specs sheet

We here at Contingencies sort of respect Mr. Obama for representin' on his bicycle, in the city streets no less (instead of Dubya's little CIA protected forest rides).

Bukowski at the Huntington

Contingencies Kultur kontinues!

"" The Bukowski exhibit, which is organized roughly chronologically, includes photos, letters, drafts and redrafts of his writing, first editions, original artwork, foreign translations, movie memorabilia and other ephemera, including a racing form.


" was his sanctuary, and this was mine," Linda Lee Bukowski, his widow, said of the Huntington. When Bukowski was gambling at the track in nearby Arcadia, she visited the library and gardens.


She arranged for his papers to come to the institution and saw the exhibit for the first time Friday.


"It's surrealistic," she said. In the foyer, in a class case, sit Bukowski's typewriter, wine glass, pens and boom box, a little dingy, arranged just as they were in his office. Linda Lee Bukowski explained that she's left his office just as it was, going in twice a year to dust. "It's like home," she said, looking at the case. "I'm walking into this room at the Huntington, and it's like home."

CA Demopublicans on Prop 19

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman both oppose Prop. 19. Senator DiDi Feinstein, California's own Margaret Thatcher, also opposes 19, and recently joined hands with LA Sheriff-Jefe Baca and other CA crimefighters to   once again proclaim how much Prop. 19 pisses her off. Nearly all the leading Democrats oppose Prop. 19, as does the GOP--whether Yacht-club, or Evinrude club.

"Ignorance is Strength"

Admittedly, Proposition 19 may have some problems. For one, the primary backers tend to be entrepreneurial types--head-shop owners, in brief-- who stand to make a buck selling paraphernalia, marijuana "education", so forth were Prop. 19 to pass--f*ck them. Furthermore, local governments could still regulate pot use to such an extent as to make it nearly impossible to grow or use (imagine cops stopping by every few days to inspect your small crop).


Proposition 19 would, however, allow some home cultivation and use of cannabis. In effect 19 would eliminate the dealers, large growers, and...mobsters from the pot trade (there are rumors that pot growers and possibly mafiosi actually have ordered Democrats to oppose the law). Prop. 19  would also raise some needed tax funds to help rebuild the post-Ahhnuld CA infrastructure.   Additionally, citizens found in possession of small amounts of pot would not be subject to criminal charges.


Maybe those citizens who favor Prop. 19--and who object to nanny state tactics, regardless of which political party enforces them-- should simply not vote for any candidate who opposes 19, Demo or GOP, instead resorting to the tried and true political tactic of DFV (Don't F*cking Vote).

LA Times/marijuana/

sabado gigante

Cal Tjader......Shoshana



++++++++++  ++++++++++

Nobel prize/Mario-Vargas-Llosa

"""""The amazing thing about "The War of the End of the World" is that it looks at religious cults and end-of-the-world figures in such an insightful way that the reader comes from the novel feeling as though the last word has been said about this subject. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of the novel is that men and women of all types -- soldiers, criminals, landowners, housewives, beggars, intellectuals, priests, believers -- and all social classes are viewed with compassion and interest. No character is dismissed or overlooked, and the result is a tragic celebration of a very human thing, the sweep of an avid belief through a society, and the change and damage it leaves behind. Is the Savior figure in this novel meant to represent Jesus? Or Jim Jones? Vargas Llosa isn't saying, and that makes it all the better."""""

End of Summers.....

Chronicle/Larry-Summers--

""""Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.

Over the past decade, Summers continued to advocate financial deregulation, both as president of Harvard and as a University Professor after being forced out of the presidency. During this time, Summers became wealthy through consulting and speaking engagements with financial firms. Between 2001 and his entry into the Obama administration, he made more than $20-million from the financial-services industry. (His 2009 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $17-million to $39-million.)




Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown.""""

Summers appears to be headed back to Harvard though a few reasonable humans have suggested Sing Sing or Leavenworth as alternative destinations.

Don't let the door hit ya.....

AlexCockburn--Emanuel's exit

""""By the time Obama hired him, Emanuel already had a proven record of toadyism to corporate America and the neocon lobby. Emanuel was a relict of all that was sleazy in the Clinton White House. Among the body blows that have brought the Democrats to their present ebb, the passage of NAFTA in 1993, with consequent destruction of the American industrial economy, must count as among the most lethal. Key to that passage was Emanuel, who directed the Clinton White House operation to get the treaty passed by any means necessary.


Following his departure from the White House in 1998, Emanuel headed to a well upholstered post in a Chicago banking firm before he won election to Dan Rostenkowski's old Chicago seat. By 2005 he headed the Democratic National Campaign Committee. As such, he decided which candidates for the House should get money and other support from the national party. As Andrew Cockburn and later John Walsh described on this site at that time, Emanuel did his best to recruit candidates, preferably rich ones, guaranteed to eschew vocal opposition to the Iraq war, which Emanuel, a veteran of the Israeli army strongly favored. """"

"Legado latino en conquista del espacio"

Desde La Opinion:

""" El legado de los hispanos va más allá de la exploración de nuevas tierras en Estados Unidos desde hace casi cinco siglos y hoy en día también forma parte de la historia de la conquista del espacio.

Además de recorrer territorios inhóspitos y dar nombres a ríos, montañas o ciudades, los hispanos han vencido también todo tipo de obstáculos hasta graduarse de carreras como ciencias, matemáticas o ingeniería que les han abierto la puertas para conquistar sueños ambiciosos como llegar al espacio.

Sueños que en muchos casos empezaron ante el asombro de las imágenes del primer hombre en luna, o la curiosidad despertada por un logo entonces desconocido, como fue el caso del ingeniero Guillermo González, quien encabeza un grupo de ingenieros que trabaja en el diseño de sistemas de aborto de lanzamientos espaciales en el Centro de Investigaciones Langley, (LARC) de la NASA, ubicado en Virginia.

"Qué es eso, NASA", fue lo primero que preguntó a sus padres el ingeniero González, en su humilde vivienda en su ciudad natal de Ponce (Puerto Rico).

"Tenía once años y observé lo que luego supe era el logo de la NASA mientras veía la transmisión de las primera llegada del hombre a la luna y desde entonces quise dedicarme a las ciencias", explicó a Efe el ingeniero puertorriqueño.""""

sabado Gigante (con convidado....JP Sartre!)

from "Existentialism is a Humanism"

""""First, [Existentialism] has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.""""

                                          Zut! 

""From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity – upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito""""

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



"Les feuilles mortes"

e-Meg, Mitt, Mormonics

the Angel Moroni opposes Big Government too....

"My friends, today I stand before you with Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts and candidate for the US President. Like Mitt, I am firmly opposed to liberal bureaucrats and to big government in all of its forms. We are also in agreement in regard to the perils of illegal immigration and are dedicated to fighting our enemy south of the Border, and across the globe if need be. Mitt and I have similar management styles too.  And like Mitt I also believe in the precious freedoms cherished by our American forefathers, and I believe in the NRA and the right of free enterprise, and in combating terrorism. Like Mitt I believe that honest hardworking Americans now face a moral crisis. Mitt and I might differ a little in some of our views, but like most Mormon people he's a hardworking American who cherishes the precious freedoms that our forefathers fought for."


"Mitt's been a very successful CEO and brought the Olympics to Salt Lake City. He knows what it takes to operate a successful business. He knows that like a business, the Government also needs to be held accountable to the shareholders, which is to say, held accountable to hardworking American property owners. We need to view govt. as an asset, rather than liability, and make it turn a profit, instead of costing us an arm and a leg."


"Mitt also understands the values of thrift and prosperity and the dangers of waste and decadence. Joseph Smith, the LDS church father also battled against what he perceived to be the moral ills of his day. Smith was an early supporter of family values. He envisioned a society dedicated to prosperity, to motherhood, and to moral goodness, and to strength. The Angel Moroni visited Smith, and brought him an American message of freedom and moral integrity, of family values, and the right of prosperity and property ownership. Moroni did not support the evils of Statism, that's for sure! "


"So today I ask you my friends to keep those moral messages of Moroni, and Mitt Romney, and our forefathers in mind. We face stiff opposition on all sides. The statists, the union bosses, the loony lefties and malcontents want us defeated. The powers of darkness want us to fail. But fail we shall not. We shall persevere, and our values, and our families, and our management styles shall prevail. Thank you and may God bless each and everyone of you here today."

spam ala Steve Jobs

"""A Long Island University student received a rude email.....

allegedly from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
.... .....
She called six times, but there was no answer from Apple's PR department.

So, she managed to find an email address for Steve Jobs himself, and fired off a message.

Lo and behold, Jobs wrote back, but was less than friendly.

Our goals, he said, do not include helping you get a good grade.

And thus began a war of words with the corporate titan, worth $5.5 billion.

Chelsea responded: "If you get a message from a client or a customer isn't it your job to return the call? That's what I always thought, but I guess it's not one of your goals."

He wrote back, "Nope, we have over 300 million users and we can't respond to every single request, unless they have a problem of some kind."

And then the kicker...

Jobs wrote, "Please leave us alone."

It's not exactly the mark of civility from the father of the iPad.""""

f*ck that untalented, uneducated dyslexic pedazo de mierda. Soon, Stevie iPad,  sweatshop owner, you'll be...finito.
--------- --------
That reminds us!
Soundgardenocracy

ah shot my love today...would you cry for me.........

Whitman Brown. Brown Whitman.

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." Robert Byrne

LATimes:

"In a blustery and vigorous first debate, gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown dueled Tuesday over their differing solutions to California's dire problems, with Whitman slighting Brown as a tool of labor unions and Brown excoriating her as a billionaire running for office to benefit the rich."

Jerry, the tool of labor unions vs. e-Meg the billionaire, non-voter, and G-sachs insider. Put on ye old booth-respirator and vote...Moonbeam.

Fiorina goes Rogue

Carly Fiorina recently told Republican students at the University of San Diego that out-of-control government spending continues to "suck out your future from your pockets and into a vast and unaccountable demonic bureaucracy in Washington D.C."


Fiorina continued--"I think that if we do not start taking apart the massive liberal belt-way bureaucracy TODAY then you will be completely and truly fucked, my friends. We either get government spending under control or we'll be saddled with humongous mountains of debt that we'll never repay in our lifetime. The liberal shits might as well put us in debtor's prisons."

                                           Siegheil!

"To that end, I propose eliminating taxes--all of them, income, capital gains, property--for those of us making serious bank--say, at least 10 million a year or so. Who cares about losers? We don't. Furthermore, we'll eliminate any and all social programs, eco-crat slushbuckets and porkbarrels, and ...mark my words---end welfare. The darkies, the wetbacks, the fat mamas on dope and their disgusting gangster offspring, yea, all the shiftless little cretins who have sucked up OUR money for decades: fuck them."


"The only government function remaining will be the US Military, God bless 'em. And I propose transferring funds--millions in fact--from the useless, bleeding heart social programs--the byatch programs-- into the US Military for research and development. As HP CEO I supervised the propeller-heads of the R & D department, my friends, and I paid them well. We need new weapons. New gear. New supercarriers, and new stealths, drones, and supersonic jets. The enemy never rests."


"In addition, I am going to reduce the federal work force to like 1900 levels. We'll freeze the pay of federal civilian employees--that is, the few remaining-- and hire one civilian employee for every ten who leave government service--which is to say, those bureaucrats we pink-slip ASAP. The only exception will be for those patriotic American men and women working in areas of national security--which I intend to upgrade, in honor of J-Edgar Hoover, a great American patriot."


"Any questions, pussies? Fine. Let's set to work. By any means necessary, my friends--and that means you, Diebold boys."

No on Prop. 23

LA Times/Prop. 23:

""""Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere, warming temperatures on land and in the oceans, according to scientific studies. California has begun to feel the effects, with rising sea levels, the disruption of habitats for plants and animals, and diminishing mountain snowpacks that are critical to the state's water supply.


California's global warming law, also known as AB 32, is the most sweeping in the nation, requiring greenhouse gas pollution to be slashed to 1990 levels by the end of the decade, and setting a goal of an 80% reduction by mid-century.


Over time, the law would affect nearly every industry and household in the state, with regulations to cut the carbon intensity of gasoline, require auto companies to build more fuel-efficient cars, force electrical utilities to switch to solar and wind energy, make buildings and appliances more energy-efficient and encourage denser development with access to public transportation.

Vote NO on 23.

Sharron Angle plays...the Vagina Card

We here at Contingencies were thinking of writing something on the far-right Nevada GOPer gal Sharron Angle and her pussy but a New York scribe beat us to the punch. What's more, the scribe hints at Miss Angle's opposition to Sen Reid's  misogynistic violence (alleged) as well--forgetting that violence is the prerogative of any oppressed people, according to Zizek.

""""What to do when you're Sharron Angle, one of the most far-right Senate candidates in the country — someone who wants to deny abortions to 13-year-old girls raped by their fathers; calls the BP victims' compensation fund a "slush fund," floats the possibility of armed rebellion; wants to abolish the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the EPA, and the IRS; and even disagrees with the legal status of alcohol — and your opponent, Harry Reid, insists on informing people about your extremist views? You stand up for yourself and defend your positions, and let the battle of ideas take its course! Or, you could just try to attract some of the sympathy that people feel for bullied and battered women.""""

Politics and..... the M-word

Masturbating on the Edge of the Apocalypse/ALEXANDER COCKBURN:

""""The Democrats keep the focus on O’Donnell, somehow hoping that, thus primed, voters across America will come to the conclusion that Republicans are unfit to govern, and reject them on November 2. It’s a very foolish strategy. Tea Party candidates promoted by Sarah Palin are doing well in some states. Not O’Donnell. It’s sadly clear that Delaware’s voters are now concluding that O’Donnell’s true vocation is on Bill Maher’s Show or as a follow-on from Bristol Palin’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars. She lags behind her Democratic opponent by 15 points in the race for Joe Biden’s former senate seat.

But for Democrats to fixate on O’Donnell is like focusing on the “threat” of Little Red Riding Hood instead of taking a close look at the true threat lurking in the woods. This is a general popular fury with incumbent politicians, most particularly Democrats, since they control both houses of Congress, with a Democrat in the Oval Office. As a roadside sign I just saw in southern Oregon put it, put it, “Remember to throw out the trash. Vote on November 2.”

witchiepoo


It’s becoming clear that by the end of Election Day Democrats could be reliving the terrible double punch they endured back in 1994 after two years of Bill Clinton: the loss of not only the House but the Senate. The House is surely going Republican. Democrats can count on 192 certain seats in the next Congress, Republicans 205, with what the Real Clear Politics (RCP) site - crunching the numbers - says are 38 seats “too close to call”. You can bet that this year more of these will tend to fall the Republican side of the line.

In the Senate Democrats, according to RCP, can count on 48 seats, Republican 46 with 6 too close to call. Of these six at least four could go to Republicans, starting with Tea Party star Sharron Angle in Nevada and heading east through Colorado, Illinois to West Virginia. And in this year of Throw Out the Trash, Democrats can’t count on “safe seats” to be truly safe.""""

The thoughts of a potential victory by the likes of evangelical Tea Party-zombie Sharron Angle in Nevada definitely should send tremors of fear up the spines of any and all semi-rational, non-conservative humans in the western US--whether they be democrat, green, libertarian, or old-fashioned Ted Kaczynski-style anarchists.

Mike Huckabee on pre-existing conditions

Mike Hucklebilly recently offered an analogy explaining why insurance companies should not allow pre-existing conditions:

"It sounds good, and it's a warm, bleeding heart message to say we're not gonna deny anyone with a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you somethin' from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance, like for our houses, or our vehicles. And you, say Jed can call your insurance agent and say, "I'd like to buy some insurance for my house." He'd say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday--it ain't even there, 'cept a few 2 by 4s--but I'd like to insure it today anyhoo." And he'll say, "I'm sorry, Jed, but we can't insure it after it's already burnt down." If you had a wrecked car, it'd be the same. They wouldn't insure it. Well, it's just the same for humans, as it is for ruined houses and wrecked cars. You don't get no pre-existing conditions. When you're already sick, you're damaged goods, burnt down, wrecked, so to speak. No businessman in their right mind would lay a bet on a diseased, old dying person anymore than they would on a burnt-down house or piece of junk car. That's the long and short of it. Bad business. Next question, folks, and then let's say a prayer for our men and women in uniform."""

nada mas que baptista-masonica-basura

++++++++++++++++++++++

amiamo verde

Mafia goes Green:

""""On Tuesday Italian police seized Mafia-linked assets worth an unprecedented €1.5 billion from a Sicilian businessman known as the ‘Lord of the Winds’.


The seizure of holdings from 43 mainly renewable energy companies included land, sports cars and bank accounts. It signifies a shift in operations for Italy’s mafia; from the illegal dumping of toxic waste to the laundering of money through solar and wind power projects. According to members of the Italian press, this transition has been going on for years.""""

Whaa, you no likea the solar power, or photovoltaics, paysano? Hey we mighta jus breaka yr kneecaps and toss you in the Passaic. Fuggetaboutit.

"""the oppressed affluent""""

Krugman/NYTimes:

"""""Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.


These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.


And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.


The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.""""""

Krugman tries, at least. 

(a hint, bozonius: read through this a dozen times or so and practice writing some prose sans your usual phony, pseudo-liberal pathos.  Maybe, just maybe in a few years you could actually get your letters to the editor published in Podunkville Times)

$119 million and counting (e-Meg, continued)

meg-whitmans-record-spending/huffpo:

""""News articles and television and radio reports have expressed shock that Meg Whitman has now broken the record for spending personal money toward getting elected: As of last week, says the Los Angeles Times, the Republican California gubernatorial candidate spent $119 million of her own bucks to get voters to like her enough that they will send her to Sacramento. Of course, for that kind of money, Whitman could buy Sacramento and have some change left over to purchase San Diego as a summer home.

mein Saitenspiel (Hölderlin-tag)

"""""Nur einen Sommer gonnt, ihr Gewaltigen !
Und einen Herbst zu reifem Gesange mir,
Dass williger mein Herz, vom siissen
Spiele gesattigt, dann mir sterbe.
Die Seele, der im Leben ihr gottlich Recht
Nicht ward, sie ruht auch drunten im Orkus nicht; Doch ist mir einst das Heil’ge, das am Herzen mir liegt, das Gedicht gelungen.
Willkommen dann, 0 Stille der Schattenwelt!
Zufrieden bin ich, wenn auch mein Saitenspiel Mich nicht hinabgeleitet; einmal
Lebt’ ich wie Gotter, und mehr bedarfs nicht.""""

Holderlin & the nazis/Lukacs

sabado Gigante!

Kodaly: Hary Janos mov.3 Song



ah Rose of Cimbalom, carry us away

Fedville, continued

Brooks/NYTimes:

""The fact is, the American story is not just the story of limited    governments; it is the story of limited but energetic governments that used aggressive federal power to promote growth and social mobility. George Washington used industrial policy, trade policy and federal research dollars to build a manufacturing economy alongside the agricultural one. The Whig Party used federal dollars to promote a development project called the American System.


Abraham Lincoln supported state-sponsored banks to encourage development, lavish infrastructure projects, increased spending on public education. Franklin Roosevelt provided basic security so people were freer to move and dare. The Republican sponsors of welfare reform increased regulations and government spending — demanding work in exchange for dollars.


Throughout American history, in other words, there have been leaders who regarded government like fire — a useful tool when used judiciously and a dangerous menace when it gets out of control. They didn’t build their political philosophy on whether government was big or not. Government is a means, not an end. They built their philosophy on making America virtuous, dynamic and great. They supported government action when it furthered those ends and opposed it when it didn’t. """""

Brooks' quasi-Humean moderate politics (that's Hume, as in David, not Brit) will not likely  please Teabaggers (or the usual pop-gonzo obsessed DINO), but ...whatevah.

Wrinkled-Robe

Fed Judge Thomas Porteous's impeachment trial:

""""Public allegations of kickbacks involving Judge Porteous first surfaced 7 1/2 years ago, as part of the Wrinkled Robe probe of corruption at the Jefferson Parish state courthouse. Jeff Duhon, former employee of then-bail bondsman Louis Marcotte III, detailed how he routinely took Judge Porteous' vehicles to be repaired on Mr. Marcotte's tab when the judge served in state court prior to his 1994 federal appointment. Mr. Duhon said he also personally installed a fence in Judge Porteous' home.

J'accuse!

A mountain of evidence, and guilty pleas from several people involved, have since shown how Judge Porteous further prostituted his office.

For years, he took kickbacks from Mr. Marcotte while setting favorable bonds for his company. The judge also created a scheme -- there's no better word for it -- to provide two lawyer friends with court appointments worth thousands of dollars. In turn, those lawyers funneled some of that cash back to Judge Porteous.

And while on the federal bench, Judge Porteous lied repeatedly under oath, including during his 2001 personal bankruptcy filing. """""

The black robe boys--that's one mean mutha-f-ing gang


More 

Mark Twain's Autobiography

 TwainNYTimes:

""""Whether anguishing over American military interventions abroad or delivering jabs at Wall Street tycoons, this Twain is strikingly contemporary. Though the autobiography also contains its share of homespun tales, some of its observations about American life are so acerbic — at one point Twain refers to American soldiers as “uniformed assassins” — that his heirs and editors, as well as the writer himself, feared they would damage his reputation if not withheld.


“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed them in 1906. “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

Twain’s decree will be put to the test when the University of California Press publishes the first of three volumes of the 500,000-word “Autobiography of Mark Twain” in November. Twain dictated most of it to a stenographer in the four years before his death at 74 on April 21, 1910. He argued that speaking his recollections and opinions, rather than writing them down, allowed him to adopt a more natural, colloquial and frank tone, and Twain scholars who have seen the manuscript agree. """""

 UC-Co has already released some teasers: thisismarktwain.com.   Nothing like prospectin' in the.....big  Esmeralda district--.  bumf**kegypt as they used to say.

young guns of the GOP

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. [Ambrose Bierce]

attack-of-the-zombie-republicans/Batchelor

""""Consider what the rest of us see in the "Young Guns," who are neither young nor noticeably armed. Eric Cantor, VA-7 (R), has limited social skills and no charisma; his position as majority leader-in-waiting is built on the money he can raise as the only Jewish Republican in the Solar System. Kevin McCarthy, CA-22 (R), is a backslapper and small-talker from a safe district, who can work a room full of Gingrich cronies as a stand-in for the slow-tongued Cantor. McCarthy is useless as muscle, as an enforcer, because, says an observer, "That would put him in a position [where] he was unpopular."

Paul Ryan, WI-6 (R), is the babyface of the lot, no money, but lots of braininess about taxes and spending. Ryan loves to spew numbers in Cantor's earshot, which makes Cantor feel smart and less bad about the fact that he voted for TARP twice and every other bank bail-out he could find in Nancy Pelosi's kitchen. Ryan also has the problem of two "yes" votes to TARP. Oddly, McCarthy, thinking of his options, rejected TARP twice, but he is too polite to bring it up to his amigos, the "young conservatives" Eric and Paul.""""

sabado Gigante

boogie wit' Bela



another version

south india veena music


More fiddles, less footballs, say Contingencies.

Hitchens the chickenhawk

Counterpunch/Bello:

""""During the first 15 seconds the camera pans the books in the book cases in the room, (Hitchen's study, perhaps), followed by the credits, and photos of Hitchens, who is being treated for cancer at present, and looks very ill, from a happier time. We get the impression of a scholar who is both hip and wise, not to mention very well read, and long suffering. When he speaks, Hitchens' tone is hesitant, deeply emotional; he often looks down and fidgets before speaking.




Goldberg tells us Hitchens has deep knowledge of the 'Holocaust', and "the protean eternal nature of antisemitism". Eternal antisemitism. That's a big statement, a cynical statement. In a world where racism and greed have impoverished and debilitated broad swaths of humanity who have darker skin, who sit on resources other, better armed, races covet while they lack the basic necessities of life, water, for instance, we are to focus on man's inhumanity to man in the form of “eternal” bigotry against an ethno-religious group, largely white, well fed and successful, who have been given permission to drive out the indigenous inhabitants of their 'Promised Land' and unconditionally supported in the establishment of their homeland through violent, separatist, racist policies towards their neighbors.""""
.... .... ....

Chairman Hitchens at the controls.

Tacitus on the jewish religion

Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. (warning--not PC)

4. Moyses, wishing to secure for the future his authority over the nation, gave them a novel form of worship, opposed to all that practised by other men. Things sacred with us, with them have no sanctity, while they allow what with us is forbidden. In their holy place they have consecrated an image of the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance from their long and thirsty wanderings. They slay the ram, seemingly in derision of Hammon, and they sacrifice the ox, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They abstain from swines flesh, in consideration of what they suffered when they were infected by the leprosy to which this animal is liable. By their frequent fasts they still bear witness to the long hunger of former days, and the Jewish bread, made without leaven, is retained as a memorial of their hurried seizure of corn. We are told that the rest of the seventh day was adopted, because this day brought with it a termination of their toils; after a while the charm of indolence beguiled them into giving up the seventh year also to inaction. But others say that it is an observance in honour of Saturn, either from the primitive elements of their faith having been transmitted from the Ideai, who are said to have shared the flight of that God, and to have founded the race, or from the circumstance that of the seven stars which rule the destinies of men Saturn moves in the highest orbit and with the mightiest power, and that many of the heavenly bodies complete their revolutions and courses in multiples of seven.""""

more on Myths of the Old Testament

Hebrew calendar unreliable

Mencken in the morning

"Prejudices"/K.Powers reviews HL Mencken:

""""To a degree, the nation Mencken claims to delight in as an "Eden of clowns" is a mischievous creation unified by his own powerful sense of the ridiculous. Throughout Prejudices, he drives the diverse "bosh mongers," spewers of buncombe and "geysers of pishposh" into the same corral through sheer brawny eloquence and fistic wit. Thus his menagerie of scoundrels brings together such strange bedfellows as "the Ku Klux Klan and all other clownish fraternal orders," Chambers of Commerce, Methodists, Chautauquans, prohibitionists, sex hygienists, Freudian "necromancers," the "snouting and preposterous Puritan," and the "fantoddish old suffragette." Indeed, his prose style is an assertion of masculine puissance (to use one of his favorite words); and it strikes one that what gives such galvanic force to his writing is not only his "unashamed taste for the bizarre and indelicate," but his outraged feeling that America is being emasculated by purveyors of genteel literature, wowsers, teetotalers, and "vassarized" women. "Here," he says, "is a land in which women rule and men are slaves. Train your women to get your slippers for you, and your ill fame will match Galileo's or Darwin's."

As a physical presence Mencken seems to have achieved what he describes as the male ideal: a figure whose "only touch of genuine color" is "the florid blob of the face." As an intellectual presence there's nothing blobby about him. He's a festive brawler, here to bust up the joint. In "The Cult of Hope" (Second Series) he calls the idea that criticism should be constructive a "messianic delusion"; on the contrary, its object is destruction. Mencken's flair for contumely and comic rancor are intoxicating, even to one who disagrees with him more than half of the time. To be sure, in the pages of Prejudices he's sometimes dull and stupid, as when he issues decrees on women's clothing and makeup or on the relations between the sexes; sometimes he's just dull, though unavoidably so, as when he lays into middle-brow writers lost to history; and sometimes he's brilliantly hard-hitting as when he takes on American journalism and other forms of timeserving. There are many reasons to read Prejudices, but for me one trumps them all: that combative, beautifully sprung, ingeniously funny style, as irresistible as a laughing baby.""""

To reiterate: "Mencken's flair for contumely and comic rancor are intoxicating, even to one who disagrees with him more than half of the time." Yes.

ol' time religion

Ganesh Chaturthi

______________________
Thoreau on Hinduism:

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the River Ganga reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water---jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges."

bootay-call!

Higher-ed. according to Paul Johnson

"Spanker" Johnson/Forbes:

Universities, as such, were first created in the Middle Ages to train the clergy, and they began assuming their modern form in 18th-century Germany. For two centuries Germany was home to the best universities in the world, leading the field in philosophy, theology, philology and most of the sciences. But this was the same Germany that under Otto von Bismarck became a militaristic state and under Adolf Hitler a totalitarian one. Germany led the world into the two most destructive wars in history. Hitler always received higher ratings from students than from any other group in society, his views being strongly supported by a majority of German academics, with the world-famous philosopher Martin Heidegger setting the pattern.

So universities, and the education they provide, do not necessarily impart wisdom. What they do convey, in general terms, is not so easily defined. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia received a routine dose of higher education in the twilight of the Soviet Union as a prelude to entering the U.S.S.R.'s secret police community, an intellectual culture in which he still remains.

Many german university students supported Hitler (and Heidegger); ergo, universities lead to nazi-ism, according to Johnson--how the mind of a Tory-papist works. Mr. Johnson has not always been a proper conservative, however. According to his one-time mistress Gloria Stewart, "Paul loved to be spanked and it was a big part of our relationship. I had to tell him he was a very naughty boy." Spanked...for the ad majorem Dei gloriam. Jolly good, then.

Gibson ---Google

WilliamGibson/NYTimes:

“I ACTUALLY think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” said the search giant’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” Do we really desire Google to tell us what we should be doing next? I believe that we do, though with some rather complicated qualifiers.

Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, eminently reliable — before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot.""""

We are Google and Google is Us.

America's favorite idiot

How many people do you think were at Glenn Beck's rally for G*d, America, the GOP, and the teachings of Moroni?

A. Under 10,000

B. 10,000 to 100,000

C. 100,000 to 250,000

D. 250,000 to 750,000

E. 1,000,000 +

Ballpark it!

* * *

"""[Beck's] assertion that the Founding Fathers were essentially evangelical Christians in the modern sense, and that they intended the founding documents to define a theocracy, is more complex. Here what is needed, and what Beck lacks, is a sense of historical context, as well as a sense of what constitutes evidence. For instance, the fact that Washington (or any other FF) may have referred to God in one or two letters out of thousands of documents, is not enough to establish that his views were the same as those of a 20th Century Rev. Hagee. In order to interpret the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” it is important to know the history on English law in which rights were not considered inalienable, but rather granted by the state and the crown. One need not invoke a Creator to maintain that rights are inalienable, but in the mindset of the 18th century, this was a pragmatic way of saying that the state was not empowered to displace these rights.""""("Auriandra")

El Tenedor o.........La Fourchette

Does Your Language Shape How you Think?(NYTimes):

""""Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.


In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”). For decades, Whorf’s theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language, from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein’s concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient Hebrew. """""

Wow, I did not know that as Ed McMahon might have said.

No on e-Meg, continued

e-Meg's tax reform plan: no taxes on e-Meg & her cronies

Kelly/HuffPo:

""""A nurse making $47,056 also paid 9.3%
Sounds fair, right?
So here's Meg's new plan: The nurse still pays 9.3% but Meg Whitman pays 0.00%
......
Since we don't have Meg Whitman's tax records, and we'll be getting them when hell freezes over, we don't know how much her Rich Eat Free tax giveaway will save her. But we can guess.


Let's say Meg has her billion dollars in a Bank of America Growth Maximizer Savings Account. Last year, married, filing jointly, her California state income tax would have been $90,843. I'll bet Meg did a little better than that. She knows all those insider trading guys from Goldman Sachs. So let's say her investments paid about the same as ten-year treasuries. If she made 3.75%, her California state income tax was $4,295,230.
Under Meg's plan, it would go down to zero.
On average, a really experienced California nurse makes $62,400. Her state income tax is $2,032. Under Meg's plan, it would go down to $2,032.
Another way of looking at these numbers: Meg Whitman's tax cut will save Meg Whitman four million dollars a year, basically even if she just has her money buried in the stable. It will save the average working Californian sweet F all.
And it'll cost the state billions.
It's going to take a lot of TV ads to make that sound like a good plan.""""

And to think...millions of Kalifornians take this sinister broad seriously. Then... Aynnie Rand hyper-capitalist potboilers remain bestsellers as well. e-Meg may be gambling on the silent CA majority: the Randian-WASP-zombie market.

6000m +

¡Buenas Dias, Aconcagua!

peaks of the Andes, 6000m+

Shekelmeisters

Richest Members of the US Congress

wit' Sat. mornin' Armada!

whoa

moral landscapes

Sam Harris/HuffPo:

....3. """"But can't moral claims be in conflict? Aren't there many situations in which one person's happiness means another's suffering?

There are some circumstances like this, and we call these contests "zero-sum." Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc. -- these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so -- which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don't have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience...."

Buh-bye, B & N

The impending Death of Barnes and Noble/WSJ:

""""The simple explanation for Barnes & Noble's decline is the Internet, which spawned Amazon.com, e-readers and digital books. But that didn't have to be the end for B&N, which had a dominant market position and should have out-Amazoned Amazon, leveraging its brand and innovating when it began marketing and selling books online.


I know exactly when B&N lost me as a customer. Some years ago, to compete with Amazon, B&N began offering free same-day delivery in Manhattan if you placed your order over the Internet by 11 a.m. I did so several times—and not once did the books arrive when promised. Everything I have ordered from Amazon has arrived on time or earlier. Then came Amazon's game-changing Kindle, and instant delivery. Nothing I've read about B&N's belated rival Nook has tempted me to try it.


My hunch is that B&N never really embraced the Internet or e-books, tied as it was to the old-fashioned world of physical books and stores. As B&N focused on managing decline, a much more nimble Amazon could concentrate exclusively on the new world it was forming. B&N needed to destroy its business model to prevail. Now it is probably too late. There is a lesson for all businesses here.""""

Drone psalm

...even though we march
through the valley of the shadow of death,
we will fear no evil, for you art with us, DRONE;
your  machine guns and your missiles, they comfort us.....

* * *
Counterpunch/AC:

""""...The Afghan war, launched covertly three decades ago, will be with us for at least two more years, and maybe several more , the need for protraction buttressed by such shock tactics as the picture of an Afghan woman with her nose cut off by the Taliban, featured on the cover of Time recently. It was certainly a horrible piece of barbarism, inflicted because the woman had breached the Talibans’ concept of moral propriety. The message was that with premature US withdrawal a lot more women’s noses will be sliced off, or women lashed and then shot for imputed “adultery” years after their husbands had died. I did feel all the same that balance should have required Time also to feature bits of human flesh strewn around after a Predator missile had landed on yet another Afghan wedding party, an inevitable feature of what happens so long as the US stays.""""

Diamonds and blood

Blood diamonds:

""On the subject of illegal gemstones, it is fair to say that Mr Reeves is uniquely well connected, even if many of his best contacts are now either dead, on the run, or in jail. The tall, quietly spoken 38-year-old is the brother-in-law, no less, of Charles Taylor, the Liberian dictator who gave Ms Campbell a gift of uncut diamonds in 1997, according to her recent testimony at his war crimes trial in the Hague. For four turbulent years, he was at the centre of the blood diamonds trade, acting as Taylor's personal envoy in his infamous arms-for-gems deals with the rebels in next door Sierra Leone, whose drug-crazed recruits raped, maimed and slaughtered their way through a war that claimed some 150,000 lives.

As such, he also knows about the appalling price in human misery that was paid so that "the chief", as his brother-in-law was known, could flatter pretty girls at parties. The gifts Taylor used to hand out to the likes of Ms Campbell were the proceeds of dozens of clandestine trips that Mr Reeves made into the Sierra Leone bush, where he would swap truckloads of weapons for tiny but highly valuable packages of stones, many from rebel-held mines being run as virtual slave camps.""""

Res ipsa loquitur

the treason of Reason

The National Interest on AC Grayling:

""""As Grayling sees things, it is only irrationality that makes human conflicts intractable. If only he had been around in the dark years of the Second World War, he seems to imply, and in a position to instruct Allied war planners on the finer points of ethical theory, the terrible struggle could have gone so much more smoothly. Certainty of this kind is comical, but it also raises a question about the origins of the principles that Grayling maintains so mechanically. He is insistent that liberal values apply universally. He is also insistent that these values have nothing to do with religion......

irrationality, Harry Reid-style

from firedoglake:

""""You would think, on occasion, the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause would mean something to aspiring Minority Leader, Harry Reid — a Mormon. However, that sort of rationality goes out the window when real important things — like reelection are involved.


The First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.
Because God forbid we tear down the holiest of relics, an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory (“You go in there with $645 and you are literally a king”) to class up the neighborhood.

By the way Harry, I imagine you were up front in making sure the Mormon Church didn’t build some sort of Memorial at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, because that would be, y’know, offensive to the memories of the victims for the same reasons?

Oh, right, you were too busy peeing your pants."""

say No to Megzilla

The politics of Whitmanopoly: e-Meg starts her gubernational campaign with $100 million+ (from e-bayCo, and G-sachs insider deals). Jerry Brown starts with under 1 million and some contributions from CA demos and unions. Life in the Mormonacracy.

No Meg2010

Hail to the Thief

Soak the very, very rich

James Surowiecki /New Yorker:

""The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? The Obama Administration’s answer is that you’re rich if you make more than two hundred thousand dollars a year as an individual or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year as a household, and therefore you should have your taxes raised. Conservatives suggest that this threshold is far too low, and argue that Obama would be taxing mostly small-business owners, or the people a Fox News host has referred to as “the so-called rich,” rather than fat plutocrats. You might think this isn’t really much of a debate. An annual income of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars puts you in the top three per cent of American households, and is more than four times the national median. You’re rich, and a small tax increase isn’t going to rock your world."""

 Tea party types who insist they're being taxed to death don't know f**k about the economic history of the last 50 years (then, teabaggers are the sort of humanoids who consider basura such as Aynnie Rand or RA Heinlein great intellectuals):  marginal income tax and capital gains tax rates under the Nixon regime were 60%; about 80% under Eisenhower. 

Morirse a gusto ...

desde La Gaceta...

""El hombre actual contempla la muerte como el fracaso de su dominio sobre las fuerzas de la naturaleza. El “hombre tecnificado” puede controlar y manipular casi todo, pero se encuentra indefenso ante el hecho innegable de la muerte. Así, la muerte y el morir no tienen cabida en las sociedades industrializadas, no afectan a los sistemas productivos. La muerte, la agonía y la senectud son consideradas como representación de la impotencia de la moderna tecnología biomédica."".......continua leyendo....

Carly-Palin-Palin-Carly

Great hinds link alike!

"Carly has been endorsed by the National Right to Life, the California Pro-Life Council, and the Susan B. Anthony List. She is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-military, and pro-strict border security and against amnesty." - Sarah Palin, May 6, 2010

"Carly is also a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Like me, she is a member of the NRA, has a 100% NRA rating, and she and her husband are gun owners." - Sarah Palin, May 6, 2010

fromFiorinaFacts aka NO on Carly (not only is Carly an ex-HP CEO-ette, but a ...Steinford Alum! More than sufficient for...negation).

When a GOP gal's in trouble campaign-wise--as MissFiorina appears to be--she can usually count on rallying at least some support by waving the flag, yapping about morali-tay, or making appeals to the hicksTed Nugent conservatives and biblethumpers. The LCD school of politics

keep the ~(faith)

mo' from the death of Hitchens...

Author and critic, Christopher Hitchens is fighting for his life. He has esophageal cancer that has metastasized to his lymph nodes and lung. But, don't expect to hear him pray as a result of it all.
Hitchens, has been a journalist of some note for decades and is a         regular contributor to "The Atlantic", "Vanity Fair", Slate and "The Nation"

He is an author of some note whose titles alone cause controversy. "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", "The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice" and "God Is Not Great."


From that last title you can surmise that he is an unapologetic atheist. Thursday night he spoke on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 program about his mortality. He is resigned to the law of averages which says that more people than not don't come back from what he is stuck with.


Asked if his prognosis has driven him to a deity to whom he prays, Hitchens told Cooper, that he is aware of prayer groups that have sprouted in his honor but, "I shall not be taking part in that."

Hitchens' demise (which CH himself grants is likely...) reiterates the proverbial "are there atheists in foxholes" chestnut (deathbeds, cancer wards, vets hospitals, etc). We here at Contingencies don't detest Hitchens though generally disagree with his tactics (not to say his pro-Bush stance circa '03-04). He writes fairly effectively, certainly in comparison with the usual 'Merican pundit. He also understood the secular vision of the chief American founders, at least (unlike so many apparatchiks).  His slightly Humean prose seemed  refreshing when it appeared in the 90s, compared to the gonzo hacks, the Safire savants, the Sally Fields PC-hysteria crew. 


His reluctance to pray or to ask for a cleric deserves some respect. Many a skeptic has waved away the preacher or priest at the end. David Hume died in rather ugly circumstances--cancer of the bowels, more or less--and yet told Boswell a few days before death, that he was convinced the soul dies with the body. Voltaire told the priests to keep their distance (saying "this was no time to be making enemies," etc). Bertrand Russell also refused to allow clergymen attend his death--reportedly (tho' some reports suggest an Anglican bureaucrat was in attendance). Apart from the usual and somewhat trite prayer issue (wouldn't a loving G*d answer prayers of a young christian who lost his legs in an accident where a drunk driver struck him and his family, etc) why bother with mere ritual at the last? Besides, given the miniscule probability that a rational Deity exists, does He demand a mere wafer and confession? He--or is it They-- will weigh human souls according to their deeds, hopefully, as even Pascal suggested--not count the notches of the masses ingested (or so one wagers). No amount of repentance will likely save a truly corrupt or perverted individual (like this republican wiccan-on-steroids, Tusconius).   And will a box of sacred wafers suffice to...expiate the sins of corrupt or criminal papists--an Al Caponay, or...Dimaggio...Der Fuhrer?  Unlikely.   Couragio....

Vineland at 20

Rereading Pynchon--

""""In 1993, when I first read Vineland, Thomas Pynchon's great novel about washed-up 60s radicals, I was living in northern California with two middle-aged hippies. A certain bohemianism and lawlessness still lingered in their creaking house in Berkeley. The cable TV service was siphoned off from a neighbouring property. One housemate drank rank-smelling wheatgrass for her breakfast. The other disappeared at weekends on unspecified operations against the logging companies in the redwood forests up near the Oregon border. When she was home, she almost never left her basement room. She emphatically instructed me to deny her existence if anyone called.


I was an inquisitive male postgraduate in my early 20s: a classic potential Pynchon reader. One day after the winter had set in, with its low skies and week-long rains, I went down to one of the bookshops on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where some of the legendary 60s student demonstrations had taken place, and bought Vineland.


The book had come out three years earlier, to approving but subtly disappointed reviews. Pynchon's previous novel, the seemingly all-encompassing second world war adventure and postmodern box of tricks Gravity's Rainbow, had been published in 1973; during the 17-year wait for a follow-up, all sorts of rumours had spread about what the famously brainy and reclusive American prodigy, only 35 in 1973, would produce next. "We heard he was doing something about Lewis and Clark," Salman Rushdie wrote in the New York Times in 1990. "Mason and Dixon? A Japanese science-fiction novel? . . . A 900-page Pynchon megabook about the American civil war?"


In fact, Vineland was less than 400 pages long, largely American rather than international in its settings, realistic in style for long stretches, and relatively earnest, even sentimental, compared with what Pynchon had previously written. In a typical response in Time magazine, Paul Gray compared an early, lovingly drawn scene of greedy birds stealing food from a dog bowl left outside by the absent-minded main character, Zoyd Wheeler, with the dazzling opening panorama in Gravity's Rainbow of a V-2 rocket descending on London ("A screaming comes across the sky . . ."). Gray concluded: "There seems to have been a little downscaling going on." In the Nation, John Leonard suggested an explanation: Vineland was "a breather between biggies", a John the Baptist of a novel preparing the ground for "another, darker, [more] magisterial" Pynchon production.""""

Vineland, as beautiful as any macro-entropy, like mushroom clouds over an atoll.

~(infinity)

JRLucasDay:

"""Once we allow some principle of recursive reasoning, we are landed with the infinite. There are an infinite number of natural numbers: for 0 is a natural number, and if anything is a natural number, its successor is a natural number. So there are natural numbers, and for any finite number, n, it is demonstrably false that there are exactly n natural numbers. We feel impelled to allow the question `How many natural numbers are there?', and the only possible answer seems to be `an infinite number'. But we have qualms.

Infinity seems out of this earth. It smacks of Platonism, mysticism and theology. The word `infinite' is a negative concept, contrasting not only with `
finite', in a strict mathematical sense, but with
`definite' and with `comprehensible'. Often, especially in theology and ancient philosophy, the Infinite is the Whole....the Universe, the Absolute, whose logic is difficult and fraught with inconsistencies. We are wise to be wary.

Although Parmenides, Plato, Augustine, William of Alnwick, Leibniz, Cantor, Dedekind and most modern mathematicians are fairly happy with infinity, other philosophers have had doubts. Aristotle allowed the existence of the potential infinite but denied
the actual infinite, and was followed by Aquinas and most of the Schoolmen. It is fair to place Weyl and the modern Intuitionists in that tradition. Locke had considerable difficulty in articulating a coherent and satisfactory account of infinity. Berkeley was deeply
critical of infinitesimals and mathematical infinity generally, and modern Finitists likewise reject every sort of infinity, and try to confine themsleves to finite numbers alone. But infinitistic arguments
keep seeping in, and strict Finitists distinguish themselves from their laxer brethren, and still are not stringent enough in their scepticism to escape the strictures of the ultra strict."""

(in other words, Cantor resides in Hades. Yay)

The die is cast....

 "By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future."

        Zelda Fitzgerald

Technology and the novel....

and..."the autocratic cunning of the machine":

""Melville wrote a whole story about a mill: "The Tartarus of Maids". Its narrator, a seed-trader in need of a good envelope-supplier, visits a paper mill and gazes in "strange dread" at the wheels and cylinders of the "inflexible iron animal", shocked by "the metallic necessity, the unbudging fatality which governed it . . . the autocratic cunning of the machine". In the marriage of humanity and industrial apparatuses, it's clear who wears the trousers:


Machinery – that vaunted slave of humanity – here stood menially served by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as the slave serves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory wheels to the general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.

It's clear, too, that Melville isn't simply pondering the rise of machine culture in society at large. Etching his way on his horse, Black, across the snow-white valley where the mill lies, and wondering at the range of lawyers' briefs, doctors' prescriptions, pastors' sermons and so on that will be scrawled in ink on the reams of blank paper he's watching cascade off the rollers, the narrator is a carrier of a more self-reflective anxiety, one that concerns itself with the very act of writing. If man's autocracy, his genius, his powers of generation, have all passed to the machine, and if the pulpy, material base for the refined and abstract thoughts and emotions that we read in books has been revealed to us, then how can we understand poetry or prose as the sublime self-expression of autonomous and elevated individuals? Melville's answer is as implicit as his question: we can't, not any more.""

Jeez, Zilmon, hit the Defibrillator! we're not in Kansas anymore (and haven't been for 100+ years...)

USS Jee-zuss

Our Supercarrier, who art in Empire, hallowed be thy name...