Am I stupid or what???
Northern_Lover
observed in various posts which I don't understand. Whats up with the
"zir" and "zie" language? What am I missing?
Thanks
Loving up North
-------
Go Flames Go!!!
serene
> So this is just a general question about some posting language I have
> observed in various posts which I don't understand. Whats up with the
> "zir" and "zie" language? What am I missing?
http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/
Some people here use them, some don't.
serene
--
"Your bay is sort of a Seattle depression starter kit,
isn't it?" -- TOTGA
Ryk
<a2b8e836.04052...@posting.google.com>
cupi...@yahoo.ca (Northern_Lover) wrote:
>So this is just a general question about some posting language I have
>observed in various posts which I don't understand. Whats up with the
>"zir" and "zie" language? What am I missing?
Think her and he, but without the gender tags. Gender neutral
pronouns, love 'em or hate 'em, are common around here.
>Go Flames Go!!!
I am also happy to think of them going...
Ryk
Norm
> So this is just a general question about some posting language I have
> observed in various posts which I don't understand. Whats up with the
> "zir" and "zie" language? What am I missing?
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationships.html#n4
There's not a lot of consensus here on when to use
gender-neutral pronouns; but this is a place where people
certainly feel free to do so.
--
Norm
Northern_Lover
--------
Go Flames Go!!!
Jim Roberts
Stsndard English practice for centuries is to use the plural when the
sex is uncertain, of if the essay applies to persons of both sexes. The
zie, zir, zit, zap zok, ziz, zom, zoq, and zod macht nichts.
jimbat
Norm
Hehe.
On occasion I use "they," "them," "their," "theirs,"
"themself," or "theirself" as a singular. Snobbish types --
they're usually the ones who say, "between you and I" --
then treat me as illiterate; and in academia that won't
help, should I ever return.
I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
"God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel"
(Psalm 76:1) doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let
us make humankind in our image" (Genesis 1:26).
But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were
used for translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir
name is great in Israel."
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Northern_Lover wrote:
>>>
>>>> So this is just a general question about some posting language I have
>>>> observed in various posts which I don't understand. Whats up with the
>>>> "zir" and "zie" language? What am I missing?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationships.html#n4
>>>
>>> There's not a lot of consensus here on when to use gender-neutral
>>> pronouns; but this is a place where people certainly feel free to do so.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Stsndard English practice for centuries is to use the plural when the
>> sex is uncertain, of if the essay applies to persons of both sexes.
>> The zie, zir, zit, zap zok, ziz, zom, zoq, and zod macht nichts.
>
>
> Hehe.
>
> On occasion I use "they," "them," "their," "theirs," "themself," or
> "theirself" as a singular. Snobbish types -- they're usually the ones
> who say, "between you and I" -- then treat me as illiterate; and in
> academia that won't help, should I ever return.
>
> I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
God, for those who believe in them, should also take the plural. The
Grammarian Movement really fucked up our language 100 years ago.
>
> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind in our
> image" (Genesis 1:26).
We no longer live in tents as a lifestyle; even the Berbers are getting
away from it. Though it would be nice to have a 2nd wife accepted when
necessary, or just for scaring the camels.
Did you know that you should not travel faster than a camel's stroll,
else you may leave your soul behind?
>
> But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were used for
> translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir name is great in
> Israel."
>
At 5, I'd have tossed the book into the fireplace instead of reading it
from front to back. I don't read posts from people prone to these phony
pronouns.
jimbat
umarc
>On occasion I use "they," "them," "their," "theirs,"
>"themself," or "theirself" as a singular. Snobbish types --
>they're usually the ones who say, "between you and I" --
>then treat me as illiterate; and in academia that won't
>help, should I ever return.
The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
introducing... They announced..." which is consistent but sounds even
more wrong to me.
>I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
>"God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel"
>(Psalm 76:1) doesn't work for me.
It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God" and
the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have been,
btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like a plural
ending).
>But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were
>used for translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir
>name is great in Israel."
Would the Christian Trinity then become the Parent, the Child, and
the Holy Ghost?
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 141 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
> The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
> is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
> ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
> inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
> introducing... They announced..." which is consistent but sounds even
> more wrong to me.
Yesterday I wrote this to a friend: "So we went to the
Kittery Trading Post instead. Only after we exited there did
we feel we had finally escaped that subtle warp in the
universe. (KTP had built new space and reorganized, so I
kept becoming disoriented.)"
Originally I wrote, "They had built ...," which is more
natural for me.
I need not have bothered to edit myself there. I suppose
that "Kittery Trading Post" would be regarded a noun of
multitude, which can take either a singular or plural,
depending on which makes the more sense. H. W. Fowler gives
as examples: "The Cabinet is divided" and "The Cabinet are
agreed."
--> A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (2nd ed., 1965):
s.v. "number," §6.
>>"God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel"
>>(Psalm 76:1) doesn't work for me.
>
>
> It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God" and
> the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have been,
> btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like a plural
> ending).
Actually Elohim is the name for God used in that verse. But
if a translator wanted to make hay out of the plural ending,
I'd prefer "they" did it another way.
As for the Hebrew names of God in general, I'd rather they
be used in translations of the Hebrew Bible instead of the
word "God" or "Lord" or whatever. For some people, the
Tetragrammaton is a special case. For that I think the
consonants should be transliterated but that an instruction
should be given that, depending on one's tradition, one
might choose to read it aloud, not according to the best
guess of its correct pronunciation, but rather as Adonai, or
Hashem, or Jehovah, or Lord, or whatever.
>>But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were
>>used for translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir
>>name is great in Israel."
>
>
> Would the Christian Trinity then become the Parent, the Child, and
> the Holy Ghost?
Well, of course they're not pronouns. My thought was that a
huge number of the masculine pronouns in many English
translations of the Bible are rendered as masculines only
for the sake of English and not because they are reflecting
masculines in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. That one
operation alone, of using gender-neutral pronouns in such
cases, would go a long way -- by no means the whole way --
towards degenderizing the Bible for English speakers, and
that in the direction of greater precision.
As for the nouns, I like to know what the Bible actually
says. The New Revised Standard Version's rendering of the
Greek word, "adelphous," in 1 Thessalonians 4:10 as
"brothers and sisters" is, to my way of thinking, an example
of a line being crossed, in part because it introduces a
suggestiveness totally absent in the text -- although I
realize that the rendering is defensible.
Liturgy's a different matter (leaving aside the question of
what to do about hymns written in English). Liturgy is a
present expression with a meaning usually intended to be in
continuity, at core, with the earlier expressions of the
tradition. There's lots of flexibility for verbalizing that
kind of meaning, although many people are resistant to any
change in what they're used to.
"The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" is a
post-biblical formula. A restatement of the formula along
the lines of "The Originator, the Offspring, and the Holy
Spirit" gets at most of the theology involved without an
apotheosis of patriarchalism. But it lacks elegance; and,
besides, some theologians object.
--
Norm
Ben
> In alt.polyamory, umarc <um...@hippogryph.com> (umarc) wrote in
> <2j2uj1F...@uni-berlin.de>::
>
>>The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
>>is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
>>ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
>>inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
>>introducing... They announced..."
>
> Would we? I was always taught that a compound entity is singular (Acme
> Corporation is.... the team is... the government is...) unless you are
> referring to the entity as its individual components (the team are lacing
> up their boots).
I'm British, and that's exactly what I do. To me, "The Foo Party says
(something)" is a statement of official position, and "The Foo Party say
(something)" is a sweeping generalisation about all the members of the Foo
Party.
Ben.
David Matthewman
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
> introducing... They announced..." which is consistent but sounds even
> more wrong to me.
That's ... not universally accepted over here. For a start, it's not what
the BBC uses in its guidelines (or it certainly wasn't a few years ago).
As with most things, the important thing is to be consistent, though.
--
David Matthewman
Jim Roberts
umarc wrote:
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>On occasion I use "they," "them," "their," "theirs,"
>>"themself," or "theirself" as a singular. Snobbish types --
>>they're usually the ones who say, "between you and I" --
>>then treat me as illiterate; and in academia that won't
>>help, should I ever return.
>
>
> The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
> is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
> ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
> inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
> introducing... They announced..." which is consistent but sounds even
> more wrong to me.
>
>
>>I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
>
>
>>"God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel"
>>(Psalm 76:1) doesn't work for me.
>
>
> It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God" and
> the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have been,
> btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like a plural
> ending).
>
Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>
>>But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were
>>used for translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir
>>name is great in Israel."
>
>
> Would the Christian Trinity then become the Parent, the Child, and
> the Holy Ghost?
>
>
> umar
The Holy Ghost is at work in our basement. Various arthropods appear
from time to time and then just as mysteriously disappear without
leaving any carcasses that my wife or I can find. A 12" centipede would
get my attention, but otherwise we do not try to second-guess the Holy
Ghost, or interfere with her work.
Aside favorite beef: PBS is nattering away right now about "greenhouse
gases". This was a term inventented by Carl Sagan, from whom I took a
course in planetary atmospheres just before Harvard fired him - the
worst course, by far, I ever had at Harvard. Sagan just did not
understand how greenhouses work: They work by suppression of
convection, not by reflection of IR radiation, which glass doesn't do.
I called him on this, and he just laughed me off without defending his
term. But I was marked for this comment - my A+ term paper got a C.
Though this term paper was written in 1966, it is still correct after
all the new discoveries. Just simple chem and phys. He really disgusted
me later by his smooth talk, which got him notoriety without his having
done a scrap of real scientific work, and without his actually
understanding much of anything, save the Peano Postulates.
jimbat
Norm
> umarc wrote:
>
>> It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God" and
>> the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have been,
>> btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like a plural
>> ending).
>>
>
> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
How do you figure?
--
Norm
David Dyer-Bennet
Well, the commandments about not worshipping other gods seem to me to
imply that the other gods are real.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>
>>>umarc wrote:
>>>
>>
>>>>It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God" and
>>>>the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have
>>>>been, btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like
>>>>a plural ending).
>>>>
>>>
>>>Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>
>>How do you figure?
>
>
> Well, the commandments about not worshipping other gods seem to me to
> imply that the other gods are real.
First a short glossary (and let me say I'm plagiarizing myself):
anotatism -- the idea that there is one God who reigns
supreme over all, including all other entities. From Philo
who calls God "the supreme (anötatö) Father of gods and men"
(De specialibus legibus 2:165)
deism -- the idea of a single God who is discoverable
through nature and reason but not through special revelation
or any given religion.
henotheism -- faith in one particular God as the deity of a
family or tribe, while recognizing the possible existence of
other gods (sometimes loosely used without reference to
tribalism).
Hochgottglaube -- belief in a high God associated with and
distinguishing a cult.
kathenotheism -- belief in many gods as facets of one
source, each to be honored in turn as single and supreme.
megalodaimonia -- the idea that there is a Supreme Being who
reigns over a pantheon of lesser entities, variously called
gods, daimons, or angels.
monolatry -- restriction of worship to one God, when other
gods may be held to exist.
monotheism -- the idea that there is one and only one God,
especially a God with personal attributes who has revealed
Zirself through inspired writers -- in the case of
Christianity, also through Incarnation.
primitive monotheism -- belief in a supreme god represented
by a force of nature, such as the sky, among a variety of
lesser gods.
Parcing among these in any given biblical writing (keeping
in mind the many centuries of the composition of the Bible)
is often a difficult task. The usual model is: early period,
henotheism; late period, monotheism. But that model doesn't
neatly fit.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Saints, my boy, saints; but I can't aregue that some old deranged
Catholics also pray to their saints, instead of just to God, but my
Catholic fiancee did not. Kabbalistic Judaism has crept into the rest
of the religion, if you care to look at the shelves in a Jewish book
store. On the other hand I could send you a dozen Jewish books my
Mother has sent to me. They are full of handwritten encomiums to me,
which prevents me from donating them to a temple. I was planning to
recycle them when she died, after which she could not visit, but at 86
she's as healthy as I am.
My opinion is based on much reading, and many serious religious scholars
agree with the statement. When I make the effort to read, I attempt to
understand it. Once I hit a page that's patent nonsense the book goes
in the recycling pile (we have paper recycling in Baltimore). My best
friend at Caltech is Israeli (his existence is owed purely to chance and
a good deed). So he was a pretty secular Jew. We have the tendence to
float over unto hysterics when we get together. The women look on in
concern, as they are below the level at which we are joking.
I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way is
a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious, can read
Hebrew backwards and forwards, and much Jewish literature, such as
Maimonides in the original, and would never skip a Friday evening, as he
used to do. I found going through the house looking for breadcrumbs on
Pesach to be the most baffling and tedious things I've ever done in my
life, besides memorizing lists of uncommon integrals.
TMI: I dozed off in the middle of Dave Letterman tonight and did not get
to see Patti Scalfa, for whom I'd fight The Boss to the death. I had a
strange dream. I had left a house, don't know whose, carrying nothing,
not wanting anything, perhaps because my wife told me this evening that
I was depressed, whether I knew it or not. I had a fellow traveller.
We were at the table on a Friday evening writing our journals, when he
suddenly screamed, jumped out of his chair, opened his suitcase to
retrieve a black hat with built-in braids, a dickey, and a prayer shawl
and headed for the bedroom in despair. The world invades my dreams and
my dreams invade my world, setting up a false structure. For instance,
my picture of my hair is now that it is parted in the middle until I get
to a mirror when I discover that it is parted on the left. All from a
dream that I do not remember. What determines what we really think?
Despite my refusal of books that jump the fence and eat the weeds, all
the book shelves are full, and there are several piles of good books
looking for a space, and my wife is demanding that it is again time that
we cull my books strictly. She will allow no more bookcases, which is
wise, since I'm 62. When we moved from LA (no recycling), I took 3 SWs
full to dumpsters in the dark of night. Of course I miss many of them,
even if they were trashy - as in how did the Lady Morgan Stanley get the
protagonist to lie across the bottom of the bed like a dog until he was
"needed". I'd order the book again but have forgotten its title and
author. And what was the JD McDonald "The Deep Purple Sky" all about?
And did Travis McGee die with his author?
Sorry if this was not responsive in your eyes, but it was in mine.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Thank you, but didn't help me much. Is parcing French for parking?
jimbat
umarc
>In alt.polyamory, umarc <um...@hippogryph.com> (umarc) wrote in
><2j2uj1F...@uni-berlin.de>::
>>The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
>>is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
>>ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
>>inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
>>introducing... They announced..."
>Would we? I was always taught that a compound entity is singular (Acme
>Corporation is.... the team is... the government is...) unless you are
>referring to the entity as its individual components (the team are lacing
>up their boots).
The BBC always seems to treat corporations, etc. as plural ("IBM are
promoting Linux as an alternative to Windows..."). I may be guilty
of assuming a BBC quirk is characteristic of the UK in general.
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 140 days, 0 hours, 16 minutes
umarc
>As for the Hebrew names of God in general, I'd rather they
>be used in translations of the Hebrew Bible instead of the
>word "God" or "Lord" or whatever.
In the Qur'an, the names of God are more easily translated: al-`Aziz,
the Almighty; al-Rahman, the Merciful; Allah (al-Ilah), "the God".
(re: the Parent, the Child, and the Holy Ghost)
>Well, of course they're not pronouns. My thought was that a
>huge number of the masculine pronouns in many English
>translations of the Bible are rendered as masculines only
>for the sake of English and not because they are reflecting
>masculines in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.
Hmm. In Arabic everything and everyone is either masculine or
feminine, and in reading the Qur'an one has to decide in each case
whether, for instance, "muslim" in a particular context means a
Muslim man or a Muslim person.
[The Muslim community, of course, will have decided centuries ago
how to interpret every dot in the text, since the Qur'an is the
first and most important source of Shari`ah law. But to follow
their interpretation is to go by the consensus of a bunch of people
who lived centuries later and whose goal was not to study the
book in its original context but to apply it to their own.]
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 139 days, 22 hours, 58 minutes
umarc
>I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
>it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way is
>a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious, can read
>Hebrew backwards and forwards, and much Jewish literature, such as
>Maimonides in the original, and would never skip a Friday evening, as he
>used to do.
I thought it was only certain forms of Greek (Minoan Linear B?) that
were written backwards and forwards.
And didn't Maimonides write in Arabic, albeit in Hebrew letters?
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 139 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes
Louise
>ChickPea <E-0C0013...@cleopatra.co.uk> writes:
>
>>In alt.polyamory, umarc <um...@hippogryph.com> (umarc) wrote in
>><2j2uj1F...@uni-berlin.de>::
>
>>>The worst problem I have is with corporations and the like. "McDonald's
>>>is introducing a new sandwich. It announced..." sounds wrong to my
>>>ears, which prefer "they announced..." even though it is gramatically
>>>inconsistent. Of course, the British would say "McDonald's are
>>>introducing... They announced..."
>
>>Would we? I was always taught that a compound entity is singular (Acme
>>Corporation is.... the team is... the government is...) unless you are
>>referring to the entity as its individual components (the team are lacing
>>up their boots).
>
>The BBC always seems to treat corporations, etc. as plural ("IBM are
>promoting Linux as an alternative to Windows..."). I may be guilty
>of assuming a BBC quirk is characteristic of the UK in general.
Could be. The CBC puts the accent on the first syllable of
'harrassment', and the Globe and Mail spells 'cigaret', and neither of
those are common usage in Canada.
Louise
David Matthewman
> The BBC always seems to treat corporations, etc. as plural ("IBM are
> promoting Linux as an alternative to Windows..."). I may be guilty
> of assuming a BBC quirk is characteristic of the UK in general.
I've just looked round the BBC news web site, and haven't found any
examples to back you up on this, but plenty to contradict you.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3807527.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3807441.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3518558.stm
(Note "IBM is already using Linux on more than 10,000 desktop computers in
its own offices." in that last one.)
--
David Matthewman
Jim Roberts
umarc wrote:
> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> writes:
>
>
>>I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
>>it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way is
>>a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious, can read
>>Hebrew backwards and forwards, and much Jewish literature, such as
>>Maimonides in the original, and would never skip a Friday evening, as he
>>used to do.
>
>
> I thought it was only certain forms of Greek (Minoan Linear B?) that
> were written backwards and forwards.
>
> And didn't Maimonides write in Arabic, albeit in Hebrew letters?
>
>
> umar
Back and for was a metaphor.
On Maimonides, yes, but he can still read him. Arabic isn't terribly
hard once you are scholarly in Hebrew, he says. He's a well-known
astrophysics professor at U of Chic, who has exhausted his research
interest and relevance. He shouldn't have been an astrophysicist any
more than I.
The Golem remains a joke between us. I just need to lumber along and
knock over a couple of trash cans to put him into hysterics. My 1st
wife did not get along with Gollum, since after a suitable performance
she had to be peeled off the ceiling. The son of my Great Love was done
in by my Igor, but he's about 40 now, so I doubt it would have the same
effect. My missing right pinky (car accident) helps me do a very
effective "suicide" through my right temple, complete with the most
gruesome sound effects, with a collapse to the ground. Neighbor kids
like to see it once. Not even adults want to see it repeated.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>
>>
>>
>> How do you figure?
>>
>>
>
> Saints, my boy, saints;
That would be an argument, I suppose, that Roman Catholic
and Eastern Orthodox Christians are polylatrous (to coin a
term), although I think that most of their theologians would
make a sharp distinction between praying to and honoring
saints and the worship of God -- kind of like the
distinction between iconography and idolatry.
> but I can't aregue
There's a word that the English language could adopt for
something.
> that some old deranged
> Catholics also pray to their saints, instead of just to God, but my
> Catholic fiancee did not.
I've heard the theory -- I don't remember where -- that the
history of polygamy follows the history of polytheism, that
is, that as polytheism was narrowed down to monotheism so
polygamy was narrowed down to monogamy and that this was no
accident. Monogamy would be an analogy for God and Israel or
Christ and his Church.
There's a plausibility factor in that theory. There's
correspondence (or coincidence, if you prefer) and bits of
evidence that can be assembled; and some people think just
that way, patterning their lives after metaphysical notions
of divine relationships. However, I don't see any essential
connection between monotheism and monogamy. Nor, would I
suppose, do many Moslems.
> Kabbalistic Judaism has crept into the rest
> of the religion,
One of my most recent acquisitions on Kabbalah is Opening
the Tanya, by Adin Steinsaltz (2003). Hmm, polytheism not
evident in a quick scan.
Care to elaborate on polytheism and Kabbalah?
> if you care to look at the shelves in a Jewish book
> store.
I find that bookstore shelves are a pretty good indicator of
religious trends in the broad sweep. They're pretty poor
when it comes to those small feverish niches that may
someday, for better or worse, transform the world.
> On the other hand I could send you a dozen Jewish books my
> Mother has sent to me. They are full of handwritten encomiums to me,
> which prevents me from donating them to a temple. I was planning to
> recycle them when she died, after which she could not visit, but at 86
> she's as healthy as I am.
As I've said before, I don't think the temple would mind. As
for your mother, I haven't a clue.
> My opinion is based on much reading, and many serious religious scholars
> agree with the statement.
Hmmm.
> When I make the effort to read, I attempt to
> understand it. Once I hit a page that's patent nonsense the book goes
> in the recycling pile (we have paper recycling in Baltimore).
Then your library must be extremely small. But you say it's
not. Disjunction, disjunction!
There are various ways of reading a book, among them (a) for
informational content and (b) for documentation. I find many
books to be useful for documentation of certain kinds of
nonsense. As for the content approach, often you have to
wade through much nonsense and mediocrity to find gems.
By spirit, I'm just not a book burner. Although I've often
thought that I could heat my home in the winter by burning
the books left over at library sales or, better, by burning
the trash that makes up the vast majority of publishing
lists these days. (I heat by wood stove.) I wonder if that
would increase dioxin levels on my property.
> My best
> friend at Caltech is Israeli (his existence is owed purely to chance and
> a good deed). So he was a pretty secular Jew. We have the tendence to
> float over unto hysterics when we get together. The women look on in
> concern, as they are below the level at which we are joking.
Most of my humor only certain people pick up on. And then it
seems like we're on an almost constant jocular wavelength.
Of course, I say to my kids, "That was a joke." And they
say, "It wasn't funny."
> I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
> it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way is
> a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious,
Because of "The Golem"?
> can read
> Hebrew backwards and forwards, and much Jewish literature, such as
> Maimonides in the original,
I'm envious.
> and would never skip a Friday evening, as he
> used to do. I found going through the house looking for breadcrumbs on
> Pesach to be the most baffling and tedious things I've ever done in my
> life, besides memorizing lists of uncommon integrals.
>
> TMI: I dozed off in the middle of Dave Letterman tonight and did not get
> to see Patti Scalfa,
Patti Scialfa? Looks like she has a heavy TV schedule coming up:
> for whom I'd fight The Boss to the death.
I have a feeling that if you knocked off Bruce, Patti might
not like you for it.
Makes me wonder how capture marriage ever worked. Gentle as
I am, if I were a woman and some guy were part of a group
that killed my husband and sons and he stole me away as his
part of the booty, he might well be found some morning with
a nail through his head. At the very least, his nest would
soon be empty of me.
> I had a
> strange dream. I had left a house, don't know whose, carrying nothing,
> not wanting anything, perhaps because my wife told me this evening that
> I was depressed, whether I knew it or not. I had a fellow traveller. We
> were at the table on a Friday evening writing our journals, when he
> suddenly screamed, jumped out of his chair, opened his suitcase to
> retrieve a black hat with built-in braids, a dickey, and a prayer shawl
> and headed for the bedroom in despair.
We've spoken before of fellow travelers.
> The world invades my dreams and
> my dreams invade my world, setting up a false structure. For instance,
> my picture of my hair is now that it is parted in the middle until I get
> to a mirror when I discover that it is parted on the left. All from a
> dream that I do not remember. What determines what we really think?
Good question. And another is: Is there really such a thing
as sanity? What would it be?
> Despite my refusal of books that jump the fence and eat the weeds, all
> the book shelves are full, and there are several piles of good books
> looking for a space, and my wife is demanding that it is again time that
> we cull my books strictly. She will allow no more bookcases, which is
> wise, since I'm 62. When we moved from LA (no recycling), I took 3 SWs
> full to dumpsters in the dark of night.
Whenever you say that, I'm thinking, "Send them my way, send
them my way!" But my house is already stuffed with books.
Oddly that doesn't keep me from acquiring more, though.
> Of course I miss many of them,
I've given away or traded, occasionally even sold off many
thousands of books and often have regrets that I no longer
have this or that title. The rare items I miss are next to
impossible to replace, that is, within my meager means.
> even if they were trashy - as in how did the Lady Morgan Stanley get the
> protagonist to lie across the bottom of the bed like a dog until he was
> "needed". I'd order the book again but have forgotten its title and
> author.
Doesn't ring a bell with me.
> And what was the JD McDonald "The Deep Purple Sky" all about?
> And did Travis McGee die with his author?
>
> Sorry if this was not responsive in your eyes, but it was in mine.
One responsive line's enough, and I think you had more than
one. The rest is gravy.
--
Norm
Norm
Yeah, I should have found a better word. But it was late,
and I was tired.
Naturally, those are not all mutually exclusive categories.
Back in Greco-Roman times, Judaism, IIRC, was sometimes
considered a form of atheism. After all, it (or some of it)
entailed rejection of the gods and all physical
representations thereof.
One of the most interesting early Christian statements
bearing on our immediate topic is 1 Corinthians 8:4-6. Check
it out.
What do you think of the idea of a God who winds up the
universe and let's it run on its own? That idea is sometimes
associated with deism.
--
Norm
umarc
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3807527.stm
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3807441.stm
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3518558.stm
>(Note "IBM is already using Linux on more than 10,000 desktop computers in
>its own offices." in that last one.)
Interesting. I appear to have a selective memory problem. It wouldn't be
the first time.
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 139 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes
David Matthewman
> Interesting. I appear to have a selective memory problem. It wouldn't be
> the first time.
It's certainly possible you heard the BBC say something like that, but I'm
pretty sure it would have been regarded as a slip-up. Mind you, I'm not
claiming that it's standard UK usage either. As I said earlier, opinions
are divided - it's just that I know the BBC used to be firmly on the
'corporations are singular entities' side of that divide, having worked on
an ex-BBC magazine (Acorn User) that still adhered to the BBC style guide.
--
David Matthewman
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
> [snip]
> (re: the Parent, the Child, and the Holy Ghost)
>
>
>>Well, of course they're not pronouns. My thought was that a
>>huge number of the masculine pronouns in many English
>>translations of the Bible are rendered as masculines only
>>for the sake of English and not because they are reflecting
>>masculines in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.
>
>
> Hmm. In Arabic everything and everyone is either masculine or
> feminine, and in reading the Qur'an one has to decide in each case
> whether, for instance, "muslim" in a particular context means a
> Muslim man or a Muslim person.
In many heavily inflected languages, such as Greek, subjects
of verbs, including pronouns, are often dropped, being
implied. However, in Greek, if person in general is meant,
whether male or female, the masculine pronoun can be used.
See Smyth, Greek Grammar (1956): §1015.
Is Arabic different?
> [snip]
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>
>>>> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> How do you figure?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Saints, my boy, saints;
>
>
> That would be an argument, I suppose, that Roman Catholic and Eastern
> Orthodox Christians are polylatrous (to coin a term), although I think
> that most of their theologians would make a sharp distinction between
> praying to and honoring saints and the worship of God -- kind of like
> the distinction between iconography and idolatry.
>
Very close to my point.
>
>> but I can't aregue
>
Spell or argue or agree? Why pick an argument when a little analytical
reading will show that you are nearly agreeing with me?
>
> There's a word that the English language could adopt for something.
>
>
>> that some old deranged Catholics also pray to their saints, instead of
>> just to God, but my Catholic fiancee did not.
>
I knew an old catholic woman like that somewhat. Her house, in which I
rented a room, was so loaded with statues of saints it almost was a
hazard, but when I caught her with them, she was only asking their
advice, not praying to them.
>
> I've heard the theory -- I don't remember where -- that the history of
> polygamy follows the history of polytheism, that is, that as polytheism
> was narrowed down to monotheism so polygamy was narrowed down to
> monogamy and that this was no accident. Monogamy would be an analogy for
> God and Israel or Christ and his Church.
>
A stretch.
> There's a plausibility factor in that theory. There's correspondence (or
> coincidence, if you prefer) and bits of evidence that can be assembled;
> and some people think just that way, patterning their lives after
> metaphysical notions of divine relationships. However, I don't see any
> essential connection between monotheism and monogamy. Nor, would I
> suppose, do many Moslems.
>
Islam is the most monotheistic of religions, yet they have polygamy of
course, and how would one explain a religious link to some polyandrous
Tibetan tribes living under the direct teaching of nature?
>
>> Kabbalistic Judaism has crept into the rest of the religion,
>
>
> One of my most recent acquisitions on Kabbalah is Opening the Tanya, by
> Adin Steinsaltz (2003). Hmm, polytheism not evident in a quick scan.
>
> Care to elaborate on polytheism and Kabbalah?
>
>
I don't know the Kabbalah much. But I can between atheism and polygamy!
But not now.
>> if you care to look at the shelves in a Jewish book store.
>
>
> I find that bookstore shelves are a pretty good indicator of religious
> trends in the broad sweep. They're pretty poor when it comes to those
> small feverish niches that may someday, for better or worse, transform
> the world.
>
Such as Spock's "Peace and be well" sign, which comes from Ukrainian and
Byelorussian Kabbalistis cults he saw as a child.
>
>> On the other hand I could send you a dozen Jewish books my Mother has
>> sent to me. They are full of handwritten encomiums to me, which
>> prevents me from donating them to a temple. I was planning to recycle
>> them when she died, after which she could not visit, but at 86 she's
>> as healthy as I am.
>
>
> As I've said before, I don't think the temple would mind. As for your
> mother, I haven't a clue.
>
>
>> My opinion is based on much reading, and many serious religious
>> scholars agree with the statement.
>
>
> Hmmm.
>
>
>> When I make the effort to read, I attempt to understand it. Once I
>> hit a page that's patent nonsense the book goes in the recycling pile
>> (we have paper recycling in Baltimore).
>
>
> Then your library must be extremely small. But you say it's not.
> Disjunction, disjunction!
I haven't read it all.
>
> There are various ways of reading a book, among them (a) for
> informational content and (b) for documentation. I find many books to be
> useful for documentation of certain kinds of nonsense. As for the
> content approach, often you have to wade through much nonsense and
> mediocrity to find gems.
Not really worth it to me.
>
> By spirit, I'm just not a book burner. Although I've often thought that
> I could heat my home in the winter by burning the books left over at
> library sales or, better, by burning the trash that makes up the vast
> majority of publishing lists these days. (I heat by wood stove.) I
> wonder if that would increase dioxin levels on my property.
>
>
>> My best friend at Caltech is Israeli (his existence is owed purely to
>> chance and a good deed). So he was a pretty secular Jew. We have the
>> tendency to float over unto hysterics when we get together. The women
>> look on in concern, as they are below the level at which we are joking.
>
>
> Most of my humor only certain people pick up on. And then it seems like
> we're on an almost constant jocular wavelength. Of course, I say to my
> kids, "That was a joke." And they say, "It wasn't funny."
>
>
>> I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
>> it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way
>> is a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious,
>
>
> Because of "The Golem"?
>
>
It's effect was minor, I think. He enjoyed Rocky Horror much more.
>> can read Hebrew backwards and forwards, and much Jewish literature,
>> such as Maimonides in the original,
>
>
> I'm envious.
>
>
>> and would never skip a Friday evening, as he used to do. I found
>> going through the house looking for breadcrumbs on Pesach to be the
>> most baffling and tedious things I've ever done in my life, besides
>> memorizing lists of uncommon integrals.
>>
>> TMI: I dozed off in the middle of Dave Letterman tonight and did not
>> get to see Patti Scalfa,
>
>
> Patti Scialfa? Looks like she has a heavy TV schedule coming up:
>
> http://www.pattiscialfa.net/
>
>
Thanks for catching the typo.
>> for whom I'd fight The Boss to the death.
>
>
> I have a feeling that if you knocked off Bruce, Patti might not like you
> for it.
That would not fit the mammalian female pattern.
>
> Makes me wonder how capture marriage ever worked. Gentle as I am, if I
> were a woman and some guy were part of a group that killed my husband
> and sons and he stole me away as his part of the booty, he might well be
> found some morning with a nail through his head. At the very least, his
> nest would soon be empty of me.
>
Sort of a Judith and Holofernes, eh?
>
>> I had a strange dream. I had left a house, don't know whose, carrying
>> nothing, not wanting anything, perhaps because my wife told me this
>> evening that I was depressed, whether I knew it or not. I had a
>> fellow traveller. We were at the table on a Friday evening writing our
>> journals, when he suddenly screamed, jumped out of his chair, opened
>> his suitcase to retrieve a black hat with built-in braids, a dickey,
>> and a prayer shawl and headed for the bedroom in despair.
>
>
> We've spoken before of fellow travelers.
>
>
>> The world invades my dreams and my dreams invade my world, setting up
>> a false structure. For instance, my picture of my hair is now that it
>> is parted in the middle until I get to a mirror when I discover that
>> it is parted on the left. All from a dream that I do not remember.
>> What determines what we really think?
>
>
> Good question. And another is: Is there really such a thing as sanity?
> What would it be?
>
>
No. In recent commentary on Thomas Eagleton on the Times channel, one
woman said that if we were all subjected to such examination, we would
be put away. We can all find ourselves in the big book psychiatrists
use to put people away. My great love was thrown in mental hospitals
over ten times under drugs and restraint, but never when I was with her.
>> Despite my refusal of books that jump the fence and eat the weeds, all
>> the book shelves are full, and there are several piles of good books
>> looking for a space, and my wife is demanding that it is again time
>> that we cull my books strictly. She will allow no more bookcases,
>> which is wise, since I'm 62. When we moved from LA (no recycling), I
>> took 3 SWs full to dumpsters in the dark of night.
>
>
> Whenever you say that, I'm thinking, "Send them my way, send them my
> way!" But my house is already stuffed with books. Oddly that doesn't
> keep me from acquiring more, though.
>
>
>> Of course I miss many of them,
>
>
> I've given away or traded, occasionally even sold off many thousands of
> books and often have regrets that I no longer have this or that title.
> The rare items I miss are next to impossible to replace, that is, within
> my meager means.
>
>
>> even if they were trashy - as in how did the Lady Morgan Stanley get
>> the protagonist to lie across the bottom of the bed like a dog until
>> he was "needed". I'd order the book again but have forgotten its
>> title and author.
>
>
> Doesn't ring a bell with me.
>
>
>> And what was the JD McDonald "The Deep Purple Sky" all about? And did
>> Travis McGee die with his author?
>>
>> Sorry if this was not responsive in your eyes, but it was in mine.
>
>
> One responsive line's enough, and I think you had more than one. The
> rest is gravy.
>
>
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>>>> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> How do you figure?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Saints, my boy, saints;
>>
>>
>>
>> That would be an argument, I suppose, that Roman Catholic and Eastern
>> Orthodox Christians are polylatrous (to coin a term), although I think
>> that most of their theologians would make a sharp distinction between
>> praying to and honoring saints and the worship of God -- kind of like
>> the distinction between iconography and idolatry.
>>
>
> Very close to my point.
>
>>
>>> but I can't aregue
>>
>>
> Spell or argue or agree?
That would be a good definition for "aregue": Can't either
argue or agree.
> Why pick an argument when a little analytical
> reading will show that you are nearly agreeing with me?
Actually, was just looking for clarity as to your point.
If "saints" is your point, I see it. (Being in a Protestant
tradition that's easy for me.) However, I think a better
case can be made on other grounds.
> [snip]
>> I've heard the theory -- I don't remember where -- that the history of
>> polygamy follows the history of polytheism, that is, that as
>> polytheism was narrowed down to monotheism so polygamy was narrowed
>> down to monogamy and that this was no accident. Monogamy would be an
>> analogy for God and Israel or Christ and his Church.
>>
>
> A stretch.
Yup, but I don't dismiss it out of hand.
>> There's a plausibility factor in that theory. There's correspondence
>> (or coincidence, if you prefer) and bits of evidence that can be
>> assembled; and some people think just that way, patterning their lives
>> after metaphysical notions of divine relationships. However, I don't
>> see any essential connection between monotheism and monogamy. Nor,
>> would I suppose, do many Moslems.
>>
>
> Islam is the most monotheistic of religions, yet they have polygamy of
> course, and how would one explain a religious link to some polyandrous
> Tibetan tribes living under the direct teaching of nature?
The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
>> Care to elaborate on polytheism and Kabbalah?
>>
>>
> I don't know the Kabbalah much. But I can between atheism and polygamy!
> But not now.
Huh?
> Such as Spock's "Peace and be well" sign, which comes from Ukrainian and
> Byelorussian Kabbalistis cults he saw as a child.
Isn't that, "Live long and prosper"? _\V/
I sign it more easily with my left hand. :-)
I don't know anything about a relationship to those cults
you mention. Perhaps I'm on the wrong track.
Or was your blood sugar low when you wrote that and the
preceding line?
>>> When I make the effort to read, I attempt to understand it. Once I
>>> hit a page that's patent nonsense the book goes in the recycling pile
>>> (we have paper recycling in Baltimore).
>>
>>
>>
>> Then your library must be extremely small. But you say it's not.
>> Disjunction, disjunction!
>
>
> I haven't read it all.
Ahh! That makes sense then. I haven't read all of my books
either. Although some I've read several times.
Actually I use my books as tools much more than I use them
for reading through. Even when I read them cover to cover,
doing so is often project related. Only occasionally do I
read for entertainment.
>> There are various ways of reading a book, among them (a) for
>> informational content and (b) for documentation. I find many books to
>> be useful for documentation of certain kinds of nonsense. As for the
>> content approach, often you have to wade through much nonsense and
>> mediocrity to find gems.
>
>
> Not really worth it to me.
I propose that, as an expansion of your approach and your
sensibilities, it just might be. But that's as far as I'll
go towards a coax.
>>> I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken by
>>> it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a way
>>> is a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious,
>>
>>
>>
>> Because of "The Golem"?
>>
>>
> It's effect was minor, I think. He enjoyed Rocky Horror much more.
So what booted him into religion?
>>> TMI: I dozed off in the middle of Dave Letterman tonight and did not
>>> get to see Patti Scalfa,
>>
>>
>>
>> Patti Scialfa? Looks like she has a heavy TV schedule coming up:
>>
>> http://www.pattiscialfa.net/
>>
>>
>
> Thanks for catching the typo.
You're welcome. It seems the typo is common, since I had
many hits using it on Google.
>>> for whom I'd fight The Boss to the death.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have a feeling that if you knocked off Bruce, Patti might not like
>> you for it.
>
>
> That would not fit the mammalian female pattern.
I hope other readers, especially females, will jump in here
and respond to that.
>> Makes me wonder how capture marriage ever worked. Gentle as I am, if I
>> were a woman and some guy were part of a group that killed my husband
>> and sons and he stole me away as his part of the booty, he might well
>> be found some morning with a nail through his head. At the very least,
>> his nest would soon be empty of me.
>>
>
> Sort of a Judith and Holofernes, eh?
You just surprised me. I thought the Bible you read didn't
have the book of Judith.
Yes, Judith was in mind, although she didn't drive a spike
through Holofernes' head. She cut it off (Judith 13:6-8).
>>> [snip] What determines what we really think?
>>
>>
>>
>> Good question. And another is: Is there really such a thing as sanity?
>> What would it be?
>>
>>
> No. In recent commentary on Thomas Eagleton on the Times channel, one
> woman said that if we were all subjected to such examination, we would
> be put away. We can all find ourselves in the big book psychiatrists
> use to put people away.
It's a psychological cliché that everyone's neurotic. But I
wonder if society itself isn't a form of insanity, kind of
like a mind-controlling cult.
And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by
their own structure and by interaction with various
phenomenon, so that they cannot see reality as it is. Oops,
I just stumbled into a thesis something like that of the
Matrix series. But then, do Einsteinian relativity and
string theory say any different?
What did you say, something to the effect that your
experience of the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum is so
simple it's difficult to grasp and impossible to express in
words? When it comes to the ultimate simplicity underlying
the cosmos, we are all, most of the time, puzzlepates.
> My great love was thrown in mental hospitals
> over ten times under drugs and restraint, but never when I was with her.
Which woman was that?
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
COULD THIS NOT BE TRIMMED? WE ARE NOT DRAFTING A SCHOLARLY ARTICLE HERE.
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>>
>>>> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> umarc wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> It would make me suspect the original text had "Elohim" for "God"
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> the translator took it as plural (which originally it may have
>>>>>>> been, btw, since "eloh" = Arabic "ilah" (god) and "-im" looks like
>>>>>>> a plural ending).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> How do you figure?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, the commandments about not worshipping other gods seem to me to
>>>> imply that the other gods are real.
>>>
>>>
>>>
I have seen all this before in prior posts, not that I don't mind
getting a refresher course in the nature of hochgottglaube and
kathenotheism, in case at 62 I get on the national spelling bee (could
you please use both in one sentence?):
Did the Corinthians ever write back? Had I been one I'd have blistered
his butt.
>
> What do you think of the idea of a God who winds up the universe and
> let's it run on its own? That idea is sometimes associated with deism.
>
I've answered this already at the most fundamental philosophical level.
jimbat
umarc
>In many heavily inflected languages, such as Greek, subjects
>of verbs, including pronouns, are often dropped, being
>implied. However, in Greek, if person in general is meant,
>whether male or female, the masculine pronoun can be used.
>See Smyth, Greek Grammar (1956): §1015.
>Is Arabic different?
The short answer is no, not really.
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 138 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes
Norm
> [snip]
> I have seen all this before in prior posts,
Not mine.
> not that I don't mind
> getting a refresher course in the nature of hochgottglaube and
> kathenotheism, in case at 62 I get on the national spelling bee (could
> you please use both in one sentence?):
Hochgottglaube is term sometimes used to describe Israelite
religion, kathenotheism to describe some forms of Hinduism.
> Did the Corinthians ever write back? Had I been one I'd have blistered
> his butt.
Evidently Paul did hear back and responded, in mellower
tones, with 2 Corinthians.
>> What do you think of the idea of a God who winds up the universe and
>> let's it run on its own? That idea is sometimes associated with deism.
>>
> I've answered this already at the most fundamental philosophical level.
As you like.
--
Norm
umarc
>The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
"Say: I seek shelter with the Lord of people,
the King of people,
the God of people,
from the whispering of al-Khannaas[1]
who whispers in the hearts of people,
be they of mankind or jinn."
-- Surat al-Naas (my translation)
This sentence, the very last of the Qur'an, makes the jinn out to be
mere creatures, as vulnerable to the world's temptations as the rest
of us.
[1] al-Khannaas: "he who withdraws [when the name of God is mentioned]",
presumably Satan.
umar
--
"Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side
As the world on Truth's current glides by."
-- Samuel Gilman
rm -rf /luser/bush 138 days, 11 hours, 8 minutes
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> Hochgottglaube is term sometimes used to describe Israelite
> religion, kathenotheism to describe some forms of Hinduism.
Kathenotheism also describes some forms of ancient Egyptian religious
practice as well as some of its modern reconstructions; it's a useful
word to have kicking around.
- Darkhawk, stashing it somewhere
--
Darkhawk - H. A. Nicoll - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
They are one person, they are two alone
They are three together, they are for each other
- "Helplessly Hoping", Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
>
>
> "Say: I seek shelter with the Lord of people,
> the King of people,
> the God of people,
> from the whispering of al-Khannaas[1]
> who whispers in the hearts of people,
> be they of mankind or jinn."
> -- Surat al-Naas (my translation)
Cool!
> This sentence, the very last of the Qur'an, makes the jinn out to be
> mere creatures, as vulnerable to the world's temptations as the rest
> of us.
Yes. The history of the ideas of angel, daimon, and god is
varied, complex, and overlapping; and I wouldn't be
surprised if djinn fit somewhere in it, though I've never
researched djinn.
> [1] al-Khannaas: "he who withdraws [when the name of God is mentioned]",
> presumably Satan.
--
Norm
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>Hochgottglaube is term sometimes used to describe Israelite
>>religion, kathenotheism to describe some forms of Hinduism.
>
>
> Kathenotheism also describes some forms of ancient Egyptian religious
> practice as well as some of its modern reconstructions; it's a useful
> word to have kicking around.
>
> - Darkhawk, stashing it somewhere
>
>
Glad to be of service. :-)
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
[much attribution to be deleted below]
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>>
>>>
>>>>>> Jews and Christians are still polytheistic, but monolatrous.
>>>>>
>>>>> How do you figure?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Saints, my boy, saints;
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That would be an argument, I suppose, that Roman Catholic and Eastern
>>> Orthodox Christians are polylatrous (to coin a term), although I
>>> think that most of their theologians would make a sharp distinction
>>> between praying to and honoring saints and the worship of God -- kind
>>> of like the distinction between iconography and idolatry.
>>>
>>
>> Very close to my point.
>>
>>>
>>>> but I can't aregue
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Spell or argue or agree?
>
>
> That would be a good definition for "aregue": Can't either argue or agree.
>
Good recovery!
>
>> Why pick an argument when a little analytical reading will show that
>> you are nearly agreeing with me?
>
>
> Actually, was just looking for clarity as to your point.
You mean about the funtion of saints on RC, and demons, dybbuks and so
forth in K? One of the things that fascinated me in the brief TV series
"Twin Peaks" (1990), both incarnations being played by Ray Wise. The
series, by David Lynch, turned out to be a cheat. A lovely database
specialist who also liked the series thought that I was funning her
about the dybbuk, so I brought her my Ultra-orthodox Rabbi Esther, who
after some discussion convinced my fellow watcher that it was indeed a
dybbuk. But Esther refused to watch the series because it was too
secular, on the advice of her High Rabbi in Jerusalem. I guess he gets
to see everything, like Hugh Hefner. It was the strangest program I've
ever seen on TV, even stranger than the movie "Blue Velvet", or David
Letterman.
I call Esther my rabbi, because we had many fascinating conversations
and debates at the Space Telescope when we were supposed to be working
or her on the horn to Jerusalem, and because when my family drives me up
the wall and I'm about to pull a Chinggis Khan, she will give me at
least 30 minutes to talk me down with a fat dose of family wisdom.
She's zaftig, but can never be married in her faith because she loves
her career, so she has chosen her career. I suggested 14 years ago that
she needn'd get married and would be welcome in our house a la Hagar,
but she cracked up and said that her High Rabbi would disapprove, mostly
as our house was about as far from kosher as could be imagined, not even
the dust mites' being blessed. It seems that the High Rabbi was very
liberal about sex. After that our conversations became more open, and
she made me more aware of her moods so that I could lend her VCRs of
romantic series I had taped that would not horrify her.
>
> If "saints" is your point, I see it. (Being in a Protestant tradition
> that's easy for me.) However, I think a better case can be made on other
> grounds.
>
>
Well, the Protestants have almost as much to answer for as the
Catholics. Who scraped off the skin of Hypatia in the streets of
Alexandria? On the one hand I want to blame Rome, but on the other I'm
not sure they had any control of the mad Christian mobs down there yet.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I've heard the theory -- I don't remember where -- that the history
>>> of polygamy follows the history of polytheism, that is, that as
>>> polytheism was narrowed down to monotheism so polygamy was narrowed
>>> down to monogamy and that this was no accident. Monogamy would be an
>>> analogy for God and Israel or Christ and his Church.
>>>
>>
>> A stretch.
>
>
> Yup, but I don't dismiss it out of hand.
>
Try "After Polygamy was Made a Sin", by Cairncross. No matter how much
condemnation one has piled up against Christians, this book puts the
icing on it.
>
>>> There's a plausibility factor in that theory. There's correspondence
>>> (or coincidence, if you prefer) and bits of evidence that can be
>>> assembled; and some people think just that way, patterning their
>>> lives after metaphysical notions of divine relationships. However, I
>>> don't see any essential connection between monotheism and monogamy.
>>> Nor, would I suppose, do many Moslems.
>>>
>>
>> Islam is the most monotheistic of religions, yet they have polygamy of
>> course, and how would one explain a religious link to some polyandrous
>> Tibetan tribes living under the direct teaching of nature?
>
>
> The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
He's just Santa Claus. Remember Bo Derek.
>
>
>>> Care to elaborate on polytheism and Kabbalah?
>>>
>>>
>> I don't know the Kabbalah much. But I can between atheism and
>> polygamy! But not now.
>
>
> Huh?
Problems with English?
My goy impression of K teachings and associated society is that they
encourage very close mongamous family life, with as much fucking as
possible, except during menses week, and a lot of singing and dancing.
It's attractive to me, though I can neither sing nor dance, but I take
orders from no one, even if he is the Rebbe Schneerson, bless his bones.
What they do after demarche, I do not know. My rebbe is as far from
Hasids as can be imagined, but she understands them as well as she does
The Economist. She thought that my taking my semi-secular Israeli buddy
to see "The Golem", which she had seen, was hilarious.
Now, TMI, how my Israeli friend came to be. His almost totally
disappeared family lived in Poland. Long before he was born his father
took his then family in 1938 on a motoring trip in the mountains in the
south of Poland (where the Pope used to take his students hiking), and
saw a broken-down car on the side of the road with a very frustrated
driver. It took about a millisecond to discover he was German, but he
was wearing civvies. Arieh's father spent an hour or two fixing his
engine and front suspension, while his family was ragging: Hey, Daddy
let's go!, or however it's said in Yiddish.
Later in late 1939 an SS officer was going down a line of men (families
already being separated and his for doom) selecting those for death
camps and those for work camps, only a few months better. He stopped in
front of Arieh's father and said, "Don't I know you? Did you fix my
car?". "Ja, mein Herr." The officer took him out of the line and
assigned him to work that guaranteed his survival. On geting to Israel
(another complicated matter) he married another survivor, and they had
Arieh. The father died about 5 years ago.
I was a rather aloof and arrogant student before I met him, but through
him I understood the microscopic self-help of doing a good turn, and not
to stop. Most of the persons I have given serious help to went on to
self-destruction anyway. I'm sure some feel the same about me. Anyway,
Arieh is the only really good friend since my best friend of all, a bush
pilot in Alaska, who died at 26 in 1966.
>
>
>> Such as Spock's "Peace and be well" sign, which comes from Ukrainian
>> and Byelorussian Kabbalistis cults he saw as a child.
>
>
> Isn't that, "Live long and prosper"? _\V/
>
Right, but I haven't watched Star Trek in many decades. My translation
from the Yiddish may be equally effective (a phrase that rings
ironically in my ears from a referee's report).
> I sign it more easily with my left hand. :-)
I can't do it at all with my right, as I have only the first bone of my
pinky over there, and it has a mind of its own.
>
> I don't know anything about a relationship to those cults you mention.
> Perhaps I'm on the wrong track.
>
> Or was your blood sugar low when you wrote that and the preceding line?
>
>
No diagnosis ever of low blood sugar, since I have enough fat, and drink
lots of water to drain off the ketones. I have no pancreatic disorder,
proved by recent blood tests and ultrasound. My doctor was looking for
signs of self-abuse, to abuse me with, but to her great frustration she
found none. My blood sugar has been too high at times in the past, not
now, as when I had a scheduled physical at UCLA Hospital just before
noon one day 25 years ago. My triglycerides came out at 450, the
highest by far the resident had ever seen. She said that level, if
continued, would kill me. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
"Well, I was programming this morning and drank three fifths of $.79
sweet wines." <Rescue! She thought. Treatment!> But I'd have none of
it, and asked her home. She checked my blood alcohol, and said I'd have
to sit around for 1-2 hours before she would release me. "How did you
even get here?" "Oh, I'm a professor, and my wife runs the computers
for the Engineering Division. I know the way and I'm a very careful
driver now", showing the missing pinky on my right hand. She was not
reassured. When I left, I told her that I hoped I was her most unusual
case of the year, and she smiled and agreed. Never got her home, though.
>>>> When I make the effort to read, I attempt to understand it. Once I
>>>> hit a page that's patent nonsense the book goes in the recycling
>>>> pile (we have paper recycling in Baltimore).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Then your library must be extremely small. But you say it's not.
>>> Disjunction, disjunction!
>>
>>
And often if the rest of the book so far has been enlightening, I'm
willing to sit on it for a while in case of an odd case of
enlightenment. Many books are unfinished, since it takes me only 1/5th
of the pages to clue me into the rest. Writers should get more mystery
training from the likes of Patricia Cornwell, bless her lesbian bones.
This does not work for the Bible, or the Talmud.
>>
>> I haven't read it all.
>
>
> Ahh! That makes sense then. I haven't read all of my books either.
> Although some I've read several times.
>
Besides the virtually worthless escapism LotR, it's been Middlemarch,
Daniel Deronda, Romola, and Wilson Follett's "Modern American Usage",
for multiple reads. That does not include Lunt's "Fundamentals of
Russian" or "Uchebnik Russkova Yazika". Otherwise a book is lucky to
get a once. In school K-12, I harly read any, fabricating all my book
reports.
> Actually I use my books as tools much more than I use them for reading
> through. Even when I read them cover to cover, doing so is often project
> related. Only occasionally do I read for entertainment.
>
>
You can put a copper plate on one side and effectively do some home
repairs. Nowadays my home repairs are most effectively performed by
staying out of the way of my wife. I have rebuilt two VW engines 30
years ago from the inside out, using only one book: ...Compleat Idiot".
I even carried one 200+ lb engine from the back porch to the car in
the driveway with only two hands, and didn't even wind up in the
hospital. Whole lives disappear in the rear-view mirror. My wife
admonishes me sharply against remembering them. She thinks that at 62
with a triple bypass and some imperfect habits, I should be focussing on
the future. But my past was so much more vivid. My first two pets were
goats.
>>> There are various ways of reading a book, among them (a) for
>>> informational content and (b) for documentation. I find many books to
>>> be useful for documentation of certain kinds of nonsense. As for the
>>> content approach, often you have to wade through much nonsense and
>>> mediocrity to find gems.
>>
>>
>>
>> Not really worth it to me.
>
>
> I propose that, as an expansion of your approach and your sensibilities,
> it just might be. But that's as far as I'll go towards a coax.
>
>
Well, I *do* have the Oxford Companion to the Bible, which is worthless
for looking anything up in, but a pleasant dip from time to time to
broaden my 5-yr-old appreciation. How do you find your sources? A vast
memory, a big onion-skin Concordance, or a search engine?
>>>> I took him to a movie I had seen, "The Golem". He was much shaken
>>>> by it, since he had a slight knowledge of the Kabbalah, and he in a
>>>> way is a survivor of the Holocaust. Now he is much more religious,
>>>
>>>
>>> Because of "The Golem"?
>>>
>>>
>> Its effect was minor, I think. He enjoyed Rocky Horror much more.
>
>
> So what booted him into religion?
>
A social group at U of Chic, and maybe his wife.
>
>>>> TMI: I dozed off in the middle of Dave Letterman tonight and did not
>>>> get to see Patti Scalfa,
>>>
>>>
>>> Patti Scialfa? Looks like she has a heavy TV schedule coming up:
>>>
>>> http://www.pattiscialfa.net/
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for catching the typo.
>
>
> You're welcome. It seems the typo is common, since I had many hits using
> it on Google.
>
>
>>>> for whom I'd fight The Boss to the death.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have a feeling that if you knocked off Bruce, Patti might not like
>>> you for it.
>>
>>
>>
>> That would not fit the mammalian female pattern.
>
>
But Bruce would kill me, and so might accept me as a friend. A woman I
love lives in Freehold, and has met members of the band.
> I hope other readers, especially females, will jump in here and respond
> to that.
>
>
>>> Makes me wonder how capture marriage ever worked. Gentle as I am, if
>>> I were a woman and some guy were part of a group that killed my
>>> husband and sons and he stole me away as his part of the booty, he
>>> might well be found some morning with a nail through his head. At the
>>> very least, his nest would soon be empty of me.
Sex quickly adapts to irrevocable power. Not that I have any. I was
just being a scared gorilla pounding my chest.
>>>
>>
>> Sort of a Judith and Holofernes, eh?
>
>
> You just surprised me. I thought the Bible you read didn't have the book
> of Judith.
>
You are right; I had forgotten. It is the painting I remember so
vividly. Esther would have been a Judith. So where is Judith?
> Yes, Judith was in mind, although she didn't drive a spike through
> Holofernes' head. She cut it off (Judith 13:6-8).
>
>
The legend of the painting explains it. Secreting a hammer of those
times into bed must have been more risky.
>>>> [snip] What determines what we really think?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Good question. And another is: Is there really such a thing as
>>> sanity? What would it be?
>>>
>>>
>> No. In recent commentary on Thomas Eagleton on the Times channel, one
>> woman said that if we were all subjected to such examination, we would
>> be put away. We can all find ourselves in the big book psychiatrists
>> use to put people away.
>
She stated it too weakly. My Liars' Club seems to have been disbanded
by the parents to my great disappointment. It was started by a Hannah,
who then moved awaw: "Tell me more lies!" So to the remaining kinder I
explained that Hannah was a genius, and everyone should have been told
many lies as children as part of a club with no retribution from
grownups, since all grown-ups, even parents, tell you lies, including
newspeople on TV. I mentioned some from my past, which shocked them, as
the kids are Catholic, and my mother linked them with Satan. I told
them that that lie made me think more than twice about what any grown-up
says to me. I also said that the best way to understand things was to
see through all the lies they were told.
So they made up lies, but I'm hard to lie to, but an accomplished liar
myself. Once I said in the fall that there would be no winter that
winter. Oldest boy: "BS there is always a winter." Since there wasn't
that winter I asked him in the spring. He pretendeed not to remember a
thing, but it was clear he was wary of my magical powers. And there
were many other things. After my triple bypass surgery in April I wendt
out in summer to sit on the curb with Achilles, and they quickly noticed
the huge long scars on my inner right leg, "What happened to you??" I
said that because I was very, very old, my heart had fallen down into my
leg and had to be gotten out and put back in my chest. Both parents are
MD/PhDs at Hopkins, so the kids came after me the next day, "You lied to
us!" "You're in the Liars' Club, and don't you now a lot more now than
you did before?" "Yes." "Would your parents have ever told you heart
surgery on their own?" "Well, no." QED I think it was their discovery
that I'm an atheist that may have put the kibosh on the Club.
>
> It's a psychological cliché that everyone's neurotic. But I wonder if
> society itself isn't a form of insanity, kind of like a mind-controlling
> cult.
The NGEO channell has a program called "taboo" that I can't watch much
of, preferring the NY Review of Books.
Society makes gross mistakes, and doesn't give a damn. I recently spent
a day and a half in jail for being attacked from the rear by a violent
paranoid pathological liar, I have pics of the scars to prove it. It
was a strange evening light and I was looking for good pictures. He
came upon me silently from the rear and then started screaming "I'm
going to kill you, asshole." He had this delusion that I was trying to
steal his 35-yr-old girlfriend from him, my being 62 and long happily
married, not a likely story. It's true that she gave me her phone
number and invided me over, before meeting him, knowing I was married,
but I never called her, nor came over. Anyway, he told the police such
a tall tale, defying sence in anyone with an IQ above 80, that they
arrested me as well and charged me with assault, though I had the scars,
was just walking up the sidewalk and was a couple of doors from his
girlfriend's house. He was determined to destroy my camera, and I was
determined that he would not, but he was much younger, bigger, and
stronger than I. (He told the police I had attacked him. Ha. Ha.) He
had been threatening my life for months and had assaulted me a few times
before with little success. He managed only to destroy the lens of my
camera, which was spread over a 20'x40' strewn field.
I wasnot allowed to see the report he gave on scene to the cops, but in
prison a magistrate examined me about my criminal history (none), and my
past. All my education at Harvard and in Chem and Astro grad schools I
described to him in detail. Apparently he's never talked to anyone like
me, though he was polite, but then wrote a report saying that I was a
danger to society and should not be allowed on the streets. Assuming I
was some homeless liar off the street, which I certainly didn't look
like, he set what he thought was the impossible bond of $30k. Well we
could handle that duck soup. My life was threatened by a police
sargeant when I asked if I could call my wife, a guaranteed right that
had been denied me since I had been arrested. I had a head injury, so
avoided being put into general population. By far the nicest, most
honest and trustworthy, caring persons in the prison were the prisoners.
I could have made most of them friends, were I not wary of being
robbed. I was wary of going into the general population, mostly because
of misleading TV programs, but I thought I'd have better luck in the
medical "ward", even with everyone puking and beatng off next to me on
the benches.
Some prisoners yelled out together,"Take care of this guy. He has a
bleeding head wound!", until a very cold nurse emerged, threw away my
Islamic-looking bandage, put on at a hospital after I got 11 stitches,
dabbed at me a bit and sent me back out with utter contempt.
This is not a case of "your tax dollars at work", since Balto has the
highest taxes in the area, but a sick culture of humiliation, contempt,
and utter unwillingness to listen. The magistrate asked me to provide
him with documents to support my assertions, though he knew perfectly
well that all had been confiscated or left at home. In fact by the
advice of the arresting office when I was in hospital I left my pocket
contents, my watch and wedding ring with my wife before going in, or, he
said, "You may never see them again." As with Saddam Hussein, there is
nothing a native can do about these things, no matter how reputable -
they always have a story. Keep your head down.
When my wife made bail and had a release order from the court, none of
the police or prison guards claimed to have any knowledge of my
whereabouts, or even that I had ever been there. Eventually I was
tossed out on the street, no call home, minus the two quarters I took in
with me to assure myself a call home. The cops had stole even them. I
hitched a ride from a couple of vultures who wanted $20.
>
> And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by their own
> structure and by interaction with various phenomenon, so that they
> cannot see reality as it is. Oops, I just stumbled into a thesis
> something like that of the Matrix series. But then, do Einsteinian
> relativity and string theory say any different?
>
A different matter. The brain is always forming false theoretical
concepts. I have explained this before. But better, you might read
"Philosophy in the Flesh."
> What did you say, something to the effect that your experience of the
> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum is so simple it's difficult to
> grasp and impossible to express in words? When it comes to the ultimate
> simplicity underlying the cosmos, we are all, most of the time,
> puzzlepates.
>
>
Not quite. I was in the differentiated aesthetic continuum, but only
sensed the Void that was behind it, and that is what at 11 scared me -
otherwise I'd have lain there all day, until my mother came and found
me. I can say what it is not, but not what it is. As for the Void,
words are incompatible, as they are pure theoretic, whereas the Void
(UAC) is purely experiential, but even that neutral phrase is
inaccurate, as it involves words, and you have no existence to
experience it with.
>> My great love was thrown in mental hospitals over ten times under
>> drugs and restraint, but never when I was with her.
>
>
> Which woman was that?
>
She is too famous for me to make any specific reference, and her husband
is even more famous. Anyway, what we had between us has vanished, and
she tells me has never recurred, and will never.
jimbat
Norm
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>> Actually, was just looking for clarity as to your point.
>
>
> You mean about the funtion of saints on RC, and demons, dybbuks and so
> forth in K?
I mean about saints and polytheism.
K = Kabbalah?
> One of the things that fascinated me in the brief TV series
> "Twin Peaks" (1990), both incarnations being played by Ray Wise. The
> series, by David Lynch, turned out to be a cheat. A lovely database
> specialist who also liked the series thought that I was funning her
> about the dybbuk, so I brought her my Ultra-orthodox Rabbi Esther, who
> after some discussion convinced my fellow watcher that it was indeed a
> dybbuk. But Esther refused to watch the series because it was too
> secular, on the advice of her High Rabbi in Jerusalem. I guess he gets
> to see everything, like Hugh Hefner. It was the strangest program I've
> ever seen on TV, even stranger than the movie "Blue Velvet", or David
> Letterman.
I didn't watch "Twin Peaks" because it was too annoying.
> I call Esther my rabbi, because we had many fascinating conversations
> and debates at the Space Telescope when we were supposed to be working
> or her on the horn to Jerusalem, and because when my family drives me up
> the wall and I'm about to pull a Chinggis Khan, she will give me at
> least 30 minutes to talk me down with a fat dose of family wisdom.
>
> She's zaftig,
Pleasantly plump?
> but can never be married in her faith because she loves
> her career, so she has chosen her career.
Not all rabbinic authorities agree that women are subject to
the command, "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).
> I suggested 14 years ago that
> she needn'd get married and would be welcome in our house a la Hagar,
> but she cracked up and said that her High Rabbi would disapprove, mostly
> as our house was about as far from kosher as could be imagined, not even
> the dust mites' being blessed. It seems that the High Rabbi was very
> liberal about sex.
In what way? Pro polygyny?
> After that our conversations became more open, and
> she made me more aware of her moods so that I could lend her VCRs of
> romantic series I had taped that would not horrify her.
Some souls are keenly sensitive to certain things on film.
Makes me wonder about the degree to which the rest of us
have become inured.
Certainly I often feel distaste. If the video packaging
prominently features a gun being used as an instrument of
force, I figure that's probably not a movie for me. I don't
understand why the gun thing isn't considered by everyone
else extremely overworked and thus extremely boring. But
there's the alien in me.
> Well, the Protestants have almost as much to answer for as the
> Catholics. Who scraped off the skin of Hypatia in the streets of
> Alexandria? On the one hand I want to blame Rome, but on the other I'm
> not sure they had any control of the mad Christian mobs down there yet.
I agree, the history of Christianity up through the early
1500s is as much a part of Protestant history as it is of
Roman Catholic history, although Protestantism didn't emerge
as such until the 1500s.
I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still
incubating hatreds, including in the U.S.
I keep hoping that someday the churches will take seriously
the saying of Jesus, "From the fruit the tree is known"
(Matthew 12:33 = Luke 6:44, my literal translation).
Many Protestants use the mental escape, "Those weren't real
Christians; or, if they were, they were acting contrary to
Christian principles." To a large extent I agree. However,
not all the sins of this or that Christian group are
attributable to selfishness and like unwelcome admixtures
with the spirit of Christianity. Some are rooted in the
doctrines and structure and historical formation of those
groups themselves.
"From the fruit the tree is known."
Of course, that saying applies more broadly than to just
Christianity.
> Try "After Polygamy was Made a Sin", by Cairncross. No matter how much
> condemnation one has piled up against Christians, this book puts the
> icing on it.
I've read it. A fascinating book. I'd like to see a new,
heftier edition with a lot more detail and more copious
translations.
>> The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
>
>
> He's just Santa Claus.
Part of a pantheon of supernatural or mythical beings. Come
to think of it, I suppose so is Santa Clause.
> Remember Bo Derek.
My ten would be one of several other physical types combined
with a rich inner life and ... but enough of that! IMHO, Bo
Derek is more stunning now than she was when she co-starred
with Dudley Moore in "Ten."
>>> I don't know the Kabbalah much. But I can between atheism and
>>> polygamy! But not now.
>>
>>
>>
>> Huh?
>
>
> Problems with English?
That must be it.
> My goy impression of K teachings and associated society is that they
> encourage very close mongamous family life, with as much fucking as
> possible, except during menses week, and a lot of singing and dancing.
> It's attractive to me, though I can neither sing nor dance, but I take
> orders from no one, even if he is the Rebbe Schneerson, bless his bones.
There's much about Hasidism that I find attractive too.
Reminds me in many ways of Sufism.
> What they do after demarche, I do not know.
Demarche?
> My rebbe is as far from
> Hasids as can be imagined, but she understands them as well as she does
> The Economist. She thought that my taking my semi-secular Israeli buddy
> to see "The Golem", which she had seen, was hilarious.
Why?
> Now, TMI, how my Israeli friend came to be. His almost totally
> disappeared family lived in Poland. Long before he was born his father
> took his then family in 1938 on a motoring trip in the mountains in the
> south of Poland (where the Pope used to take his students hiking), and
> saw a broken-down car on the side of the road with a very frustrated
> driver. It took about a millisecond to discover he was German, but he
> was wearing civvies. Arieh's father spent an hour or two fixing his
> engine and front suspension, while his family was ragging: Hey, Daddy
> let's go!, or however it's said in Yiddish.
>
> Later in late 1939 an SS officer was going down a line of men (families
> already being separated and his for doom) selecting those for death
> camps and those for work camps, only a few months better. He stopped in
> front of Arieh's father and said, "Don't I know you? Did you fix my
> car?". "Ja, mein Herr." The officer took him out of the line and
> assigned him to work that guaranteed his survival. On geting to Israel
> (another complicated matter) he married another survivor, and they had
> Arieh. The father died about 5 years ago.
Quite the story!
> I was a rather aloof and arrogant student before I met him, but through
> him I understood the microscopic self-help of doing a good turn, and not
> to stop.
A valuable lesson many seem never to learn.
> Most of the persons I have given serious help to went on to
> self-destruction anyway. I'm sure some feel the same about me. Anyway,
> Arieh is the only really good friend since my best friend of all, a bush
> pilot in Alaska, who died at 26 in 1966.
Count yourself lucky.
>[snip]
> I can't do it at all with my right, as I have only the first bone of my
> pinky over there, and it has a mind of its own.
Some careless driver smashed my right forearm to smithereens
a few decades ago, by knocking me off my bike, despite my
trying to get out of his way. Chronic, sometimes
debilitating, pain. Constant discomfort. Limited motion.
Numbness. Scars. Construction work not for me. Standard
touch typing not an option. Takes some maneuvering to get
that Vulcan hand sign facing forward.
There are some good consequences. For instance, I don't
write off the wounded in Iraq as "just wounded." My very
bones are too empathetic. And I've learned to regard pain,
if not as a friend, as a sort of companion. And I lost my
sense of invulnerability early. And I've learned that being
rained on doesn't keep you from being rained on again.
> [snip]
> And often if the rest of the book so far has been enlightening, I'm
> willing to sit on it for a while in case of an odd case of
> enlightenment. Many books are unfinished, since it takes me only 1/5th
> of the pages to clue me into the rest. Writers should get more mystery
> training from the likes of Patricia Cornwell, bless her lesbian bones.
> This does not work for the Bible, or the Talmud.
They're mysteries unto themselves.
> Besides the virtually worthless escapism LotR,
The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chron," had an
article this month about the quest for respectability on the
part of Tolkien scholars in the halls of academe. I've
always thought Tolkien worthy of serious academic study.
> it's been Middlemarch,
> Daniel Deronda, Romola,
I want to read more of George Eliot. I think I was put off
her by some peculiar mental association with Edith Wharton.
> and Wilson Follett's "Modern American Usage",
> for multiple reads. That does not include Lunt's "Fundamentals of
> Russian" or "Uchebnik Russkova Yazika". Otherwise a book is lucky to
> get a once.
For a while I was reading a style manual a year. Then I
stopped. Recently I picked up Strunk and White* again, only
to rediscover that I often depart from their generally sound
advice.
* The Elements of Style (3rd ed., c1979).
> In school K-12, I harly read any, fabricating all my book
> reports.
Most of the novels I've read, I read during my high school
days. "Most," that is, up until a few years ago when my
interest in novels was rekindled.
>> Actually I use my books as tools much more than I use them for reading
>> through. Even when I read them cover to cover, doing so is often
>> project related. Only occasionally do I read for entertainment.
>>
>>
> You can put a copper plate on one side and effectively do some home
> repairs. Nowadays my home repairs are most effectively performed by
> staying out of the way of my wife. I have rebuilt two VW engines 30
> years ago from the inside out, using only one book: ...Compleat Idiot".
> I even carried one 200+ lb engine from the back porch to the car in the
> driveway with only two hands, and didn't even wind up in the hospital.
> Whole lives disappear in the rear-view mirror. My wife admonishes me
> sharply against remembering them. She thinks that at 62 with a triple
> bypass and some imperfect habits, I should be focussing on the future.
> But my past was so much more vivid. My first two pets were goats.
"Whole lives disappear in the rear-view mirror." I like that.
> Well, I *do* have the Oxford Companion to the Bible, which is worthless
> for looking anything up in, but a pleasant dip from time to time to
> broaden my 5-yr-old appreciation.
That's a fair review.
> How do you find your sources? A vast
> memory, a big onion-skin Concordance, or a search engine?
Not memory, unless a broad familiarity counts; but
otherwise, every way I possibly can, including concordances
and search engines.
Somewhere along the line while doing reference work, I
started thinking concentrically about resources. You might
have a large university library handy, which is wonderful;
but where would you find the answer if you were limited to
your library at home, or just to the resources lying about
nearby? That kind of thinking helped me zero in on many
answers all the faster.
There are many tricks of the trade. Ph.D.s neglect
librarians, project by project, to their own deficit.
> [snip]
> Sex quickly adapts to irrevocable power.
Personally I wouldn't want to sleep with a hostile wife. And
if I were a woman, I'd prefer the desert, jungle, or ocean
to a man who had murdered my husband. But evidently, in
general terms, you're right.
> [snip]
>> You just surprised me. I thought the Bible you read didn't have the
>> book of Judith.
>>
>
> You are right; I had forgotten. It is the painting I remember so
> vividly. Esther would have been a Judith. So where is Judith?
In the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books. Or in a Roman
Catholic Bible just before Esther.
>> Yes, Judith was in mind, although she didn't drive a spike through
>> Holofernes' head. She cut it off (Judith 13:6-8).
>>
>>
> The legend of the painting explains it. Secreting a hammer of those
> times into bed must have been more risky.
As the story reads, Judith used Holofernes' own scimitar.
> [snip] My Liars' Club seems to have been disbanded
> by the parents to my great disappointment. It was started by a Hannah,
> who then moved awaw: "Tell me more lies!" So to the remaining kinder I
> explained that Hannah was a genius, and everyone should have been told
> many lies as children as part of a club with no retribution from
> grownups, since all grown-ups, even parents, tell you lies, including
> newspeople on TV. I mentioned some from my past, which shocked them, as
> the kids are Catholic, and my mother linked them with Satan. I told
> them that that lie made me think more than twice about what any grown-up
> says to me. I also said that the best way to understand things was to
> see through all the lies they were told.
>
> So they made up lies, but I'm hard to lie to, but an accomplished liar
> myself. Once I said in the fall that there would be no winter that
> winter. Oldest boy: "BS there is always a winter." Since there wasn't
> that winter I asked him in the spring. He pretendeed not to remember a
> thing, but it was clear he was wary of my magical powers. And there
> were many other things. After my triple bypass surgery in April I wendt
> out in summer to sit on the curb with Achilles, and they quickly noticed
> the huge long scars on my inner right leg, "What happened to you??" I
> said that because I was very, very old, my heart had fallen down into my
> leg and had to be gotten out and put back in my chest. Both parents are
> MD/PhDs at Hopkins, so the kids came after me the next day, "You lied to
> us!" "You're in the Liars' Club, and don't you now a lot more now than
> you did before?" "Yes." "Would your parents have ever told you heart
> surgery on their own?" "Well, no."
Somewhere (in the "What is a Slut?" thread, June 15th) I
wrote "ex-Liar's Club." I should have written "defunct
Liars' Club."
> QED I think it was their discovery
> that I'm an atheist that may have put the kibosh on the Club.
Odd how people discriminate against each other on the basis
of beliefs. But I suppose that's the alien in me speaking again.
> [snip]
Your story makes me angry. It resonates with various
experiences I've had -- all, though, of lesser intensity.
>> And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by their own
>> structure and by interaction with various phenomenon, so that they
>> cannot see reality as it is. Oops, I just stumbled into a thesis
>> something like that of the Matrix series. But then, do Einsteinian
>> relativity and string theory say any different?
>>
> A different matter. The brain is always forming false theoretical
> concepts. I have explained this before. But better, you might read
> "Philosophy in the Flesh."
I've looked at it in bookstores, but it's never grabbed me.
Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the
expansion of the universe?
>> What did you say, something to the effect that your experience of the
>> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum is so simple it's difficult to
>> grasp and impossible to express in words? When it comes to the
>> ultimate simplicity underlying the cosmos, we are all, most of the
>> time, puzzlepates.
>>
>>
> Not quite. I was in the differentiated aesthetic continuum, but only
> sensed the Void that was behind it, and that is what at 11 scared me -
> otherwise I'd have lain there all day, until my mother came and found
> me. I can say what it is not, but not what it is. As for the Void,
> words are incompatible, as they are pure theoretic, whereas the Void
> (UAC) is purely experiential, but even that neutral phrase is
> inaccurate, as it involves words, and you have no existence to
> experience it with.
Why do you choose the word "Void"?
>>> My great love was thrown in mental hospitals over ten times under
>>> drugs and restraint, but never when I was with her.
>>
>>
>>
>> Which woman was that?
>>
> She is too famous for me to make any specific reference, and her husband
> is even more famous. Anyway, what we had between us has vanished, and
> she tells me has never recurred, and will never.
Oh, that love.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>> Actually, was just looking for clarity as to your point.
>>
>>
>>
>> You mean about the funtion of saints on RC, and demons, dybbuks and so
>> forth in K?
>
>
> I mean about saints and polytheism.
>
> K = Kabbalah?
K, yes, what Madonna is into now; may the Golem protect her. As for
saints in RC, I'm sure their function has changed over time. I've met
only a couple of elderly American women, and many English-free Mexicans
who were into them. My RC fiancee had no truck with saints, not even St
Christopher, as she went travelling only with me, her St Christopher.
As I explained before, and you must have read, given the depth and
breadth of your scholarship, the only American woman I knew better than
I wanted to, inundated with saint bric-a-brac - from whom I was renting
a room - only went around asking for their advice and clearly was not
praying to them. She had no problem with my being there, as she thought
she might get a more straightforward reply to a scientist. Mexicans
appeared to be worshipping, but I wouldn't call their terrible privation
for the Virgin of Guadalupe as polytheism, because their variant of RC
considers her to be a part of God.
>
>
[...reference to a dybbuk...]
>> One of the things that fascinated me in the brief TV series "Twin
>> Peaks" (1990), both incarnations being played by Ray Wise. The
>> series, by David Lynch, turned out to be a cheat. A lovely database
>> specialist who also liked the series thought that I was funning her
>> about the dybbuk, so I brought her my Ultra-orthodox Rabbi Esther, who
>> after some discussion convinced my fellow watcher that it was indeed a
>> dybbuk. But Esther refused to watch the series because it was too
>> secular, on the advice of her High Rabbi in Jerusalem. I guess he
>> gets to see everything, like Hugh Hefner. It was the strangest
>> program I've ever seen on TV, even stranger than the movie "Blue
>> Velvet", or David Letterman.
>
>
> I didn't watch "Twin Peaks" because it was too annoying.
Didn't like the traffic lights? The dancing dwarf who spoke backwards?
The lesbian mill owner? Doris and I went by the cafe (the interior in
the series was a set somewhere else) and got a "damn fine cup of coffee"
(- Agent Cooper), and a piece of cherry pie that would have pleased
Agent Cooper (her password for a time long ago). Soon after, the real
restaurant burned to the ground. You need to let go of something, I
could name a number of things, but don't know which is relevant here.
Our problem was that the serieas went far astray and made no sense in
the end, but since you didn't watch it, you wouldn't know about that.
Did you know that some Christian opponent of innocent adultery is
burning down the landmarks from "The Bridges of Madison County"? I'm
sure he's not under direct orders from Jesus, who did his share of
fooling around.
>
>
>> I call Esther my rabbi, because we had many fascinating conversations
>> and debates at the Space Telescope when we were supposed to be working
>> or her on the horn to Jerusalem. And because when my family drives me
>> up the wall and I'm about to pull a Chinggis Khan, she will give me at
>> least 30 minutes to talk me down with a fat dose of family wisdom.
>>
>> She's zaftig,
>
>
> Pleasantly plump?
>
Mucho jamon para dos huevos. I don't know if sex with her would be
great or not. For some, guilt is an aphrodisiac and for others a
turn-off. If I pulled it on her, I'd yank out all the phone cords in
the house so she couldn't call Jerusalem.
>
>> but can never be married in her faith because she loves her career, so
>> she has chosen her career.
>
>
> Not all rabbinic authorities agree that women are subject to the
> command, "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).
Remember, she's Ultra Othodox, and was never under the rule of
Schneerson. She considered that the Hasids were trying to observe God,
so forgave them. Also her ancestors in Grodno went through most of the
same things the Hasids did. She says a husband in her faith would not
allow her to work, but would spend his days in edubba, where the money
would come from she did not know. She's now making twice whatever I
ever made as a professor or astronomer.
>
>
>> I suggested 14 years ago that she needn'd get married and would be
>> welcome in our house a la Hagar, but she cracked up and said that her
>> High Rabbi would disapprove, mostly as our house was about as far from
>> kosher as could be imagined, not even the dust mites' being blessed.
>> It seems that the High Rabbi was very liberal about sex.
>
>
> In what way? Pro polygyny?
>
She gave me the impression that he would have given a green light, were
my wife and I sufficiently orthodox, and at least hunted down those
damned crumbs at Pesach. But we also have a micro ecology of arthropods
that I leave strictly alone. It's their life, and we give them some
haven. We'd have had to build a second kitchen and have all our present
cooking and eating dishes forgiven by an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi for their
atheism. After all he *does* want her to be happy, and if that was the
only way....
>
>> After that our conversations became more open, and she made me more
>> aware of her moods so that I could lend her VCRs of romantic series I
>> had taped that would not horrify her.
>
>
> Some souls are keenly sensitive to certain things on film. Makes me
> wonder about the degree to which the rest of us have become inured.
>
Yes some have become so. What she liked best, despite some very racy
episodes, was "Diana" starring Jenny Seagrove, as it was a profound,
tragic love story in which both were fighting the Nazis. I gave her
one tape (of 7) of "Tenko", but she found it too disturbing, thinking of
Shoah. It's about women in a series of Japanese prison camps. It took
even my wife a couple of years to watch it. There are 3 10-episode
series, plus a post imprisonment movie that is disappointing, but may be
more truthful than the series. It was definitely not Disneyland in
Indonesia like "Paradise Road" with Glenn Close. Instead you had Major
Yamauchi, hanged later for war crimes, though he was "only doing his job."
We have all become so, but if there is violence I'd like it to be
justifiable as in "High Noon", though the end of the movie nauseated me
as a child because Cooper went off with the wrong woman, the cad; and
sex when it's part of the deal as in "Wild Side".
> Certainly I often feel distaste. If the video packaging prominently
> features a gun being used as an instrument of force, I figure that's
> probably not a movie for me. I don't understand why the gun thing isn't
> considered by everyone else extremely overworked and thus extremely
> boring. But there's the alien in me.
No responsible person should own a gun, except a bona fide hunting gun
in hunting country. I never have, but I can shoot them pretty well. I
know where my head must go when I'm shooting a Magnum pistol. Watching
these shooting matches on TV programs is such a joke, because real guns
of that calibre do not act so tamely. Those automatics they use used to
be called blue sky and clouds guns by GIs.
>
>
>> Well, the Protestants have almost as much to answer for as the
>> Catholics. Who scraped off the skin of Hypatia in the streets of
>> Alexandria? On the one hand I want to blame Rome, but on the other
>> I'm not sure they had any control of the mad Christian mobs down there
>> yet.
>
>
> I agree, the history of Christianity up through the early 1500s is as
> much a part of Protestant history as it is of Roman Catholic history,
> although Protestantism didn't emerge as such until the 1500s.
The Dark Ages are dark to me, except for the tremendous growth in
technology over that of the Romans. I had a terrible debate with a
woman in this newsgroup years ago over the role of magic in the growth
of science (she was for it, and was studying it in some Brit U). I
thought I put her down on every point, but of course she thought she
won, as she had her lunatic professor to back her up.
I'm not sure exactly what protestantism is. The sect my step-father was
a travelling preacher in for 18 years was much farther from the Church
of England than the CoE is from Rome, or even Methodists are. In a
sense I was more of an RC than my RC fiancee, as she preferred guitar
masses, did not believe in hell, and hated the group "English Chant
Schola", to which I was turned on to by several seminarians.
>
> I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still incubating
> hatreds, including in the U.S.
>
Ever travelled through the South with the Whites Only signs? I have. I
and my travelling companion fled a Hattiesburg diner in fear in 1964.
The later movie "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) looked like Disneyland
by comparison. I ranted for about 30 minutes after that movie until my
first wife shut me up.
And now the US Southern Baptists want to split off from the World
Conference of Baptists (?). When will it ever end? My grandparents and
many others dropped out of the Southern Baptists during the depression,
because they demanded church tithes, even when my ancestors didn't have
money to buy seeds. They formed their own fundamentalist fellowship
open to anyone, which met in homes, and was based on a much more honest
version of AA or Confession on how god helped me over this or that
problem in the previous week (witnessing). My real father, a sociopath,
did not join, but later my mother married an 18-yr itinerant preacher in
this sect, who never received a dime for religious work, but only for
physical work - and a skilled man he was, with many women wanting to
snag him. I don't think he was truly heterosexual, as all his older
sisters beat up on him, and ratted every little thing about this
high-spirited boy to his *very* Victorian parents from Penzance.
> I keep hoping that someday the churches will take seriously the saying
> of Jesus, "From the fruit the tree is known" (Matthew 12:33 = Luke 6:44,
> my literal translation).
That's my investment basis. I invest my wife's and my money entirely in
mutual funds. She brings in the considerable income and I transmute it
with my money into gold. I give declining funds a break for a while
(except during bubbles), because everyone can fuck up. But when a trend
continues worse than the mkt averages, they are gone. I exercise no
moralistic criteria, but only that the fig land in my lap. So far, I'm
well ahead of mkt. I never invest in stock directly, as I would lose
sleep. The Times tells me how I'm doing on the funds every day, but I
don't usually bother unless some monster is slouching toward Bethlehem.
Any amateur who trades stock, even with the info touted on TV, is a
fool. When stock is sold or bought, one person is wrong, and you do not
know which that is, unless you are Martha Stewart.
>
> Many Protestants use the mental escape, "Those weren't real Christians;
> or, if they were, they were acting contrary to Christian principles." To
> a large extent I agree. However, not all the sins of this or that
> Christian group are attributable to selfishness and like unwelcome
> admixtures with the spirit of Christianity. Some are rooted in the
> doctrines and structure and historical formation of those groups
> themselves.
>
As in Islam, practice is more rooted in changing societal views than in
the founding religious documents themselves.
There are no truly Christian principles that we can rely upon. Scholars
have tried to winnow through the red print, and there is no general
agreement. That was what Winnie was trying to tell me 50 years ago,
though there was no scholarship readily available at that time to back
her up. By next morning I agreed with her when everything came together
with a bang. What Paul said is nothing like Jesus would have said. Have
you read the book "The First Coming"?
> "From the fruit the tree is known."
>
> Of course, that saying applies more broadly than to just Christianity.
>
Certainly not to the DoJ?!
>
>> Try "After Polygamy was Made a Sin", by Cairncross. No matter how
>> much condemnation one has piled up against Christians, this book puts
>> the icing on it.
>
>
> I've read it. A fascinating book. I'd like to see a new, heftier edition
> with a lot more detail and more copious translations.
>
I think Cairncross is dead. Nice thing good Christians did to the
residents of Muenster, who were only trying to survive against the
Christian insanity of the 30 years' War. I won't eat Muenster cheese,
even if it is low cal. The book you hope for is yours, as no one else
would dare to write it, ya'hear? I'm too old and not a historical or
Christian scholar. You do it. It would be a service, as Cairncross's
book is a bit limp to make any changes, except for the converted, like me.
>
>>> The most? Hmm. Beware the djinn!
>>
>>
>>
>> He's just Santa Claus.
>
>
> Part of a pantheon of supernatural or mythical beings. Come to think of
> it, I suppose so is Santa Clause.
>
>
Don't let grammar lead you astray.
>> Remember Bo Derek.
>
>
> My ten would be one of several other physical types combined with a rich
> inner life and ... but enough of that! IMHO, Bo Derek is more stunning
> now than she was when she co-starred with Dudley Moore in "Ten."
>
There's a club you can go to in LA, I think called the Scores Club, that
if you go in one day with a roll of 200+ $100 bills in your pocket (one
or two for the doorman) and spread it around liberally without asking
for favors, then the next day, after the word has passed around, go in
with the same, your reputation made, you can have just about anything
you want. It's a sex club for those with rolls in their pocketses, and
maybe One Rings. I saw on a bit on VH1 that Cristina Aguilera went
there recently, took her time selecting sexual partners, and took 5
wommen into a back room from which they did not emerge for hours, but
all with happy faces. I don't mind 12-hr erections, have had them
before, but Jesus I'd need 4 months to get into shape for that. And
what if I couldn't find a woman I could like? I'd rather buy a Lexus
(can do) and pick up the right kind of woman.
>
>>>> I don't know the Kabbalah much. But I can between atheism and
>>>> polygamy! But not now.
>>>
>>>
>>> Huh?
>>
>>
>> Problems with English?
>
>
> That must be it.
>
>
>> My goy impression of K teachings and associated society is that they
>> encourage very close mongamous family life, with as much fucking as
>> possible, except during menses week, and a lot of singing and dancing.
>> It's attractive to me, though I can neither sing nor dance, but I take
>> orders from no one, even if he is the Rebbe Schneerson, bless his bones.
>
>
> There's much about Hasidism that I find attractive too. Reminds me in
> many ways of Sufism.
Thete's a Disney-style movie (i.e. no more real than "Shtetl"), very
romantic, "A Stranger Among Us" in which the detective Melanie Griffith
goes underground as a Hasid to find a killer, whom she is sure is a
memeber of the community, but which the community utterly denies. She
is right, but falls into an impossible love.
Yes, there s always a connection when dancing encourages a state of ecstasy.
>
>
>> What they do after demarche, I do not know.
>
>
> Demarche?
>
I could swear I've seen this word used for the end of menstruation, but
never bothered to look it up. A French usage fits, but few dictionaries
carry it. I may have gotten my wires crossed - has happened before. It
means a reversal or change of pace in French. Even my Harper-Collins
French-English dictionary doesn't give the definition I assumed. Oh,
silly me, I did a different Google search, and the word I meant was
Menarche. Ya larned me sumtin today.
>
>> My rebbe is as far from Hasids as can be imagined, but she understands
>> them as well as she does The Economist. She thought that my taking my
>> semi-secular Israeli buddy to see "The Golem", which she had seen, was
>> hilarious.
>
>
> Why?
>
Oh, as he knew just enough to freak him out. She is very far from
stupid, despite her political positions. I mentioned another incident in
which I took another fellow astrophysicist, working on QM measurement
theory for LIGO (q.v.), to see Rocky Horror. Afterwards he wouldn't even
speak to me for a week. I told Esther I had it on tape at home, and
that it was excellent for seductions of the 3rd kind. She laughed and
ran down the hall to her office.
>
>> Now, TMI, how my Israeli friend came to be. His almost totally
>> disappeared family lived in Poland. Long before he was born his
>> father took his then family in 1938 on a motoring trip in the
>> mountains in the south of Poland (where the Pope used to take his
>> students hiking), and saw a broken-down car on the side of the road
>> with a very frustrated driver. It took about a millisecond to
>> discover he was German, but he was wearing civvies. Arieh's father
>> spent an hour or two fixing his engine and front suspension, while his
>> family was ragging: Hey, Daddy let's go!, or however it's said in
>> Yiddish.
>>
>> Later in late 1939 an SS officer was going down a line of men
>> (families already being separated and his for doom) selecting those
>> for death camps and those for work camps, only a few months better.
>> He stopped in front of Arieh's father and said, "Don't I know you?
>> Did you fix my car?". "Ja, mein Herr." The officer took him out of the
>> line and assigned him to work that guaranteed his survival. On getting
>> to Israel (another complicated matter) he married another survivor,
>> and they had Arieh. The father died about 5 years ago.
>
>
> Quite the story!
>
>
>> I was a rather aloof and arrogant student before I met him, but
>> through him I understood the microscopic self-help of doing a good
>> turn, and not to stop.
>
>
> A valuable lesson many seem never to learn.
>
>
>> Most of the persons I have given serious help to went on to
>> self-destruction anyway. I'm sure some feel the same about me.
>> Anyway, Arieh is the only really good friend since my best friend of
>> all, a bush pilot in Alaska, who died at 26 in 1966.
>
>
> Count yourself lucky.
>
I do. My wife sometimes looks at me and says that (I paraphrase many
comments), given all you have done to trangress the laws of man and god
and common sense, here you stand before me a free man, not hounded by
the law, nor excessive demons, and ready to mountaineer again, could you
only get your shit together. She thinks I should take a kick-ass pill
for depression. In the past they used to ruin the angle of your dangle,
but there seem to be drugs for that too.
>
>> [snip]
>> I can't do it at all with my right, as I have only the first bone of
>> my pinky over there, and it has a mind of its own.
>
>
> Some careless driver smashed my right forearm to smithereens a few
> decades ago, by knocking me off my bike, despite my trying to get out of
> his way. Chronic, sometimes debilitating, pain. Constant discomfort.
> Limited motion. Numbness. Scars. Construction work not for me. Standard
> touch typing not an option. Takes some maneuvering to get that Vulcan
> hand sign facing forward.
>
I have come so close so many times, as I commuted on bikes 10 mi/day all
through grad school rain or shine and afterwards, for tens of thousands
of miles, for most of those years without a bike helmet. I sold that
bike, as it was the first Japanese 10-speed sold in the US and weighed
42# stripped. Now I have a found Pugeot, about 33# that cost me only
$110 to ship to Pasadena, get its forks replaced, and a tune-up. I have
done fine against $300-$1000 bikes, even carrying leader gear(gatorade,
extra snacks, space blankets, extra capilene clothes and a couple of
rainproof shells in a two-bag pannier. I've never been on a long bike
ride with a group when my leader supplies were not useful. Saved the VP
of the Baltimore Bike Club from a sure time in hospital, even if she was
a doctor. She had no idea how bad off she was, until I turned around and
cared for her. (I'd rather have a smart inventory clerk than a stupid
doctor asa lover.) I an no bike leader, but that is what I did as a
mountaneering leader. 10 years ago, not now. It'll take me 3 years to
get back into that shape.
[Oh, dear, I just heard a woman on an NPR discussion on teenage sex -
kids for it, adults against - say, "I don't remember ever breeching that
subject." No grammar mistakes, but I'd far rather see her breeching
than hear her broaching. Breeching gets rid of the barnacles which
could not but improve love making, whereas broaching usually leads to
confusion.]
> There are some good consequences. For instance, I don't write off the
> wounded in Iraq as "just wounded." My very bones are too empathetic. And
> I've learned to regard pain, if not as a friend, as a sort of companion.
> And I lost my sense of invulnerability early. And I've learned that
> being rained on doesn't keep you from being rained on again.
>
>
Soon to your right arm. I read a story by a chaplain in the Ardennes
during the Bulge. His best friend was about 30-40' away and took a
direct round of artillery. All that could be found was a boot, no body
parts, nothing to be shipped back home. Thus he is still listed as MIA.
Should there be categories like EIU (evaporated into the universe), SF
(shark food, as in the USS Indianapolis)? Use your imagination.
Your right arm. Very sorry to hear that; I never guessed. You may now
call me Dr Roberts, as that is what I was always called in class. Get
the arm fixed. The orthopedic surgery is painful, and will doubtless
need several sessions in the OR. If you are as tough as Aquinas, ask
for a local anaesthetic, so you can see it and hear it. In pre-op
before my open heart surgery I teased the anaesthetist by asking for a
local, so that I "could assist". He departed immediately, presumably to
spread the joke. I was well received in the OR, treated like a prince
by the nurses, but I don't know if all the watching residents were clued in.
My personal doctor, also my wife's, saved my life, just by saying, "I
don't agree with your diagnosis," after I had rattled on for about 20
seconds. She's the best personal doctor I've had in my life. I claim
to be her worst patient, but she rolls her eyes and says, "You have no
idea. At least you try and are interested in every detail."
She's an internist, studied under my favorite roommate at Harvard (back
when it was not harvard), and so is not a bone surgeon, but lordy does
she know a lot, and cooks up a treatment in a trice. Why not call her,
though you do not live in Baltimore? She knows my name, for sure. *If
you tell her the truth*, she "will not agree with your diagnosis", you
can be sure. She can refer you to the best possible treatment. You
believe in God. You think he wants you like this? Is not life a "vale
of tears"?
Laura Mumford
Lutherville, MD
410/583-0390
Lynn will usually answer.
Office hours are 9-4 ET, but she makes most of her calls after hours.
>> [snip]
>> And often if the rest of the book so far has been enlightening, I'm
>> willing to sit on it for a while in case of an odd case of
>> enlightenment. Many books are unfinished, since it takes me only
>> 1/5th of the pages to clue me into the rest. Writers should get more
>> mystery training from the likes of Patricia Cornwell, bless her
>> lesbian bones. This does not work for the Bible, or the Talmud.
>
>
> They're mysteries unto themselves.
>
>
>> Besides the virtually worthless escapism LotR,
>
>
> The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chron," had an article this
> month about the quest for respectability on the part of Tolkien scholars
> in the halls of academe. I've always thought Tolkien worthy of serious
> academic study.
>
>
He is, for the source of his names, which I'm informed come mostly from
ancient Icelandic mythology. As for the stories, I've got dozens of
better ones on my shelves, and thrown many more out. The Egyptians made
up a writing system, and so did he. Which one do you think is known by
a larger number of people and will last longer?
>> it's been Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Romola,
>
>
> I want to read more of George Eliot. I think I was put off her by some
> peculiar mental association with Edith Wharton.
Utterly different. I was put off by being forced to read "Silas Marner"
as a junior in HS, in the usual broken-up way with meaningless questions
for each section. I shoved her out of my mind to the extent that the
following humiliating encounter happened to me when I was cleaning
upper-class "house" johns my freshman year. The frights I've seen...
One resident told me that he was a holdover from his class. He was all
ready to go out with honors in English. In that, and many other,
subjects at Harvard you are subjected to an oral exam in which any
question from out of the blue can be asked. He was asked what he made
of the ultimate fate of Dr Lydgate in Middlemarch, and if there was any
lesson in that for him. He had not read Middlemarch. The professors
conferred and flunked him: "No one can graduate from Harvard in English
without having read Middlemarch." He showed me he letter. (He was
assigned to a seminar on George Eliot the next year.) Me" "I,ve never
heard of him." Him: "It's novel by George Eliot, you imbecile." Me:
"Oh, I've heard of *him*." He spun on his heel, slammed the door to his
bedroom and began kicking furniture. I did an especially good job on
his disgusting john, which caused me to have to work beyond my allotted
time.
>
>
>> and Wilson Follett's "Modern American Usage", for multiple reads.
>> That does not include Lunt's "Fundamentals of Russian" or "Uchebnik
>> Russkova Yazika". Otherwise a book is lucky to get a once.
>
>
> For a while I was reading a style manual a year. Then I stopped.
> Recently I picked up Strunk and White* again, only to rediscover that I
> often depart from their generally sound advice.
>
Yes, they were a great influence on my style. Had I only read it before
I had to write essays for my college applications. Extra words? No!!
If I turn anti-S&W, let me know.
> * The Elements of Style (3rd ed., c1979).
>
>
>> In school K-12, I harly read any books, fabricating all my book reports.
Well, librarians were not a problem to me when I was working on my
theses, since I knew the libraries better than they did. But my theses
were projects, not meandering among the docs to find some inspiration.
I always knew where I wanted to go.
E.g., I have given detractors instructions to find my two following
papers by consulting librarians about the organization of the stacks:
ApJ *187*, 575
ApJSupp *41* 75.
As they had called me a moron, I offered a quiz after they had read the
papers. So far, no takers.
Librarians were better in the past, I think sometimes. But maybe they
were just better at "Shhhhhh!!" As a 7-9 year old, before we moved to a
homestead and the city library was out of my reach, our librarian was
very kind to this uncommon child who wanted help in things not even
adults were interested in. From the homestead, where I had my
"experience", my step father, bless him, did drive me into Fairbanks to
the USO once a week for the Chess Club, entirely composed of elderly
gentlemen. But maybe he was also trying to get away from my mother. He
finally succeeded by dying in 1974.
>
>> [snip]
>> Sex quickly adapts to irrevocable power.
>
>
> Personally I wouldn't want to sleep with a hostile wife. And if I were a
> woman, I'd prefer the desert, jungle, or ocean to a man who had murdered
> my husband. But evidently, in general terms, you're right.
>
You'd be surprised how subservient you can become to improper authority.
I stayed for 9 years with a wife who hated sex with men. How many
points does that subtract from my IQ? All her bruises have long
disappeared from my legs from when I was trying to make pancakes, stews,
change diapers, or whatever. She was 2nd best wing in field hockey in
Philly and really had a wallop. Were I my age then, I would have been
in hospital. I'd have been gone with the kids, but she was mentally
assaulted every day by terrifying "black blobs" that could leave her
huddled in the corner of any room, trembling. I thought if I could get
to the bottom of them we could have a real life, as she was very funny
and pretty, and just as I was getting to the bottom of them (sexual and
physical abuse, totally suppressed). When I told her that is where she
must go now, she realized the truth of it, then divorced me rather than
face it among a number of more perverse matters, spent her time in
secret shelters for abused women and children, and at AA and Al-Anon
meetings though alcohol played no part in our lives. Maybe she just
wanted to listen to fabricated stories worse than her real one.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> You just surprised me. I thought the Bible you read didn't have the
>>> book of Judith.
>>>
>>
>> You are right; I had forgotten. It is the painting I remember so
>> vividly. Esther would have been a Judith. So where is Judith?
>
>
> In the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books. Or in a Roman Catholic Bible
> just before Esther.
>
>
>>> Yes, Judith was in mind, although she didn't drive a spike through
>>> Holofernes' head. She cut it off (Judith 13:6-8).
>>>
>>>
>> The legend of the painting explains it. Secreting a hammer in those
>> times into bed must have been more risky.
>
>
> As the story reads, Judith used Holofernes' own scimitar.
>
>
Oh, yes, of course. What would a zaftig lady like that be carrying a
weapon for, except to beat away horny Jews on the road to Samaria?
>> [snip] My Liars' Club seems to have been disbanded by the parents to
>> my great disappointment. It was started by a Hannah, who then moved
>> awaw: "Tell me more lies!" So to the remaining kinder I explained
>> that Hannah was a genius, and everyone should have been told many lies
>> as children as part of a club with no retribution from grownups, since
>> all grown-ups, even parents, tell you lies, including newspeople on
>> TV. I mentioned some from my past, which shocked them, as the kids
>> are Catholic, and my mother linked them with Satan. I told them that
>> that lie made me think more than twice about what any grown-up says to
>> me. I also said that the best way to understand things was to see
>> through all the lies they were told.
>>
>> So they made up lies, but I'm hard to lie to, but an accomplished liar
>> myself. Once I said in the fall that there would be no winter that
>> winter. Oldest boy: "BS there is always a winter." Since there
>> wasn't that winter I asked him in the spring. He pretendeed not to
>> remember a thing, but it was clear he was wary of my magical powers.
>> And there were many other things. After my triple bypass surgery in
>> April 2001 I went out in summer to sit on the curb with Achilles, and they
>> quickly noticed the huge long scars on my inner right leg, "What
>> happened to you??" I said that because I was very, very old, my heart
>> had fallen down into my leg and had to be gotten out and put back in
>> my chest. Both parents are MD/PhDs at Hopkins, so the kids came after
>> me the next day, "You lied to us!" "You're in the Liars' Club, and
>> don't you know a lot more now than you did before?" "Yes." "Would
>> your parents have ever told you heart surgery on their own?" "Well, no."
>
>
> Somewhere (in the "What is a Slut?" thread, June 15th) I wrote
> "ex-Liar's Club." I should have written "defunct Liars' Club."
>
>
That's more strictly correct, as I'm no ex-liar, but like a spider lying
in wait for mental prey. The kids clearly want it back, as they had
great fun and learned a lot, but though their parents are highly
educated by common standards, they don't seem to want it to continue.
The kids (except for the 5-yr-old Hannah) had been totally unaware that
anyone would lie to them. All I told Hannah was that soccer balls
naturally roll uphill. I made clear that our lies were just part of the
club so they could learn new things faster, instead of boring school
books, and was not to go anywhare else, except to their parents or my
wife. I could have included the parents in the Club, as I have some very
good lies, such as how there was light before the creation of the sun,
moon, and stars, and that they could not die without quorum sensing
(q.v.), but they are too busy: medical research, kids, church
activities, yearly extended visits to Ireland, and head burying exercises.
>> QED I think it was their discovery that I'm an atheist that may have
>> put the kibosh on the Club.
>
>
> Odd how people discriminate against each other on the basis of beliefs.
> But I suppose that's the alien in me speaking again.
>
>
The eldest girl got it out of me very easily. On a Sunday afternoon
when I had Achilles out in the catchment basin to chase rabbits and do
doggy business, very similar to mine, except that I don't circle around
and around until the truth emerges. She came up on her bike and asked
me what church Doris and I go to, since our car is always in the parking
lot on Sunday morning. I tried to evade by saying that we went to 4 am
Mass, because the priest was sleepy then, and wasn't sure if he had
given his homily yet.
"Oh!" Ske biked off and was back in 5 minutes, as Achilles and I were
ready to go in. "There's no such thing as 4 am Mass! You lied to me!"
"There is at my bar." "Nonsense, you don't go to bars, as you are
home most of the time." (getting to be a better member of the Liars'
Club!) So I confessed that we go to Church or Temple only under
extraordinary circumstances since we don't believe in God. "What???"
"We just don't and don't have to." I explained that the only Church we
visited was the Davenport Methodist Church's Christmas pageant, which
always blows me away, and my brother's temple in Everett. (My German
pig-farmer relatives still live in SE Iowa.) My brother converted to
Judaism from atheism, as he was married to a Russian Jew, and is
secretary of his temple. I don't think he believes any more in the
existence of God now than he did then. The virus gets into your glial
cells, often through hidden codes in e-mail.
"Have you ever believed in God?,", asked Claire. "Yes, when I was your
age, I believed in God even more than you do, so be careful." When did
you stop, and why, etc. etc. I told her I was 12, and a 14-yr-old
Athapaskan Indian girl named Winnie persuaded me. Off she goes for
another 5 minutes. Achilles and I wait, he smelling everything, and my
wondering how I could screw this up any worse.
Coming back, she asserted that Winnie must have been a very stupid and
evil girl. I asked if she had ever heard of Jane Goodall. "Yes, of
course, the chimp lady." "Well I used to go talk to her, since her
office was 2 blocks from my apartment, and she taught me a lot, but
Winnie taught me more; she was one of the smartest, best women I have
ever met."
At this moment she realized that she and her mother had lost the
argument completely. She hasn't talked to me since. But she will wave
from the family van.
I hope I have repaired some of their self-inflicted damage. The middle
girl Maria seems to be the only one who has not condemned me to Hell.
She has a sense of humor, but might not be the brightest of her
siblings. She rode out to meet me a few months ago to chat. "What's
Achilles doing?" "Pretty much what what you do, except that he smells
and hears better than we do." "Oh, is that true?" "A thousand times
better." Then I asked her if she noticed that I always gave Achilles a
treat when he took a poop." "Of course." Does your mommy give you a
treat when you take a poop?" "No, of course not!" "Don't you think you
deserve as much as Achilles?" I said, "dont ask your mom." "Don't
worry." So, as she is the most accepting of the Irish children, I gave
he "How the Irish Saved Civilization" for her 10th birthday on Mar 22.
My wife said she could never read it or understand it. I said just
watch her if you care. Go over there, as you are not as threatening as
I am. So far no results.
>> [snip]
>> Society makes gross mistakes, and doesn't give a damn. I recently
>> spent a day and a half in jail for being attacked from the rear by a
>> violent paranoid pathological liar, I have pics of the scars to prove
>> it. It was a strange evening light and I was looking for good
>> pictures. He came upon me silently from the rear and then started
>> screaming "I'm going to kill you, asshole." He had this delusion that
>> I was trying to steal his 35-yr-old girlfriend from him, my being 62
>> and long happily married, not a likely story. It's true that she gave
>> me her phone number and invited me over, before meeting him, knowing I
>> was married, but I never called her, nor came over. Anyway, he told
>> the police such a tall tale, defying sense in anyone with an IQ above
>> 80, that they arrested me as well and charged me with assault, though
>> I had the scars, was just walking up the sidewalk and was a couple of
>> doors from his girlfriend's house. He was determined to destroy my
>> camera, and I was determined that he would not, but he was much
>> younger, bigger, and stronger than I. (He told the police I had
>> attacked him. Ha. Ha.) He had been threatening my life for months and
>> had assaulted me a few times before with little success. He managed
>> only to destroy the lens of my camera, which was spread over a 20'x40'
>> strewn field.
>>
>> I was not allowed to see the report he gave on scene to the cops, but
Even better, I gave him my employment history - professor, astronomer,
planetary scientist, etc. He took notes, so I thought at last someone
was listening. The next day he met my wife and told her that I was the
most pathological liar he'd ever met, and went over with her everything
I had told him, while she verified everything in detail. He did not
apologize for the damage he had done, but just shrugged and walked away.
>> When my wife made bail and had a release order from the court, none of
>> the police or prison guards claimed to have any knowledge of my
>> whereabouts, or even that I had ever been there. Eventually I was
>> tossed out on the street, no call home, minus the two quarters I took
>> in with me to assure myself a call home. The cops had stole even
>> them. I hitched a ride from a couple of vultures who wanted $20.
>
I knew that they didn't want to rob me as they were on regular patrol,
and knew I had nothing but my toenails.
>
> Your story makes me angry. It resonates with various experiences I've
> had -- all, though, of lesser intensity.
>
>
>>> And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by their own
>>> structure and by interaction with various phenomenon, so that they
>>> cannot see reality as it is. Oops, I just stumbled into a thesis
>>> something like that of the Matrix series. But then, do Einsteinian
>>> relativity and string theory say any different?
>>>
You mean phenomena.
>> A different matter. The brain is always forming false theoretical
>> concepts. I have explained this before. But better, you might read
>> "Philosophy in the Flesh."
>
>
> I've looked at it in bookstores, but it's never grabbed me.
Well, you could try "Cognitive Neuroscience" if you want a brain-eater,
but PitF will do once you grasp the simple correct principles.
>
> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of the
> universe?
>
>
It doesn't. Light comes here. Try stsci.edu, click on UDF (ultra deep
field) and get about four photos and frame them. You will see the very
birth of galaxies, which later grew into the ones nearby that we are
familiar with, by repeated incidents of a tree of coalescence. Now were
there a Space Telescope out there, which there isn't, it might see the
myriad mini-galaxies that formed ours. There is no "edge of the
Universe", but only as far as we can see into the past. Impress your
friends. I guarantee that neither heaven nor hell appear in any of the
photos.
>>> What did you say, something to the effect that your experience of the
>>> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum is so simple it's difficult to
>>> grasp and impossible to express in words? When it comes to the
>>> ultimate simplicity underlying the cosmos, we are all, most of the
>>> time, puzzlepates.
>>>
>>>
>> Not quite. I was in the differentiated aesthetic continuum, but only
>> sensed the Void that was behind it, and that is what at 11 scared me -
>> otherwise I'd have lain there all day, until my mother came and found
>> me. I can say what it is not, but not what it is. As for the Void,
>> words are incompatible, as they are pure theoretic, whereas the Void
>> (UAC) is purely experiential, but even that neutral phrase is
>> inaccurate, as it involves words, and you have no existence to
>> experience it with.
>
>
> Why do you choose the word "Void"?
>
That was the word I chose at the age of 11. I knew the word from reading
in astronomy, but I knew then at last that this was the real thing.
I don't think anyone who has experienced the UAC can communicate the
experience to another who also has. They may smoke a pipe, gaze at the
waves breaking in the rocks below, and listen to the therapod
dinosaurs, but you are on your own there, except for the company of
another potentially wise man. Or woman, though Judy's date jerked her
out of it before she got a chance to feel the Void.
>
>>>> My great love was thrown in mental hospitals over ten times under
>>>> drugs and restraint, but never when I was with her.
>>>
>>>
>>> Which woman was that?
>>>
>> She is too famous for me to make any specific reference, and her
>> [former] husband is even more famous. Anyway, what we had between us has
>> vanished, and she tells me has never recurred, and will never.
>
>
> Oh, that love.
>
Well it did change my physiology permantly, but sadly not hers.
Why do I write to you so much?
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>> K = Kabbalah?
>
>
> K, yes, what Madonna is into now; may the Golem protect her.
I like her. Never been particularly into her music or acting
or writing. But whenever I see her interviewed, I like her
as a person.
I notice that Stanford University Press has recently
published volume 1 of a projected ten-volume fresh
translation of the Zohar, the central classic of Kabbalism.
> As for
> saints in RC, I'm sure their function has changed over time. I've met
> only a couple of elderly American women, and many English-free Mexicans
> who were into them. My RC fiancee had no truck with saints, not even St
> Christopher, as she went travelling only with me, her St Christopher.
>
> As I explained before, and you must have read, given the depth and
> breadth of your scholarship,
*Gag*
> the only American woman I knew better than
> I wanted to, inundated with saint bric-a-brac - from whom I was renting
> a room - only went around asking for their advice and clearly was not
> praying to them. She had no problem with my being there, as she thought
> she might get a more straightforward reply to a scientist. Mexicans
> appeared to be worshipping, but I wouldn't call their terrible privation
> for the Virgin of Guadalupe as polytheism, because their variant of RC
> considers her to be a part of God.
I've heard there's more than some residual syncretism there.
But I don't know the details.
>> I didn't watch "Twin Peaks" because it was too annoying.
>
>
> Didn't like the traffic lights? The dancing dwarf who spoke backwards?
> The lesbian mill owner? Doris and I went by the cafe (the interior in
> the series was a set somewhere else) and got a "damn fine cup of coffee"
> (- Agent Cooper), and a piece of cherry pie that would have pleased
> Agent Cooper (her password for a time long ago). Soon after, the real
> restaurant burned to the ground. You need to let go of something, I
> could name a number of things, but don't know which is relevant here.
> Our problem was that the serieas went far astray and made no sense in
> the end, but since you didn't watch it, you wouldn't know about that.
Each time I tried watching "Twin Peaks," I became tired of
waiting for it to make sense. I might have tried harder if,
in those snippets I watched, it had made even a smidgen of
sense.
> Did you know that some Christian opponent of innocent adultery is
> burning down the landmarks from "The Bridges of Madison County"? I'm
> sure he's not under direct orders from Jesus, who did his share of
> fooling around.
I've heard. I have no inside scoop on what's been going on
there. However, some destructive religious iconoclasts in
American society think they're carrying forward the spirit
of Gideon and Jehu and Hezekiah and Josiah and other
Israelite heroes (Judges 6:25ff; 2 Kings 10:18-28; 18:4;
23:4ff). But they're only creating symbols of destruction,
which is one of the Molochs of our age.
>>> She's zaftig,
>>
>>
>>
>> Pleasantly plump?
>>
> Mucho jamon para dos huevos.
Lots of ham and eggs? Not kosher.
Hmm, but sometimes you seem to use "zaftig" to mean other
than pleasantly plump, no?
> I don't know if sex with her would be
> great or not. For some, guilt is an aphrodisiac and for others a
> turn-off. If I pulled it on her, I'd yank out all the phone cords in
> the house so she couldn't call Jerusalem.
Falling in love with people who would be unsuitable sex
partners for us: a cruel irony, too frequent; but only one
of many cruel ironies that life has a penchant to dish out.
> Remember, she's Ultra Othodox, and was never under the rule of
> Schneerson. She considered that the Hasids were trying to observe God,
> so forgave them. Also her ancestors in Grodno went through most of the
> same things the Hasids did. She says a husband in her faith would not
> allow her to work, but would spend his days in edubba, where the money
> would come from she did not know. She's now making twice whatever I
> ever made as a professor or astronomer.
Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting
up their wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study
of the Torah?
>>> [snip] It seems that the High Rabbi was very liberal about sex.
>>
>>
>>
>> In what way? Pro polygyny?
>>
> She gave me the impression that he would have given a green light, were
> my wife and I sufficiently orthodox, and at least hunted down those
> damned crumbs at Pesach.
I'm curious about any Orthodox rabbis who revert to
traditional attitudes towards polygyny -- that would be
traditional pre-Rabbi Gershom (ca. 965-ca. 1028).
> But we also have a micro ecology of arthropods
> that I leave strictly alone. It's their life, and we give them some
> haven.
I have a rule for arthropods: It's my home; they're free to
live outside. I'm not strict with the crustaceans. But it's
the arachnids who get away with the most.
> [snip]
>> Certainly I often feel distaste. If the video packaging prominently
>> features a gun being used as an instrument of force, I figure that's
>> probably not a movie for me. I don't understand why the gun thing
>> isn't considered by everyone else extremely overworked and thus
>> extremely boring. But there's the alien in me.
>
>
> No responsible person should own a gun, except a bona fide hunting gun
> in hunting country. I never have, but I can shoot them pretty well. I
> know where my head must go when I'm shooting a Magnum pistol. Watching
> these shooting matches on TV programs is such a joke, because real guns
> of that calibre do not act so tamely. Those automatics they use used to
> be called blue sky and clouds guns by GIs.
Beware or we'll set off a subthread or even a full-fledged
thread about the right to bear arms. This ng has already
generated plenty of those.
Heedlessly plunging ahead: I see the right to bear arms for
the common defense, self defense, and potential or actual
subsistence hunting as subservient to the right to life and
to be maintained in proper balance for the maximization of
the right to life. As for the use of guns for sport, I
suppose that would be subservient to the right to the
pursuit of happiness and to the responsibility of reasonable
environmental management.
> The Dark Ages are dark to me, except for the tremendous growth in
> technology over that of the Romans.
This parallel just occurred to me today (Sunday) during a
discussion of the Arts and Crafts Movement (William Morris
et alia): Italian humanists brought about a Renaissance of a
romanticized notion of Greek and Roman classical culture.
Morris and his lot brought about a renaissance of a
romanticized notion of medieval culture.
> I had a terrible debate with a
> woman in this newsgroup years ago over the role of magic in the growth
> of science (she was for it, and was studying it in some Brit U). I
> thought I put her down on every point, but of course she thought she
> won, as she had her lunatic professor to back her up.
Chemistry out of alchemy, astronomy out of astrology, etc.?
Regarding the latter, once I dug into it in response to a
reference question and was impressed with the degree to
which astronomy has been independent of astrology going back
millennia. As for the former, I suppose that cooking and
medicine and metallurgy and assassination by poison AND
alchemy, and other things as well, all had much to do with
the development of chemistry.
> I'm not sure exactly what protestantism is.
Protestantism is an umbrella term for those church groups
that broke away from Roman Catholicism in the 1500s, those
ecclesiastical bodies that have descended from them, and
those Christian groups, especially those Bible-based ones,
that have since sprung up independent of Roman Catholicism
and Eastern Orthodoxy. (A motto of that break-away, the
Reformation, was "Sola Scriptura!") Generally they share a
core of doctrine with Roman Catholicism, such as the
doctrinal portions of the great ecumenical creeds -- Nicea,
Chalcedon, etc. If that last bit is accepted as part of the
definition, that lets out Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses,
for example; although some people do classify them as
Protestants. It would also let out a lot of liberal
Christians in the Protestant tradition, but since most of
them are in the stream of descent, they and those of similar
ilk are generally considered to be under the umbrella.
The theologian Paul Tillich posited a Protestant principle,
a spirit of radical reform that keeps pressing and pressing.
But I'd have to refresh myself to elaborate.
Some thinkers insist that, in terms of what's needed, the
Reformation is far from over. For instance, Demosthenes
Savramis, in The Satanizing of Woman (1974), claimed that
the Protestant churches' attitudes towards sexuality are far
from free of the taint of false dualisms left over from
medieval Catholicism.
> The sect my step-father was
> a travelling preacher in for 18 years was much farther from the Church
> of England than the CoE is from Rome, or even Methodists are. In a
> sense I was more of an RC than my RC fiancee, as she preferred guitar
> masses, did not believe in hell, and hated the group "English Chant
> Schola", to which I was turned on to by several seminarians.
I've started looking for the English Chant Schola. Anything
like Gregorian Chant?
Hmm, you believed in hell at that point, even though you
were an atheist?
>> I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still incubating
>> hatreds, including in the U.S.
>>
>
> Ever travelled through the South with the Whites Only signs?
I didn't travel in the South till the early 70s, and then I
lived there (Nashville, then on to Arkansas) for only a
summer. I did encounter blatant racism. One white woman kept
asking me, "Would you want your son to marry a woman who
uses one of those combs, huh, huh?!" But most of the racism
I encountered was among Blacks themselves -- only some, of
course; and most of that racism was directed against other
Blacks: mulattos, Blacks who could pass, etc. (That was
before the term "African-American" was pushed by Jesse Jackson.)
Probably the most interesting person I met that summer was
an old jazz musician -- a tall, lanky Arkansan. I wish to
goodness that I could remember his name. I had a long
wonderful conversation with him. I wish too that I could
remember all he told me, but I remember only the flavor of it.
> [snip]
>
> And now the US Southern Baptists want to split off from the World
> Conference of Baptists (?).
The Baptist World Alliance.
> When will it ever end?
Maybe never. Splits go on and on.
Denominationalism isn't all bad. There's something for all
kinds of people. (Notice I'm not saying "for everybody.")
And the denominations learn from one another.
However, the Southern Baptists have had an intense
internecine war going on for the last two decades, a war
that is destroying some institutions and countless careers
(many moderates are being left out in the cold) and that is
reinforcing a polarization of conservative and liberal
Christianity well beyond their own bounds.
> My grandparents and
> many others dropped out of the Southern Baptists during the depression,
> because they demanded church tithes, even when my ancestors didn't have
> money to buy seeds. They formed their own fundamentalist fellowship
> open to anyone, which met in homes, and was based on a much more honest
> version of AA or Confession on how god helped me over this or that
> problem in the previous week (witnessing).
I'm well familiar with the phenomenon of bearing witness to
God's work in one's life.
> My real father, a sociopath,
> did not join, but later my mother married an 18-yr itinerant preacher in
> this sect, who never received a dime for religious work, but only for
> physical work - and a skilled man he was, with many women wanting to
> snag him. I don't think he was truly heterosexual, as all his older
> sisters beat up on him, and ratted every little thing about this
> high-spirited boy to his *very* Victorian parents from Penzance.
Older sisters will turn a guy gay?
> [snip]
>> Many Protestants use the mental escape, "Those weren't real
>> Christians; or, if they were, they were acting contrary to Christian
>> principles." To a large extent I agree. However, not all the sins of
>> this or that Christian group are attributable to selfishness and like
>> unwelcome admixtures with the spirit of Christianity. Some are rooted
>> in the doctrines and structure and historical formation of those
>> groups themselves.
>>
>
> As in Islam, practice is more rooted in changing societal views than in
> the founding religious documents themselves.
Now there you go saying something super smart way out of
your field!
Not many people, pro or con a given religion, realize that.
Many of the faults of a given religion are simply with
ourselves and of our own time.
> There are no truly Christian principles that we can rely upon.
And the pendulum rapidly swings the other way. It's the
people you're seldom sure you can rely on.
> Scholars
> have tried to winnow through the red print, and there is no general
> agreement. That was what Winnie was trying to tell me 50 years ago,
> though there was no scholarship readily available at that time to back
> her up. By next morning I agreed with her when everything came together
> with a bang. What Paul said is nothing like Jesus would have said.
I take issue with that. Keep in mind that Paul's writings
are much closer to the time of Jesus than any of the
Gospels, and the voice of Jesus can be detected (albeit
second-hand) over and over in them. I'd say the key
difference is that Paul was christocentric and Jesus wasn't.
> Have
> you read the book "The First Coming"?
Bits and pieces.
>> "From the fruit the tree is known."
>>
>> Of course, that saying applies more broadly than to just Christianity.
>>
>
> Certainly not to the DoJ?!
Department of Justice?
>>> Try "After Polygamy was Made a Sin", by Cairncross. No matter how
>>> much condemnation one has piled up against Christians, this book puts
>>> the icing on it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've read it. A fascinating book. I'd like to see a new, heftier
>> edition with a lot more detail and more copious translations.
>>
>
> I think Cairncross is dead.
John Cairncross was a spy for the Soviets, right? If so, his
dates were 1913-1995.
> Nice thing good Christians did to the
> residents of Muenster, who were only trying to survive against the
> Christian insanity of the 30 years' War. I won't eat Muenster cheese,
> even if it is low cal. The book you hope for is yours, as no one else
> would dare to write it, ya'hear? I'm too old and not a historical or
> Christian scholar. You do it. It would be a service, as Cairncross's
> book is a bit limp to make any changes, except for the converted, like me.
One of the books I hope to write someday -- it's several
books down the road -- covers some of the same territory.
> Don't let grammar lead you astray.
The grammar of others sometimes does. My own grammar is at
my direction -- except when it's not, to employ a jimbatism.
>>> Remember Bo Derek.
>>
>>
>>
>> My ten would be one of several other physical types combined with a
>> rich inner life and ... but enough of that! IMHO, Bo Derek is more
>> stunning now than she was when she co-starred with Dudley Moore in "Ten."
>>
>
> There's a club you can go to in LA,
I'm wondering how what I said sparked your thoughts in that
direction.
> I think called the Scores Club, that
> if you go in one day with a roll of 200+ $100 bills in your pocket (one
> or two for the doorman) and spread it around liberally without asking
> for favors, then the next day, after the word has passed around, go in
> with the same, your reputation made, you can have just about anything
> you want. It's a sex club for those with rolls in their pocketses, and
> maybe One Rings. I saw on a bit on VH1 that Cristina Aguilera went
> there recently, took her time selecting sexual partners, and took 5
> wommen into a back room from which they did not emerge for hours, but
> all with happy faces. I don't mind 12-hr erections, have had them
> before, but Jesus I'd need 4 months to get into shape for that.
Now wait a minute! I don't think I want to imagine the
workouts. ;-)
> And
> what if I couldn't find a woman I could like?
Ahh, you're picky. Good for you.
> I'd rather buy a Lexus
> (can do) and pick up the right kind of woman.
Hmm, I don't associate a "right kind of woman" with her
attraction to a make of car.
> [snip]
> I have come so close so many times, as I commuted on bikes 10 mi/day all
> through grad school rain or shine and afterwards, for tens of thousands
> of miles, for most of those years without a bike helmet. I sold that
> bike, as it was the first Japanese 10-speed sold in the US and weighed
> 42# stripped. Now I have a found Pugeot, about 33# that cost me only
> $110 to ship to Pasadena, get its forks replaced, and a tune-up. I have
> done fine against $300-$1000 bikes, even carrying leader gear(gatorade,
> extra snacks, space blankets, extra capilene clothes and a couple of
> rainproof shells in a two-bag pannier. I've never been on a long bike
> ride with a group when my leader supplies were not useful. Saved the VP
> of the Baltimore Bike Club from a sure time in hospital, even if she was
> a doctor. She had no idea how bad off she was, until I turned around and
> cared for her. (I'd rather have a smart inventory clerk than a stupid
> doctor asa lover.) I an no bike leader, but that is what I did as a
> mountaneering leader. 10 years ago, not now. It'll take me 3 years to
> get back into that shape.
Better get started then!
I had a heavy duty custom modified (high seat, high handle
bars) one-speed, balloon-tire bike for many years, in fact
the one that was bent into a pretzel when my arm was
smashed. Used to take it both mountain biking and on long
day trips on the road back in the 60s. It worked much better
than the new-fangled 21-speed mountain bike I have now.
> [snip]
> she can refer you to the best possible treatment. You
> believe in God. You think he wants you like this? Is not life a "vale
> of tears"?
>
> Laura Mumford
> Lutherville, MD
> 410/583-0390
> Lynn will usually answer.
> Office hours are 9-4 ET, but she makes most of her calls after hours.
Thank you. I have consulted doctors recently, including a
specialist who consulted other specialists.
> [snip]
>> The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chron," had an article this
>> month about the quest for respectability on the part of Tolkien
>> scholars in the halls of academe. I've always thought Tolkien worthy
>> of serious academic study.
>>
>>
> He is, for the source of his names, which I'm informed come mostly from
> ancient Icelandic mythology.
There's a much broader array of sources than that. But, yes,
many are from Old Norse mythology, which I love to read.
> As for the stories, I've got dozens of
> better ones on my shelves, and thrown many more out.
Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I
suppose it had its purpose.
> The Egyptians made
> up a writing system, and so did he. Which one do you think is known by
> a larger number of people and will last longer?
I would guess Tolkien's to be known by more people at this
moment but that hieroglyphics and Coptic will last longer,
especially given that they already have a head start of some
millennia.
> [snip]
> Utterly different. I was put off by being forced to read "Silas Marner"
> as a junior in HS, in the usual broken-up way with meaningless questions
> for each section. I shoved her out of my mind to the extent that the
> following humiliating encounter happened to me when I was cleaning
> upper-class "house" johns my freshman year. The frights I've seen...
> One resident told me that he was a holdover from his class. He was all
> ready to go out with honors in English. In that, and many other,
> subjects at Harvard you are subjected to an oral exam in which any
> question from out of the blue can be asked. He was asked what he made
> of the ultimate fate of Dr Lydgate in Middlemarch, and if there was any
> lesson in that for him. He had not read Middlemarch. The professors
> conferred and flunked him: "No one can graduate from Harvard in English
> without having read Middlemarch." He showed me he letter. (He was
> assigned to a seminar on George Eliot the next year.) Me" "I,ve never
> heard of him." Him: "It's novel by George Eliot, you imbecile." Me:
> "Oh, I've heard of *him*." He spun on his heel, slammed the door to his
> bedroom and began kicking furniture. I did an especially good job on
> his disgusting john, which caused me to have to work beyond my allotted
> time.
I cleaned johns for a while in college too.
> [snip]
> You'd be surprised how subservient you can become to improper authority.
I've hung out with religionists a lot, so maybe I'd be less
surprised than you think.
> I stayed for 9 years with a wife who hated sex with men. How many
> points does that subtract from my IQ?
Maybe sublimation added points. Who knows?
> [snip]
> "Oh!" Ske biked off and was back in 5 minutes, as Achilles and I were
> ready to go in. "There's no such thing as 4 am Mass! You lied to me!"
> "There is at my bar." "Nonsense, you don't go to bars, as you are home
> most of the time." (getting to be a better member of the Liars' Club!)
> So I confessed that we go to Church or Temple only under extraordinary
> circumstances since we don't believe in God. "What???" "We just don't
> and don't have to." I explained that the only Church we visited was
> the Davenport Methodist Church's Christmas pageant, which always blows
> me away, and my brother's temple in Everett. (My German pig-farmer
> relatives still live in SE Iowa.) My brother converted to Judaism from
> atheism, as he was married to a Russian Jew, and is secretary of his
> temple. I don't think he believes any more in the existence of God now
> than he did then. The virus gets into your glial cells, often through
> hidden codes in e-mail.
Oh, that's what you say instead of using the Dawkins word
"memes"! :-)
> [snip]
> Coming back, she asserted that Winnie must have been a very stupid and
> evil girl. I asked if she had ever heard of Jane Goodall. "Yes, of
> course, the chimp lady." "Well I used to go talk to her, since her
> office was 2 blocks from my apartment, and she taught me a lot, but
> Winnie taught me more; she was one of the smartest, best women I have
> ever met."
You sound like a Forrest Gump with all these famous people
you say you've known. You must've been in the right circles.
> [snip]
>>>> And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by their
>>>> own structure and by interaction with various phenomenon, so that
>>>> they cannot see reality as it is. Oops, I just stumbled into a
>>>> thesis something like that of the Matrix series. But then, do
>>>> Einsteinian relativity and string theory say any different?
>>>>
>
> You mean phenomena.
Yes, of course, "phenomena." That's the kind of thing a
spell checker doesn't pick up. I need a "when I talk like an
idiot" checker. Can't imagine how I even thought that.
>>> A different matter. The brain is always forming false theoretical
>>> concepts. I have explained this before. But better, you might read
>>> "Philosophy in the Flesh."
>>
>>
>>
>> I've looked at it in bookstores, but it's never grabbed me.
>
>
> Well, you could try "Cognitive Neuroscience" if you want a brain-eater,
> but PitF will do once you grasp the simple correct principles.
Does this catch some of the spirit of what you have in mind:
"... no such disembodied mind can exist, whether you call it
mind or Soul, anything that both thinks and is free-floating
is a myth. It cannot exist."
--> Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought, [by] George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson (New York, NY: Basic Books, c1999): p. 563.
I had a copy in my hand briefly today (Monday).
>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of the
>> universe?
>>
>>
>
> It doesn't. Light comes here.
To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But
doesn't the expansion of the universe also move into the
future? And isn't the speed of light faster than the
expansion of the universe?
> Try stsci.edu, click on UDF (ultra deep
> field) and get about four photos and frame them.
I'm still downloading the first.
> You will see the very
> birth of galaxies, which later grew into the ones nearby that we are
> familiar with, by repeated incidents of a tree of coalescence. Now were
> there a Space Telescope out there, which there isn't, it might see the
> myriad mini-galaxies that formed ours. There is no "edge of the
> Universe", but only as far as we can see into the past.
Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for
the universe? All else is past? Surely there must be such a
thing as simultaneity, no?
If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically,
be able to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not
the far away stuff, but the identical stuff.
So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or
ignorance, if you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than
twice as old as the oldest perceptible light? All starts at
point A. Point A now stretches between point A1 (here) and
point A2 (the most distant light). The source of that light
had to get to where it was when it emitted that light at
less than the speed of light (I suppose the Hubble
Constant), right? The trouble is, that would mean --
wouldn't it? -- some sort of horizon of perception: we could
see at the most midway and no further. But that notion's as
nonsensical sounding as, say, there being no simultaneity.
Or is it?
I caught up on Science News today. It does a pretty good job
of teaching me how little I know.
> Impress your
> friends. I guarantee that neither heaven nor hell appear in any of the
> photos.
A lot of places in the universe look pretty hellish to me.
>>> Not quite. I was in the differentiated aesthetic continuum, but only
>>> sensed the Void that was behind it, and that is what at 11 scared me
>>> - otherwise I'd have lain there all day, until my mother came and
>>> found me. I can say what it is not, but not what it is. As for the
>>> Void, words are incompatible, as they are pure theoretic, whereas the
>>> Void (UAC) is purely experiential, but even that neutral phrase is
>>> inaccurate, as it involves words, and you have no existence to
>>> experience it with.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why do you choose the word "Void"?
>>
> That was the word I chose at the age of 11. I knew the word from reading
> in astronomy, but I knew then at last that this was the real thing.
>
> I don't think anyone who has experienced the UAC can communicate the
> experience to another who also has. They may smoke a pipe, gaze at the
> waves breaking in the rocks below, and listen to the therapod
> dinosaurs, but you are on your own there, except for the company of
> another potentially wise man. Or woman, though Judy's date jerked her
> out of it before she got a chance to feel the Void.
By serendipity, I just came across this passage in the
Metaphysics of Aristotle:
"Infinity and void and other concepts of this kind are said
to 'be' potentially or actually in a different sense from
the majority of existing things, e.g. that which sees, or
walks, or is seen. For in these latter cases the predication
may sometimes be truly made without qualification, since
'that which is seen' is so called sometimes because it is
seen and sometimes because it is capable of being seen; but
the Infinite does not exist potentially in the sense that it
will ever exist separately in actuality; it is separable
only in knowledge. For the fact that the process of division
never ceases makes this actuality exist potentially, but not
separately." (1048b:10-18 = 9.6.5-6, Loeb Classical Library)
>> Oh, that love.
>>
>
> Well it did change my physiology permantly, but sadly not hers.
I suspect I know the effect. Unless you have something more
individual in mind.
> Why do I write to you so much?
I suppose in part hunger for good conversation. This
cross-thread conversation has operated on many levels.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Ultra-Apocrypha, for the 3rd millenium in which the tardy Messiah has
not yet come. Can someone not give him a big, ugly Casio watch like I
have so he won't be so late for promised meetings?
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>>> K = Kabbalah?
>>
>>
>>
>> K, yes, what Madonna is into now; may the Golem protect her.
>
>
> I like her. Never been particularly into her music or acting or writing.
> But whenever I see her interviewed, I like her as a person.
Like Sharon Stone, she knows *exactly* what she is doing. I preferred
Cyndi Lauper at the time they both came out. Madonna has a one-octave
range, and I'm not sure she can hit all those notes. She sure broke
Warren Beatty, who decided that he'd be better off with Annette Bening
than with Madonna, and screwing these mother-daughter couples all over
the world. Good choice!! I'd like to be torn apart by Annette Bening.
>
> I notice that Stanford University Press has recently published volume 1
> of a projected ten-volume fresh translation of the Zohar, the central
> classic of Kabbalism.
>
>
Eeeks! "A Stranger Among Us", and "The Golem" are enough for me. You
knowI'm an atheist, and deny completely the existence of the world
Kabbalism refers to.
Was it written in Sepphoris, like the Mishnah and the beginnings of the
Talmud? My wife and I went to a big exhibit on Sepphoris in NC.
There's a book of the exhibit. The town escaped Roman destruction by
submitting, and was then even give Roman permission to mint its own
coinage, possibly not owed to Caesar.
>> As for saints in RC, I'm sure their function has changed over time.
>> I've met only a couple of elderly American women, and many
>> English-free Mexicans who were into them. My RC fiancee had no truck
>> with saints, not even St Christopher, as she went travelling only with
>> me, her St Christopher.
>>
>> As I explained before, and you must have read, given the depth and
>> breadth of your scholarship,
>
>
> *Gag*
>
Yes, a tough rag to swallow in your modest state.
>
>> the only American woman I knew better than I wanted to, inundated with
>> saint bric-a-brac - from whom I was renting a room - only went around
>> asking for their advice and clearly was not praying to them. She had
>> no problem with my being there, as she thought she might get a more
>> straightforward reply to a scientist. Mexicans appeared to be
>> worshipping, but I wouldn't call their terrible privation for the
>> Virgin of Guadalupe as polytheism, because their variant of RC
>> considers her to be a part of God.
>
>
> I've heard there's more than some residual syncretism there. But I don't
> know the details.
>
>
>>> I didn't watch "Twin Peaks" because it was too annoying.
>>
>>
>>
>> Didn't like the traffic lights? The dancing dwarf who spoke
>> backwards? The lesbian mill owner? Doris and I went by the cafe (the
>> interior in the series was a set somewhere else) and got a "damn fine
>> cup of coffee" (- Agent Cooper), and a piece of cherry pie that would
>> have pleased Agent Cooper (her password for a time long ago). Soon
>> after, the real restaurant burned to the ground. You need to let go
>> of something, I could name a number of things, but don't know which is
>> relevant here. Our problem was that the series went far astray and
>> made no sense in the end, but since you didn't watch it, you wouldn't
>> know about that.
>
>
> Each time I tried watching "Twin Peaks," I became tired of waiting for
> it to make sense. I might have tried harder if, in those snippets I
> watched, it had made even a smidgen of sense.
>
The whole point was that it didn't: a dybbuk in the Cascades? Perhaps
some relation to the Kabbalah.
>
>> Did you know that some Christian opponent of innocent adultery is
>> burning down the landmarks from "The Bridges of Madison County"? I'm
>> sure he's not under direct orders from Jesus, who did his share of
>> fooling around.
>
>
> I've heard. I have no inside scoop on what's been going on there.
> However, some destructive religious iconoclasts in American society
> think they're carrying forward the spirit of Gideon and Jehu and
> Hezekiah and Josiah and other Israelite heroes (Judges 6:25ff; 2 Kings
> 10:18-28; 18:4; 23:4ff). But they're only creating symbols of
> destruction, which is one of the Molochs of our age.
>
From 5-yrs-old all I now remember of Gideon is to keep your weapons in
one hand while you drink with the other. I still do that. Oh, doesn't
he have a trumpet in Revelatians, or is that a different Gideon?
>
>>>> She's zaftig,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Pleasantly plump?
>>>
>> Mucho jamon para dos huevos.
>
>
> Lots of ham and eggs? Not kosher.
Much ham for two eggs. You can guess the ham and the eggs; both kosher
and halal. The expression expresses both uncertainty and a devout wish.
>
> Hmm, but sometimes you seem to use "zaftig" to mean other than
> pleasantly plump, no?
A little, perhaps.....
>
>
>> I don't know if sex with her would be great or not. For some, guilt
>> is an aphrodisiac and for others a turn-off. If I pulled it on her,
>> I'd yank out all the phone cords in the house so she couldn't call
>> Jerusalem.
>
>
> Falling in love with people who would be unsuitable sex partners for us:
> a cruel irony, too frequent; but only one of many cruel ironies that
> life has a penchant to dish out.
>
>
A vale of tears.
>> Remember, she's Ultra Othodox, and was never under the rule of
>> Schneerson. She considered that the Hasids were trying to observe
>> God, so forgave them. Also her ancestors in Grodno went through most
>> of the same things the Hasids did. She says a husband in her faith
>> would not allow her to work, but would spend his days in edubba, where
>> the money would come from she did not know. She's now making twice
>> whatever I ever made as a professor or astronomer.
>
>
> Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting up their
> wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study of the Torah?
>
>
Yes, but, inn the home, in the old days of the crafts, but I cannot
over-emphasize that she is ULTRA-orthodox. She can telecommute to some
extent, but she has a number of meetings to go to in a week.
>>>> [snip] It seems that the High Rabbi was very liberal about sex.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In what way? Pro polygyny?
>>>
>> She gave me the impression that he would have given a green light,
>> were my wife and I sufficiently orthodox, and at least hunted down
>> those damned crumbs at Pesach.
>
>
> I'm curious about any Orthodox rabbis who revert to traditional
> attitudes towards polygyny -- that would be traditional pre-Rabbi
> Gershom (ca. 965-ca. 1028).
>
>
There are a lot of racy rabbis out there.
>> But we also have a micro ecology of arthropods that I leave strictly
>> alone. It's their life, and we give them some haven.
>
>
> I have a rule for arthropods: It's my home; they're free to live
> outside. I'm not strict with the crustaceans. But it's the arachnids who
> get away with the most.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Certainly I often feel distaste. If the video packaging prominently
>>> features a gun being used as an instrument of force, I figure that's
>>> probably not a movie for me. I don't understand why the gun thing
>>> isn't considered by everyone else extremely overworked and thus
>>> extremely boring. But there's the alien in me.
>>
>>
>>
>> No responsible person should own a gun, except a bona fide hunting gun
>> in hunting country. I never have, but I can shoot them pretty well.
>> I know where my head must go when I'm shooting a Magnum pistol.
>> Watching these shooting matches on TV programs is such a joke, because
>> real guns of that calibre do not act so tamely. Those automatics they
>> use used to be called blue sky and clouds guns by GIs.
>
>
> Beware or we'll set off a subthread or even a full-fledged thread about
> the right to bear arms. This ng has already generated plenty of those.
Has it? I put down a few gun flame wars on rec.backcountry in 1991, to
which ng I've returned a couple of years ago. I did it with a parody,
which can now apparently be Googled, because someone on r.b found it and
e-mailed it to me; it's called "Tanks in the Backcountry."
>
> Heedlessly plunging ahead: I see the right to bear arms for the common
> defense, self defense, and potential or actual subsistence hunting as
> subservient to the right to life and to be maintained in proper balance
> for the maximization of the right to life. As for the use of guns for
> sport, I suppose that would be subservient to the right to the pursuit
> of happiness and to the responsibility of reasonable environmental
> management.
>
>
There you go again. Guns will just get you into trouble. Deer are OK,
since the are a plague in the East, and tou can't eat too much of them
at a sitting, anyway.
There was a stupid joke on Reno911 this evening. A homeless man wearing
only a long shirt was being urged by two officers to pull his pants back
on. He said, "Aw there ain't nothin' there." Then, "I have to pee
sitting down because my doctor said my back was to weak too lift
anything heavy." The officers retreated, trying to control their
sphincters.
>> The Dark Ages are dark to me, except for the tremendous growth in
>> technology over that of the Romans.
>
>
> This parallel just occurred to me today (Sunday) during a discussion of
> the Arts and Crafts Movement (William Morris et alia): Italian humanists
> brought about a Renaissance of a romanticized notion of Greek and Roman
> classical culture. Morris and his lot brought about a renaissance of a
> romanticized notion of medieval culture.
>
>
Over her in the US, the A&C movement is mainly associated with
architecture, like the Greene & Greene houses in Pasdena, and my great
love's bungalow on Palomar Mtn. I've seen much of the Morris work at
the V&A Museum in London.
>> I had a terrible debate with a woman in this newsgroup years ago over
>> the role of magic in the growth of science (she was for it, and was
>> studying it in some Brit U). I thought I put her down on every point,
>> but of course she thought she won, as she had her lunatic professor to
>> back her up.
>
I'm sorry, I should have made clear *modern science* since 1500 or so.
>
> Chemistry out of alchemy, astronomy out of astrology, etc.? Regarding
> the latter, once I dug into it in response to a reference question and
> was impressed with the degree to which astronomy has been independent of
> astrology going back millennia. As for the former, I suppose that
> cooking and medicine and metallurgy and assassination by poison AND
> alchemy, and other things as well, all had much to do with the
> development of chemistry.
>
>
Not much. You needed the concept of different sorts of atoms, which
Mendeleev rationalized. He didn't know why the elements arranged into a
regular pattern by properties; that had to await the arrival of
quantization.
>> I'm not sure exactly what protestantism is.
>
>
> Protestantism is an umbrella term for those church groups that broke
> away from Roman Catholicism in the 1500s, those ecclesiastical bodies
> that have descended from them, and those Christian groups, especially
> those Bible-based ones, that have since sprung up independent of Roman
> Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. (A motto of that break-away, the
> Reformation, was "Sola Scriptura!") Generally they share a core of
> doctrine with Roman Catholicism, such as the doctrinal portions of the
> great ecumenical creeds -- Nicea, Chalcedon, etc. If that last bit is
> accepted as part of the definition, that lets out Mormons and Jehovah's
> Witnesses, for example; although some people do classify them as
> Protestants. It would also let out a lot of liberal Christians in the
> Protestant tradition, but since most of them are in the stream of
> descent, they and those of similar ilk are generally considered to be
> under the umbrella.
Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so accurately
or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it all, or a
super-protestant?
>
> The theologian Paul Tillich posited a Protestant principle, a spirit of
> radical reform that keeps pressing and pressing. But I'd have to refresh
> myself to elaborate.
>
He was dreaming. I have often dreamed strange things that affect my
waking thought irritatingly, such as where poop comes from.
> Some thinkers insist that, in terms of what's needed, the Reformation is
> far from over. For instance, Demosthenes Savramis, in The Satanizing of
> Woman (1974), claimed that the Protestant churches' attitudes towards
> sexuality are far from free of the taint of false dualisms left over
> from medieval Catholicism.
>
Of course that's true. I can hardly tell a homily apart from a tame
protestant sermon, except that the homily is blessedly shorter.
>
>> The sect my step-father was a travelling preacher in for 18 years was
>> much farther from the Church of England than the CoE is from Rome, or
>> even Methodists are. In a sense I was more of an RC than my RC
>> fiancee, as she preferred guitar masses, did not believe in hell, and
>> hated the group "English Chant Schola", to which I was turned on to by
>> several seminarians.
>
>
> I've started looking for the English Chant Schola. Anything like
> Gregorian Chant?
Yes it Gregorian chant, with the notes adjusted to better fit English
vowels than Latin. You can't just translate Gregorian chant to English.
>
> Hmm, you believed in hell at that point, even though you were an atheist?
>
>
No, of course not, but it was just another sign that RC was just a
family and social thing for her, though it controlled her pretty well.
>>> I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still incubating
>>> hatreds, including in the U.S.
>>>
NSDT.
>>
>> Ever travelled through the South with the Whites Only signs?
>
>
> I didn't travel in the South till the early 70s, and then I lived there
> (Nashville, then on to Arkansas) for only a summer. I did encounter
> blatant racism. One white woman kept asking me, "Would you want your son
> to marry a woman who uses one of those combs, huh, huh?!" But most of
> the racism I encountered was among Blacks themselves -- only some, of
> course; and most of that racism was directed against other Blacks:
> mulattos, Blacks who could pass, etc. (That was before the term
> "African-American" was pushed by Jesse Jackson.)
Oh, it's still there: when black kids try to prevent others from
studying by calling them a "white boy".
>
> Probably the most interesting person I met that summer was an old jazz
> musician -- a tall, lanky Arkansan. I wish to goodness that I could
> remember his name. I had a long wonderful conversation with him. I wish
> too that I could remember all he told me, but I remember only the flavor
> of it.
>
There's a Southern Folk Music Museum catty-cornered from BB King's in
Memphis on Beale and 2nd according to my poster. Old blues men go into
there to jam as long as they can make it. I'm not sure that he is still
alive, but Rufus Thomas ("the oldest living teenager in the world") did
when we were there, and he knew *everybody*.
>> [snip]
>
[...]
>
>> My grandparents and many others dropped out of the Southern Baptists
>> during the depression, because they demanded church tithes, even when
>> my ancestors didn't have money to buy seeds. They formed their own
>> fundamentalist fellowship open to anyone, which met in homes, and was
>> based on a much more honest version of AA or Confession on how god
>> helped me over this or that problem in the previous week (witnessing).
>
>
> I'm well familiar with the phenomenon of bearing witness to God's work
> in one's life.
>
As you might guess I don't do it. When a Balto cop pulled his service
revolver belly to belly on me in front of two paramedics as we were
going to the station to get my woumds from a fall cleaned and dressed
(My FDNY cap can't have hurt with them), and then pointed it at my
leashed dog that growled at him to protect me, "I'm likely to kill your
vicious dog" (really the most gentle dog). For the 2nd time I told him
he was out of policy and had two witnesses. When he then tried to force
the paramedics back into the FD building, they told him that their
official obligation was to people who needed medical aid, that I did,
and he was out of policy in that matter, too. The cop thean claimed
that I was inebriated. I told him I'd just had a terrible whack on the
head, and demanded to take a breatholyzer test. He refused. Then I
asked the paramedics if they had one and would they give me the test,
they said yes, and the cop turned his gun on them. After then
presenting me with several impossible alternatives, all of which
involved confiscating my dog and putting him in some unknown SPCA
location in town, I suggested why didn't he just shoot an injured person
and his peaceful dog under the eyes of the paramedics, and then resign
from the force; how'd his family like that?
At this point he was foaming at the mouth, but knew he was trapped, as
the paramedics had snapped his cruiser and him with a private digital
camera, not under his control, So he offered to take me home, and maybe
if I got lucky I'd be able to keep my perfectly leashed and tagged dog.
He said my wife could clean me up. I said she's out of town for a few
more days on important business and that I was too dazed to do it.
"I'll take you to a hospital, but then you will lose your dog. I said
no way, Jose. He said, "Tough titty." So he took me home with
Achilles. "Are you capable of making you door?" "Of course, you idiot,
you knew all the time I wasn't drunk."
My beard was bleeding profusely, and it took me about 2 hours and 3
washrags to get it reduced to a trickle. It seems that I took the main
hit on my mandible, and TMJ. The TMJ then bled into the tissue about my
right eyeball, closing it. My wife is back now, and my atrocious
condition is much improved, though I'm still weak. I saved all my
clothes with blood on them, but they all washed well, confirming to my
wife what she had long suspected, that I'm a space alien.
Reichsgauleiter: "Though our neighborhood is safe, never, ever take
Achilles on a walk after 10 pm. As you know the biggest dangers in our
community are the police!" "Ja, mein Frau."
Dealing with the Balto Police is like craps - BTW I'm white, tonsured
like a retired professor and astronomer - not DWB, but that didn't give
any pause to the cop. It's a crap shoot to get involved with cops. I
try all efforts to avoid it, but this guy saw an innocent situation, but
was looking for trouble. God knows what would have happened if I had
not fallen right outside a firehouse emergency garage. Who was that
singer, Jimmy Rogers?, who sang mostly religious ballads who was beaten
into a permanent vegitative state in the '70s by a couple of LA police
officers on Laurel Canyon when he might have been going 5 miles above
the speed limit. No higher was proved as I recall.
Saddam for Bush?
Nevertheless I give no thanks to God. Had he existed, 1st, I wouldn't
have fallen (perhaps with the help of a small seizure), and 2nd, he
wouldn't have sicked a vicious, out of policy cop on me. Atheism and
the UAC got me through it.
>
>> My real father, a sociopath, did not join, but later my mother married
>> an 18-yr itinerant preacher in this sect, who never received a dime
>> for religious work, but only for physical work - and a skilled man he
>> was, with many women wanting to snag him. I don't think he was truly
>> heterosexual, as all his older sisters beat up on him, and ratted
>> every little thing about this high-spirited boy to his *very*
>> Victorian parents from Penzance.
>
>
> Older sisters will turn a guy gay?
>
I didn't actually say that. But you should have known these bitches.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Many Protestants use the mental escape, "Those weren't real
>>> Christians; or, if they were, they were acting contrary to Christian
>>> principles." To a large extent I agree. However, not all the sins of
>>> this or that Christian group are attributable to selfishness and like
>>> unwelcome admixtures with the spirit of Christianity. Some are rooted
>>> in the doctrines and structure and historical formation of those
>>> groups themselves.
>>>
>>
*No* one acts according to Christian principles. This became extremly
clear to me when I was 8 and had partially recovered from my insanity
after being kidnapped.
>> As in Islam, practice is more rooted in changing societal views than
>> in the founding religious documents themselves.
>
>
> Now there you go saying something super smart way out of your field!
All fields are mine, even all the parasites we carry with us every day
and spread like Johnny Appleseed. My eyebrows itch from time to time,
and I know that is because of an infestation of follicle mites. I've
been an expert to the bafflement of almost everyone only a few times,
but most things are clear to me, given a modicum of info. I have many
ideas that are correct, but which will not be proved in my lifetime, or
ever, because of bureaucracy and current prejudices. I have been cursed
with ideas ahead of their time, but I'd rather be that than a plodder,
as are most I know. The ones who want good fun, I forgive.
>
> Not many people, pro or con a given religion, realize that. Many of the
> faults of a given religion are simply with ourselves and of our own time.
>
>
>> There are no truly Christian principles that we can rely upon.
>
>
> And the pendulum rapidly swings the other way. It's the people you're
> seldom sure you can rely on.
>
>
Everyone lies; so did Aquinas and Plato and Augustine. Even jimbat, but
he's to tricky to catch. Did you know that EL Doctorow had the cheek to
write a book called "City of God"? Let's grab him and scrape off his
skin with oyster shells; I have plenty from my oyster restoration work
on the Chesapeake. Environmental work put to good use.
Except for Seldom Seen Slim (q.v.) of Ballarat, CA, in the Panamints,
who always gave a good tale and good direction.
>> Scholars have tried to winnow through the red print, and there is no
>> general agreement. That was what Winnie was trying to tell me 50
>> years ago, though there was no scholarship readily available at that
>> time to back her up. By next morning I agreed with her when
>> everything came together with a bang. What Paul said is nothing like
>> Jesus would have said.
>
>
> I take issue with that. Keep in mind that Paul's writings are much
> closer to the time of Jesus than any of the Gospels, and the voice of
> Jesus can be detected (albeit second-hand) over and over in them. I'd
> say the key difference is that Paul was christocentric and Jesus wasn't.
>
I disagree, after reading Jesus's teachings, and then reading Paul, I
only wonder what can he have been thinking. He made the decision to go
to the goys (Gentiles), which caused a disastrous split with the Jews,
as they could not break bread together, which was the main way of
cementing social relations back then.
So were those of the Sanhedrin, and the scholars in Sepphoris. There is
no argument here.
>
>> Have you read the book "The First Coming"?
>
>
> Bits and pieces.
>
>
>>> "From the fruit the tree is known."
>>>
>>> Of course, that saying applies more broadly than to just Christianity.
>>>
>>
>> Certainly not to the DoJ?!
>
>
> Department of Justice?
>
>
Of course!
Now compare Einstein to Oppenheimer, who was probably the brightest
human since Archimedes, or ever. Oppenheimer despised Einstein. Whose
fruit do you want?
I was fortunate to have had one of the last life-changing conversations
with Oppenheimer before he died of throat cancer. He was watching the
Mallards in Drumheller Fountain. I had been building doubts about the
usefulness of my experimental chemical physics thesis over six months,
despite its intellectual interest (Raman scattering off fluctuations in
chemical reactions). I said my piece in less than a minute before the
Great Man. He puffed on his pipe, said, "I've never read anything on
exactly this." Another puff and he looked back a the Mallards and said,
"Of course, you are right. There are too few cases of fluctuations in
the dielectric constant." "Thank *you*, Sir!" "Just call me Oppie." I
had no idea he was dying. He was finished with me and wanted to watch
he Mallards that would outlive him.
I soon became an astronomy grad student, and started a different career,
equally wrong. My best opportunities I had thrown away as an
undergraduate.
My Great Love, while at Princeton about the same time with her star
post-doc husband, had Oppie come over to her on a couch, as she was
about 8 mos pregnant with her first child. He gently asked her if he
could feel her child move. He did, and then asked if he could try to
detect its heart beat. He couldn't, and then moved off after about 5
minutes. She never saw him again. But that interaction changed her
life, too.
>>>> Try "After Polygamy was Made a Sin", by Cairncross. No matter how
>>>> much condemnation one has piled up against Christians, this book
>>>> puts the icing on it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've read it. A fascinating book. I'd like to see a new, heftier
>>> edition with a lot more detail and more copious translations.
>>>
>>
>> I think Cairncross is dead.
>
>
> John Cairncross was a spy for the Soviets, right? If so, his dates were
> 1913-1995.
>
>
I'm pretty sure that's the man. Odd that he's spy for folks who also
did not believe n polygamy. But that generation had many odd and
interesting spies.
>> Nice thing good Christians did to the residents of Muenster, who were
>> only trying to survive against the Christian insanity of the 30 years'
>> War. I won't eat Muenster cheese, even if it is low cal. The book
>> you hope for is yours, as no one else would dare to write it,
>> ya'hear? I'm too old and not a historical or Christian scholar. You
>> do it. It would be a service, as Cairncross's book is a bit limp to
>> make any changes, except for the converted, like me.
>
>
> One of the books I hope to write someday -- it's several books down the
> road -- covers some of the same territory.
>
>
>> Don't let grammar lead you astray.
>
>
> The grammar of others sometimes does. My own grammar is at my direction
> -- except when it's not, to employ a jimbatism.
I borrowed it from somewhere, as in this proof is true, unless it's not.
>
>
>>>> Remember Bo Derek.
>>>
>>> My ten would be one of several other physical types combined with a
>>> rich inner life and ... but enough of that! IMHO, Bo Derek is more
>>> stunning now than she was when she co-starred with Dudley Moore in
>>> "Ten."
>>>
>>
>> There's a club you can go to in LA,
>
>
> I'm wondering how what I said sparked your thoughts in that direction.
>
>
>> I think called the Scores Club, that if you go in one day with a roll
>> of 200+ $100 bills in your pocket (one or two for the doorman) and
>> spread it around liberally without asking for favors, then the next
>> day, after the word has passed around, go in with the same, your
>> reputation made, you can have just about anything you want. It's a
>> sex club for those with rolls in their pocketses, and maybe One
>> Rings. I saw on a bit on VH1 that Cristina Aguilera went there
>> recently, took her time selecting sexual partners, and took 5 wommen
>> into a back room from which they did not emerge for hours, but all
>> with happy faces. I don't mind 12-hr erections, have had them before,
>> but Jesus I'd need 4 months to get into shape for that.
>
A confluence of things. I had a friend in SF in the very early 60s, who
had an uncle who felt naked if de didn't have a roll of $5000 in his
pocket, which with inflation would probably get him into Scores.
Naturally he was a building inspector. 8<)>
>
> Now wait a minute! I don't think I want to imagine the workouts. ;-)
>
>
To paraphrase Amundsen: stairs, stairs, und more stairs.
>> And what if I couldn't find a woman I could like?
>
>
> Ahh, you're picky. Good for you.
>
>
>> I'd rather buy a Lexus (can do) and pick up the right kind of woman.
>
>
> Hmm, I don't associate a "right kind of woman" with her attraction to a
> make of car.
>
>
Even a female Professor of Theology will go for a Lexus.
>> [snip]
>> I have come so close so many times, as I commuted on bikes 10 mi/day
>> all through grad school rain or shine and afterwards, for tens of
>> thousands of miles, for most of those years without a bike helmet. I
>> sold that bike, as it was the first Japanese 10-speed sold in the US
>> and weighed 42# stripped. Now I have a found Pugeot, about 33# that
>> cost me only $110 to ship to Pasadena, get its forks replaced, and a
>> tune-up. I have done fine against $300-$1000 bikes, even carrying
>> leader gear(gatorade, extra snacks, space blankets, extra capilene
>> clothes and a couple of rainproof shells in a two-bag pannier. I've
>> never been on a long bike ride with a group when my leader supplies
>> were not useful. Saved the VP of the Baltimore Bike Club from a sure
>> time in hospital, even if she was a doctor. She had no idea how bad
>> off she was, until I turned around and cared for her. (I'd rather
>> have a smart inventory clerk than a stupid doctor as a lover.) I an no
>> bike leader, but that is what I did as a mountaneering leader. 10
>> years ago, not now. It'll take me 3 years to get back into that shape.
>
>
> Better get started then!
>
> I had a heavy duty custom modified (high seat, high handle bars)
> one-speed, balloon-tire bike for many years, in fact the one that was
> bent into a pretzel when my arm was smashed. Used to take it both
> mountain biking and on long day trips on the road back in the 60s. It
> worked much better than the new-fangled 21-speed mountain bike I have now.
>
I've had come crashes, but maybe just knew when to let go and trust the
Earth rather than a weird machine. I used to bike at night over the
ridge of hills above UCLA on Glen Canyon and one night hit a huge
pothole going down fast on the north side. I went back afterwards and
found it to be 2' by 1+' and over 10" deep. After I hit it I was
airborne was looking into the jaws of death, and my helmetless head
wound up about 6" from a big curb. The bike was far away. I had a
pretty good plastic coat so no scrapes except on my knees. That's when
I checked the pothole, which had no business being there in such an
upscale community. That Japanese bike was sure heavy, but I rode it on
to grannies, wheere my wife and kids were. No damage. I had to point
out the damage when I got there, as it wasn't obvious.
[...]
>
The gears can be tricky, but you don't need Lance Armstrong's thighs,
nor his 9-liter lungs.
>> [snip]
>> she can refer you to the best possible treatment. You believe in
>> God. You think he wants you like this? Is not life a "vale of tears"?
>>
>> Laura Mumford
>> Lutherville, MD
>> 410/583-0390
>> Lynn will usually answer.
>> Office hours are 9-4 ET, but she makes most of her calls after hours.
>
>
> Thank you. I have consulted doctors recently, including a specialist who
> consulted other specialists.
>
Good, but perform a miracle first so you can at least be beatified.
Glad you want to heal, and don't fear the pain (too much).
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chron," had an article this
>>> month about the quest for respectability on the part of Tolkien
>>> scholars in the halls of academe. I've always thought Tolkien worthy
>>> of serious academic study.
>>>
>>>
>> He is, for the source of his names, which I'm informed come mostly
>> from ancient Icelandic mythology.
>
>
> There's a much broader array of sources than that. But, yes, many are
> from Old Norse mythology, which I love to read.
>
>
>> As for the stories, I've got dozens of better ones on my shelves, and
>> thrown many more out.
>
>
> Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I suppose it
> had its purpose.
>
>
Also his racism. I hadn't noticed it until my best friends at Harvard
pointed it out to me in 1965. I looked through them again, and was so
embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it
>> The Egyptians made up a writing system, and so did he. Which one do
>> you think is known by a larger number of people and will last longer?
>
>
> I would guess Tolkien's to be known by more people at this moment but
> that hieroglyphics and Coptic will last longer, especially given that
> they already have a head start of some millennia.
I doubt the first assertion. The number of Egyptian scholars is quaite
astonishing.
>
>
>> [snip]
>> Utterly different. I was put off by being forced to read "Silas
>> Marner" as a junior in HS, in the usual broken-up way with meaningless
>> questions for each section. I shoved her out of my mind to the extent
>> that the following humiliating encounter happened to me when I was
>> cleaning upper-class "house" johns my freshman year. The frights I've
>> seen... One resident told me that he was a holdover from his class.
>> He was all ready to go out with honors in English. In that, and many
>> other, subjects at Harvard you are subjected to an oral exam in which
>> any question from out of the blue can be asked. He was asked what he
>> made of the ultimate fate of Dr Lydgate in Middlemarch, and if there
>> was any lesson in that for him. He had not read Middlemarch. The
>> professors conferred and flunked him: "No one can graduate from
>> Harvard in English without having read Middlemarch." He showed me he
>> letter. (He was assigned to a seminar on George Eliot the next year.)
>> Me: "I've never heard of him." Him: "It's novel by George Eliot, you
I'm not terribly fond of Dawkins, because he's so ideological about his
theories, or representations.
>
>> [snip]
>> Coming back, she asserted that Winnie must have been a very stupid and
>> evil girl. I asked if she had ever heard of Jane Goodall. "Yes, of
>> course, the chimp lady." "Well I used to go talk to her, since her
>> office was 2 blocks from my apartment, and she taught me a lot, but
>> Winnie taught me more; she was one of the smartest, best women I have
>> ever met."
>
>
> You sound like a Forrest Gump with all these famous people you say
> you've known. You must've been in the right circles.
>
>
Caltech isn't a bad place to meet people and neither is Harvard. I've
gotten around a bit by spreading ideas that are too hard for me.
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> And I wonder whether our brains are schooled to delusion by their
>>>>> own structure and by interaction with various phenomenon, so that
>>>>> they cannot see reality as it is. Oops, I just stumbled into a
>>>>> thesis something like that of the Matrix series. But then, do
>>>>> Einsteinian relativity and string theory say any different?
>>>>>
>>
>> You mean phenomena.
>
>
> Yes, of course, "phenomena." That's the kind of thing a spell checker
> doesn't pick up. I need a "when I talk like an idiot" checker. Can't
> imagine how I even thought that.
>
>
Maybe Word's grammar checker would get it, but I never use it.
>>>> A different matter. The brain is always forming false theoretical
>>>> concepts. I have explained this before. But better, you might read
>>>> "Philosophy in the Flesh."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've looked at it in bookstores, but it's never grabbed me.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, you could try "Cognitive Neuroscience" (Gazanniga, et al.) if you want a
>> brain-eater, but PitF will do once you grasp the simple correct
>> principles.
>
>
> Does this catch some of the spirit of what you have in mind:
>
> "... no such disembodied mind can exist, whether you call it mind or
> Soul, anything that both thinks and is free-floating is a myth. It
> cannot exist."
Of course. One would know this instantly and deeply after reading "The
Meeting of East and West" (MEW). My having discovered independently
(with Judy) the thesis of that book in the summer of '64 and then having
immediately read it together has made almost all things easier for me,
except advanced calculus and Clebsch-Gordon coefficients, though I have
an incomprehensible, but perfect, paper using both. Not to speak of
inner and outer operations on multidimensional curved manifolds.
The book is definitely hard though, and maybe impossible for those who
haven't had some form of the aesthetic experience - at least I have had
almost no success over many years in explaining it to heathens, no
matter how smart. When you consider how many physics professors do not
understand Newton's laws, one regrettably recognizes that the simplest
things are the hardest, if not properly taught with great patience, of
which I have little.
> --> Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to
> Western Thought, [by] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (New York, NY:
> Basic Books, c1999): p. 563.
>
> I had a copy in my hand briefly today (Monday).
>
The thing about PitF is that it is totally obvious to anyone who knows a
bit of neurology, metaphors in thought, and "MEW". Others often think
they are reading a too-expensive bit of quack science and philosophy.
But the book is correct, despite all the doubting Thomases.
>
>>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of the
>>> universe?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It doesn't. Light comes here.
>
>
> To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But doesn't the
> expansion of the universe also move into the future? And isn't the speed
> of light faster than the expansion of the universe?
Here things visibly get older. As youlook away, they generally
getyounger. You cannot see beyond the event Horizon.
>
>
>> Try stsci.edu, click on UDF (ultra deep field) and get about four
>> photos and frame them.
>
>
> I'm still downloading the first.
>
>
>> You will see the very birth of galaxies, which later grew into the
>> ones nearby that we are familiar with, by repeated incidents of a tree
>> of coalescence. Now were there a Space Telescope out there, which
>> there isn't, it might see the myriad mini-galaxies that formed ours.
>> There is no "edge of the Universe", but only as far as we can see into
>> the past.
There *will be* Space Telescopes out there 12+ bilions of years from the
ages of the galaxies we see at the fringe of the UDF. They can then see
us before our developing galaxies coalesce to form our present galaxies,
like the Milky Way or Andromeda or M87. Time travel works both ways.
> Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for the universe?
> All else is past? Surely there must be such a thing as simultaneity, no?
>
Not in Relativity. That is why it is caled relativity.
> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be able to
> view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far away stuff, but
> the identical stuff.
There is considerable debate about the uniformity of the Universe,
leaving aside the question that there may be an infinite number of
Universes that we would never be able to know anything about. The
Inflation of the Universe may have something to do with its
non-uniformity, and the current apparent acceleration of the Universe,
which violates classical General Relativity. There seems to be a
pressure caused by virtual particles in the vacuum.
>
> So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or ignorance, if
> you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than twice as old as the oldest
> perceptible light?
No. A billion or two years, nax. It all depends on a workable model
not yet developed.
All starts at point A. Point A now stretches between
> point A1 (here) and point A2 (the most distant light). The source of
> that light had to get to where it was when it emitted that light at less
> than the speed of light (I suppose the Hubble Constant), right? The
> trouble is, that would mean -- wouldn't it? -- some sort of horizon of
> perception: we could see at the most midway and no further. But that
> notion's as nonsensical sounding as, say, there being no simultaneity.
> Or is it?
>
One looks in only one direction at a time. The wavelength of light
adjusts to the action: the flatter the action the longer the wavelength.
> I caught up on Science News today. It does a pretty good job of teaching
> me how little I know.
>
You mean the slim maga, I presume, not the "Science Times" section in
the Tuesday NYT. I used to take it over 20 years ago when I was working
on Viking data from Mars, because it had an excellent planetaary
reporter, called Eberhard, I believe. I got to know him, and debated
some of his articles with him. He'd say that most planetary scientists
disagree with you. I'd say that they had all caught Carl Sagan's virus,
as he is gighly contagious, and that the condition was incurable. That
amused nim, and he asked how I had avoided the virus: "there's live any
where there might ever have been water, etc., etc."
I told him I had taken a course in planetary atmospheres from Sagan at
Harvard, which was the worst course I ever had there. His weekly
problem sets were unsolvable, so our TA, Berendzen (q.v.), revised them
into solvable ones. Sagan never noticed that they were a week late,
and that the problems were not the ones he had assigned. He preferred
to BS about e.g. the Peano Postulates than to lecture about planetary
atmospheres, about which he knew little.
I've said this before somewhere... I also got into trouble with him by
calling him on his blunder when he was lecturing about Venus's
"greenhouse effect", a term he invented, and which has carried over into
our current "greenhouse gases." The gross mistake, which I as an old
farmer knew, is that greenhouses work by suppressing convection, not by
reflecting the infrared, to which the glass panes are transparent. I
had an A in the class until the end, when I wrote an A term paper about
Mars to which he gave a C. I told Eberhart that I was permanently
innoculated from the Sagan virus. So far all my ideas then have proved
correct. Afterwards there was a change of tome in his articles, but of
course he didn't want the Editor to fire him.
If you watch the cable channels DSC/Science or NGEO, whenever they
discuss the planets, the Sagan virus is all over the place. Searching
for life on other planets is about the only way NASA can get money for
these expensive lander plans, and the kooky idea of a manned trip to
Mars. There is no life in the solar system except on Earth, and damned
few civilization elsewhere in the galaxy, if only you know enough about
the gantlet or terror and chance we had to run to get where we are.
>
>> Impress your friends. I guarantee that neither heaven nor hell appear
>> in any of the photos.
>
>
> A lot of places in the universe look pretty hellish to me.
>
The Universe is a very unfriendly place to everything but electrons and
protons.
That was not a passage we were assigned when I was 17. I would not have
berated my TA about it. He got it pretty close, and I think I would
have understood it at the time. Thanks!
>
>>> Oh, that love.
>>>
>>
>> Well it did change my physiology permantly, but sadly not hers.
>
>
> I suspect I know the effect. Unless you have something more individual
> in mind.
>
>
>> Why do I write to you so much?
>
>
> I suppose in part hunger for good conversation. This cross-thread
> conversation has operated on many levels.
>
>
That must be it. I took a nasty fall night before last, and should be
resting more today than yesterday, but look slightly better. Yesterday
my right eye was swollen black closed.
jimbat
Norm
> Another chapter in the Book of Norm and Jim, to be published in the
> Ultra-Apocrypha, for the 3rd millenium in which the tardy Messiah has
> not yet come.
Hee! Sounds good to me. And will we get to edit out our
egregious mistakes? Maybe just some of them. After all, who
wants to pretend to inerrancy?
> Can someone not give him a big, ugly Casio watch like I
> have so he won't be so late for promised meetings?
"Him" being the tardy Messiah. I won't wear a watch. Or
rings. Or any like foreign object, except glasses and
clothing. I do sometimes carry a pocket watch, though.
Keep in mind that "with the Lord ... a thousand years [is]
as one day" (2 Peter 3:8, NASB). Once I made a prediction,
that the Second Coming would occur around the year 60,000, I
think it was. That was a jocular counter to all those claims
that it is imminent, the point being to emphasize
responsibility rather than escapism, to work for a better
world rather than merely to deplore the world as it is.
(Which isn't to say that there aren't some up-sides to a
sense of imminence.) But right now I'm imagining a
millennial movement sometime in the century following the
year 1,000,000.
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>> I notice that Stanford University Press has recently published volume
>> 1 of a projected ten-volume fresh translation of the Zohar, the
>> central classic of Kabbalism.
>>
>>
> Eeeks! "A Stranger Among Us", and "The Golem" are enough for me. You
> knowI'm an atheist, and deny completely the existence of the world
> Kabbalism refers to.
The Zohar turns the world of theism topsy-turvy. For
instance, it interprets the first verse of the Bible this
way: "With beginning, It created Elohim" (1:15a).
The same passage speaks of "A spark of impenetrable
darkness," to which the new translator, Daniel C. Matt, adds
the gloss in his introduction, "so intensely bright that it
cannot be seen" (p. xix).
It could be that the very reason some have commended
Kabbalism to you is that they see a natural match.
> Was it written in Sepphoris, like the Mishnah and the beginnings of the
> Talmud?
Judah ha-Nasi (ca. 135-ca. 217), who redacted the Mishnah,
spent some of his life in Sepphoris. So you're right about that.
As for the Zohar, it is a collection of booklets written in
Hebrew and Aramaic with touches of Castilian. Its origin is
obscure. It is set in the 2nd century C.E. but didn't emerge
until around 1300 out of Castile. It is said to show
literary influences from works produced shortly before that
time.
> My wife and I went to a big exhibit on Sepphoris in NC.
Cool!
> There's
> a book of the exhibit. The town escaped Roman destruction by
> submitting, and was then even give Roman permission to mint its own
> coinage, possibly not owed to Caesar.
>
> [snip]
> From 5-yrs-old all I now remember of Gideon is to keep your weapons in
> one hand while you drink with the other. I still do that. Oh, doesn't
> he have a trumpet in Revelatians, or is that a different Gideon?
No, no Gideon at all. See Revelation 1;10; 4:1; 8; 9:14.
>>> Mucho jamon para dos huevos.
>>
>>
>>
>> Lots of ham and eggs? Not kosher.
>
>
> Much ham for two eggs. You can guess the ham and the eggs; both kosher
> and halal. The expression expresses both uncertainty and a devout wish.
I've never learned much Spanish. Although once I did
translate a poem by Alfonsina Storni.
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/poems.html#Sleep
> [snip]
>> Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting up their
>> wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study of the Torah?
>>
>>
> Yes, but, inn the home, in the old days of the crafts, but I cannot
> over-emphasize that she is ULTRA-orthodox. She can telecommute to some
> extent, but she has a number of meetings to go to in a week.
I wonder what she'd say if you put my question to her.
> [snip]
>> Beware or we'll set off a subthread or even a full-fledged thread
>> about the right to bear arms. This ng has already generated plenty of
>> those.
>
>
> Has it?
Oh yeah! Not happening this time (hopefully), 'cause
probably nobody's reading us.
> I put down a few gun flame wars on rec.backcountry in 1991, to
> which ng I've returned a couple of years ago. I did it with a parody,
> which can now apparently be Googled, because someone on r.b found it and
> e-mailed it to me; it's called "Tanks in the Backcountry."
>
>>
>> Heedlessly plunging ahead: I see the right to bear arms for the common
>> defense, self defense, and potential or actual subsistence hunting as
>> subservient to the right to life and to be maintained in proper
>> balance for the maximization of the right to life. As for the use of
>> guns for sport, I suppose that would be subservient to the right to
>> the pursuit of happiness and to the responsibility of reasonable
>> environmental management.
>>
>>
> There you go again. Guns will just get you into trouble.
Substitute "You can easily get into trouble with guns" and
I'd agree.
> Deer are OK,
> since the are a plague in the East, and tou can't eat too much of them
> at a sitting, anyway.
A reference to Lyme disease? The deer ticks that carry it
find all sorts of hosts, not just deer. The first time I had
a deer tick on me -- the first time I know of -- the tick
fell off a crazy shrew. (Crazy: It kept turning itself over
and over like a screw and did that for weeks before it
disappeared.)
A few weeks ago I was knocking dozens of deer ticks off my
pant legs when I was hiking a trail that was petering out.
> [snip]
> Over her in the US, the A&C movement is mainly associated with
> architecture, like the Greene & Greene houses in Pasdena, and my great
> love's bungalow on Palomar Mtn. I've seen much of the Morris work at
> the V&A Museum in London.
As I had it explained to me, the big difference between the
Arts and Crafts Movement on each side of the pond was that
in England it had a strong political, largely socialist
element, and in the U.S. it didn't. To put it another way, a
broad social philosophy that served as a setting for an
aesthetic (British) vis-à-vis an aesthetic approach (American).
> [snip]
>> [Re chemistry out of alchemy]
> Not much. You needed the concept of different sorts of atoms, which
> Mendeleev rationalized. He didn't know why the elements arranged into a
> regular pattern by properties; that had to await the arrival of
> quantization.
I see your point, although the nature of atoms has been
debated since the pre-Socratics.
> Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so accurately
> or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it all, or a
> super-protestant?
Super-protestant,
mega-dissident,
atheistic
purple people-eater.
:-)
That last just because that's what the kids in my grade
school would have added to complete the stanza.
>> The theologian Paul Tillich posited a Protestant principle, a spirit
>> of radical reform that keeps pressing and pressing. But I'd have to
>> refresh myself to elaborate.
>>
>
> He was dreaming. I have often dreamed strange things that affect my
> waking thought irritatingly, such as where poop comes from.
I take it you associate Protestantism with traditionalism
and reactionary responses rather than with radical reform.
So do a lot of Protestants.
If you ("you" in that general indistinct sense) think your
reform has prevailed for a while but your culture moves on
leaving it behind, then the tendency is to fall into the
irony of abandoning your reform spirit and adopting a
reactionary one. To do so changes everything, right down to
the fibers of your being; but a lot of people overlook that.
> [snip]
>>>> I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still incubating
>>>> hatreds, including in the U.S.
>>>>
>
> NSDT.
North Sumatra Daylight Time?
> Oh, it's still there: when black kids try to prevent others from
> studying by calling them a "white boy".
Knew a fella once, Caucasian (so he'd generally be
classified*), born and raised in Africa where (IIRC) his
family had been for many generations, immigrated to the
U.S., became a U.S. citizen, says he's African-American,
objects when the term is used as a synonym for "Black" thus
denying him his heritage.
* I don't like racial classification.
>> Probably the most interesting person I met that summer was an old jazz
>> musician -- a tall, lanky Arkansan. I wish to goodness that I could
>> remember his name. I had a long wonderful conversation with him. I
>> wish too that I could remember all he told me, but I remember only the
>> flavor of it.
>>
>
> There's a Southern Folk Music Museum catty-cornered from BB King's in
> Memphis on Beale and 2nd according to my poster. Old blues men go into
> there to jam as long as they can make it. I'm not sure that he is still
> alive, but Rufus Thomas ("the oldest living teenager in the world") did
> when we were there, and he knew *everybody*.
If he knew everybody, he musta been the one. :-)
>> I'm well familiar with the phenomenon of bearing witness to God's work
>> in one's life.
Yuk! I wrote "well familiar."
Sorry to hear you were hurt. What lousy treatment on that
cop's part! He should be summarily fired.
I have a friend in the Baltimore area who does autopsies.
(She's an EMT too.) Stay off her table!
> Reichsgauleiter:
What gives with your occasional sprinkling of Nazi references?
> "Though our neighborhood is safe, never, ever take
> Achilles on a walk after 10 pm. As you know the biggest dangers in our
> community are the police!" "Ja, mein Frau."
>
> Dealing with the Balto Police is like craps - BTW I'm white, tonsured
> like a retired professor and astronomer - not DWB,
Driving while Black?
> but that didn't give
> any pause to the cop. It's a crap shoot to get involved with cops. I
> try all efforts to avoid it, but this guy saw an innocent situation, but
> was looking for trouble. God knows what would have happened if I had
> not fallen right outside a firehouse emergency garage. Who was that
> singer, Jimmy Rogers?, who sang mostly religious ballads who was beaten
> into a permanent vegitative state in the '70s by a couple of LA police
> officers on Laurel Canyon when he might have been going 5 miles above
> the speed limit. No higher was proved as I recall.
I have no recollection of the story. That's what I get for
not being a regular reader of the NY Times!
> Saddam for Bush?
So far as I can tell, Saddam was only for himself. But if
he's symbolic of the worst in human instincts, that vote is
usually split. What else can you expect given the usual
political pandering?
> Nevertheless I give no thanks to God. Had he existed, 1st, I wouldn't
> have fallen (perhaps with the help of a small seizure), and 2nd, he
> wouldn't have sicked a vicious, out of policy cop on me. Atheism and
> the UAC got me through it.
The undifferentiated aesthetic continuum as crutch?
> [snip]
> *No* one acts according to Christian principles. This became extremly
> clear to me when I was 8 and had partially recovered from my insanity
> after being kidnapped.
Oh, I'd say that some people sometimes do act according to
Christian principles, just that some of them are much more
inconsistent at doing so than others.
> All fields are mine, even all the parasites we carry with us every day
> and spread like Johnny Appleseed. My eyebrows itch from time to time,
> and I know that is because of an infestation of follicle mites. I've
> been an expert to the bafflement of almost everyone only a few times,
> but most things are clear to me, given a modicum of info. I have many
> ideas that are correct, but which will not be proved in my lifetime, or
> ever, because of bureaucracy and current prejudices. I have been cursed
> with ideas ahead of their time, but I'd rather be that than a plodder,
> as are most I know. The ones who want good fun, I forgive.
I expect that most ideas will have their time and place. As
for me, I have the Cassandra curse, or used to. I've grown
averse to looking ahead. Nobody listens anyway.
> Everyone lies; so did Aquinas and Plato and Augustine. Even jimbat, but
> he's to tricky to catch. Did you know that EL Doctorow had the cheek to
> write a book called "City of God"? Let's grab him and scrape off his
> skin with oyster shells; I have plenty from my oyster restoration work
> on the Chesapeake. Environmental work put to good use.
The book's being compared with James Joyce's Ulysses. If the
comparison's fair ...
Reminds me: I haven't finished Ulysses yet.
> Except for Seldom Seen Slim (q.v.) of Ballarat, CA, in the Panamints,
> who always gave a good tale and good direction.
The guy who said, "I'm half coyote and half wild burro"?
>>> [snip] What Paul said is nothing like
>>> Jesus would have said.
>>
>>
>>
>> I take issue with that. Keep in mind that Paul's writings are much
>> closer to the time of Jesus than any of the Gospels, and the voice of
>> Jesus can be detected (albeit second-hand) over and over in them. I'd
>> say the key difference is that Paul was christocentric and Jesus wasn't.
>>
>
> I disagree, after reading Jesus's teachings, and then reading Paul, I
> only wonder what can he have been thinking. He made the decision to go
> to the goys (Gentiles), which caused a disastrous split with the Jews,
> as they could not break bread together, which was the main way of
> cementing social relations back then.
You will notice that the book of Acts (in chapter 10)
credits Peter with that breakthrough. (Compare the story of
Jesus and the centurion in Luke 7:1-10). At that point, Paul
was still a newby.
Our disagreement's a respectable one. The debate's old. If a
vote were taken today of the members of the Society of
Biblical Literature, I imagine that the vast majority would
vote your way, that Paul's message was profoundly different
from Jesus' far beyond Paul's christocentrism. It seems I
often find myself in a minority position.
> So were those of the Sanhedrin, and the scholars in Sepphoris. There is
> no argument here.
I don't follow.
> [snip]
> Now compare Einstein to Oppenheimer, who was probably the brightest
> human since Archimedes, or ever. Oppenheimer despised Einstein. Whose
> fruit do you want?
The father of relativity or the father of the atom bomb?
> I was fortunate to have had one of the last life-changing conversations
> with Oppenheimer before he died of throat cancer. He was watching the
> Mallards in Drumheller Fountain. I had been building doubts about the
> usefulness of my experimental chemical physics thesis over six months,
> despite its intellectual interest (Raman scattering off fluctuations in
> chemical reactions). I said my piece in less than a minute before the
> Great Man. He puffed on his pipe, said, "I've never read anything on
> exactly this." Another puff and he looked back a the Mallards and said,
> "Of course, you are right. There are too few cases of fluctuations in
> the dielectric constant." "Thank *you*, Sir!" "Just call me Oppie." I
> had no idea he was dying. He was finished with me and wanted to watch
> he Mallards that would outlive him.
>
> I soon became an astronomy grad student, and started a different career,
> equally wrong. My best opportunities I had thrown away as an
> undergraduate.
>
> My Great Love, while at Princeton about the same time with her star
> post-doc husband, had Oppie come over to her on a couch, as she was
> about 8 mos pregnant with her first child. He gently asked her if he
> could feel her child move. He did, and then asked if he could try to
> detect its heart beat. He couldn't, and then moved off after about 5
> minutes. She never saw him again. But that interaction changed her
> life, too.
Now I see the point you're making, I think.
>> John Cairncross was a spy for the Soviets, right? If so, his dates
>> were 1913-1995.
What I like in that paragraph is the apparent silliness of
the logic. :-)
> I'm pretty sure that's the man. Odd that he's spy for folks who also
> did not believe n polygamy. But that generation had many odd and
> interesting spies.
You're reminding me of Wilhelm Reich on the Russian
Revolution: according to him, it was a period of free love,
which the totalitarian types had to suppress in order to
maintain autocratic control.
>> The grammar of others sometimes does. My own grammar is at my
>> direction -- except when it's not, to employ a jimbatism.
>
>
> I borrowed it from somewhere, as in this proof is true, unless it's not.
A meme? :-)
> [snip]
>>> I'd rather buy a Lexus (can do) and pick up the right kind of woman.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, I don't associate a "right kind of woman" with her attraction to
>> a make of car.
>>
>>
> Even a female Professor of Theology will go for a Lexus.
Not usually being in a defensive mode, I'll forego defending
others, who might dispute my defense of them anyway.
> I've had come crashes, but maybe just knew when to let go and trust the
> Earth rather than a weird machine. I used to bike at night over the
> ridge of hills above UCLA on Glen Canyon and one night hit a huge
> pothole going down fast on the north side. I went back afterwards and
> found it to be 2' by 1+' and over 10" deep. After I hit it I was
> airborne was looking into the jaws of death, and my helmetless head
> wound up about 6" from a big curb. The bike was far away. I had a
> pretty good plastic coat so no scrapes except on my knees. That's when
> I checked the pothole, which had no business being there in such an
> upscale community. That Japanese bike was sure heavy, but I rode it on
> to grannies, wheere my wife and kids were. No damage. I had to point
> out the damage when I got there, as it wasn't obvious.
My last serious bicycle accident, of many, was along those
lines. Was alone out in a field. Foolishly I decided to try
a jump made for dirt bikes. Went airborne, then hit hard.
Head and shoulder were crashing into the ground before a
thought could pass or a muscle could react. I had a mile
walk home while stunned and with a shoulder injury that
would take months to heal.
> [snip]
>> Thank you. I have consulted doctors recently, including a specialist
>> who consulted other specialists.
>>
> Good, but perform a miracle first so you can at least be beatified. Glad
> you want to heal, and don't fear the pain (too much).
What silliness, that criterion for beatification! Of course,
there are miracles and then there are miracles. For example:
"A certain man lived carnally with another woman, his wife
being aware of it. She finding it hard to endure this, made
complaint in the church of St. Mary, praying to be avenged
on her who had taken away her husband. St. Mary, appearing
to her, said, 'How can I bring harm upon her, for each day
she bends her knee a hundred times to me?' But the woman in
much vexation said: 'Why will you not avenge me? I will make
my complaint to your Son.'
"She went out of the church muttering those words. But the
adulteress met her, and when she inquired what she was
saying, the other replied: 'I was complaining about you to
the Virgin Mary, and she replied that she would do you no
harm because every day you made a hundred genuflexions to
her, and it is for that I am murmuring. But I hope that her
Son will avenge me.' Hearing that, the adulteress at once
threw herself at her feet begging her pardon and faithfully
promising never again to commit sin with her husband."
--> Miracles of the Virgin, [by] Johannes Herolt (Latin,
15th century), trans. C. C. S. Bland (1928) and anthologized
in: The Portable Medieval Reader, edited ... by James Bruce
Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (1949): p. 529.
Was the miracle the vision of Mary or the repentance, I
wonder? If it was the repentance, one can imagine other
changes of heart that might have been just as miraculous.
>[snip]
>> Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I suppose it
>> had its purpose.
>>
>>
> Also his racism. I hadn't noticed it until my best friends at Harvard
> pointed it out to me in 1965. I looked through them again, and was so
> embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it
You mean orcs versus men?
>>> The Egyptians made up a writing system, and so did he. Which one do
>>> you think is known by a larger number of people and will last longer?
>>
>>
>>
>> I would guess Tolkien's to be known by more people at this moment but
>> that hieroglyphics and Coptic will last longer, especially given that
>> they already have a head start of some millennia.
>
>
> I doubt the first assertion. The number of Egyptian scholars is quaite
> astonishing.
I hope you're right.
> [snip]
>> Does this catch some of the spirit of what you have in mind:
>>
>> "... no such disembodied mind can exist, whether you call it mind or
>> Soul, anything that both thinks and is free-floating is a myth. It
>> cannot exist." [Philosophy in the Flesh]
>
>
> Of course. One would know this instantly and deeply after reading "The
> Meeting of East and West" (MEW). My having discovered independently
> (with Judy) the thesis of that book in the summer of '64 and then having
> immediately read it together has made almost all things easier for me,
> except advanced calculus and Clebsch-Gordon coefficients, though I have
> an incomprehensible, but perfect, paper using both. Not to speak of
> inner and outer operations on multidimensional curved manifolds.
>
> The book is definitely hard though, and maybe impossible for those who
> haven't had some form of the aesthetic experience - at least I have had
> almost no success over many years in explaining it to heathens, no
> matter how smart. When you consider how many physics professors do not
> understand Newton's laws, one regrettably recognizes that the simplest
> things are the hardest, if not properly taught with great patience, of
> which I have little.
>
>> --> Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to
>> Western Thought, [by] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (New York, NY:
>> Basic Books, c1999): p. 563.
>>
>> I had a copy in my hand briefly today (Monday).
>>
>
> The thing about PitF is that it is totally obvious to anyone who knows a
> bit of neurology, metaphors in thought, and "MEW". Others often think
> they are reading a too-expensive bit of quack science and philosophy.
> But the book is correct, despite all the doubting Thomases.
MEW?
>>>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of the
>>>> universe?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> It doesn't. Light comes here.
>>
>>
>>
>> To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But doesn't the
>> expansion of the universe also move into the future? And isn't the
>> speed of light faster than the expansion of the universe?
>
>
> Here things visibly get older. As youlook away, they generally
> getyounger. You cannot see beyond the event Horizon.
Hmm, sorry, I don't see the connection between that answer
and my question.
> There *will be* Space Telescopes out there 12+ bilions of years from the
> ages of the galaxies we see at the fringe of the UDF. They can then see
> us before our developing galaxies coalesce to form our present galaxies,
> like the Milky Way or Andromeda or M87. Time travel works both ways.
If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it
wouldn't be able to look back here and see anything earlier
than its launch; in fact, it will see nothing even that
early, will it?
>> Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for the
>> universe? All else is past? Surely there must be such a thing as
>> simultaneity, no?
>>
>
> Not in Relativity. That is why it is caled relativity.
Don't intersecting chains of cause and effect dispose us to
presuppose simultaneity? Must we unravel our ideas of cause
and effect to assimilate relativity?
>> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be able
>> to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far away
>> stuff, but the identical stuff.
>
>
> There is considerable debate about the uniformity of the Universe,
> leaving aside the question that there may be an infinite number of
> Universes that we would never be able to know anything about. The
> Inflation of the Universe may have something to do with its
> non-uniformity, and the current apparent acceleration of the Universe,
> which violates classical General Relativity. There seems to be a
> pressure caused by virtual particles in the vacuum.
Let's say just the specific soup that made up the planet earth.
>> So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or ignorance,
>> if you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than twice as old as the
>> oldest perceptible light?
>
>
> No. A billion or two years, nax. It all depends on a workable model
> not yet developed.
You mean "max"?
Well, that's exactly what's not making sense to me. How can
two areas of matter that start out together become so
separated in 2 billion years that it takes the light from
one 12 billion years to reach the other? Doesn't that
require a convoluted structure of the universe to achieve
and/or the warping of light not just in minor degrees but in
whacky ways?
>> All starts at point A. Point A now stretches between
>> point A1 (here) and point A2 (the most distant light). The source of
>> that light had to get to where it was when it emitted that light at
>> less than the speed of light (I suppose the Hubble Constant), right?
>> The trouble is, that would mean -- wouldn't it? -- some sort of
>> horizon of perception: we could see at the most midway and no further.
>> But that notion's as nonsensical sounding as, say, there being no
>> simultaneity. Or is it?
>>
> One looks in only one direction at a time. The wavelength of light
> adjusts to the action: the flatter the action the longer the wavelength.
The further back we look, the less spatial direction there
should be to our gaze, right? After all, looking back, the
universe should be getting smaller and smaller. Yet each
peek at the distant past is very much directional, in fact
increasingly so the further back we look. Puzzling.
>> I caught up on Science News today. It does a pretty good job of
>> teaching me how little I know.
>>
>
> You mean the slim maga, I presume, not the "Science Times" section in
> the Tuesday NYT.
Right.
I have a friend who's annoyed that I don't read the NY
Times, other than an issue now and then or an article here
and there. I'm eclectic in my news reading and, in any case,
not fond of newsprint on my fingers.
My channel selections are extremely limited. I don't receive
any of those. But, yeah, I've detected it anyway.
> Searching
> for life on other planets is about the only way NASA can get money for
> these expensive lander plans, and the kooky idea of a manned trip to
> Mars. There is no life in the solar system except on Earth, and damned
> few civilization elsewhere in the galaxy, if only you know enough about
> the gantlet or terror and chance we had to run to get where we are.
Personally, I think the better part of wisdom is to think
both ways, to think there is intelligent life elsewhere, and
to think we're the only life in the universe. It's not a bad
thing to alternate between different views of our place in
the universe. One view reflects the specialness of our
planet and the rise of intelligent life on it. The other
view takes the edge off of pridefulness, suggests a
responsible approach to exploration, and sparks the
imagination.
In any case, I think it's a good thing to look for life to
make sure that we don't either trample it or become infected
by it. But for me, exploration is its own reward, one which
happens to have some collateral benefits, especially with
regard to understanding.
However, the American public seems to need the pretense of
pragmatic ends, either that or the rush of mind-blowing
possibilities.
> [snip]
>> By serendipity, I just came across this passage in the Metaphysics of
>> Aristotle:
>>
>> "Infinity and void and other concepts of this kind are said to 'be'
>> potentially or actually in a different sense from the majority of
>> existing things, e.g. that which sees, or walks, or is seen. For in
>> these latter cases the predication may sometimes be truly made without
>> qualification, since 'that which is seen' is so called sometimes
>> because it is seen and sometimes because it is capable of being seen;
>> but the Infinite does not exist potentially in the sense that it will
>> ever exist separately in actuality; it is separable only in knowledge.
>> For the fact that the process of division never ceases makes this
>> actuality exist potentially, but not separately." (1048b:10-18 =
>> 9.6.5-6, Loeb Classical Library)
>>
> That was not a passage we were assigned when I was 17. I would not have
> berated my TA about it. He got it pretty close, and I think I would
> have understood it at the time. Thanks!
You're welcome.
Don't many formulas for the physical world use the infinity
symbol? Do you think the physical realm is characterized by
finitude?
As for infinity and void, I wonder how far the realm in
which they have their distinctive existence can be pushed.
> [snip] I took a nasty fall night before last, and should be
> resting more today than yesterday, but look slightly better. Yesterday
> my right eye was swollen black closed.
I heard an odd statistic the other day, that one-third of
all people over a certain age, 65 I think it was, take a bad
spill in any given year. I can't imagine how that figure was
arrived at or how anybody set criteria as to what
constitutes a bad spill.
I hope you're feeling better.
--
Norm
Norm
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so accurately
>> or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it all, or a
>> super-protestant?
>
>
> Super-protestant,
> mega-dissident,
> atheistic
> purple people-eater.
Make that supra-protestant.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> Another chapter in the Book of Norm and Jim, to be published in the
>> Ultra-Apocrypha, for the 3rd millenium in which the tardy Messiah has
>> not yet come.
>
>
> Hee! Sounds good to me. And will we get to edit out our egregious
> mistakes? Maybe just some of them. After all, who wants to pretend to
> inerrancy?
>
My rabbi might be the redactor. But she'd consider it "too secular".
Else we'll have to get Mel Brooks.
>
>> Can someone not give him a big, ugly Casio watch like I have so he
>> won't be so late for promised meetings?
>
>
> "Him" being the tardy Messiah. I won't wear a watch. Or rings. Or any
> like foreign object, except glasses and clothing. I do sometimes carry a
> pocket watch, though.
I used to carry the latter until I sat on one too many too hard on the
trail to Lake Coonstance. My favorite astronaut, the one who threw the
trashed ST's solar panels to their doom in spectacular fashion, had an
even larger and uglier Casio watch than I. Kathryn P----, can't find
her name at present. She is small, but I suspected that any woman who
wore a wathch like that would be a leopard in bed. I wouldn't have
minded dying on a tree branch in the back yard if I could have that kind
of orgasm once again.
[I hear on PBS that many literary researchers want Jane Austin to be dug
up and killed again for having burned her papers. But in my POV her
live is her life, and not theirs.
>
> Keep in mind that "with the Lord ... a thousand years [is] as one day"
> (2 Peter 3:8, NASB). Once I made a prediction, that the Second Coming
> would occur around the year 60,000, I think it was. That was a jocular
> counter to all those claims that it is imminent, the point being to
> emphasize responsibility rather than escapism, to work for a better
> world rather than merely to deplore the world as it is. (Which isn't to
> say that there aren't some up-sides to a sense of imminence.) But right
> now I'm imagining a millennial movement sometime in the century
> following the year 1,000,000.
>
But I *have* returned and you are my St Paul [until I fire you and give
you the dunking test]. I'm not on a bread diet of stones to loaves;
won't work on me, unless it is Manischewitz rye bread, and Satan does
not have that recipe.
>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>
>
>>> I notice that Stanford University Press has recently published volume
>>> 1 of a projected ten-volume fresh translation of the Zohar, the
>>> central classic of Kabbalism.
>>>
>>>
>> Eeeks! "A Stranger Among Us", and "The Golem" are enough for me. You
>> know I'm an atheist, and deny completely the existence of the world
>> Kabbalism refers to.
>
>
> The Zohar turns the world of theism topsy-turvy. For instance, it
> interprets the first verse of the Bible this way: "With beginning, It
> created Elohim" (1:15a).
>
> The same passage speaks of "A spark of impenetrable darkness," to which
> the new translator, Daniel C. Matt, adds the gloss in his introduction,
> "so intensely bright that it cannot be seen" (p. xix).
>
> It could be that the very reason some have commended Kabbalism to you is
> that they see a natural match.
>
>
If you interpret Kabbalah correctly, you could do well. But the social
customs are unacceptable to me. During the Vietnam War (1968) I joined
the Socialist Workers' Party for a few weeks, until I discovered that
they wanted to tell me what to think as much as everyone else did.
Tyring to tell me what to think is always a non-starter. But if my
thesis advisor (long ago) gets a genius idea from me, and then tells me
to write it up overnight on my Olympia office typewriter, and he will
then "tear it to pieces". I did and he did, and I left reeling down the
hall, thinking "I have seen the face of God."
>> Was it written in Sepphoris, like the Mishnah and the beginnings of
>> the Talmud?
>
>
> Judah ha-Nasi (ca. 135-ca. 217), who redacted the Mishnah, spent some of
> his life in Sepphoris. So you're right about that.
>
> As for the Zohar, it is a collection of booklets written in Hebrew and
> Aramaic with touches of Castilian. Its origin is obscure. It is set in
> the 2nd century C.E. but didn't emerge until around 1300 out of Castile.
> It is said to show literary influences from works produced shortly
> before that time.
>
Whew there were a lot of brave boys and girls along the way! The ease
of my present life is depressing. Not that I want to slay any Moabites,
but my many intellectual disabilities leave me feeling rather helpless.
>
>> My wife and I went to a big exhibit on Sepphoris in NC.
>
>
> Cool!
>
>
>> There's a book of the exhibit. The town escaped Roman destruction by
>> submitting, and was then even give Roman permission to mint its own
>> coinage, possibly not owed to Caesar.
>>
>> [snip]
>> From 5-yrs-old all I now remember of Gideon is to keep your weapons
>> in one hand while you drink with the other. I still do that. Oh,
>> doesn't he have a trumpet in Revelatians, or is that a different Gideon?
>
>
> No, no Gideon at all. See Revelation 1;10; 4:1; 8; 9:14.
>
>
Oh, it's so nice to have a Bible the size of a PDA. Thank you. Perhaps
I got my wires crossed, but I swear I had to sit through sermons
claiming such things as Gideon's trumpets in Revelations. Well, as I
told my Liars's Club, everyone lies to tou, even Norm, so check it out
for yourself, the problem with that being it's to hard to do it all by
yourself, whish is why you need to rely on persons who have a record of
truth. You do, in my mind, you lucky dog.
>>>> Mucho jamon para dos huevos.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Lots of ham and eggs? Not kosher.
>>
>>
>>
>> Much ham for two eggs. You can guess the ham and the eggs; both
>> kosher and halal. The expression expresses both uncertainty and a
>> devout wish.
>
>
> I've never learned much Spanish. Although once I did translate a poem by
> Alfonsina Storni.
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/poems.html#Sleep
>
>
But you understand it now nicht war? As when Detective Sipowicz grabbed
his crotch and told the prosecutor "Ipsa this!", and then they later got
married.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting up their
>>> wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study of the Torah?
>>>
>>>
>> Yes, but, in the home, in the old days of the crafts, but I cannot
>> over-emphasize that she is ULTRA-orthodox. She can telecommute to
>> some extent, but she has a number of meetings to go to in a week.
>
>
> I wonder what she'd say if you put my question to her.
Do it yourself: li...@stsci.edu. I won't tell you any more than that her
family is from Grodno. Be very careful. She doesn't like her
confidences betrayed, so give your resume, your on-line friendship with
me, yur downloading of the UDF survey, and my explanation, and only then
ask her religious questions in an extremely non-judgemental way. I
never questioned her relious beliefs; who am I to do so? And she never
questioned mine.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Beware or we'll set off a subthread or even a full-fledged thread
>>> about the right to bear arms. This ng has already generated plenty of
>>> those.
>>
>>
>>
>> Has it?
>
>
> Oh yeah! Not happening this time (hopefully), 'cause probably nobody's
> reading us.
>
>
>> I put down a few gun flame wars on rec.backcountry in 1991, to which
>> ng I've returned a couple of years ago. I did it with a parody, which
>> can now apparently be Googled, because someone on r.b found it and
>> e-mailed it to me; it's called "Tanks in the Backcountry."
>>
>>>
>>> Heedlessly plunging ahead: I see the right to bear arms for the
>>> common defense, self defense, and potential or actual subsistence
>>> hunting as subservient to the right to life and to be maintained in
>>> proper balance for the maximization of the right to life. As for the
>>> use of guns for sport, I suppose that would be subservient to the
>>> right to the pursuit of happiness and to the responsibility of
>>> reasonable environmental management.
>>>
>>>
>> There you go again. Guns will just get you into trouble.
>
>
A poice .38 was pulled on me by a Balto Police Jerk and two paramedics
tryng to help me a few nights ago. I had a bad fall into the sidewalk
while looking at the stars and planets. I took a bat hit in the head in
the head and was confused. He said I was enebriated (not true), so I
offered to take his breatholyzer test; he refused in fron to everyone,
so I said he swas full of shit. He said he didn't need a test to take
me in for enebriation, but the paramedics told him that wasn't true.
"Out of policy," we all told him. My dog growled when he pulled his
gun and was threatened with instant death, "I'm going to kill your
vicious dog" (much objections from the two paramedics) even though he
had made friends with all three. I don't even want to think about what
might have happened had the paramedics not been there - no witnesses.
Never take a walk after 10 pm, even in a safe neightborhood, as you
never know when you might meet a policeman going through a divorce, in a
custody dispute, or just got a bad hamburger.
I used to go out walking at all times of night in Fairbanks, no problem,
but now, even if my dog goes nuts for a walk, my wife tells me I
shouldn't, even if I an an elderly-looking retired astrophysicist. Were
I black, I'd know about the DWB arrest.
> Substitute "You can easily get into trouble with guns" and I'd agree.
>
>
>> Deer are OK, since the are a plague in the East, and tou can't eat too
>> much of them at a sitting, anyway.
>
>
> A reference to Lyme disease? The deer ticks that carry it find all sorts
> of hosts, not just deer. The first time I had a deer tick on me -- the
> first time I know of -- the tick fell off a crazy shrew. (Crazy: It kept
> turning itself over and over like a screw and did that for weeks before
> it disappeared.)
>
> A few weeks ago I was knocking dozens of deer ticks off my pant legs
> when I was hiking a trail that was petering out.
>
My encounter was brief and lucky, on the Eastern Shore. My wife and the
other husband took a short cut through the forest. I stayed on the farm
road, was the first person to notice in the car the damned things, much
smaller than I thought (San Gabriel ticks are much bigger). I jumped
out of the car and began ripping them off me by the dozen. After I
couldn't find any more, going nude in front of our friends, I got back
in the car, when they began to discover them on themselves. A
high-speed trip to their house, where it was discovered that the lice
had infested his and my wife's pubic areas. His wife did a good job of
geting rid of them: he kept saying (PhD in math), "Will someone please
shoot me?!" My wife was much more stoic, but we got something like
flagyl to put them down. Nasty beasties!
>
>> [snip]
>> Over her in the US, the A&C movement is mainly associated with
>> architecture, like the Greene & Greene houses in Pasdena, and my great
>> love's bungalow on Palomar Mtn. I've seen much of the Morris work at
>> the V&A Museum in London.
>
>
> As I had it explained to me, the big difference between the Arts and
> Crafts Movement on each side of the pond was that in England it had a
> strong political, largely socialist element, and in the U.S. it didn't.
> To put it another way, a broad social philosophy that served as a
> setting for an aesthetic (British) vis-à-vis an aesthetic approach
> (American).
>
>
I think that's right. In the US it was mostly a practical and aesthetic
movement.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> [Re chemistry out of alchemy]
>
>
>> Not much. You needed the concept of different sorts of atoms, which
>> Mendeleev rationalized. He didn't know why the elements arranged into
>> a regular pattern by properties; that had to await the arrival of
>> quantization.
>
>
> I see your point, although the nature of atoms has been debated since
> the pre-Socratics.
>
>
They had a good idea, but their science was too primitive to do anything
with it. Things come in their time, sometimes.
>> Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so accurately
>> or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it all, or a
>> super-protestant?
>
>
> Super-protestant,
> mega-dissident,
> atheistic
> purple people-eater.
> :-)
I used to disrupt my Latin I class in HS with that song, because the
cute honey-blonde in front of me was hooked on it. All I had to do was
to hum it until she collapsed in hysterics and got punished for
disruption, i.e., not going out with me. I revealed this when I visited
my Latin I teacher when she was 93 in '98; "Ahha! I knew that there was
something rotten about you." Now I can't jump her bones, as she is gone.
>
> That last just because that's what the kids in my grade school would
> have added to complete the stanza.
>
No I have given you something more for Anacreaon in Heaven.
>
>>> The theologian Paul Tillich posited a Protestant principle, a spirit
>>> of radical reform that keeps pressing and pressing. But I'd have to
>>> refresh myself to elaborate.
>>>
>>
>> He was dreaming. I have often dreamed strange things that affect my
>> waking thought irritatingly, such as where poop comes from.
>
>
> I take it you associate Protestantism with traditionalism and
> reactionary responses rather than with radical reform. So do a lot of
> Protestants.
If they have bells and songs "oh-hah-*hah*, I'll stitstill but then I
will argue with me relatives about monolatry and do they really mean it.
Making assumptions, and so forth.
>
> If you ("you" in that general indistinct sense) think your reform has
> prevailed for a while but your culture moves on leaving it behind, then
> the tendency is to fall into the irony of abandoning your reform spirit
> and adopting a reactionary one. To do so changes everything, right down
> to the fibers of your being; but a lot of people overlook that.
>
>
That's a very insightful comment. The "experience" does not last
forever; you have to work on it. I used to, but there has been less and
less reason to do so in the last 10 years, as I see that the world is
nade of shit, and that Germans are still Germans. I'm going areound the
bend. We do give *gobs* of money to a few efficient international aid
organizations, but virtually nothing so far within the US.
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> I'm afraid that many branches of Protestantism are still incubating
>>>>> hatreds, including in the U.S.
>>>>>
>>
>> NSDT.
>
>
> North Sumatra Daylight Time?
>
No Shit Dick Tracy, but you knew.
>
>> Oh, it's still there: when black kids try to prevent others from
>> studying by calling them a "white boy".
>
>
> Knew a fella once, Caucasian (so he'd generally be classified*), born
> and raised in Africa where (IIRC) his family had been for many
> generations, immigrated to the U.S., became a U.S. citizen, says he's
> African-American, objects when the term is used as a synonym for "Black"
> thus denying him his heritage.
>
> * I don't like racial classification.
>
>
I see all these "black" folks on TV who are whiter than I am. I tell
averyone that I'm an African, as my ancestors left Africa only 80,000
years ago.
>>> Probably the most interesting person I met that summer was an old
>>> jazz musician -- a tall, lanky Arkansan. I wish to goodness that I
>>> could remember his name. I had a long wonderful conversation with
>>> him. I wish too that I could remember all he told me, but I remember
>>> only the flavor of it.
>>>
>>
>> There's a Southern Folk Music Museum catty-cornered from BB King's in
>> Memphis on Beale and 2nd according to my poster. Old blues men go
>> into there to jam as long as they can make it. I'm not sure that he
>> is still alive, but Rufus Thomas ("the oldest living teenager in the
>> world") did when we were there, and he knew *everybody*.
>
>
> If he knew everybody, he musta been the one. :-)
>
>
>>> I'm well familiar with the phenomenon of bearing witness to God's
>>> work in one's life.
>
>
> Yuk! I wrote "well familiar."
>
>
[somewhat repetitious of an earliest comment:]
That's what the paramedics said, in essence. I didn't dare, and he
didn't dare arrest a paramedic.
> I have a friend in the Baltimore area who does autopsies. (She's an EMT
> too.) Stay off her table!
>
Jordan? Can I remain alive for a little while?
>
>> Reichsgauleiter:
>
>
> What gives with your occasional sprinkling of Nazi references?
>
After I read the Bible front-to-back twice whan I was 5, 1947, my mother
told me about all the DP and extermination camps in Europe. I wondered
why I was in Iowa and not there, a philosophical prpblem that greatly
troubled me. I went to the library with her and checked everything out
on Nazism. And it stuck. It comes back, as I see so much of it around
even today.
[...]
>
>> but that didn't give any pause to the cop. It's a crap shoot to get
>> involved with cops. I try all efforts to avoid it, but this guy saw
>> an innocent situation, but was looking for trouble. God knows what
>> would have happened if I had not fallen right outside a firehouse
>> emergency garage. Who was that singer, Jimmy Rogers?, who sang mostly
>> religious ballads who was beaten into a permanent vegitative state in
>> the '70s by a couple of LA police officers on Laurel Canyon when he
>> might have been going 5 miles above the speed limit. No higher was
>> proved as I recall.
>
>
> I have no recollection of the story. That's what I get for not being a
> regular reader of the NY Times!
>
>
My wife thinks he was a memeber of The Brouns - you remember the "little
country chapel"?
>> Saddam for Bush?
>
>
> So far as I can tell, Saddam was only for himself. But if he's symbolic
> of the worst in human instincts, that vote is usually split. What else
> can you expect given the usual political pandering?
>
>
He rose through a vicious system. Now that to everyone's surprise,
"power" has been handed over, it appears that the Iraqis want to give up
the American 5# rubber hammer for the 10# sledge hammer that circus
workers used to drive the tent stakes. There are many jobs in this
world that I'm not qualified for, and that nearly heads the list.
>> Nevertheless I give no thanks to God. Had he existed, 1st, I wouldn't
>> have fallen (perhaps with the help of a small seizure), and 2nd, he
>> wouldn't have sicked a vicious, out of policy cop on me. Atheism and
>> the UAC got me through it.
>
>
> The undifferentiated aesthetic continuum as crutch?
>
>
It's there, and it got me home free.
>> [snip]
>> *No* one acts according to Christian principles. This became extremly
>> clear to me when I was 8 and had partially recovered from my insanity
>> after being kidnapped.
>
>
> Oh, I'd say that some people sometimes do act according to Christian
> principles, just that some of them are much more inconsistent at doing
> so than others.
>
>
>> All fields are mine, even all the parasites we carry with us every day
>> and spread like Johnny Appleseed. My eyebrows itch from time to time,
>> and I know that is because of an infestation of follicle mites. I've
>> been an expert to the bafflement of almost everyone only a few times,
>> but most things are clear to me, given a modicum of info. I have many
>> ideas that are correct, but which will not be proved in my lifetime,
>> or ever, because of bureaucracy and current prejudices. I have been
>> cursed with ideas ahead of their time, but I'd rather be that than a
>> plodder, as are most I know. The ones who want good fun, I forgive.
>
>
> I expect that most ideas will have their time and place. As for me, I
> have the Cassandra curse, or used to. I've grown averse to looking
> ahead. Nobody listens anyway.
But should Hector's child have been pushed off the cliff? Priam had
come to Achilles's tent to beg for the body of his son. Does anyone
ever learn anything? Achilles did, hence the name of my dog.
>
>
>> Everyone lies; so did Aquinas and Plato and Augustine. Even jimbat,
>> but he's to tricky to catch. Did you know that EL Doctorow had the
>> cheek to write a book called "City of God"? Let's grab him and scrape
>> off his
>> skin with oyster shells; I have plenty from my oyster restoration work
>> on the Chesapeake. Environmental work put to good use.
>
>
> The book's being compared with James Joyce's Ulysses. If the
> comparison's fair ...
>
> Reminds me: I haven't finished Ulysses yet.
>
>
Don't bother. I think it was written on worse than opium, but three
witches in bed with him together. You want Irish? Try the book I read
at 21 "The Ginger Man". It's out of print, but I was able to get a copy
through Amazon. It has my favorite epithet when things get bad with my
body: "God's teeth!" Imagine a 2nd storey toilet breaking through the
ceiling and immersing you on offal and TP, and then running out of the
house to the nearest pub saying "God's Teeth." Not Mr Fix-it.
>> Except for Seldom Seen Slim (q.v.) of Ballarat, CA, in the Panamints,
>> who always gave a good tale and good direction.
>
>
> The guy who said, "I'm half coyote and half wild burro"?
>
Yes. My wife and I used to go on secret spring trips to the west of
China Lake, have a hike, and then feast on buried, well-cooked wild
burro. My magic, and I do mean magic, BBQ sauce made it palatable for
everyone.
>
>>>> [snip] What Paul said is nothing like Jesus would have said.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I take issue with that. Keep in mind that Paul's writings are much
>>> closer to the time of Jesus than any of the Gospels, and the voice of
>>> Jesus can be detected (albeit second-hand) over and over in them. I'd
>>> say the key difference is that Paul was christocentric and Jesus wasn't.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree, after reading Jesus's teachings, and then reading Paul, I
>> only wonder what can he can have been thinking. He made the decision to
>> go to the goys (Gentiles), which caused a disastrous split with the
>> Jews, as they could not break bread together, which was the main way
>> of cementing social relations back then.
>
>
> You will notice that the book of Acts (in chapter 10) credits Peter with
> that breakthrough. (Compare the story of Jesus and the centurion in Luke
> 7:1-10). At that point, Paul was still a newby.
Mebby, but I'm not going to hunt through Acts for offal.
>
> Our disagreement's a respectable one. The debate's old. If a vote were
> taken today of the members of the Society of Biblical Literature, I
> imagine that the vast majority would vote your way, that Paul's message
> was profoundly different from Jesus' far beyond Paul's christocentrism.
> It seems I often find myself in a minority position.
>
>
Norm (short for normal?), you need not feel ashamed for admitting I'm
right. I have been throughout my life, except when disagreeing with
Goldreich (q.v.), when I was right only twice - but mostly we agreed.
He made my mind fluctuate.
[...]
>> [snip]
>> Now compare Einstein to Oppenheimer, who was probably the brightest
>> human since Archimedes, or ever. Oppenheimer despised Einstein. Whose
>> fruit do you want?
>
>
> The father of relativity or the father of the atom bomb?
Exactly.
>> did not believe in polygamy. But that generation had many odd and
>> interesting spies.
>
>
> You're reminding me of Wilhelm Reich on the Russian Revolution:
> according to him, it was a period of free love, which the totalitarian
> types had to suppress in order to maintain autocratic control.
>
How did they get all those breeches off? When you watch a modern movie,
you wonder how they can fuck through underpants, or without unzipping
their pants. I've never tried it.
[...]
>
>> Even a female Professor of Theology will go for a Lexus.
>
>
> Not usually being in a defensive mode, I'll forego defending others, who
> might dispute my defense of them anyway.
>
>
[bicycle accidents]
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Thank you. I have consulted doctors recently, including a specialist
>>> who consulted other specialists.
>>>
>> Good, but perform a miracle first so you can at least be beatified.
>> Glad you want to heal, and don't fear the pain (too much).
>
>
> What silliness, that criterion for beatification! Of course, there are
> miracles and then there are miracles. For example:
>
> "A certain man lived carnally with another woman,
I'm just appalled. Did his wife join in by feeling what was going on?
If not, she had no say so.
his wife being aware
> of it. She finding it hard to endure this, made complaint in the church
> of St. Mary, praying to be avenged on her who had taken away her
> husband. St. Mary, appearing to her, said, 'How can I bring harm upon
> her, for each day she bends her knee a hundred times to me?' But the
> woman in much vexation said: 'Why will you not avenge me? I will make my
> complaint to your Son.'
>
> "She went out of the church muttering those words. But the adulteress
> met her, and when she inquired what she was saying, the other replied:
> 'I was complaining about you to the Virgin Mary, and she replied that
> she would do you no harm because every day you made a hundred
> genuflexions to her, and it is for that I am murmuring. But I hope that
> her Son will avenge me.' Hearing that, the adulteress at once threw
> herself at her feet begging her pardon and faithfully promising never
> again to commit sin with her husband."
>
> --> Miracles of the Virgin, [by] Johannes Herolt (Latin, 15th century),
> trans. C. C. S. Bland (1928) and anthologized in: The Portable Medieval
> Reader, edited ... by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin
> (1949): p. 529.
>
Mary Martin might have been much more interesting than my mother, who
was at that time was claiming that Harry Truman was a Communist.
> Was the miracle the vision of Mary or the repentance, I wonder? If it
> was the repentance, one can imagine other changes of heart that might
> have been just as miraculous.
>
Perhaps the real miracle was Jesus's lending Judas 30 pieces to betray
him. I might do many things, but I'm essentially a guerilla.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I suppose it
>>> had its purpose.
>>>
>>>
>> Also his racism. I hadn't noticed it until my best friends at Harvard
>> pointed it out to me in 1965. I looked through them again, and was so
>> embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it
>
>
> You mean orcs versus men?
>
Partly, but the contrast with the Rohirrim and the dark men from the
East (read Jews) was what hit them. They were both Jews. One was the
best man at my wedding in Chestnut Hill (q.v.) and the other head usher,
the son of the Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin (q.v.).
>
>>>> The Egyptians made up a writing system, and so did he. Which one do
>>>> you think is known by a larger number of people and will last longer?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would guess Tolkien's to be known by more people at this moment but
>>> that hieroglyphics and Coptic will last longer, especially given that
>>> they already have a head start of some millennia.
>>
>>
>>
>> I doubt the first assertion. The number of Egyptian scholars is
>> quite astonishing.
As established above, "The Meeting of East and West".
>
>
>>>>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of
>>>>> the universe?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It doesn't. Light comes here.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But doesn't the
>>> expansion of the universe also move into the future? And isn't the
>>> speed of light faster than the expansion of the universe?
>>
>>
>>
>> Here things visibly get older. As you look away, they generally
>> get younger. You cannot see beyond the event Horizon.
>
>
> Hmm, sorry, I don't see the connection between that answer and my question.
>
The expansion of the universe eventually outruns light. Anything that
outruns light cannot be seen. This should be simple.
>
>> There *will be* Space Telescopes out there 12+ bilions of years from
>> the ages of the galaxies we see at the fringe of the UDF. They can
>> then see us before our developing galaxies coalesce to form our
>> present galaxies, like the Milky Way or Andromeda or M87. Time travel
>> works both ways.
>
>
> If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it wouldn't be
> able to look back here and see anything earlier than its launch; in
> fact, it will see nothing even that early, will it?
No, it will see the Death of the Universe.
>
>
>>> Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for the
>>> universe? All else is past? Surely there must be such a thing as
>>> simultaneity, no?
>>>
>>
>> Not in Relativity. That is why it is caled relativity.
>
>
> Don't intersecting chains of cause and effect dispose us to presuppose
> simultaneity? Must we unravel our ideas of cause and effect to
> assimilate relativity?
>
That's a simple everyday observation, which served our ancestors very
well, but it is not physics. It's how I live. I don't guide my life by
relativity, but Newton's Laws, on the rare occasion when I think about
even them.
>
>>> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be able
>>> to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far away
>>> stuff, but the identical stuff.
>>
>>
>>
>> There is considerable debate about the uniformity of the Universe,
>> leaving aside the question that there may be an infinite number of
>> Universes that we would never be able to know anything about. The
>> Inflation of the Universe may have something to do with its
>> non-uniformity, and the current apparent acceleration of the Universe,
>> which violates classical General Relativity. There seems to be a
>> pressure caused by virtual particles in the vacuum.
>
>
> Let's say just the specific soup that made up the planet earth.
>
Plamet Earth is simple. Initially, planetesimals ~1km across formed
from the Goldreich-LyndenBell dispersion relation. If you can get to
Peter's list of papers you can find this analysis, or write him, though
he doesn't like e-mail and is ill with bladder cancer. He's only 3
years older than I am, but has lived 100 of my lifetimes.
Earth coalesced by statistical mechanics from these planetesimals, and
the random collision with a planet the size of Mars.
>
>>> So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or ignorance,
>>> if you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than twice as old as the
>>> oldest perceptible light?
>>
>>
>>
>> No. A billion or two years, max. It all depends on a workable model
>> not yet developed.
>
>
> You mean "max"?
>
> Well, that's exactly what's not making sense to me. How can two areas of
> matter that start out together become so separated in 2 billion years
> that it takes the light from one 12 billion years to reach the other?
> Doesn't that require a convoluted structure of the universe to achieve
> and/or the warping of light not just in minor degrees but in whacky ways?
>
But our galactic system is 14 billion years old.
[...]
>
>>> I caught up on Science News today. It does a pretty good job of
>>> teaching me how little I know.
>>>
>>
>> You mean the slim maga, I presume, not the "Science Times" section in
>> the Tuesday NYT.
>
>
> Right.
SN is pretty easy. I haven't read it in over 20 years, but its best
sections then were genetics, planetary science, and trivial astronomy -
their worst were on simple biology, astrophysics, and electronics. But
it's probably a completely different maga now.
>
> I have a friend who's annoyed that I don't read the NY Times, other than
> an issue now and then or an article here and there. I'm eclectic in my
> news reading and, in any case, not fond of newsprint on my fingers.
The Times uses a different ink that does not rub off much.
>
>
>> I used to take it over 20 years ago when I was working on Viking data
>> from Mars, because it had an excellent planetaary reporter, called
>> Eberhard, I believe. I got to know him, and debated some of his
>> articles with him. He'd say that most planetary scientists disagree
>> with you. I'd say that they had all caught Carl Sagan's virus, as he
>> is highly contagious, and that the condition was incurable. That
>> amused nim, and he asked how I had avoided the virus: "there's life
As long as the kiddies get educated and not brainwashed, which seems
increasingly unlikely, they can carry on. One thing I have found in the
last 10 years is that Germans are still Germans. I'm not sure how this
happens, but it has something to do with control and lying to escape
control.
>
> However, the American public seems to need the pretense of pragmatic
> ends, either that or the rush of mind-blowing possibilities.
>
You are probably too young to have read Popular Mechanics in the 50s.
One thing they were sure about was that everyone would have his own
autogyro by 1990. Myself, I've only seen an autogyro on TV. Read
current "wired" computer magazines and you will see similar bizarre
predictions, only more and worse.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> By serendipity, I just came across this passage in the Metaphysics of
>>> Aristotle:
>>>
>>> "Infinity and void and other concepts of this kind are said to 'be'
>>> potentially or actually in a different sense from the majority of
>>> existing things, e.g. that which sees, or walks, or is seen. For in
>>> these latter cases the predication may sometimes be truly made
>>> without qualification, since 'that which is seen' is so called
>>> sometimes because it is seen and sometimes because it is capable of
>>> being seen; but the Infinite does not exist potentially in the sense
>>> that it will ever exist separately in actuality; it is separable only
>>> in knowledge. For the fact that the process of division never ceases
>>> makes this actuality exist potentially, but not separately."
>>> (1048b:10-18 = 9.6.5-6, Loeb Classical Library)
>>>
>> That was not a passage we were assigned when I was 17. I would not
>> have berated my TA about it. He got it pretty close, and I think I
>> would have understood it at the time. Thanks!
>
>
> You're welcome.
>
> Don't many formulas for the physical world use the infinity symbol? Do
> you think the physical realm is characterized by finitude?
>
> As for infinity and void, I wonder how far the realm in which they have
> their distinctive existence can be pushed.
>
Infinity is very important. Integrals in fundamental physics (field
theory) usually have to have infinite limits. This is how
"renormalization" is carried out. Because, for convenience, we treat
particles as point objects, all forces and energies go to infinity. You
just need to subtract out the integrals that produce the infinities to
get your real physical answer. This was one of Feynman's deep insights.
He has two books you might enjoy. I gave mine to my worthless
daughter: "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-so-Easy Pieces".
>
>> [snip] I took a nasty fall night before last, and should be resting
>> more today than yesterday, but look slightly better. Yesterday my
>> right eye was swollen black closed.
>
>
> I heard an odd statistic the other day, that one-third of all people
> over a certain age, 65 I think it was, take a bad spill in any given
> year. I can't imagine how that figure was arrived at or how anybody set
> criteria as to what constitutes a bad spill.
>
> I hope you're feeling better.
>
It was a bad spill, right by a fire station - I don't remember going
down and had great difficulty in getting up. The paramedics who came
out to help were very pleased with my FDNY cap and wanted to help me.
In my dazed state, I still had my dog on his leash. Then one of
Baltimore's finest pulled up and accused me of public enebriation (NOT).
I asked for a breatholyzer, he refused, saying that he could take me
to jail on "suspicion of inebriation". I asked the paramedics if they
could give me a breatholyzer and wash up my wounds, as they had offered.
The cop pulled his revolver and got belly to belly to me, saying "You
aren't going anywhere except where I tell you." My dog growled. "And
I'm going to kill your vicious dog." The psramedics stood up for me,
and then he spun on them with his revolver still drawn, "Does anyone
have anything else to say?" It got slightly worse from there. I'm a
62-yr-old WHITE retired astronomer with a white beard, well trimmed. No
one is safe. I live in a very safe neighborhood, and proved that I was
a resident. I know from a couple of other incidents that the cops are
the most dangerous persons (especially the female cops) in our
neightborhood. My wife has given me new marching orders: "Never go
outside the Assciation after 10 pm, because the police are too dangerous."
The swelling on my face has gone down and my left hand has almost
stopped leaking.
Thanks for your concern.
Can we now trim this drivel to something sane?
jimbatty
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
OK, I'll tell the little Irish Catholics that. Their parents will never
figure it out.
jimbat
Norm
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Norm wrote:
>>> Another chapter in the Book of Norm and Jim, to be published in the
>>> Ultra-Apocrypha, for the 3rd millenium in which the tardy Messiah has
>>> not yet come.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hee! Sounds good to me. And will we get to edit out our egregious
>> mistakes? Maybe just some of them. After all, who wants to pretend to
>> inerrancy?
>>
>
> My rabbi might be the redactor. But she'd consider it "too secular".
> Else we'll have to get Mel Brooks.
I feel great sympathy for those redactors who try to edit
online conversations, having done it myself on more than one
occasion.
> I used to carry the latter until I sat on one too many too hard on the
> trail to Lake Coonstance. My favorite astronaut, the one who threw the
> trashed ST's solar panels to their doom in spectacular fashion, had an
> even larger and uglier Casio watch than I. Kathryn P----, can't find
> her name at present.
K. D. Sullivan? K. C. Thornton?
> She is small, but I suspected that any woman who
> wore a wathch like that would be a leopard in bed. I wouldn't have
> minded dying on a tree branch in the back yard if I could have that kind
> of orgasm once again.
>
> [I hear on PBS that many literary researchers want Jane Austin to be dug
> up and killed again for having burned her papers. But in my POV her
> live is her life, and not theirs.
I hate when authors burn their papers, but am tempted to
burn my own. Not that anybody would care.
Austin's on my must read list.
> But I *have* returned and you are my St Paul [until I fire you and give
> you the dunking test]. I'm not on a bread diet of stones to loaves;
> won't work on me, unless it is Manischewitz rye bread, and Satan does
> not have that recipe.
Think of the revisionism!
> If you interpret Kabbalah correctly, you could do well. But the social
> customs are unacceptable to me.
There are customs special to the Kabbalah? Or are you
referring to Jewish dietary laws and the like?
> During the Vietnam War (1968) I joined
> the Socialist Workers' Party for a few weeks, until I discovered that
> they wanted to tell me what to think as much as everyone else did.
> Tyring to tell me what to think is always a non-starter.
With me too. I won't surrender my mind. That poses an
interesting educational paradox, for some types of learning
entail a certain capitulation of the mind. I suppose, that
partly explains why so much of higher education entails
unlearning what one has learned.
It occurred to me that you and I are of different species in
the family of skeptics. Your teeth are all up front and
little gets through. Mine are all down my gullet and what's
left after passing the gauntlet is tiny and hard.
> But if my
> thesis advisor (long ago) gets a genius idea from me, and then tells me
> to write it up overnight on my Olympia office typewriter, and he will
> then "tear it to pieces". I did and he did, and I left reeling down the
> hall, thinking "I have seen the face of God."
What was the sense of "the face of God" there?
>> As for the Zohar, it is a collection of booklets written in Hebrew and
>> Aramaic with touches of Castilian. Its origin is obscure. It is set in
>> the 2nd century C.E. but didn't emerge until around 1300 out of
>> Castile. It is said to show literary influences from works produced
>> shortly before that time.
>>
>
> Whew there were a lot of brave boys and girls along the way! The ease
> of my present life is depressing. Not that I want to slay any Moabites,
> but my many intellectual disabilities leave me feeling rather helpless.
"Intellectual disabilities"? Repetitive story telling
symptomatic? :-)
> Oh, it's so nice to have a Bible the size of a PDA. Thank you. Perhaps
> I got my wires crossed, but I swear I had to sit through sermons
> claiming such things as Gideon's trumpets in Revelations.
Could be the preacher was making an association of certain
passages in Revelation with Judges 7:18-22.
> Well, as I
> told my Liars's Club, everyone lies to tou, even Norm, so check it out
> for yourself, the problem with that being it's to hard to do it all by
> yourself, whish is why you need to rely on persons who have a record of
> truth. You do, in my mind, you lucky dog.
Uh-oh! Now I feel set up for a fall from grace. That feeling
comes out of repeated personal experience.
> [snip]
>>>> Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting up their
>>>> wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study of the Torah?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yes, but, in the home, in the old days of the crafts, but I cannot
>>> over-emphasize that she is ULTRA-orthodox. She can telecommute to
>>> some extent, but she has a number of meetings to go to in a week.
>>
>>
>>
>> I wonder what she'd say if you put my question to her.
>
>
> Do it yourself: li...@stsci.edu. I won't tell you any more than that her
> family is from Grodno. Be very careful. She doesn't like her
> confidences betrayed, so give your resume, your on-line friendship with
> me, yur downloading of the UDF survey, and my explanation, and only then
> ask her religious questions in an extremely non-judgemental way. I
> never questioned her relious beliefs; who am I to do so? And she never
> questioned mine.
When she does her redaction, she can chime in. Or sooner if
she likes.
> [snip]
>>> Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so
>>> accurately or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it all,
>>> or a super-protestant?
>>
>>
>>
>> Super-protestant,
>> mega-dissident,
>> atheistic
>> purple people-eater.
>> :-)
>
>
> I used to disrupt my Latin I class in HS with that song,
Lucky you had Latin in High School. I had it in grad school
when there was little time for it.
> because the
> cute honey-blonde in front of me was hooked on it. All I had to do was
> to hum it until she collapsed in hysterics and got punished for
> disruption, i.e., not going out with me. I revealed this when I visited
> my Latin I teacher when she was 93 in '98; "Ahha! I knew that there was
> something rotten about you." Now I can't jump her bones, as she is gone.
>
>>
>> That last just because that's what the kids in my grade school would
>> have added to complete the stanza.
>>
>
> No I have given you something more for Anacreaon in Heaven.
Hehe, four lines more for the Anacreontea?
It seems to have been Anacreon who wrote:
"For I am eager
to sing of tender Love,
his head garlanded with luxuriant flowers:
he is the ruler over gods,
he is the subduer of mortals."
(As quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6.14.7;
translation from the Loeb Classical Library, section 505)
And one of his imitators who wrote:
"The ladies say,
'Anacreon, you are old.
Take a mirror and look:
your hair is no longer there,
and your brow is bare.'
But I do not know whether
my hair is still there or
has gone; I do know that
the closer fate is,
the more fitting it is for the old man
to enjoy his fun and games."
(Anacreontea 7, LCL)
> [snip]
>> If you ("you" in that general indistinct sense) think your reform has
>> prevailed for a while but your culture moves on leaving it behind,
>> then the tendency is to fall into the irony of abandoning your reform
>> spirit and adopting a reactionary one. To do so changes everything,
>> right down to the fibers of your being; but a lot of people overlook
>> that.
>>
>>
> That's a very insightful comment. The "experience" does not last
> forever; you have to work on it. I used to, but there has been less and
> less reason to do so in the last 10 years, as I see that the world is
> nade of shit, and that Germans are still Germans. I'm going areound the
> bend. We do give *gobs* of money to a few efficient international aid
> organizations, but virtually nothing so far within the US.
>>> NSDT.
>>
>>
>>
>> North Sumatra Daylight Time?
>>
>
> No Shit Dick Tracy, but you knew.
Now you overestimate me. :-)
>> Knew a fella once, Caucasian (so he'd generally be classified*), born
>> and raised in Africa where (IIRC) his family had been for many
>> generations, immigrated to the U.S., became a U.S. citizen, says he's
>> African-American, objects when the term is used as a synonym for
>> "Black" thus denying him his heritage.
>>
>> * I don't like racial classification.
>>
>>
> I see all these "black" folks on TV who are whiter than I am. I tell
> averyone that I'm an African, as my ancestors left Africa only 80,000
> years ago.
So it seems. Emphasis on the commonality of humanity.
> [snip]
>> I have a friend in the Baltimore area who does autopsies. (She's an
>> EMT too.) Stay off her table!
>>
>
> Jordan?
When I mentioned "Crossing Jordan," my friend hadn't heard
of it. Her favorite: "Diagnosis Murder."
I picture her as a blonde Jill Hennessy. She's one
of those friends I haven't met. A pen pal. Or more
accurately, keyboard pal.
> Can I remain alive for a little while?
Why not?
>> What gives with your occasional sprinkling of Nazi references?
>>
>
> After I read the Bible front-to-back twice whan I was 5, 1947, my mother
> told me about all the DP and extermination camps in Europe. I wondered
> why I was in Iowa and not there, a philosophical prpblem that greatly
> troubled me.
Yes .. yes! You were right on as a little kid.
I keep wrestling with the Holocaust and other mass murders
in my writings. An example is posted:
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/holocaust.html
> I went to the library with her and checked everything out
> on Nazism. And it stuck. It comes back, as I see so much of it around
> even today.
On behalf of my client, the culture in which I live, I plead
"No contest."
Sometimes I fear that some of those most opposed to Nazism
and some of those most victimized by it are among those who
have inherited its spirit. The spirit of the oppressor is
contagious. Opponents and victims are the most susceptible.
But what a politically incorrect idea to entertain!
>>> [snip] Who was that singer, Jimmy Rogers?, who sang
>>> mostly religious ballads who was beaten into a permanent vegitative
>>> state in the '70s by a couple of LA police officers on Laurel Canyon
>>> when he might have been going 5 miles above the speed limit. No
>>> higher was proved as I recall.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have no recollection of the story. That's what I get for not being a
>> regular reader of the NY Times!
>>
>>
> My wife thinks he was a memeber of The Brouns - you remember the "little
> country chapel"?
My memory still draws a blank. And Google's not helping. It
gives me this:
Merle Haggard
The Farmer's Daughter
"Tonight there'll be candlelight and roses
In this little country chapel that's almost falling down
..."
You're probably not thinking of the jazz musician, Bud
Powell (1924-1966). But he'd be another example:
"In 1945, then 21, he received a beating by police after he
tried to help his pal and mentor Monk from being harassed.
Taken to Bellevue Hospital for evaluation, he wrote on the
admittance form under occupation: 'Pianist and composer of
over 1,000 songs.' To which the attending doctor wrote,
'delusions of grandeur' and put him in a straitjacket. In
fact at the time, he was working with well-known band leader
Cootie Williams. Spending most of the year recovering in the
hospital, he suffered excruciating headaches, seizures and
erratic behavior. Cootie Williams would say, 'They’d beaten
him so badly around the head.... His sickness started right
there....'”
http://www.cchr.org/art/eng/page28.htm
>> So far as I can tell, Saddam was only for himself. But if he's
>> symbolic of the worst in human instincts, that vote is usually split.
>> What else can you expect given the usual political pandering?
>>
>>
> He rose through a vicious system. Now that to everyone's surprise,
> "power" has been handed over, it appears that the Iraqis want to give up
> the American 5# rubber hammer for the 10# sledge hammer that circus
> workers used to drive the tent stakes. There are many jobs in this
> world that I'm not qualified for, and that nearly heads the list.
It was a stroke of genius (not Bush's stroke) to hand over
sovereignty two days early. It works on many levels.
>>> Nevertheless I give no thanks to God. Had he existed, 1st, I
>>> wouldn't have fallen (perhaps with the help of a small seizure), and
>>> 2nd, he wouldn't have sicked a vicious, out of policy cop on me.
>>> Atheism and the UAC got me through it.
>>
>>
>>
>> The undifferentiated aesthetic continuum as crutch?
>>
>>
> It's there, and it got me home free.
I suppose that's consistent with your sympathy for religion
as a crutch.
>> I expect that most ideas will have their time and place. As for me, I
>> have the Cassandra curse, or used to. I've grown averse to looking
>> ahead. Nobody listens anyway.
>
>
> But should Hector's child have been pushed off the cliff? Priam had
> come to Achilles's tent to beg for the body of his son. Does anyone
> ever learn anything? Achilles did, hence the name of my dog.
Yes, some people do learn. Of course, there's learning and
there's learning. It's one thing to know that being rained
on doesn't keep you from being rained on again. It's another
to know it in your very bones.
Kind of like the difference, during the Viet Nam War,
between Guard duty in Texas and patrolling the Mekong Delta.
You learn a bit about war in both cases, but ...
>> Reminds me: I haven't finished Ulysses yet.
>>
>>
> Don't bother. I think it was written on worse than opium, but three
> witches in bed with him together.
I have an inviting reading copy. And I'm motivated by
my search for terms for my glossary. In that respect,
Ulysses has been a fruitful source. Otherwise do I think
it's worth it? Not so far.
> You want Irish? Try the book I read
> at 21 "The Ginger Man".
For my information:
The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy (1955), originally banned
in America.
I don't recall having read any Donleavy. Although I have
this niggling inkling that maybe I have.
> It's out of print, but I was able to get a copy
> through Amazon. It has my favorite epithet when things get bad with my
> body: "God's teeth!" Imagine a 2nd storey toilet breaking through the
> ceiling and immersing you on offal and TP, and then running out of the
> house to the nearest pub saying "God's Teeth." Not Mr Fix-it.
>> [snip]
> Yes. My wife and I used to go on secret spring trips to the west of
> China Lake, have a hike, and then feast on buried, well-cooked wild
> burro. My magic, and I do mean magic, BBQ sauce made it palatable for
> everyone.
I just learned that horse meat is what's fed to the jaguar
at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Mass.
Got a recipe for barbecue sauce to share?
> [snip]
>> Our disagreement's a respectable one. The debate's old. If a vote were
>> taken today of the members of the Society of Biblical Literature, I
>> imagine that the vast majority would vote your way, that Paul's
>> message was profoundly different from Jesus' far beyond Paul's
>> christocentrism. It seems I often find myself in a minority position.
>>
>>
> Norm (short for normal?),
No. The norm by which all else is measured (to pretend, like
you, to a delusion of grandeur).
By mistake I once said, "Now if you take me as the norm..."
It was in the wee hours of the morning, and my friend and I,
who were in a dorm room in London at the time, cracked up
and couldn't stop laughing. But that can be a funny mistake
only once.
Actually, Norman derives from "northman" or some cognate term.
> you need not feel ashamed for admitting I'm
> right.
I'll keep that in mind for when you are. :-)
> I have been throughout my life, except when disagreeing with
> Goldreich (q.v.), when I was right only twice - but mostly we agreed. He
> made my mind fluctuate.
Peter?
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/goldreich/
> [snip]
>>>> John Cairncross was a spy for the Soviets, right? If so, his dates
>>>> were 1913-1995.
>>
>>
>>
>> What I like in that paragraph is the apparent silliness of the logic. :-)
Darn! Misfired again!
>> You're reminding me of Wilhelm Reich on the Russian Revolution:
>> according to him, it was a period of free love, which the totalitarian
>> types had to suppress in order to maintain autocratic control.
>>
>
> How did they get all those breeches off? When you watch a modern movie,
> you wonder how they can fuck through underpants, or without unzipping
> their pants. I've never tried it.
Ninotchka came across as prissy and not at all knowledgeable
of such things.
There's a term for it, of course. Probably several.
> [snip]
>> Was the miracle the vision of Mary or the repentance, I wonder? If it
>> was the repentance, one can imagine other changes of heart that might
>> have been just as miraculous.
>>
> Perhaps the real miracle was Jesus's lending Judas 30 pieces to betray
> him. I might do many things, but I'm essentially a guerilla.
I knew a bookdealer once, a former librarian, who said that
librarians are essentially subversives.
>>>> Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I suppose
>>>> it had its purpose.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Also his racism. I hadn't noticed it until my best friends at
>>> Harvard pointed it out to me in 1965. I looked through them again,
>>> and was so embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it
>>
>>
>>
>> You mean orcs versus men?
>>
>
> Partly, but the contrast with the Rohirrim and the dark men from the
> East (read Jews) was what hit them. They were both Jews. One was the
> best man at my wedding in Chestnut Hill (q.v.) and the other head usher,
> the son of the Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin (q.v.).
I don't make the connection between the dark men from the
East and Jews.
I see that there are many sites on the Web where Tolkien and
racism are discussed. I just read section 7 of the FAQ at:
http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/External.html
Personally I think that authors should be read with a
generous spirit, unless their lives and spirit clearly show
racist hatred. Otherwise we wind up with Huckleberry Finn
being banned in the schools. Instead of banning, let's teach
kids how to read with understanding, generosity, and
critical acumen.
Some readers bring humanity to a text and read it
accordingly, connecting with the humanity of the author,
that author giving expression to an aspect of the humanity
of humankind. Other readers read a text as cold type ever
fraught with the potential to threaten their sense of
humanity. I'd suggest that the latter approach is much more
prone to hermeneutical distortion. I'd also suggest that, in
this regard, it's better to have two types of readings than
two types of readers -- the first type of reading, bringing
humanity to a text, being the default; the second, as cold
type, when forced to it.
>>> The thing about PitF is that it is totally obvious to anyone who
>>> knows a bit of neurology, metaphors in thought, and "MEW". Others
>>> often think they are reading a too-expensive bit of quack science and
>>> philosophy. But the book is correct, despite all the doubting Thomases.
>>
>>
>>
>> MEW?
>
>
> As established above, "The Meeting of East and West".
Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
registered the decryption.
By the way, I picked up a paperback copy of Philosophy in
the Flesh at the Todd Farm flea market over the weekend. I
bargained down from six bucks to five. I later found the
book had been marked up and figure I overpaid.
>>>>>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of
>>>>>> the universe?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It doesn't. Light comes here.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But doesn't the
>>>> expansion of the universe also move into the future? And isn't the
>>>> speed of light faster than the expansion of the universe?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Here things visibly get older. As you look away, they generally get
>>> younger. You cannot see beyond the event Horizon.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, sorry, I don't see the connection between that answer and my
>> question.
>>
>
> The expansion of the universe eventually outruns light. Anything that
> outruns light cannot be seen. This should be simple.
Isn't the Hubble constant indicative of the rate of the
expansion of the universe? And isn't it much slower than the
speed of light? And doesn't the theory of relativity posit
that nothing can exceed the speed of light? So no, not
simple. Not yet.
>>> There *will be* Space Telescopes out there 12+ bilions of years from
>>> the ages of the galaxies we see at the fringe of the UDF. They can
>>> then see us before our developing galaxies coalesce to form our
>>> present galaxies, like the Milky Way or Andromeda or M87. Time
>>> travel works both ways.
>>
>>
>>
>> If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it wouldn't be
>> able to look back here and see anything earlier than its launch; in
>> fact, it will see nothing even that early, will it?
>
>
> No, it will see the Death of the Universe.
*Scrunching forehead*
You think the life of the universe is more than half over?
>>>> Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for the
>>>> universe? All else is past? Surely there must be such a thing as
>>>> simultaneity, no?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not in Relativity. That is why it is caled relativity.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don't intersecting chains of cause and effect dispose us to presuppose
>> simultaneity? Must we unravel our ideas of cause and effect to
>> assimilate relativity?
>>
>
> That's a simple everyday observation, which served our ancestors very
> well, but it is not physics. It's how I live. I don't guide my life by
> relativity, but Newton's Laws, on the rare occasion when I think about
> even them.
Yeah, that's a commonplace. But what do you do with the
fabric of intersecting cause and effect?
>>>> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be able
>>>> to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far away
>>>> stuff, but the identical stuff.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There is considerable debate about the uniformity of the Universe,
>>> leaving aside the question that there may be an infinite number of
>>> Universes that we would never be able to know anything about. The
>>> Inflation of the Universe may have something to do with its
>>> non-uniformity, and the current apparent acceleration of the
>>> Universe, which violates classical General Relativity. There seems
>>> to be a pressure caused by virtual particles in the vacuum.
>>
>>
>>
>> Let's say just the specific soup that made up the planet earth.
>>
>
> Plamet Earth is simple. Initially, planetesimals ~1km across formed
> from the Goldreich-LyndenBell dispersion relation. If you can get to
> Peter's list of papers you can find this analysis, or write him, though
> he doesn't like e-mail and is ill with bladder cancer. He's only 3
> years older than I am, but has lived 100 of my lifetimes.
>
> Earth coalesced by statistical mechanics from these planetesimals, and
> the random collision with a planet the size of Mars.
You miss my point.
>>>> So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or
>>>> ignorance, if you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than twice as
>>>> old as the oldest perceptible light?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> No. A billion or two years, max. It all depends on a workable model
>>> not yet developed.
>>
>>
>>
>> You mean "max"?
>>
>> Well, that's exactly what's not making sense to me. How can two areas
>> of matter that start out together become so separated in 2 billion
>> years that it takes the light from one 12 billion years to reach the
>> other? Doesn't that require a convoluted structure of the universe to
>> achieve and/or the warping of light not just in minor degrees but in
>> whacky ways?
>>
>
> But our galactic system is 14 billion years old.
I was afraid you'd say that. The answer makes sense to me
only if the expansion of the universe is indeed faster than
light.
> [[snip]
> As long as the kiddies get educated and not brainwashed, which seems
> increasingly unlikely, they can carry on. One thing I have found in the
> last 10 years is that Germans are still Germans. I'm not sure how this
> happens, but it has something to do with control and lying to escape
> control.
Is there really such a thing as a national character with
which a preponderance of individuals in a given nation are
affected?
>> However, the American public seems to need the pretense of pragmatic
>> ends, either that or the rush of mind-blowing possibilities.
Richard Feynman said it better (so I read somewhere):
"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical
results, but that's not why we do it."
> You are probably too young to have read Popular Mechanics in the 50s.
> One thing they were sure about was that everyone would have his own
> autogyro by 1990. Myself, I've only seen an autogyro on TV. Read
> current "wired" computer magazines and you will see similar bizarre
> predictions, only more and worse.
Maybe I'll ask for an autogyro for Christmas. I see there
are radio-controlled ones for sale.
Oops, even those prices are too high for a Christmas gift in
my family.
I read in the Wikipedia, "NASA is said to be exploring the
use of these sporty flying machines to encourage personal
air transportation for everyone."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro
As for Popular Mechanics, it's fun to flip through old
issues from the 50s, not that I've done it much.
>> Don't many formulas for the physical world use the infinity symbol? Do
>> you think the physical realm is characterized by finitude?
>>
>> As for infinity and void, I wonder how far the realm in which they
>> have their distinctive existence can be pushed.
>>
>
> Infinity is very important. Integrals in fundamental physics (field
> theory) usually have to have infinite limits. This is how
> "renormalization" is carried out. Because, for convenience, we treat
> particles as point objects, all forces and energies go to infinity. You
> just need to subtract out the integrals that produce the infinities to
> get your real physical answer. This was one of Feynman's deep insights.
> He has two books you might enjoy. I gave mine to my worthless daughter:
> "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-so-Easy Pieces".
I've started collecting Feynman's books. Don't have those
two yet. Enjoyed the movie about his early life, "Infinity"
(1996). Used to see him on PBS from time to time.
> [snip]
> Thanks for your concern.
You're welcome.
> Can we now trim this drivel to something sane?
Trimming can be done. Sanity's another matter. :-)
--
Norm
Norm
Go right ahead.
--
Norm
Norm
> Is there really such a thing as a national character with which a
> preponderance of individuals in a given nation are affected?
I meant "infected," of course.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
> >>
> >>> Norm wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>>>> Another chapter in the Book of Norm and Jim, to be published in the
>>>> Ultra-Apocrypha, for the 3rd millenium in which the tardy Messiah
>>>> has not yet come.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hee! Sounds good to me. And will we get to edit out our egregious
>>> mistakes? Maybe just some of them. After all, who wants to pretend to
>>> inerrancy?
>>>
You haven't been reading! Try rec.backcountry or rec.games.chess, amd
there are other threads in this ng, that say "Oh, lah, de dah!" and so
avoid the question of inerrancy. It's been some time since I've read
that word, being a scientific atheist, none of which claim it.
>>
>> My rabbi might be the redactor. But she'd consider it "too secular".
>> Else we'll have to get Mel Brooks.
>
>
> I feel great sympathy for those redactors who try to edit
> online conversations, having done it myself on more than one
> occasion.
>
>
>> I used to carry the latter until I sat on one too many too hard on the
>> trail to Lake Coonstance. My favorite astronaut, the one who threw
>> the trashed ST's solar panels to their doom in spectacular fashion,
>> had an even larger and uglier Casio watch than I. Kathryn P----,
>> can't find her name at present.
>
>
> K. D. Sullivan? K. C. Thornton?
>
Thornton. My wife told me several times, but I still had Sullivan stuck
in my lizard brain. I didn't see her in person until after the mission,
but I felt it was best to keep some distance, else I be arrested. Male
astronauts have hit on a number of female scientists at the ST, but I
waited for her to hit on me, and it never came. I even showed her my
Casio watch, but that peacock tail was insufficient. I came later,
probably to the excessive interest of our neighbors.
>
>> She is small, but I suspected that any woman who wore a watch like
>> that would be a leopard in bed. I wouldn't have minded dying on a
>> tree branch in the back yard if I could have that kind of orgasm once
>> again.
>>
>> [I hear on PBS that many literary researchers want Jane Austin to be
>> dug up and killed again for having burned her papers. But in my POV
>> her life is her life, and not theirs.
>
>
> I hate when authors burn their papers, but am tempted to
> burn my own. Not that anybody would care.
>
> Austin's on my must read list.
>
>
Mansfield Park? My papers are too hard for anyone, so I have directed
my wife to burn them in the unlikely event that she outlives me (she's 6
yrs younger), which brings on a gallon of aqua regia. My funeral
service, to which no one is invited, especially my "natural" family is a
reading of the verse in Ecclesiastes "The race is not always to the
swift..." followed by my cremation with extreme prejudice in a pine box.
When I read the Bible through twice when I was 5, this verse stuck in my
mind. I knew that for me, the race was always to the swift, as I was
the fastest, but the rest gave me much puzzlement. It wasn't until my
first marriage, when I recited these lines, that I actually understood
them. My bride, whose memory was not quite up to more, just said,
"Better an handful in quietness than both hands full with travail and
vexation of spirit". I knew that would be our lot for the next 7-9
years, but the lesson did not take on her, as she kept hasseling me to
be a banker.
>> But I *have* returned and you are my St Paul [until I fire you and
>> give you the dunking test]. I'm not on a bread diet of stones to
>> loaves; won't work on me, unless it is Manischewitz rye bread, and
>> Satan does not have that recipe.
>
>
> Think of the revisionism!
>
>
>> If you interpret Kabbalah correctly, you could do well. But the
>> social customs are unacceptable to me.
>
>
> There are customs special to the Kabbalah? Or are you
> referring to Jewish dietary laws and the like?
>
Yes and no.
>
>> During the Vietnam War (1968) I joined the Socialist Workers' Party
>> for a few weeks, until I discovered that they wanted to tell me what
>> to think as much as everyone else did. Trying to tell me what to think
>> is always a non-starter.
>
>
> With me too. I won't surrender my mind. That poses an
> interesting educational paradox, for some types of learning
> entail a certain capitulation of the mind. I suppose, that
> partly explains why so much of higher education entails
> unlearning what one has learned.
>
I never capitulated in school. Teachers who did a good job got my
respect, so I gave them my best, but never mind control. Sometimes they
wished that I did less than my best. Sorry if I mentioned the following
before. In my 2nd week into kindergarten I told Mrs. Beltz to go home
because I could teach the class better then she could. Things went
downhill from there; I'll spare the details.
On only one occasion did I report on a book I had actually read ("The
French Revolution" by Carlyle in 7th grade, read in a weekend). For
other books, I made up essays out of whole cloth from the flaps and the
preface. I was careful to choose books my teachers could not possibly
understand. I did everything to cheat the system, and still gained the
moniker "Einstein", I guess because no teacher dared give me anything
but an A, except in penmanship (C) and conduct (C). I did help a few
kids through the grade we were in, and they wondered at my magic.
> It occurred to me that you and I are of different species in
> the family of skeptics. Your teeth are all up front and
> little gets through. Mine are all down my gullet and what's
> left after passing the gauntlet is tiny and hard.
>
You are wrong twice. We are descended from a single mammal-like reptile
that survived the Permian extinction, Lystrosaurus. And the word is
gantlet, not gauntlet, which is a metal glove.
>
>> But if my thesis advisor (long ago) gets a genius idea from me, and
>> then tells me to write it up overnight on my Olympia office
>> typewriter, and he will then "tear it to pieces". I did and he did,
>> and I left reeling down the hall, thinking "I have seen the face of God."
>
>
> What was the sense of "the face of God" there?
>
I thought I had it nailed, and he showed me how my arrogant brain was
not up to the task. It was an intellectial face of god, not an
aesthetic, though there was some aesthetic mixed in, as I relied on my
intuition and then tried to clean things up with math. His intuition
was just so much better, beyond anything I had ever known. Check him out
on Google, Peter Goldreich.
>
>>> As for the Zohar, it is a collection of booklets written in Hebrew
>>> and Aramaic with touches of Castilian. Its origin is obscure. It is
>>> set in the 2nd century C.E. but didn't emerge until around 1300 out
>>> of Castile. It is said to show literary influences from works
>>> produced shortly before that time.
>>>
>>
>> Whew there were a lot of brave boys and girls along the way! The ease
>> of my present life is depressing. Not that I want to slay any
>> Moabites, but my many intellectual disabilities leave me feeling
>> rather helpless.
>
>
> "Intellectual disabilities"? Repetitive story telling symptomatic? :-)
Yes. This has been called to my attention. The problem is that I post
to two newsgroups, this and rec.backcountry, and get much e-mail from
some posters, so I would need a Vatican Secretary to keep track of what
I have written where. But we have no satisfactory dry-cleaning
establishment, nor any barbershop in the neighborhoood to satisfy such a
Secretary, and our shower soap may be below his standard (Yardley).
Another problem: we have no Neutrogena products in our house, since I
met a woman in the late 70s who was sold into sexual slavery by her
mother to the CEO of Neutrogena. I'm a natural doubter, but she was
very convincing. I asked for a date, but she said it would take her a
long time to adjust to ordinary men. I protested that I was not
ordinary, but she replied, "Men are just men."
>
>
>> Oh, it's so nice to have a Bible the size of a PDA. Thank you.
>> Perhaps I got my wires crossed, but I swear I had to sit through
>> sermons claiming such things as Gideon's trumpets in Revelations.
>
>
> Could be the preacher was making an association of certain
> passages in Revelation with Judges 7:18-22.
>
You never know. His daughter and I used to play Yahtzee and feel each
others' legs under the table. He was not a scholar like you, but he had
fire, as did his daughter. Then they moved away. I can no longer
remember how to play Yahtzee, but I can still feel legs in the tradition
of Maria Muldaur.
>
>> Well, as I told my Liars's Club, everyone lies to you, even Norm, so
>> check it out for yourself, the problem with that being it's too hard to
>> do it all by yourself, which is why you need to rely on persons who
>> have a record of truth. You do, in my mind, you lucky dog.
(some typos corrected)
>
>
> Uh-oh! Now I feel set up for a fall from grace. That feeling
> comes out of repeated personal experience.
Heh! I never mentioned you, as we were not corresponding at that time.
I mentioned my mother's lies when I was a kid, and that she's still a
bit nuts. Visualize Catholic kids' wide eyes. There is no grace to
fall from. However, if you accept my approval as grace, that is
available, and as holy as anything Jesus had to offer.
I had two questions on reading the Bible for the first time, among many
others that caused me to be told to shut up: 1. How can something be
created out of nothing, viz. 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed a multitude,
and 2. Why was it a miracle for Jesus to turn water into wine at a
wedding, when you are a teetotaller, and drink 12 cups of coffee per
day? Naturally my phrasing at the time was more primitive.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> Didn't the rabbis of the Talmuds envision holy men setting up their
>>>>> wives to work to support their, the rabbis', study of the Torah?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, but, in the home, in the old days of the crafts, but I cannot
>>>> over-emphasize that she is ULTRA-orthodox. She can telecommute to
>>>> some extent, but she has a number of meetings to go to in a week.
>>>
>>>
>>> I wonder what she'd say if you put my question to her.
>>
>>
[...]
> When she does her redaction, she can chime in. Or sooner if
> she likes.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> Yes, I'm familiar with all that, but could not recite it so
>>>> accurately or succintly. Am I a protestant because I protest it
>>>> all, or a super-protestant?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Super-protestant,
>>> mega-dissident,
>>> atheistic
>>> purple people-eater.
>>> :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> I used to disrupt my Latin I class in HS with that song,
>
>
> Lucky you had Latin in High School. I had it in grad school
> when there was little time for it.
>
But I never studied in HS. It was a point of pride never to take a book
home. Do you rememeber the old computer magazine from the 70-80s:
"Travelling Lite without Overbyte", all about cool, simple programming.
With the dominance of Microsoft it vanished. It's not too hard to
tell that I loathe Microsoft, especially as I am a partial prisoner in
their Abu Ghraib prison.
I did everything cool. It was the rare teacher who dared to challenge
me, but them I remember with great favor. The problem was that if they
had the guts to challenge me, they also had the guts to challenge our
Nazi, heavy-drinking principal, and got fired. He tried to destroy my
Harvard admission and scholarship, but my step-father, a city
councilman, came like Robert Moses (q.v.) to his office with a fat
police folder on him, and the problem suddenly evaporated.
[nice stuff on Anacreon]
That's a lot of fun. I told my brother to take his pic off his Nexus
Marine web site, as he looked too much like Alexandr Solzhenytsin. I
can't reach his website at the moment. Anacreon had more fun than I
did, except for 6 mos there and three years there.
>>> If you ("you" in that general indistinct sense) think your reform has
>>> prevailed for a while but your culture moves on leaving it behind,
>>> then the tendency is to fall into the irony of abandoning your reform
>>> spirit and adopting a reactionary one. To do so changes everything,
>>> right down to the fibers of your being; but a lot of people overlook
>>> that.
>>>
>>>
>> That's a very insightful comment. The "experience" does not last
>> forever; you have to work on it: why Tagore wrote all thos Bengali songs.
I used to, but there has been less
>> and less reason to do so in the last 10 years, as I see that the world
>> is nade of shit, and that Germans are still Germans. I'm going
>> around the bend. We do give *gobs* of money to a few efficient
>> international aid organizations, but virtually nothing so far within
>> the US.
>
>
>>>> NSDT.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> North Sumatra Daylight Time?
>>>
>>
>> No Shit Dick Tracy, but you knew.
>
>
> Now you overestimate me. :-)
>
>
>>> Knew a fella once, Caucasian (so he'd generally be classified*), born
>>> and raised in Africa where (IIRC) his family had been for many
>>> generations, immigrated to the U.S., became a U.S. citizen, says he's
>>> African-American, objects when the term is used as a synonym for
>>> "Black" thus denying him his heritage.
>>>
>>> * I don't like racial classification.
>>>
>>>
>> I see all these "black" folks on TV who are whiter than I am. I tell
>> everyone that I'm an African, as my ancestors left Africa only 80,000
>> years ago.
>
>
I always say that I'm African, that few of my ancestors survived, but we
are still here. A Balto city cop did not like this, and demanded my
driver's licence, though I wasn't driving.
> So it seems. Emphasis on the commonality of humanity.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I have a friend in the Baltimore area who does autopsies. (She's an
>>> EMT too.) Stay off her table!
>>>
>>
>> Jordan?
>
>
> When I mentioned "Crossing Jordan," my friend hadn't heard of it. Her
> favorite: "Diagnosis Murder."
>
Really, mostly it's "Diagnosis Accident". Men who get murdered IMHO
usually deserve it. But the murder of women I'd investigate
relentlessly, until I got fired. I could have gotten murdered just for
falling on the sidewalk a week ago. I was really dazed. I now think
that my right cheekbone has a lateral crack, but there is nothing to be
done about that.
> I picture her as a blonde Jill Hennessy. She's one
> of those friends I haven't met. A pen pal. Or more accurately, keyboard
> pal.
[misadventures in Nazism and with Germans]
>
>> I went to the library with her and checked everything out on Nazism.
>> And it stuck. It comes back, as I see so much of it around even today.
>
>
> On behalf of my client, the culture in which I live, I plead "No contest."
>
Big client. Big pockets? Your plead reminds me of the one time
Oppenheimer was defeated scientifically. A young upstart, who should
have gotten the Nobel prize with Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, was
trying to prove that their three theories were all the same - a correct
solution of quantum electrodynamics (relativistic), but Oppenheimer kept
cutting him off before he could even get off the ground. So this young
British feller invited Bethe, the theory leader on the Manhattan
Project, to come to his series of attempted seminars. Hans Bethe told
Oppie to shut up and listen. The next morning Freeman Dyson, father of
Esther, got a note in his mailbox from Oppie: "Nolo contendere."
> Sometimes I fear that some of those most opposed to Nazism
> and some of those most victimized by it are among those who
> have inherited its spirit. The spirit of the oppressor is
> contagious. Opponents and victims are the most susceptible.
> But what a politically incorrect idea to entertain!
>
But for my personal love experience, I'd scream bloody murder at such an
assertion, but you have felt a piece of the complicated cookie.
[a blank on a vicious LAPD beating - they are *still* doing it]]
Thank you for the additional info. We all know that the LAPD has long
been astray from at least the 20s. But this event I remember, and is so
clear in my mind, happened soon after my move to Pasadena in 1973. I
said to myself, "Hoo hah!", even the Seattle police's trying to run me
over in crosswalks because I looked like a hippy, but was working on
pulsar emission theories, was nothing compared to such deliberate abuse.
When they chased me after taking over the U Wash campus, their TAC
squads (pre SWAT) chased me through the trees as I was making my way
from my office to the library and back. I just laughed and gave them
the finger, as I was younger, faster, and they were carrying too much
weight.
You may have seen on TV, the LAPD trying to beat a man to death with
their Maglites. When Katya's sister asked her to get me to get her a
Maglite, I objected, as my flashlights are all platic and work just as
well, except in beating people's brains out. Her sister insisted, with
no reason I could understand, so I got it for her. I should have just
told her sister to go fuck herself, but Katya would not give me her
e-mail address.
When a member of "Batimore's finest" pulled his revolver on me a week
ago just because I was dazed from a bad fall (possibly cracked
cheekbone), I told a black friend that I wasn't even DWB, so the cops
are a danger to everyone. He said, "Right on, bro."
I'm sorry to have raised a Tasmanian Devil. My wife knows the story and
corrected me to the Browns (misspelled above), but we can't get a grip
on the story through simple, free searches.
>>> So far as I can tell, Saddam was only for himself. But if he's
>>> symbolic of the worst in human instincts, that vote is usually split.
>>> What else can you expect given the usual political pandering?
>>>
>>>
>> He rose through a vicious system. Now that to everyone's surprise,
>> "power" has been handed over, it appears that the Iraqis want to give
>> up the American 5# rubber hammer for the 10# sledge hammer that circus
>> workers used to drive the tent stakes. There are many jobs in this
>> world that I'm not qualified for, and that nearly heads the list.
>
>
> It was a stroke of genius (not Bush's stroke) to hand over
> sovereignty two days early. It works on many levels.
>
>
Exactly.
>>>> Nevertheless I give no thanks to God. Had he existed, 1st, I
>>>> wouldn't have fallen (perhaps with the help of a small seizure), and
>>>> 2nd, he wouldn't have sicked a vicious, out of policy cop on me.
>>>> Atheism and the UAC got me through it.
>>>
>>>
Saw Saddam on TV this morning, but he's clearly not himself. We are
mistreating him. He needs walks, jogs, and maybe some volleyball. He's
a greater criminal than we have ever had, but why should we not treat
his body with dignity?
>>>
>>>
>>> The undifferentiated aesthetic continuum as crutch?
Nothing you think is real is real. His bullying was bluster, and once I
and the paramedics stood up to him, he lost his sense of absolute power.
He also knew we had at least 5 incidents of out-of-policy behavior to
use against him in court, where FD employees are not ignored. He tried
to maintain his dignity by refusing to let me get 1st aid. I never
assume that what appears to be true is true.
That reminds me of an incident when I was on jury duty in Balto. It was
a double murder case, with the only witnesses being Balto police
officers. The presiding judge asked if anyone who would have a problem
believing police testimony please step forward. Among about 10, I did
and said, "Your honor, you know that police lie on the witness stand and
get away with it. They even call it 'testilying'". She passed her hand
over her mouth for a few seconds, and than said, "You are excused."
>
> I suppose that's consistent with your sympathy for religion as a crutch.
>
No, no, I don't think of it that way. We all need ways to get through
life. Mine are imperfect as are those of most other persons. Think of
Kant. Everyone set their watches by when he passed their shops on his
morning walk. Was that routine a crutch? Perhaps, if you want to
extend the definition. Others pick up fuckmates at bars or wherever,
which is often not exactly safe (Mr. Goodbar).
>
>>> I expect that most ideas will have their time and place. As for me, I
>>> have the Cassandra curse, or used to. I've grown averse to looking
>>> ahead. Nobody listens anyway.
>>
>>
Well, Clytemnestra took care of her. Too bad their boat didn't sink
with all the others, else we'd be spared Aeschylus (I'm kidding). He's
the only reading in my freshman philosophy course that I thought had it
right on.
>>
>> But should Hector's child have been pushed off the cliff? Priam had
>> come to Achilles's tent to beg for the body of his son. Does anyone
>> ever learn anything? Achilles did, hence the name of my dog.
>
>
> Yes, some people do learn. Of course, there's learning and
> there's learning. It's one thing to know that being rained
> on doesn't keep you from being rained on again. It's another
> to know it in your very bones.
>
I went through most of grad school in Seattle, where you always know you
are going to get rained on or worse.
> Kind of like the difference, during the Viet Nam War,
> between Guard duty in Texas and patrolling the Mekong Delta.
> You learn a bit about war in both cases, but ...
>
I often skipped classes at Harvard, so Dubya and I have too much in common.
>
>>> Reminds me: I haven't finished Ulysses yet.
>>>
>>>
>> Don't bother. I think it was written on worse than opium, but three
>> witches in bed with him together.
>
>
> I have an inviting reading copy. And I'm motivated by
> my search for terms for my glossary. In that respect,
> Ulysses has been a fruitful source. Otherwise do I think
> it's worth it? Not so far.
>
>
Land O'Goshen. I have a copy, but if you know anything about how it was
put together, you rather choose to fight a cow moose than read that
meaningless book. Joyce didn't actually write it - it's an
interpretation of his madness. If you want something easier, but
actually correct, try
ApJSupp *41*, 75.
There are no mistakes in it, and lots of interesting and true ideas. Go
with your U librarian, she can find this obscure paper that no one can
understand, save one other.
>> You want Irish? Try the book I read at 21, "The Ginger Man".
>
>
> For my information:
>
> The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy (1955), originally banned
> in America.
>
> I don't recall having read any Donleavy. Although I have this niggling
> inkling that maybe I have.
>
I can understand why it might have been banned. The ginger man had a
tendency to bury his face and anything else in his mistress's aromatic sod.
>
>> It's out of print, but I was able to get a copy through Amazon. It has
>> my favorite epithet when things get bad with my
>> body or our house: "God's teeth!" Imagine a 2nd storey toilet breaking through the
>> ceiling and immersing you in offal and TP, and then running out of the
>> house to the nearest pub saying "God's Teeth." Not Mr Fix-it, the Ginger Man,
>> but good with a pint of stout.
>
>
>>> [snip]
>
>
>> Yes. My wife and I used to go on secret spring trips to the west of
>> China Lake, have a hike, and then feast on buried, well-cooked wild
>> burro. My magic, and I do mean magic, BBQ sauce made it palatable for
>> everyone.
>
>
> I just learned that horse meat is what's fed to the jaguar
> at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Mass.
>
> Got a recipe for barbecue sauce to share?
>
>
Are you kidding? No one serious has a recipe.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Our disagreement's a respectable one. The debate's old. If a vote
>>> were taken today of the members of the Society of Biblical
>>> Literature, I imagine that the vast majority would vote your way,
>>> that Paul's message was profoundly different from Jesus' far beyond
>>> Paul's christocentrism. It seems I often find myself in a minority
>>> position.
>>>
And if a vote were held today on the Bill of Rights, it would fail.
When persons are asked if they are in favor of the BoR, they always say
yes, but if they are asked on the particular language of the 10
amendments, they usually say "no". Thank god for Rhode Island.
Oddly, I once got a long distance collect phone call for someone on the
Isle of Rhodes, which is why I didn't ask for babes.
>>>
>> Norm (short for normal?),
>
>
> No. The norm by which all else is measured (to pretend, like you, to a
> delusion of grandeur).
Ah, but jimbat is what my wife calls me, and is the nickname that our
wife gave me. Grandeur? Me? No I'm the most modest man you'd ever
hope to meet. (Almost) everything is above-board with me. If there are
persons I want to entrap, they soon find out. You are not among them.
Some fish are easy.
>
> By mistake I once said, "Now if you take me as the norm..." It was in
> the wee hours of the morning, and my friend and I, who were in a dorm
> room in London at the time, cracked up and couldn't stop laughing. But
> that can be a funny mistake only once.
Do you know what the "morm" is in statistics?
>
> Actually, Norman derives from "northman" or some cognate term.
>
>
Of course, but is it real? Perhaps you think I've never heard of
Normans? I had a gf from Newcastle who could speak Geordie, whose name
is on the Bayeux Tapestry (Stigant).
>> you need not feel ashamed for admitting I'm right.
>
>
> I'll keep that in mind for when you are. :-)
>
>
Damn, when the persons with the blue-blockers are leading the blind,
even with the help of Seldom Seen Slim, whatever might happen? And will
my wife and I ever get a chance to give Sharapova a proper kissing with
all the main courses and deserts to follow?
>> I have been throughout my life, except when disagreeing with Goldreich
>> (q.v.), when I was right only twice - but mostly we agreed. He made my
>> mind fluctuate.
>
>
> Peter?
> http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/goldreich/
>
The very man, as I said above. I learned modesty when working with him.
Blue-blockers. I use glasses with dyes invented by friends at JPL. I
have hand-made glacier classes that are so dark you would be totally
blind trying to your way around the house; before that I wore welding
glasses. My eyes are sensitive.
Seven years ago, I had a bad go at EtOH when Katya left us, so I went
into treatment for a month. Have I mentioned this before? Forgive me.
We had a clueless priest come to lecture us on "spirituality" every
Wednesday. Among other things, other disparaging comments ("do you
smell sulphur"?), I claimed that with my JPL blue blockers I could see
666 on his forehead. I passed them around and had almost universal
agreement.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> John Cairncross was a spy for the Soviets, right? If so, his dates
>>>>> were 1913-1995.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What I like in that paragraph is the apparent silliness of the logic.
>>> :-)
>
>
> Darn! Misfired again!
>
If you wanted ever to see a misfire, you should have been to my younger
brother's launch of his soldered Pepsi-can (when they were steel) launch
of his zinc & sulphur rocket. I have been scared to shit from time to
time, but not much worse than that. He's so clever, I actually thought
it might go. We had an analysis session afterwards, in which I
explained to him why it didn't work. He decided to take a more
theoretical track in his education.
>
>>> You're reminding me of Wilhelm Reich on the Russian Revolution:
>>> according to him, it was a period of free love, which the
>>> totalitarian types had to suppress in order to maintain autocratic
>>> control.
>>>
>>
>> How did they get all those breeches off? When you watch a modern
>> movie, you wonder how they can fuck through underpants, or without
>> unzipping their pants. I've never tried it.
>
>
> Ninotchka came across as prissy and not at all knowledgeable of such
> things.
>
> There's a term for it, of course. Probably several.
>
Her Polish lancer?? I never was much of a lancer through many layers of
clothes.
[What is our recactor going to do now??]
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Was the miracle the vision of Mary or the repentance, I wonder? If it
>>> was the repentance, one can imagine other changes of heart that might
>>> have been just as miraculous.
>>>
>> Perhaps the real miracle was Jesus's lending Judas 30 pieces to betray
>> him. I might do many things, but I'm essentially a guerilla.
>
>
> I knew a bookdealer once, a former librarian, who said that
> librarians are essentially subversives.
>
>
I was once a librarian at MIT's engineering library, since my
step-father refused to send me momey. After I scoped the place, anyone
who had the temerity to interrupt my reading was sent to the opposite
side of the library from their wishes, thus chemical phusics instead of
turhbines. Perhaps, then, I'm your counterexample, depending on what you
mean. My other trick was to refer them to Leo Szilard's works,
expecially if they were interested in turbines.
But my HS librarian, who I think wanted to tear my pants off after I got
my Harvard scholarship, took all 200 of my SF books that I had read in
secret when I donated them. "Older" women should let themselves go.
I needed them when I was young, but oddly the older I get the younger
the women I want.
>>>>> Tolkien's overdrawn dualism rapidly wears thin. But then I suppose
>>>>> it had its purpose.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Also his racism. I hadn't noticed it until my best friends at
>>>> Harvard pointed it out to me in 1965. I looked through them again,
>>>> and was so embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it
>>>
>>>
>>> You mean orcs versus men?
>>>
>>
>> Partly, but the contrast with the Rohirrim and the dark men from the
>> East (read Jews) was what hit them. They were both Jews. One was the
>> best man at my wedding in Chestnut Hill (q.v.) and the other head
>> usher, the son of the Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin (q.v.).
>
>
> I don't make the connection between the dark men from the
> East and Jews.
>
Exactly, but *they* do.
> I see that there are many sites on the Web where Tolkien and
> racism are discussed. I just read section 7 of the FAQ at:
>
> http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/External.html
>
> Personally I think that authors should be read with a
> generous spirit, unless their lives and spirit clearly show
> racist hatred. Otherwise we wind up with Huckleberry Finn
> being banned in the schools. Instead of banning, let's teach kids how to
> read with understanding, generosity, and critical acumen.
That's what I have, not what they have.
I started writing an SF novel about our first encounter with beings from
Beta Hydrae (a nearby G2 star like our sun) 25 years ago, but abandoned
it for two reasons. I can't write for shit, although I had some
fantastic romantic scenes in it, and because I couldn't get rid of the
racialism.
I never recognized the racialism I still carry from the society in which
I was reared, very racialist. My friends were always the outcasts, the
unforgiven. From my return after my kidnapping (@4=1946) through
Harvard, my mother and I were thrown out of two boarding houses because
I insisted on inviting my best friend, a black kid, over. In HS I was
the best Anglo friend of several Eskimo and Indian students. The woman
who made the greatest difference in my life was an Athapaskan.
Yet what you hear and the way people around you think gets blown into
your mind like roofing staples. I was with my two best friends one
evening at Harvard. We were discussing the East Asian History class
(Soc Sci 111 - no longer exists), which they were taking and considered
to be a ball-breaker, and I was planning to take it the next year, when
we got off onto the purchase of a used car by Boorstin. He cited a
price I considered a bit high. I said, "Oh, you can Jew him down." The
Ice Age came into the room, 'gulp'. I got down on hands and knees, but
they were never as close to me again. They could not understand that it
was a standard phrase all through my rearing, as I was uncertain about
how seriously I should take their reaction (*very* seriously).
I let them get even, and that won them back; they had more fun at my
wedding than I did. As I have said before, one was best man and one
head usher in the most WASPish community you can imagine in the US:
Chestnut Hill, Philly. I'm not sure that anyone at the reception
afterwards had ever knowingly met a Jew, and my friends were partying.
I introduced them to a Wistar girl, yes that Wistar, but told them what
her problems were, so they preferred a nice intellectial Jewish girl to
a super-rich WASP, and so they did. (Dieting until her periods
vanished.) Anyway we had a good time, and I covered their transportation
and clothing rentals (how many times have you seen a teen-aged Jew in a
morningcoat?). Thanks to my mother, who could not attend, god bless.
It was a perfect beginning to an ugly disaster.
>
> Some readers bring humanity to a text and read it
> accordingly, connecting with the humanity of the author,
> that author giving expression to an aspect of the humanity
> of humankind. Other readers read a text as cold type ever
> fraught with the potential to threaten their sense of
> humanity. I'd suggest that the latter approach is much more
> prone to hermeneutical distortion. I'd also suggest that, in
> this regard, it's better to have two types of readings than
> two types of readers -- the first type of reading, bringing
> humanity to a text, being the default; the second, as cold
> type, when forced to it.
>
Hermeneutical, not a word I see so often anymore. George Eliot liked
it. I was once accused of that, but I stapled his ears to his skull,
until he sort of understood what I was talking about.
Yes, the Stanley Fishes. There was an article in the New Yorker some
time ago by two brothers of EL Doctorow (as in doctoring history). They
were English teachers, but became addicted to gambling in Mobile. It
was a slow progression, but they ended up destroying their lives. This
is real stuff, not what Fish, the charlatan, likes.
I know gambling a little bit, but only from the POV of winning. My
step-father gave me peanuts for spending money; my mother ocasionally
slipped me a little more, though he kept control of all accounts.
Unimaginable in either of my marriages. I used to supplement my meager
allowance with 3-card draw poker, but one night I lost $20, and didn't
play again for (1991-1962) = 29 years.
I am gracious I think in acknowledging intellectial defeat on the facts
here, but I'm not happy at the poker table. So in the 100 hours' war I
played poker with a table-full of astronomers. I discovered that they
are much better than Alaskans, in that they think they cannot possibly
be wrong. In 4 hours I had only two good hands, my worst night ever,
never bluffed, but took home the biggest haul. Give me more astronomers
for poker!
>
>>>> The thing about PitF is that it is totally obvious to anyone who
>>>> knows a bit of neurology, metaphors in thought, and "MEW". Others
>>>> often think they are reading a too-expensive bit of quack science
>>>> and philosophy. But the book is correct, despite all the doubting
>>>> Thomases.
>>>
>>> MEW?
>>
>> As established above, "The Meeting of East and West".
>
>
> Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
> registered the decryption.
Are you Siamese, if you please?
>
> By the way, I picked up a paperback copy of Philosophy in
> the Flesh at the Todd Farm flea market over the weekend. I
> bargained down from six bucks to five. I later found the
> book had been marked up and figure I overpaid.
>
Did you Jew them down?
Don't grouse. You'll learn whatever you want to learn. You may have
missed the 19-yr-old all painted up, who was riding her scooter around
naked. She's teaching English in China now, if they only knew...
>
>>>>>>> Where does light go when it reaches the edge of the expansion of
>>>>>>> the universe?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It doesn't. Light comes here.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> To our space and, more to the point, to our time. But doesn't the
>>>>> expansion of the universe also move into the future? And isn't the
>>>>> speed of light faster than the expansion of the universe?
>>>>
>>>> Here things visibly get older. As you look away, they generally get
>>>> younger. You cannot see beyond the event Horizon.
>>>
>>> Hmm, sorry, I don't see the connection between that answer and my
>>> question.
>>>
>>
>> The expansion of the universe eventually outruns light. Anything that
>> outruns light cannot be seen. This should be simple.
>
>
> Isn't the Hubble constant indicative of the rate of the expansion of the
> universe? And isn't it much slower than the speed of light? And doesn't
> the theory of relativity posit that nothing can exceed the speed of
> light? So no, not simple. Not yet.
>
The Hubble constant is not a constant. That was a delusion of the old
cosmology. In my publications I've always been modest, listing at the
end of the paper everything I can think of that can possibly be wrong
with it. Fortunately critics ignore my cautions and take off on an
idiotic path. The son of the double Nobel Prize winner tried to knock
down my Her X-1 model, probably out of shame for not supporting my
original ideas (I asked him to be my advisor, but he hemmed and hawed,
and I walked out). But all he was able to come up with was an
impossible potato chip model that I told him was ridiculous. Sorry,
this is getting arcane.
There is the Hubble "Constant" (local), Omega, the ratio of mass to
blow-out (now somewhat obsolete), and the pressure of the vacuum, not
computed nor understood. There is no such thing as the vacuum you might
have been taught in school. Because of my inability to respect what
grown-ups tell me I was only too ready to know that there was no vacuum.
>
>>>> There *will be* Space Telescopes out there 12+ bilions of years from
>>>> the ages of the galaxies we see at the fringe of the UDF. They can
>>>> then see us before our developing galaxies coalesce to form our
>>>> present galaxies, like the Milky Way or Andromeda or M87. Time
>>>> travel works both ways.
>>>
>>>
>>> If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it wouldn't
>>> be able to look back here and see anything earlier than its launch;
>>> in fact, it will see nothing even that early, will it?
>>
>>
Think about it. No.
>>
>> No, it will see the Death of the Universe.
No one will see the death of the universe. Make your arrangements
through Schwab or Morgan Stanley, not Caltech, or the Space Telescope.
>
>
> *Scrunching forehead*
>
> You think the life of the universe is more than half over?
The opposite if the current date, which is being analyzed by persons I
have known and trusted for a long time. I don't know what Goldreich
thinks, and he would never tell me, as his father told him from a young
age not to make a fool of himself. Cosmology invites compulsive fools.
Goldreich and I had a little of off and on about it, but I quickly
came over to his POV. "Why say stupid things in public??" But it's
hard to resist, isn't it?
He's a boring panel member until he asks a deceptively simple question
that destroys the point that the star attraction was trying to make.
His lectures are slow, then you realize you are being drawn into realms
you don't understand.
>
>
>>>>> Wherever a perceiver is, that is the pinnacle of time for the
>>>>> universe? All else is past? Surely there must be such a thing as
>>>>> simultaneity, no?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Not in Relativity. That is why it is caled relativity.
>>>
>>> Don't intersecting chains of cause and effect dispose us to
>>> presuppose simultaneity? Must we unravel our ideas of cause and
>>> effect to assimilate relativity?
>>>
>> That's a simple everyday observation, which served our ancestors very
>> well, but it is not physics. It's how I live. I don't guide my life
>> by relativity, but Newton's Laws, on the rare occasion when I think
>> about even them.
>
>
> Yeah, that's a commonplace. But what do you do with the fabric of
> intersecting cause and effect?
>
>
Join my Liars' Club, if you want to learn. I can tell you some great
lies, all taken from "The Astrophysical Journal" (ApJ). After Chandra
resigned, it went through a period of "inflation".
I told my wife about your objections to the severe culling of my books.
She guarantees that you will have first choice if we have enough
cartons. Where do you live BTW and do you have a real name? You know
my e-mail, as I conceal nothing, except bits of my mind.
>>>>> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be
>>>>> able to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far
>>>>> away stuff, but the identical stuff.
>>>>
We have, but only the fluctuations, as there was nothing else to see then.
>>>>
>>>> There is considerable debate about the uniformity of the Universe,
>>>> leaving aside the question that there may be an infinite number of
>>>> Universes that we would never be able to know anything about. The
>>>> Inflation of the Universe may have something to do with its
>>>> non-uniformity, and the current apparent acceleration of the
>>>> Universe, which violates classical General Relativity. There seems
>>>> to be a pressure caused by virtual particles in the vacuum.
>>>
>>>
>>> Let's say just the specific soup that made up the planet earth.
>>>
>>
>> Planet Earth is simple. Initially, planetesimals ~1km across formed
>> from the Goldreich-LyndenBell dispersion relation. If you can get to
>> Peter's list of papers you can find this analysis, or write him,
>> though he doesn't like e-mail and is ill with bladder cancer. He's
>> only 3 years older than I am, but has lived 100 of my lifetimes.
>>
>> Earth coalesced by statistical mechanics from these planetesimals, and
>> the random collision with a planet the size of Mars.
>
>
> You miss my point.
>
I did not. You missed your question.
>
>>>>> So as to indicate further the depth of my puzzlement -- or
>>>>> ignorance, if you prefer: Mustn't the universe be more than twice
>>>>> as old as the oldest perceptible light?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No. A billion or two years, max. It all depends on a workable
>>>> model not yet developed.
>>>
>>>
>>> You mean "max"?
Not as in Mad Max, though my kids even in their 30s would much prefer
Mad Max to a disquisition by me on the Universe. Mad Max drives my
wife, Doris, nuts, and she will not watch it for personal resasons. It
is not always the bad guys who get crushed.
>>>
>>> Well, that's exactly what's not making sense to me. How can two areas
>>> of matter that start out together become so separated in 2 billion
>>> years that it takes the light from one 12 billion years to reach the
>>> other? Doesn't that require a convoluted structure of the universe to
>>> achieve and/or the warping of light not just in minor degrees but in
>>> whacky ways?
>>>
>>
>> But our galactic system is 14 billion years old.
>
>
> I was afraid you'd say that. The answer makes sense to me only if the
> expansion of the universe is indeed faster than light.
>
Eventually it is.
>
>> [[snip]
>> As long as the kiddies get educated and not brainwashed, which seems
>> increasingly unlikely, they can carry on. One thing I have found in
>> the last 10 years is that Germans are still Germans. I'm not sure how
>> this happens, but it has something to do with control and lying to
>> escape control.
>
>
> Is there really such a thing as a national character with which a
> preponderance of individuals in a given nation are affected?
I think so. It depends on their faulty education. I escaped that here,
but many others did not.
>
>
>>> However, the American public seems to need the pretense of pragmatic
>>> ends, either that or the rush of mind-blowing possibilities.
>
>
> Richard Feynman said it better (so I read somewhere): "Physics is like
> sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do
> it."
>
We wrote a parody of the Caltech weekly list of astrophysics meetings
and colloquia in which F was called Feyn Dickman, and was listed as the
Richard Chaste Olman (really Richard Chace Tolman q.v.) Professor of
Physics. He cracked up. It is possible to parody persons a lot smarter
than you, and they usually like the attention.
[Popular Mechanics gone]
>
>>> Don't many formulas for the physical world use the infinity symbol?
>>> Do you think the physical realm is characterized by finitude?
>>>
>>> As for infinity and void, I wonder how far the realm in which they
>>> have their distinctive existence can be pushed.
>>>
>>
>> Infinity is very important. Integrals in fundamental physics (field
>> theory) usually have to have infinite limits. This is how
>> "renormalization" is carried out. Because, for convenience, we treat
>> particles as point objects, all forces and energies go to infinity.
>> You just need to subtract out the integrals that produce the
>> infinities to get your real physical answer. This was one of
>> Feynman's deep insights. He has two books you might enjoy. I gave
>> mine to my worthless daughter: "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-so-Easy
>> Pieces".
>
>
> I've started collecting Feynman's books. Don't have those
> two yet. Enjoyed the movie about his early life, "Infinity"
> (1996). Used to see him on PBS from time to time.
>
>
Don't try his "Lectures".
He had a love that still makes me cry. She died when he was at Los
Alamos; the games thay played as she was dying of TB!
>> [snip]
>> Thanks for your concern.
>
>
> You're welcome.
>
>
>> Can we now trim this drivel to something sane?
>
>
> Trimming can be done. Sanity's another matter. :-)
>
>
My wife is not quite at the level of strangling me, which she did about
8 years ago. But I blow with the immediate winds.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Yes. The parents do it. I've seen it through what my 1st wife did to
my kids. She wrote, and I have her handwriting, "I'm goibg to twist
their souls to make sure that they grow as screwed up as I am". My son
says there are two sides to every story, though he's slowly getting less
screwed up (I hope), so I ask him about Theresienstadt. "What's that?"
"Exactly."
He's still scared of me, but gradually learning that I'm not the threat
his mother persuaded him I was. She lived with two different women for
nine years each, destoying both relationships as she did ours, and now
lives alone, except for my son, whom she holds onto by her spider claws.
But now he is thinking of getting married. This will be interesting.
He's 36, and i tell him he's too young. She's an English teacher and he
says whe's trying to improve his English, which is deficient to the
level of Heidelberg Man.
His mother is in China, and cannot control him from there. I have long
said that I hope I never have grandchildren, as my kids are not
qualified, though I love babies and take care of them as if they were
the Universe. I have many tricks to bring them joy, even in the worst
circumstances.
I do not know her name, nor much else about her, but my son is going to
get a severe letter from me later for keeping me in the dark, into which
I have never kept him.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
> You haven't been reading! Try rec.backcountry or rec.games.chess, amd
> there are other threads in this ng, that say "Oh, lah, de dah!" and so
> avoid the question of inerrancy. It's been some time since I've read
> that word, being a scientific atheist, none of which claim it.
In confessional contexts, "inerrancy" is a word with
countless nuances. And "infallibility" has a different set
of nuances. In some circles, if you believe in infallibility
but not inerrancy, you're not good enough. But then for many
inerrancy won't do either without sufficient
propositional-level literalism, for if the formal and the
material diverge too much, what do you have? The next step
is into absurdity, but people differ widely on where that
threshold is. For the atheist, I suppose that wouldn't be
the next step but the first step -- with that word
"confessional."
Is your stomach turning or are you laughing? I'm guessing
the former, given your Fundamentalist past.
Believe it or not, there's a framework there that stimulates
some people to a lot of inner growth.
>>> I used to carry the latter until I sat on one too many too hard on
>>> the trail to Lake Coonstance. My favorite astronaut, the one who
>>> threw the trashed ST's solar panels to their doom in spectacular
>>> fashion, had an even larger and uglier Casio watch than I. Kathryn
>>> P----, can't find her name at present.
>>
>>
>>
>> K. D. Sullivan? K. C. Thornton?
>>
> Thornton. My wife told me several times, but I still had Sullivan stuck
> in my lizard brain.
Ah, you have brain registry problems too (like me, that is)! :-)
> [snip]
>> Austin's on my must read list.
>>
>>
>
> Mansfield Park?
That's what a former philosophy prof of mine commends.
> My papers are too hard for anyone, so I have directed
> my wife to burn them in the unlikely event that she outlives me (she's 6
> yrs younger), which brings on a gallon of aqua regia. My funeral
> service, to which no one is invited, especially my "natural" family is a
> reading of the verse in Ecclesiastes "The race is not always to the
> swift..." followed by my cremation with extreme prejudice in a pine box.
>
> When I read the Bible through twice when I was 5, this verse stuck in my
> mind. I knew that for me, the race was always to the swift, as I was
> the fastest, but the rest gave me much puzzlement. It wasn't until my
> first marriage, when I recited these lines, that I actually understood
> them. My bride, whose memory was not quite up to more, just said,
> "Better an handful in quietness than both hands full with travail and
> vexation of spirit". I knew that would be our lot for the next 7-9
> years, but the lesson did not take on her, as she kept hasseling me to
> be a banker.
"Time and chance overtake them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
> [snip]
> I never capitulated in school. Teachers who did a good job got my
> respect, so I gave them my best, but never mind control. Sometimes they
> wished that I did less than my best. Sorry if I mentioned the following
> before. In my 2nd week into kindergarten I told Mrs. Beltz to go home
> because I could teach the class better then she could. Things went
> downhill from there; I'll spare the details.
>
> On only one occasion did I report on a book I had actually read ("The
> French Revolution" by Carlyle in 7th grade, read in a weekend). For
> other books, I made up essays out of whole cloth from the flaps and the
> preface. I was careful to choose books my teachers could not possibly
> understand. I did everything to cheat the system, and still gained the
> moniker "Einstein", I guess because no teacher dared give me anything
> but an A, except in penmanship (C) and conduct (C). I did help a few
> kids through the grade we were in, and they wondered at my magic.
I was the opposite. I read all the books I wrote reports on
for grade school and high school -- all except one, and I
felt guilty about that. Told myself I'd read it later. Never
did. Finally dumped the book. One of Herbert Hoover's books
on lasting peace, I think it was.
Of all those mandatory readings, the book that caught my
imagination most was Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson (1916).
>> It occurred to me that you and I are of different species in
>> the family of skeptics. Your teeth are all up front and
>> little gets through. Mine are all down my gullet and what's
>> left after passing the gauntlet is tiny and hard.
>>
>
> You are wrong twice. We are descended from a single mammal-like reptile
> that survived the Permian extinction, Lystrosaurus. And the word is
> gantlet, not gauntlet, which is a metal glove.
Darn! I 'uz hopin' you just tot me sumpin'. But American
Heritage gives both spellin's for each meanin'.
>>> But if my thesis advisor (long ago) gets a genius idea from me, and
>>> then tells me to write it up overnight on my Olympia office
>>> typewriter, and he will then "tear it to pieces". I did and he did,
>>> and I left reeling down the hall, thinking "I have seen the face of
>>> God."
>>
>>
>>
>> What was the sense of "the face of God" there?
>>
>
> I thought I had it nailed, and he showed me how my arrogant brain was
> not up to the task. It was an intellectial face of god, not an
> aesthetic, though there was some aesthetic mixed in, as I relied on my
> intuition and then tried to clean things up with math.
For a brief moment you were out of yourself. You saw beyond
yourself. That's a vital role that the idea of God plays in
my thought. Only practical reason. No better than Kant's.
But it's one peg.
> His intuition
> was just so much better, beyond anything I had ever known. Check him out
> on Google, Peter Goldreich.
I did. Deeply sad eyes of mortal struggle, combined with
intelligence and humor. An impression.
>> "Intellectual disabilities"? Repetitive story telling symptomatic? :-)
>
>
> Yes. This has been called to my attention. The problem is that I post
> to two newsgroups, this and rec.backcountry, and get much e-mail from
> some posters, so I would need a Vatican Secretary to keep track of what
> I have written where. But we have no satisfactory dry-cleaning
> establishment, nor any barbershop in the neighborhoood to satisfy such a
> Secretary, and our shower soap may be below his standard (Yardley).
Of course, that doesn't explain the same story more than
once in the same post.
> Another problem: we have no Neutrogena products in our house, since I
> met a woman in the late 70s who was sold into sexual slavery by her
> mother to the CEO of Neutrogena. I'm a natural doubter, but she was
> very convincing. I asked for a date, but she said it would take her a
> long time to adjust to ordinary men. I protested that I was not
> ordinary, but she replied, "Men are just men."
So no Neutrogena. Interesting. Currently I use Alba, for my
few remaining locks.
> You never know. His daughter and I used to play Yahtzee and feel each
> others' legs under the table. He was not a scholar like you, but he had
> fire, as did his daughter. Then they moved away. I can no longer
> remember how to play Yahtzee, but I can still feel legs in the tradition
> of Maria Muldaur.
Good thing search engines are around, or I wouldn't be
getting a lot of your cultural references.
Someone said I should go on that "Millionaire" show. But I'd
bomb out after the first few questions. I'm no good on pop
culture.
> [snip]
>> Uh-oh! Now I feel set up for a fall from grace. That feeling
>> comes out of repeated personal experience.
>
>
> Heh! I never mentioned you, as we were not corresponding at that time.
> I mentioned my mother's lies when I was a kid, and that she's still a
> bit nuts. Visualize Catholic kids' wide eyes. There is no grace to
> fall from. However, if you accept my approval as grace, that is
> available, and as holy as anything Jesus had to offer.
>
> I had two questions on reading the Bible for the first time, among many
> others that caused me to be told to shut up: 1. How can something be
> created out of nothing, viz. 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed a multitude,
> and 2.
Dunno. Dunno the opposite either, how there can be aseity to
the physical world, or even to physical laws.
Of course, one rationalizing explanation of that particular
miracle story is that the faith demonstrated sparked
generosity so that more was brought in. The moral of that
rationalizing is so good, you have to wonder why the Gospel
writers didn't seize it. So I expect it's not what they meant.
Jesus' own explanation was that bread was symbolic for
teaching (Matthew 16:8-12; cf. 14:13-21; 15:32-38; et par.).
However, I don't know if that explains away the miracle reports.
> Why was it a miracle for Jesus to turn water into wine at a
> wedding, when you are a teetotaller, and drink 12 cups of coffee per
> day? Naturally my phrasing at the time was more primitive.
Jesus was a teetotaler? That wine bibber (Matthew 11:19 =
Luke 7:34)? Hmm, I've heard it maintained by some on the
basis of flimsy scholarship. Never heard tell of him
drinkin' coffee.
Note: He made sure it was the good stuff (John 2:10).
> [snip]
> But I never studied in HS. It was a point of pride never to take a book
> home.
I've encountered that spirit with my boys. Now in college,
they've finally overcome it, almost.
I expect some tight connection with American -- or would
that be childhood -- anti-intellectualism. But in you're
case ...
> Do you rememeber the old computer magazine from the 70-80s:
> "Travelling Lite without Overbyte", all about cool, simple programming.
No. There were so many back then. Kinda wish I had run
across that one, though -- as you describe it.
Never thought of myself as a programmer; but my older son,
who's taken programming, says I long ago crossed that line.
In that case, my crossings are only forays.
> With the dominance of Microsoft it vanished. It's not too hard to tell
> that I loathe Microsoft, especially as I am a partial prisoner in their
> Abu Ghraib prison.
I started on an OCLC computer in 1974. In the 80s I added
CP/M and MS-DOS. In the 90s WindowsNT and Mac. Now I use
mostly Mac albeit with some supplementary Windows as needed
(e.g. for the OED).
The lemming rush to IBM/Microsoft annoyed me. Even the
library I directed went that way. No choice. We were
committed to OCLC and back then only one kind of operating
system would work with it.
I'm delighted when cyber chains are broken.
Remember BCN, the Business Computer Network? I did a little
online chatting on it back in the mid 80s with my "portable"
Kaypro. Still have that Kaypro.
> I did everything cool. It was the rare teacher who dared to challenge
> me, but them I remember with great favor. The problem was that if they
> had the guts to challenge me, they also had the guts to challenge our
> Nazi, heavy-drinking principal, and got fired. He tried to destroy my
> Harvard admission and scholarship, but my step-father, a city
> councilman, came like Robert Moses (q.v.) to his office with a fat
> police folder on him, and the problem suddenly evaporated.
So how did Robert Moses enter the iconography of your mind?
> [nice stuff on Anacreon]
>
> That's a lot of fun. I told my brother to take his pic off his Nexus
> Marine web site, as he looked too much like Alexandr Solzhenytsin. I
> can't reach his website at the moment. Anacreon had more fun than I
> did, except for 6 mos there and three years there.
The sixth century B.C.E. might not have been a bad time to
live, except for the Persian threat and tyrants.
>>> That's a very insightful comment. The "experience" does not last
>>> forever; you have to work on it: why Tagore wrote all thos Bengali
>>> songs.
>
> I used to, but there has been less
Write songs? Maybe they shouldn't be burned.
> I always say that I'm African, that few of my ancestors survived, but we
> are still here. A Balto city cop did not like this, and demanded my
> driver's licence, though I wasn't driving.
The story irritates the libertarian in me.
>> When I mentioned "Crossing Jordan," my friend hadn't heard of it. Her
>> favorite: "Diagnosis Murder."
>>
> Really, mostly it's "Diagnosis Accident". Men who get murdered IMHO
> usually deserve it. But the murder of women I'd investigate
> relentlessly, until I got fired.
What a sexist! (Taking this opportunity to balance off the
threat below. :-) )
> I could have gotten murdered just for
> falling on the sidewalk a week ago. I was really dazed. I now think
> that my right cheekbone has a lateral crack, but there is nothing to be
> done about that.
The healing properties of the body are astounding to me. One
of those things you come to know in your very bones: that
kind of astonishment.
> [snip]
>> On behalf of my client, the culture in which I live, I plead "No
>> contest."
>>
> Big client. Big pockets?
What's that expression? "I get my pay from God."
> Your plead reminds me of the one time
> Oppenheimer was defeated scientifically. A young upstart, who should
> have gotten the Nobel prize with Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, was
> trying to prove that their three theories were all the same - a correct
> solution of quantum electrodynamics (relativistic), but Oppenheimer kept
> cutting him off before he could even get off the ground. So this young
> British feller invited Bethe, the theory leader on the Manhattan
> Project, to come to his series of attempted seminars. Hans Bethe told
> Oppie to shut up and listen. The next morning Freeman Dyson, father of
> Esther, got a note in his mailbox from Oppie: "Nolo contendere."
And I thought nobody outside the legal system had heard of
that before Spiro Agnew.
>> Sometimes I fear that some of those most opposed to Nazism
>> and some of those most victimized by it are among those who
>> have inherited its spirit. The spirit of the oppressor is
>> contagious. Opponents and victims are the most susceptible.
>> But what a politically incorrect idea to entertain!
>>
>
> But for my personal love experience, I'd scream bloody murder at such an
> assertion, but you have felt a piece of the complicated cookie.
Well, it's a sad, cautionary note. And I expect the
realities involve much more complexity.
> [a blank on a vicious LAPD beating - they are *still* doing it]]
>
>
> Thank you for the additional info.
You're welcome.
> We all know that the LAPD has long
> been astray from at least the 20s. But this event I remember, and is so
> clear in my mind, happened soon after my move to Pasadena in 1973. I
> said to myself, "Hoo hah!", even the Seattle police's trying to run me
> over in crosswalks because I looked like a hippy, but was working on
> pulsar emission theories, was nothing compared to such deliberate abuse.
>
> When they chased me after taking over the U Wash campus, their TAC
> squads (pre SWAT) chased me through the trees as I was making my way
> from my office to the library and back. I just laughed and gave them
> the finger, as I was younger, faster, and they were carrying too much
> weight.
I picture some longhaired guy swinging from branch to branch.
> You may have seen on TV, the LAPD trying to beat a man to death with
> their Maglites. When Katya's sister asked her to get me to get her a
> Maglite, I objected, as my flashlights are all platic and work just as
> well, except in beating people's brains out. Her sister insisted, with
> no reason I could understand, so I got it for her. I should have just
> told her sister to go fuck herself, but Katya would not give me her
> e-mail address.
>
> When a member of "Batimore's finest" pulled his revolver on me a week
> ago just because I was dazed from a bad fall (possibly cracked
> cheekbone), I told a black friend that I wasn't even DWB, so the cops
> are a danger to everyone. He said, "Right on, bro."
>
> I'm sorry to have raised a Tasmanian Devil. My wife knows the story and
> corrected me to the Browns (misspelled above), but we can't get a grip
> on the story through simple, free searches.
The Internet doesn't have everything yet.
> [snip]
> Saw Saddam on TV this morning, but he's clearly not himself. We are
> mistreating him. He needs walks, jogs, and maybe some volleyball. He's
> a greater criminal than we have ever had, but why should we not treat
> his body with dignity?
Come to think of it, I could use some of that. Been sitting
in front of this computer too much.
> Nothing you think is real is real. His bullying was bluster, and once I
> and the paramedics stood up to him, he lost his sense of absolute power.
> He also knew we had at least 5 incidents of out-of-policy behavior to
> use against him in court, where FD employees are not ignored. He tried
> to maintain his dignity by refusing to let me get 1st aid. I never
> assume that what appears to be true is true.
Hmm, the true and the real.
> That reminds me of an incident when I was on jury duty in Balto. It was
> a double murder case, with the only witnesses being Balto police
> officers. The presiding judge asked if anyone who would have a problem
> believing police testimony please step forward. Among about 10, I did
> and said, "Your honor, you know that police lie on the witness stand and
> get away with it. They even call it 'testilying'". She passed her hand
> over her mouth for a few seconds, and than said, "You are excused."
One of the juries I was on had a member who wouldn't trust a
thing any cop testified to. Eventually he prevailed, largely
by not revealing his position till the end. A professorial
type. MIT or someplace.
If you've mastered academic politics, you've mastered
politics. Or maybe I've underestimated government politicians.
>> I suppose that's consistent with your sympathy for religion as a crutch.
>>
>
> No, no, I don't think of it that way. We all need ways to get through
> life. Mine are imperfect as are those of most other persons. Think of
> Kant. Everyone set their watches by when he passed their shops on his
> morning walk. Was that routine a crutch? Perhaps, if you want to
> extend the definition. Others pick up fuckmates at bars or wherever,
> which is often not exactly safe (Mr. Goodbar).
Have always had a special fondness for Kant. Not sure why.
What atrociously dense thickets he put forward as books! And
many of the people I used to hang out with resented his
philosophy and were suspicious of anyone who appreciated it.
I notice that Philosophy in the Flesh takes him on. But as I
read that book, I find it overdone.
Ever notice this: "The spiritual is not first, but the
natural; then the spiritual" (1 Corinthians 15:46)? Arthur
Lovejoy wrote a lengthy book about Alfred North Whitehead
and Bertrand Russell each taking on mind-body dualism.
Philosophy in the Flesh does not thus far strike me as being
as revolutionary as its authors think, not even in terms of
theological implications. It's anticipated, for instance, by
process theology.
New disciplines tend to give rise to grandiose claims. I
wonder if that's what's going on here.
But I have a lot more reading to do. Those are initial
thoughts only.
> Well, Clytemnestra took care of her. Too bad their boat didn't sink
> with all the others, else we'd be spared Aeschylus (I'm kidding). He's
> the only reading in my freshman philosophy course that I thought had it
> right on.
That figures!
You seem to have good recall of the Oresteia.
>> Yes, some people do learn. Of course, there's learning and
>> there's learning. It's one thing to know that being rained
>> on doesn't keep you from being rained on again. It's another
>> to know it in your very bones.
>>
>
> I went through most of grad school in Seattle, where you always know you
> are going to get rained on or worse.
Hehe.
> I often skipped classes at Harvard, so Dubya and I have too much in common.
I've skipped my share of classes, some regretfully. Eight
o'clock classes should be banned for anyone under 30 (except
for the morning people). Then there are the required
courses, and those where you've already had your fill of the
subject, and those where the teaching style doesn't work for
you, and so on and so on. I sometimes try to imagine a
system of higher ed that bypasses -- what shall we call it?
-- the standard set of student neuroses.
> Land O'Goshen. I have a copy, but if you know anything about how it was
> put together, you rather choose to fight a cow moose than read that
> meaningless book.
Last October I was just, oh, maybe six yards from a cow
moose, at Baxter State Park in Maine.
There's a bull moose mucking around the Wellesley-Natick
area right now and stirring up a bit of commotion.
I say leave it alone. The mountain lion a few miles from
here too.
> Joyce didn't actually write it - it's an
> interpretation of his madness. If you want something easier, but
> actually correct, try
>
> ApJSupp *41*, 75.
>
> There are no mistakes in it, and lots of interesting and true ideas. Go
> with your U librarian, she can find this obscure paper that no one can
> understand, save one other.
I still dare you to post it.
> [snip]
>> Got a recipe for barbecue sauce to share?
>>
>>
> Are you kidding? No one serious has a recipe.
Hehe. Same here. Cooking's an ever evolving creative
process. A recipe's just a snapshot.
> And if a vote were held today on the Bill of Rights, it would fail. When
> persons are asked if they are in favor of the BoR, they always say yes,
> but if they are asked on the particular language of the 10 amendments,
> they usually say "no". Thank god for Rhode Island.
I suppose that's why the 9th amendment* is all but
meaningless in the courts today, when it should be the most
meaningful of all the amendments.
I wonder what would have happened if Bill Clinton had cited
the 9th instead of lying under oath. I suppose he's too good
a lawyer. He knew such an attempt would have gone nowhere.
But it would have given his defense a noble cast.
Don Quixote was another of my readings during my high school
years. Maybe a chip of the Quixotic lodged in my soul.
* "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
by the people."
> Oddly, I once got a long distance collect phone call for someone on the
> Isle of Rhodes, which is why I didn't ask for babes.
Who's Babes?
> [snip]
> Ah, but jimbat is what my wife calls me, and is the nickname that our
> wife gave me. Grandeur? Me? No I'm the most modest man you'd ever
> hope to meet. (Almost) everything is above-board with me. If there are
> persons I want to entrap, they soon find out. You are not among them.
> Some fish are easy.
I'm easy enough to fool for a moment or two. Even longer.
Too easy. No sport to it.
>> By mistake I once said, "Now if you take me as the norm..." It was in
>> the wee hours of the morning, and my friend and I, who were in a dorm
>> room in London at the time, cracked up and couldn't stop laughing. But
>> that can be a funny mistake only once.
>
>
> Do you know what the "morm" is in statistics?
Maximum Operational Resource Matrix?
No, not a clue.
But "norm": "middle item around an ordered ranking"? Yes,
much less grandiose. Sounds almost poly, though, doesn't it?
>> Actually, Norman derives from "northman" or some cognate term.
>>
>>
> Of course, but is it real? Perhaps you think I've never heard of
> Normans? I had a gf from Newcastle who could speak Geordie, whose name
> is on the Bayeux Tapestry (Stigant).
Geordie -- a Northumbrian dialect. New word for me.
My father's side is Swedish. My mother's a Yankee mix. Her
Elliott line may derive from a fellow who invaded England
with William the Conqueror. But the furthest back I've been
able to push any of her lines, person by person, is to Sir
William Lushell in the 1300s, and that's not proven.
However, that research was decades ago, before the Internet,
and under time constraints.
Cool about the Bayeux Tapestry!
> [snip]
>> Peter? [Peter Goldreich]
>
>
>> http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/goldreich/
>>
> The very man, as I said above. I learned modesty when working with him.
>
> Blue-blockers. I use glasses with dyes invented by friends at JPL. I
> have hand-made glacier classes that are so dark you would be totally
> blind trying to your way around the house; before that I wore welding
> glasses. My eyes are sensitive.
Mine too. Used to be much more so. Sensitivity started when
I had to hike into the setting sun without so much as a
visor in order to get home. Took decades to desensitize. The
eyes are still not back to where they were.
> Seven years ago, I had a bad go at EtOH when Katya left us, so I went
> into treatment for a month. Have I mentioned this before? Forgive me.
> We had a clueless priest come to lecture us on "spirituality" every
> Wednesday. Among other things, other disparaging comments ("do you
> smell sulphur"?), I claimed that with my JPL blue blockers I could see
> 666 on his forehead. I passed them around and had almost universal
> agreement.
In answer to your first question, yes. No problem.
> [snip]
>>> How did they get all those breeches off? When you watch a modern
>>> movie, you wonder how they can fuck through underpants, or without
>>> unzipping their pants. I've never tried it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Ninotchka came across as prissy and not at all knowledgeable of such
>> things.
>>
>> There's a term for it, of course. Probably several.
>>
> Her Polish lancer?? I never was much of a lancer through many layers of
> clothes.
>
> [What is our recactor going to do now??]
A judicious edit. And the term's "dry hump."
Of the, I suppose, hundreds of thousands of questions I've
fielded, I think that's the first time I've received that one.
>> I knew a bookdealer once, a former librarian, who said that
>> librarians are essentially subversives.
>>
>>
> I was once a librarian at MIT's engineering library, since my
> step-father refused to send me momey. After I scoped the place, anyone
> who had the temerity to interrupt my reading was sent to the opposite
> side of the library from their wishes, thus chemical phusics instead of
> turhbines. Perhaps, then, I'm your counterexample, depending on what you
> mean. My other trick was to refer them to Leo Szilard's works,
> expecially if they were interested in turbines.
>
> But my HS librarian, who I think wanted to tear my pants off after I got
> my Harvard scholarship, took all 200 of my SF books that I had read in
> secret when I donated them. "Older" women should let themselves go.
> I needed them when I was young, but oddly the older I get the younger
> the women I want.
There's a term I'm considering for my glossary: "jail bait."
However, one nice thing about growing older as a male: the
range of attractive females grows larger. I don't suppose
that's a universal experience; but I do suppose the same is
true for many women, mutatis mutandis.
>> I don't make the connection between the dark men from the
>> East and Jews.
>>
> Exactly, but *they* do.
So sensitivity: hypo- (me) or hyper- (those individuals to
whom you refer)? Or just postmodern relativity?
>> Personally I think that authors should be read with a
>> generous spirit, unless their lives and spirit clearly show
>> racist hatred. Otherwise we wind up with Huckleberry Finn
>> being banned in the schools. Instead of banning, let's teach kids how
>> to read with understanding, generosity, and critical acumen.
>
>
> That's what I have, not what they have.
But what they need to acquire.
> I started writing an SF novel about our first encounter with beings from
> Beta Hydrae (a nearby G2 star like our sun) 25 years ago,
Cool! Maybe something else not to be burned.
> but abandoned
> it for two reasons. I can't write for shit, although I had some
> fantastic romantic scenes in it,
Write gobs like you do here. Then keep the occasional neat
turns of phrase and enough body and plot to contain them,
and dump the rest. You'll have a gem. But no guarantees. :-)
> and because I couldn't get rid of the
> racialism.
Then use the plot and frank reflection to neutralize it.
Hmm, racialism even when engaged with Betahydrians, eh? I
wonder if they'd be puzzled.
> I never recognized the racialism I still carry from the society in which
> I was reared, very racialist. My friends were always the outcasts, the
> unforgiven. From my return after my kidnapping (@4=1946) through
> Harvard, my mother and I were thrown out of two boarding houses because
> I insisted on inviting my best friend, a black kid, over. In HS I was
> the best Anglo friend of several Eskimo and Indian students. The woman
> who made the greatest difference in my life was an Athapaskan.
I've had similar closenesses, but was fortunate enough to
have grown up in a family environment mostly free of
detectable racism -- if there is such an environment.
> Yet what you hear and the way people around you think gets blown into
> your mind like roofing staples.
Now there's a turn of phrase for your novel. Yup, you
definitely should take it up again.
> I was with my two best friends one
> evening at Harvard. We were discussing the East Asian History class
> (Soc Sci 111 - no longer exists), which they were taking and considered
> to be a ball-breaker, and I was planning to take it the next year, when
> we got off onto the purchase of a used car by Boorstin. He cited a
> price I considered a bit high. I said, "Oh, you can Jew him down." The
> Ice Age came into the room, 'gulp'. I got down on hands and knees, but
> they were never as close to me again. They could not understand that it
> was a standard phrase all through my rearing, as I was uncertain about
> how seriously I should take their reaction (*very* seriously).
>
> I let them get even, and that won them back; they had more fun at my
> wedding than I did. As I have said before, one was best man and one
> head usher in the most WASPish community you can imagine in the US:
> Chestnut Hill, Philly. I'm not sure that anyone at the reception
> afterwards had ever knowingly met a Jew, and my friends were partying. I
> introduced them to a Wistar girl, yes that Wistar, but told them what
> her problems were, so they preferred a nice intellectial Jewish girl to
> a super-rich WASP, and so they did. (Dieting until her periods
> vanished.) Anyway we had a good time, and I covered their transportation
> and clothing rentals (how many times have you seen a teen-aged Jew in a
> morningcoat?). Thanks to my mother, who could not attend, god bless.
>
> It was a perfect beginning to an ugly disaster.
>
>>
> Hermeneutical, not a word I see so often anymore. George Eliot liked
> it.
"Hermeneutical" is a word of my everyday existence. Has been
since I was a teen. My impression is that, due to German
influence, it's used in more English-speaking circles today
than it used to be: philosophical hermeneutics, etc. Belated
offspring of Schleiermacher.
I find hermeneutics both a tough discipline and liberating,
though I expect that few would understand the liberating
aspect. It's one of my fields of keen interest.
Came across a beautiful old edition of the works of George
Eliot in a bookshop yesterday for $250. Gilt upper edge. Too
much for my budget, though.
> I was once accused of that, but I stapled his ears to his skull,
> until he sort of understood what I was talking about.
Stapling meaning less cold?
> Yes, the Stanley Fishes.
No, those thoughts were independent of reader-response
theory. I'm still a hold-out from an earlier age when
authorial intent mattered; although, in my view, so does the
text and so does the targeted audience and so does the
actual reader.
Of course intent is intangible and ultimately beyond reach.
Scares scholars. But that's the point. It's supposed to be
beyond reach. They want to objectify the humanities. But
*humanity* is not so susceptible to objectification, and it
permeates the *humanities*.
> There was an article in the New Yorker some
> time ago by two brothers of EL Doctorow (as in doctoring history). They
> were English teachers, but became addicted to gambling in Mobile. It
> was a slow progression, but they ended up destroying their lives. This
> is real stuff, not what Fish, the charlatan, likes.
>
> I know gambling a little bit, but only from the POV of winning.
I bought a lottery ticket once, just for the experience.
Found out I was buying a temporary measure of hope.
> My
> step-father gave me peanuts for spending money; my mother ocasionally
> slipped me a little more, though he kept control of all accounts.
> Unimaginable in either of my marriages. I used to supplement my meager
> allowance with 3-card draw poker, but one night I lost $20, and didn't
> play again for (1991-1962) = 29 years.
I have similar reactions. I was late returning a rented
video that I didn't know a family member had checked out.
After returning it, I didn't revisit the video store for
months longer than I otherwise would have.
> I am gracious I think in acknowledging intellectial defeat on the facts
> here, but I'm not happy at the poker table. So in the 100 hours' war I
> played poker with a table-full of astronomers. I discovered that they
> are much better than Alaskans, in that they think they cannot possibly
> be wrong. In 4 hours I had only two good hands, my worst night ever,
> never bluffed, but took home the biggest haul. Give me more astronomers
> for poker!
I should learn to play poker someday. It's one of those
things I never picked up along the way. Can't imagine when
there wouldn't be something else I'd rather be doing, though.
>> Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
>> registered the decryption.
>
>
> Are you Siamese, if you please?
Does not compute.
>> By the way, I picked up a paperback copy of Philosophy in
>> the Flesh at the Todd Farm flea market over the weekend. I
>> bargained down from six bucks to five. I later found the
>> book had been marked up and figure I overpaid.
>>
>
> Did you Jew them down?
Not a verb I learned growing up. "Indian-giver" was a word I
somehow learned. Should've been "imperialist-giver," I guess.
> Don't grouse. You'll learn whatever you want to learn.
Well, since the book's already marked up, I might just mark
it up further myself. Otherwise I wouldn't.
My main gripe with marked up books isn't that they're marked
up, it's that they're stupidly marked up. As far as I'm
concerned, intelligent marginalia is a big plus, all the
more so when one reader is responding to a former reader.
> You may have
> missed the 19-yr-old all painted up, who was riding her scooter around
> naked. She's teaching English in China now, if they only knew...
Now you're giving me something I should really grouse about?
Am still catching on to your style of discourse.
>> Isn't the Hubble constant indicative of the rate of the expansion of
>> the universe? And isn't it much slower than the speed of light? And
>> doesn't the theory of relativity posit that nothing can exceed the
>> speed of light? So no, not simple. Not yet.
>>
>
> The Hubble constant is not a constant.
I suspected not.
> That was a delusion of the old
> cosmology. In my publications I've always been modest, listing at the
> end of the paper everything I can think of that can possibly be wrong
> with it.
I wind up many of my essays with questions. The question the
essay addresses usually leads to more questions.
> Fortunately critics ignore my cautions and take off on an
> idiotic path. The son of the double Nobel Prize winner tried to knock
> down my Her X-1 model, probably out of shame for not supporting my
> original ideas (I asked him to be my advisor, but he hemmed and hawed,
> and I walked out). But all he was able to come up with was an
> impossible potato chip model that I told him was ridiculous. Sorry,
> this is getting arcane.
Don't potato chips have something to do with string theory
(which I don't understand at all, except for there being
more to the universe)? Ack, belay that question.
> There is the Hubble "Constant" (local), Omega, the ratio of mass to
> blow-out (now somewhat obsolete), and the pressure of the vacuum, not
> computed nor understood. There is no such thing as the vacuum you might
> have been taught in school. Because of my inability to respect what
> grown-ups tell me I was only too ready to know that there was no vacuum.
A lot of my modern cosmology is from PBS, news magazines,
and popular science magazines (my physics courses now being
woefully outdated and inadequate to begin with), so you're
hearing from gaps they've left in my understanding (or in
memory). For example, just heard on one of the PBS science
shows that the Big Bang is expanding into space, which is
generally conceived of as infinite. But that conflicts with
what I thought I had heard earlier, that the Big Bang
encompasses all, including space, that space is part of the
expanding universe. Since space has dimensions and
dimensions are intimately wrapped up with the Big Bang, I
would have thought the model I mentioned second to be
correct, senseless as it sounds -- not that any option makes
much sense at that level.
>>>> If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it wouldn't
>>>> be able to look back here and see anything earlier than its launch;
>>>> in fact, it will see nothing even that early, will it?
>>>
>>>
>>>
> Think about it. No.
As I thought. Which goes towards explaining one of my
obstacles to understanding.
>>> No, it will see the Death of the Universe.
>
>
> No one will see the death of the universe. Make your arrangements
> through Schwab or Morgan Stanley, not Caltech, or the Space Telescope.
>
>>
>>
>> *Scrunching forehead*
>>
>> You think the life of the universe is more than half over?
>
>
> The opposite if the current date, which is being analyzed by persons I
> have known and trusted for a long time.
Okay, but you leave me mystified as to the meaning of your
original comment.
> I don't know what Goldreich
> thinks, and he would never tell me, as his father told him from a young
> age not to make a fool of himself. Cosmology invites compulsive fools.
> Goldreich and I had a little of off and on about it, but I quickly came
> over to his POV. "Why say stupid things in public??" But it's hard to
> resist, isn't it?
Without stupid comments, how would we ever get to
intelligent ones? Well, I suppose that's truer of questions
than of comments. However, it's one of those librarian
clichés that there's no such thing as a stupid question.
> He's a boring panel member until he asks a deceptively simple question
> that destroys the point that the star attraction was trying to make. His
> lectures are slow, then you realize you are being drawn into realms you
> don't understand.
When I do that, nobody notices. Used to be part of an
intellectual discussion group -- academicians from various
schools in the area. At one of the meetings I put a question
I thought went to the heart of the matter. The question was
politely brushed off. Took the entire session for the rest
of the group including the leading philosopher to come round
to that question on their own.
I've noticed a paradox: that sometimes a dense, plodding
intellectual style eventually enables the mind to get out
ahead of others. "Thoroughly familiar with those trails
already," so to speak.
"The race is not [always] to the swift" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
>> Yeah, that's a commonplace. But what do you do with the fabric of
>> intersecting cause and effect?
>>
>>
> Join my Liars' Club, if you want to learn. I can tell you some great
> lies, all taken from "The Astrophysical Journal" (ApJ). After Chandra
> resigned, it went through a period of "inflation".
>
> I told my wife about your objections to the severe culling of my books.
> She guarantees that you will have first choice if we have enough
> cartons.
That sounds like a threat. Especially to those with whom I
live. ;-)
> Where do you live BTW and do you have a real name? You know
> my e-mail, as I conceal nothing, except bits of my mind.
Massachusetts. You're welcome to visit my Web site:
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/
I have a given name, which I don't conceal. But as for what
my real name would be, I've never settled on that. There's
probably some peyote ritual for finding out.
>>>>>> If we're looking into the past, shouldn't we, theoretically, be
>>>>>> able to view the very soup out of which we are made? Not the far
>>>>>> away stuff, but the identical stuff.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>
> We have, but only the fluctuations, as there was nothing else to see then.
Hmm.
>> You miss my point.
>>
>
> I did not. You missed your question.
Hehe. No free ed here. :-)
>>>> You mean "max"?
>
>
> Not as in Mad Max, though my kids even in their 30s would much prefer
> Mad Max to a disquisition by me on the Universe. Mad Max drives my
> wife, Doris, nuts, and she will not watch it for personal resasons. It
> is not always the bad guys who get crushed.
The Mad Max movies wouldn't work if it weren't for tragedy.
But they do.
Funny how some of your corrections show up five indents in. :-)
>>>> Well, that's exactly what's not making sense to me. How can two
>>>> areas of matter that start out together become so separated in 2
>>>> billion years that it takes the light from one 12 billion years to
>>>> reach the other? Doesn't that require a convoluted structure of the
>>>> universe to achieve and/or the warping of light not just in minor
>>>> degrees but in whacky ways?
>>>>
>>>
>>> But our galactic system is 14 billion years old.
>>
>>
>>
>> I was afraid you'd say that. The answer makes sense to me only if the
>> expansion of the universe is indeed faster than light.
>>
> Eventually it is.
Whoah! (a) You're making me think you're pulling my leg. (b)
I'm talking about the past, not the future.
Thinking: Is an expansion of vacuum at a rate faster than
light even meaningful? But you say there's no vacuum, so how
can "something" go faster than light when the laws of
physics say it can't?
Nope, you're not linkin' up with my mind at all.
> [snip]
>> Richard Feynman said it better (so I read somewhere): "Physics is like
>> sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we
>> do it."
>>
> We wrote a parody of the Caltech weekly list of astrophysics meetings
> and colloquia in which F was called Feyn Dickman, and was listed as the
> Richard Chaste Olman (really Richard Chace Tolman q.v.) Professor of
> Physics. He cracked up. It is possible to parody persons a lot smarter
> than you, and they usually like the attention.
Well, it's funny stuff.
> [snip]
>> I've started collecting Feynman's books. Don't have those
>> two yet. Enjoyed the movie about his early life, "Infinity"
>> (1996). Used to see him on PBS from time to time.
>>
>>
> Don't try his "Lectures".
I have his Lectures on Gravitation. Also The Character of
Physical Law, and Surely You're Joking. Haven't read any of
those books yet.
> He had a love that still makes me cry. She died when he was at Los
> Alamos; the games thay played as she was dying of TB!
>
> [snip]
>
> My wife is not quite at the level of strangling me, which she did about
> 8 years ago. But I blow with the immediate winds.
Take your time.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
have Paris." So date references are dubious.
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>
>> You haven't been reading! Try rec.backcountry or rec.games.chess, amd
>> there are other threads in this ng, that say "Oh, lah, de dah!" and so
>> avoid the question of inerrancy. It's been some time since I've read
>> that word, being a scientific atheist, none of which claim it.
>
>
> In confessional contexts, "inerrancy" is a word with countless nuances.
> And "infallibility" has a different set of nuances. In some circles, if
> you believe in infallibility but not inerrancy, you're not good enough.
> But then for many inerrancy won't do either without sufficient
> propositional-level literalism, for if the formal and the material
> diverge too much, what do you have? The next step is into absurdity, but
> people differ widely on where that threshold is. For the atheist, I
> suppose that wouldn't be the next step but the first step -- with that
> word "confessional."
Inerrancy has to to with text, and infallibility with the will of God,
nicht war?
>
> Is your stomach turning or are you laughing? I'm guessing the former,
> given your Fundamentalist past.
Guessed wrong. I can deal even with Stalinists, because I'm right and
they are wrong. When I dropped my Christian Fundamentalism, I dropped
it utterly. I remember some of the litrary and musical bits, but the
beliefs vanished immediately.
>
> Believe it or not, there's a framework there that stimulates some people
> to a lot of inner growth.
>
Exactly what does that mean? Greater dependency?
That's what a former philosophy prof of mine commends.
[astronauts and Austin]
>
>
>> My papers are too hard for anyone, so I have directed my wife to burn
>> them in the unlikely event that she outlives me (she's 6 yrs younger),
>> which brings on a gallon of aqua regia. My funeral service, to which
>> no one is invited, especially my "natural" family is a reading of the
>> verse in Ecclesiastes "The race is not always to the swift..."
>> followed by my cremation with extreme prejudice in a pine box.
>>
>> When I read the Bible through twice when I was 5, this verse stuck in
>> my mind. I knew that for me, the race was always to the swift, as I
>> was the fastest, but the rest gave me much puzzlement. It wasn't
>> until my first marriage, when I recited these lines, that I actually
>> understood them. My bride, whose memory was not quite up to more,
>> just said, "Better an handful in quietness than both hands full with
>> travail and vexation of spirit". I knew that would be our lot for the
>> next 7-9 years, but the lesson did not take on her, as she kept
>> hasseling me to be a banker.
>
>
> "Time and chance overtake them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
>
>
It was never better said. Look at Alexander, dying at 33 of malaria or
some such. Maybe it was for the best. At 33 my life was in disarray -
I had barely survived two life-threatening illnesses - and I hadn't even
conquered Altadena.
>> [snip]
>> I never capitulated in school. Teachers who did a good job got my
>> respect, so I gave them my best, but never mind control. Sometimes
>> they wished that I did less than my best. Sorry if I mentioned the
>> following before. In my 2nd week into kindergarten I told Mrs. Beltz
>> to go home because I could teach the class better then she could.
>> Things went downhill from there; I'll spare the details.
>>
>> On only one occasion did I report on a book I had actually read ("The
>> French Revolution" by Carlyle in 7th grade, read in a weekend). For
>> other books, I made up essays out of whole cloth from the flaps and
>> the preface. I was careful to choose books my teachers could not
>> possibly understand. I did everything to cheat the system, and still
>> gained the moniker "Einstein", I guess because no teacher dared give
>> me anything but an A, except in penmanship (C) and conduct (C). I did
>> help a few kids through the grade we were in, and they wondered at my
>> magic.
>
>
> I was the opposite. I read all the books I wrote reports on for grade
> school and high school -- all except one, and I felt guilty about that.
> Told myself I'd read it later. Never did. Finally dumped the book. One
> of Herbert Hoover's books on lasting peace, I think it was.
>
You mean "Hoobert Heever", for which a radio announcer was fired?
> Of all those mandatory readings, the book that caught my imagination
> most was Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson (1916).
>
Yessss. I can't remember it now, but I think I liked it. My mind was
elsewhere at the time.
>
>>> It occurred to me that you and I are of different species in
>>> the family of skeptics. Your teeth are all up front and
>>> little gets through. Mine are all down my gullet and what's
>>> left after passing the gauntlet is tiny and hard.
>>>
>>
>> You are wrong twice. We are descended from a single mammal-like
>> reptile that survived the Permian extinction, Lystrosaurus. And the
>> word is gantlet, not gauntlet, which is a metal glove.
>
>
> Darn! I 'uz hopin' you just tot me sumpin'. But American Heritage gives
> both spellin's for each meanin'.
>
They are wrong.
>
>>>> But if my thesis advisor (long ago) gets a genius idea from me, and
>>>> then tells me to write it up overnight on my Olympia office
>>>> typewriter, and he will then "tear it to pieces". I did and he did,
>>>> and I left reeling down the hall, thinking "I have seen the face of
>>>> God."
>>>
>>>
>>> What was the sense of "the face of God" there?
>>>
>>
>> I thought I had it nailed, and he showed me how my arrogant brain was
>> not up to the task. It was an intellectial face of god, not an
>> aesthetic, though there was some aesthetic mixed in, as I relied on my
>> intuition and then tried to clean things up with math.
>
>
> For a brief moment you were out of yourself. You saw beyond yourself.
> That's a vital role that the idea of God plays in my thought. Only
> practical reason. No better than Kant's. But it's one peg.
>
>
Well, when you wake up with the solution to the biggest mystery of the
time, and are not living at 221B Baker Street, you must have something,
right? Not necessarily so. Peter and I biked up from Pasadena to
Altadena that evening. I apologized for being an obvious idiot. He
said, "It was good. No one else is even trying to solve the problem.
And you made me understand that it is a lot harder than most think it
is." (It hasn't been solved even 30 years later.)
>> His intuition was just so much better, beyond anything I had ever
>> known. Check him out on Google, Peter Goldreich.
>
>
> I did. Deeply sad eyes of mortal struggle, combined with intelligence
> and humor. An impression.
>
He was a Greek god 30 years ago. As for humor, we really ragged each
other.
>
>>> "Intellectual disabilities"? Repetitive story telling symptomatic? :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes. This has been called to my attention. The problem is that I
>> post to two newsgroups, this and rec.backcountry, and get much e-mail
>> from some posters, so I would need a Vatican Secretary to keep track
>> of what I have written where. But we have no satisfactory
>> dry-cleaning establishment, nor any barbershop in the neighborhoood to
>> satisfy such a Secretary, and our shower soap may be below his
>> standard (Yardley).
>
>
> Of course, that doesn't explain the same story more than once in the
> same post.
>
I try to eliminatem that problem through editing. A number of my posts
to you have taken several days, as I have other things to do, like
translate Maimonides into Croation for my favorite tennis players.
But now I have a new love: Marina ShaRAPova. I asked my wife if we
could adopt her, but it seems that she has loving parents. There are
not enough sufficiently excellent women to go around. I'm sure many
women feel the same, in their way.
Yes, I'm sure something else was meant originally, but the boboes lost it.
>
>> Why was it a miracle for Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding,
>> when you are a teetotaller, and drink 12 cups of coffee per day?
>> Naturally my phrasing at the time was more primitive.
>
>
> Jesus was a teetotaler? That wine bibber (Matthew 11:19 = Luke 7:34)?
> Hmm, I've heard it maintained by some on the basis of flimsy
> scholarship. Never heard tell of him drinkin' coffee.
>
That was all about my mother, a far cry from Jesus, not counting the
family jewels.
> Note: He made sure it was the good stuff (John 2:10).
>
>
>> [snip]
>> But I never studied in HS. It was a point of pride never to take a
>> book home.
>
>
> I've encountered that spirit with my boys. Now in college, they've
> finally overcome it, almost.
>
> I expect some tight connection with American -- or would that be
> childhood -- anti-intellectualism. But in you're case ...
>
>
I'm not really an American, but a supra-American. When I went to
Harvard, I thought I'd have all my books in my room, and would just have
to read them to get my usual straight As. It wasn't so simple,
especially as I was ambitious in my choice of courses, unlike Katya.
>> Do you rememeber the old computer magazine from the 70-80s:
>> "Travelling Lite without Overbyte", all about cool, simple programming.
>
>
> No. There were so many back then. Kinda wish I had run across that one,
> though -- as you describe it.
>
> Never thought of myself as a programmer; but my older son, who's taken
> programming, says I long ago crossed that line. In that case, my
> crossings are only forays.
>
>
>> With the dominance of Microsoft it vanished. It's not too hard to
>> tell that I loathe Microsoft, especially as I am a partial prisoner in
>> their Abu Ghraib prison.
>
>
> I started on an OCLC computer in 1974. In the 80s I added CP/M and
> MS-DOS. In the 90s WindowsNT and Mac. Now I use mostly Mac albeit with
> some supplementary Windows as needed (e.g. for the OED).
>
My wife and I still have our "Osborne I" that we bought right after our
marriage in 1982. Damned if it doesn't still work! 90k one sided
diskettes, C-compiler from Doris's old boyfriend that still works (Not
C++), and the Pac-Man which my daughter whipped my pants off with.
> The lemming rush to IBM/Microsoft annoyed me. Even the library I
> directed went that way. No choice. We were committed to OCLC and back
> then only one kind of operating system would work with it.
>
> I'm delighted when cyber chains are broken.
>
> Remember BCN, the Business Computer Network? I did a little online
> chatting on it back in the mid 80s with my "portable" Kaypro. Still have
> that Kaypro.
>
No. I never got a Kaypro. We considered a Zebra until a business
partner stole $5k from us that we could not get back. And what's OCLC?
>
>> I did everything cool. It was the rare teacher who dared to challenge
>> me, but them I remember with great favor. The problem was that if
>> they had the guts to challenge me, they also had the guts to challenge
>> our Nazi, heavy-drinking principal, and got fired. He tried to
>> destroy my Harvard admission and scholarship, but my step-father, a
>> city councilman, came like Robert Moses (q.v.) to his office with a
>> fat police folder on him, and the problem suddenly evaporated.
>
>
> So how did Robert Moses enter the iconography of your mind?
>
>
Read the bio "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. When anyone in a NY
political meeting was giving him any trouble, he put one hand behind his
back, an aide slapped a folder into it, and Moses began reading from it.
It often had to do with his opponent's comings and going with ladies
not his wife, but also with graft, etc. Meeting over. Moses himself was
squeaky clean with a $25k salary and nothing under the table. He was
unstoppable. He seriously fucked up NYC, because he oppoaed public transit.
I read this book 30 years ago.
>> [nice stuff on Anacreon]
>>
>> That's a lot of fun. I told my brother to take his pic off his Nexus
>> Marine web site, as he looked too much like Alexandr Solzhenytsin. I
>> can't reach his website at the moment. Anacreon had more fun than I
>> did, except for 6 mos there and three years there.
>
>
> The sixth century B.C.E. might not have been a bad time to live, except
> for the Persian threat and tyrants.
>
And slaves, and Athenian empire and all that. A brutal time.
>
>>>> That's a very insightful comment. The "experience" does not last
>>>> forever; you have to work on it: why Tagore wrote all thos Bengali
>>>> songs.
>>
>>
>> I used to, but there has been less
>
>
> Write songs? Maybe they shouldn't be burned.
>
>
>> I always say that I'm African, that few of my ancestors survived, but
>> we are still here. A Balto city cop did not like this, and demanded
>> my driver's licence, though I wasn't driving.
>
>
> The story irritates the libertarian in me.
>
>
>>> When I mentioned "Crossing Jordan," my friend hadn't heard of it. Her
>>> favorite: "Diagnosis Murder."
>>>
>> Really, mostly it's "Diagnosis Accident". Men who get murdered IMHO
>> usually deserve it. But the murder of women I'd investigate
>> relentlessly, until I got fired.
>
>
> What a sexist! (Taking this opportunity to balance off the threat below.
> :-) )
threat???
>
The truth can be sexist, and anti-sexism can be a lie.
>
>> I could have gotten murdered just for falling on the sidewalk a week
>> ago. I was really dazed. I now think that my right cheekbone has a
>> lateral crack, but there is nothing to be done about that.
>
>
> The healing properties of the body are astounding to me. One of those
> things you come to know in your very bones: that kind of astonishment.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> On behalf of my client, the culture in which I live, I plead "No
>>> contest."
>>>
>> Big client. Big pockets?
>
>
> What's that expression? "I get my pay from God."
>
Is it in dollars, Euros, Dinars, or Drachmas? Maybe it's in "Gimmedat",
one of my daughter's favorite expressions when she was a little brat,
which she still is at 32.
>
>> Your plead reminds me of the one time Oppenheimer was defeated
>> scientifically. A young upstart, who should have gotten the Nobel
>> prize with Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, was trying to prove that
>> their three theories were all the same - a correct solution of quantum
>> electrodynamics (relativistic), but Oppenheimer kept cutting him off
>> before he could even get off the ground. So this young British feller
>> invited Bethe, the theory leader on the Manhattan Project, to come to
>> his series of attempted seminars. Hans Bethe told Oppie to shut up and
>> listen. The next morning Freeman Dyson, father of Esther, got a note
>> in his mailbox from Oppie: "Nolo contendere."
And quantum electrodynamic was accepted.
My bonobo self. But I have yet to meet a bonobo who can tear through
the ApJ as I can.
>
>
>> You may have seen on TV, the LAPD trying to beat a man to death with
>> their Maglites. When Katya's sister asked her to get me to get her a
>> Maglite, I objected, as my flashlights are all platic and work just as
>> well, except in beating people's brains out. Her sister insisted,
>> with no reason I could understand, so I got it for her. I should have
>> just told her sister to go fuck herself, but Katya would not give me
>> her e-mail address.
>>I'm sorry to have raised a Tasmanian Devil. My wife knows the story
>> Do you know what the "norm" is in statistics?
>
>
> Maximum Operational Resource Matrix?
>
> No, not a clue.
Typo!!
>
> But "norm": "middle item around an ordered ranking"? Yes, much less
> grandiose. Sounds almost poly, though, doesn't it?
>
Could use some of those helpers...
>
>>> Actually, Norman derives from "northman" or some cognate term.
>>>
>>>
>> Of course, but is it real? Perhaps you think I've never heard of
>> Normans? I had a gf from Newcastle who could speak Geordie, whose
>> name is on the Bayeux Tapestry (Stigant).
>
>
> Geordie -- a Northumbrian dialect. New word for me.
>
> My father's side is Swedish. My mother's a Yankee mix. Her Elliott line
> may derive from a fellow who invaded England with William the Conqueror.
> But the furthest back I've been able to push any of her lines, person by
> person, is to Sir William Lushell in the 1300s, and that's not proven.
> However, that research was decades ago, before the Internet, and under
> time constraints.
>
> Cool about the Bayeux Tapestry!
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Peter? [Peter Goldreich]
>>
>>
>>
>>> http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/goldreich/
>>>
>> The very man, as I said above. I learned modesty when working with him.
>>
>> Blue-blockers. I use glasses with dyes invented by friends at JPL. I
>> have hand-made glacier classes that are so dark you would be totally
>> blind trying to find your way around the house; before that I wore welding
Why can't they just fuck naturally with their clothes off like for real
and they do and everyone else does? As in "Bound" and "Wild Side"?
July 4: evening:
I just had a depressing few hours watching war correspondents' stories
on the DSC/Times channel, and just can't stand it anymore.
------
>>> I knew a bookdealer once, a former librarian, who said that
>>> librarians are essentially subversives.
>>>
>>>
>> I was once a librarian at MIT's engineering library, since my
>> step-father refused to send me momey. After I scoped the place,
>> anyone who had the temerity to interrupt my reading was sent to the
>> opposite side of the library from their wishes, thus chemical physics
>> instead of turbines. Perhaps, then, I'm your counterexample,
>> depending on what you mean. My other trick was to refer them to Leo
>> Szilard's works, expecially if they were interested in turbines.
>>
>> But my HS librarian, who I think wanted to tear my pants off after I
>> got my Harvard scholarship, took all 200 of my SF books that I had
>> read in secret when I donated them. "Older" women should let
>> themselves go. I needed them when I was young, but oddly the older
>> I get the younger the women I want.
>
>
> There's a term I'm considering for my glossary: "jail bait."
San Quentin Quail back when I was just growing my pubes.
>
> However, one nice thing about growing older as a male: the range of
> attractive females grows larger. I don't suppose that's a universal
> experience; but I do suppose the same is true for many women, mutatis
> mutandis.
This is all very unclear to me, as it appears that the fraction of wives
who commit physical adultery is about the same as men, the only
difference in the statistics owing either to male bragging or female
reticence.
I saw a program on our rebellion against Britain this afternoon, in
which a particularly bloody British general, before he marched off to
defeat said that he had killed more men and fucked more women than any
other man in America. We got the SOB. This was in the Carolinas.
>
>
>>> I don't make the connection between the dark men from the
>>> East and Jews.
>>>
>> Exactly, but *they* do.
>
>
> So sensitivity: hypo- (me) or hyper- (those individuals to whom you
> refer)? Or just postmodern relativity?
>
Germans, part of my ancestry (came over in 1847, up the Mississippi to
Iowa), have a fear of the dark peoples of the East. However, had you a
chance to wathch ShaRAPova trounce Serena Willians on Saturday, you
might have felt a desire to ride with the Rohirrim: such a gorgeous
blonde. And she was sick unto death and still won the championsip. She
will be a hero of mine for life. Perhaps this fear comes from the Mongols.
>
>>> Personally I think that authors should be read with a
>>> generous spirit, unless their lives and spirit clearly show
>>> racist hatred. Otherwise we wind up with Huckleberry Finn
>>> being banned in the schools. Instead of banning, let's teach kids how
>>> to read with understanding, generosity, and critical acumen.
>>
>>
>>
>> That's what I have, not what they have.
>
>
> But what they need to acquire.
>
My daughter seems as wild as I was in my 20s, but I can't penetrate her
mind completely, but my son has had a weakness for bimbos like I had for
his mother: what melted my integrity? "Oh hell, you're just horney", and
she was right. But now he is telling me that he wants to marry an
English teacher. I didn't ask many questions, because that has led to
large ruptures in the past. At least he said that she was trying to
improve his English, about which I have verbally chastised him since he
was 8, and he now admits I was right. He's 36, but I told him that he's
too young to get married; I got a protest. I think I have an agreement
to meet her, if I pay the plane fare.
>
>> I started writing an SF novel about our first encounter with beings
>> from Beta Hydrae (a nearby G2 star like our sun) 25 years ago,
>
>
> Cool! Maybe something else not to be burned.
>
>
>> but abandoned it for two reasons. I can't write for shit, although I
>> had some fantastic romantic scenes in it,
>
>
> Write gobs like you do here. Then keep the occasional neat turns of
> phrase and enough body and plot to contain them, and dump the rest.
> You'll have a gem. But no guarantees. :-)
>
I have no friends in Hollywood or NY, and no tolerance for rejection.
Probably that arises from my childhood kidnapping, and all my
disruptions in school.
>
>> and because I couldn't get rid of the racialism.
>
>
> Then use the plot and frank reflection to neutralize it.
>
> Hmm, racialism even when engaged with Betahydrians, eh? I wonder if
> they'd be puzzled.
>
I was appalled at myself. Since I was a wee boy, I always thought I was
totally accepting of other races and ethnicities (except that I can't
sing or dance), and proved it by getting many disciplinary procedures in
school. But when you dig down into your inner thoughts, sometimes you
find things you don't like. But I limit myself too much out of an
extreme sensitivity to my weaknesses. Back in the mid 60s, when it was
still possible, my first wife and I went to black supper clubs, were
practically the only whites there, and danced like demons: there were no
set moves to follow. She got propositioned about 20 times an evening,
which she liked very much.
I could not characterize the Hydran Commander and his romance with a
woman who was the brightest physicist on Earth, modelled on a friend of
mine, in any way that I could live with. I went cold in trying to write
it. Of course it was I who wanted to make love with her, and this
Hydran didn't fit into my feelings.
>> I never recognized the racialism I still carry from the society in
>> which I was reared, very racialist. My friends were always the
>> outcasts, the unforgiven. From my return after my kidnapping
>> (@4=1946) my mother and I were thrown out of two
>> boarding houses because I insisted on inviting my best friend, a black
>> kid, over. In HS I was the best Anglo friend of several Eskimo and
>> Indian students. The woman who made the greatest difference in my
>> life was an Athapaskan.
>
>
> I've had similar closenesses, but was fortunate enough to have grown up
> in a family environment mostly free of detectable racism -- if there is
> such an environment.
You can get close, but no one is totally free. It's genetic.
>
>
>> Yet what you hear and the way people around you think gets blown into
>> your mind like roofing staples.
>
>
> Now there's a turn of phrase for your novel. Yup, you definitely should
> take it up again.
>
>
>> I was with my two best friends one evening at Harvard. We were
>> discussing the East Asian History class (Soc Sci 111 - no longer
>> exists), which they were taking and considered to be a ball-breaker
(they were mostly A students),
>> and I was planning to take it the next year, when we got off onto the
>> purchase of a used car by Boorstin. He cited a price I considered a
>> bit high. I said, "Oh, you can Jew him down." The Ice Age came into
>> the room, 'gulp'. I got down on hands and knees, but they were never
>> as close to me again. They could not understand that it was a
>> standard phrase all through my rearing, as I was uncertain about how
>> seriously I should take their reaction (*very* seriously).
>>
Boorstin said, "OK. you have a car and have blown an engine, so please
come with me, and tell me what you think." I said, "You bet, but I'm
not a real expert." It was a good car, and he was never dissatisfied
with it to my knowledge, and he got a break in the price. He vanished
from my radar screen when I went off to grad school and he wanted to
work with a famous architect (Eales? Eaves?) - I lost the name - the
archictect (now dead) is so famous among the in crowd but I can't fathom
his work, as my artistic sensibiliteis are back in Cuneiform times.
>> I let them get even, and that won them back; they had more fun at my
>> wedding than I did. As I have said before, one was best man and one
>> head usher in the most WASPish community you can imagine in the US:
>> Chestnut Hill, Philly. I'm not sure that anyone at the reception
>> afterwards had ever knowingly met a Jew, so my friends were partying.
>> I introduced them to a Wistar girl, yes that Wistar, but told them
>> what her problems were, so they preferred a nice intellectial Jewish
>> girl to a super-rich WASP, and so they did. (Dieting until her
>> periods vanished.) Anyway we had a good time, and I covered their
>> transportation and clothing rentals (how many times have you seen a
>> teen-aged Jew in a morningcoat?). Thanks to my mother, who could not
>> attend, god bless.
>>
>> It was a perfect beginning to an ugly disaster.
>>
>>>
>
>> Hermeneutical, not a word I see so often anymore. George Eliot liked it.
>
>
> "Hermeneutical" is a word of my everyday existence. Has been since I was
> a teen. My impression is that, due to German influence, it's used in
> more English-speaking circles today than it used to be: philosophical
> hermeneutics, etc. Belated offspring of Schleiermacher.
>
> I find hermeneutics both a tough discipline and liberating, though I
> expect that few would understand the liberating aspect. It's one of my
> fields of keen interest.
>
To me the feelings come first, not disquisitions on uncertain propositions.
> Came across a beautiful old edition of the works of George Eliot in a
> bookshop yesterday for $250. Gilt upper edge. Too much for my budget,
> though.
>
Well, if you have to ask the price you can't afford it. I get most of
my books from Hamilton Books remaindered books. It's amazing what you
can find. Mostly I buy them for presents, as I have no further shelf
space. I'm not sure how much this endeares me to friends and relatives,
as folks are much more polite after having passed through humanism.
I prefer the alpha-male alpha-female way. I adapt to it very well. For
instance if Goldreich or Feynman sent me books, they would take an
hononored place on my bookshelf, even if the titles were something like
"Debbie Does Dallas". My son has a gf in Dallas, so I warned him about
this movie.
>
>> I was once accused of that, but I stapled his ears to his skull, until
>> he sort of understood what I was talking about.
>
>
> Stapling meaning less cold?
>
>
No cnxn with GE. You lost what I was referring to.
>
>> Yes, the Stanley Fishes.
>
What was called the Fish Tank at Duke, though he wound up at U Chi for
no reason I can apprehend, except that he must have been into bring in
cash. At Hopkins you can't even keep a tenured professorship, unless
you bring in cash. They have their ways...
Fish made such a fool of himself when he fell hard for the Sokal parody
(q.v.):
Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics ...
www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
I thought that would have finished Fish's career in an honest academic
field. But it didn't prove that academic English is an honest
profession, except among the very few like Harold Bloom.
>
> No, those thoughts were independent of reader-response theory. I'm still
> a hold-out from an earlier age when authorial intent mattered; although,
> in my view, so does the text and so does the targeted audience and so
> does the actual reader.
>
None of this is clear to me. I don't think most authors have an intent
(I don't, I hope), the text is something for sharks to fight over, and I
can't conceive of a targeted audience. Anybody who reads a book of mine
and doesn't try to hunt me down in the night is a friend.
> Of course intent is intangible and ultimately beyond reach. Scares
> scholars. But that's the point. It's supposed to be beyond reach. They
> want to objectify the humanities. But *humanity* is not so susceptible
> to objectification, and it permeates the *humanities*.
>
>
When you are dealing with Patricia Cornwell or Ken Follett, you know the
intent of the author, but we aren't talking of those books, are we?
Actually, we can tell a bit of Shakepeare's and Eliot's intents, but
they were moralistic writers, engendering our way of thinking. Reading
Highsmith's books leaves me a bit adrift.
>> There was an article in the New Yorker some time ago by two brothers
>> of EL Doctorow (as in doctoring history). They were English teachers,
>> but became addicted to gambling in Mobile. It was a slow progression,
>> but they ended up destroying their lives. This is real stuff, not
>> what Fish, the charlatan, likes.
>>
>> I know gambling a little bit, but only from the POV of winning.
>
>
> I bought a lottery ticket once, just for the experience. Found out I was
> buying a temporary measure of hope.
>
My experience with real gambling. I had to play poker on my year out
from Harvard to make the spending money my step-father fefused to give
me, though he had been berating me for years for going to Harvard and
not the U of AK (Fbx) = UAF, now.
>
>> My step-father gave me peanuts for spending money; my mother
>> ocasionally slipped me a little more, though he kept control of all
>> accounts. Unimaginable in either of my marriages. I used to
>> supplement my meager allowance with 3-card draw poker, but one night I
>> lost $20, and didn't play again for (1991-1962) = 29 years.
>
>
> I have similar reactions. I was late returning a rented video that I
> didn't know a family member had checked out. After returning it, I
> didn't revisit the video store for months longer than I otherwise would
> have.
>
>
>> I am gracious I think in acknowledging intellectial defeat on the
>> facts here, but I'm not happy at the poker table. So in the 100
>> hours' war I played poker with a table-full of astronomers. I
>> discovered that they are much better than Alaskans, in that they think
>> they cannot possibly be wrong. In 4 hours I had only two good hands,
>> my worst night ever, never bluffed, but took home the biggest haul.
>> Give me more astronomers for poker!
>
>
> I should learn to play poker someday. It's one of those things I never
> picked up along the way. Can't imagine when there wouldn't be something
> else I'd rather be doing, though.
>
3-card draw poker is Soooo easy. Fold quickly: don't think a pair of
10s is going to get you the pot. When you have a straight or a flush,
make some temtative bets, pretending that you really have nothing.
Sometimes everyone drops out, even those with full-houses. If you have
a big hand, throw down a big bet; only the morons will continue. That
is, unless you are playing real poker players. Stay within your limits.
Bluff at most once a night, else someone will always call you. When
you have smashed the table with a couple of big hands, only a real
player will challenge a bluff, based on your involuntary body signals.
I don't play other varieties of poker an they are too chancy, and
require the counting of cards, as in bridge,
>
>>> Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
>>> registered the decryption.
>>
>>
>> Are you Siamese, if you please?
>
>
> Does not compute.
>
>
It's a disgusting song.
>>> By the way, I picked up a paperback copy of Philosophy in
>>> the Flesh at the Todd Farm flea market over the weekend. I
>>> bargained down from six bucks to five. I later found the
>>> book had been marked up and figure I overpaid.
>>>
>>
>> Did you Jew them down?
>
>
> Not a verb I learned growing up. "Indian-giver" was a word I somehow
> learned. Should've been "imperialist-giver," I guess.
>
>
>> Don't grouse. You'll learn whatever you want to learn.
>
>
> Well, since the book's already marked up, I might just mark it up
> further myself. Otherwise I wouldn't.
>
> My main gripe with marked up books isn't that they're marked up, it's
> that they're stupidly marked up. As far as I'm concerned, intelligent
> marginalia is a big plus, all the more so when one reader is responding
> to a former reader.
>
Exactly.
>
>> You may have missed the 19-yr-old all painted up, who was riding her
>> scooter around naked. She's teaching English in China now, if they
>> only knew...
>
>
> Now you're giving me something I should really grouse about?
>
> Am still catching on to your style of discourse.
>
>
>>> Isn't the Hubble constant indicative of the rate of the expansion of
>>> the universe? And isn't it much slower than the speed of light? And
>>> doesn't the theory of relativity posit that nothing can exceed the
>>> speed of light? So no, not simple. Not yet.
>>>
>>
>> The Hubble constant is not a constant.
>
And it is in different units than the speed of light: cm/sec, vs
(km/sec)/Mpc (Mpc = megaparsec), so they connot be compared.
>
> I suspected not.
>
>
>> That was a delusion of the old cosmology. In my publications I've
>> always been modest, listing at the end of the paper everything I can
>> think of that can possibly be wrong with it.
>
>
> I wind up many of my essays with questions. The question the essay
> addresses usually leads to more questions.
>
>
Questions are either for fools or thinkers, depending on how they are
phrased.
>> Fortunately critics ignore my cautions and take off on an idiotic
>> path. The son of the double Nobel Prize winner tried to knock down my
>> Her X-1 model, probably out of shame for not supporting my original
>> ideas (I asked him to be my advisor, but he hemmed and hawed, and I
>> walked out). But all he was able to come up with was an impossible
>> potato chip model that I told him was ridiculous. Sorry, this is
>> getting arcane.
>
>
> Don't potato chips have something to do with string theory (which I
> don't understand at all, except for there being more to the universe)?
> Ack, belay that question.
>
On belay! With my anchors, you will never fall.
You may be thinking of D-branes to which superstrings may be anchored.
I do not know this math, though I once attempted it 40 years ago, it has
to do with inner and outer operations on manifolds in Hausdorff spaces
in a variety of dimensions (9-11?), as my limited brains now understand
it. There are only a few folks in the world who can keep up with this
shit, and they work on it day and night to the detriment of their families.
>
>> There is the Hubble "Constant" (local), Omega, the ratio of mass to
>> blow-out (now somewhat obsolete), and the pressure of the vacuum, not
>> computed nor understood. There is no such thing as the vacuum you
>> might have been taught in school. Because of my inability to respect
>> what grown-ups tell me I was only too ready to know that there was no
>> vacuum.
>
>
> A lot of my modern cosmology is from PBS, news magazines, and popular
> science magazines (my physics courses now being woefully outdated and
> inadequate to begin with), so you're hearing from gaps they've left in
> my understanding (or in memory). For example, just heard on one of the
> PBS science shows that the Big Bang is expanding into space, which is
> generally conceived of as infinite. But that conflicts with what I
> thought I had heard earlier, that the Big Bang encompasses all,
> including space, that space is part of the expanding universe. Since
> space has dimensions and dimensions are intimately wrapped up with the
> Big Bang, I would have thought the model I mentioned second to be
> correct, senseless as it sounds -- not that any option makes much sense
> at that level.
I have news for you. Neither PBS nor DSC/SCI channels are a good way to
learn about cosmology or planetary science. The first is infected with
catastrophic misunderstanding, the latter with the Sagan virus. They
are the best channels on TV for these two subjects, but the best
education for you would be to sit on my couch and hear me scream the
truth at them. My wife can put up with only a little of it.
>
>
>>>>> If we send a telescope out 12 billion light years away, it wouldn't
>>>>> be able to look back here and see anything earlier than its launch;
>>>>> in fact,
it will see nothing even that early, will it?
>>>>
>>>>
>> Think about it. No.
>
>
> As I thought. Which goes towards explaining one of my obstacles to
> understanding.
>
>
>>>> No, it will see the Death of the Universe.
>>
>>
>>
>> No one will see the death of the universe. Make your arrangements
>> through Schwab or Morgan Stanley, not Caltech, or the Space Telescope.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Scrunching forehead*
>>>
>>> You think the life of the universe is more than half over?
>>
>>
>>
>> The opposite if the current date, which is being analyzed by persons I
>> have known and trusted for a long time.
>
>
> Okay, but you leave me mystified as to the meaning of your original
> comment.
>
The Universe has no time limit.
>
>> I don't know what Goldreich thinks, and he would never tell me, as his
>> father told him from a young age not to make a fool of himself.
>> Cosmology invites compulsive fools. Goldreich and I had a little of
>> off and on about it, but I quickly came over to his POV. "Why say
>> stupid things in public??" But it's hard to resist, isn't it?
>
>
> Without stupid comments, how would we ever get to intelligent ones?
> Well, I suppose that's truer of questions than of comments. However,
> it's one of those librarian clichés that there's no such thing as a
> stupid question.
>
Are they ever wrong. I ber I could get my son's librarian gf to give me
over one stupid question a minute, unless I talked too long.
>
>> He's [Goldreich] a boring panel member until he asks a deceptively simple question
>> that destroys the point that the star attraction was trying to make.
>> His lectures are slow, then you realize you are being drawn into
>> realms you don't understand.
>
>
> When I do that, nobody notices. Used to be part of an intellectual
> discussion group -- academicians from various schools in the area. At
> one of the meetings I put a question I thought went to the heart of the
> matter. The question was politely brushed off. Took the entire session
> for the rest of the group including the leading philosopher to come
> round to that question on their own.
>
I once took an evening poetry class at Harvard, thinking, wrongly, that
my romantic conceptions of the universe might lead me into worthwhile
poetry. But the son of William Styron ("Darkness Visible") was in the
class. He wrote a poem about a walk in the dark, that contained the
phrase "fallen candelabras of dead leaves", and at that point I knew I
had no hope, and quit the class. I had seen these many times, but never
made the connection with candelabras. Poetry is in the connections you
can make.
> I've noticed a paradox: that sometimes a dense, plodding intellectual
> style eventually enables the mind to get out ahead of others.
> "Thoroughly familiar with those trails already," so to speak.
>
> "The race is not [always] to the swift" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
>
>
>>> Yeah, that's a commonplace. But what do you do with the fabric of
>>> intersecting cause and effect?
>>>
>>>
>> Join my Liars' Club, if you want to learn. I can tell you some great
>> lies, all taken from "The Astrophysical Journal" (ApJ). After Chandra
>> resigned, it went through a period of "inflation".
>>
>> I told my wife about your objections to the severe culling of my
>> books. She guarantees that you will have first choice if we have
>> enough cartons.
>
>
> That sounds like a threat. Especially to those with whom I live. ;-)
>
>
>> Where do you live BTW and do you have a real name? You know my
>> e-mail, as I conceal nothing, except bits of my mind.
>
>
> Massachusetts. You're welcome to visit my Web site:
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/
>
> I have a given name, which I don't conceal. But as for what my real name
> would be, I've never settled on that. There's probably some peyote
> ritual for finding out.
>
So you need to read a little more Northrop.
I used to walk with a clever stick, but it got abandoned by mistake and
never reconstructed. Here is how you make it: get two crutch rubber
ends from a medical supply store, then go to your nearest Japanese
gardener to get a 6'-8' bamboo pole onto which they will fit.
Matter and all disappear over the horizon. Our conection with the
extreme past is only with the fluctuations in the microwave background
(q.v.)
> Thinking: Is an expansion of vacuum at a rate faster than light even
> meaningful? But you say there's no vacuum, so how can "something" go
> faster than light when the laws of physics say it can't?
>
> Nope, you're not linkin' up with my mind at all.
>
>
You're are not thinking of General Relativity, but only of Special
relativity. I cannot recommend a book that will help you, as it is all
so hard. I burned my brains out on this years ago, and still understood
only part of it. You want a book to crush your bookshelves that will
keep you occupied for the rest of your life? Try "Gravitation" by
Misner, et al., written mostly by the husband of my great love.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Richard Feynman said it better (so I read somewhere): "Physics is
>>> like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not
>>> why we do it."
>>>
>> We wrote a parody of the Caltech weekly list of astrophysics meetings
>> and colloquia in which F was called Feyn Dickman, and was listed as
>> the Richard Chaste Olman (really Richard Chace Tolman q.v.) Professor
>> of Physics. He cracked up. It is possible to parody persons a lot
>> smarter than you, and they usually like the attention.
>
>
> Well, it's funny stuff.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I've started collecting Feynman's books. Don't have those
>>> two yet. Enjoyed the movie about his early life, "Infinity"
>>> (1996). Used to see him on PBS from time to time.
>>>
>>>
>> Don't try his "Lectures".
>
>
> I have his Lectures on Gravitation. Also The Character of Physical Law,
> and Surely You're Joking. Haven't read any of those books yet.
>
OK, good books. It's the 3-volume set that I wouldn't wish on an enemy.
The CoPL is a greay boot. You mught supplement it with "Thermodynamics"
by Enrico Fermi, a bit easier, but not lesser.
>
>> He had a love that still makes me cry. She died when he was at Los
>> Alamos; the games they played as she was dying of TB!
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> My wife is not quite at the level of strangling me, which she did
>> about 8 years ago. But I blow with the immediate winds.
>
>
> Take your time.
>
>
jimbat
at last
please delete everythin on which I have no specifically commented in
your reply, as this is getting ridiculous
Norm
> I diddled away 5 days on this, from time to time. "But we'll always
> have Paris." So date references are dubious.
And I respond through the fog of a bug.
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>> In confessional contexts, "inerrancy" is a word with countless
>> nuances. And "infallibility" has a different set of nuances. In some
>> circles, if you believe in infallibility but not inerrancy, you're not
>> good enough. But then for many inerrancy won't do either without
>> sufficient propositional-level literalism, for if the formal and the
>> material diverge too much, what do you have? The next step is into
>> absurdity, but people differ widely on where that threshold is. For
>> the atheist, I suppose that wouldn't be the next step but the first
>> step -- with that word "confessional."
>
>
> Inerrancy has to to with text, and infallibility with the will of God,
> nicht war?
Infallibility in Roman Catholicism applies to the Pope under
certain conditions, in Eastern Orthodoxy to ecclesiastical
councils, and in some forms of Protestantism to the Bible
and the divine operations that many believe gave rise to it.
It's Protestantism that I was talking about, especially
Anglo-American Evangelicalism.
In Protestantism, infallibility places the stress on the
Bible as authoritative for faith and practice or, to put it
another way, for doctrine, morals, and (in the view of many)
worship. Other aspects of infallibility include (a) the idea
that the testimony of the Bible is reliable for salvation;
(b) the idea that the absolutely perfect Holy Spirit speaks
through the Bible; and (c) the idea that the Bible will
achieve its ends without fail.
Inerrancy, on the other hand, places the stress on the
accuracy of the Bible in the autographs, that is, the
original manuscripts which are, so far as anybody knows, not
extant. If that sounds like a bit of legerdemain, well,
yeah, it is. However, it is generally asserted that a
reliable enough text of the Bible can be constructed from
extant manuscripts for the doctrine of inerrancy to have
bite. In many versions of the doctrine of inerrancy,
accuracy is understood to extend well beyond matters of
faith and practice, from historical detail to scientific
detail, the idea being that the Bible in its very words is
the Word of God and God does not lie. However, allowance is
usually made for figures of speech, poetic expression,
approximation (e.g. at 1 Kings 7:23), etc.
Where precisely the line is drawn for allowances is a big
question. Many theologians, scholars, and members of the
clergy have lost their jobs after unwittingly crossing
someone else's line of tolerability. I'm afraid that even
Augustine wouldn't have survived in those circles. According
to his Confessions, he couldn't accept the Bible apart from
allegorical interpretation.
Some Protestants insist upon both infallibility and
inerrancy. See, for example, the International Council on
Biblical Inerrancy (1978):
http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html
By the way, take note also of its statement on biblical
hermeneutics (1982):
http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html
There was a third statement by the ICBI on biblical
application (1986), but I'm not finding it online.
> Guessed wrong. I can deal even with Stalinists, because I'm right and
> they are wrong. When I dropped my Christian Fundamentalism, I dropped
> it utterly. I remember some of the litrary and musical bits, but the
> beliefs vanished immediately.
Beliefs are one thing, attitudes are another -- dogmatism, a
black and white view of the world, a sense of superiority,
attitudes like that. Better to keep the beliefs and drop the
attitudes than to keep the attitudes and drop the beliefs.
>> Believe it or not, there's a framework there that stimulates some
>> people to a lot of inner growth.
>>
> Exactly what does that mean? Greater dependency?
Not usually greater dependency but a recognition of ultimate
dependency is a part of the spirituality of many. However,
that wasn't what I was referring to exactly.
What I meant, in part, was that taking truly seriously a
text that a community regards as sacred drives one deeper
and deeper until one either lapses into one's defects or
subdues them to a true humanity. It is not just what the
text says but how it functions that contributes to
spirituality.
Perhaps you've noticed, I never write about spirituality as
a safe thing.
> [snip]
>> [snip] One of Herbert Hoover's books on lasting peace, I think it was.
>>
> You mean "Hoobert Heever", for which a radio announcer was fired?
The same, although you seem to be recounting some form of an
urban legend.
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/radio/vonzell.htm
>> Of all those mandatory readings, the book that caught my imagination
>> most was Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson (1916).
>>
> Yessss. I can't remember it now, but I think I liked it. My mind was
> elsewhere at the time.
Now I'd've thought Rima to have been just the sort of girl
to have riveted your attention.
>> [Re gantlet, gauntlet]
>> Darn! I 'uz hopin' you just tot me sumpin'. But American Heritage
>> gives both spellin's for each meanin'.
>>
>
> They are wrong.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) also
gives both spellings for each meaning.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives only the
"gauntlet" spelling for the glove, but both spellings for
the sense in "running the gauntlet."
The edition of the OED that I have seems not to have the
second meaning at all under either spelling (or else I'm
suffering from temporary blindness), but gives both
spellings for the glove.
Of course dictionaries can be wrong. But an argument can be
made that if a dictionary spelling is reasonable, then the
dictionary is the authoritative arbiter of that spelling.
The same with definitions. Just by virtue of giving a
hitherto unknown definition or of giving an ambiguous one, a
dictionary gives fleshly clothing to a ghost. (I suspect,
but can't prove, that Merrian-Webster gave flesh to such a
ghost in its definition of the term "pansexual," to cite a
possible instance.) So where is the line to be drawn between
a dictionary's errancy and it's divine-like authority?
> Well, when you wake up with the solution to the biggest mystery of the
> time, and are not living at 221B Baker Street, you must have something,
> right? Not necessarily so. Peter and I biked up from Pasadena to
> Altadena that evening. I apologized for being an obvious idiot. He
> said, "It was good. No one else is even trying to solve the problem.
> And you made me understand that it is a lot harder than most think it
> is." (It hasn't been solved even 30 years later.)
An extremely important insight, which I wish a lot more
people would have about a lot more things.
> [snip]
> I try to eliminatem that problem through editing. A number of my posts
> to you have taken several days, as I have other things to do,
Me too. :-)
Amazing how much time a few simple replies in a conversation
like this take.
> like
> translate Maimonides into Croation for my favorite tennis players.
Karolina Sprem? She's Croatian. I didn't know you know
Croatian. Or was that a figure of speech?
> But now I have a new love: Marina ShaRAPova. I asked my wife if we
> could adopt her, but it seems that she has loving parents.
In a year or so she'll be old enough to adopt you.
> There are
> not enough sufficiently excellent women to go around. I'm sure many
> women feel the same, in their way.
So I've heard.
ObPoly: If the culture were more broadly poly, do you
suppose that complaint would go away?
>> Jesus' own explanation was that bread was symbolic for teaching
>> (Matthew 16:8-12; cf. 14:13-21; 15:32-38; et par.). However, I don't
>> know if that explains away the miracle reports.
>>
>
> Yes, I'm sure something else was meant originally, but the boboes lost it.
Bobo = bourgeois bohemian?
>>> Why was it a miracle for Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding,
>>> when you are a teetotaller, and drink 12 cups of coffee per day?
>>> Naturally my phrasing at the time was more primitive.
>>
>>
>>
>> Jesus was a teetotaler? That wine bibber (Matthew 11:19 = Luke 7:34)?
>> Hmm, I've heard it maintained by some on the basis of flimsy
>> scholarship. Never heard tell of him drinkin' coffee.
>>
> That was all about my mother, a far cry from Jesus, not counting the
> family jewels.
Ah! See, I told you I'm still catching on to your style of
discourse. Even now I don't get the "family jewels" reference.
> I'm not really an American, but a supra-American. When I went to
> Harvard, I thought I'd have all my books in my room, and would just have
> to read them to get my usual straight As. It wasn't so simple,
> especially as I was ambitious in my choice of courses, unlike Katya.
I was ambitious in my choice of courses too, but had the
opposite malady: wanted to find everything written on a
given subject. Not enough time in college or grad school for
that.
> [snip] And what's OCLC?
An organization that keeps a mammoth database of library
catalog records compiled by libraries at first in Ohio, then
around the U.S.A. and Canada, and now from all over the
world. Initially the point was shared cataloging.
IIRC, at first OCLC stood for the Ohio College Library
Center and then OCLC, Inc.; but since everybody kept asking
what OCLC stands for, the answer started being given, Online
Computer Library Center.
Back in the late 60s through early 80s, OCLC terminals were
used for accessing the database.
Nowadays the database is called WorldCat.
> [snip]
>> The sixth century B.C.E. might not have been a bad time to live,
>> except for the Persian threat and tyrants.
>>
>
> And slaves, and Athenian empire and all that. A brutal time.
And now isn't? The human species seems always to have large
amounts of brutality going on in multiple places.
I had been hoping that the 21st century would be different.
> threat???
Just kidding. Actually I'm secretly thrilled. (That "threat"
was about weeded books.)
> The truth can be sexist, and anti-sexism can be a lie.
Hmm, I'm wondering what the meaning of "truth" is in that
statement.
>> What's that expression? "I get my pay from God."
>>
> Is it in dollars, Euros, Dinars, or Drachmas? Maybe it's in "Gimmedat",
> one of my daughter's favorite expressions when she was a little brat,
> which she still is at 32.
Drachmas. Very droll drachmas.
>>> [snip] The next morning Freeman Dyson, father
>>> of Esther, got a note in his mailbox from Oppie: "Nolo contendere."
>
>
>
> And quantum electrodynamic was accepted.
>
>> I picture some longhaired guy swinging from branch to branch.
>
>
> My bonobo self. But I have yet to meet a bonobo who can tear through
> the ApJ as I can.
Frankly I don't recall ever meeting a bonobo. They may be
rarer than readers of The Astrophysical Journal.
>>> Do you know what the "norm" is in statistics?
>>
>>
>>
>> Maximum Operational Resource Matrix?
>>
>> No, not a clue.
>
>
> Typo!!
And I was kidding. :-)
But now I know what I'm building: a MORM.
>> But "norm": "middle item around an ordered ranking"?
What awful wording for a definition! That's what I get for
following another's wording too closely.
> [snip]
>>> But my HS librarian, who I think wanted to tear my pants off after I
>>> got my Harvard scholarship, took all 200 of my SF books that I had
>>> read in secret when I donated them. "Older" women should let
>>> themselves go. I needed them when I was young, but oddly the older I
>>> get the younger the women I want.
Let themselves go to pot? or go in libertine fashion?
>> There's a term I'm considering for my glossary: "jail bait."
>
>
> San Quentin Quail back when I was just growing my pubes.
From your lips to my glossary. Thanks!
>> However, one nice thing about growing older as a male: the range of
>> attractive females grows larger. I don't suppose that's a universal
>> experience; but I do suppose the same is true for many women, mutatis
>> mutandis.
>
>
> This is all very unclear to me, as it appears that the fraction of wives
> who commit physical adultery is about the same as men, the only
> difference in the statistics owing either to male bragging or female
> reticence.
Yes, I've seen stats like those. To account for them in a
different way would require assuming a small number of
highly promiscuous women.
You use the term "physical adultery." As distinguished from?
> I saw a program on our rebellion against Britain this afternoon, in
> which a particularly bloody British general, before he marched off to
> defeat said that he had killed more men and fucked more women than any
> other man in America. We got the SOB. This was in the Carolinas.
I saw that too. Don't remember the name. Was it Clinton?
> Germans, part of my ancestry (came over in 1847, up the Mississippi to
> Iowa), have a fear of the dark peoples of the East. However, had you a
> chance to wathch ShaRAPova trounce Serena Willians on Saturday, you
> might have felt a desire to ride with the Rohirrim: such a gorgeous
> blonde. And she was sick unto death and still won the championsip. She
> will be a hero of mine for life. Perhaps this fear comes from the Mongols.
You mean 1241 "and all that," when all Europe lay open to
the Mongol "hordes," but they turned back in Silesia?
However, "Mongols" hardly equates with "Jews."
> My daughter seems as wild as I was in my 20s, but I can't penetrate her
> mind completely, but my son has had a weakness for bimbos like I had for
> his mother: what melted my integrity? "Oh hell, you're just horney", and
> she was right. But now he is telling me that he wants to marry an
> English teacher. I didn't ask many questions, because that has led to
> large ruptures in the past. At least he said that she was trying to
> improve his English, about which I have verbally chastised him since he
> was 8, and he now admits I was right. He's 36, but I told him that he's
> too young to get married; I got a protest. I think I have an agreement
> to meet her, if I pay the plane fare.
So you do care!
> I have no friends in Hollywood or NY, and no tolerance for rejection.
> Probably that arises from my childhood kidnapping, and all my
> disruptions in school.
A long-lasting, unceasing concatenation of rejections led to
my darkest "dark night of the soul." Five years later I'm
still recovering.
But as for publishers' rejections, fortunately they can be
bypassed nowadays. Just post.
> I was appalled at myself. Since I was a wee boy, I always thought I was
> totally accepting of other races and ethnicities (except that I can't
> sing or dance), and proved it by getting many disciplinary procedures in
> school. But when you dig down into your inner thoughts, sometimes you
> find things you don't like.
If everyone with disturbing thoughts refused to publish,
there'd be nothing to read. What you do with such thoughts
is what counts.
I expect that thoughts of that ilk have many sources, for
instance, irrational associations, parental attitudes, and
societal pathologies that play themselves out in our souls.
> But I limit myself too much out of an
> extreme sensitivity to my weaknesses. Back in the mid 60s, when it was
> still possible, my first wife and I went to black supper clubs, were
> practically the only whites there, and danced like demons: there were no
> set moves to follow. She got propositioned about 20 times an evening,
> which she liked very much.
>
> I could not characterize the Hydran Commander and his romance with a
> woman who was the brightest physicist on Earth, modelled on a friend of
> mine, in any way that I could live with. I went cold in trying to write
> it. Of course it was I who wanted to make love with her, and this
> Hydran didn't fit into my feelings.
There's always the writer's analogy to method acting: ground
the character in your own feelings, make him some aspect of
yourself. Why not? Make the process an homage to Marlon
Brando, if you like.
>> I've had similar closenesses, but was fortunate enough to have grown
>> up in a family environment mostly free of detectable racism -- if
>> there is such an environment.
>
>
> You can get close, but no one is totally free. It's genetic.
Yeah, in the sense that there are physical differences
between people, differences that reflect lineage. But I
don't believe that either racism or, more generally,
groupism is genetic.
> [snip]
> Boorstin said, "OK. you have a car and have blown an engine, so please
> come with me, and tell me what you think." I said, "You bet, but I'm
> not a real expert." It was a good car, and he was never dissatisfied
> with it to my knowledge, and he got a break in the price. He vanished
> from my radar screen when I went off to grad school and he wanted to
> work with a famous architect (Eales? Eaves?) - I lost the name - the
> archictect (now dead) is so famous among the in crowd but I can't fathom
> his work, as my artistic sensibiliteis are back in Cuneiform times.
Perhaps Charles or Ray Eames?
>> [snip]
>> I find hermeneutics both a tough discipline and liberating, though I
>> expect that few would understand the liberating aspect. It's one of my
>> fields of keen interest.
>>
>
> To me the feelings come first, not disquisitions on uncertain propositions.
Yeah, but feelings lack both intellectual content and, in
and of themselves, the challenge of integrating heart and
mind. When it comes to the canons of sacred communities,
there's often a great historical richness with which to
interact.
>> Came across a beautiful old edition of the works of George Eliot in a
>> bookshop yesterday for $250. Gilt upper edge. Too much for my budget,
>> though.
>>
>
> Well, if you have to ask the price you can't afford it.
I have to ask.
Actually I didn't. It took me several minutes to find the
price inside of one of the covers.
> I get most of
> my books from Hamilton Books remaindered books. It's amazing what you
> can find. Mostly I buy them for presents, as I have no further shelf
> space. I'm not sure how much this endeares me to friends and relatives,
> as folks are much more polite after having passed through humanism.
Huh?
When I was selling books door to door in Arkansas not very
successfully decades ago, some of the politest people I came
across were Jehovah's Witnesses. Perhaps they knew what it
was like.
> [snip]
> No cnxn with GE. You lost what I was referring to.
Now I'm even more lost. But no matter.
> What was called the Fish Tank at Duke, though he wound up at U Chi for
> no reason I can apprehend, except that he must have been into bring in
> cash. At Hopkins you can't even keep a tenured professorship, unless
> you bring in cash. They have their ways...
>
> Fish made such a fool of himself when he fell hard for the Sokal parody
> (q.v.):
>
> Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics ...
> www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
Silliness!
> I thought that would have finished Fish's career in an honest academic
> field. But it didn't prove that academic English is an honest
> profession, except among the very few like Harold Bloom.
>
>>
>> No, those thoughts were independent of reader-response theory. I'm
>> still a hold-out from an earlier age when authorial intent mattered;
>> although, in my view, so does the text and so does the targeted
>> audience and so does the actual reader.
>>
> None of this is clear to me. I don't think most authors have an intent
> (I don't, I hope),
Let's just say they intended to mean this and not that.
But maybe I know what you mean. Something like an intent to
prevail? an unstated agenda?
> the text is something for sharks to fight over,
Shredding, blood in the water, frenzy.
BTW, a couple of years ago a close relative of mine was
charged by a lemon shark off of a Cape Cod jetty (where I
have often snorkled). He had to shoot it using a speargun.
The spear bounced off; but, fortunately, the shark was deterred.
The shark was apparently going after my relative's fish catch.
> and I
> can't conceive of a targeted audience.
Whoever you envision you're writing to. If you write to your
children, they're your targeted audience. If they share what
you said to them with a friend, the friend is part of the
audience, but not the targeted audience.
> Anybody who reads a book of mine
> and doesn't try to hunt me down in the night is a friend.
More ambiguity! :-)
>> Of course intent is intangible and ultimately beyond reach. Scares
>> scholars. But that's the point. It's supposed to be beyond reach. They
>> want to objectify the humanities. But *humanity* is not so susceptible
>> to objectification, and it permeates the *humanities*.
>>
>>
> When you are dealing with Patricia Cornwell or Ken Follett, you know the
> intent of the author, but we aren't talking of those books, are we?
> Actually, we can tell a bit of Shakepeare's and Eliot's intents, but
> they were moralistic writers, engendering our way of thinking. Reading
> Highsmith's books leaves me a bit adrift.
Patricia Highsmith, author of those Ripley novels?
I've seen the two Ripley movies. They do seem to be the
opposite of morality tales, except for the barrenness of the
landscape of Ripley's personality. A life about getting what
one wants isn't much of a life.
> My experience with real gambling. I had to play poker on my year out
> from Harvard to make the spending money my step-father fefused to give
> me, though he had been berating me for years for going to Harvard and
> not the U of AK (Fbx) = UAF, now.
Hard to know where to draw the line with grown kids.
Establishing some financial barriers is important.
Parent/child finances tend to be fungible during the college
years -- i.e. everything the young adult spends eventually
affects the parents' bank account. So brakes are needed to
prevent the drain.
>> I should learn to play poker someday. It's one of those things I never
>> picked up along the way. Can't imagine when there wouldn't be
>> something else I'd rather be doing, though.
>>
>
> 3-card draw poker is Soooo easy. Fold quickly: don't think a pair of
> 10s is going to get you the pot. When you have a straight or a flush,
> make some temtative bets, pretending that you really have nothing.
> Sometimes everyone drops out, even those with full-houses. If you have
> a big hand, throw down a big bet; only the morons will continue. That
> is, unless you are playing real poker players. Stay within your limits.
> Bluff at most once a night, else someone will always call you. When
> you have smashed the table with a couple of big hands, only a real
> player will challenge a bluff, based on your involuntary body signals.
That was fun! Now I don't have to play poker. ;-)
> I don't play other varieties of poker an they are too chancy, and
> require the counting of cards, as in bridge,
Not the counting-cards kind of a brain? I'm certainly not.
>>>> Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
>>>> registered the decryption.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Are you Siamese, if you please?
>>
>>
>>
>> Does not compute.
>>
>>
> It's a disgusting song.
"We Are Siamese If You Please" from Disney's "Lady And The
Tramp"?
If so, still doesn't compute.
>> My main gripe with marked up books isn't that they're marked up, it's
>> that they're stupidly marked up. As far as I'm concerned, intelligent
>> marginalia is a big plus, all the more so when one reader is
>> responding to a former reader.
>>
> Exactly.
Excellent!
>>> The Hubble constant is not a constant.
>>
>>
> And it is in different units than the speed of light: cm/sec, vs
> (km/sec)/Mpc (Mpc = megaparsec), so they connot be compared.
Ah, the light bulb goes on! In one corner of a dark room.
But I don't see that my problem is solved. We're still
talking about the separation of matter at greater than the
speed of light. Is cosmic separation somehow different from
travel?
> Questions are either for fools or thinkers, depending on how they are
> phrased.
I prefer the librarians' cliché, at least with regard to
honest questions. I'm not much for elitism, although in
practice I may be more elitist than I imagine. There are not
many people to whom I can say some of the things I say here.
>> Don't potato chips have something to do with string theory (which I
>> don't understand at all, except for there being more to the universe)?
>> Ack, belay that question.
>>
>
> On belay! With my anchors, you will never fall.
>
> You may be thinking of D-branes to which superstrings may be anchored.
Yes! Although I think I misheard "membranes." :-)
> I
> do not know this math, though I once attempted it 40 years ago, it has
> to do with inner and outer operations on manifolds in Hausdorff spaces
> in a variety of dimensions (9-11?),
Oh dear! I almost understood that.
> as my limited brains now understand
> it.
Funny.
> There are only a few folks in the world who can keep up with this
> shit, and they work on it day and night to the detriment of their families.
I used to try to be out front in certain rapidly moving
fields, but decided the effort wasn't worth it. Now (to mix
metaphors) I aim at slower moving targets.
> I have news for you. Neither PBS nor DSC/SCI channels are a good way to
> learn about cosmology or planetary science. The first is infected with
> catastrophic misunderstanding, the latter with the Sagan virus. They
> are the best channels on TV for these two subjects, but the best
> education for you would be to sit on my couch and hear me scream the
> truth at them. My wife can put up with only a little of it.
Hehe! No kidding. But those PBS science programs are a
welcome diversion from my usual intellectual fare. And I'm
somewhat immune to catastrophism (or did you mean something
else?). Less so to the Sagan virus, but not completely
vulnerable.
>> Okay, but you leave me mystified as to the meaning of your original
>> comment.
>>
> The Universe has no time limit.
You were the one who wrote, "it [our hypothetical telescope]
will see the Death of the Universe."
Now I'm a bit surprised at your "no time limit" comment. Why
do you think that?
>> Without stupid comments, how would we ever get to intelligent ones?
>> Well, I suppose that's truer of questions than of comments. However,
>> it's one of those librarian clichés that there's no such thing as a
>> stupid question.
>>
> Are they ever wrong. I ber I could get my son's librarian gf to give me
> over one stupid question a minute, unless I talked too long.
Theological seminary student: "Where do I find the book of
Genesis?"
Third-year grad student: "Where's the downstairs to the
library?"
> I once took an evening poetry class at Harvard, thinking, wrongly, that
> my romantic conceptions of the universe might lead me into worthwhile
> poetry. But the son of William Styron ("Darkness Visible") was in the
> class. He wrote a poem about a walk in the dark, that contained the
> phrase "fallen candelabras of dead leaves", and at that point I knew I
> had no hope, and quit the class. I had seen these many times, but never
> made the connection with candelabras. Poetry is in the connections you
> can make.
No, it's in the connections You make. And connections are
only part of the process.
I do like his phrase: "fallen candelabras of dead leaves."
Here you weren't oversensitive to your own weaknesses. You
imagined weakness by comparison, which was instead of
finding your own authentic voice.
>> Massachusetts. You're welcome to visit my Web site:
>>
>> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/
>>
>> I have a given name, which I don't conceal. But as for what my real
>> name would be, I've never settled on that. There's probably some
>> peyote ritual for finding out.
>>
>
> So you need to read a little more Northrop.
Actually I read a little more of Northrop today, while
waiting for a mechanic.
> I used to walk with a clever stick, but it got abandoned by mistake and
> never reconstructed. Here is how you make it: get two crutch rubber
> ends from a medical supply store, then go to your nearest Japanese
> gardener to get a 6'-8' bamboo pole onto which they will fit.
I have a nifty rubber end for a walking stick, but it
doesn't fit any of mine. On the upper end of a couple of my
sticks, I have an orange kerchief, good for dipping into a
cool stream and then wiping across a sweaty forehead, also
for letting hunters know I'm not game.
I'm very particular about my walking sticks. Will generally
use only fallen wood for them, preferably beaver felled.
> Matter and all disappear over the horizon. Our conection with the
> extreme past is only with the fluctuations in the microwave background
> (q.v.)
What makes the horizon?
>> Thinking: Is an expansion of vacuum at a rate faster than light even
>> meaningful? But you say there's no vacuum, so how can "something" go
>> faster than light when the laws of physics say it can't?
>>
>> Nope, you're not linkin' up with my mind at all.
>>
>>
> You're are not thinking of General Relativity, but only of Special
> relativity.
Hey, that's pretty good! At least my cosmology's up to 1905
(sort of). I was beginning to fear it was actually stuck
back with the presocratics, whom I systematically studied
and much enjoyed in college -- although they were often more
tantalizing than revealing.
So bring me up to 1916. How's general relativity relevant to
my question?
> I cannot recommend a book that will help you, as it is all
> so hard. I burned my brains out on this years ago, and still understood
> only part of it. You want a book to crush your bookshelves that will
> keep you occupied for the rest of your life? Try "Gravitation" by
> Misner, et al., written mostly by the husband of my great love.
Sounds like the book must've been his long-time mistress.
>> [About Richard Feynman]
>> I have his Lectures on Gravitation. Also The Character of Physical
>> Law, and Surely You're Joking. Haven't read any of those books yet.
>>
> OK, good books. It's the 3-volume set that I wouldn't wish on an enemy.
> The CoPL is a greay boot. You mught supplement it with "Thermodynamics"
> by Enrico Fermi, a bit easier, but not lesser.
greay boot = great book?
Will have to look for Fermi. (I avoid buying books retail.)
>> Take your time.
>>
>>
>
> jimbat
> at last
> please delete everythin on which I have no specifically commented in
> your reply, as this is getting ridiculous
I keep deleting oodles and oodles and yet ...
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
sandwiches, Jamaican food, and pasta.
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> I diddled away 5 days on this, from time to time. "But we'll always
>> have Paris." So date references are dubious.
Of all the gin joints in the world how did you stumble into mine?
>
>
> And I respond through the fog of a bug.
My arthropods don't seem to be in a fog, just a bit desperate from time
to time, as when they try to crawl out of my basement 1/2-bath sink.
When we had Katya, she always seemed to be able to rescue them. My
efforts are half-hearted, as I believe in Darwin (darwinawards.com), and
they are slippery devils.
Oh, you have a parasite. Get a voodoo priestess! We met one in NO, but
we wanted her to put another woman in our power, but she said, "Do you
have some of her hair?" "No." "Then I can't help you."
>
>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>>> In confessional contexts, "inerrancy" is a word with countless
>>> nuances. And "infallibility" has a different set of nuances. In some
>>> circles, if you believe in infallibility but not inerrancy, you're
>>> not good enough. But then for many inerrancy won't do either without
>>> sufficient propositional-level literalism, for if the formal and the
>>> material diverge too much, what do you have? The next step is into
>>> absurdity, but people differ widely on where that threshold is. For
>>> the atheist, I suppose that wouldn't be the next step but the first
>>> step -- with that word "confessional."
>>
>>
Now I understand your text above better. I've never been to confession,
except when I confess to my wife late at night that I have embellished a
story. But what fun is there in life if you can't embellish a story?
Day-to-day life is very boring in the telling. Yes, I walked the dog
and he smelled everything and then took a poop, etc. A young woman
acted as if she wanted to grab the family jewels - an embellishment.
Actually I don't think what you said above actually means anything.
>>
>> Inerrancy has to to with text, and infallibility with the will of God,
>> nicht war?
>
>
> Infallibility in Roman Catholicism applies to the Pope under certain
> conditions, in Eastern Orthodoxy to ecclesiastical councils, and in some
> forms of Protestantism to the Bible and the divine operations that many
> believe gave rise to it. It's Protestantism that I was talking about,
> especially Anglo-American Evangelicalism.
Papal Bull.... and what is it called among the doubting Thomases of the
East?
>
> In Protestantism, infallibility places the stress on the Bible as
> authoritative for faith and practice or, to put it another way, for
> doctrine, morals, and (in the view of many) worship. Other aspects of
> infallibility include (a) the idea that the testimony of the Bible is
> reliable for salvation; (b) the idea that the absolutely perfect Holy
> Spirit speaks through the Bible; and (c) the idea that the Bible will
> achieve its ends without fail.
Am I unknowingly corresponding with Elaine Pagels? If so, come forward,
and let me express my regrets for the death of Heinz, a man I much
admired, not as creative as some, but a great teacher, and obviously
didn't need Viagra.
It's taken me a while to get over the idea that you are a grad student
but actually believe this stuff.
>
> Inerrancy, on the other hand, places the stress on the accuracy of the
> Bible in the autographs, that is, the original manuscripts which are, so
> far as anybody knows, not extant. If that sounds like a bit of
> legerdemain, well, yeah, it is. However, it is generally asserted that a
> reliable enough text of the Bible can be constructed from extant
> manuscripts for the doctrine of inerrancy to have bite. In many versions
> of the doctrine of inerrancy, accuracy is understood to extend well
> beyond matters of faith and practice, from historical detail to
> scientific detail, the idea being that the Bible in its very words is
> the Word of God and God does not lie. However, allowance is usually made
> for figures of speech, poetic expression, approximation (e.g. at 1 Kings
> 7:23), etc.
When my wife succeeds in getting our bookcases cleaned out many other
things will not be extant either. I gave her a run-down of her own and
what would have to go, so she has pulled in her horns a bit. You get
first fibs, but it may not be worth your whila, and as you say may make
you enemies.
Since I've been writing to you (does anyone else read this shit? If so
please say "Hi"), I've been keeping my de minimus KJV by the computer.
In metric, 180 x 85 x 13 mm. Your reference to Kings does not compute
for me. I'll bet our cubits differ very much, as I joke about my being
an achondroplastic dwarf. I can wear children's shoes and LL Bean
long-sleeve shirts seem as if they were meant for giants. Yet I'm 5'6"
owing to my torso. My mother is much the same.
>
> Where precisely the line is drawn for allowances is a big question. Many
> theologians, scholars, and members of the clergy have lost their jobs
> after unwittingly crossing someone else's line of tolerability. I'm
> afraid that even Augustine wouldn't have survived in those circles.
> According to his Confessions, he couldn't accept the Bible apart from
> allegorical interpretation.
Well, Augustine had given up his libertinism. Was he who is reputed to
have said, "Yes, Lord, I will adopt celebacy, but just not now."? His
"City of God" was a disaster for the West.
>
> Some Protestants insist upon both infallibility and inerrancy. See, for
> example, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (1978):
>
> http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html
I think you nailed it. I was confusing the "inerrancy" that I was
taught at 17 in freshman philosophy with the "infallibility" that was
drilled into me as a kid when I was supposed to be a fundamentalist
Christian. You need to have a consistent POV on the meaning of the two
words, which I do not. And frankly I do not care, as I consider both
concepts to be at variance with thought and the universe.
>
> By the way, take note also of its statement on biblical hermeneutics
> (1982):
>
> http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html
>
> There was a third statement by the ICBI on biblical application (1986),
> but I'm not finding it online.
>
>
To me the Bible is a fun and scary read (like a coaster), but means
little else. I have a pic of me on The Mean Streak, a wooden coaster
that will take your fillings out.
What's the word for "last days"?
>> Guessed wrong. I can deal even with Stalinists, because I'm right and
>> they are wrong. When I dropped my Christian Fundamentalism, I dropped
>> it utterly. I remember some of the literary and musical bits, but the
>> beliefs vanished immediately.
>
>
> Beliefs are one thing, attitudes are another -- dogmatism, a black and
> white view of the world, a sense of superiority, attitudes like that.
> Better to keep the beliefs and drop the attitudes than to keep the
> attitudes and drop the beliefs.
>
Not when you are right. Why be a mushy wrong? This is why I think you
are so curius about my thinking - because I have a firm defensible
philosophical position in opposition to yours. Sorry about that, but
not even the KGB could crack me.
[I scored a major coup this morning (Friday). My wife of 22 years is no
one's fool and can usually see through one of my japes in 1-2 seconds.
(After having been through a few of my Calif. desert Easter-egg hunts,
she can usually do those pretty fast now.) But I was cleverer than usual
today. Our NY Times usually arrives about 5 am, but today it hadn't
come by the time she left for work at 7 and not even after I arose from
my nap at 10. I called them, and they told me there had been a
"production problem" - odd - and we would get our paper tomorrow. So I
called my wife and left voice mail - she's usually in meetings - to that
effect with the embellishment that a virus had infected their Virginia
computer at their mid-Atlantic printing facility that made the paper
come out in Arabic. After finally getting my voice mail, she was about
to warn her security folks at the Space Telescope about this new
diabolical virus, when she thought it might be best to check with the
Source first. She was relieved. One woman believed her.]
>
>>> Believe it or not, there's a framework there that stimulates some
>>> people to a lot of inner growth.
>>>
>> Exactly what does that mean? Greater dependency?
>
>
> Not usually greater dependency but a recognition of ultimate dependency
> is a part of the spirituality of many. However, that wasn't what I was
> referring to exactly.
>
> What I meant, in part, was that taking truly seriously a text that a
> community regards as sacred drives one deeper and deeper until one
> either lapses into one's defects or subdues them to a true humanity. It
> is not just what the text says but how it functions that contributes to
> spirituality.
>
> Perhaps you've noticed, I never write about spirituality as a safe thing.
>
Not a bad explanation. A deep text can lead one slowly into a better
understanding of the constellation of things, but it's better if it hits
you in a flash, as that is the formative experience.
As for the term spirituality, I have argued by mail at length with a
woman, whom my wife and I almost caught as a lover, that "spirituality"
implies the existence of a "spirit", which cannot exist. That hurt our
relationship, but I mean to try her again. She's 5'11" and she and I
know what each other is thinking before anything is said.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> [snip] One of Herbert Hoover's books on lasting peace, I think it was.
>>>
>> You mean "Hoobert Heever", for which a radio announcer was fired?
>
>
> The same, although you seem to be recounting some form of an urban legend.
>
> http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/radio/vonzell.htm
Well, that's damed good to know! But how about the poor announcer who
cried when the Hindenburg burned, and was fired? BTW, the disaster is
wrongly blamed on Hydrogen (we refused to sell Helium to the Nazis).
The fault was with the fabric cover that picked up static electricity,
so that the dirigible would have gone down in any case - at least that
is my understanding from an analysis I read some time ago.
>
>
>>> Of all those mandatory readings, the book that caught my imagination
>>> most was Green Mansions, by W. H. Hudson (1916).
>>>
>> Yessss. I can't remember it now, but I think I liked it. My mind was
>> elsewhere at the time.
>
>
> Now I'd've thought Rima to have been just the sort of girl to have
> riveted your attention.
Not exactly. but close. My mind was then focussed on brilliant girls,
no matter their looks. In 5th grade I hit 12.9 (12th grade - 9th month)
- the highest possible score - on my achievement test. A 5th grade girl
in another class hit 11.7, and there was a huge gap below us as I
discovered by rifling teachers' desks. So we made plans to run off
together. But one day she just vanished, and I never heard from her
again. She certainly wasn't the cutest girl in 5th grade. But we had
our plans....
>
>
>>> [Re gantlet, gauntlet]
>>> Darn! I 'uz hopin' you just tot me sumpin'. But American Heritage
>>> gives both spellin's for each meanin'.
>>>
>>
>> They are wrong.
>
I DID tot you sumpin'.
>
> Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) also gives both
> spellings for each meaning.
>
That is the problem with letting illiterates determine English spelling
and usage. I am prescriptive, not descriptive, and so should you be as
a scholar. As Jesus, I'd drive you out of the temple. Anyone who uses
a Mirriam-Webster dictionary needs to spend 40 days in the wilderness
hoping that the stones will turn into (Wonder) bread. I was given one
as a child, but it took me on one too many circular definition loops, so
I burned it in our backyard 55-gal drum (not legal anymore even in
Fairbanks).
> Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives only the "gauntlet"
> spelling for the glove, but both spellings for the sense in "running the
> gauntlet."
You run the gantlet, there is nothing else: get your brain on the road.
The gauntlet is the metal glove. Since neither phenomena is of any
use, let's forget about it, just so long as you have learned some
English, and make use of it, and change dictionaries. Anything with
"Mirriam" on it is a no-no, but Webster's can be OK if it's a makeover
of someone else's work. My "Webster's Unabridged Encyclopedic
Dictionary" containe an egregious error right on it's cover, as it say
it has 200,000 entries, and everyone knows that English has over 500,000
words. My tendinitis makes it hard to pick up.
>
> The edition of the OED that I have seems not to have the second meaning
> at all under either spelling (or else I'm suffering from temporary
> blindness), but gives both spellings for the glove.
>
> Of course dictionaries can be wrong. But an argument can be made that if
> a dictionary spelling is reasonable, then the dictionary is the
> authoritative arbiter of that spelling. The same with definitions. Just
> by virtue of giving a hitherto unknown definition or of giving an
> ambiguous one, a dictionary gives fleshly clothing to a ghost. (I
> suspect, but can't prove, that Merrian-Webster gave flesh to such a
> ghost in its definition of the term "pansexual," to cite a possible
> instance.) So where is the line to be drawn between a dictionary's
> errancy and it's divine-like authority?
>
Maid Merrian? Spellings and meanings should be distinct, though not
pronunciations, as we have such a monster vocabulary in English. There
is no reason to fuck it up. We have been given a gift, so why pee on
it? Be superior to dictionaries, as I am to the ApJ. Truth is superior
to the written word.
>
>> Well, when you wake up with the solution to the biggest mystery of the
>> time, and are not living at 221B Baker Street, you must have
>> something, right? Not necessarily so. Peter and I biked up from
>> Pasadena to Altadena that evening. I apologized for being an obvious
>> idiot. He said, "It was good. No one else is even trying to solve
>> the problem. And you made me understand that it is a lot harder than
>> most think it is." (It hasn't been solved even 30 years later.)
>
>
> An extremely important insight, which I wish a lot more people would
> have about a lot more things.
>
>
I have to consult my very funny Israeli asytrophysicist at U Chi who is
an expert on jets. Some think that jets very early in the universe from
massive stars' collapsing then (you downloaded the images of the
galaxies from the UDS) into black holes is the answer to the problem.
Mebbee. They are isotropic on the cosmic sky, so they either had to be
nearby or vastly distant.
When the DoD first declassified these detections, as the DoD realized
they didn't come from Soviet space nuclear explosions, I looked at the
numbers and said to myself that night, "No way, Jose, there's not that
much energy for them to be at cosmological distances." So I concocted
an idea based on nearby neutron stars, which could be nearly isotropic.
So now some - and not stupid persons, as I know them - think that
highly beamed radiation (jets) can resolve the energy problem. I never
mastered jets, so I have to consult my friend.
It was this contradiction, which I called to the atention of my thesis
advisor, that stumped him. I saw a program on DSC/Sci a while back on
them that was alomst incorrect from start to finish.
>> [snip]
>> I try to eliminatem that problem through editing. A number of my
>> posts to you have taken several days, as I have other things to do,
>
>
> Me too. :-)
>
> Amazing how much time a few simple replies in a conversation like this
> take.
>
>
>> like translate Maimonides into Croation for my favorite tennis players.
>
>
> Karolina Sprem? She's Croatian. I didn't know you know Croatian. Or was
> that a figure of speech?
>
>
Yes, Sprem is my personal assistant. On the highest level: the
anti-Venus. The thighs! C'mon, I'm fooling too much. Translate
Maimonides into Croatian, a Christian country? I might sell one copy to
a library. I can make more money on one day on the stock market.
>> But now I have a new love: Marina ShaRAPova. I asked my wife if we
>> could adopt her, but it seems that she has loving parents.
>
>
> In a year or so she'll be old enough to adopt you.
>
Bless you for this wonderful idea! Oh, dear, another boss?? She'll
have to work out a deal with my wife.
>> There are not enough sufficiently excellent women to go around. I'm
>> sure many women feel the same, in their way.
>
>
> So I've heard.
>
> ObPoly: If the culture were more broadly poly, do you suppose that
> complaint would go away?
Yes, folks are too paranoid about trying something different, both
across age and across sexes. But maybe I'm just shy, since the latest
statistics indicate that 40% of married women have flings. As James
Bond used to say, I can hold up the British end.
And there are all these damned "romantic" stories in books, on TV, in
movies where one lover competes with another. Why don't they just relax
and cooperate? My wife had a total shit-fit when Katya came along, but
then settled into it with a lot more enthusiasm than I expected.
>
>
>>> Jesus' own explanation was that bread was symbolic for teaching
>>> (Matthew 16:8-12; cf. 14:13-21; 15:32-38; et par.). However, I don't
>>> know if that explains away the miracle reports.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, I'm sure something else was meant originally, but the boboes lost
>> it.
>
>
> Bobo = bourgeois bohemian?
>
Perhaps an Alaskan term. We used it for people who thought they knew
something but didn't. I know a few Alaskans to whom it still applies,
but that's on a different newsgroup, rec.backcountry.
I never passed out bread in class, as I thouhht it led to inattention,
whereas spread legs in the front row led to even more inattention. It
is hard to concentrate on Sumerian and Babylonian astronomy, or the
freezing out of forces in the early universe when you know that juices
are flowing just 15' from you.
>
>>>> Why was it a miracle for Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding,
>>>> when you are a teetotaller, and drink 12 cups of coffee per day?
>>>> Naturally my phrasing at the time was more primitive.
>>>
>>>
>>> Jesus was a teetotaler? That wine bibber (Matthew 11:19 = Luke 7:34)?
>>> Hmm, I've heard it maintained by some on the basis of flimsy
>>> scholarship. Never heard tell of him drinkin' coffee.
>>>
Or absinthe. (Picasso - "The Absinthe Drinker" - which depressed me for
a whole day until I got to "Eat First" in DC, which has food to die for)
My comment was a little off the wall. I bow to your superior
scholarship. Even at 62, I'm still willing to learn, but not to study -
so just tell me the truth.
>> That was all about my mother, a far cry from Jesus, not counting the
>> family jewels.
>
>
> Ah! See, I told you I'm still catching on to your style of discourse.
> Even now I don't get the "family jewels" reference.
>
Think back to an early episode of NYPD Blue when Dtv. Sipowicz said to
the prosecutor he was later to marry, grabbing his balls and saying,
"Ipso this!". She had said in court "Ipso res" (the thing speaks for
itself) and won. Latin is marvellous. So those are the family jewels.
In my case some lustre has gone out after my 1st wife and I agreed that
with a boy and a girl we had replaced ourselves, and I got a free
vasectomy in 1972.
>
>> I'm not really an American, but a supra-American. When I went to
>> Harvard, I thought I'd have all my books in my room, and would just
>> have to read them to get my usual straight As. It wasn't so simple,
>> especially as I was ambitious in my choice of courses, unlike Katya.
>
>
> I was ambitious in my choice of courses too, but had the opposite
> malady: wanted to find everything written on a given subject. Not enough
> time in college or grad school for that.
>
Well now, all I wantd was the knowledge to solve specific problems
correctly, as most "knowledge" is BS. Real knowledge arises from the
correct solution of specific problems, not from wool-gathering. The
latter crime I could convict many professors for wasting our tax dollars on.
>
>> [snip] And what's OCLC?
>
>
> An organization that keeps a mammoth database of library catalog records
> compiled by libraries at first in Ohio, then around the U.S.A. and
> Canada, and now from all over the world. Initially the point was shared
> cataloging.
>
> IIRC, at first OCLC stood for the Ohio College Library Center and then
> OCLC, Inc.; but since everybody kept asking what OCLC stands for, the
> answer started being given, Online Computer Library Center.
>
> Back in the late 60s through early 80s, OCLC terminals were used for
> accessing the database.
>
> Nowadays the database is called WorldCat.
>
> http://www.oclc.org/
>
Thanks! OK, so what's IIRC? It's not a NASA acronym like OJWJFU (Oh
Jesus we just fucked up).
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> The sixth century B.C.E. might not have been a bad time to live,
>>> except for the Persian threat and tyrants.
>>>
>>
>> And slaves, and Athenian empire and all that. A brutal time.
>
>
> And now isn't? The human species seems always to have large amounts of
> brutality going on in multiple places.
>
My wife and I live in a 3-story townhouse, "governed" by an Association
of self-important persons we don't want to have anything to do with. As
I said to a neighbor before he and his wife moved out to fancier digs
(too much money - which they should have invested instead), "I'd rather
have six persons in black suits on my doorstep than two persons from the
Association." "Why do you think we are moving?"
But the worst danger in the neighborhood is the Balto City Police. My
wife has told me not even to go out after 10 pm as they have a thing for
old guys in white beards = automatic derelicts. I'm going to have to
write off to get cards from my UW astronomy department, UCLA, and the
Space Telescope, as my two encounters with cops when I was doing nothing
wrong, walking my dog at night, have shown me that they prejudge you and
do not believe who you say you are. I was once thrown into jail, with a
judgement by the magistrate that I was "A danger to the community" so
should not be released on OR, so my wife had to hock the house for my
bail. So gather your cards together now when it is easier. We are not
discussing Aristotle here.
> I had been hoping that the 21st century would be different.
>
It gets worse. Remember Comus? (communications US) Think of a new
movie for a clue.
>
>> threat???
>
>
> Just kidding. Actually I'm secretly thrilled. (That "threat" was about
> weeded books.)
>
>
>> The truth can be sexist, and anti-sexism can be a lie.
>
>
> Hmm, I'm wondering what the meaning of "truth" is in that statement.
>
>
Pilate: "What is truth?" Salome: "What is a man's head?"
>>> What's that expression? "I get my pay from God."
>>>
>> Is it in dollars, Euros, Dinars, or Drachmas? Maybe it's in
>> "Gimmedat", one of my daughter's favorite expressions when she was a
>> little brat, which she still is at 32.
>
>
> Drachmas. Very droll drachmas.
>
If they get their shit built, and can protect visitors who have paid
their life savings.
>
>>>> [snip] The next morning Freeman Dyson, father
>>>> of Esther, got a note in his mailbox from Oppie: "Nolo contendere."
>>
>> And quantum electrodynamic was accepted.
>>
>
>>> I picture some longhaired guy swinging from branch to branch.
>>
>>
>>
>> My bonobo self. But I have yet to meet a bonobo who can tear through
>> the ApJ as I can.
>
>
> Frankly I don't recall ever meeting a bonobo. They may be rarer than
> readers of The Astrophysical Journal.
There is a book "Bonobo" by Frans de Waal (q.v.). Most excellent. But
it is missing important info, which I asked him directly: bonobo
strength, as Pan troglodytes is notoriously strong. Bonobos are
trivially classified as Pan paniscus. Bonobos are not howling,
screaming predators in the forest like Pt. Yet I knew that they must be
strong, even if they spent much of their time fucking: F-F. He told me a
story of a male bonobo who had developed a grudge against a caretaker
weighing about 220 lb. He said that the male bonobo just walked
alongside the caretaker, and with his right arm grabbed his neck and
just lifted him off the ground for some yards and then rejoined the
group. Bonobos are much more civilized than we are. They are the
closest to us in variety of behavior.
There are readers and there are "readers". Astrophysicists don't take
the ApJ any more, since you get it on line if you pay the sub. I've
thrown all mine out, but still have a bunch of AJs and PASPs. My wife
is warning me about them.
>
>
>>>> Do you know what the "norm" is in statistics?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Maximum Operational Resource Matrix?
>>>
>>> No, not a clue.
>>
>>
>>
>> Typo!!
>
>
> And I was kidding. :-)
>
> But now I know what I'm building: a MORM.
>
>
It's a new career for you. Don't say that I ever left you in drydock.
>>> But "norm": "middle item around an ordered ranking"?
>
>
> What awful wording for a definition! That's what I get for following
> another's wording too closely.
>
In statistics there is no good word for norm. If you have a Gaussian
distribution, it's the number that defines the peak. Otherwise, there
is median, which is what I think you mean, but the word 'norm' seems to
have no other value that I know about.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> But my HS librarian, who I think wanted to tear my pants off after I
>>>> got my Harvard scholarship, took all 200 of my SF books that I had
>>>> read in secret when I donated them. "Older" women should let
>>>> themselves go. I needed them when I was young, but oddly the older
>>>> I get the younger the women I want.
>
>
> Let themselves go to pot? or go in libertine fashion?
>
Libertine, but not the same as Judith killing Holofernes.
>
No pot, or they won't be ready for Challenger, which my dead best friend
used to call his helper. Had he known more, he's have called him
Seabiscuit. I'm seeing so much art from 2500-2000 years ago, lately,
that I think we have not only learned nothing about sex since then, but
lost a lot.
>>> There's a term I'm considering for my glossary: "jail bait."
>>
>> San Quentin Quail back when I was just growing my pubes.
>
>
> From your lips to my glossary. Thanks!
>
>
What I wanted, back then, but a little later than Winnie, was the wife
of a U of AK geology asst prof for whom I didn't care nothing, as I knew
the Mohs scale, who would zoom about the apartment in nothing but her
panties, no lie. That I was 13-14 either escaped her attention or she
was very cruel, because I was just at the age when I needed to be taught
by an expert and not be intimidated by a callow schoolgirl. Of course,
I didn't formulate it this way at that time, but just oozed and said to
myself "fuck me please!"
>>> However, one nice thing about growing older as a male: the range of
>>> attractive females grows larger. I don't suppose that's a universal
>>> experience; but I do suppose the same is true for many women, mutatis
>>> mutandis.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is all very unclear to me, as it appears that the fraction of
>> wives who commit physical adultery is about the same as men, the only
>> difference in the statistics owing either to male bragging or female
>> reticence.
>
>
> Yes, I've seen stats like those. To account for them in a different way
> would require assuming a small number of highly promiscuous women.
>
> You use the term "physical adultery." As distinguished from?
>
>
Mere flirting. When you flirt with respect and no pressure there's
hardly a woman who doesn't like it, even among the Amish. Though as
full as possible I've gone back to an Amish ice cream stand to get one
more cone of black-cherry ice cream, even if it would kill me. A few
winks and smiles get a special cone up in Pennsylvania. They know that
they are facing a lifetime of hard work or else shunning. Had my wife
and her sister not been with me that day, I would have asked whether
there was any hard work I could have done in the back of the shop.
>
>> I saw a program on our rebellion against Britain this afternoon, in
>> which a particularly bloody British general, before he marched off to
>> defeat said that he had killed more men and fucked more women than any
>> other man in America. We got the SOB. This was in the Carolinas.
>
>
> I saw that too. Don't remember the name. Was it Clinton?
Don't be nasty. That Clinton was near NY. Look, if I get come on my
dress, I'd get it cleaned right away.
[edited quote:]
>> Germans, part of my ancestry (came over in 1847, up the Mississippi to
>> Iowa), have a fear of the dark peoples of the East. However, had you
>> a chance to wathch ShaRAPova trounce Serena Willians on Saturday, you
>> might have felt a desire to ride with the Rohirrim: such a gorgeous
>> blonde. My wife and I could see her gallopping over the steppes with
blonde hair blowing out the back - yes! And she was sick unto death and
still won the championsip.
>> She will be a hero of mine for life. Perhaps this fear cames from the
>> Mongols.
>
>
> You mean 1241 "and all that," when all Europe lay open to the Mongol
> "hordes," but they turned back in Silesia?
>
> However, "Mongols" hardly equates with "Jews."
>
>
Sometime folks don't draw too fine distinctions. There were two great
defeats for the Europeans, in Hungary and Poland, as the Mongols had
split into northern and southern salients and slaughtered the stupid
knights who faced them with their grossly inferior technology. [I've
now got NS 7.1 and don't know how to pick special characters - it's all
alien to me, but here goes] the Khan Oegoedei died, they went back for
his funeral, and never returned, though they had a clear path to the
Atlantic and Britain. My Slavic Bab instructor was a Mongol, and I
asked him what were they thinking, and he told me not to bother thinking
about it, in Russian. The best answer I ever got, even though I had to
say poftarytye pozhaluysta.
>> My daughter seems as wild as I was in my 20s, but I can't penetrate
>> her mind completely, but my son has had a weakness for bimbos like I
>> had for his mother: what melted my integrity? "Oh hell, you're just
>> horney", and she was right. But now he is telling me that he wants to
>> marry an English teacher. I didn't ask many questions, because that
>> has led to large ruptures in the past. At least he said that she was
>> trying to improve his English, about which I have verbally chastised
>> him since he was 8, and he now admits I was right. He's 36, but I told
>> him that he's too young to get married; I got a protest. I think I
>> have an agreement to meet her, if I pay the plane fare.
>
>
> So you do care!
>
I did at one time, and I'm still a dad.
>
>> I have no friends in Hollywood or NY, and no tolerance for rejection.
>> Probably that arises from my childhood kidnapping, and all my
>> disruptions in school.
>
>
> A long-lasting, unceasing concatenation of rejections led to my darkest
> "dark night of the soul." Five years later I'm still recovering.
>
In my darkest moment after my Great Love screwed me and my kids over, I
almost got my aesthetic experience back. Very odd. I was probably just
cracking up, but got through it.
> But as for publishers' rejections, fortunately they can be bypassed
> nowadays. Just post.
>
But I wanted millions for a new house. I had even promised my kids.
>> I was appalled at myself. Since I was a wee boy, I always thought I
>> was totally accepting of other races and ethnicities (except that I
>> can't sing or dance), and proved it by getting many disciplinary
>> procedures in school. But when you dig down into your inner thoughts,
>> sometimes you find things you don't like.
>
>
> If everyone with disturbing thoughts refused to publish, there'd be
> nothing to read. What you do with such thoughts is what counts.
>
> I expect that thoughts of that ilk have many sources, for instance,
> irrational associations, parental attitudes, and societal pathologies
> that play themselves out in our souls.
>
Yes, when I was kidnapped I had no contact that I can recall with other
kids, from 3-4 yrs old. The first night I was kidnapped, there was a
Loooong drive through a rainy night, I was given an apple when we
arrived, wherever it was, so I ate only half the apple, since I didn't
know if I was going to be given anything else, and saved the rest behind
the moving board of an upright piano, which I could play a bit. Since I
had been used to eating everything like a greedy dog, imagine my
astonishment the next morning to find that the remains of the apple had
gone brown.
And during the night rats ran up and down the wall between the wallpaper
and the stucco. I confronted my father with this memory many years
later, and though I have had some vivid nightmares, these images are too
specific and went on too long to be nightmares. Eventually I got real
food, and most of the rest I forget.
>
>> But I limit myself too much out of an extreme sensitivity to my
>> weaknesses. Back in the mid 60s, when it was still possible, my first
>> wife and I went to black supper clubs, were practically the only
>> whites there, and danced like demons: there were no set moves to
>> follow. She got propositioned about 20 times an evening, which she
>> liked very much.
>>
>> I could not characterize the Hydran Commander and his romance with a
>> woman who was the brightest physicist on Earth, modelled on a friend
>> of mine, in any way that I could live with.
Our chem dept tried to get rid of her, until a visiting Nobel Prize winner
said she had a great project, which I knew and had been arguing,
partly to the detriment of my career in the dept, and suddenly she began
passing
her comprehensive exams. Are there politics in scientific departments?
Nah!!
>>I went cold in trying to
>> write the novel. Of course it was I who wanted to make love with her, and
>> this Hydran didn't fit into my feelings.
>
>
> There's always the writer's analogy to method acting: ground the
> character in your own feelings, make him some aspect of yourself. Why
> not? Make the process an homage to Marlon Brando, if you like.
>
>
I can't scream for Stella. Desire is allowed me in its place. But I've
had two unfortunate incidents with the Balto PD in the last year -
called OCD (organized crime division) just because I was out walking my
dog at night, which he likes to do, being a night dog who sleeps all
day. The OCD is *not* nice, and there is no organized crime that they
are looking for in our neighborhood. I say I'm on a walk with my dog
who likes nighttime. They summon a few more plain patrol cars, and soon
I'm surrounded. <all sorts of nasty questions> "I'm a retired
astrophysicist out for a walk with my dog" "Prove it!" "Here's the
dog." "If it's vicious we'll kill it. Otherwise we'll just take it
away." "He's on a leash and is not threatening anyone, and you are out
of policy." "Who says?" I'd like to say that the whole incident is
being recorded, but I can't.
The first time, I got home after two days in prison, no witnesses. My
wife was treated like shit, even with a court order, and makes 6 digits.
The second time, no prison time, and Achilles got home scot free, as
there were two paramedics who confirmed my declaration that the cop was
out of policy. The paramedics took down his license number and time, as
I was dazed from a fall that may have come from a seizure, but the cop
wasn't listening. I and my dog got a ride home, as he knew he was out
of policy and had been documented, but I never got the First Aid the
paramedics wanted to give me, even though I explained that my wife was
out of town. The OCD cop told me he was being generous in letting me
keep my dog. I told him that the fire station had a complete record of
him, and never to bother me again. Still I am not comfortable about
walking at night in our perfectly safe neighborhood (except for the
cops), so my wife has ordered me not to go out after 10 pm unless she is
with me.
>>> I've had similar closenesses, but was fortunate enough to have grown
>>> up in a family environment mostly free of detectable racism -- if
>>> there is such an environment.
>>
>>
>>
>> You can get close, but no one is totally free. It's genetic.
>
>
> Yeah, in the sense that there are physical differences between people,
> differences that reflect lineage. But I don't believe that either racism
> or, more generally, groupism is genetic.
>
I have no proof, and there isn't any, but I think it's part of how we
evolved. I can say to an Afro-American that I'm also an African, just
that we left at different times, we under our own steam but they being
sold. Not all take it in good spirit.
>
>> [snip] Boorstin said, "OK. you have a car and have blown an engine, so
>> please come with me, and tell me what you think." I said, "You bet,
>> but I'm not a real expert." It was a good car, and he was never
>> dissatisfied with it to my knowledge, and he got a break in the
>> price. He vanished from my radar screen when I went off to grad
>> school and he wanted to work with a famous architect (Eales? Eaves?)
>> - I lost the name - the archictect (now dead) is so famous among the
>> in crowd but I can't fathom his work, as my artistic sensibiliteis are
>> back in Cuneiform times.
>
>
> Perhaps Charles or Ray Eames?
Yes, the Eames who did funny houses and wierd buildings. I didn't grok
them. Jon was so bright, but I thought he wasted his mind.
>
>
>>> [snip]
>>> I find hermeneutics both a tough discipline and liberating, though I
>>> expect that few would understand the liberating aspect. It's one of
>>> my fields of keen interest.
>>>
>>
>> To me the feelings come first, not disquisitions on uncertain
>> propositions.
>
>
> Yeah, but feelings lack both intellectual content and, in and of
> themselves, the challenge of integrating heart and mind. When it comes
> to the canons of sacred communities, there's often a great historical
> richness with which to interact.
>
Feelings and intuitions are what make civilizations, wrong or right,
great or small. Writing makes scholars. Which are more important? You
can't answer that question, as it is beyond anyone alive, except maybe me.
Save me from these committees. I know more than they do, and they know
it. If a minister wants to tell me his story, that's fine, as long as I
get to feel his daughter's leg. If a rabbi wants to tell me stories I
haven't heard before, he is welcome, until he is not willing to listen
to me. A monk and I just sit together, as we know there is nothing to
communicate that we do not know aready, or don't, as the case may be.
What is "intellectual content"? It's almost always wrong. Feelings are
something you can share on one level or another, sometimes it's just
sufficient to know that the other has some feeling.
>
>>> Came across a beautiful old edition of the works of George Eliot in a
>>> bookshop yesterday for $250. Gilt upper edge. Too much for my budget,
>>> though.
>>>
>>
>> Well, if you
have to ask the price you can't afford it.
>
>
> I have to ask.
>
> Actually I didn't. It took me several minutes to find the price inside
> of one of the covers.
>
>
>> I get most of my books from Hamilton Books remaindered books. It's
>> amazing what you can find. Mostly I buy them for presents, as I have
>> no further shelf space. I'm not sure how much this endears me to
>> friends and relatives, as folks are much more polite after having
>> passed through humanism.
>
>
> Huh?
I mean, folks are supposed to be polite now, before tossing your
presents in the trash?
>
> When I was selling books door to door in Arkansas not very successfully
> decades ago, some of the politest people I came across were Jehovah's
> Witnesses. Perhaps they knew what it was like.
My mother's mother was one, and a great embarrassment.
>
>
[...]
>> What was called the Fish Tank at Duke, though he wound up at U Chi for
>> no reason I can apprehend, except that he must have been into bringing in
>> cash. At Hopkins you can't even keep a tenured professorship, unless
>> you bring in cash. They have their ways...
>>
>> Fish made such a fool of himself when he fell hard for the Sokal
>> parody (q.v.):
>>
>> Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics ...
>> www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
>>
>
>
> Silliness!
But they fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Just a little wiggly worm
- hermeneutics - at the end of the line.
>
>
>> I thought that would have finished Fish's career in an honest academic
>> field. But it didn't prove that academic English is an honest
>> profession, except among the very few like Harold Bloom.
>>
>>>
>>> No, those thoughts were independent of reader-response theory. I'm
>>> still a hold-out from an earlier age when authorial intent mattered;
>>> although, in my view, so does the text and so does the targeted
>>> audience and so does the actual reader.
>>>
>> None of this is clear to me. I don't think most authors have an
>> intent (I don't, I hope),
>
>
> Let's just say they intended to mean this and not that.
So my Admiral from Beta Hydrae, The Harbinger, meant one thing and not
another?
>
> But maybe I know what you mean. Something like an intent to prevail? an
> unstated agenda?
>
You are groping toward the light. A real author intends to overwhelm
his readers with his vision, at least I did before I realized I was an
idiot. My vison is limited to that of a sand mole (q.v.).
>
>> the text is something for sharks to fight over,
>
>
> Shredding, blood in the water, frenzy.
>
> BTW, a couple of years ago a close relative of mine was charged by a
> lemon shark off of a Cape Cod jetty (where I have often snorkled). He
> had to shoot it using a speargun. The spear bounced off; but,
> fortunately, the shark was deterred.
>
> The shark was apparently going after my relative's fish catch.
>
>
Yes. llkely. Humans aren't good shark food as we have too little fat,
unless you are Oprah.
>> and I can't conceive of a targeted audience.
>
>
> Whoever you envision you're writing to. If you write to your children,
> they're your targeted audience. If they share what you said to them with
> a friend, the friend is part of the audience, but not the targeted
> audience.
I don't think anyone they write to could possibly understand what I'm
saying to them, so I'm sure they keep it to themselves. Even when I
tell my son that his sister is lying to him, he ignores me. I had
thought he learned more in his childhood. She lies to me too, but I
changed her diapers and am on to her in a trice: nobody lies to the jimbat.
>
>> Anybody who reads a book of mine and doesn't try to hunt me down in
>> the night is a friend.
>
>
> More ambiguity! :-)
>
>
Yes, but what else is good in life? With some friends rent the movie
"Nevada" with Amy Brenneman ("Judging Amy"), and the now Mrs Pete
Sampras, and take a vote at the end how it will go. My wife and I
disagreed, but she's pulling me around to her point of view. Some
things amazed me in this movie, but I'll let you discover. AB has a bod
that she conceals in her judicial robes. Harvard, yeah!
>>> Of course intent is intangible and ultimately beyond reach. Scares
>>> scholars. But that's the point. It's supposed to be beyond reach.
>>> They want to objectify the humanities. But *humanity* is not so
>>> susceptible to objectification, and it permeates the *humanities*.
>>>
>>>
>> When you are dealing with Patricia Cornwell or Ken Follett, you know
>> the intent of the author, but we aren't talking of those books, are
>> we? Actually, we can tell a bit of Shakepeare's and Eliot's intents,
>> but they were moralistic writers, engendering our way of thinking.
>> Reading Highsmith's books leaves me a bit adrift.
>
>
> Patricia Highsmith, author of those Ripley novels?
The very one. I've been trying to get my wife interested in them,
although they are hard to read with my nattering away. She's now
reading "Those who walk away". I have known many such persons, but have
carefully avoided murder mysteries, perhaps because there are too many
persons in my life who needed murdering. Actually I got her interested
in PH through a tell-all book about her lesbian affair.
Want more? Read "The Girls" by McLellan.
Did you get my paragraph above yours, as it has content?
>
> I've seen the two Ripley movies. They do seem to be the opposite of
> morality tales, except for the barrenness of the landscape of Ripley's
> personality. A life about getting what one wants isn't much of a life.
>
>
I see few movies now that my kids are grown and there is little I can do
to annoy their mother.
>> My experience with real gambling. I had to play poker on my year out
>> from Harvard to make the spending money my step-father fefused to give
>> me, though he had been berating me for years for going to Harvard and
>> not the U of AK (Fbx) = UAF, now.
>
>
> Hard to know where to draw the line with grown kids. Establishing some
> financial barriers is important. Parent/child finances tend to be
> fungible during the college years -- i.e. everything the young adult
> spends eventually affects the parents' bank account. So brakes are
> needed to prevent the drain.
>
>
I'm a Scrooge, like him. He, my step-father, and my father were from
different Scots clans, my wife is from the Clan McLoud, so guess where
we keep our spending money? In the Tartan!
I spend money on books, but on little else. My wife keeps ragging me
about my cheap LL Bean clothes, and even she has to order them for me.
>>> I should learn to play poker someday. It's one of those things I
>>> never picked up along the way. Can't imagine when there wouldn't be
>>> something else I'd rather be doing, though.
>>>
>>
>> 3-card draw poker is Soooo easy. Fold quickly: don't think a pair of
>> 10s is going to get you the pot. When you have a straight or a flush,
>> make some tentative bets, pretending that you really have nothing.
>> Sometimes everyone drops out, even those with full-houses. If you
>> have a big hand, throw down a big bet; only the morons will continue.
>> That is, unless you are playing real poker players. Stay within your
>> limits. Bluff at most once a night, else someone will always call
>> you. When you have smashed the table with a couple of big hands, only
>> a real player will challenge a bluff, based on your involuntary body
>> signals.
>
>
> That was fun! Now I don't have to play poker. ;-)
You lucky dog! The reason I quit in 1962 was not that I lost $20 in a
night, but was that I suspected they had picked up on involuntary body
language and had me. It was always 6-7 of us; so I quit. After I told
my step-father, the preacher-man, he sent me more money. It was 30 more
years before I played again.
>
>
>> I don't play other varieties of poker an they are too chancy, and
>> require the counting of cards, as in bridge,
>
>
> Not the counting-cards kind of a brain? I'm certainly not.
>
>
>>>>> Duh, of course! But I'm still not sure if my brain has
>>>>> registered the decryption.
>>>>
>>>> Are you Siamese, if you please?
>>> Does not compute.
>>>
>>>
>> It's a disgusting song.
>
>
> "We Are Siamese If You Please" from Disney's "Lady And The Tramp"?
>
> If so, still doesn't compute.
Nothing has to compute, except, please Brer Bear please don't throw me
into that briar patch!
>
>
>>> My main gripe with marked up books isn't that they're marked up, it's
>>> that they're stupidly marked up. As far as I'm concerned, intelligent
>>> marginalia is a big plus, all the more so when one reader is
>>> responding to a former reader.
>>>
>> Exactly.
>
>
> Excellent!
>
>
I have a nost excellent theorem, the proof of which is too large for
this margin.
>>>> The Hubble constant is not a constant.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> And it is in different units than the speed of light: cm/sec, vs
>> (km/sec)/Mpc (Mpc = megaparsec), so they connot be compared.
>
>
> Ah, the light bulb goes on! In one corner of a dark room. But I don't
> see that my problem is solved. We're still talking about the separation
> of matter at greater than the speed of light. Is cosmic separation
> somehow different from travel?
>
There is a horizon neither you nor any light from you can pass, either
one way or the other. When you look at those UDF pics try to think
that's where the boundary of light stops. It's true that we can see
ripples in the origin of the universe beyond that in microwaves, but
that is not exactly the same thing, as it is from the gas of the Big
Bang itself.
>
>> Questions are either for fools or thinkers, depending on how they are
>> phrased.
>
>
> I prefer the librarians' cliché, at least with regard to honest
> questions. I'm not much for elitism, although in practice I may be more
> elitist than I imagine. There are not many people to whom I can say some
> of the things I say here.
>
>
Yes, you are an elitist. A cross has been erected for you om Mt San
Antonio, where I was phographed in a crucufixion posture by my good
Isaeli friend. 5x7, suitable for framing - $8.
Consider Mrs Bush bubbling about books with little kiddies, as opposed
to Theresa Heinz, who has done so much more.
>>> Don't potato chips have something to do with string theory (which I
>>> don't understand at all, except for there being more to the
>>> universe)? Ack, belay that question.
>>>
>>
>> On belay! With my anchors, you will never fall.
>>
>> You may be thinking of D-branes to which superstrings may be anchored.
>
>
> Yes! Although I think I misheard "membranes." :-)
>
>> I do not know this math, though I once attempted it 40 years ago, it
>> has to do with inner and outer operations on manifolds in Hausdorff
>> spaces in a variety of dimensions (9-11?),
>
>
> Oh dear! I almost understood that.
>
No, you didn't. What's the difference between inner and outer?
>> as my limited brains now understand it.
>
>
> Funny.
>
>
>> There are only a few folks in the world who can keep up with this
>> shit, and they work on it day and night to the detriment of their
>> families.
>
>
> I used to try to be out front in certain rapidly moving fields, but
> decided the effort wasn't worth it. Now (to mix metaphors) I aim at
> slower moving targets.
>
What I have been trying to tell you: I discovered when I was 11 and 22
that everything is simple. I had a bit of riffles between, but the end
was conclusive and has never wavered. I need no more research into the
basics for understanding, but only out of curiousity to know what others
knew when they were usually much older than I.
I tossed my Captain Jupiter's Space Cadet's membership card long ago
(expired when I was 12). I used it a few times when being carded in
bars, but it didn't work. I understand that John Edwards gets carded
still.
I have a slower moving target for you, but much more difficult. You can
find some of this shit on the web. The very thought of it pisses me off
to the extent that my wife wants to put me into restraints. A year ago,
the great love of my life = we taught each other how to fuck - the fuck
of a 1000 fucks - said she wanted to collaborate with me on a book about
"quorum sensing". This is not trivial and may be vitally important in
many areas of biology (she's an agricultural geneticist). I hit on it
right away, obvious I thought, why didn'T I think of it before? Got a
FAX machine so we could exchsnge work and references.
Cool, man, I was going to do a book on one of the most important
phenomena in biology! I understood it immediately, faster than she
could even explain it to me. Quorum sensing is a general term for when
cells, benevolent or malevolent, realize that they have enough cells in
their clump (the quorum) to go do their business. The cells emit
chemicals that the other cells pick up, and then realize that the
starter's gun has gone off.
I got all my shit together, paid for the FAX, got notebooks and all, the
references I could find on the internet, and then asked her what should
I work on first, as I had the general idea straight?
Well, surprise - she was always less than reliable except in bed - "I'm
sorry, Jim, I have to pay more attention to my (newly married) husband's
chldren, so we can't do this." "They are HIS children, He has
responsibility, and how good of a job did you do with your own"? "And
you?" "You know Jill fucked them up, and I'm not using them for an excuse."
She disrupted the collabotation for whatever reason, and our relations
have not been repaired since: I told her, if you want to keep knowing me
you know what to do: be honest with me which you never have been, but
now I demand it. I think she's entering a period of heavy drinking, but
it's not my place to inquire despite thousands of orgasms in 8 mos.
>
>> I have news for you. Neither PBS nor DSC/SCI channels are a good way
>> to learn about cosmology nor planetary science. The first is infected
>> with catastrophic misunderstanding, the latter with the Sagan virus.
>> They are the best channels on TV for these two subjects, but the best
>> education for you would be to sit on my couch and hear me scream the
>> truth at them. My wife can put up with only a little of it.
>
>
> Hehe! No kidding. But those PBS science programs are a welcome diversion
> from my usual intellectual fare. And I'm somewhat immune to
> catastrophism (or did you mean something else?). Less so to the Sagan
> virus, but not completely vulnerable.
>
>
>>> Okay, but you leave me mystified as to the meaning of your original
>>> comment.
>>>
>> The Universe has no time limit.
>
>
> You were the one who wrote, "it [our hypothetical telescope] will see
> the Death of the Universe."
>
The beginning, not the same as the ending. The ending cannot be seen.
Even you know that. If I wrote that phrase, Tenille must have been
gnawing on my calf.
> Now I'm a bit surprised at your "no time limit" comment. Why do you
> think that?
>
>
Whoever said there was a time limit to the universe?
>>> Without stupid comments, how would we ever get to intelligent ones?
>>> Well, I suppose that's truer of questions than of comments. However,
>>> it's one of those librarian clichés that there's no such thing as a
>>> stupid question.
>>>
>> Are they ever wrong. I ber I could get my son's librarian gf to give
>> me over one stupid question a minute, unless I talked too long.
>
>
> Theological seminary student: "Where do I find the book of Genesis?"
>
> Third-year grad student: "Where's the downstairs to the library?"
>
I have to poop. Where's the john? Do I need to take my own TP?
>
>> I once took an evening poetry class at Harvard, thinking, wrongly,
>> that my romantic conceptions of the universe might lead me into
>> worthwhile poetry. But the son of William Styron ("Darkness Visible")
>> was in the class. He wrote a poem about a walk in the dark, that
>> contained the phrase "fallen candelabras of dead leaves", and at that
>> point I knew I had no hope, and quit the class. I had seen these many
>> times, but never made the connection with candelabras. Poetry is in
>> the connections you can make.
>
>
>
> No, it's in the connections You make. And connections are only part of
> the process.
>
> I do like his phrase: "fallen candelabras of dead leaves."
>
> Here you weren't oversensitive to your own weaknesses. You imagined
> weakness by comparison, which was instead of finding your own authentic
> voice.
>
There is no way to be oversensitive to your own weaknesses. That way
madness or death lies.
I had no visuals that anyone could understand. So I thought that
inorganic chemistry lab might be more important, another mistake.
>
[walkingsticks]
>
>> Matter and all disappear over the horizon. Our connection with the
>> extreme past is only with the fluctuations in the microwave background
>> (q.v.)
>
>
> What makes the horizon?
>
What neither our nor their light can trangress.
>
>>> Thinking: Is an expansion of vacuum at a rate faster than light even
>>> meaningful? But you say there's no vacuum, so how can "something" go
>>> faster than light when the laws of physics say it can't?
>>>
>>> Nope, you're not linkin' up with my mind at all.
>>>
>>>
>> You're are not thinking of General Relativity, but only of Special
>> relativity.
>
>
> Hey, that's pretty good! At least my cosmology's up to 1905 (sort of). I
> was beginning to fear it was actually stuck back with the presocratics,
> whom I systematically studied and much enjoyed in college -- although
> they were often more tantalizing than revealing.
Actually, I can ask you simple questions that will nake you more modest.
>
> So bring me up to 1916. How's general relativity relevant to my question?
>
The universe is curved, and light follows "action". See "Gravitation"
by Misner, et al.
[...]
>
> Sounds like the book must've been his long-time mistress.
Except for the others. Where have you been, boy??
>
>
>>> [About Richard Feynman]
>>> I have his Lectures on Gravitation. Also The Character of Physical
>>> Law, and Surely You're Joking. Haven't read any of those books yet.
>>>
>> OK, good books. It's the 3-volume set that I wouldn't wish on an enemy.
>> The CoPL is a great book. You mught supplement it with
>> "Thermodynamics" by Enrico Fermi, a bit easier, but not lesser.
>
>
> greay boot = great book?
>
Gimme a break, the y is next to the t.
> Will have to look for Fermi. (I avoid buying books retail.)
Amazon will help - it's ppbk.
>
>
>>> Take your time.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> jimbat
>> at last
>> please delete everything on which I have not specifically commented in
>> your reply, as this is getting ridiculous
>
>
> I keep deleting oodles and oodles and yet ...
>
I know. Good job, Oddjob. The best "I know" I ever heard said was by
Linda Fiorentino to Anthony Edwards (she a CIA agent, he an unusually
resourceful and potent UCLA student completely misled, and still with
his hair) in a movie called "Gotcha!" (1986). Then he tracked her down,
accidentally, after she vanished. He said, "I'm not just a kid
anymore." And she said the magic words in her inimitable low sexy
voice. It will cause your eyes to ooze. Rent the flick, it's not at all
bad. After I got frustrated on imdb, my wife tracked the movie.
So, I have two questions:
1) Ebeonites: (Jew/Christian) did they really believe that Jesus was human?
2) Marcionites: (Paulist) did they really believe in two gods and that
Jesus was not human?
3) Jimbatist: he don't believe in fucking nothing outside of science and
aesthetic experience?
jimbat
Norm
> This post was actually written in 24 xx 36 xx 48 hours, among some
> sandwiches, Jamaican food, and pasta.
You're making me salivate.
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> I diddled away 5 days on this, from time to time. "But we'll always
>>> have Paris." So date references are dubious.
>
> Of all the gin joints in the world how did you stumble into mine?
I tripped. Uneven boards on the walk outside. Or maybe it
was words that I tripped over.
> [snip]
> Oh, you have a parasite. Get a voodoo priestess! We met one in NO, but
> we wanted her to put another woman in our power, but she said, "Do you
> have some of her hair?" "No." "Then I can't help you."
You met a voodoo priestess in Norway?
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>> In confessional contexts, "inerrancy" is a word with countless
>>>> nuances. And "infallibility" has a different set of nuances. In some
>>>> circles, if you believe in infallibility but not inerrancy, you're
>>>> not good enough. But then for many inerrancy won't do either without
>>>> sufficient propositional-level literalism, for if the formal and the
>>>> material diverge too much, what do you have? The next step is into
>>>> absurdity, but people differ widely on where that threshold is. For
>>>> the atheist, I suppose that wouldn't be the next step but the first
>>>> step -- with that word "confessional."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> Now I understand your text above better. I've never been to confession,
> except when I confess to my wife late at night that I have embellished a
> story.
I'll pretend you didn't understand me and say that
"confessional," as used above, means "characterized by a
religious faith held in common."
> But what fun is there in life if you can't embellish a story?
> Day-to-day life is very boring in the telling. Yes, I walked the dog
> and he smelled everything and then took a poop, etc. A young woman
> acted as if she wanted to grab the family jewels - an embellishment.
>
> Actually I don't think what you said above actually means anything.
Hehe, then I guess you're underscoring what I said about
absurdity.
>> Infallibility in Roman Catholicism applies to the Pope under certain
>> conditions, in Eastern Orthodoxy to ecclesiastical councils [snip].
>
>
> Papal Bull.... and what is it called among the doubting Thomases of the
> East?
I'm not privy.
> Am I unknowingly corresponding with Elaine Pagels? If so, come forward,
> and let me express my regrets for the death of Heinz, a man I much
> admired, not as creative as some, but a great teacher, and obviously
> didn't need Viagra.
Heinz R. Pagels (1939-1988), physicist.
> It's taken me a while to get over the idea that you are a grad student
> but actually believe this stuff.
*Was* a grad student. What I believe of or about such stuff
I don't say here.
> When my wife succeeds in getting our bookcases cleaned out many other
> things will not be extant either. I gave her a run-down of her own and
> what would have to go, so she has pulled in her horns a bit. You get
> first fibs, but it may not be worth your whila, and as you say may make
> you enemies.
Great! I'll take first fibs. :-)
Will unload on book dealers and libraries if necessary. But
why don't you, instead of tossing away?
(Postage is the worry.)
> Since I've been writing to you (does anyone else read this shit? If so
> please say "Hi"),
Yes, yes, please chime in.
> I've been keeping my de minimus KJV by the computer.
> In metric, 180 x 85 x 13 mm. Your reference to Kings does not compute
> for me.
An allusion to ChickPea's (erstwhile?) .sig generator
discussed here in the thread "Label babble (was Re: Globe
and Mail poll on polygamy)" last February.
Re 1 Kings 7:23: Circumference = pi x diameter. So if the
circumference is 30 and the diameter is 10, then pi = 3.
Must be so, 'cause the Bible says so. So fix your math. :-)
> I'll bet our cubits differ very much, as I joke about my being
> an achondroplastic dwarf. I can wear children's shoes and LL Bean
> long-sleeve shirts seem as if they were meant for giants. Yet I'm 5'6"
> owing to my torso. My mother is much the same.
I was told by a ballet dancer that I don't have the right
body shape for ballet -- too long a torso on this 6'1"
frame. I was stunned and slightly disconcerted that she had
noticed. I wasn't interested in doing ballet anyway.
>> Where precisely the line is drawn for allowances is a big question.
>> Many theologians, scholars, and members of the clergy have lost their
>> jobs after unwittingly crossing someone else's line of tolerability.
>> I'm afraid that even Augustine wouldn't have survived in those
>> circles. According to his Confessions, he couldn't accept the Bible
>> apart from allegorical interpretation.
>
>
> Well, Augustine had given up his libertinism. Was he who is reputed to
> have said, "Yes, Lord, I will adopt celebacy, but just not now."?
"Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo." That is
to say: "Give me chastity and continency, but do not give it
yet."
--> Augustine, Confessions 8:7, William Watts translation,
1631, as reflected in the Loeb Classical Library, 1912.
> His
> "City of God" was a disaster for the West.
Oh, I dunno. Ever read it? Augustine was in contention with
old Roman ways and scored a lot of points in the De civitate
Dei.
Besides, who can help how their words are later used? Would
you want people a thousand years from now stuck on the way
that you currently see the universe? I should hope not. I
should hope they'd have a larger view of things. Your words
wouldn't be a disaster for them, but a stuck-in-the-mud use
of them would be.
> I think you nailed it. I was confusing the "inerrancy" that I was
> taught at 17 in freshman philosophy with the "infallibility" that was
> drilled into me as a kid when I was supposed to be a fundamentalist
> Christian. You need to have a consistent POV on the meaning of the two
> words, which I do not. And frankly I do not care, as I consider both
> concepts to be at variance with thought and the universe.
If you learned about inerrancy at Harvard, then you didn't
learn it, only a stereotype of it. However, the belief
systems of an amazing number of people do fit the stereotype.
> To me the Bible is a fun and scary read (like a coaster), but means
> little else. I have a pic of me on The Mean Streak, a wooden coaster
> that will take your fillings out.
>
> What's the word for "last days"?
"Eschaton." Or maybe you're referring to "Millennium."
>> Beliefs are one thing, attitudes are another -- dogmatism, a black and
>> white view of the world, a sense of superiority, attitudes like that.
>> Better to keep the beliefs and drop the attitudes than to keep the
>> attitudes and drop the beliefs.
>>
>
> Not when you are right. Why be a mushy wrong?
Do I sound mushy? "Not simplistic" does not equate with "mushy."
That's a lesson I hope the majority of the American public
has learned by now. Doubtful, though.
> This is why I think you
> are so curius about my thinking - because I have a firm defensible
> philosophical position in opposition to yours.
You think that?!
Heavens to Betsy, most religious thinkers I know are capable
of putting forward a stronger defense of your philosophical
positions than you have so far done in our discussions --
not that you've needed to bring any forward. Have you felt
in the least on the defensive? Besides, it's not the easy
positions but the hard positions that have done the most to
explore our humanity.
No, your part in this discussion is interesting for other
reasons. For instance (one instance of many), your
juxtaposition of atheism and the experience of the
undifferentiated aesthetic continuum.
> Sorry about that, but
> not even the KGB could crack me.
>
> [I scored a major coup this morning (Friday). My wife of 22 years is no
> one's fool and can usually see through one of my japes in 1-2 seconds.
I have this yapping dog next door which sometimes just won't
quit. I'd like to pull a jape on it.
> (After having been through a few of my Calif. desert Easter-egg hunts,
> she can usually do those pretty fast now.) But I was cleverer than usual
> today. Our NY Times usually arrives about 5 am, but today it hadn't
> come by the time she left for work at 7 and not even after I arose from
> my nap at 10. I called them, and they told me there had been a
> "production problem" - odd - and we would get our paper tomorrow. So I
> called my wife and left voice mail - she's usually in meetings - to that
> effect with the embellishment that a virus had infected their Virginia
> computer at their mid-Atlantic printing facility that made the paper
> come out in Arabic. After finally getting my voice mail, she was about
> to warn her security folks at the Space Telescope about this new
> diabolical virus, when she thought it might be best to check with the
> Source first. She was relieved. One woman believed her.]
Hehe. Too creative for the typical viral criminal, but
probably doable in the present, that is, to make an English
language newspaper come out in Arabic.
> Not a bad explanation. A deep text can lead one slowly into a better
> understanding of the constellation of things, but it's better if it hits
> you in a flash, as that is the formative experience.
A flash in the gray matter is but a flash in the pan. An
insight is but a splinter of the whole. Activity of the mind
is but an element of the evolution of sensibility.
> As for the term spirituality, I have argued by mail at length with a
> woman, whom my wife and I almost caught as a lover, that "spirituality"
> implies the existence of a "spirit", which cannot exist. That hurt our
> relationship, but I mean to try her again. She's 5'11" and she and I
> know what each other is thinking before anything is said.
I don't know what You mean by "spirit," and I don't know how
you or anybody else can know it doesn't exist. "Spirit,"
"spiritual," and "spirituality" are words with countless
senses. (I think I've said this to you before.)
> Well, that's damed good to know! But how about the poor announcer who
> cried when the Hindenburg burned, and was fired?
Yeah, I've read that that too is a myth.
http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/hindenburg.html
> BTW, the disaster is
> wrongly blamed on Hydrogen (we refused to sell Helium to the Nazis). The
> fault was with the fabric cover that picked up static electricity, so
> that the dirigible would have gone down in any case - at least that is
> my understanding from an analysis I read some time ago.
There was a PBS show on the Hindenburg disaster featuring an
investigation by Addison Bain, I think it was.
> Not exactly. but close. My mind was then focussed on brilliant girls,
> no matter their looks. In 5th grade I hit 12.9 (12th grade - 9th month)
> - the highest possible score - on my achievement test. A 5th grade girl
> in another class hit 11.7, and there was a huge gap below us as I
> discovered by rifling teachers' desks. So we made plans to run off
> together. But one day she just vanished, and I never heard from her
> again. She certainly wasn't the cutest girl in 5th grade. But we had
> our plans....
I've never understood this penchant of many boys to want
girls dumber than they are and the complementary penchant of
smart girls to pretend to be dumb around boys. Nor do I
understand -- understand in my bones, I mean -- single women
with Ph.D.s having trouble finding men. Given the first,
though, then, I suppose, the latter.
>>>> [Re gantlet, gauntlet]
>>>> Darn! I 'uz hopin' you just tot me sumpin'. But American Heritage
>>>> gives both spellin's for each meanin'.
>>>>
>>>
>>> They are wrong.
>>
>>
>
> I DID tot you sumpin'.
Indeed. That I'll concede.
>> Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) also gives both
>> spellings for each meaning.
>>
> That is the problem with letting illiterates determine English spelling
> and usage. I am prescriptive, not descriptive, and so should you be as
> a scholar.
Nope. We have enough prescriptive,
come-across-like-they-think-they-know-it-all scholars in the
world.
Helps engender idol worship, though, which sometimes has its
temporary rewards.
> As Jesus, I'd drive you out of the temple.
I've always wondered.
> Anyone who uses
> a Mirriam-Webster dictionary needs to spend 40 days in the wilderness
> hoping that the stones will turn into (Wonder) bread. I was given one
> as a child, but it took me on one too many circular definition loops, so
> I burned it in our backyard 55-gal drum (not legal anymore even in
> Fairbanks).
I used to keep notes on how well various dictionaries served
me. My biggest problems were with Random House -- woolly
definitions over and over again.
As for circular definitions: for many words, I don't know if
it's possible to have any other type. (Pictures and
classification schemes are a couple of the strategies that
can help bust open some circles.)
However, Merriam-Webster's circles are indeed often much
tighter than they need to be, sometimes too tight to be
useful. Occasionally I have other problems with
Merriam-Webster as well -- obvious omissions, ambiguous
definitions, and so forth. Still, it has much going for it.
Dump the tight circles and ambiguous definitions, and you'll
yet have a hefty dictionary.
> You run the gantlet, there is nothing else: get your brain on the road.
> The gauntlet is the metal glove. Since neither phenomena is of any
> use, let's forget about it, just so long as you have learned some
> English, and make use of it, and change dictionaries.
I use a large assortment of dictionaries. I tend to cite
Merriam-Webster because many regard it as the most
authoritative for American English. In other words, citing
it sometimes helps to build common ground. I see not so here.
> Anything with
> "Mirriam" on it is a no-no, but Webster's can be OK if it's a makeover
> of someone else's work.
I have almost the exact opposite attitude.
> My "Webster's Unabridged Encyclopedic
> Dictionary" containe an egregious error right on it's cover, as it say
> it has 200,000 entries, and everyone knows that English has over 500,000
> words.
I doubt that any English dictionary has gleaned even half of
the words in the English language.
> My tendinitis makes it hard to pick up.
There are, occasionally, days when the bones of my right
forearm won't endure even a smaller book.
>> [snip]
>> Of course dictionaries can be wrong. But an argument can be made that
>> if a dictionary spelling is reasonable, then the dictionary is the
>> authoritative arbiter of that spelling. The same with definitions.
>> Just by virtue of giving a hitherto unknown definition or of giving an
>> ambiguous one, a dictionary gives fleshly clothing to a ghost. (I
>> suspect, but can't prove, that Merrian-Webster gave flesh to such a
>> ghost in its definition of the term "pansexual," to cite a possible
>> instance.) So where is the line to be drawn between a dictionary's
>> errancy and it's divine-like authority?
>>
> Maid Merrian?
Hehe. Typo. I was tempted to chase after it and correct it,
but decided to wait.
> Spellings and meanings should be distinct, though not
> pronunciations, as we have such a monster vocabulary in English.
Hmm, not quite Melville Dewey, who wanted words spelled the
way they sound; but just as much a reform spirit.
Does that make you a homonymphobe?
> There
> is no reason to fuck it up. We have been given a gift, so why pee on
> it? Be superior to dictionaries, as I am to the ApJ. Truth is superior
> to the written word.
I do stand in awe of the English language.
> I have to consult my very funny Israeli asytrophysicist at U Chi who is
> an expert on jets. Some think that jets very early in the universe from
> massive stars' collapsing then (you downloaded the images of the
> galaxies from the UDS) into black holes is the answer to the problem.
> Mebbee. They are isotropic on the cosmic sky, so they either had to be
> nearby or vastly distant.
>
> When the DoD first declassified these detections, as the DoD realized
> they didn't come from Soviet space nuclear explosions, I looked at the
> numbers and said to myself that night, "No way, Jose, there's not that
> much energy for them to be at cosmological distances." So I concocted
> an idea based on nearby neutron stars, which could be nearly isotropic.
> So now some - and not stupid persons, as I know them - think that
> highly beamed radiation (jets) can resolve the energy problem. I never
> mastered jets, so I have to consult my friend.
>
> It was this contradiction, which I called to the atention of my thesis
> advisor, that stumped him. I saw a program on DSC/Sci a while back on
> them that was alomst incorrect from start to finish.
By "energy problem," I assume you're not talking about
public policy or the Energy Dept.
>>> like translate Maimonides into Croation for my favorite tennis players.
>>
>>
>>
>> Karolina Sprem? She's Croatian. I didn't know you know Croatian. Or
>> was that a figure of speech?
>>
>>
> Yes, Sprem is my personal assistant. On the highest level: the
> anti-Venus. The thighs! C'mon, I'm fooling too much. Translate
> Maimonides into Croatian, a Christian country? I might sell one copy to
> a library. I can make more money on one day on the stock market.
Hey, ya never know. I wouldn't put it past some Croatian
acquaintances of mine. But I'm glad my critical faculties
were working.
"Anti-Venus" here equals ... oh, you mean Venus Williams!
>>> But now I have a new love: Marina ShaRAPova. I asked my wife if we
>>> could adopt her, but it seems that she has loving parents.
>>
>>
>>
>> In a year or so she'll be old enough to adopt you.
>>
>
> Bless you for this wonderful idea! Oh, dear, another boss?? She'll
> have to work out a deal with my wife.
Hehe. *Shaking head*
>> ObPoly: If the culture were more broadly poly, do you suppose that
>> complaint would go away?
>
>
> Yes, folks are too paranoid about trying something different, both
> across age and across sexes. But maybe I'm just shy, since the latest
> statistics indicate that 40% of married women have flings. As James
> Bond used to say, I can hold up the British end.
>
> And there are all these damned "romantic" stories in books, on TV, in
> movies where one lover competes with another. Why don't they just relax
> and cooperate? My wife had a total shit-fit when Katya came along, but
> then settled into it with a lot more enthusiasm than I expected.
Love stories are able to presuppose less and less, but I
don't yet see the competition-factor-as-presupposition on
its way out. I suspect that most English-language authors
assume it's needed to make a good story. But if the
presupposition drops away culturally, many of their stories
are going to look silly.
Frankly I think the assumption that the competition factor
is needed for a good story is false. One of the greatest
love poems ever, the Song of Songs, was set in a polygynous
context (6:8).
I wonder if the Anglo-American inclination towards
competition has influenced the way that many in
English-language cultures approach love?
>>> Yes, I'm sure something else was meant originally, but the boboes
>>> lost it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Bobo = bourgeois bohemian?
>>
>
> Perhaps an Alaskan term.
Like "tin dog" for snowmobile?
And like "bear insurance": a 12-gauge shotgun or,
alternatively, a companion you can outrun?
> We used it for people who thought they knew
> something but didn't. I know a few Alaskans to whom it still applies,
> but that's on a different newsgroup, rec.backcountry.
Odd, bobo in that sense is not coming up in my cursory word
searches. I'm finding "short for Bobolina," "synonym for
cannabis," and stuff like that.
I got "bobo" as "BOurgeois BOhemian" from:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/jan-june00/brooks_5-9.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,319350,00.html
and ultimately from:
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper-Class and How They Got
There, by David Brooks (2000).
I noticed that you used the plural form "boboes."
I've heard "bozo" used for something like your definition.
Merriam-Webster (2003) *smile* has "a foolish or incompetent
person," I suppose from the clown of that name. Earlier
(1986) it defined the term as "fellow, guy." Partridge
(1961) says that definition, "a fellow," is Australian.
> I never passed out bread in class, as I thouhht it led to inattention,
> whereas spread legs in the front row led to even more inattention. It
> is hard to concentrate on Sumerian and Babylonian astronomy, or the
> freezing out of forces in the early universe when you know that juices
> are flowing just 15' from you.
You taught Sumerian and Babylonian astronomy? Cool!
>>>> Jesus was a teetotaler? That wine bibber (Matthew 11:19 = Luke
>>>> 7:34)? Hmm, I've heard it maintained by some on the basis of flimsy
>>>> scholarship. Never heard tell of him drinkin' coffee.
>>>>
>
> Or absinthe. (Picasso - "The Absinthe Drinker" - which depressed me for
> a whole day until I got to "Eat First" in DC, which has food to die for)
I read (in Merriam-Webster *smile again*) that absinthe "is
banned in many countries for health concerns."
I found Picasso's "The Absinthe Drinker" (1901) online at:
http://www.geocities.com/picasso0408/absinthe.html
> My comment was a little off the wall. I bow to your superior
> scholarship. Even at 62, I'm still willing to learn, but not to study -
> so just tell me the truth.
Roughly my attitude on some subjects.
>> Ah! See, I told you I'm still catching on to your style of discourse.
>> Even now I don't get the "family jewels" reference.
>>
>
> Think back to an early episode of NYPD Blue when Dtv. Sipowicz said to
> the prosecutor he was later to marry, grabbing his balls and saying,
> "Ipso this!". She had said in court "Ipso res" (the thing speaks for
> itself) and won. Latin is marvellous. So those are the family jewels.
> In my case some lustre has gone out after my 1st wife and I agreed that
> with a boy and a girl we had replaced ourselves, and I got a free
> vasectomy in 1972.
Yeah, I know what family jewels are, just not how they make
sense in your sentence.
I haven't seen much of NYPD Blue and probably missed the
episode.
>> I was ambitious in my choice of courses too, but had the opposite
>> malady: wanted to find everything written on a given subject. Not
>> enough time in college or grad school for that.
>>
>
> Well now, all I wantd was the knowledge to solve specific problems
> correctly, as most "knowledge" is BS. Real knowledge arises from the
> correct solution of specific problems, not from wool-gathering. The
> latter crime I could convict many professors for wasting our tax dollars
> on.
A little qiviut keeps you warm -- although I've never tried
it. Icelandic wool is what I use. Somehow my sensitive skin
tolerates it, although even then I wear a couple of layers
underneath. Would like to try alpaca wool.
I had a boss once who conceived of himself as a
problem-solver and not a visionary (which didn't prevent him
from having hidden agendas). Heaven forbid that he should
have a vision for the sake of good management! His boss knew
that and so made effective use of him as a shield and
hatchet man. Since my boss's aforesaid boss was a visionary
and had not a clue of how to move something from point A to
point B, it turns out they were rather good at manipulating
each other, to the ruination of all around.
Me, I'm both -- a problem-solver and a visionary. But (to
move in peculiar fashion from management to academics) I
think that knowledge that arises from problem-solving would
be mostly in physics and engineering and like subjects, not
as much in the humanities and social sciences, except maybe
political science.
I should also mention that information and knowledge are not
the same thing.
>> IIRC, at first OCLC stood for [snip]
>
> Thanks! OK, so what's IIRC? It's not a NASA acronym like OJWJFU (Oh
> Jesus we just fucked up).
IIRC = if I recall correctly.
Sorry 'bout dat. For two and a half decades I existed in an
acronyms-and-abbreviations-wherever-possible environment
(librarianship) and, though I became master of all and even
compiled a key to them (unpublished), I rebelled and now
resist using acronyms and abbreviations except for the most
common. "IIRC" is one of the most common used in this newsgroup.
> [snip]
> But the worst danger in the neighborhood is the Balto City Police. My
> wife has told me not even to go out after 10 pm as they have a thing for
> old guys in white beards = automatic derelicts. I'm going to have to
> write off to get cards from my UW astronomy department, UCLA, and the
> Space Telescope, as my two encounters with cops when I was doing nothing
> wrong, walking my dog at night, have shown me that they prejudge you and
> do not believe who you say you are. I was once thrown into jail, with a
> judgement by the magistrate that I was "A danger to the community" so
> should not be released on OR, so my wife had to hock the house for my
> bail. So gather your cards together now when it is easier. We are not
> discussing Aristotle here.
The cop should be sentenced to reading through Aristotle's
Metaphysics and commenting upon it. What d'ya say, fifty
written pages minimum?
>> I had been hoping that the 21st century would be different.
>>
> It gets worse. Remember Comus? (communications US) Think of a new
> movie for a clue.
I remember Milton's Comus, not Communications US.
>>> The truth can be sexist, and anti-sexism can be a lie.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, I'm wondering what the meaning of "truth" is in that statement.
>>
>>
> Pilate: "What is truth?" Salome: "What is a man's head?"
Like Alexander's Gordian knot.
>>>> What's that expression? "I get my pay from God."
>>>>
>>> Is it in dollars, Euros, Dinars, or Drachmas? Maybe it's in
>>> "Gimmedat", one of my daughter's favorite expressions when she was a
>>> little brat, which she still is at 32.
>>
>>
>>
>> Drachmas. Very droll drachmas.
>>
> If they get their shit built, and can protect visitors who have paid
> their life savings.
TV preacher: "Fork 'em over."
Heaven: "Welcome! Leave life savings behind."
> [snip]
>>>>> Do you know what the "norm" is in statistics?
Hehe! Another correction, I see.
>>>> Maximum Operational Resource Matrix?
>>>>
>>>> No, not a clue.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Typo!!
>>
>>
>>
>> And I was kidding. :-)
>>
>> But now I know what I'm building: a MORM.
>>
>>
> It's a new career for you. Don't say that I ever left you in drydock.
Right. I could surf the wave, so long as nobody makes a
connection with the tired "learning resource center" of
60s-speak.
> In statistics there is no good word for norm. If you have a Gaussian
> distribution, it's the number that defines the peak. Otherwise, there
> is median, which is what I think you mean, but the word 'norm' seems to
> have no other value that I know about.
In statistics.
> [snip]
> No pot, or they won't be ready for Challenger, which my dead best friend
> used to call his helper. Had he known more, he's have called him
> Seabiscuit. I'm seeing so much art from 2500-2000 years ago, lately,
> that I think we have not only learned nothing about sex since then, but
> lost a lot.
Yup.
> What I wanted, back then, but a little later than Winnie, was the wife
> of a U of AK geology asst prof for whom I didn't care nothing, as I knew
> the Mohs scale, who would zoom about the apartment in nothing but her
> panties, no lie. That I was 13-14 either escaped her attention or she
> was very cruel, because I was just at the age when I needed to be taught
> by an expert and not be intimidated by a callow schoolgirl. Of course,
> I didn't formulate it this way at that time, but just oozed and said to
> myself "fuck me please!"
The Mohs Scale of mineral hardness?
>> You use the term "physical adultery." As distinguished from?
>>
>>
> Mere flirting. When you flirt with respect and no pressure there's
> hardly a woman who doesn't like it, even among the Amish. Though as
> full as possible I've gone back to an Amish ice cream stand to get one
> more cone of black-cherry ice cream, even if it would kill me. A few
> winks and smiles get a special cone up in Pennsylvania. They know that
> they are facing a lifetime of hard work or else shunning. Had my wife
> and her sister not been with me that day, I would have asked whether
> there was any hard work I could have done in the back of the shop.
Flirtation is non-physical adultery?
>> I saw that too. Don't remember the name. Was it Clinton?
>
>
> Don't be nasty. That Clinton was near NY.
He didn't stay put.
> [snip]
> Sometime folks don't draw too fine distinctions. There were two great
> defeats for the Europeans, in Hungary and Poland, as the Mongols had
> split into northern and southern salients and slaughtered the stupid
> knights who faced them with their grossly inferior technology. [I've
> now got NS 7.1 and don't know how to pick special characters - it's all
> alien to me, but here goes] the Khan Oegoedei died, they went back for
> his funeral, and never returned, though they had a clear path to the
> Atlantic and Britain. My Slavic Bab instructor was a Mongol, and I
> asked him what were they thinking, and he told me not to bother thinking
> about it, in Russian. The best answer I ever got, even though I had to
> say poftarytye pozhaluysta.
Slavic Bab = Russian II, i.e. intermediate Russian?
"Povtorite, pozhaluysta?" = "Could you please say that
again?" That right?
>> So you do care!
>>
>
> I did at one time, and I'm still a dad.
Good. Besides death and taxes, the closest thing to a
guarantee in life is parental love. But not everyone has it.
> In my darkest moment after my Great Love screwed me and my kids over, I
> almost got my aesthetic experience back. Very odd. I was probably just
> cracking up, but got through it.
Strange the relationship between cracking up and some
mystical experiences! I think they're not a symptom, but a
side effect.
As for old flames, how hard it can be to keep oneself
integrated and in the moment when so often living in what
could have been!
>> But as for publishers' rejections, fortunately they can be bypassed
>> nowadays. Just post.
>>
> But I wanted millions for a new house. I had even promised my kids.
Then ya gotta face the gantlet. :-)
> Yes, when I was kidnapped I had no contact that I can recall with other
> kids, from 3-4 yrs old. The first night I was kidnapped, there was a
> Loooong drive through a rainy night, I was given an apple when we
> arrived, wherever it was, so I ate only half the apple, since I didn't
> know if I was going to be given anything else, and saved the rest behind
> the moving board of an upright piano, which I could play a bit. Since I
> had been used to eating everything like a greedy dog, imagine my
> astonishment the next morning to find that the remains of the apple had
> gone brown.
When I was a kid, I wouldn't eat browned apples. Now I do.
> [snip]
> Our chem dept tried to get rid of her, until a visiting Nobel Prize winner
> said she had a great project, which I knew and had been arguing,
> partly to the detriment of my career in the dept, and suddenly she began
> passing
> her comprehensive exams. Are there politics in scientific departments?
> Nah!!
Oh, don't disillusion me! ;-)
> I can't scream for Stella. Desire is allowed me in its place. But I've
> had two unfortunate incidents with the Balto PD in the last year -
> called OCD (organized crime division) just because I was out walking my
> dog at night, which he likes to do, being a night dog who sleeps all
> day. The OCD is *not* nice, and there is no organized crime that they
> are looking for in our neighborhood. I say I'm on a walk with my dog
> who likes nighttime. They summon a few more plain patrol cars, and soon
> I'm surrounded. <all sorts of nasty questions> "I'm a retired
> astrophysicist out for a walk with my dog" "Prove it!" "Here's the
> dog." "If it's vicious we'll kill it. Otherwise we'll just take it
> away." "He's on a leash and is not threatening anyone, and you are out
> of policy." "Who says?" I'd like to say that the whole incident is
> being recorded, but I can't.
Next time, drop out the astrophysicist part. A lot of cops
hate being made to feel inferior.
> [snip]
>>>> I've had similar closenesses, but was fortunate enough to have grown
>>>> up in a family environment mostly free of detectable racism -- if
>>>> there is such an environment.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You can get close, but no one is totally free. It's genetic.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yeah, in the sense that there are physical differences between people,
>> differences that reflect lineage. But I don't believe that either
>> racism or, more generally, groupism is genetic.
>>
>
> I have no proof, and there isn't any, but I think it's part of how we
> evolved.
Groups being the vehicle of survival for genes? Nah, that
doesn't make any sense in terms of skin color, not even much
in terms of groupism. Leastways, I'd take a lot of convincin'.
> I can say to an Afro-American that I'm also an African, just
> that we left at different times, we under our own steam but they being
> sold. Not all take it in good spirit.
Sunday morning, the journalist Chris Matthews said much the
same thing in his brief report on a trip to Africa.
> [snip]
>>> To me the feelings come first, not disquisitions on uncertain
>>> propositions.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yeah, but feelings lack both intellectual content and, in and of
>> themselves, the challenge of integrating heart and mind. When it comes
>> to the canons of sacred communities, there's often a great historical
>> richness with which to interact.
>>
>
> Feelings and intuitions are what make civilizations, wrong or right,
> great or small. Writing makes scholars. Which are more important? You
> can't answer that question, as it is beyond anyone alive, except maybe me.
I associate feelings and intuitions with individuals, not
civilizations. When an individual encounters a sacred text
or participates in a liturgy, then that individual is taken
up into something bigger than him or herself. It is an
engagement with a collective experience of countless lifetimes.
> Save me from these committees. I know more than they do, and they know
> it. If a minister wants to tell me his story, that's fine, as long as I
> get to feel his daughter's leg. If a rabbi wants to tell me stories I
> haven't heard before, he is welcome, until he is not willing to listen
> to me. A monk and I just sit together, as we know there is nothing to
> communicate that we do not know aready, or don't, as the case may be.
>
> What is "intellectual content"?
In this case, the subject matter of the text.
> It's almost always wrong. Feelings are
> something you can share on one level or another, sometimes it's just
> sufficient to know that the other has some feeling.
Feelings I have regardless.
>>> I get most of my books from Hamilton Books remaindered books. It's
>>> amazing what you can find. Mostly I buy them for presents, as I have
>>> no further shelf space. I'm not sure how much this endears me to
>>> friends and relatives, as folks are much more polite after having
>>> passed through humanism.
>>
>>
>>
>> Huh?
>
>
> I mean, folks are supposed to be polite now, before tossing your
> presents in the trash?
I would suppose that courtesy existed before humanism had
its name.
>> When I was selling books door to door in Arkansas not very
>> successfully decades ago, some of the politest people I came across
>> were Jehovah's Witnesses. Perhaps they knew what it was like.
>
>
> My mother's mother was one, and a great embarrassment.
Because of her religion?
>>> [snip]
>>> Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics ...
>>> www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Silliness!
>
>
> But they fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Just a little wiggly worm
> - hermeneutics - at the end of the line.
Surfing the postmodern wave, I suppose.
>> Let's just say they intended to mean this and not that.
>
>
> So my Admiral from Beta Hydrae, The Harbinger, meant one thing and not
> another?
Unless either he intended ambiguity or was operating with
less than a clear and distinct idea (to sound cartesian for
a moment).
>> But maybe I know what you mean. Something like an intent to prevail?
>> an unstated agenda?
>>
>
> You are groping toward the light. A real author intends to overwhelm
> his readers with his vision,
Must the "real author's" relation to the reader be one of
"power over," as your word "overwhelm" would suggest? I'd
say not, not even if you include the power of attraction.
> at least I did before I realized I was an
> idiot. My vison is limited to that of a sand mole (q.v.).
>
>[snip]
>> Patricia Highsmith, author of those Ripley novels?
>
>
> The very one. I've been trying to get my wife interested in them,
> although they are hard to read with my nattering away. She's now
> reading "Those who walk away". I have known many such persons, but have
> carefully avoided murder mysteries, perhaps because there are too many
> persons in my life who needed murdering.
Mystery's not a genre to which I'm particularly drawn
either, although I like Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown.
I started to write a mystery novel once, but it wasn't any
good, so I dropped it. Might make another attempt someday.
> Actually I got her interested
> in PH through a tell-all book about her lesbian affair.
Are you referring to her 1953 novel, The Price of Salt, for
which she used the pseudonym, Claire Morgan?
> Want more? Read "The Girls" by McLellan.
Diana? I'm more interested in lesbianism in the ancient world.
> Did you get my paragraph above yours, as it has content?
I think so. But if you wish to elaborate, go ahead.
I'm still mulling over "engendering our way of thinking." An
allusion to Harold Bloom?
> [snip]
> I spend money on books, but on little else. My wife keeps ragging me
> about my cheap LL Bean clothes, and even she has to order them for me.
Cheap! Not for me. I just bought four much-needed shirts
there, on the way down from central Maine. Ouch!
I try not to spend much on clothing and such, so that I can
buy books.
> [snip]
>>>> My main gripe with marked up books isn't that they're marked up,
>>>> it's that they're stupidly marked up. As far as I'm concerned,
>>>> intelligent marginalia is a big plus, all the more so when one
>>>> reader is responding to a former reader.
>>>>
>>> Exactly.
>>
>>
>>
>> Excellent!
>>
>>
>
> I have a nost excellent theorem, the proof of which is too large for
> this margin.
Listen, Fermat, write it down before something happens.
Better yet, don't.
>> Ah, the light bulb goes on! In one corner of a dark room. But I don't
>> see that my problem is solved. We're still talking about the
>> separation of matter at greater than the speed of light. Is cosmic
>> separation somehow different from travel?
>>
> There is a horizon neither you nor any light from you can pass, either
> one way or the other. When you look at those UDF pics try to think
> that's where the boundary of light stops. It's true that we can see
> ripples in the origin of the universe beyond that in microwaves, but
> that is not exactly the same thing, as it is from the gas of the Big
> Bang itself.
That sounds like an answer to a different question.
Relative to my question: So we are right now moving faster
than the speed of light relative to the most distant star?
Relative to your answer: What is the relation of the cosmic
background radiation discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson to this horizon?
Idea for a science fiction novel: Surfing the expansion of
the universe.
> [snip]
>>> I do not know this math, though I once attempted it 40 years ago, it
>>> has to do with inner and outer operations on manifolds in Hausdorff
>>> spaces in a variety of dimensions (9-11?),
>>
>>
>>
>> Oh dear! I almost understood that.
>>
> No, you didn't. What's the difference between inner and outer?
Like "outside" means "anywhere but Alaska." See, "almost
understanding" is "not understanding."
> What I have been trying to tell you: I discovered when I was 11 and 22
> that everything is simple. I had a bit of riffles between, but the end
> was conclusive and has never wavered. I need no more research into the
> basics for understanding, but only out of curiousity to know what others
> knew when they were usually much older than I.
Try Plotinus, whose mystical experience was also sparse but
whose intellectual development from that experience was rich.
> I tossed my Captain Jupiter's Space Cadet's membership card long ago
> (expired when I was 12). I used it a few times when being carded in
> bars, but it didn't work. I understand that John Edwards gets carded
> still.
I can't buy a bottle of wine without showing ID. What do
they think: precocious gray beard?
> I have a slower moving target for you, but much more difficult. You can
> find some of this shit on the web. The very thought of it pisses me off
> to the extent that my wife wants to put me into restraints. A year ago,
> the great love of my life = we taught each other how to fuck - the fuck
> of a 1000 fucks - said she wanted to collaborate with me on a book about
> "quorum sensing". This is not trivial and may be vitally important in
> many areas of biology (she's an agricultural geneticist). I hit on it
> right away, obvious I thought, why didn'T I think of it before? Got a
> FAX machine so we could exchsnge work and references.
>
> Cool, man, I was going to do a book on one of the most important
> phenomena in biology! I understood it immediately, faster than she
> could even explain it to me. Quorum sensing is a general term for when
> cells, benevolent or malevolent, realize that they have enough cells in
> their clump (the quorum) to go do their business. The cells emit
> chemicals that the other cells pick up, and then realize that the
> starter's gun has gone off.
I suppose that quorum sensing would help explain some cancer
spread.
> [snip]
>> You were the one who wrote, "it [our hypothetical telescope] will see
>> the Death of the Universe."
>>
> The beginning, not the same as the ending. The ending cannot be seen.
> Even you know that. If I wrote that phrase, Tenille must have been
> gnawing on my calf.
Then we can name this nonsensical subthread the Tenille Detour.
>> Now I'm a bit surprised at your "no time limit" comment. Why do you
>> think that?
>>
>>
> Whoever said there was a time limit to the universe?
Dissipation or collapse had been the argument. Now it looks
like dissipation, as I've heard it explained. As for time, I
think of it as an attribute of matter. But what happens to
time at the extremes -- complete dissipation or complete
collapse -- I don't know.
>>> [snip] I ber I could get my son's librarian gf to give
>>> me over one stupid question a minute, unless I talked too long.
>> [snip]
> I have to poop. Where's the john? Do I need to take my own TP?
Don't give 'em any ideas! (Id est, protect the reading
materials!)
> [snip]
> There is no way to be oversensitive to your own weaknesses. That way
> madness or death lies.
How do you figure?
> I had no visuals that anyone could understand. So I thought that
> inorganic chemistry lab might be more important, another mistake.
Poetry over science?
>>> Matter and all disappear over the horizon. Our connection with the
>>> extreme past is only with the fluctuations in the microwave
>>> background (q.v.)
>>
>>
>>
>> What makes the horizon?
>>
>
> What neither our nor their light can trangress.
Because of gravity?
>> Hey, that's pretty good! At least my cosmology's up to 1905 (sort of).
>> I was beginning to fear it was actually stuck back with the
>> presocratics, whom I systematically studied and much enjoyed in
>> college -- although they were often more tantalizing than revealing.
>
>
> Actually, I can ask you simple questions that will nake you more modest.
Don't bother. That threat alone has done the job. And no, I
can't reconstruct Einstein's theory of special relativity. I
merely have a few popular-level conceptions of it.
>> So bring me up to 1916. How's general relativity relevant to my question?
>>
>
> The universe is curved, and light follows "action". See "Gravitation"
> by Misner, et al.
What do you mean by "action"?
>> Sounds like the book must've been his long-time mistress.
>
>
> Except for the others. Where have you been, boy??
Obviously not paying attention to the love life of Charles
W. Misner.
>> greay boot = great book?
>>
>
> Gimme a break, the y is next to the t.
And the t in relation to the k? Belay that. I'll give you a
break. :-)
>> Will have to look for Fermi. (I avoid buying books retail.)
>
>
> Amazon will help - it's ppbk.
I had a book dealer friend a couple of decades ago who
styled himself a "book doctor" and who oft repeated, "A
paperback is not a book."
So, by that criterion, I have some number of non-books among
my books.
>> I keep deleting oodles and oodles and yet ...
>>
>
> I know. Good job, Oddjob. The best "I know" I ever heard said was by
> Linda Fiorentino to Anthony Edwards (she a CIA agent, he an unusually
> resourceful and potent UCLA student completely misled, and still with
> his hair) in a movie called "Gotcha!" (1986). Then he tracked her down,
> accidentally, after she vanished. He said, "I'm not just a kid
> anymore." And she said the magic words in her inimitable low sexy
> voice. It will cause your eyes to ooze. Rent the flick, it's not at all
> bad. After I got frustrated on imdb, my wife tracked the movie.
You sound exceptionally impressionable.
> So, I have two questions:
>
> 1) Ebeonites: (Jew/Christian) did they really believe that Jesus was human?
Ebionites. Only known by way of their detractors. Given that
caveat: Yes. At least one group of that name believed that
Jesus was just human. No virgin birth or anything.
Quite a coincidence that you ask, since I was reviewing the
ancient literature on them just a few days ago.
> 2) Marcionites: (Paulist) did they really believe in two gods and that
> Jesus was not human?
Given the same caveat: To the first part of your question,
yes, sort of. In Marcion's view the Creator God of the
Hebrew Bible was the Demiurge and not the Supreme God of
Love revealed by Jesus. As for Jesus himself, Marcion was
said to have held a Docetic christology. In other words, he
believed that Jesus only appeared to be human.
So, why are you asking these questions?
> 3) Jimbatist: he don't believe in fucking nothing outside of science and
> aesthetic experience?
Doubtful.
--
Norm
Norm
Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
>
>
> God, for those who believe in them, should also take the plural. The
> Grammarian Movement really fucked up our language 100 years ago.
A bit. English is not Latin. It's not even Greek. The same
in prosody.
I find it odd, though, that neologisms built from Old
English rarely take, whereas those from Latin or Greek often
do -- "polyamory," for instance, which is from both Greek
and Latin.
Even the singular "they," which has a long history in
English, has trouble making a go in many circles, especially
when cast in the reflexive, "themself" or "theirself."
>> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
>> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind in
>> our image" (Genesis 1:26).
>
>
> We no longer live in tents as a lifestyle; even the Berbers are getting
> away from it. Though it would be nice to have a 2nd wife accepted when
> necessary, or just for scaring the camels.
Evidently, in ancient Hebrew culture, each wife had her own
tent.
> Did you know that you should not travel faster than a camel's stroll,
> else you may leave your soul behind?
No, I don't recall ever hearing that.
Some separations are best done slowly, others cold turkey.
But some emotional attachment may persist in either case.
Maybe the saying is about the former kind.
Or maybe the saying is less about attachment than about a
rapid change in one's social matrix in a way that affects
how one behaves, for instance, with inhibitions gone.
>> But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were used for
>> translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir name is great in
>> Israel."
> At 5, I'd have tossed the book into the fireplace instead of reading it
> from front to back.
If I recall correctly, you read the King James Version.
Evidently, the five-year old you took all the "thees" and
"thous" in stride.
> I don't read posts from people prone to these phony
> pronouns.
English could use a few more pronouns, so that we won't have
to twist our sentences like pretzels or make heavier use of
first and second-person pronouns in order to reflect
present-day sensibilities. Thus I applaud the effort rather
than dubbing "phony." But I too have a limit on how many
"zies" I can take before my eyes glaze over.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
strokes, one of my more common errors. I hate Windows.
Norm wrote:
> I just found this message, which I missed earlier.
>
>
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>
>>> I like "Zie," "Zir," etc. best for God.
>>
>>
>>
>> God, for those who believe in them, should also take the plural. The
>> Grammarian Movement really fucked up our language 100 years ago.
>
>
> A bit. English is not Latin. It's not even Greek. The same in prosody.
>
> I find it odd, though, that neologisms built from Old English rarely
> take, whereas those from Latin or Greek often do -- "polyamory," for
> instance, which is from both Greek and Latin.
>
> Even the singular "they," which has a long history in English, has
> trouble making a go in many circles, especially when cast in the
> reflexive, "themself" or "theirself."
>
Please don't make me cackle. My wife says it's bad for my health. What
is the ablative absolute of they? Just "they" isn't it?
Los Alamos is having troubles over stolen documents. An old friend I
used to tease at Caltech was Ass't Director last I heard. It's
interesting to see how easy it to catch persons out that are brighter
than you are. You just have to prey on their overconfidence.
His collaborator separated the electrodynamic equations for the Kerr
black hole just when I got to Caltech in 1973. I just said, oh, my god,
I couldn't do that! So I took him all the equations I couldn't solve.
Saul always saw me coming; seemed to have a special pad just for me, and
a smile just for me. "What it is it today?" He would say where were
you in advanced calculus. Here, just do Green's Theorem <whizzzz>, and
then Gauss's Theorem, and you have it. Duh!
Buy their book "Numerical Recipes".
>
>>> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
>>> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind in
>>> our image" (Genesis 1:26).
>>
Psalms. God, will you never learn, even from an atheist?? My secret?
*I* am God. So pay respect. I know I don't exist, only you don't.
I took the classified info from Los Alamos just to screw up their system.
>>
>>
>> We no longer live in tents as a lifestyle; even the Berbers are
>> getting away from it. Though it would be nice to have a 2nd wife
>> accepted when necessary, or just for scaring the camels.
>
>
> Evidently, in ancient Hebrew culture, each wife had her own tent.
>
Not in mine. We peel off the paint together.
>
>> Did you know that you should not travel faster than a camel's stroll,
>> else you may leave your soul behind?
>
>
> No, I don't recall ever hearing that.
>
> Some separations are best done slowly, others cold turkey. But some
> emotional attachment may persist in either case. Maybe the saying is
> about the former kind.
>
> Or maybe the saying is less about attachment than about a rapid change
> in one's social matrix in a way that affects how one behaves, for
> instance, with inhibitions gone.
>
>
Inhibitions gone? Good!
>>> But imagine the hue and cry if gender-neutral pronouns were used for
>>> translating the Bible! "God is known in Judah; Zir name is great in
>>> Israel."
>
>
>> At 5, I'd have tossed the book into the fireplace instead of reading
>> it from front to back.
>
>
> If I recall correctly, you read the King James Version. Evidently, the
> five-year old you took all the "thees" and "thous" in stride.
>
Yes! They are real English! But not in the plural.
>
>> I don't read posts from people prone to these phony pronouns.
>
>
> English could use a few more pronouns, so that we won't have to twist
> our sentences like pretzels or make heavier use of first and
> second-person pronouns in order to reflect present-day sensibilities.
> Thus I applaud the effort rather than dubbing "phony." But I too have a
> limit on how many "zies" I can take before my eyes glaze over.
>
>
Glaze at the first one.
jimbat
Norm
> I accidentally sent you an incomplete letter by hitting the wrong
> strokes, one of my more common errors. I hate Windows.
I'm always afraid of doing that even with Macintosh. Having
the spell checker come up when the "send" button is hit has
saved me more than once.
What happened to the letter?
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>> A bit. English is not Latin. It's not even Greek. The same in prosody.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Even the singular "they," which has a long history in English, has
>> trouble making a go in many circles, especially when cast in the
>> reflexive, "themself" or "theirself."
>>
>
> Please don't make me cackle. My wife says it's bad for my health.
I should think that cackling would be good for your health,
that is, unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly,
knows better.
> What
> is the ablative absolute of they? Just "they" isn't it?
English has no ablative absolute. But I suppose you knew
that. Good example of English not being Latin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_absolute
> Los Alamos is having troubles over stolen documents. An old friend I
> used to tease at Caltech was Ass't Director last I heard. It's
> interesting to see how easy it to catch persons out that are brighter
> than you are. You just have to prey on their overconfidence.
>
> His collaborator separated the electrodynamic equations for the Kerr
> black hole just when I got to Caltech in 1973. I just said, oh, my god,
> I couldn't do that! So I took him all the equations I couldn't solve.
> Saul always saw me coming; seemed to have a special pad just for me, and
> a smile just for me. "What it is it today?" He would say where were
> you in advanced calculus. Here, just do Green's Theorem <whizzzz>, and
> then Gauss's Theorem, and you have it. Duh!
>
> Buy their book "Numerical Recipes".
I had 708 hits at amazon.com for "numerical recipes."
Frankly, I'm just wishing I could recoup my high school
math. I did pretty well, though I was no math whiz. (One or
two others in my senior class were, which is how I know.)
Got to college and total disconnect. The prof never linked
up with anything I knew. Never, not once. Asking questions
was fruitless. Almost killed my interest.
A similar thing happened with Shakespeare. I had a
wonderful, amazing class on Shakespeare in my senior year of
high school. But my college class was deadly. Fortunately,
my interest has endured despite college.
Been reading some of Pepys ("Peeps") Ballads lately, which
evoke something of the literary spirit of the times. It's a
collection from the 16th and 17th centuries. Somehow some of
those ballads seem more of a fabric with Shakespeare than do
many of the contemporary dramatists.
For a couple of examples, see under "Westminster wedding"
and "whore" at:
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsT.html
>>>> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
>>>> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind in
>>>> our image" (Genesis 1:26).
>>>
>>>
>
> Psalms.
"Psalms," the book, a compilation; "Psalm," the psalm.
> God, will you never learn, even from an atheist?? My secret?
> *I* am God. So pay respect. I know I don't exist, only you don't.
>
>
> I took the classified info from Los Alamos just to screw up their system.
You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting
the Feds?! Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care
whether you exist or not.
That, of course, is to say nothing about tempting God.
(Deuteronomy 6:16).
Ever run into Pascal's Wager?
> [snip]
>>> Did you know that you should not travel faster than a camel's stroll,
>>> else you may leave your soul behind?
>>
>>
>>
>> No, I don't recall ever hearing that.
>>
>> Some separations are best done slowly, others cold turkey. But some
>> emotional attachment may persist in either case. Maybe the saying is
>> about the former kind.
>>
>> Or maybe the saying is less about attachment than about a rapid change
>> in one's social matrix in a way that affects how one behaves, for
>> instance, with inhibitions gone.
>>
>>
> Inhibitions gone? Good!
Not necessarily just inhibitions about nudity and sexuality.
I find it odd that when people talk of immorality, typically
the assumption is that the subject matter is sexuality. The
same of inhibitions.
Some will go so far as to reject any idea of right and
wrong, simply because they've decided that what they heard
about sexual right and wrong was baloney. (I think that
matter's already been discussed in this newsgroup.)
However, don't think that I'm equating a sense of right and
wrong with inhibition, even if there is some overlap with
respect to behavioral outcomes.
Some have defined "polyamory" as "ethical non-monogamy." If
there is no right and wrong, is that definition vacuous,
null, and void?
BTW, when I travel, even by jet plane (which I haven't taken
since sometime before 9/11/01), I find that I never do
escape myself. I carry my personality and commitments with me.
>> If I recall correctly, you read the King James Version. Evidently, the
>> five-year old you took all the "thees" and "thous" in stride.
>>
>
> Yes! They are real English! But not in the plural.
My father used "thees" and "thous" often in extemporaneous
prayer. In fact, I heard a retired Baptist minister use them
just a week or two ago while saying grace free-form. But,
IIRC, they're disallowed in Scrabble. My spell-checker
doesn't approve of them either. Lots of terms that
dictionaries label "obsolete" or "archaic" are not, but are
still perpetuated as living words by some margin or subset
of society.
The loss of "ye" (2nd person nominative plural of "thou") in
general usage has led many to think of their own bodies as
individual temples of the Holy Spirit. It's even a cliché
these days: "My body's a temple."
After all, modern translations of the Bible generally read
something like the New American Standard does: "... do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit ..."
(1 Corinthians 6:19). This is easily misinterpreted per
American individualism. But, on the point of plural versus
singular, the King James renders the original Greek with
greater precision: "... know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost ..." -- in other words, the author
was referring to a collective body.
I don't know that the absence of an intimate "you" in
present-day English is a problem. But English could stand to
recover a distinctive plural "you."
As for "real English," that's not just the English of the past.
>> English could use a few more pronouns, so that we won't have to twist
>> our sentences like pretzels or make heavier use of first and
>> second-person pronouns in order to reflect present-day sensibilities.
>> Thus I applaud the effort rather than dubbing "phony." But I too have
>> a limit on how many "zies" I can take before my eyes glaze over.
>>
>>
> Glaze at the first one.
Lots of times the sex of a person being referred to is
totally irrelevant, and so the sexed part of "he" and "she"
in such cases is irrelevant.
Nevertheless, I find "zies" of interest and not unduly
distracting only when used to beat the limitations of the
usual English pronouns, apart from avoidance of the
irrelevant sexing of language -- for example, when they help
with precision (as in reference to God) or obfuscation (as
when you don't want to reveal sexes).
Even then a sea of "zies" rapidly seems a wash -- i.e. a
swill rather than a swell. But if I had learned them from my
mother, perhaps that wouldn't be so.
"As when you ...": Wouldn't it be nice to have a general
"you" that would be distinct from a particular "you,"
whether plural or singular?
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> I accidentally sent you an incomplete letter by hitting the wrong
>> strokes, one of my more common errors. I hate Windows.
>
>
> I'm always afraid of doing that even with Macintosh. Having the spell
> checker come up when the "send" button is hit has saved me more than once.
>
> What happened to the letter?
My wife found it and you will receive it.
>
>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>>> A bit. English is not Latin. It's not even Greek. The same in prosody.
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Even the singular "they," which has a long history in English, has
>>> trouble making a go in many circles, especially when cast in the
>>> reflexive, "themself" or "theirself."
>>>
>>
>> Please don't make me cackle. My wife says it's bad for my health.
>
>
> I should think that cackling would be good for your health, that is,
> unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly, knows better.
She's a bit beyond the point of laying eggs. Our townhouse association
has a rule against chickens and geese. Oh, and against goats and oxen.
>
>
>> What is the ablative absolute of they? Just "they" isn't it?
>
>
> English has no ablative absolute. But I suppose you knew that. Good
> example of English not being Latin.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_absolute
>
>
Great reference. But if it doesn't exist, it's the same - my point exactly.
>
>> Los Alamos is having troubles over stolen documents. An old friend I
>> used to tease at Caltech was Ass't Director last I heard. It's
>> interesting to see how easy it to catch persons out that are brighter
>> than you are. You just have to prey on their overconfidence.
>>
>> His collaborator separated the electrodynamic equations for the Kerr
>> black hole just when I got to Caltech in 1973. I just said, oh, my
>> god, I couldn't do that! So I took him all the equations I couldn't
>> solve. Saul always saw me coming; seemed to have a special pad just
>> for me, and a smile just for me. "What it is it today?" He would say
>> where were you in advanced calculus. Here, just do Green's Theorem
>> <whizzzz>, and then Gauss's Theorem, and you have it. Duh!
>>
>> Buy their book "Numerical Recipes".
>
>
> I had 708 hits at amazon.com for "numerical recipes."
>
> Frankly, I'm just wishing I could recoup my high school math. I did
> pretty well, though I was no math whiz. (One or two others in my senior
> class were, which is how I know.) Got to college and total disconnect.
> The prof never linked up with anything I knew. Never, not once. Asking
> questions was fruitless. Almost killed my interest.
You were unlucky. My accelerated math professor at Harvard, Birkhoff:
"A survey of Modern Algebra", passed out a proof or one of his theorems.
Three pages. He was very proud, so he challenged any student to come
up with a shorter proof. One student, now a math professor, came up with
a half-page proof the next meeting, and then Birkhoff kept his promise.
That was the class, to much applause.
>
> A similar thing happened with Shakespeare. I had a wonderful, amazing
> class on Shakespeare in my senior year of high school. But my college
> class was deadly. Fortunately, my interest has endured despite college.
>
> Been reading some of Pepys ("Peeps") Ballads lately, which evoke
> something of the literary spirit of the times. It's a collection from
> the 16th and 17th centuries. Somehow some of those ballads seem more of
> a fabric with Shakespeare than do many of the contemporary dramatists.
>
An expose, to be sure.
> For a couple of examples, see under "Westminster wedding" and "whore" at:
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsT.html
>
>
>>>>> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
>>>>> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind
>>>>> in our image" (Genesis 1:26).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> Psalms.
>
>
> "Psalms," the book, a compilation; "Psalm," the psalm.
>
Checking - you are right.
>
>> God, will you never learn, even from an atheist?? My secret? *I* am
>> God. So pay respect. I know I don't exist, only you don't.
>>
>>
>> I took the classified info from Los Alamos just to screw up their system.
>
>
> You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting the Feds?!
> Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care whether you exist or not.
>
> That, of course, is to say nothing about tempting God. (Deuteronomy 6:16).
>
I hsve tempted God many times, but have always gotten away with it. So
where is God's power?
> Ever run into Pascal's Wager?
Yes, and he was right.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> Did you know that you should not travel faster than a camel's
>>>> stroll, else you may leave your soul behind?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> No, I don't recall ever hearing that.
>>>
>>> Some separations are best done slowly, others cold turkey. But some
>>> emotional attachment may persist in either case. Maybe the saying is
>>> about the former kind.
>>>
>>> Or maybe the saying is less about attachment than about a rapid
>>> change in one's social matrix in a way that affects how one behaves,
>>> for instance, with inhibitions gone.
>>>
>>>
>> Inhibitions gone? Good!
>
>
> Not necessarily just inhibitions about nudity and sexuality.
>
> I find it odd that when people talk of immorality, typically the
> assumption is that the subject matter is sexuality. The same of
> inhibitions.
I will have to chastise Michelle in that case.
>
> Some will go so far as to reject any idea of right and wrong, simply
> because they've decided that what they heard about sexual right and
> wrong was baloney. (I think that matter's already been discussed in this
> newsgroup.)
>
> However, don't think that I'm equating a sense of right and wrong with
> inhibition, even if there is some overlap with respect to behavioral
> outcomes.
As if behvior ever leads to outcomes. She can lead me down the garden
path, but what sqeeels lie at the end?
>
> Some have defined "polyamory" as "ethical non-monogamy." If there is no
> right and wrong, is that definition vacuous, null, and void?
>
No, no, and no.
> BTW, when I travel, even by jet plane (which I haven't taken since
> sometime before 9/11/01), I find that I never do escape myself. I carry
> my personality and commitments with me.
>
I put a post to that effect here on 9/12
>
>>> If I recall correctly, you read the King James Version. Evidently,
>>> the five-year old you took all the "thees" and "thous" in stride.
>>>
>>
>> Yes! They are real English! But not in the plural.
>
I have the KJV right here.
>
> My father used "thees" and "thous" often in extemporaneous prayer. In
> fact, I heard a retired Baptist minister use them just a week or two ago
> while saying grace free-form. But, IIRC, they're disallowed in Scrabble.
> My spell-checker doesn't approve of them either. Lots of terms that
> dictionaries label "obsolete" or "archaic" are not, but are still
> perpetuated as living words by some margin or subset of society.
>
He should have exercised more restraint.
> The loss of "ye" (2nd person nominative plural of "thou") in general
> usage has led many to think of their own bodies as individual temples of
> the Holy Spirit. It's even a cliché these days: "My body's a temple."
>
Is it not? I told Katya that her body was a temple.
> After all, modern translations of the Bible generally read something
> like the New American Standard does: "... do you not know that your body
> is a temple of the Holy Spirit ..." (1 Corinthians 6:19). This is easily
> misinterpreted per American individual
I have no such version.
ism. But, on the point of plural
> versus singular, the King James renders the original Greek with greater
> precision: "... know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy
> Ghost ..." -- in other words, the author was referring to a collective
> body.
>
My body is also collective.
> I don't know that the absence of an intimate "you" in present-day
> English is a problem. But English could stand to recover a distinctive
> plural "you."
>
> As for "real English," that's not just the English of the past.
>
>
>>> English could use a few more pronouns, so that we won't have to twist
>>> our sentences like pretzels or make heavier use of first and
>>> second-person pronouns in order to reflect present-day sensibilities.
>>> Thus I applaud the effort rather than dubbing "phony." But I too have
>>> a limit on how many "zies" I can take before my eyes glaze over.
>>>
>>>
>> Glaze at the first one.
>
>
> Lots of times the sex of a person being referred to is totally
> irrelevant, and so the sexed part of "he" and "she" in such cases is
> irrelevant.
>
Not really.
> Nevertheless, I find "zies" of interest and not unduly distracting only
> when used to beat the limitations of the usual English pronouns, apart
> from avoidance of the irrelevant sexing of language -- for example, when
> they help with precision (as in reference to God) or obfuscation (as
> when you don't want to reveal sexes).
>
> Even then a sea of "zies" rapidly seems a wash -- i.e. a swill rather
> than a swell. But if I had learned them from my mother, perhaps that
> wouldn't be so.
>
> "As when you ...": Wouldn't it be nice to have a general "you" that
> would be distinct from a particular "you," whether plural or singular?
>
Context, you pussy!
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> I accidentally sent you an incomplete letter by hitting the wrong
>> strokes, one of my more common errors. I hate Windows.
>
>
> I'm always afraid of doing that even with Macintosh. Having the spell
> checker come up when the "send" button is hit has saved me more than once.
>
> What happened to the letter?
>
>
It's starting to get light outside, so I'm going to have to run down my
deer pretty damn quick, else the freezer will be empty and there will be
nothing for Achilles to eat.
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>>> A bit. English is not Latin. It's not even Greek. The same in prosody.
>>>
Why you should get English Chant Scola. I may be tone deaf, but not
that deaf.
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Even the singular "they," which has a long history in English, has
>>> trouble making a go in many circles, especially when cast in the
>>> reflexive, "themself" or "theirself."
>>>
>>
>> Please don't make me cackle. My wife says it's bad for my health.
>
>
> I should think that cackling would be good for your health, that is,
> unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly, knows better.
I just got up to see if I laid one, but no such luck. Oh, but I'm a
rooster, and now have to wake up my hens so that we can make the beast
with two backs. But with chickens it's a little different.
>
>
>> What is the ablative absolute of they? Just "they" isn't it?
>
>
> English has no ablative absolute. But I suppose you knew that. Good
> example of English not being Latin.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_absolute
>
>
"jimbat" is ablative absolute, but I hoped you would know that as the
name was born on a long night of e-mail to La Silla when the weather was
bad there.
>
>> Los Alamos is having troubles over stolen documents. An old friend I
>> used to tease at Caltech was Ass't Director last I heard. It's
>> interesting to see how easy it to catch persons out that are brighter
>> than you are. You just have to prey on their overconfidence.
I stole his girlfriend.
>>
>> His collaborator separated the electrodynamic equations for the Kerr
>> black hole just when I got to Caltech in 1973. I just said, oh, my
>> god, I couldn't do that! So I took him all the equations I couldn't
>> solve. Saul always saw me coming; seemed to have a special pad just
>> for me, and a smile just for me. "What it is it today?" He would say
>> where were you in advanced calculus. Here, just do Green's Theorem
>> <whizzzz>, and then Gauss's Theorem, and you have it. Duh!
>>
>> Buy their book "Numerical Recipes".
>
>
> I had 708 hits at amazon.com for "numerical recipes."
>
> Frankly, I'm just wishing I could recoup my high school math. I did
> pretty well, though I was no math whiz. (One or two others in my senior
> class were, which is how I know.) Got to college and total disconnect.
> The prof never linked up with anything I knew. Never, not once. Asking
> questions was fruitless. Almost killed my interest.
>
> A similar thing happened with Shakespeare. I had a wonderful, amazing
> class on Shakespeare in my senior year of high school. But my college
> class was deadly. Fortunately, my interest has endured despite college.
>
> Been reading some of Pepys ("Peeps") Ballads lately, which evoke
> something of the literary spirit of the times. It's a collection from
> the 16th and 17th centuries. Somehow some of those ballads seem more of
> a fabric with Shakespeare than do many of the contemporary dramatists.
>
> For a couple of examples, see under "Westminster wedding" and "whore" at:
I know how Pepys is pronounced, even I am from Alaska. But I did induce
a fever that slowly caught on, as I was worshipped as the smartest kid
in town, when presenting my paper my sophomore HS paper in world history
on "Eng Lit before the advent of the Romans". I was only 13 fer God's
sake. I pronounced annihillation (one tribe vs another) as
anHILLiation. The tescher cracked up and then so did every one else,
following his cue. My paper, worthy of respect, was ruined. And he was
perhaps my best HS teacher. He had a question for us every day. I
missed only one all year; had been sick and didn't do the reading : What
was the name of Alexander the Great's Admiral and what did her do? I
liked his daughter, but had to give it up after she got pregnant.
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsT.html
>
>
>>>>> "God is known in Judah; Their name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:1)
>>>>> doesn't work for me. Although Zie did say, "Let us make humankind
>>>>> in our image" (Genesis 1:26).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> Psalms.
>
>
> "Psalms," the book, a compilation; "Psalm," the psalm.
>
>
When the plural and when the singular?
>> God, will you never learn, even from an atheist?? My secret? *I* am
>> God. So pay respect. I know I don't exist, only you don't.
>>
>>
>> I took the classified info from Los Alamos just to screw up their system.
>
>
> You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting the Feds?!
> Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care whether you exist or not.
I fear only Comus.
Und thou. Alpe de Hues today.
jimbat
Norm
> Blush...
Why?
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>> I should think that cackling would be good for your health, that is,
>> unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly, knows better.
>
>
> She's a bit beyond the point of laying eggs. Our townhouse association
> has a rule against chickens and geese. Oh, and against goats and oxen.
Try camelids.
> [snip]
>> You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting the Feds?!
>> Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care whether you exist or
>> not.
>>
>> That, of course, is to say nothing about tempting God. (Deuteronomy
>> 6:16).
>>
>
> I hsve tempted God many times, but have always gotten away with it. So
> where is God's power?
Mercifully not withheld.
>> Ever run into Pascal's Wager?
>
>
> Yes, and he was right.
Oh, interesting. I always thought his reasoning was flawed,
but thought it might have some application here -- flawed
with respect to belief, applicable with respect to tempting
fate.
So how was Monsieur Blaise Pascal right?
>> I find it odd that when people talk of immorality, typically the
>> assumption is that the subject matter is sexuality. The same of
>> inhibitions.
Morality and inhibition are often woven together in people's
minds, so I discussed them in woven fashion, but didn't
realize till later.
> I will have to chastise Michelle in that case.
Michelle?
> [snip]
>> The loss of "ye" (2nd person nominative plural of "thou") in general
>> usage has led many to think of their own bodies as individual temples
>> of the Holy Spirit. It's even a cliché these days: "My body's a temple."
>>
>
> Is it not? I told Katya that her body was a temple.
Depends on "temple" to and for whom. Or it could be
conceived of as part of the temple precincts.
>> After all, modern translations of the Bible generally read something
>> like the New American Standard [snip]
>
> I have no such version.
The NASB makes a pretense to being one of the most accurate
versions of the Bible, and a lot of people buy that claim. I
don't. However, it's false reputation makes it a useful
version to cite. Besides I like my copy. It's a first
edition and has a good leather smell.
>> But, on the point of plural
>> versus singular, the King James renders the original Greek with
>> greater precision: "... know ye not that your body is the temple of
>> the Holy Ghost ..." -- in other words, the author was referring to a
>> collective body.
>>
>
> My body is also collective.
At last your bacteria are getting some recognition!
>> Lots of times the sex of a person being referred to is totally
>> irrelevant, and so the sexed part of "he" and "she" in such cases is
>> irrelevant.
>>
>
> Not really.
Granted, not to you. :-)
>> "As when you ...": Wouldn't it be nice to have a general "you" that
>> would be distinct from a particular "you," whether plural or singular?
>>
>
> Context, you pussy!
American Southerners have "y'all," and I've always liked
that. "Y'all come back now, ya hear?"
--
Norm
Norm
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> I accidentally sent you an incomplete letter by hitting the wrong
>>> strokes, one of my more common errors. I hate Windows.
If it's a reply in the other subthread, I haven't received
it yet.
> It's starting to get light outside, so I'm going to have to run down my
> deer pretty damn quick, else the freezer will be empty and there will be
> nothing for Achilles to eat.
What hours you're keeping!
A little road kill will do for Achilles, eh?
> Why you should get English Chant Scola. I may be tone deaf, but not
> that deaf.
I may have another chance to look today.
>> I should think that cackling would be good for your health, that is,
>> unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly, knows better.
>
>
> I just got up to see if I laid one, but no such luck. Oh, but I'm a
> rooster, and now have to wake up my hens so that we can make the beast
> with two backs. But with chickens it's a little different.
I thought only two were left in the roost, including the
rooster.
>> English has no ablative absolute. But I suppose you knew that. Good
>> example of English not being Latin.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_absolute
>>
>>
>
> "jimbat" is ablative absolute, but I hoped you would know that as the
> name was born on a long night of e-mail to La Silla when the weather was
> bad there.
My being a dense bear today, you'll have to explain that one.
(Oops, that awful clause: almost an ablative absolute!)
>>> Los Alamos is having troubles over stolen documents. An old friend I
>>> used to tease at Caltech was Ass't Director last I heard. It's
>>> interesting to see how easy it to catch persons out that are brighter
>>> than you are. You just have to prey on their overconfidence.
>
> I stole his girlfriend.
Noting the "stole."
>>> His collaborator separated the electrodynamic equations for the Kerr
>>> black hole just when I got to Caltech in 1973. I just said, oh, my
>>> god, I couldn't do that! So I took him all the equations I couldn't
>>> solve. Saul always saw me coming; seemed to have a special pad just
>>> for me, and a smile just for me. "What it is it today?" He would
>>> say where were you in advanced calculus. Here, just do Green's
>>> Theorem <whizzzz>, and then Gauss's Theorem, and you have it. Duh!
>>>
>>> Buy their book "Numerical Recipes".
More data?
>> Been reading some of Pepys ("Peeps") Ballads lately, which evoke
>> something of the literary spirit of the times. It's a collection from
>> the 16th and 17th centuries. Somehow some of those ballads seem more
>> of a fabric with Shakespeare than do many of the contemporary dramatists.
>>
>> For a couple of examples, see under "Westminster wedding" and "whore" at:
>
>
> I know how Pepys is pronounced, even I am from Alaska.
I assumed that, but did not assume that every individual in
our great horde of readers would know.
The librarian asked how to pronounce Pepys, and she
remembered when the interlibrary loan came in. Irrelevant,
but since you'd want to know: Yes, cute.
> But I did induce
> a fever that slowly caught on, as I was worshipped as the smartest kid
> in town, when presenting my paper my sophomore HS paper in world history
> on "Eng Lit before the advent of the Romans". I was only 13 fer God's
> sake. I pronounced annihillation (one tribe vs another) as
> anHILLiation. The tescher cracked up and then so did every one else,
> following his cue.
Like pronouncing "gesture" with a hard "g." A well-read
friend of mine, of a long time ago, did that in class in
grad school, to his embarrassment. "Well-read" does not
necessarily translate to "well-attuned to pronunciation."
Reminds me of a discussion a while ago in this forum on the
pronunciation of "polygyny." In that case, the hard "g"
pronunciation seems to be widespread, despite what
dictionaries say.
> My paper, worthy of respect, was ruined. And he was
> perhaps my best HS teacher. He had a question for us every day. I
> missed only one all year; had been sick and didn't do the reading : What
> was the name of Alexander the Great's Admiral and what did her do?
Nearchus of Crete wrote some memoires.
> I
> liked his daughter, but had to give it up after she got pregnant.
What, she married the guy who knocked her up?
>> "Psalms," the book, a compilation; "Psalm," the psalm.
>>
>>
>
> When the plural and when the singular?
"Psalm" when just one is meant; otherwise "Psalms" --
ordinarily speaking.
>> You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting the Feds?!
>> Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care whether you exist or
>> not.
>
>
> I fear only Comus.
Why? It might pull the plug?
>> "As when you ...": Wouldn't it be nice to have a general "you" that
>> would be distinct from a particular "you," whether plural or singular?
>>
>
> Und thou. Alpe de Hues today.
Thanks to Google, I discover a reference to the Tour de France.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> Blush...
>
>
> Why?
I haven't blushed since I was 15.
>
>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>
>>> I should think that cackling would be good for your health, that is,
>>> unless you're laying an egg. But she, undoubtedly, knows better.
>>
>>
>>
>> She's a bit beyond the point of laying eggs. Our townhouse
>> association has a rule against chickens and geese. Oh, and against
>> goats and oxen.
>
>
> Try camelids.
>
My wives went down to Chilean Patagonia almost 10 years ago. #2 kept
calling it "fireland" which I did not understand, for a while, as she
was translating from German. They found the guanacos less than
pleasant. Do not let them spit on you. The Magelannic penguins are
much more fun. And the wind is hard.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> You don't like the Baltimore police and now you're tempting the
>>> Feds?! Beware, Echelon is watching. And it doesn't care whether you
>>> exist or not.
>>>
>>> That, of course, is to say nothing about tempting God. (Deuteronomy
>>> 6:16).
>>>
>>
>> I hsve tempted God many times, but have always gotten away with it.
>> So where is God's power?
>
>
> Mercifully not withheld.
>
He doesn't care a flying fuck for me, though I *have* been very lucky
from time to time.
>
>
>>> Ever run into Pascal's Wager?
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, and he was right.
>
>
> Oh, interesting. I always thought his reasoning was flawed, but thought
> it might have some application here -- flawed with respect to belief,
> applicable with respect to tempting fate.
>
> So how was Monsieur Blaise Pascal right?
>
His theorem was recently proved, but not without going through a few
Japanese on the way. The proof is too hard for me to understand, though
the theorem is obvious. You don't want to know.
>
>>> I find it odd that when people talk of immorality, typically the
>>> assumption is that the subject matter is sexuality. The same of
>>> inhibitions.
>
>
> Morality and inhibition are often woven together in people's minds, so I
> discussed them in woven fashion, but didn't realize till later.
>
>
>> I will have to chastise Michelle in that case.
>
>
> Michelle?
Yes, she weighed 90 lb in 1972 when I weighed only 130. I could take
her by the hips and lift her sraight out. Smart kid. Something was
wrong with my mind back then, as I didn't take her upstairs to throw her
into bed with my wife. Something was not clicking upstairs.
She had me.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> The loss of "ye" (2nd person nominative plural of "thou") in general
>>> usage has led many to think of their own bodies as individual temples
>>> of the Holy Spirit. It's even a cliché these days: "My body's a temple."
>>>
>>
>> Is it not? I told Katya that her body was a temple.
>
And I told my wife that it was not getting enough kissing.
>
> Depends on "temple" to and for whom. Or it could be conceived of as part
> of the temple precincts.
It's a bit old for us to conceive, but I can "conceive of".
>
>
>>> After all, modern translations of the Bible generally read something
>>> like the New American Standard [snip]
>>
>>
>> I have no such version.
>
>
> The NASB makes a pretense to being one of the most accurate versions of
> the Bible, and a lot of people buy that claim. I don't. However, it's
> false reputation makes it a useful version to cite. Besides I like my
> copy. It's a first edition and has a good leather smell.
>
I take the KJV, as that's back when we knew how to speak English. Viz
Shakespeare. It doesn't *smell* like leather so it may be vinyl. It
costs The Host to get a god Bible now and a wagon to carry it.
>
>>> But, on the point of plural
>>> versus singular, the King James renders the original Greek with
>>> greater precision: "... know ye not that your body is the temple of
>>> the Holy Ghost ..." -- in other words, the author was referring to a
>>> collective body.
>>>
>>
>> My body is also collective.
>
>
> At last your bacteria are getting some recognition!
This is the age of bacteria and it always shall be. It is always the
age of cancer. My great love enticed me to be her collaborator on a pop
book on "quorum sensing" (q.v.). Nothing works without it, not even
cancer, or babies. I got a FAX machine and everything, printed out lots
of stuff, and then she said no; new husband had too many kids. A very
unreliable person, but changed my physiology. She never again had fucks
like we did, and me neither, but close. Catholic girls are good. She
was Mormon.
>
>
>>> Lots of times the sex of a person being referred to is totally
>>> irrelevant, and so the sexed part of "he" and "she" in such cases is
>>> irrelevant.
>>>
>>
>> Not really.
>
>
> Granted, not to you. :-)
>
Take it easy there boy. Well, maybe not.
>
>>> "As when you ...": Wouldn't it be nice to have a general "you" that
>>> would be distinct from a particular "you," whether plural or singular?
>>>
>>
>> Context, you pussy!
>
>
> American Southerners have "y'all," and I've always liked that. "Y'all
> come back now, ya hear?"
>
Yes, "you" is almost worthless.
I like it too, being a Texas boy. (pre-Alaska)
jimbat
umarc
>Jim Roberts wrote:
>> She's a bit beyond the point of laying eggs. Our townhouse association
>> has a rule against chickens and geese. Oh, and against goats and oxen.
>Try camelids.
Those are placentals. You need a monotreme, maybe, or any of the various
diapsids or anapsids[1]. They can't all be covered, and they are all
potential egg sources (well, most of them, anyway).
>The NASB makes a pretense to being one of the most accurate
>versions of the Bible, and a lot of people buy that claim. I
>don't. However, it's false reputation makes it a useful
>version to cite. Besides I like my copy. It's a first
>edition and has a good leather smell.
None of my Qur'ans have any particular smell at all. Wright's _Grammar
of the Arabic Language_ smells very nice, though.
(re: second person plural)
>American Southerners have "y'all," and I've always liked
>that. "Y'all come back now, ya hear?"
Old English had not only the second person pural "ge" (="ye"), but
also a second person dual "git" ("yit"), and its corresponding
genitive and accusative/dative forms "incer" and "inc", respectively.
[1] Confusticate and bebother these cladists; why can't we say
"reptile" any more?
umar
--
Bookmarks: Qur'an/Surat al-Baqarah 250; Voina i Mir/v.1 p.461
можете вы это читать?
rm -rf /luser/bush 106 days, 23 hours, 34 minutes
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>>>She's a bit beyond the point of laying eggs. Our townhouse association
>>>has a rule against chickens and geese. Oh, and against goats and oxen.
>
>
>>Try camelids.
>
>
> Those are placentals.
Indeed! As are goats and oxen. O the sins of free association!
But alpaca farming's not a bad life.
> You need a monotreme, maybe, or any of the various
> diapsids or anapsids[1]. They can't all be covered, and they are all
> potential egg sources (well, most of them, anyway).
A Formicidae farm might suit; or, better, an apiary. Though
I like your idea of a platypus best.
If you're hungry for ova (in the Latin sense), there are
always ostriches.
As a child I ate a chicken egg a day. Now I can hardly
stomach them. I have a similar problem with many a cheese
dish, but not stemming from my childhood diet.
>>The NASB makes a pretense to being one of the most accurate
>>versions of the Bible, and a lot of people buy that claim. I
>>don't. However, it's false reputation makes it a useful
>>version to cite. Besides I like my copy. It's a first
>>edition and has a good leather smell.
>
>
> None of my Qur'ans have any particular smell at all.
None of mine have either. So what then would it be that
piques and sustains your interest in the Quran?
> Wright's _Grammar
> of the Arabic Language_ smells very nice, though.
Alas, none of my Arabic grammars can compare -- Dilaver
Berberi, A. S. Tritton, Edward J. Young.
I believe it was Young who learned a language a year. He
also wrote a manual of chess, commentaries on some books of
the Hebrew Bible, and more.
> (re: second person plural)
>
>
>>American Southerners have "y'all," and I've always liked
>>that. "Y'all come back now, ya hear?"
>
>
> Old English had not only the second person pural "ge" (="ye"), but
> also a second person dual "git" ("yit"), and its corresponding
> genitive and accusative/dative forms "incer" and "inc", respectively.
Right, though seldom encountered in extant sources.
Classical Greek also had a dual that meant "you two": sphö
(nominative/accusative); sphön (genitive/dative).
> [1] Confusticate and bebother these cladists; why can't we say
> "reptile" any more?
I'm not a cladist, but I do note the class Reptilia. Did
someone take it away?
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> Blush...
>>
>>
>>
>> Why?
>
>
> I haven't blushed since I was 15.
'Bout time then.
>> Try camelids.
>>
>
> My wives went down to Chilean Patagonia almost 10 years ago. #2 kept
> calling it "fireland" which I did not understand, for a while, as she
> was translating from German.
Feuerland??
> They found the guanacos less than
> pleasant. Do not let them spit on you. The Magelannic penguins are
> much more fun. And the wind is hard.
No one ever said camelids are wanting in personality.
However, many are shy.
>>> I hsve tempted God many times, but have always gotten away with it.
>>> So where is God's power?
>>
>>
>>
>> Mercifully not withheld.
>>
> He doesn't care a flying fuck for me, though I *have* been very lucky
> from time to time.
My parents always taught me that with God there's no such
thing as luck. I don't think they took quantum theory into
account, though.
Hmm, I've noticed that some people completely lack a
spiritual sense, or else suppress it. For people who have it
the world is rich and variegated and their very existence is
the demonstration of divine care. For people who lack it the
world is, by comparison, stark and dreary or else fanciful
and embellished. But, of course, that's much too simplistic
an observation.
>> So how was Monsieur Blaise Pascal right?
>>
>
> His theorem was recently proved, but not without going through a few
> Japanese on the way. The proof is too hard for me to understand, though
> the theorem is obvious. You don't want to know.
Oh, you did a free association off of Pascal, not his Wager.
> [snip]
>> The NASB makes a pretense to being one of the most accurate versions
>> of the Bible, and a lot of people buy that claim. I don't. However,
>> it's false reputation makes it a useful version to cite. Besides I
>> like my copy. It's a first edition and has a good leather smell.
>>
>
> I take the KJV, as that's back when we knew how to speak English. Viz
> Shakespeare.
Frankly I like modern English better, although I sometimes
wonder whether Shakespeare's genius would have been
dissipated by it. I doubt it.
> It doesn't *smell* like leather so it may be vinyl. It
> costs The Host to get a god Bible now and a wagon to carry it.
I see skads of Bibles at booksales.
Hmm, I wonder what would be a good term for a multiplicity
of Bibles. "Skads" will do in a pinch. A "babel of Bibles"
sounds too ideological.
> [snip]
>> American Southerners have "y'all," and I've always liked that. "Y'all
>> come back now, ya hear?"
>>
>
>
> Yes, "you" is almost worthless.
>
> I like it too, being a Texas boy. (pre-Alaska)
After Texas and Alaska, doesn't Maryland seem confining?
--
Norm
Cally Soukup
> Hmm, I've noticed that some people completely lack a
> spiritual sense, or else suppress it. For people who have it
> the world is rich and variegated and their very existence is
> the demonstration of divine care. For people who lack it the
> world is, by comparison, stark and dreary or else fanciful
> and embellished. But, of course, that's much too simplistic
> an observation.
I should say so. On what are you basing this purported fact?
--
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend
to the death your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
umarc
>umarc wrote:
>> None of my Qur'ans have any particular smell at all.
>None of mine have either. So what then would it be that
>piques and sustains your interest in the Quran?
The language. The Qur'an is the ultimate exemplar of classical Arabic.
>> Old English had not only the second person pural "ge" (="ye"), but
>> also a second person dual "git" ("yit"), and its corresponding
>> genitive and accusative/dative forms "incer" and "inc", respectively.
>Right, though seldom encountered in extant sources.
>Classical Greek also had a dual that meant "you two": sphö
>(nominative/accusative); sphön (genitive/dative).
Arabic has not only dual pronouns but dual nouns ("bahrayn" = "two
seas").
>I'm not a cladist, but I do note the class Reptilia. Did
>someone take it away?
The current fashion is to abandon the Linnaean system of
kingdom/phylum/class/etc. in favor of cladism, a system under which
the only valid classifications are those that contain all the
descendants of a common ancestor. "Reptilia" doesn't make the cut
because it doesn't include birds, which are descended from theropod
dinosaurs. There is no common ancestor of turtles, lizards, snakes,
crocodilians, and the tuatara that isn't also an ancestor of birds.
Indeed, by my (limited) understanding of these things, one can't
even define "dinosaur" without including birds. So one reads
about "archosaurs" (dinosaurs, birds, crocodilians, and predecessors);
"diapsids" (all the above + lizards, snakes, the tuatara, and allies);
"anapsids" (turtles and their allies); and "synapsids" (mammals and
their "reptilian" predecessors, including Dimetrodon and its ilk).
It's quite confusing, actually. Agassiz would puke, and Linnaeus
too, I suspect.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Qur'an/Surat al-Baqarah 250; Voina i Mir/v.1 p.461
можете вы это читать?
rm -rf /luser/bush 106 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes
umarc
>Jim Roberts wrote:
>> My wives went down to Chilean Patagonia almost 10 years ago. #2 kept
>> calling it "fireland" which I did not understand, for a while, as she
>> was translating from German.
>Feuerland??
Tierra del Fuego.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Qur'an/Surat al-Baqarah 250; Voina i Mir/v.1 p.461
можете вы это читать?
rm -rf /luser/bush 106 days, 9 hours, 23 minutes
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>>>My wives went down to Chilean Patagonia almost 10 years ago. #2 kept
>>>calling it "fireland" which I did not understand, for a while, as she
>>>was translating from German.
>
>
>>Feuerland??
>
>
> Tierra del Fuego.
Oh, of course!
--
Norm
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>umarc wrote:
>
>
>>>None of my Qur'ans have any particular smell at all.
>
>
>>None of mine have either. So what then would it be that
>>piques and sustains your interest in the Quran?
>
>
> The language. The Qur'an is the ultimate exemplar of classical Arabic.
Some people read Arabic for the Quran. You read the Quran
for Arabic. Curious. I guess that's a lot better than for
the smell. :-)
Do you get a different generalized sense of the Quran from
reading it in the original than you do from reading it in
English translation?
>>Classical Greek also had a dual that meant "you two": sphö
>>(nominative/accusative); sphön (genitive/dative).
>
>
> Arabic has not only dual pronouns but dual nouns ("bahrayn" = "two
> seas").
So does classical Greek, for example, tö ophthalmö, "the two
eyes."
I don't miss the lack of duals in modern English. Nor do I
miss the lack of an intimate "you." In fact, I think it
would introduce a social awkwardness to English that the
language is better off without. However, the word "you"
itself is a bit of a nuisance in poetry because of the
strong "u" sound, when one often wants a silkier sound, as
in a love poem.
As for the generic "you," Tacit points out in a different
thread ("The generic 'you' [etc.]") that the word "one"
sometimes serves that function, yet that it often sounds
stilted. I suppose that the felt desire for a generic (or,
alternatively, a particularized) "you" is a desire for
something that yet retains certain characteristics of the
word "you," as opposed to the word "one."
Frankly, I'm not quite sure what it is that makes the word
"one" sound stilted.
>>I'm not a cladist, but I do note the class Reptilia. Did
>>someone take it away?
>
>
> The current fashion is to abandon the Linnaean system of
> kingdom/phylum/class/etc. in favor of cladism, a system under which
> the only valid classifications are those that contain all the
> descendants of a common ancestor. "Reptilia" doesn't make the cut
> because it doesn't include birds, which are descended from theropod
> dinosaurs. There is no common ancestor of turtles, lizards, snakes,
> crocodilians, and the tuatara that isn't also an ancestor of birds.
>
> Indeed, by my (limited) understanding of these things, one can't
> even define "dinosaur" without including birds. So one reads
> about "archosaurs" (dinosaurs, birds, crocodilians, and predecessors);
> "diapsids" (all the above + lizards, snakes, the tuatara, and allies);
> "anapsids" (turtles and their allies); and "synapsids" (mammals and
> their "reptilian" predecessors, including Dimetrodon and its ilk).
>
> It's quite confusing, actually. Agassiz would puke, and Linnaeus
> too, I suspect.
Ah, so somebody did abscond with the class "Reptilia"!
Actually cladism makes a certain sense to me as an ultimate
goal. A static Linnaean system doesn't do enough to preclude
coincidence. It's feature-based rather than ancestry-based,
yet conclusions as to familial relationships are drawn from
it. But how else, at this point, is one to determine
ancestry except by Linnaean-like classification? So why
wouldn't a revision of Linnaeus rather than a displacement
have served the stopgap need? I suppose I'm answering my own
question: Because there are no absolute lines of demarcation
between the Linnaean categories when they're arrayed against
genealogy; or, rather, the genealogical lines of demarcation
overwhelm the Linnaean categories. Am I on the right track?
BTW, a few weeks ago I visited the Big and Little Agassiz
Rocks in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Had to do some swamping to
reach the big one.
--
Norm
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> wrote in article <40FAA97...@comcast.net>:
>
>
>>Hmm, I've noticed that some people completely lack a
>>spiritual sense, or else suppress it. For people who have it
>>the world is rich and variegated and their very existence is
>>the demonstration of divine care. For people who lack it the
>>world is, by comparison, stark and dreary or else fanciful
>>and embellished. But, of course, that's much too simplistic
>>an observation.
>
>
> I should say so. On what are you basing this purported fact?
It's of lesser standing than a purported fact. More like an
overly condensed subjective observation based on haphazard
data. And I should have said, in each instance, "For *some*
people ...," especially since many an atheist, including, I
suspect, jimbat, has a spiritual sense.
With that paragraph under the spotlight, I'm now thinking,
"Was that ever a stupid way of expressing a thought or
what?!" You were right to jump on it. Let's hope I can
elaborate without sinking deeper into the muck.
First, let me say that the observation has nothing to do with:
- ideas of salvation (Karl Barth would turn over in his
grave in frustration); or,
- whether or not God per someone's notion of God exists; or,
- the rightness or wrongness of how some construe their
spiritual experience.
Augustine's remark, "You have made us for yourself, and our
heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confessions 1:1,
Chadwick translation), and the traditional preachers'
paraphrase, "There's a God-shaped hole in the heart of every
person," have never seemed convincing to me when used to
demonstrate anything beyond the human heart; and, even then,
they're applicable only where the shoe fits. Of course, then
the "every person" is to be ignored; but don't take that
comment as support for the notion that at bottom there are
two kinds of people, those who can know the spiritual realm
and those who can't.
Tangentially related to what I was talking about would be
something a member of B'nai Jeshurun said to me a few years
ago outside the halls of Union Theological Seminary in NYC,
that to pass on one's religious heritage to one's children
is to pass on to them a richness in life.
http://www.bj.org/
http://www.uts.columbia.edu/
However, I used the word "sense" because I had perception in
mind. But I didn't mean a physical sense, and so in some
ways the word "sense" here may be indistinguishable from
"sensibility." It is a sense of:
- there being more to life than mechanical processes;
- there being more between people than physicality;
- there being more between the individual and what's out
there than a common existence; and,
- recognition when the inner life is addressed.
It's also a sense that perhaps some (or for some people,
all) of "there being more to life, etc." has been or is
waiting to be invented -- not fabricated in some fictional
sense, but woven out of the depths of the heart. This is to
say nothing of the numinous or of gratitude, but a sense of
either might enter in as well.
It's kind of like the difference between seeing a sunset as
gorgeous and seeing it as simply light on particles of dust.
But that's not to reduce either the spiritual sense or the
divine to aesthetics. Nor is it to diminish a scientific
view of things, which I value highly.
Obviously there's a certain inscrutability to other people's
souls, so observation is far from easy. Yet there are
various ways that we can see into the inner lives of others.
Fictional narratives sometimes provide a window. One apropos
example would be the novel, Homo Faber, by Max Frisch
(1957), in which, to borrow someone else's phrase, "the
Techniker finds his soul." The movie version, Homo Faber
(1991) = Voyager (1992), was directed by Volker Schlöndorff.
It would be almost the exemplar of what I was talking about,
the beginning depicting the barrenness of a life where all
is reduced to mechanism.
This doesn't mean that there aren't other sorts of
richnesses or other sorts of variety. Nor does it mean that
having a spiritual sense is necessary for self-fulfilment
(although for any given individual that might be a matter
worth looking into). Nor does it even mean that having a
spiritual sense is better for each and every person than not
having one. It just means that there is a sometimes
perceptible contrast between people with a spiritual sense
and those without in terms of their way of being in the
world; also that I feel richness in a spiritual sense, a
richness which I suspect many others feel as well.
As for a person's very existence being a demonstration of
divine care, that's neither tangible evidence nor a logical
proof of God's existence. It is rather of the spiritual
sense itself, though not everybody's.
By the way, have you ever read Celsus? He's been called the
2nd century Voltaire.
--
Norm
Arthur D. Hlavaty
wrote:
>
>I don't miss the lack of duals in modern English. Nor do I
>miss the lack of an intimate "you." In fact, I think it
>would introduce a social awkwardness to English that the
>language is better off without. However, the word "you"
>itself is a bit of a nuisance in poetry because of the
>strong "u" sound, when one often wants a silkier sound, as
>in a love poem.
>
The absence of the dual number in English is a Good Thing for those of
us who belong to couples of more than two.
--
Arthur D.Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius in Wile E. we trust
http://www.livejournal.com/users/supergee/
E-zine available on request
Norm
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 07:00:07 -0400, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>>I don't miss the lack of duals in modern English. Nor do I
>>miss the lack of an intimate "you." In fact, I think it
>>would introduce a social awkwardness to English that the
>>language is better off without. However, the word "you"
>>itself is a bit of a nuisance in poetry because of the
>>strong "u" sound, when one often wants a silkier sound, as
>>in a love poem.
>>
>
>
> The absence of the dual number in English is a Good Thing for those of
> us who belong to couples of more than two.
Y'know, a similar thought crossed my mind. Then I started
wondering. Could it be that the dual number emerged
precisely because it was wanted in polygamous or group
marriage contexts? "We two, not you and I." "You two, not
the rest of you."
I suppose that actually the origin of the dual number was of
more general a nature. But who knows?
--
Norm
Norm
> Arthur D. Hlavaty wrote:
>
> Y'know, a similar thought crossed my mind. Then I started wondering.
> Could it be that the dual number emerged precisely because it was wanted
> in polygamous or group marriage contexts? "We two, not you and I." "You
> two, not the rest of you."
The irony being that monogamy makes the dual number in
grammar less useful in household contexts.
--
Norm
Cally Soukup
> Cally Soukup wrote:
>> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> wrote in article <40FAA97...@comcast.net>:
>>
>>
>>>Hmm, I've noticed that some people completely lack a
>>>spiritual sense, or else suppress it. For people who have it
>>>the world is rich and variegated and their very existence is
>>>the demonstration of divine care. For people who lack it the
>>>world is, by comparison, stark and dreary or else fanciful
>>>and embellished. But, of course, that's much too simplistic
>>>an observation.
>>
>>
>> I should say so. On what are you basing this purported fact?
> It's of lesser standing than a purported fact. More like an
> overly condensed subjective observation based on haphazard
> data. And I should have said, in each instance, "For *some*
> people ...," especially since many an atheist, including, I
> suspect, jimbat, has a spiritual sense.
I'm sitting here seething, and finding words difficult. How DARE you
suggest that I, who I suspect you wouldn't feel had a "spiritual
sense", finds the world any less enthralling than you? Finds it any
less beautiful or awe-inspiring? Because people who are not religious
are often portrayed as robotic or unfeeling or somehow lesser, doesn't
make it true. You're taking the propoganda and believing it. I've
known so-called "spiritual" people who wouldn't have known awe if it
bit them on the butt.
I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
Mean Green Dancing Machine
Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>I'm sitting here seething, and finding words difficult. How DARE you
>suggest that I, who I suspect you wouldn't feel had a "spiritual
>sense", finds the world any less enthralling than you? Finds it any
>less beautiful or awe-inspiring? Because people who are not religious
>are often portrayed as robotic or unfeeling or somehow lesser, doesn't
>make it true. You're taking the propoganda and believing it. I've
>known so-called "spiritual" people who wouldn't have known awe if it
>bit them on the butt.
>
>I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
>just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
You rock, you know that?
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2004 by aa...@pobox.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
George Bush is soft on terrorism:
http://buffaloreport.com/2004/040713.boxer.marriage.html
Norm
Huh?? I don't know what you think I said, but I most
definitely made no suggestion either that you lack a
spiritual sense or that non-religious people are "robotic or
unfeeling or somehow lesser."
On the contrary, I was going out of my way to avoid leaving
any impression that I was making such suggestions. (I'm
scanning for a misplaced "not," but I don't see one.)
Nor did I assign the sense, of which I was speaking,
particularly to religious people. In fact, I agree with you
that many wouldn't know awe if it bit them on the butt --
although the image is a bit anomalous.
--
Norm
Laura Elizabeth Back
>I'm sitting here seething, and finding words difficult. How DARE you
>suggest that I, who I suspect you wouldn't feel had a "spiritual
>sense", finds the world any less enthralling than you? Finds it any
>less beautiful or awe-inspiring? Because people who are not religious
>are often portrayed as robotic or unfeeling or somehow lesser, doesn't
>make it true. You're taking the propoganda and believing it. I've
>known so-called "spiritual" people who wouldn't have known awe if it
>bit them on the butt.
>
>I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
>just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
Maybe Norm is playing games with definitions here; perhaps this "finding
the world enthralling/beautiful/awe-inspiring" is what a spiritual sense
*is* in his mind.
--
Laura E. Back
Norm
> Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>I'm sitting here seething, and finding words difficult. How DARE you
>>suggest that I, who I suspect you wouldn't feel had a "spiritual
>>sense", finds the world any less enthralling than you? Finds it any
>>less beautiful or awe-inspiring? Because people who are not religious
>>are often portrayed as robotic or unfeeling or somehow lesser, doesn't
>>make it true. You're taking the propoganda and believing it. I've
>>known so-called "spiritual" people who wouldn't have known awe if it
>>bit them on the butt.
>>
>>I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
>>just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
>
>
> Maybe Norm is playing games with definitions here;
Um, we haven't really gotten into definitions, but it is
true that I do not equate a spiritual sense with religiosity.
> perhaps this "finding
> the world enthralling/beautiful/awe-inspiring" is what a spiritual sense
> *is* in his mind.
Thanks for a sympathetic reading.
--
Norm
Cally Soukup
> In article <cdhngn$6f6$1...@wheel2.two14.net>,
> Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
>>just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
> You rock, you know that?
Thanks, but I'm still ambivalent about having posted that. It's just
that I get so very sick of, "you poor non-spiritual people live such
drab lives without God" that it makes me just want to spit.
Living in an extremely born-again town almost all my life may have made
me oversensitive to such remarks.
serene
> I'm sitting here seething, and finding words difficult. How DARE you
> suggest that I, who I suspect you wouldn't feel had a "spiritual
> sense", finds the world any less enthralling than you? Finds it any
> less beautiful or awe-inspiring? Because people who are not religious
> are often portrayed as robotic or unfeeling or somehow lesser, doesn't
> make it true. You're taking the propoganda and believing it. I've
> known so-called "spiritual" people who wouldn't have known awe if it
> bit them on the butt.
Yeah, this.
serene, who became *more* enchanted with the world when religion went
out of the picture, and *more* involved in her inner life and the life
of the world around her
Dale Hurliman
suspect you're getting tangled up in your own rhetoric. Are you trying
to posit some sort of mind/matter duality? I don't see the necessity of
that at all.
Norm
Yup.
> But I
> suspect you're getting tangled up in your own rhetoric.
Yup. I utterly renounce any seeming put-down of others in
anything I said. No put-down was intended. And I wholly
understand why the point I was originally trying to make was
missed. Nor am I sure I'm capable of expressing it.
> Are you trying
> to posit some sort of mind/matter duality? I don't see the necessity of
> that at all.
Nope.
--
Norm
Norm
> Mean Green Dancing Machine <aa...@pobox.com> wrote in article <cdhrr2$qv$1...@panix3.panix.com>:
>
>>In article <cdhngn$6f6$1...@wheel2.two14.net>,
>>Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I'm sorry; I'm finding it impossible to be coherant on this subject
>>>just now. Feeling personally insulted will do that.
>
>
>>You rock, you know that?
>
>
> Thanks, but I'm still ambivalent about having posted that. It's just
> that I get so very sick of, "you poor non-spiritual people live such
> drab lives without God" that it makes me just want to spit.
>
> Living in an extremely born-again town almost all my life may have made
> me oversensitive to such remarks.
Your sensitivities are instructive. It's a shame that my
woefully poor expression of a different point triggered
them. Sorry about that. Glad you chimed in.
By the way, I don't suppose anything about your spiritual
sense, regardless of what you think about God or any
particular religion.
--
Norm
Vicki Rosenzweig
>The current fashion is to abandon the Linnaean system of
>kingdom/phylum/class/etc. in favor of cladism, a system under which
>the only valid classifications are those that contain all the
>descendants of a common ancestor. "Reptilia" doesn't make the cut
>because it doesn't include birds, which are descended from theropod
>dinosaurs. There is no common ancestor of turtles, lizards, snakes,
>crocodilians, and the tuatara that isn't also an ancestor of birds.
>
>Indeed, by my (limited) understanding of these things, one can't
>even define "dinosaur" without including birds. So one reads
>about "archosaurs" (dinosaurs, birds, crocodilians, and predecessors);
>"diapsids" (all the above + lizards, snakes, the tuatara, and allies);
>"anapsids" (turtles and their allies); and "synapsids" (mammals and
>their "reptilian" predecessors, including Dimetrodon and its ilk).
It's certainly possible to talk about "Cretaceous dinosaurs" or about
subgroups of dinosaurs (e.g., carnosaurs or theropods or, yes, birds);
you can even talk about "dinosaurs other than birds" if you find
something they have in common and want to. "Reptile", like
"invertebrate", isn't a cladistically sound category--but that
won't stop people from using it when they find it convenient. The
trick is to stop and think about when each of these categories is useful,
and when it's not. (It's like defining people as "non-Danish"--that has
its uses, but mostly when discussing things related to Denmark or its
culture.)
>
>It's quite confusing, actually. Agassiz would puke, and Linnaeus
>too, I suspect.
>
Linnaeus would probably be delighted and amazed at how much more
has been seen and connected since his day. But I could be wrong.
As for Agassiz, I have no idea--cladistics is thoroughly rooted in
evolutionary biology, an idea he rejected. But 20th century evidence
might have changed his mind.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
v...@redbird.org | http://www.redbird.org
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Walt Kelly
umarc
>Do you get a different generalized sense of the Quran from
>reading it in the original than you do from reading it in
>English translation?
Yes; among other things, I get more than a hint of how profoundly
differently people thought in seventh century Arabia than they do
here today. By rendering it in modern English, we shield the reader
from various syntactic and grammatical bizarrities that are windows
into the thought process of the time and place. Moreover, it's
impossible to translate it without inserting words and meanings
that aren't in the original. The Qur'an is full of sentence fragments
that just don't make sense translated literally; we think we know
what they must have meant, but we can never be sure.
>Frankly, I'm not quite sure what it is that makes the word
>"one" sound stilted.
In my last paragraph, I gave a generic "we" a try.
>Actually cladism makes a certain sense to me as an ultimate
>goal. A static Linnaean system doesn't do enough to preclude
>coincidence. It's feature-based rather than ancestry-based,
>yet conclusions as to familial relationships are drawn from
>it.
Linnaeus set out to classify the plants and animals of his world,
in which there was no fossil record and everyone assumed that
the organisms of the day were not significantly different from those
of the past.
Once evolution began to be perceived, people started unearthing
fossils such as Archaeoptryx and asking "is it a bird, or is it
a reptile?" It has characteristics of both classes, as no animal
examined by Linnaeus had.
Then along came Gould with creatures like Hallucigenia, which
doesn't fit into any of Linnaeus's tidy boxes -- not even at the
phylum level.
>But how else, at this point, is one to determine
>ancestry except by Linnaean-like classification?
I don't know. Paleontologists, whether of the cladist or traditional
views, seem to be fond of classifying vertebrate fossils by bone
sttucture, especially skull structure. But how they know that
species A is an ancestor of species B rather than a collateral
branch of the tree I can't say.
>...there are no absolute lines of demarcation
>between the Linnaean categories when they're arrayed against
>genealogy; or, rather, the genealogical lines of demarcation
>overwhelm the Linnaean categories. Am I on the right track?
Yup. See above.
The cladist answer to the Archaeopteryx question is that it is
a bird, but being descended from theropod dinosaurs it is also
a theropod dinosaur. The Linnaean class Aves (birds) they
recognize as a valid "clade", but call it a "subclade" of Theropoda,
which is a "subclade" of Dinosauria, which is a "subclade" of
Archosauria, which is a "subclade" of "Diapsida", etc. etc. all
the way to Animalia.
Logically the cladist approach breaks down on two levels: first,
by defining a "clade" as an individual organism and all its
descendants, one opens up the possibility that there are as many
different "clades" as individual organisms, at which point the
classification scheme is overwhelmed and rendered useless. And let's
suppose it is determined some day that all animal life descends
from a particular species of amoeba. By cladist logic, that makes
every animal and human being in the world an amoeba, and that's
absurd.
But I am not an expert on these things, and I will leave it to
folks more knowedgable then myself to explain it.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Qur'an/Surat al-Baqarah 260; Voina i Mir/v.1 p.461
rm -rf /luser/bush 104 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>Do you get a different generalized sense of the Quran from
>>reading it in the original than you do from reading it in
>>English translation?
>
>
> Yes; among other things, I get more than a hint of how profoundly
> differently people thought in seventh century Arabia than they do
> here today. By rendering it in modern English, we shield the reader
> from various syntactic and grammatical bizarrities that are windows
> into the thought process of the time and place. Moreover, it's
> impossible to translate it without inserting words and meanings
> that aren't in the original. The Qur'an is full of sentence fragments
> that just don't make sense translated literally; we think we know
> what they must have meant, but we can never be sure.
I have much the same experience reading the Bible in the
original. Dropping as many preconceptions as one can think
of makes it seem even stranger. After all, if you don't, you
can translate in your head and come out much the same as the
typical translator. Translators tend to smooth over and
render texts in a way that accommodates at least parts of a
modern world-view. It takes some discipline not to do that
when reading for oneself.
But it's not just the translators and their world-view, it's
also traditions of interpretation that they incorporate, and
even the English language itself. Many of its terms
encapsulate something of cultural experience and
conceptualization that differ from the cultural experiences
and conceptualizations encapsulated in Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek.
My first Greek teacher said, unforgettably, "Trying to read
the New Testament in translation is like trying to kiss a
woman through a veil."
>>Frankly, I'm not quite sure what it is that makes the word
>>"one" sound stilted.
>
>
> In my last paragraph, I gave a generic "we" a try.
Wegen, yougen, theygen. :-)
I suppose a set of singulars could be worked out too.
I notice that The New Enlarged Schöffler-Weis German and
English Dictionary (1981) gives both "man" and "einen" as
colloquial meanings for "you."
>>Actually cladism makes a certain sense to me as an ultimate
>>goal. A static Linnaean system doesn't do enough to preclude
>>coincidence. It's feature-based rather than ancestry-based,
>>yet conclusions as to familial relationships are drawn from
>>it.
>
>
> Linnaeus set out to classify the plants and animals of his world,
> in which there was no fossil record and everyone assumed that
> the organisms of the day were not significantly different from those
> of the past.
>
> Once evolution began to be perceived, people started unearthing
> fossils such as Archaeoptryx and asking "is it a bird, or is it
> a reptile?" It has characteristics of both classes, as no animal
> examined by Linnaeus had.
>
> Then along came Gould with creatures like Hallucigenia, which
> doesn't fit into any of Linnaeus's tidy boxes -- not even at the
> phylum level.
I found pictures of Hallucigenia at:
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/shale/phallu.htm
>>But how else, at this point, is one to determine
>>ancestry except by Linnaean-like classification?
>
>
> I don't know. Paleontologists, whether of the cladist or traditional
> views, seem to be fond of classifying vertebrate fossils by bone
> sttucture, especially skull structure. But how they know that
> species A is an ancestor of species B rather than a collateral
> branch of the tree I can't say.
Of course, there are big debates over that very issue even
with regard to hominids and human ancestry.
Idea for a science fiction novel: A planet where evolution
proceeded by radical permutations to such a degree that
ancestry could not be determined by a supposition of overall
likeness. Add plot.
>>...there are no absolute lines of demarcation
>>between the Linnaean categories when they're arrayed against
>>genealogy; or, rather, the genealogical lines of demarcation
>>overwhelm the Linnaean categories. Am I on the right track?
>
>
> Yup. See above.
>
> The cladist answer to the Archaeopteryx question is that it is
> a bird, but being descended from theropod dinosaurs it is also
> a theropod dinosaur. The Linnaean class Aves (birds) they
> recognize as a valid "clade", but call it a "subclade" of Theropoda,
> which is a "subclade" of Dinosauria, which is a "subclade" of
> Archosauria, which is a "subclade" of "Diapsida", etc. etc. all
> the way to Animalia.
>
> Logically the cladist approach breaks down on two levels: first,
> by defining a "clade" as an individual organism and all its
> descendants, one opens up the possibility that there are as many
> different "clades" as individual organisms, at which point the
> classification scheme is overwhelmed and rendered useless.
I would suppose that the ability to have a line of
generation would provide some exclusive boundaries, both
diachronic and synchronic, would it not?
> And let's
> suppose it is determined some day that all animal life descends
> from a particular species of amoeba. By cladist logic, that makes
> every animal and human being in the world an amoeba, and that's
> absurd.
A sub, sub, sub, [etc.] clade of amoeba, I suppose.
Would it come out better if described as a super, super,
super, [etc.] clade of amoeba? I imagine that Gould would
balk at the implicit assumption of super-iority.
> But I am not an expert on these things, and I will leave it to
> folks more knowedgable then myself to explain it.
I take it you're not fond of cladism.
--
Norm
Dale Hurliman
That strikes me as odd. When I read Homer (Odyssey) in the original
Greek (I have not read the Bible), I was struck by just the opposite --
how modern it sounded. I guess I began reading with the preconceived
notion that styles and techniques of literature should have shown some
"progress" over, say, 3,000 years. But Homer used the same sorts of
word-play, tongue-in-cheek, and obvious exaggerations we use today.
For example, Homer has Odysseus spending 9 years on Cerce's island. And
every day he goes down to the beach to weep, moan, wail, and lament for
his homeland and his wife. He is, he says, searching the sea and hoping
for a boat to return him to Ithaca and home. But every night he eagerly
returns to her supper and her bed. One imagines that Cerce would
appreciate a little help around the house: perhaps chopping the
fire-wood or catching the occasional fish (since he spends every day on
the beach anyway). But Odysseus is no help at all and after 9 years she
finally kicks him out and sends him packing (in a boat she provides).
Why does she put up with him for 9 years? We are not told directly, but
he _is_ the only man on the island. Go figure.
<snip>
umarc
>My first Greek teacher said, unforgettably, "Trying to read
>the New Testament in translation is like trying to kiss a
>woman through a veil."
Yup. Perhaps some day I shall give Greek a try.
>I notice that The New Enlarged Schöffler-Weis German and
>English Dictionary (1981) gives both "man" and "einen" as
>colloquial meanings for "you."
"man" is also a proboun in Arabic, meaning "who" or "whoever".
>I take it you're not fond of cladism.
I've absorbed a fondness for the Linnaean system from my father,
who seems to prefer classifying an animal by its characteristics
rather than by its supposed ancestry (particularly when the latter
is hypothesized on the basis of DNA analyses).
I don't like digital radio either, even though I know it is the
future of the medium.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Qur'an/Surat al-Baqarah 260; Voina i Mir/v.1 p.461
rm -rf /luser/bush 103 days, 10 hours, 33 minutes
Norm
> Norm wrote:
>
>> I have much the same experience reading the Bible in the original.
>> Dropping as many preconceptions as one can think of makes it seem even
>> stranger. After all, if you don't, you can translate in your head and
>> come out much the same as the typical translator. Translators tend to
>> smooth over and render texts in a way that accommodates at least parts
>> of a modern world-view. It takes some discipline not to do that when
>> reading for oneself.
>>
>> But it's not just the translators and their world-view, it's also
>> traditions of interpretation that they incorporate, and even the
>> English language itself. Many of its terms encapsulate something of
>> cultural experience and conceptualization that differ from the
>> cultural experiences and conceptualizations encapsulated in Hebrew,
>> Aramaic, and Greek.
>
>
> That strikes me as odd. When I read Homer (Odyssey) in the original
> Greek (I have not read the Bible), I was struck by just the opposite --
> how modern it sounded.
Yes, for one thing there's a humanity that speaks through
ancient texts with which we are able to connect. I'm
skeptical of many ideas of a "human nature," yet we're able
to connect with much in those texts because of a common
humanity.
Some ancient novels sound almost like they were written
yesterday.
> I guess I began reading with the preconceived
> notion that styles and techniques of literature should have shown some
> "progress" over, say, 3,000 years. But Homer used the same sorts of
> word-play, tongue-in-cheek, and obvious exaggerations we use today.
Apart from the literary forms of email and online chat (some
of which, I'd say, does, at times, reach the level of
literature), I'd be hard pressed to point to genres, styles,
or techniques that were absent in the ancient world.
However, many ancient authors used techniques that have been
largely lost or overlooked and that have often caused us to
misinterpret their texts. For instance, Ovid's Metamorphoses
is structurally complex, and that complexity has been
unraveled only in recent decades (at the University of
Toronto, IIRC).
Paul the Apostle, rather than writing in linear fashion,
which is how he's usually interpreted, often wrote
chiastically, that is, in an A-B-B-A pattern, or
concentrically, that is, in an A-B-C-B-A pattern, only in a
much more elaborate way than a simple A-B-B-A or A-B-C-B-A
would suggest.
Thus, for example, we moderns -- or postmoderns, if you
prefer -- tend to read Romans 1:26 as parallel to 1:27 (a
reading which the word "similarly" in verse 27 helps foster,
given our modern categories of thought); and so we tend to
presume that it is referring to lesbianism. However,
lesbianism is nowhere mentioned in the text Paul was
presuming, the Torah; it was not regarded in his legal
context as similar to a male lying with a male as with a
female (Leviticus 18:22 = 20:13); and we have no evidence
that it was a special issue to his immediate audience. The
pivot point of proximity is the end of verse 25, and the
structural parallel is to be sought before that pivot point.
Unfortunately these patterns are aesthetic patterns and so
are not only difficult to pick up in translation but
difficult to prove, even with reference to the original
language texts.
> For example, Homer has Odysseus spending 9 years on Cerce's island.
> And every day he goes down to the beach to weep, moan, wail, and lament
> for his homeland and his wife. He is, he says, searching the sea and
> hoping for a boat to return him to Ithaca and home. But every night he
> eagerly returns to her supper and her bed. One imagines that Cerce would
> appreciate a little help around the house: perhaps chopping the
> fire-wood or catching the occasional fish (since he spends every day on
> the beach anyway). But Odysseus is no help at all and after 9 years she
> finally kicks him out and sends him packing (in a boat she provides).
> Why does she put up with him for 9 years? We are not told directly, but
> he _is_ the only man on the island. Go figure.
Hehe.
--
Norm
Arthur D. Hlavaty
wrote:
To me the idea that the whole universe, with all its wonder and
complexity, could have just happened, is an enchanting and fascinating
one. It's not my belief, but I respect it.
serene
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 21:50:49 -0700, ser...@serenepages.org (serene)
> wrote:
> >
> >serene, who became *more* enchanted with the world when religion went
> >out of the picture, and *more* involved in her inner life and the life
> >of the world around her
>
> To me the idea that the whole universe, with all its wonder and
> complexity, could have just happened, is an enchanting and fascinating
> one. It's not my belief, but I respect it.
I don't know anyone who believes the world "just happened", or at least
I don't think I do.
serene
David Matthewman
> I don't know anyone who believes the world "just happened", or at least
> I don't think I do.
I think I believe that, for some value of 'just happened'. I'm not
claiming that you know me, of course, just datapointing.
--
David Matthewman
Mean Green Dancing Machine
Depending on what you mean by "just happened", I certainly do. That is,
I believe that nothing other than blind chance generated by the laws of
physics generated the universe as we know it, and I believe that those
laws of physics are also the result of blind chance. It's not a strong
belief; I'm certainly willing to be persuaded by evidence. But it's my
current belief, and it's not likely to be changed in the absence of
evidence.
That said, I also believe that this world (as opposed to this universe)
didn't just happen. If you see the distinction, which I believe is
critical.
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2004 by aa...@pobox.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
"Look, it's your affair if you want to play with five people, but don't
go calling it doubles." --John Cleese anticipates Usenet