August 29, 2009 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City Missouri

Perhaps we as a species are not genetically adapted for the objectives we have set for ourselves – whose fault is that – we must either rethink or build machines that are – the later seems to be the current strategy and success is not guaranteed, while rethinking is.

Chet Chylinski  says he's been inspired by Mitch Dobrowner. Chet has been looking up at the sky (remember his rainbow photograph - I've gotten a lot of hits from people wanting to know if double rainbows are good or bad luck) . Most of us look at our shoes a lot.  If you are behind me right now I hope your looking at my rear (the break lights on my car, I mean) and don't run into me. I said to Katie, I wouldn't mind running into you". She said, "I hope your not in your car". And Anna gave Katie a high five and said "Good one, Katie."  Chet has his camera out but it's OK because he's gotten out of his car. I've tried to take pictures out the window but everything came out blurry. Chet's photographs are not blurry. Chet said I'd appreciate this blog and I do. Chet sent another of his cloud photographs. I have a whole portofolio of Chet's cloud photogtraphs. Chet is having a show this weekkend in Chicago. Chet why don't you have a blog with a portfolio like Mitch. We can't all be as clever as Cecelia.  Some of us are way to wordy. Cecelia is graphical (too graphic isn't that what we call someone who is too wordy?)  Most people want to watch videos. I do occasionally  go to the cinema (I saw Inglorous Basterds).  I don't like videos much espically on my laptop. I do like Chet's photographs of clouds though. Too bad you couldn't see it it all its graphical detail - a quality photgraph needs to be view as a print (and it's not just a Luddite thing either). I'm a Luddite in the original sense of the word. Joe says he's a Luddite but what he just means he don't like anything new. I like Robbie the Robot and R2DE too. I'm a Luddite in an Ivan Illich sense.

Give me a quiet, shy fountain - / one content to sit in a small square gathering shade – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p65

Progress is what this point in history has led us to – it is Panglossian because progress means “the best of all possible worlds” – is it not ‘progress’ that got us here – and is it not progress that will get us there. What do you want anyway to return to the ‘dark ages’ – after all this is the best of all possible worlds – hell, it’s the only world – make the most of it – shove the runts out of the way – stick your snout in the trough and feed – My! But is this mighty find slop – the best of all possible slop. It’s not that we expect too much, it’s that we don’t expect enough!

Those who study things don’t like to envisage the possibility that they’re working on phantoms – Jean-Claude Carriére – Please, Mr. Einstein, 2006 p170

String theory is not pretty – it’s much more complicated than what it tries to explain – besides no experiment can contain it

Meaning is everything. When we can experience a changing of meaning – a new meaning – there we may really join hands and sing with the morning stars; for there we are in a new birth – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction, 1951 p131

Barney Oldfield
Owen Barfield
Bar None
Bridge of No Return

Words are not bottles; every individual must intuit meaning for himself and the function of the poetic is to mediate such intuition by suitable suggestion – Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction, 1951 p133

Then the dog climbed up
      Into my lap and wanted
      The same as the black cat got


But instead of bearing its fangs
It nuzzled me with its wet
       Nose


Dog gone, your breath
And who knows where
        You’ve stuck your nose

They permitted themselves to doubt the axioms, and even if they agreed to obey the rules, it had been their own choice so to do. That very detachment, that sense of making a choice was precisely what the ordered community would have to deny – Andrew Hodges – Alan Turning: The Enigma, 1983 p499

Cross-fertilization (corn-stalks waving in the air) was the essence of education – courses are taken concurrently rather than sequentially – giving opportunities for novelty to arise – but this is not the way we organize our work – discipline, the outgrowth of slave labor now is the overriding principle – work at an assigned task until it is completed (or until the clock hand says you can quite) – education is an outgrowth of the training of a gentlemen – but we are changing all of that, making it conform to the principles of slavery – now test taking is the mark of an educated man.

Depression is an economic state. / Green is also the color of cash – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p195

A hundred pounds a day
       Of meat on the hoof is a lot
But spread it out on a hundred
      Thousand leaves it is trivial
And to realize it takes seven pounds
      Of feed to produce a pound
      Of beef if photosynthesis
Was as inefficient as cattle are
      There would be no stakes to grill
Nor would we have any worry at all
It’s just the way it works

If the debtor be insolvent to serve creditors, let his body be cut in pieces on the third market day. It may be cut into more or fewer pieces with impunity. Or, if his creditors consent to it, let him be sold to foreigners beyond the Tiber. —Twelve Tables, Table III, 6 (ca. 450 B.C.)

Nuclear deterrence was a demonstration in stupidity and its defense as a rational strategy is an apology for stupidity regardless of the apologist’s credentials. Let this be written in stone.

I shop / to make the world / an acceptable place - / less embarrassed by its riches, / more aware of my grace – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p211

Like most statistics official statistics (and all statistics are official in that they are collected in the interest of some cause) don’t tell the real story – bankruptcy statistics now record entrepreneurial failure under the count of individual fillings rather than under business filings – it makes it seem as if business risk has decreased. It is a form of selective under-reporting – official business fillings constitute only 2.3% of the fillings and constitute 15-16% of the actual bankruptcies. It’s a self-serving process – it’s the same with unemployment reporting (it’s all a matter what the numbers actually report and we don’t stop to question the meaning). Everyone has a story to tell.

In our poetry too / we like our lyricism / minus the garlic / on the poet’s breath – Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect - new and selected poems, 2007 p181

To movie critics, the whole world is a movie – the cinema gives you insight into its own cinematic universe where the frame-image continuum is warped and doubles back upon itself – in cinemaland everything is relevant – we are all fixed observers (sitting in our seats)

[For what is] logically simple [fundamental], a definition is not possible; there is nothing but to lead the reader or hearer, by means of hints, to understand the words as is intended – Gottleb Frege

He who finds no one
      To blame
Is the last man
      Standing

The people do not consume culture; they create it – Ernesto Cardenal

Our common language is our common
     Source of misunderstanding
Otherwise we would have assumed
     That we just failed to comprehend