someone showing up drunk to their job
as a bus driver and killing everyone on board.
IRRESPONSIBILITY causes these problems,
not one particular pharmacological substance.
I looked around a bit on some of the drug policies.
Bush and Cheney were both caught driving drunk.
not to mention the ties his dad had
with noriega, one of the biggest drug kingpins ever.
before the elder bush got tired of noriega,
he had him on the cia payroll.
and the drug war stuff they do is just retarded. I
can't believe how stupid anyone could be to think that
the drug war is beneficial to anyone but the czars and
the dirty politicians and military shitheads who
facilitate it.
and they didn't learn the lesson from that.
carrie nation and the temperance movement are to blame.
there is big money in illegal drugs,
from the people who sell them to the people
that get money from privatized prisons
to the police departments that use drug confiscation laws
as a means to illegally seize property
and auction it off to pay for new police toys
(tasers, night-vision goggles, etc.)
you should put something on your website to help
spread the word. I haven't noticed if you have it
already, but it's definitely an issue.
Also, did yo uknow that the DARE program isn't even
federally funded. they get their money by selling
wingdings, and getting donations from local venues and
shit.
since they spread a lot of lies and propaganda.
or, as i hear a lot of people say these days,
"fear, uncertainty, and doubt" (FUD for short).
I think that drug education (effects and history)
should be taught as a part of the curriculum in all
levels of public school. Science class.
including the legal varieties that are often
far more dangerous that some illegal drugs.
ex: oxycontin, alcohol, cigarettes.
nicotine is one of the more toxic substances known.
check it out, from
here
The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg
(0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained
in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes;
15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette).
However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette,
with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing
1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg.
or swallowing a chaw of tobacco.
I can't believe how fucked up this country is.
the vast majority of people
only care about bread and circuses.
"give me convenience or give me death!"
