When a DNA profile is used to verify the identity of a suspect without previously having been identified as a suspect – i.e. when a database of DNA profiles are trolled to find the culprit – the chances of error go up exponentially, this is especially true when the DNA sample is from coldcase evidence and time and contamination have degraded the sample. The statistical rarity of a match is based on a statistical sampling of only 200 to 300 profiles and was meant to reflect all 13 DNA indicators which are rarely available for an actual matching. In other words when a jury is told that there is a one in a million chance of error they are being lied to – this is only true if the profile was matched against a very limited number of suspects, was not contaminated and was not degraded. If profiles of all Americans were available in a database and there was a one in a million chance of error then there should be about 350 matches But the actual chance for such a match (depending of degradation of sample and cross contamination) may be as high as one in three-hundred and hence a DNZ profile search of all Americans would probably produce over a million suspectse. DNA might be evidence that someone did not commit a crime but it should never be taken as the sole evidence alone that a specific  person wass the perpetrator of the given event.

Of course a ‘box’ is only a step away from a ‘frame’. And the ‘frame’ is the thing that gets put ‘around’ the art work… It’s what lets us ‘know’ it’s a work of art you’re looking at – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p86

Having power and being disingenuous
     Are synonymous
Your are no sportsman
Nature without danger
     Is a contradiction
I have my eyes on you, I want
     You to know this
Your time in front of the camera
     Is anonymous
There is no utility in pretending
     That this is reality

The historian… must always maintain towards his subject an indeterminist point of view. He must constantly put himself at a point in the past at which the human factor still seems to permit different outcomes – Johan Huizinga

The Committee was a total business enterprise
Never very far away from its ledger
Anything worth counting
      Needs a double bookkeeping entry
Sports are accounting enterprises too
      Just as concentration camps are also

Citizen journalism is like citizen dentistry – Andrew Stroehlein

Y2K now all but forgotten
But once a very tall mountain
On the horizon of a new
      Millennium
Yes, I’m aware it didn’t
Begin for another year
But mechanical metaphors
      Trump reason and
             History too
Don’t call it global warming
       Call it the Climate Crisis
             Instead
It confuses the simple minded
When the car’s odometer
              Has a whole string of those
              Zeros - it must
Have some kind of meaning
The same is true of years
But the truth is that it’s significance
          Was an attempt to save space
But now space is cheap
           And we can return to the moon
Pennies per terabyte
           Pennies on the dollar
But not one red cent more for defense

Wild honey smells like freedom, / Dust-like a ray of sun. / Like violets – a young maid’s mouth, / And gold – like nothing. / The flowers of the mignonette like water, / And like an apple – love. / But we learned once and for all / That blood smells only like blood – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p382


I’m sitting at the kitchen table. I can see the feet of a woman. Someone asks, “Has anyone seen any snakes?” Let’s say for the sake of convenience that it was my mother who asked this. But was it also necessarily her whose feet I had seen? And as I thought about this,  a snake materialized near one of the table’s legs just to the right of the woman’s left foot. It is small, no bigger than a worm but begins to grow and to wiggle. It is distinctly a snake. It slithers across the carpet and disappears under the couch. What might have originally been mistaken for a night crawler is clearly a rattlesnake – a diamond back rattlesnake to be specific – which don’t get as big as a timber rattler, but they are plumper. There is no mistaking that triangular head and its pink darting tongue for anything other. More and more snakes begin to appear. One might suppose that there is a migration occurring through my kitchen. The snakes begin to pair up. Perhaps they are performing some bazaar mating ritual. They are forming into balls, wiggling masses. They wither around and become entangled with each other. The news of this phenomenon gets out. People are gathering. They are watching the spectacle. People are coming from the neighborhood – whole families. They have brought their picnic baskets. They are spreading out red-and-white checkered tablecloths upon my lawn. There is a pair of withering diamond backes right next to a little blond headed toddler. She reaches out and begins to pet them. No one tries to restrain her. She giggles. She reaches over and picks up one of the withering masses or thses rattlesnakes. They are all so engrossed in their performance that they totally ignore the people around them even the ones grabbing at them. Now something really strange begins to occure – the snakes have become covered in long hair – not really fur, but more like strips of frayed fabric. As move people come to gawk – it is now the snakes who are in danger. They are in danger of being trampled upon. There is no fear that anyone will get bitten by them. Will the people become hysterical? Will they begin clubbing them like baby seals, stomping on them in furry like ants on their watermellons? Swarming masses always arouse disgust in man.  It is inevitable - just like maggots - gag me with a maggot.  I am becoming more and more fearful of something like might happen. The snakes have moved on. Thee people all went home.  Afterwards I researched the natural history of snakes. This behavior is not uncommon but rarely happens in such masses as this and has not happend in this scale in recorded history. Native American myth indicates it may have happened in the past. Is there anything in the Bible about snakes other than in the garden. Some people incorporate this behavior into their religions. Serpents in a double helix make up  a caduceus and may have been a symbol for Mercury. I take it as a sign for the rightousness of health care reform. I gather that this has nothing to do with global warming, but I may be wrong.

History does not consist of “facts” but of statements of them – John Lukas – The American Scholar (Winter 2010) p57

I slip back into the anonyminity of the night where Zimbabwe is just teeth. Africa is the night – the cattle and the sheep are safe behind their walls of thorn and the women are busy with their chores. Why is the night so full of the unreason? Why does the night have so many sounds? I wander out into this darkness – howling, moaning and chirping, adding to the noises, becoming just another warning. My lighter does not work and matches do not last for long. I encounter a set of twins, well not exactly twins as they had never met before this night but they were sharing a birthday cupcake. One of them, Marsha offered me a candle from her cake to light my way – “here do you need this” she asked? “I do! Now I’m doing OK,” I replied. Two women were doing a slow grind in front of the jukebox… “its too late to live…as the politicians do”… bang, bang, bang. “There is no time” - moan, moan, moan - bang, bang – “for creation” … A woman’s voice wails in the dark  A guitar picks up her goans - thuda, thuda, thuda. There is a crescendo of lush sound – they are violins perhaps – then there is a twang, twang – plunk, and finally a long slow fade into silence. The lights go out.  The night is very quiet. Pause. Someone has put another quarter in and then Singapore Johnny began to lilt - I keep my eyes wide open all the time… because you’re mine, I walk the line…because your mine I walk the line. There is just enough light for me to just make out a quy tonguing someone. Both of them are dressed in black t-shirts and blue jeans. I keep my eyes open all the time…

Guitars are wailing - wah, wah, wah …bang, bang…. “The bigger the place the bigger to go”…Chorus - solo - chorus… Repeat…,”The bigger the place the bigger to go” - bang, bang, wahhh, oooh, screech, oooh! Why is it that I never have anything significant to say? And when I do it is only after the fact. The appropriate time is long gone. I wake up in the middle of the night with the perfect rejoiner.

Sense perceptions are sense deceptions – Descarates

The ubiquitousness of tunes, bright lights and garish colors is a modern phenomena – we have never before as a life form been so oblivious to our environment. This exquisite sensory system of ours no longer alerts us of dangers – it is overloaded – there will be dire consequences – a brainworm is a synthetic parasite. The neon lights flash and all the birds have gone insane.

Emerald peeks polish heaven. I wander, / sweeping clouds away / forgetting years – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p109

34% of the couples in the UK break up by sending their partner an e-mail, 13% change their status on Facebook without telling and 2% do it by texting. 38% still break up face-to-face and 8% do it my telephone.

A guest rides up along the golden grain, / He kisses Grandmother’s hand in the drawing room / And my lips on the curving staircases – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p251

When you abort the first born of anything nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children – Bob Marshall (Republican delegate in Virginia). I guess if creation science is science then so is this – just make it up –oh what the heck (a euphemism for hell), it’s God’s punishment for being naughty..

The progression of an economy such as America’s from agriculture to manufacturing to services is a natural change – Ronald Reagan

Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolves around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. This is also called Corporatism and rule by Expertise. I call it a katistocracy

When asking ourselves whether we support a proposal or initiative, we have not asked, is it good or bad? Instead we inquire: Is it efficient? Is it productive? Will it contribute to growth? This propensity to avoid moral consideration… is not an instinctive human condition. It is an acquired taste – Tony Judt – New York Review of Books (12/17/09) p86

Where did the day go
What happened to my life
      God, I don’t want to die yet
Those who are alive really live

You were promised to me neither by life nor by God, / Not even by my secret premonition. / Why then do you linger at night in the doorway / As if in the lanugos of happiness? // I won’t come out, I won’t cry, “Oh, be mine alone! Be with me until the hour of death!” / I only speak with the voice of the swan / To the inconstant moon – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p282

I want to assume this responsibility
     For your fate knowingly
You shall learn to hate me
     For demanding this
Is this love that I proclaim
     Or just a momentary desire

The moon stalled behind the lake / And looked like the open window / Of a hushed, brilliantly illuminated house, / Where something awful had taken place – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p271

Is it just in my head that my heart is aching
This bloodletting is appalling
      But it does not deter me
I am feeling the marrow melting
      In my very bones
As I took her at her word
      Melodies had no utility
I didn’t take it too badly
       I tried not to cry
So long as the notes that
       She was singing were not too high
I had not yet realized that all the words I was hearing
       Were monosyllabic
       Later I kept quiet about this
I do not want to be misunderstood
But it was unavoidable

Out beyond this jar of wine, it’s all // longing, longing – no head of mine – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p118

It comes and it goes. Yes it is snowing again. The small white security SUV with its strip of blue lettering waits at the entrance to the bank’s drive up. Two men in door knocker uniforms wait in the vehicle and watch the traffic pass by on the street. In the process of the amalgamation of power only the geographic centers of that power are allowed to have historical significance. It’s wet – turning to slush – the dog knew better than to go out in it but not I – it may get worse – it may get colder rather than warming up with the sunlight. Another cold front may be moving in. I refuse to be a slave of the weatherman – that is for the businessman or the farmer. If it warms up it will not remain snow anymore , just a gentle rain – spring is on its way after all, or so I am told by the weatherman.

When you have spent the pennies of delight / With your sweetheart / And your surfeited soul / Feels sudden disgust - / Don’t come to me in my triumphant night – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p166

Brainworms are stereotypical
     And mercilessly invariant
Lying in ambush, erupting
     Convulsively then melting
Into the underbrush and/or the prairie grass
      Ticks awaiting prey
Lyme diseases of the mind


House north of the Han River: I’m like some partridge or quail - / going south, then flying lazily north. // And now I’ve come to find you home, / a little wine returns me to the moon – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p109

80% of the sexual abuse reported in juvenile correction facilities is committed not by other inmates but by the staff and 95% of the youth making such allegations claim to have been victimized by female staff members. Less than half of the juvenile corrections officers whose sexual abuse is confirmed are referred for prosecution and almost none are ever convicted.

All week I don’t say a word to anyone, / Just sit on a stone by the edge of the sea, / And it’s pleasing that the spray of the green waves / Is salty, like my tears – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p241

30% of Texans think that human beings and dinosaurs coexisted and another 30% are unsure as to whether they did on did not coexist

Bleached bones lie silent, say nothing, / and how can evergreen pines see spring? – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p110

Shock and awe became the desert storm
     Visions of caravans
Operation freedom is the new dawn
      Red sky in morning
      Sailor take warning
Catchy slogans from pitiful poets

Doggerel is a parasitic brainworm too

One less home becomes / One more song – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p179

One third of corporate profit is obtained through the degradation of the environment which accounts for $2.2 trillion dollars of their profits. These profits are not gtains but are loans being taken out with the future as collateral – about half of this cost is attributed to the emission of greenhouse gases. Other major “costs” include local air pollution and over use and pollution of freshwater. Long term effects and damages other than that from climate change have not been included in this figure.

It’s always been like this, yellow-dust / chocking even imperial gates closed // in the end. If you don’t drink wine / where are those ancient people now? – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p112

60% of in-office psychiatric visits results in the prescriptions of two or more drugs;  almost 30% of those visits results in the prescription of three or more drugs. The rate of such prescription has increased 30% over the last 10 years.

Lone cloud returning to empty mountains, / birds returning, each to its own home: // in all this, nothing is without refuge, / I alone have nowhere in life to turn. // Forever drunk, I face rock-born moon, / sing for wildwood sights and smells – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p113

Air traffic delays cost the US economy as much as $40 billion a year – mostly through increases in operating costs.

“The fact is, there ‘is’ no praise as great as the praise I want.” He’d said it with tear welling. “That sort of praise doesn’t exist – I ‘know’ that.” – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p90

It was not an act of Terrorism (with a big T), after all he was an American citizen – Terrorism with a capital T is a slogan – it has nothing to do with the act and everything to do with the actor – He was not a Muslim hostile to the US – Muslims can be citizens and be Terrorists too. Terrorism with a capital T is not committed by patriots. Action against the IRS is political action and not terrorism. It is an extreme action of democracy when you can't get your way any other way. He was a Patriot (with a capital P). It was unfortunate that he took someone else’s life too. Some collateral damage is to be expected under such circumstances.

Bland silence – the hostility the ignorant always displayed when faced with knowledge that carried no validating mark of any current trend – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p70

Beethoven's hearing may be the rule rather than the exception

A wanderer’s heart sours bitterly. And here / on Crab-Apple Mountain, it’s only worse – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p111

Afterimages: simple sensory effects, persistent activations in low-level sensory systems, due to sensory over stimulation – I tried to go to sleep and instead only wore myself out repeating what I had been doing all day long – it was very tiring but certainly not restful. And I am unable to sleep while these afterimages persist.

Rinsing sorrows of a thousand forevers / away, we linger out a hundred jars of wine – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p115

Some questions are dared not asked. It is not that one will wind up in a concentration camp or be sent to the guillotine, it is more subtle than that these days – but it is well know that such an inquiey will not help your career, get you that rise, help make the monthly mortgage payments, find the ideal mate. They are only for adrarline junkies and most of them are trying to climb the north face or wrestleing alligators. We don’t even have to waste time thinking about them, our subconscious avoids them like the plague – its not as if Stalin had to tell us what was good for us. Self-censorship is the most effective form of censorship.

Here he was, bone naked in the hallway, when only moments before Bea had been wandering the same hall, in her summer dress. He ‘must’ get on his pants…! Then he remembered that had been a dream… Then he remembered Bea was dead… Next time I’m in class I must tell them how dreams can… But he hadn’t taught in two years… Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p60

Snow again? Yeah, supposed to get one to two inches of accumulation tomorrow. Chance of snow tonight 70%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. Tomorrow: snow during the morning transitioning to snow showers in the afternoon. Some sleet or freezing rain possible. Temperature nearly steady in the mid 30s. Chance of snow 70% with accumulation of one to two inches.

It is a fact so familiar that we seldom remember… how very strange it is that the commonest phrases we hear used about civilization at the present time all relate to the possibility, or even the prospect, of it being destroyed – George N Clark (1932)

Everyone now hates SCOTUS – American is united – 85% of the Democrats, 81% of the Independents and 70% or the Republicans oppose the turning of property into people. Only 8% of the American voters say that they would re-elect incumbent lawmakers. 75% of the voters disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

We’re not hunting for the great image that will resonate in people’s minds and help us understand… but for the momentary thrill – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p204

And when you lose
     Its for an eternity
And when you win
     Its not for long
But there is no choice
     Whether to win or to lose
But how many times
One has to throw the die

Three barriers sever us, fellow: your language, your poverty, your insanity. Now and again, I’ve stepped to the far side of all three – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p74

If you are predisposed to doubt my honesty, then I have nothing to lose by my lying..

Your words are a wonderful lullaby: / Because of them for three months I haven’t slept – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p148

People who are uncomfortable with complexity and ambiguity generally tend to be more conservative

Let us glorify the burden of fate, / which in time of tears takes the nation’s helm. / Let us glorify the dark burden of power, / it’s unbearable oppressions / Whoever has the heart should earn, time // How your ship is sinking – Osip Mandelstram – Tristia p87

Ask questions and throw the hockey puck around – a horrible metaphor that I overheard, sort of similar to “Raise it up the flag pole and see who salutes” but with the added advantage of incorporating sports

Once something has been proved it stands to take on a concrete reality – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p130

The late great stage of the homo sapien is the cosmopithecoid

Even the darkest days of the years / Must become brighter. / I can’t find the simile for - / How tender your lips are – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p184

Technology raises the threshold for self-sufficiency

Those who strive to reach it are mad, and those / Who reach it – stricken by grief… / Now you understand why my heart / Does not beat faster under your hand – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p181

Beware of Botox – without the means of physically expressing certain feelings (as when cosmetic surgery makes it difficult to smile) we may have trouble processing our emotions - By altering our faces we’re tempering with the ancient lines of communication between face and brain that may change our minds in ways we don’t yet understand – Carl Zimmer – Discover

The Earth – love it or leave it

Forgive me that I ignored the sun / And that I lived in sorrow. / Forgive, forgive, that I / Mistook too many others for you – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p216

Government in a box – “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in” – General Stanley A McChrystal, bringing a “big box” to your local neighborhood

After wine, I go out into the fields, / wander open country – singing, // asking myself how green grass / could be a white-haired old man – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 o p120

Capitalism – paradise for some at the expense of the many

So many stones have been thrown at me, / That I’m not frightened of them anymore, / And the pit has become a solid tower, / Tall among tall towers. / I think the builders – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p174

The croupier shouted
I ran like hell
The light turned red
I lit out
It was snowing
I wasn’t wearing any shoes
Emergency sirens are bee bopping
I used to like jazz
Little cars careened about
I had once been loved
A homeless man sold roses
I wanted to hid out
The moon came out
I did not look up
This damn city is cold

Mathematicians are driven in their work by a strong sense of aesthetics, and the correct path to follow is quite often the most beautiful one – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p145

The lady is crying in her Chemay. The lady had asked the bartender if he knew differences between roasting, boiling and frying? The Irishman, Tom, escaped from Mark, said that he was drunk. Mark later came over to say goodbye to Tom. Tom introduced us, said Mark was a philosopher. “I don’t know about that”, Mark replied. What pissed Tom off was when Mark insulted the barmaid when he said she would be a good lay. “Now I’ve pissed Tom off. He’s a good man.” After Mark leaves, Tom returns and taps me on the shoulder, “Thanks for being a good sport”, he says. “That’s why I left the other end of the bar.”

Lee talks in half sentences – you get the hang of it after a while, and after a few beers. He gets exhausted half way through a sentence with all that wind rushing through the gaps in his teeth
“I never…Tom so mad.” The bartender buys Lee a pint and I leave a bill on the bar. “Bank will be the eventually…high and dry…But if you don’t have the income to pay for government services…” Lee is lecturing on politics, economics and outsourcing.

Darkness descends on San Francisco like a lover creeping naked in between the satin sheets, transforming a hazy lazy afternoon into a frantic race with an ever faster pendulum clock - hours becoming minutes, minutes becoming seconds. A second is no longer a measurable unit. Soon I too must join the frenzy. It has gotten dark and I shall go out and howl at the moon

It is snowing again – big flakes – the temperature is in the lower twenties. My ears froze this morning while I was walking the dog – the wind blew from behind on the way out but in my face on the way back and like a sailor I must gauge my voyage by its most disadvantageous leg – I shouldn’t have gone as far as I did, but the dog was scampering about, pawing at the leaves and pissing up a storm – how could I have told it no, I want to go back as my ears are getting so cold. But then had I not picked it up and carried it back earlier in the winter when it froze it little paws. The sun has not shown in a long long while.

49% of Americans think that the US should mind its own business internationally

The worlds of media and politics have been steadily merging and today they seem all but interchangeable – Sam Tanenhaus – New Yorker (Dec 7, 2009) p84

This museum in honor of
       Failed products – for example
       The Holocaust
Unlike Ford’s automotive
       Assembly line where
       The latest models still roll forth
Achieving efficiency in waste management
        Is still our  measurable  objective
Employing the best and the brightest
        For a better  future - better living
        Through chemistry
All out for agent Orange
Garbage in - Garbage out
        Interchangeability


This Self-sustaining enterprise
These factories of social engineering
        Where noting is absent
        Except moral rectitude
Museums of failed endeavors
Are strewn across our borders
       Archelogical opportunities
       Indicators of full employment
And a growing economy
Platforms for re-electability

In 2002 no US university president earned more than one million dollars. Today there are 24 US university presidents who earn at least one million dollars

Beyond the boundaries of the ordinary world of lives and houses, unguessed, undreamed of in their common philosophy, lies the vast realm of the improbable – Jean Cocteau – The Holy Terrors, 1957 p87

There is less than a 1% chance that a name on the US Terrorism list will also be on the “no-fly” list

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils but cannot wear them plausibly – Jean Cocteau – The Holy Terrors, 1957 p88

42% of South Koreans have never knowingly spoken to a foreigner

[In an overall] culture shift of perceiving crime more and more in terms of insufficient surveillance [we come to see crime as actually] caused by insufficient surveillance. So we used to be trying to figure out the root cause of crime, but now we are saying people are committing crime, because no one is watching. The criminals wouldn’t be doing this if the cameras were there – Stepehane Leman- Langlois

98% of Chinese government officials claim that their health is “not too good”

Surveillance… presents not truth but the appearance of truth, not reality but the aura of reality, not knowing but the feeling of knowing – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p201

25% of same sex female couples in the US are currently raising a child

But slice water with a knife, and water still flows, / empty a wine cup to end grief, and grief remains grief. // You never get what you want in this life, so why not / shake your hair loose on a boat at play in dawn light – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p71

Telecommunications – per 100 inhabitants
       Telephone lines     Mobile phones    Internet users
United States    50             87              74
United Kingdom   54            126              76
Sudan             1             29              10
Spain            45            112              57
Monaco          107             67              67
Malaysia         16            112              56
World            18             60              23

Up where new born clouds rise over open rock, / a guest come into wild flower confusions, // I’m still lingering on, my climb unfinished, / as the sun sinks away west of peaks galore – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p49

43% of the French say that ‘capitalism is fatally flawed’ and that a different economic system is needed.

Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me – Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil

60% of the jobs lost in the last year can be attributed to cuts from small businesses

Money has always been scarce for the speculative boomer throughout American history; there has never been quite enough to ballast his inflated predictions – A Theodore Brown - Frontier Community Kansas City to 1870, 1963 p189

The average unemployed American male spent 74 more minutes per day watching TV and spent 3 minutes a day less providing child care than did his employed counterpart.

Sometimes there is a dividing-line running across life. Sharp, almost actual, like the black stroke of a paintbrush or the white gash of a chalk-mark. Sometimes, but not often – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948

400,000 child paternity DNA tests are conducted in the US every year

You admit lament is empty, ask how / reflections get so worn and withered – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p123

18% of American males think that standing up during sex is an effective form of contraception

Pure numerological nonsense, but wonderful. It is this playfulness that makes for a great mathematician – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p102

There is sunshine. I had forgotten what it felt like. It feels good. I had forgotten that feeling of goodness. The sun is shining through the window. My eyes are watering as they squint to see. They also water when I try to see in the snow, but that is different. This time I am crying with joy.

Once [he] had wondered how to pronounce parentheses. Years ago he’d given up and now said them as if the first were a hyphen and the second not there – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p17

Voters do not deserve very high reputations as policy wonks, not nearly as much as political analysts tend to attribute to them. But they do have a basic instinct that allows them to intuitively pursue their own long-term self-interests. Policy wonks never look beyond their own asses. Their self-interest is to meet the next filing deadline.

In this Peep age of cyber gossip, truth is determined not by one’s ability to trace a story back to a reputable source, but by how many people indicate interest through linking, down loading, sharing, and otherwise participation in the narrative – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009

Chick flick – she meets handsome rich man
      She falls in love with same
      There are difficulties
      Their hearts go
          Pitter-pat
      He sees the light
      She is worth the sacrifice
      He straightens out his life
      They live happily ever after
      In a white house with green grass
      And two and a half kids
            Color not specific (in the latest release 
            at least)
The End

There are true answers that are so misleading that one is never the less tempted to call them lies, and there is that protracted silence in the face of questions that even in the absence of an answer cannot be considered anything other than deception – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p34

First there was talk about peak oil (a time after which demand is greater than production capacity) and now there is talk about peak phosphorus, which is worst. Oil is only needed for energy and there are alternatives. Phosphorus is necessary for life and there are no substitutes. In 2008 prices skyrocketed from $50 to $400 per ton. The two most critical problems for world food supply (other than a growing population and our propensity to use food to produce oil) are water and phosphorus. There have been oil wars and water wars. We have phosphorus wars to look forward to – 75% of world production is concentrated in three countries.

We want the unstated rules that govern traditional community, but we don’t necessarily want those rules to apply to us. This, in many ways, is the conundrum of modern society – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p149

Towards the final solution
Onwards to the stars
Blue giants and red dwarfs
Frog marched into our camp
Carrying our cardboard suitcases
This is all that belongs to us

How is it that animals / Can save time: / They sleep a whole season / Of lamentation and snow, / Without bothering to weep – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p132

Accidental lies are not really lies – they are just a matter of having been wrong for which one may apologize

This place was not hostile to my presence, far from it. Just entirely, gradelessly, indifferent…. Here there was no question of relation. This place refused any imputation of meaning – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p157

55% of all single Americans are not in a committed relationship and are not actively looking for a partner, amongr younger singles the number is lower of course, 38%. 43% of adults claim to be single and 21% are married

Where do couples meet:
         At work or at school         38%
         Through family or friends    34%
         In a social environment      13%
         Through the Internet          3%
         At church                     2%

All travelers to wild places will have felt… a brief blazing perception of the world’s disinterest. In a small measure it exhilarates. But in full form it annihilates – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p157

After an honest man’s veracity is called into question, he is justified in lying to his inquisitor

Warren Harding: Yet he was beautiful, he was the snowfall / Turned to white stallions standing still / Under dark elm trees. // He died in public. He claimed the secret right / To be ashamed – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p120

Passenger intercity trips of more than 50 miles BTU/passenger mile
      Car             90%                 3,500
      Air              7%                 3,300
      Bus              2%                 4,235 (urban)
      Train            1%                 2,600
      Motorcycle        -                 1,855
      Walking           -                 1,050
      Bicycle           -                   183

We’re not afraid of the surveillance state. We’re afraid of the gaps in our culture of surveillance. We’re afraid of the dark spaces where our senses fail us. We fear the moments when unobserved, unrecorded, and un-exhibited, we virtually disappear – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p208

The homeless man has his arm in a sling. He seems to be in a trance. He reawakens to the world and suddenly says ,“Hi there” to the two women next to where he had been standing. “Can I get some change for a cup of coffee,” he asks them. Now he is asking for a blueberry pastry in addition to the cup of coffee. “Hey Hey, One cup of coffee and that’s it,” Samhae tells him from behind the counter. The man insists that some cocoa also be added to his cup of coffee. He persistently interrupts Samhae twice to insist on it. He gets thrown out.

Mr. Bliss has arrived. He effortlessly comes down California  Street and turns left at the corner of Fillmore, he finds the small already open right sided door and enters the coffee shop. His cane tapped a few of the tables on his left as he navigated up next to the potato chip stand. After helping the customers already in line, Samhae says “Good morning Mr. Bliss. Bagel and Coffee?” Mr. Bliss bumps into a seated customer but otherwise confidently strolls back out of the shop and up California St. towards home. Most of us live in a world which to all intents and purposes seems normal - God help us if we don't.

To push beyond the limit is to forever change the assembly. To push the envelope is to expand the boundary lines of the limit.

I got a slight buzz from crossing into forbidden territory. I’m someone who follows the rules – for most of the time. It’s my mathematical upbringing. Mathematics very quickly begins to collapse if one starys outside the logical boundaries permitted by the subject – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p84

Capitalism always operates at its limits - what would it cost to step over this line, and it does. Capitalism is the least conservative form of economics that can be imagined, in fact it is revolutionary. It refuses to be guided by rationality. Homo Economicus is not a rational man.

Humanity should be on guard against all generalization of ideas that causes us to loose sight of the facts, and above all against the errors of identifying the public good with wealth, abstracted from the suffering of the human beings who create it – J C L Simonded-Nouveaux – Principles of Economic Critique, 1827

Value is created by increasing the differential between the least productive and the most productive process and/or resource - the least productive porcess has zero value.

Beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell – St Augustine – De Genesi ad Litteram

Cognitive Fluency

Muzak for the coffee shop – forties this morning – big band – Bing Crosby and Al Hurt, while it snows – gray skies and I’m so blue. Not just for elevators anymore. The latest in derivative trading - boxoffice receipts. For those with vested interest it is risk management. For all others it is gambling. All gamblers believe in divine intervention - that's why our motto is "IN GOD WE TRUST" - let it ride on Red Twenty-Two.

Lesson one of tracking your loved ones: They will toy with your mind just because they can. Lesson Two: tracking makes you paranoid – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p168

Big money is to be made in Haiti – capitalists can capitalize on any disaster – they always have their eyes on the prize – 60m cubic meters of earthquake rubble to dispose of.  Will the contractor’s political donations see results in Haiti? You can count on that now that properties are people and people are properties.  Big profits were made in Katrina – AshBritt garnered $900m in US government contracts and with the rush for results, little oversight is maintained. This is called Neo-Capitalism – profits belong to the investor, loses are passed on to taxpayers – it’s the best of both government and business – it’s the American way. This morning 20% of all sales in the coffee shop are going to Haiti. No one asks how it is to be spent. They are just glad to be helping out.

Just as the absence of acknowledgment of community in economic theory has led to the destruction of human community in economic practice, so also the neglect of the physical world in economic theory has led to its degradation in economic practice – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p190

Theological tourism also called Christian Imperialism – ‘Immersion’ trips by eager university and church groups who descend upon countries full of poor people. The participants then proceed to ‘immerse’ themselves in the concrete lives of these poor people and thereby gain a feeling after a week of living alongside a community that they understand and know what’s best for these poor populations.

The human mind is desperate to find patterns… Patterns imply meaning. But sometimes things can be random and without patterns – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p.97

It is not coincidental that all things seem connected – it is the natural result of web of life that we weave

Rime ice had formed in feathery windrows on shattered grey rocks, which were also marked with lichens the colour of lime and tangerine. Between the rocks, snow lay in strips and furrows, dry and granular as sand – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p155

I like it
When I read
This poetry
As if
I had not
Myself
Written it


This felling
Of distance
Away
From myself
As if
I were not the
        Me
That I had read
        Here
And that is
        True

Everywhere / Giant finned cars nose / Forward like fish / A savage servility / Slides by on grease – Robert Lowell

Americans have the best government that money can buy

A handful get paraded around in front of the cameras and we millions are still at home, in the dark, doing what we’ve always done since the inception of television; passively watching… It’s the lie of fame restated for the lazy and complacent – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p114

Cognitive fluency is the new hot topic in psychology – a measure of how easy it is to think about something. People prefer to think about things that are easy to think about – shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names significantly out perform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Writing in a clear font or making it rhyme or simply repeating can alter people’s judgment of the truth of a statement (nothing new in this to preachers and marketeers).

Can we hit a carbon Undo button? “Not a hope in hell” – James Lovelock

Soundbytes work best when there is a vacuity of actual knowledge

Homo Sapiens now splash golf courses across deserts, joyride in outer space, update their Facebook profiles from the South Pole. And technological change is accelerating – Spencer Reiss – Wired (Dec 2009) p3

Easy = True: Cognitive Fluency

As we begin to accept climate change as inevitable We shall begin to grapple with diminishing diversity and a diminished resource base (biological, fossil fuels, and minerals – or at least the availability of cheap  resources).. But what the heck there [has always] been the technological fix. None of those are complete solutions – it’s the sum of ‘all’ progress that will get us through – Spencer Reiss – Wired (Dec 2009) p3 In Technology do we now pray. Let's have 30 seconds of silence for the ice caps.

Should you ask if I’m sane, I’ll say, “absolutely”. If you should ask if I were insane, I’ll say the same.

`Autonomy understood as negative liberty is the single-family dwelling of ethics – Willard Gaylin – The Perversion of Autonomy: coercion and constraints in a liberal society, 2003

My guests are gone. It’s time to repair my mind and catch up on my me-dos (my selfish honey-dos). She had said, “brush your hair before you go out”. I obeyed. She said, “I’m mean aren’t I?” “Yes”, I agreed, “you make me do what I ought to have done in the first place”. We said goodbye.

Not hindering is different from helping - Willard Gaylin – The Perversion of Autonomy: coercion and constraints in a liberal society, 2003

Dimitri the photographer told me to set my alarm clock at an arbitrary time and write down whatever came to mind when I was awoken – “But wouldn’t the shock of the alarm going off dispel any dream consciousness that I had (or more precisely any dream non-consciousness),” I asked him. “The idea.” he remindes me, “is to capture a non-cognitive state of mind” But that’s another project I am already pursuing “Rules for Following People” and then there is my “Breakfast Project” where I eat breakfast at every place that serves it along a specific transit line. But with his project I could be engaged 24-7, oh great! To be worried about keeping busy once one retires is crazy. It is not keeping busy that is the problem, it is the relevance of one’s activities that is called in to question and in our culture anything for which you are not remunerated is not worthwhile unless it is recreational. And what about self-improvement? You mean a hobby! No, I am talking about a project – like right know I have in mind researching jalapeno potato chips. “What for?” he asked.

Another dusting of snow – I’m missing my wallet – I carry the loose bills in my front right pocket, so I can pay for my coffee – I carry my wallet in my front left pocket – It’s not there – I retrace my steps. No it’s not in the truck – I only hope that I failed to put into my pocket when I got dressed this morning. Yesterday it was the glasses. Last night Dave called, telling me he couldn’t find his hearing aides. God, its horrible getting old. But still I worry that it might have dropped out of my pocket – how will I know until I return home. Dave though he might have left them in his work clothes. I put them in the washer, I told him. In that case they might be fried. He said he had been told not to let them get wet – dry them immediately with a hair dryer. I told him I would check the pockets of the clothes in the washer when I got home. It is not the first time they have been lost – once Brenda threw them in the trash when cleaning the house – once he left them while working on Staci’s house (they were found that time). But at $3,000 a pair it is a clostly mistake. And this time I might be partially at fault – what should be my fair share - $$$ - when I got home I looked in the washing machine – they were not in there – I was relieved. Later I found them next to the computer. I just can’t remember where I might have left them. I called him and let him know he could stop worrying. Buy something cheep that you can show the Highway Patrol when they stop you (he’s required by DOT to have them). They do not have a field test for hearing aides (and you can always claim you didn’t know they were broke). You have plausible denial with your hearing unlike sobriety. Lock them away and use them only for your DOT examination. Oh God, two old bachelors – stereotypical old farts. I called my little sister for her birthday – how old are you know, fifty-five? Fifty-six, she said.

Cognitive fluency is a process of getting a lot of data in under the radar

The real question is not how we can keep things the way they are but how we’ll survive and maybe even thrive, on a hotter planet – Spencer Reiss – Wired (Dec 2009) p3

Blogging and commenting on bloggs among teens and young adults has declined by 50% in the last three years. Among the same age  group usage of social network web sites has increased  while daily usage of those same  sites has decreased. 58% of 12 year olds now possess their own cell phones.

I climbed the towering walls but did not sack the town. / I yoked the steeds but did not mount the car. / Acting, I did not act. Completing, I did not complete. / Achieving, I did not achieve. Doing, I didn’t – Theognis

GCOIN or Global Counterinsurgency is the new term for what George W Bush had called the “Global War on Terrorism”. GCOIN downplays much of the religious and ideological associations with the war on terror and allows the “War on Drugs” to be rolled with the “War on Terror” into a single concept – that of restoring rule over “lawless” or “ungoverned spaces” (I suppose it can also be applied to pirates). Plan Colombia is being touted as the poster child of this concept replacing Iraq as the GCOIN marquee. “Colombia is what Iraq should eventually look like in our best dreams”. We need to take a closer look at Colombia and see what this may mean. What Plan Colombia really means is a return to the “Banana Republics” where large landholders seize land from the peasants and use it to grow cash crops for North America (in this case commercial crops like palms that can be used to produce ethanol and of course drugs).

Plan Colombia has financed the opposite of what is taking place in neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, where progressive movements are fitfully trying to ‘refound’ their societies along inclusive lines – Grey Grandin – The Nation [Feb 8, 2010] p10

Factoid: Only 19 of the world’s 195 countries have no US military personal stationed on their soil. About one third of the US military forces are stationed outside the United States. The US spending on defense exceeds the spending of the rest of the entire world

America goes on, goes on / Laughing, and Harding was a fool. / Even his big pretentious stone / Lays him bare to ridicule – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p121

We cause so much misery trying to establish a (the) reality

Our maps have grown less speculative, less interested in elemental possibilities of the Earth’s skin, and that suggests that the Earth has lost its capacity to keep Secrets. We tend to look at them [maps] for what we want to avoid, rather than for what, in good fortune, we might discover – Robert Penn Warren

Grandpa did
      Gandma did smoke too
      Set her apron on fire
      With a corncob pipe
The chimney smokes
       Badly. That’s what
       The damper is for
            Asshole
Don’t let the smoke
       Get in your eyes
       Don't let the dogs
             Catch you among
             My watermelons
The smoke of the lamp
        Sooted the roof
He peeled away
        And his tires smoked
That pile of old tires were smoking
         Sending a dark cloud
         High into the sky


Wannta a smoke? Sure, I replied
Where there is smoke
         He lit me up
         There’s fire
The Smoky Mountains boys
         In their prime
         And the Dixie Chicks
         Smoke!
Smoking! He said and was gone
         In a blur


A computer simulation of the soot
        From burning forest fires resulting
             From a nuclear exchange
        Makes it possible to conceive that
             A large meteor might have
             Caused the dinosaurs' extinction

There’s nothing / we can’t pluck the stinger from / nothing we can’t turn into a soft-drink flavor or a T-shirt – Tony Hoagland – Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

The chance of autism increases with the age of the mother. It also increases with the age of the father and his age makes the most difference with young mothers. Mothers older than 40 were 50% more likely to have a child with autism than were mothers in their twenties. There is also a correlation with the age of the father and the his son’s cognitive abilities

The yellow-bearded winter of depression / Is still alive somewhere, an old man / counting his collection of bottle caps / in a tarpaper shack under the cold trees / of my grave – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p124

One should be weary of any term that was not originated by a poet. Only poets care nothing about your trust.

There is parody only in relation to an authenticity… There is caricature only in reference to a non-degraded form, words lie only to those who are haunted by the truth of words – Raymond Federman – The Twoflod Vibration, 1981 p63

Factoid: Up to 45% of the traffic in Manhattan is generated by cars circling the block looking for an available parking space. In one year cars looking for parking in one small business district in Los Angeles burn 47,000 gallons of gasoline and produce 730 tons of carbon dioxide

Nobody knows us and we don’t know anybody, so we need to send out signals about who we are that can be instantly understood – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p147

Someone looking like Leslie is in a day dreaming mood as she walks towards me along the sidewalk up ahead. It is she. “Hey Leslie” “Oh Hi” she replies, “I was just tripping along thinking how great it was to be walking down the streets of San Francisco. I was just thinking that I never see anybody that I know on these streets”. “ I am thinking of the shellfish we ate under starlight last night at the cafe in the alley and I speak about Amelio’s in New York’s Greenwich Village with it’s patio surrounded by a wall that was topped with broken glass bottles to keept the prowling neighborhood cats out of the restaurant, and how you got to the patio by going through the kitchen and how I have spent the intervening thirty years looking for as good a meat ball sandwich as I had gotten there. It was just opposite of where Bleaker Street ended  not far from Washington Square  and you go through the restaurant  (but I had already said that) and its kitchen and emerge into this great tree enclosed patio. I always ordered a house red wine and a meat-ball sandwich.. It was probably not the meat balls themselves but the space and the warm New York City nights and the cats and of course my youth. So now I sit at Happy Donuts with a eighty-five cent chocolate covered buttermilk waiting for happy hour to begin next door.

It’s now probably after 4PM but I have not yet finished my pastry. I had been interrupted by stopping to write this. The man next to me asks what time it was. He too has been waiting for happy hour next door. He leaves and walks up the street combing his hair. He wants to look his best for his favorite time of the day. He will have two or three one-dollar half pints. I have seen him in here before. He always has a light beer in a half-pint glass. I’ve never seen him have anything darker than an Albatross or Shanghai. I do not wait to finish my donut before heading over to the brewery. I did not come to eat donuts but to drink beer. The old man is there at the end of the bar, his regular place. I take a seat. Josh is behind the bar. He serves too later arrivals and starts to serve a third. I interrupt him. “I’ve been waiting a while” I announce. “IPA” he asks? I never drink IPA. I order a Doppel Weisen. Pint or Glass?, Josh asks. Still annoyed at the service I inadvertently say “Pint” not realizing what I had asked for before it had one plunked down in front of me. It’s too late to change the order. He was already in the process of helping another customer - the guy that I had rebuked Josh for serving ahead of me. The customer snidely remarks “I didn’t know that there was a line here.” Yes, he is right, but there is protocol – a bartender is suppose to look out for his regulars, the ones who regularly leave him a tip.

Evidence is accumulating. Four Inches expected before daybreak

Evidence accumulates that policies aimed at increasing bio-fuels and energy self-sufficiency may cause more problems than they solve including destruction of habitats (decreasing biodiversity), the seizing of land form small land holders in developing countries (to grow palm trees in monoculture plantations for example), decreasing availability of food (increasing the cost of food commodities). Palm oils are forecast to account for 45% of Europe’s biodiesel by 2020. Solutions that transfer problems rather than resolve them are destructive in a global economy. Energy self-sufficiency is such a problem. The only solution is to be less energy reliant – but that contradicts the premise of a technological based civilization.

We are accustomed to trust maps, to invest confidence in the data with which they present us. But in the pre-modern expressions, mapmaking was a pursuit that mingled knowledge and supposition, that told stories about places, that admitted fear, love, memory and amazement into its projections – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p141

Quantity quantification is destruction
     Destroyer of worlds becoming
     Count the bodybags – add up the cost
Quality, qualification is creation
     Breathing life into clay – changing
     Ribs into beings – make love not war
Like beauty is becoming as is the future

The white house is silent. / My friends can’t hear me yet. / The flicker who lives in the bare trees at the field’s edge / Pecks once and is still for a long time – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1972 p130

If you are paid (a salary, a rate or even a fee) then you are working class even if you are the President

Gossip functions as a kind of community policing… If you deviated from social norms you would be noticed and gossiped about – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p143

Education is a ‘rite-of-passage’ and without any production function

The world that economic theory normally pictures is one in which individuals all seek their own good and are indifferent to the success or failure of other individuals engaged in the same activity – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p159

Being working class means being greater than “who you are” or at least who you are allowed to be

Like the terrorist, the sex offender is a new category of human being – JoAnn Wypijewski – The Nation (Feb 8, 2010) p7 – but one which is  not a being totally unlike the heretic and the witch – someone for whom torture is not unjustified

Like the woman who gave
       You an evil eye
Like the parrot that shits
       On your head
Like that hunger for revenge
       That gnaws at your soul
Like this desire for respect
       The keeps you in debt
Like the President with his finger
       Up your ass
Like the Man on the Moon
       Taking his snail pace

Thousands of years of human living and dying have destroyed the possibility of the pristine wild… The human and the wild cannot be partitioned – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p127

Factoid: Time spent actually sleeping (as opposed to lying in bed) decreases with age for healthy adults – about 10 minuets a decade, however as we get older that sleep becomes less continuous

Mephistophelas: There is a natural way to make you young… / Go out in a field / And start right to work; dig, hoe, / keep your thought and yourself in that field, / Eat the food you raise… / Be willing to manure the field you harvest. / And that’s the best way – take it from me!
Faust: So narrow a life would not suit me
Mephistophelas: Well then, we must have the witch – Goethe

Inadequacy serves self-discipline rather than revolt

Next up more fame, more acclaim, more opportunities to really show what you can do – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p101

Factoid: Unionization results in a 15% increase in hourly wages, a 19% increase in the likehood of having employer provided health insurance and a 24% increase in the likelihood of having empoyer sponsored retirement plans.

Generally reality TV stops just short of snuff – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p105

Moths can fly at 100 kilometers an hour with a tail wind but what is interesting is that they are able to detect when the best time to fly and which winds will best assist them in both the northward and southward migrations. And the moths are able to adjust for up to 20 degrees of drift. Pretty smart for a moth.

We want them to spill their guts and presumably they want to spill their guts. That’s no voyeurism. That’s Peep culture, a culture in which a desire to be watched and to watch others being watched pervades almost everything we do – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p111