Last lights.

Belief is an intelligent species' mechanism against going insane.

Do you think it's possible that humans evolved a need to find patterns/meaning in things because of natural selection? Say, you have half the population with a gene that causes them to have vague religious or spiritual ideas, and the other half doesn't have that gene. Since we've become smart enough to reflect on life and ourselves, unlike almost all other animals (as far as we know), for the people who didn't have the gene, they would just stand there like me and think, I'm eating so I can live so I can breed so another one of me can eat and do the whole thing over again; what's the point? Those people in general would have bred less often than the people who had some sense of purpose or of a higher force directing them or judging them or whatever. So after many iterations, the population of non-believers shrinks to some minimum (but never totally goes away), while the people who possess the gene that causes them to plunge ahead with eating and humping and doing all that stuff that life is "about," are obviously more successful at it and go on to dominate the gene pool.

That's my theory why so many people are religious or spiritual or believe in fate or have some need to believe, if you will. They have to or they will cease to care about anything, even living. Obviously that wouldn't be selected for in a natural setting. People like me are an aberration, people who were born without that gene or whatever and who looked around, realized there was no instruction manual, no rules, no way to "win", no end except a grisly one without meaning, and said, ok, what do I do now? And that's my problem in life. I can't find any purpose, any reason to exist. No one asked me if I wanted to be born. Actually I'm a little bitter about it still. Just a theory. But one that explains why people are the way they are without needing to postulate a God or Intelligent Designer of any sort. Because then you get into the whole infinite-regress problem: Who made God? Etc. It's tortoises all the way down. Maybe the Entire Universe is a form of sentient life, and organizes itself like a life form; that's possible. I just don't know. So I'm agnostic about everything.

---

I think the fact that I'm educated and well-spoken and intelligent is the problem. It might be better if I had a drooling, blithering retarded exterior rather than a veneer of normalcy. Then people would at least see right away that I'm nonfunctional. As it is, I am nonfunctional, or barely functional, just as much as anyone else who cannot take care of himself and who is deeply mentally and emotionally impaired. But my higher-brained ability to hold a conversation and do things "normally" for short periods of time when under observation, and then to blog about it, works against me, and hides that rest of the iceberg that is my mangled self from the world. It's like the old saying of if you're sane enough to say that you're insane, you can't possibly be insane. The insane don't know they are. But I know I have huge problems beneath the surface, they just aren't always obvious from the outside and that has really harmed me in the sense of getting help. So many people would look at me, talk briefly to me, and think I'm smart and well-adjusted. But they never come live with me for awhile and learn the truth...

---

Dream: Four siblings born at once to a dying mother. 2 boys, 1 girl, 1 mutant. 2 boys grew up to each control half the world's power, and fought ceaselessly against one another, maintaining an equilibrium of war and strife. Finally, at one of their ebbs in power when both were regrouping, the sister, who had been waiting patiently, stepped in and wiped them both out. She promised peace for the world, but under her leadership the one-world government, unchecked, became corrupt, stale, and abusive, leading to another sort of nightmare existence under Big Sister. Finally, the mutant, who had been assumed impotent and largely forgotten, rose up and defeated the sister, and the world thought one dictator was merely replacing another. Especially when 'it' began to multiply vastly its arsenal of weapons and control of every aspect of the living ecosphere. But at the peak of its incredible power, the mutant composed itself with grace and chose self-destruction, and took everything with it, rather than succumb to the lure of power, even the promise of benevolent self-rule with all its lies. Life everywhere was snuffed out, and suffering was at last ended.

---

I want to scream so loud that my entire apartment will be shattered, the entire world go away, my own body and mind implode after the scream, and collapse in on itself to nothing.

Shaking, shaking in fear and withdrawal. Now too terrified to even move. Wrapped in a blanket like a mummy in linens, still, heart pounding, waiting for the end of time. It's cold and I'm sweating and I can't bear to look. My skin is crawling and there is no light; it's dark inside and out. It's dark everywhere now.

---

There is a dog running around, rolling around, gamboling about above me, day and night. But it's a guide dog so that's ok right? The office denied for months that there was a dog, looking me in the eye and reminding me of their policy that "we don't allow dogs in these apartments." Kaleena, you lied. There is a dog above me - I saw him. Then you said, "He's a guide dog." I support guide dogs and the people who need them, but don't lie to me, and don't place them in upstairs units. BIG guide dogs that like to run and knock over furniture, with owners who encourage them by seemingly throwing them things to fetch, all the way across the apartment, repeatedly. What in the hell was the management of this place thinking? I hate being lied to, and told that what I'm hearing is NOT a dog when it is - guide dog variety or not. I would have understood more had you been honest. Now I'm just mad.

---

The light is fading now. I've been wrapped in blankets all day. I can't stand to see the light, or what it shows. Headaches are kicking me around like kids with a new ball. The dog is running around.

It's only once every chunk of hours that I can get up the courage to get on the computer and write something so people don't panic. Now I can go back to my cocoon and panic. The lights, so low...

Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Sometimes I want to do things to be rid of myself
Not directly, you understand,
Though there are those times too
Sometimes I just want to feel different and I don't know what to do
Whatever will change this boring life is better than
Sitting and stewing and thinking about the past
Or looking on at the compressed and stretched out future
Whose uncertainty mocks everything I once
Thought I knew about the world.

And my brain wants a holiday
My body wants to feel good for a day
Or at least for now, somehow. Some way,
Amid heavy sundrops
I'll meet somebody who will take away the pain
On whom I can count with all ten fingers and toes
Who just doesn't sympathize but who knows
And can empathize
Or maybe euthanize, I dunno.

Toumai.

Black roses on a white cloth
Black roses and a dove
Sit in atonement, wait in silence
For the girl I once loved

Stagnant are the winds
Seeping through this place of fire
And stagnant the day that never ends
Goodbye, desire

You sir, you may think you're a just man
But look into your heart with eyes open
Don't clamp them shut when the
Sky peals and pounds you with rain

It's only fair
For what you've done again and again
There is nowhere else for you to go
So you just lay there.

Simplicity.

I like simple things. Information may be simplified in a crude way, say for children, which makes it easy to understand but also distorts the information somewhat. To correct these distortions, you can start to add in the corrections - the details, as it were. But in the process, you make the whole corpus more complex, and as it becomes more accurate it also loses its accessibility, so that soon it requires an adult mind to comprehend it, then that of a specialist, and so on. But I firmly believe that, like those Zen masters who return to simplicity in their teaching and yet leave out nothing in the way of truth, knowledge of any kind at its very best and most complete returns to a simple, unifying model for those who have the gift to stand back far enough to gain the perspective necessary to but see it. Then they can write simply and accurately.

Like Eastern metaphysics, I think Western intellectual endeavors need to achieve this kind of "level up" simplification. Indeed I'm not sure there is a difference between Eastern and Western intellectual philosophies at all. Any that seem to exist may be semantic and imposed by us as a species, for there exist widely different cultures and modes of expression and understanding on this planet as a result of long geographical separation without easy communication, a form of "island isolationism" which has only recently changed. As East and West continue to merge I think it likely that we'll find we've merely taken different roads to reach Rome.

But back to simplicity, and to books. I like children's books, but they are dissatisfying in some way as well, because most of them conjure the suspicion of something being hidden from you. I also enjoy complex scientific textbooks, full of taxonomy and intricate detail and endless levels of complexity to explore. There's a sense of them being "treasure troves" of mankind's collected information and inferences. But most of all I enjoy a simple book written by a "master" which seems to really sum up the essence of a thing; to leave nothing out, and yet to be utterly clear linguistically and conceptually. These types of books are few and far between, but they are the type I like to fill up my library with, and the type I would like myself one day to write, if it is possible for me to do so.

Piano Magic

COMETS
(Words - GA Johnson)
Came to London to find myself but in ten million people, where do you start?/Drunk at a party, you asked me if I was someone else and I say, "Yeah, if it helps you, I won't be myself"/Like Japanese poets who capture a summer in only three lines, with just one kiss, I want to tell you but it takes all night/You just can't wait for the right time because like comets, it could be the last time/You should always tell them you love them in case you never see them again.

You should always tell them you love them in case you never see them again.

What is a 'generation' these days?

I know precisely what a generation is in biology, say in bacteria cultures or drosophila experiments. I know what it means in chemical and physical iterative, enumerated events, done in a lab under controlled circumstances. In science everything is precise, or tries its damnedest to be, and I understand the concept of generations very clearly.

But what about the popular idea of "my generation" or "the younger generation" or "the generation gap" or "my parent's generation"? Most people know that (at least in so-called Western countries), giving birth to children has become an event that has migrated to a later and later period in life. Through most of history, and presumably in pre-history, women gave birth nearly as soon as they reached puberty, and continued to do so for most of the middle part of their lives. So a "generation" could be held up as something like 15-20 years, the age they were when they first gave birth to another "gene machine." In fact, 20-25 years even now seems to be what most people have in mind when they talk about the World War II Generation, The 60s Generation, Generation X, and now Generation Y.

But does this really make sense? In the developing world, sure - though I'm not sure how concerned they are with concepts like 'generational culture drift' - not to sound smug about it, but they're mostly just trying to grow food, eat, and not die of disease or starvation or natural disasters. Amongst more prosperous nations though, it's hard to call 20-25 years a generation anymore; if women are regularly holding off giving birth until their mid-thirties, then that figure is the generational turnover. It may seem a pedantic point (to sneak a word in), but it really isn't. Insofar as children are taught the basics in life by their parents, the generational turnover really has slowed into the mid 30s in a real sense.

But at the same time, one would be hard-pressed to argue that 'cultural drift' has slowed its pace. It hasn't, of course; perversely, it's ramped up to dizzying speeds thanks to the exponential rise of technology. So on the one hand we have (in prosperous demographic areas of prosperous nations), a fairly dramatic slowing of the actual biological 'turnover rate.' Parents are even further removed in age from their children than they once were. At the same time, the pace of change has sped dramatically, which must be more difficult for these older parents to cope with and educate their children about than it would be were they themselves younger, and so children (IMO) - more and more frequently, and at younger ages - turn to their peers for help and guidance in the technical skills and the observance of social mores and away from their parents, who seem old and out of touch (even more so than in previous years).

This seems to me to be one of the root causes of the many forms of breakdown in the family unit, the extended family unit, the parent-child bond, and ultimately perhaps the crime rate, the feeling of alienation and depression experienced by more people now than ever, and a host of other social maladies. Just a theory of mine, but it makes sense to me. Any thoughts on this subject?

Hitler and the iPad

Word quiz.

Here are 10 words for you to define. Ok, I will be extra nice this time and make it a matching game. However, in order not to make it too simple, don't count on the definitions to be in the same tense or form (noun, adjective, etc.) as the main word; the root word will match the basic sense of the definition, but that's all I can guarantee. Have fun!

01. irascible....... A. slavish attention to rules
02. cladistic....... B. minute particle or trace
03. pedantry........ C. taxonomically inclined
04. lugubrious...... D. ill-natured
05. contretemps..... E. sorrowful
06. aquiline........ F. eagle-like
07. portentous...... G. equal in lefts and rights
08. palimpsest...... H. parchment overwritten later
09. scintilla....... I. ominously significant
10. racemic......... J. embarrassing mischance

Ah, the joy of words!

Animal names.

The science of taxonomy, as you surely know, has ways of comparing all the living things in the world and clumping the most closely related among them (those which can actually interbreed) into species, then the most similar species into genera (singlur: genus), genera into families, families into classes, classes into orders, orders into phyla, and so on.

Out of the technical jargon you will hear scientists (or other people) talk about groups of animals (usually at the "family" or "class" level, but not always) with a sort of short-hand 'group name' - like hominids for all humans and their closely related ancestors (Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Erectus, Australopithicines like "Lucy", and so on, but NOT, for example, chimps or gorillas, which are more distantly related to the hominids than hominids are to each other). With me so far?

Ok, so here are some scientific shorthand terms used to describe common animals. I've tried to put them generally in order from easiest to hardest. Try to give the common (non-scientific name) for that group or perhaps an example or two. How many can you get?

No search engines, please!

00. Primates - Humans, Apes, Monkeys, Prosimians
01. Felids
02. Canids
03. Ursids
04. Cetaceans
05. Equids
06. Marsupials
07. Piscids
08. Arachnids
09. Monotremes
10. Squamates
11. Testudinates
12. Chiroptids
13. Accipiters
14. Annelids
15. Pinnepeds
16. Lagomorphs

Ok, I think we'll stop there. 16 is a nice, square number (square of a square!). I'll give you a hint: In the list above 10 are mammals (not counting "00"), and 6 are either birds, reptiles, or other things.

Good luck, and if you know any other common group names you didn't find on this list, please share them so we can all learn!

They're beautiful, ferocious, endangered, and they run your Macintosh!

Gonna try something...

I'm going to post about a week's worth of short quizzes and miscellany all right now, but timed so that each gets displayed at midnight PST. This way I'll be sure to always have something new each day, but not so much all as once that it floods the blog and people miss some of the items. Especially quizzes - you don't want 7 or 8 quizzes all in one day.

Meantime, during the week if I have something I really want to blog about, I can still do that, it won't interfere with the automatic releases. In a sense I'm just spreading a backlog out over time, but in advance and automatically.

Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford.

Here's the first question - not a quiz but a voluntary (of course) inquiry about your ethnic/cultural background. If this is sensitive information for anyone, don't feel the need to answer. But I'm of the opinion we should neither be ashamed nor proud of our heritage: After all, what say did we have in the matter. That's right, none. I'm just curious, as I am about all things, what my ethnic (one used to say "racial") heritage is. The search in itself is usually more enlightening than any conclusions reached.

For example, I've discovered that just through my mom's mom's side, I'm related to a group that came to America from England just 11 years after the Pilgrims landed the Mayflower, and founded a community which would grow into the town (now city) of Hartford, Connecticut. In fact I'm a direct ancestor of the first governor of that state and have many modern-day relatives living in the state. I qualify to belong to some "Native Connecticut" society in which I have no interest, but it's neat nonetheless to know about. And I am also related through the same channels to the very influential senator Daniel Webster, his cousin Noah Webster (known for compiling the most-used dictionary in the USA), and relative of John Webster, another governor of New Hampshire. All this I just found out in the last couple of months.

Without going into so much detail, then, I'll briefly state what I currently believe to be the ethnicities of my four grandparents, until such time as I can go back further and more comprehensively.

Maternal Grandmother: Mostly English, some Polish and possible French and German.
Maternal Grandfather: From what records I have, was fully German.
Paternal Grandmother: English and Cherokee, with possibly some Irish.
Paternal Grandfather: Apparently full-blooded Castillian Spanish.

This means I'm probably more English, German, and Spanish than anything, with a helping of Cherokee Indian and much lesser amounts of other ethnicities. My nationality is 100% American, since I was born here and am a full citizen of the USA and nowhere else. That's something I hear mixed up all the time - terms race, ethnicity, culture, nationality. Each has a very precise meaning in ethnography.

The exciting bit is, the process of uncovering my ancestors is ongoing, and all of this information is subject to negation, refinement, or elaboration.

What about YOU?

Could someone pick one of these up for me?

Thanks.

In The Lord of the Rings,

Curumo, Olórin, Aiwendil, Morinehtar, and Rómestámo were what kind of creatures/beings?

Hint: These names are in Quenya. Extra points if you know their Sindarin names, Common (Westron) names, or anything more detailed about them. :-)

Sorry to all you non-Americans...

Let's see if our own citizens know who's on their money. No cheating! You'll only hurt yourself, in the end. Somehow.

Whose portrait is featured on the...
$1 bill?
$2 bill?
$5 bill?
$10 bill?
$20 bill?
$50 bill?
$100 bill?
$500 bill?*
$1000 bill?*

Penny?
Nickel?
Dime?
Quarter?
Fifty-cent piece?
Dollar coin? (There are several correct answers; I'll take any of them)

Anyone is welcome to play of course, not just Americans, though it might be more difficult for you...

*These and even higher-denomination bills are no longer printer over concerns of counterfeiting and of use by drug cartels, the mafia, and other unsavory types. Therefore, bonus points (2 pts) if you can get these to correct. It could make up for lost points elsewhere!

A bit bleak, but a great song. Don't let it get you down.

"No Surprises"

A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal

You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't speak for us

I'll take a quiet life
A handshake
Of carbon monoxide

No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises

Silent, silent

This is my final fit
My final
Bellyache with

No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises please

Such a pretty house
Such a pretty garden...

No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises please (let me out of here).

(Thom Yorke, Radiohead)

QUAKE

Big old quake in Chile... 8.8 on the Richer Scale! Fortunately, the damage appears to be far less than it could have been given a quake of that magnitude. Track the ongoing story here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8540742.stm

A lot of people have been kind to me lately, and I am very appreciative of that. Not everything's been easy. But especially, thanks to my mom, my sister, and my stepdad for going above and beyond to help me with some very important things. I can't say thank you enough, and I'll never forget it.

This could be the most awesome movie ever.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Vocals, musical arrangement, and instruments by Milla Jovovich.
Lyrics - Traditional (see below).

In a glade.

In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a nightingale singing,
he sings to gather everyone from his family.

In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a bass vibrating and a fiddle crying,
I think of a place where my lovely one is strolling now...

In a glade near the Danube river,
I am sick with my loneliness,
crying, I want to fly like a bird, to where my lovely one is now.


(traditional Ukrainian folk song)

Cool, but not the extended versions.

Apparently those will be released on Blu-ray as well, once some time is given for the theatrical releases to sell.

Why the extended movies aren't all you can buy at this point seems silly to me, as they are so much better. If anything I'd add an extra hour or two to each of the extended editions - they still wouldn't even scratch the surface of the detail to be found in the novels. One would think the theatrical versions had served their purpose of packing more paying customers into theaters, but should now quietly go away....

Surprisingly, many people actually don't like long movies, period, and are pretty vehement about it.

Of course I recognize that some films should have been edited more tightly, but 'running time' as such is never on my list of criticisms; movies to me are either worth seeing or they're not — fully realized, or not. Some stories simply demand more time than others to stretch their wings fully, and should be given that. Pure action, horror, and comedy generally run their creative course in far less time than epic adventure or sweeping historical drama. My point is, a film should run as long as it needs to in order that it be the best film it can be - no more and no less.

But obviously not everyone sees it this way, and that's fine. The thing is, for those kind of people with short attention spans who prefer 90 min movies and actually complain when movies are "too long," the theatrical editions of all three of the LOTR movies are likely too long for them anyways! They were all still nearly 3 hours.

Might as well go all out and see the whole 12 hour enchilada, in my mind, if you're going to undertake the journey into Middle Earth in the first place. But, whatever. New Line obviously see more money to be made this way, and anyway I've read that we'll see the extended set in 2010. They're not going to make us wait a whole lot longer. Hopefully by the summer, and if not, then certainly as a holiday release.

Fun stuff.

I named 9 planets in 30 seconds

I named 9 reindeer in 30 seconds

Neill Blomkamp on life in the universe.

Chris in top form. Amazing live performance from the Troubadour in LA.

Terence Trent D'Arby covering "A Change Is Gonna Come"

This generation's Sam Cooke? I'm gonna post more about Terence soon, but he's certainly got those "throw back" pipes plus a raw feeling for music and the impeccable timing to be compared with the greats - Sam, Otis, Marvin, et al.

More to come...this is just a teaser :)

Please continue to help Haiti.

This video is a couple weeks old, but don't think the suffering has gone away. If anything, with the dramatic earthquakes and people trapped in rubble or inside collapsed buildings having subsided, the danger is that the world breathes a sigh of relief and returns to its daily business.

But Haiti before this disaster was the poorest country in the western hemisphere; one of the poorest in the world. They were barely a functioning "country" at all. And now, in the wake of their terrible natural disaster, hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives have been made even harder, past the point of poverty, to the point of complete homelessness and starvation. It will go on for months, people dying not because of the earthquake but because they live on a piece of land which no longer functions as a country.



Please help in anyway you can.

Goodbye, Anonymous, we hardly knew ye.

I had to block anonymous posting. After years of luck, I've started getting a spam post under the "anonymous" heading every few days. They seem to appear on random blog posts, some going back years. I know about them right away though because the spam goes to my email as any other response would.

So I figured I'd better shut down that exhaust port before some wise-ass Jedi kid come by and shoots some real blast torpedoes into it. I'm still not resorting to the verification text yet, because it's such an annoyance to the users. But in the future I can't guarantee that I won't have to.

Anyway, I hope the lack of the ability to post anonymously doesn't hamper anyone too much. You can use any "OpenID" login to post still - it can be a Blogger account, but there are other blog formats that all participate in that open standard of a login/password gate, so I'm trying my best to keep it wide open to as many people as possible without letting the bad guys in.

Thanks.