August 28, 2009 - Benetti's Coffee Experience - Raytown Missouri

All in all the wholesale attachment of almost every economists of the last hundred years to the mechanistic dogma is still a historical puzzle - Nicolas Georgescu-Rogen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p2

She sings so sweet with
Just a hint of a whine
And then the door opens and
           The buzz of a motor scooter
            Drowns out her voice
Sounds that alone are tolerable
Combine to produce noise


The eyes can no longer see
The ears can no longer hear
The nose can no longer smell
None of the neurons know
          When to fire


But we only call it pollution
If it is composed of waste
A singular definition
And this is just a malaise


Into our aesthetics
Has been incorporated
This inability of the brain
           To continue processing


We even call it pleasure
To deprive it of perception
Like holding our breath
           In the ol swimming hole
           For as long as you can

But then there is alwasy the option
Of coming to the surface

I try to not speak more clearly than I think – Niels Bohr

There is a certain half-spurious element in the appreciation of poetry… of the obstreperous medium having been masterfully subdued. It is a kind of architectural pleasure – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction, 1951 p96

She’s my doll

She’s got a close chopped head

Big bangles in her ears

And hairy underarms

Any institution that moves towards its second watershed tends to become highly manipulative. For instance, it cost more to make teaching possible than to teach. The cost of roles exceeds the cost of production – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p23

Blood red
Wine deep
A big leap
All in a heap
Too steep
No sleep

It's an amazing challenge to constantly break out the Nietzschean hammer and destroy your worldview and belief system and evaluate others - Steve Hoffman

THE EMPTY POCKETBOOK

To understand you must unthink
Medicine does not prolong life
It delays the grieving

The ancient men who assumed that the ‘world’ was flat were not mistaken in this observation… they were only limited in their conception of the size of the world – James Gibson – The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, 1961 p8

The Standard Bureaucratic Response:
1 – Post a sign
2 – Promulgate a ruling
3 – Wait and see it if goes away
4 – If not – explain how it’s not this agency’s responsibility
5 – Lobby for additional funding
6 – Hire a public relations expert

For those whose conceits are seated in popular opinions, need only prove or dispute, but those whose conceits are beyond popular opinions, have a double labour: the one to make themselves conceived, and the other to prove and demonstrate – Bacon

How much of test taking is just that – test taking?

The English ‘love’ to talk about the price of things. They sell their homes in the U.K., cash in their life insurance, and buy a villa on the south cost of Spain… but what really moves them is how much they’re going to save on marmalade and teabags – John Barlow – Everything But the Squeal, 2008 p93

To understand you must remove yourself (place yourself outside) the system you want to understand, but if you do the knowledge the acquire becomes inapplicable – unacceptable to the process – to be relevant to neo-classical economics acceptable solutions must be consistent with neoclassical economics – only neoclassical economists can make any contribution to neoclassical economics. It was for this reason that Thomas Jefferson recommended a revolution every twenty years.

Grow a beard. / Wear a cowl. / Ride a donkey / Carry a torch. // Sit by a well. / Live to a ripe, old age. / Remain a virgin / and speak in tongues. // These are the words of the Lord – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p102

Nowhere, a place without location
Nothing happens there, ever
It is inexplicable that such a place
       Should exist

Before anyone becomes an authority on evolution, and even thereafter, he needs to know what ‘fitness’ means without waiting until natural selection will have eliminated the unfit – science cannot be satisfied with the idea that the only way to find out whether a mushroom is poisonous is to eat it – Nicolas Georgescu-Rogen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p48

Vulnerability and resilience are inversely related – an industrial nation is difficult to invade but easy to defeat, while a non-integrated economy is easy to invade but difficult to crush

Everyone knows. It’s a confrontation that no one can win. Or lose. It is a system. No one gets angry. That was the system – John Barlow – Everything But the Squeal, 2008 p55


The full meaning of words are flashing, iridescent shapes like flames – ever-flickering vestiges of the slowly ever living consciousness beneath them – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction, 1951 p75

Owen Barfield argues that metaphors are abbreviated similes – i.e. ‘points of view’ – ‘sleep is to hurt minds what balm is to hurt bodies’ – hence Shakespeare’s ‘balm of hurt minds’

Every aspect of industrial societies has become part of a larval system for escalating production and increasing demand necessary to justify the total social cost - Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p25

We unconsciously use metaphors by extending ancient the meanings inherent in a word and this can be done in a revolutionary manner when an author makes a given Language into a language of his own (Spencer, Shakespeare, Joyce)

It’s as if past and present are so intertwined, / they almost cancel each other out. // The city cannot be said to exist fully / in either dimension. Only the taste / of its hazelnut gelato proved eternal to me – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p65

Another new industry is born – prison consultation – that which Wall Street swindlers and rapacious athletes can expect when the enter incarceration – it doesn’t come cheap – a one hundred hours course for $20,000 – phone consultation at one hundred dollars an hours. Don’t fall prey to what is portrayed on TV, they advice, don’t pick a fight – try to stay invisible – know the prison etiquette – stay with your race – don’t talk to the guards. Everyone watches TV – they know who you are – they are awaiting your arrival.

Many scientists are surprised – greatly surprised, in fact – that the world corresponds to our calculations and obeys our brain. Some of them (including Einstein?) even admit to being worried by this and fail to understand how we can understand what surrounds us – Jean-Claude Carriére – Please, Mr. Einstein, 2006 p172

Work cannot be sold in the marketplace – only its aftermath can be. The right to operate machines must be granted and only then can one earn a living.

There is something banal about evil / but the reverse is also true / and what is mundane quickly becomes sinister – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p107

That’s how you know
     That this is still summer
The fireflies still come out
     Of the evening and you still
     Sweat even after the sun
            Has gone down

Then the cicadas begin
     Their chirring which makes
            You dozy

Of a summer evening
      There are now only a few
      But everyone counts

Labor day is only a week
                 Away

Really, there is no distinction between Poetry and Science, as kinds of knowing, at all. There is only a distinction between bad poetry and bad science – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction, 1951 p139