Exceptionalism

Sunday is here. What meme sticks to the craw today? (craw NOT claw; Get Smart)

It was something Putin said. Did he actually say that it is dangerous to tell people that they are exceptional. Was this right? Did I hear him right? Do I really understand what is he trying to say?!
This is in the context of the Syrian conflict and I kinda of know exactly what he is trying to do. I don't really want to talk about Syria. There are already too many voices in that choir. Or is it a Greek choral? A classic tragedy. Focus. Stay on target. Stay on target. Wait to be blown up by Vadar or was it Vater, mein Vater, Das Leader oder Leder. OK. Focus.

What Putin warns against is what America is! We believe that we, all of us are exceptional. I know that statistically this is not possible because if we were to actually choose a set of metrics that predicts an exceptional person, it would fail. The metrics would not be able to predict anything.

There is a story of a very successful man, but he wanted a tutor. He was determined to brush up on his smarts and take all those tests that he skipped while on the way to success. Being a successful man, he is surrounded by quants and their statistics. They keep telling him it is random but he knows, KNOWS that his success was not random. So he plans on taking the SAT, and any other metrics that will prove to himself and them that his success was not a fluke, not a random nucleation.

For the record, I am a randomist acolyte. I have not been given an official title within the Order. I am more in the style of old western preacher, maybe like Pale Rider or High Plains Drifter. I don't really understand the Random Book, but I understand enough to preach the locals. 

Do you see, at least the non-Math part, the psychology part? If you become successful like Putin, you've had to scratch and craw your way to the top against all those other people. They MUST be inferior if I am to be superior. But no one thinks like this. Right?

Americans at least in public preach that we are all superior, and we should all take on as much risk as possible so that we can be... superior? Superior to whom? (all this risk taking of course benefits the System) There is no way before hand to identify who will become successful. The system will ALWAYS be more complex than the players. Do we understand this? If we could become an alien Watcher race with all the technology and maturity of an older race, who is not directly perturbing the system, but is only watching passively, then perhaps we could identify at one moment's time, who will probably become the leader of the tribe of hominids. Maybe. Even then it would be difficult. And maybe this physics work in strange ways and the act of even observing, changes the state of the system and that is why we have not had any alien contact. They know this principle. Perhaps by observing, just observing radio waves leaking from our solar system, they would risk perturbing the our systems enough to end it before it could become mature. OK. Stay on topic. Focus.

What I'm trying to get at is that Putin's advice is sound. Does that surprise you after what I just said? His advice is good advice for himself and all those who are in "leadership" and "successful" position. They must really guard themselves against the idea that they are truly exceptional people. (Trump card; Hitler believed he was exceptional, and he was. Look at all that he accomplished). And we must constantly remind ourselves that we are exceptional people.

In reality, statistically, we are just ordinary, plain, God's people, or earth people. Each one of us living in Xanth with some bit of magic. Or are we all like Magic (The Gathering TM) cards? Yes. In a way. There are no forbidden cards though, because the system doesn't allow for really power cards. Those would terminate that game too fast. Instead we each try to make decks with ourselves. Trying desperately to find the archetype, the pattern of individual that when put together will be an unbeatable deck. Focus.

Please listen to Putin, but immediately forget what he says. Also immediately forget what I write here. OK? Let the information wash over you. Use your own magic in the way that is best for you. Keep trying to form your band of adventurers with that odd mixture of magic user, fighter, and thief. Just remember that I am also out here playing and to be careful not to really hurt anyone in our games.

Syria is an opportunity meme. Putin is not exceptional. Assad is not exceptional. Obama is not exceptional. They are just channeling cards. But Putin is right. Wildcards spurting magic does a lot of damage.  The traditional deck used to control these wildcards are not working.  We need new decks, novel archetypes. We have so many different players for our Magic game. We have so many different quest and adventures to go on. Just remember to be careful and don't really hurt anyone.


(Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
最高执行权力来自群众的授权，而不是从一些闹剧水产仪式
العليا السلطة التنفيذية تستمد من ولاية من الجماهير، وليس من بعض مراسم المائية هزلية.)

Idle Ideal ideas

It's Saturday Morning. I know that the blog will date the post automatically, but I still write it because I want it in the routine. In essences, this is a log mashed with a... what? Bulletin? Is that where blogs came from? Never mind. Back to the topic. Focus. If we can't focus at the task at hand then the information river will swamp us away in its glacial bog flow.

I woke up thinking creatively. HA. As a recent NPR show reminded me, the intervals between the Spaces are when these thoughts come. They'd be too disruptive if they came with each new chunk of information. Is that how some form of autism disrupts? Never mind. Back to the topic. Focus.

I woke up with geometry in my head. I've been trying to earn some money on the side as a tutor and there are a lot of post wanting personalized teaching for math. I reply to all the subjects that I qualify for, but I've yet to get a single reply! They've either found someone better or didn't really know what they wanted and was wasting my time with their post. I'd like to think the former. It's the same with a job search. Are all these automated services, mostly through Taleo and Brassring, just wasting our time or do they truly find someone better than us for the company.com. It's probably random, but randomness doesn't motivate. OK. Focus.

I used to play Dungeons & Dragon (D&D). The primordial game for gamers. Do you remember too? If you are here or there playing, you're probably the type. In D&D we wanted different probabilities so we had different sided dices. Instead of the normal gambling dices that have six sides and a cube shape, we also had a four sided dice in a pyrimidal shape (there must be a geometry name for a pyrimid with another triangle as a base instead of a square, but I am trying to write without internet to force myself to stay focus, so I can't look it up).  The geometry of the dices went all the way up to a 20-side dice. What was that used for?  I remember that a magic user got to roll only a 4-side dice to determine her hit points! Only a max of 4?! And this was the same for physical attacks! Still, the appeal was at higher levels her abilities were not capped. If she became a powerful enough wizard she could destroy the entire Universe and there would be no more games to play. Focus.

The geometry of the dice associates with probability. Understanding probability allows us to manage risk and mitigate Black Swan events. I realized that the normal probability for a simple gambling dice does not include Black Swan event of the dice staying on its edge. Wouldn't be cool to see a dice land and stay on its edge?! We might never see it happen but it could happen. We would roll the dices and it should have been snake-eyes but one dice didn't flatten into a two dimensional readout. It stayed on its edge. The normal probability for a six sided dice would be 1:6 for any number. But in "three" dimension, without the strong effect of gravity, but instead a weak effect of gravity, the probability would begin to include the edges.  There are 12 edges to a 6-sided dice. In reality, the probability would be the major (1:6) + minor (1:12) depending upon how strong gravity is and how sharp the edges are.  If the edges are true lines then (1:12) never happens, but if the edges are in fact planes/surfaces then (1:12) happens with some frequency.  In a weaker gravitational field (do these exist?! Not the example here, where falling dice and falling table are still under the same strength gravity) the falling dice might have a better chance at stabilizing on an edge surface. Where does all this take me? No where. It was how I spent a weekend morning. But maybe a real mathematician or physicist with ideal idle time during this extended restructuring might start doodling with it and come up with something interesting. Or not.

We all know that a lot of Americans spend the weekends watching Football and a lot of the World spends the weekend watching Football, and the New.Brit.Indi.Australiapus hominids watch crickets chirp. And some like to do random mob flashes on the weekend for TED talks. I like to eat breakfast and share the not so random memes that percolates through the heat of the week to finally spurts out in bold flavors during interspersed weekend Space s.


空閒理想的想法
Idle Идеальный идеи

مبتعد أفكار مثالية

आदर्श विचारों निष्क्रिय  

Uncle restructured

I am here with you.

I am with my Uncles and Aunts.

Weren't we here just a few years ago, engineers with degrees and best employee awards? Wasn't it suppose to be like a family? The good son and daughter, the good student, the hard working employee in the family owned aerospace business.

Who's fault is it? Short-sighted workers or lazy, avarice leadership?

I don't know. I only know I am at the local bakery, drinking bottomless coffee, writing to clear my head before I jump into the madness again. This yearly ritual of looking for yet another job.

Where does it go, this constant restructuring? I cannot help but buy more services from India, or tools from China until they also restructure their labor market. I am hunkering down for the extended recovery.

What will we do when we riot? Do we wait until we billions become restless? We need a Great Wall Project now! The shuffle of a billion feet is frightening, each pair carries a sharp tongued month, and tiny cheating hands. There is be no magic pill to ease human suffering, no novel technology to change biology.

I watch people race on the freeway like packs of wild dogs chasing prey. That instinct, I know it. I need it too, but not on the freeway. For brief saltatory moments our primordial brain is happy, motivated, and has a sense of accomplishment. In exchange the system gets plasticity and we get more highway deaths, more gas being burned to get us somewhere five minutes faster, on average.

I don't know.

I'm just some dude.




我們將做什麼 
當我們騷亂
我們將做什麼
當我們開始互相殘殺
有十億微小的謀殺溢出一條河流

 

Stephen Roach 1998

Stephen Roach in 1998 wrote about "Global Restructuring: Lessons, Myths, and Challenges".

He states:
80's were manufacturing restructuring, ex. "tool & die makers".
90's were service restructuring, ex. "mid-management" 

00's what did we restructure here? the "knowledge-base" workers?
10's what are we restructuring now "executives" workers.

Truth be told, if you look at the numbers, the stats, execs haven't performed any better. Well, actually you can't easily measure the effectiveness of the Executive Brand.

It's easy to give only vague metrics that make it difficult to evaluate executives. The ability to talk easy, shake hands, network effortlessly, and access to other executive circles. These skill sets are transferable over different industries: IT to biotech to mining for gold. Any street hood-Eddie-Murphy-Trading-Places has got loads of these skills, right? Well, except access to executive circles.

Any tool-and-die maker or bench-top scientist can think critically. It is the appetite for risk taking that is missing. And the handshake network. 

Even a chemist knows that the way to a job is via a handshake and not another user account and password.

The Market will restructure and we, the mean we, will always bear the brunt of our risk taking failures. And those that randomly succeed perpetuate the system because it worked for them, so it must be working for everybody else, except for those who aren't doing it right. 

(shit, social, crapper)

I am indebted to George Carlin for this stream. I hope he smiles on me today.


Social Networks are like toilets.


We all dump into it, but let me ask you, when do you eat and drink from it?

Mostly of the time we are so busy shaping and crafting our own shit that we have only just enough time to take quick bites and sips from the porcelain bowl, and usually only choice morsels from friends we semi-trust after we've picked out the corn bits. Corn, its everywhere.

Some people shit really easy. It just comes down the shoot into the bowl in one long, firmly textured sausage.

Others are sick. Their sick shit just sprays out, like diarrhea. Something is defiantly disturbing their digestive tracts.

Still other, like me, are dehydrated, or electrolytically imbalanced, or not getting enough love fiber.


Every shit takes too long. We wait and wait, and it is painful coming out, this shit.

It's called constipation, writer's block, artistic distraction, displacement, whatever. It's all :descriptors for shitting.

Now, if somehow our shit goes viral, like Brian's sandal, then we're put on a pedestal shitter and people pay for our shit.

Anywho, good luck pushing your shit.

All I have is my priceless shit, and thus I can't really use it to buy your shit.

And my shit takes up a lot of time to make, leaving only brief interludes between work-shitting to marvel at how creative you've been with your shit.

Maybe one day, if I work-shit hard enough and I am lucky, I will have enough shit to buy some of your really expensive shit.


Shit.

How the time flies!

I gotta go and work on my shit before it hits the fan.

ciao ciao

(Pushers, Followers, Grumblers)

It's a game, like the ones we invented as kids, just more complex.

There are kids who are ring leaders. The pushers get the group to move, follow the rules, and achieve the goals of the game; however contrived rules|they are. Then there are the followers who accept the rules because the game looks fun. Perhaps some become spirit leaders, something like cheerleaders. They forms Pep squads to push messages from the Pusher. This certainly is not just an American thing!

Oh, don't forget the grumblers. These are the kids who don't like the rules, don't think the game is so much fun, but there's nothing else to play. If ours is the only playground in the neighborhood then we play the game that is current. The grumblers like to grumble, but they don't really want to be pushers, ring leaders, or followers... do they? 

This is a gross simplification of the much more complex South Park groups: Dicks, Pussies, and Assholes. The reverse Fourier transformation is:  Pushers are Dicks; followers, Pussies; and the grumblers, Assholes. The math dictates a distribution with overlapping hybrids. Here are the possible Venn diagrams.


What the hell is a Dick-Pussy?! A leader-follower? Are they even possible?

If we know the change of Pushers over time, can we transform to get a frequency of Dicks? Can I use it to predict how often a day I have to envelop Dicks, gently fuck Pussies, or fist Assholes into silent pleasure? 

Thus goes my Abstraction of complex behaviors into finite-dimensional vector spaces.

And as with all games, we have the roll of the dice spinning the vector!

In the long run, it's all random ending in a fixed non-Gaussian distribution stone.

Sunday (Walk.bread.reflection)

I've started this Sunday routine. Will it become habit? Will I chuck data, and do it without thinking, almost effortless.

>push.MIT.Ann Graybiel.//neuroscience behind routine and habit formation.OCD//
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.112851

I walk the Baltimore community, or at least my little locale that is being gentrified. It is happening everywhere, even in my youth town, Los Angeles.

>push.NPR.//
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/27/179299380/im-the-caf-and-hes-the-leche

There is trash on the sidewalk. I think of mechanisms for communities to pickup the litter. The city provides the basic, but we need to fill in the gap. I think laterally like the TED talk about doing things on the weekend that interest you. If you like football then do that. If you like Improv Everywhere, do that!

>push.TED.//
http://www.ted.com/talks/charlie_todd_the_shared_experience_of_absurdity.html

What if you like to pickup trash? Analyzing trash? What if you got like-minded individuals, who are a bit eccentric, retentive; who like to catalog and record things; to pick up and note the trash being discarded? This provides useful city data that is not being captured. It is not volunteer work. It is just something to do on the weekend outside work and children and the internet. Throw in a bit of science, a bit of garbagology?

Does the frequency of 7-eleven litter.discards map out to a dispersion circle-area around the actual site? Probably. Do the makeup of discard items that don't get reclaimed by basic city garbage collection remain consistent over time or do they breath? How about across different cities in the US. How about across different countries. We provide interesting analysis while picking up litter.

But back to walking to Hamilton Bakery on Harford, here in Baltimore, MD, USA.
I walk pass these houses with black and white and who knows what kinda of coloration and I wonder about the revitalization process. I see the dynamics. The young, hipster kids and the older established black AND white Baltimorian with their jaded experience. How many "revitalization" has Baltimore gone through they think. The city has revitalized the inner harbor before. There are freeways the lead to nowhere. Now they are trying it here on Harford & Hamilton. I put myself.empathy.in them, and think.//"The streets are being repaved but I'm still struggling. I deserve enough free time to enjoy the things that I like to do. I am somebody"// It sort of reminds me of the Army. At least the research.civilian part. People get into a negative mindset and just become unresponsive, waiting for the rigidity of the system to prove them right. They watch with morbid humor as others try to push, to remodel, to move, to remove stovepipes. When the newcomers fails, the cogs feel justified. Bitter justification.

I don't know how to get the old cogs of the communities to participate in remodeling this network.machine. I just moved here to Baltimore. I am a cog. It takes me awhile to fit and then usually the network removes me to another system.

I start my routine. Hopefully, I will instill a good habit. Maybe the bridging is with the young hipsters of this community who don't realize they are hipsters.

I guess that is what www.jojobrand3.com is about. A corporation to help.let other corporations rebrand themselves. Major brands don't need JB3. They have strong presence and loud voice already.

We'll see.
#rambling.end
www.jojobrand3.com

query (Kids.community.liability)

Is a child an investment for the community? The community usually markets children as investments, but treats them is liabilities.

Is your child a liability to you? You would never view it like this... would you? [biology.shapes our view.behavior] Is it like buying a house? When you buy a house you view it as an investment, but the community sees it as you taking on the liability of ownership. [at least our communities]

Bringing a child into the world is not the same as creating a home, which is different that building a house and buying a house is even further removed. Still, something in me keeps saying, "same same but different". Ever where I look there are limited liability corporation and not many fully liable .com.org.gov.edu corporations. Absolutely no fully liable communities. What is the point of creating communities with limit liabilities?

It ebb and flows, the binary nature of corporations.religion.gov.com.mil.org. They try to instill this idea of being responsible for each other [liability], but then sets up routine.rituals that make sure the corporations that push the brand are not liable themselves.

Corporal beings are liable nonetheless. And when trust is lost, the One community dissolves the corporation, sometimes violently, leaving individuals or fragmented corporations to recreate a new brand and a new corporation. Perhaps a complex corporations [higher ordered structures] but always in One community.

In the ancient model, you were born into a family.extended.community. That family.extended.community takes on the liability of that new person.

In the newer model, a new person is born into an immediate family and various corporations:  .com.org.edu.gov.mil.de. The new person's liability is broken up for corporal entities to more safely take on a limited liability for that new person. The liability [risk?] of that person has been broken up and packaged into discrete vehicles and sold to each corporation. The community accepts this  because supposedly it provides efficiency. Our community through no ignorance individuals nor malice of corporations have created rules & rituals to maximize the longevity of corporations by limiting the liability it has to the individuals. Isn't the newer model a lot like the old model? Perhaps we need a complete different model?

There is an effect called Money Priming.
http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/index3.html

Money priming results in a plastic community (pun intended). It is necessary but not sufficient for a community. A Brand holds the community together and provides rigidity. It is also necessary but not sufficient for a healthy community.

I see a weird dynamic pulling between money.individual versus brand.group.

In times of fear, the brand pulls the members of a corporation tigher together. Yet when primed with money, members are less suspectible to being pulled into a brand. That is OK as long as they know that there is only One community.

What am I talking about? I don't know. I can only give you a narrative to my thoughts. You could go directly to my thoughtStream! It is be even more raw with fragments and loose associations. Still, maybe an interaction with another raw stream might induce the correct interferance patterns with nodes of clarity and troughs of hidden ignorance.

Afternoon(marriage conservation reformation)

The cycle repeats: same.same.but different.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation

I'm not trying to redefine marriage.

• http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/maryland/

Hell, I'm not even trying to redefine a sacrament.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_%28Catholic_Church%29
• http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/145520.pdf
• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_marriage_a_religious_sacrament
• http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1438sacraments.asp

I'm just an anarchist shaking the House to see what falls and what falls, true Conservatives will keep in their conservation efforts.

When the routine is stable, I look to the future with confidence, moving, elaborating the complexity further.

When the future is uncertain, I shake the past, looking for something of usefulness. Always something drops out but always I have to write something new.

I graft it all to my skin, changing my brand. And in randomness of Spirit, in discipline of One, and with exponential virus between us, I move. 

Evening (monster problem circle)

Parameter:  We have a monster.
Problem:  It eats children.

Monster's rationale:
It justifies children consumption as a useful service to the community burdened with young hooligans.

Reaction:
Eating children does not benefit the community. It reduces the future potential of the community and while on the surface the beast's statement seems plausible, upon digging into the data we find:
    A. Demons do not eat, on average more bad kids than good kids.
    B. The opposite is occurs.
    C. On average, hooligans are significantly eaten less times by monsters.

Counter:
The Demon says that the loss of good kids is still justifiable in the short term to get rid of the current problems of hooligans, and assures us that in the future it will return to eating more or even exclusively hooligans. It counters that any dead hooligan is good for the community, and regrets the undo consumption of good kids. 

Questions:
1. Why do Monsters eat less hooligans?
2. Do Monsters like the taste of hooligans less than ordinary children?
3. Are Hooligans more difficult to catch & eat.
4. If #3 is true, why are hooligans more difficult to catch?
5. Are children the only slayers of Monsters?
6. Are hooligans, a subset of children, the only slayers of Monsters?
7. Do child slayers grow up to be hunters?   


New Parameter: We have a Hunter.
Problem: Hunts for monsters always kill a lot of people, including children.

Obfuscation:
The Hunters justifies execution of people as a useful service to the community burdened with too many Monsters.

Morning (idea leader sum)

I've been thinking this morning. HA!

Now you get to listen to my crazy ideas, which also means that in the world there are probably several hundred thousand people with similar thoughts. Some of them will be in a position to implement action. I just send my action potential along and hope its summation results in real action by someone, anyone, somewhere, or no where.

Now, what is my simple stream?

The thinking goes something like this.

• History/evolution
• Single leader for small to medium size group of people
• Son's of God, Kings, Emperors, and Absolute Leaders
• Advent of Democracy (still dependent upon single Leader)
• Advent of Communism (still dependent upon single Leader)
• Both were/are "perverted" by the vestigial tail of Absolute Leaders
• Groups have become massive

The main idea is this.

The historic archetype of a leader represents a downward flow of implementation. In times of uncertainty, the group looks to the leader, and takes on the characteristics of the leader by automatically following his orders.

The current era changes to an upward flow in leader building and implementation. During all times, the group gives the leader his characteristics. The more asynchronous the group is, the more distorted the leader becomes, and there is no real resonance between him and the greater community. As a consequence, implementation of action is slowed. However, since there is no longer a tiger in the boat with us, we have the luxury of a slower implementation time.

Viewed in this light, contemporary conflicts can be interpreted in a binary versus non-binary mode. In the Absolute Leader/binary mode, a single person takes action against another person. Therefore when the group takes on the characteristic of its leader, it takes action against those people represented by the opposition. The spill-over effects are implementation of idiosyncratic polices of that leader (racism, bigotry, etc) which don't really benefit the single massive group.

However, today's Leaders live increasingly in a non-binary world. We, the groups still revert to a binary system because this is in our genes and history. Yet, as groups begin to self-organize and synchronize its consensus, the leader becomes a true "representative" voice. The group benefits by not taking on the bad qualities of the leader. We won't go out and start killing people the leader doesn't like.

This process in ongoing. Individuals self-organize into groups, which then aggregate to form higher ordered groups of consensus. We don't need to take on the characteristics of the leader in order to build consensus. We project our own characteristic onto our leaders, whether that leader has those characteristics or not!

As this projection becomes more aggressive, I think the strong and charismatic leader will be marginalized in favor of ones who can better integrate and manage all the many different characteristics being pushed onto him. Case-in-point, Mitt Romney. When those "pushes" are too disparate, even someone as malleable as Mitt can't manage it! And we see this, even in our legacy binary mode of interpretation. The trick now is to figure out how to synchronize our voices in a chaotic way! Don't worry, we are doing it real-time.


Anywho,

Crazy talk.

Afternoon (Kentucky coal Guantanamo)

These streams of voices and images goes in and mixes and out comes something unexpected AND expected. How would you characterize this synchronization? The same conclusion arrived separately by many individual ingesting the same info feed mix. Is it like a Police song?

I was thinking about Kentucky coal miners. Why? As I have previously mentioned, I will soon be making the same salary as a Kentucky coal miner; yet I have as PhD in Biochemistry. I  can appreciate why a coal miner would like to hold on to his industry and salary. And logically you can appreciate why Senator Rand Paul's position on energy is this. It will be very hard for a miner to recover his salary value, even with extensive retraining. Can he be retrained to do what I do, and would he be satisfied making the same amount after all the additional training?! It is unrealistic... maybe.

I know my climate change stance is effecting real people. I know that coal burning plants are just bad for the environment and the national energy mix must change if we are to lead the world in managing this problem of climate change.

How can I help miners recover their standard of living without going back to coal mining? Should we do it cold turkey or a gradual weening? How do we speed up and also ease the transition?

The two senators from Kentucky are Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. They honestly represent their state. If we want McConnell and Paul to vote differently, then we must support the people in this time of transition. If you ask any coal miner whether he wants his son to do the same job, he would say no. Everyone knows the direction and the solutions; we just drag our feet because that is the way we are.

I focus here because I perceive a synchronous voice also on the issue of Guantanamo. Senator Paul still believes in the Constitution and eventually he will also support life under the Gospel of Paul. It is just political will he needs from the people.

I have two weeks to pack everything and move to Maryland from Germany; yet I sit here writing about ways for effecting real change, dragging my feet with all talk. I have to get involve directly, and perhaps once I am back in the States I will "move" again. 

Some interesting links connected to Kentucky and this stream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_Kentucky

Notice the 18th Senator in class 3.
John J. Crittenden
Notice what he tried to do politically vs. the party he joined after the Whig party left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party

 "The Know Nothing was a movement by the nativist American political faction of the 1850s, characterized by political xenophobia, anti-Catholic sentiment, and occasional bouts of violence against the groups the nativists targeted. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to republican values and controlled by the Pope in Rome."

American politics, same same but different. Xenophobia and sectarian violence. Sound familiar?

 

Morning (job chassis social)

I am starting a new job next year.

I'll be making as much money as a Kentucky coal miner fresh out of high school. However, if I reflect upon this, it makes sense. I consider the cost of living in the US. I consider the occupational risk of mining: health (black lung), accidents, etc. All these things result in roughly the same salary.

I've had a liberal education and a carefree life pursuing research into life's meaning at a molecular level. I should be paid a premium for that advance knowledge. However, that premium is about the same as the premium given to coal miners for their occupational risk (or should miners be paid more?!). Let's take a look at what we mean by premium and what exactly we are paying for.

On average, a coal miner, me and a CEO of some startup cloud company, are biological the same machine. This means a sophisticated organic locomotion chassis on which an advanced neural network is mounted. It has been argued that the advanced neural network mounted on the average CEO chassis is better at making complex decision regarding an ever changing community network than me or the coal miner.

I disagree. CEOs on average don't make better decisions than a Kentucky coal miner. If a CEO or a coal miner were given ownership of a company, on average, over time with multiple trials over many companies, we would see that both perform about the same in regard to the success of the company. Of course we can't run this experiment, and in the real world with all that money the CEO's voice is louder and people are evolutionarily conditioned to believe the louder speaker. He is shouting because of some imminent danger coming to eat us! But in reality he is shouting to hide the fact that his decision making isn't better than you or me.

This doesn't mean you or I can go out today to become a CEO, or that we would be successful at it if given only one shot. But if given the opportunity and observed over multiple companies you would see that our success rate would be about the same as any current CEO.

If my hypothesis is correct, then we have to ask why we pay CEO such a high premium. This premium is specifically for their decision making ability. Isn't it? Or are we paying for the social network that they have developed over time? The premium on the social network should be high, but if that is where the real value is, then we should acknowledge this fact!

And when we talk about increasing the opportunities of all Americans, what we should be talking about is increasing access of Americans to these social networks. The old social networks were difficult to open up. They tend to be closed and clique-ish. The new networks are much more open. Let's keep it that way.

Just my 2.3 cents.

-J

Morning (korea abortion gaza)

These are the streams that are running through my head.

I am starting to put other people's stream into Google Reader and searching their streams for keywords. Eventually, it will be media, data, and not just words. It will be semi-automatic.

That is why I was thinking about Korea. They are very wired. They have a split personality too. What will happen when the two merge again? It must happen. The Korean-corporation is awakening, stretching, and yawning. I will translate with Google Translate.

>g.translate.english-korean

//
제가 한국에 대해 생각 해봤는데 이유입니다. 그들은 매우 유선 있습니다. 그들도 다중 인격을 갖추고 있습니다. 두가 다시 병합하면 어떻게 되나요? 그런 일은해야합니다.한국 회사가 떴다 스트레칭 및 하품 있습니다. 나는 번역 Google과 번역 할 ...

 

jega hangug e daehae saeng-gag haebwassneunde iyuibnida. geudeul-eun maeu yuseon issseubnida. geudeuldodajung ingyeog eul gajchugo issseubnida. du ga dasi byeonghab hamyeon eotteohge doenayo? geuleon il-eun haeyahabnida. hangug hoesaga tteossda seuteuleching mich hapum issseubnida. naneun beon-yeog Googlegwa beon-yeog hal ...

//

There is a strong Christian current that runs through the country. I push the Korean stream to see what will happen. My stream flows thru abortion on Facebook and I've just immersed in some ranting from the Rachel Maddow show. She's smart, or at least her voice is loud, maybe not as loud yet as Fox News but she is trying. The loud voices; that is another stream, and Jon Stewart commented about it during her interview with him. But back to life, back to reality; back to life, back to reality.

Rachel makes a smart comparison in the context of US culture. She chose to juxtapose the idea of federal regulation and abortion. She shows brief video snippets of people declaring "I am proud of my pro-Life record."

What would a Korean say?

The government should recognize that life begins at conception. OK. But my immersion in the stream clearly shows that it makes no legislative sense. Should the federal government tell rich liberal women living in Hollywood that they can't get abortions. Sure. But you know they will still get them! They are wealthy. California has the highest abortion per population rate. (you can go to a gov. site and check or you can just trust JoJoBrand). Should the government tell a teenage girl that she must keep her rape baby because there is no exception to the sanctity of life. How about the wife of a man who refuses to use contraception? She wants to at least space the children a little farther apart. She must choose the question of life and death because her husband doesn't want to use a condom or let her take birth control pills? Who should we send to jail? The wife or the husband? Who should be punish and who should we love? Is that a good framing of the discussion? What are we really talking about here?

On my computer I can stream live images of Gaza, but I can't see live images of drone missiles making exceptions to the sanctity of life. What are we really talking about here?

We need more contraception! If you really believe in both the sanctity of life and the quality of life then we need more contraception. The USA is a rich country. We can afford free contraception for ourselves. More contraception equals less abortions. That is the biology of conception and contraception. It is legislatively possible and it makes sense!

I stretch the idea a bit. We are now the prophylactic force behind the sweet love of Egypt.

Viral Gangnam-style. Death to Israel video game, except it's not a game or a funny video. Attack ads and demonizing of the opposition. Can you imagine? How can we trust each other when there is real casualty behind the posturing? It is a little too late for contraception here. These two rape babies are here, born already. And now the young women of Egypt and her big sister, USA must take care these two little ones, and make sure they don't destroy their room while growing up. It's a loose metaphor but I like it. In the long run, it doesn't really matter so much.

Israel will be gone (even with nukes). Palestine will be gone. English will be gone. Deutsch will be gone. Sure, they will still be here, stored and protected in redundant off-world sites and eventually off-solar sites so we can remember and reflect, and then probably forget. Yet even this scenario is predicated on the assumption that one of our variants survive into the near future. It might not happen.

Silver, liquid metal things living on a Hoth world of I, me, and Robot via Spielberg playing on an Asimov-mountain and not a Kafka-burg. The future? Maybe, but I don't think so. The corporate mind of the Movie circle is still too old-skool.

In the long race we are all dead.

2x6
Economy. evolution.
Camus. science.
Silver. chimeras.
Quantum. intelligence.
Transportation. cognition
xo. consciousness.

xo-JoJo

Afternoon (cycle picture dream)

It's Sunday. I've had some breakfast and posted my picture. The thoughts, images, and dreams flicker through me and I can barely comprehend them. On some level I understand, on some level I feel too much, and yet at some other "holistic" level I don't understand. I will never understand. I am only offered glimpses, shadows on a cave wall some would say.

Here are the things I am selling today:

Vittorio's table, the self-assemble shelf, and gifted chairs.

The table is apart already because they need to fit it into their car. I can't with the shelf. The pieces are screwed together.
We took it apart anyways and they took everything away. A nice french couple. They were looking at the same apartment as Gonca (who took the Ikea dresser).


Before I took the table apart, I took the "almost finished breakfast on the table" picture. What did I have for dinner last night on the table? Here.

Blogger isn't really up to fancy picture display yet. No more angled table images but for sure more dinner pictures. Later.

And more wine pictures, just on a different table.

 You get the gist.

(it's chicken)

A Dornfelder from last night..

If I could only stack the pictures and compress the time like it feels. Still. The images are fragmented, spaced like I see my memories.
I put up pictures here.
We put up pictures on our walls.
For me it is a cycle of putting up and taking down physical pictures. I go through different but same emotions everytime.

There is Lil's black and white picture framing a boat. It is dated 1998, when I left LA and went to Boulder for Graduate School.

There are the Kanji from Ikeda sensei and the odd deconstruction of women pictures preserved in polyurethane shoe fix gloo. Boulder days of practicing Aikido, and then fixing paper in rubber while living in Julie's place. Maybe the artist spirit moved me then!

And what else? The calendar from 2009 giving classic art images. 2009 was a busy and good year. A stitched together photograph of a Thailand jungle was from then. Pictures of gramma and me and mom and ta re and the cardboard pieces from a care package sent to me by my nieces. Life in Vietnam circa 1970-71, LA circa 1998, Boulder 2002-6 and Tuebingen 2006-2009, all on my wall. My timeline.

It is like Aikido. You can't learn it by talking about it. You have to go through the motion. The movement is putting up and taking down physical artifacts with hyper-linked connection to various neural networks. I go through the movements that others have done with love. What does it feel like? I can't describe it. I just go through the movements. You have to go through the movements. Social muscle memory networks linked to group cognition.

I keep telling myself that when all this is more settled the pictures will come back up. And they will. They are all slices of time's passage that I've cut away and taken with me, artifacts with memory traces linking places and people and times and wine and fun and laughter.

These artifacts I will keep and go through the motions again.

But I will put some here too, as you do. An electronic artifact who's persistence might be longer than any real object.

These objects are organically in you, in your brain and now on extended network you create to store memories for random access. How will these extended networks alter the movements we do?

Regardless, if they last longer than expected, I will be happy.

Morning (noFog nass fragment)

It's Friday! Time to relax and sleep in tomorrow.

Yes and no.

I am in transition. My country is in transition. My world community is in transition.

A friend came by last night to pick up the Ikea dresser I bought last year. It is starting, the time that I must leave Germany. All these bits and pieces of stuff that has no meaning to anyone else are being giving away or sold for a few euros.

I'm looking at a cheap, self-assembled shelf. I bought it from the previous guy living in my tiny apartment back in Tuebingen. I brought it here to Magdeburg, but now I leave it here. It won't hold anymore memories. The object itself is an Artifact, a magical thing which holds part of my past. I will sell it to someone.

I was told to cherish the memories. That's kinda obvious, isn't it? I must take the magic from the object back into my head and transfer it here so that when my organic brain fails, at least some fragment of the magic lingers on, or maybe is transformed, used for some other creative endeavor. The magic is cheap and can't be sold. Idiosyncratic and highly personal, it carries no value except for those who know it, who created it.

The shelf held my books, which are now packed away or electronically stored because I had suspected my transient life-style would demand more flexibility. Books read and stored away in boxes and now at Amazon. It's always difficult for a bookophile to give up the book and to remember what is important is the story. It's always difficult for a magician to give up the talisman even though he has reabsorbed the magic back into himself. Stacks of science paper on the shelf are also long gone, moved and then left behind except for the story which runs through my head:

Combinatorial regulation with transcription factors, epigenetic integration, facilitation from womb impact, contact, contacting space and you and me. Poisons and gift in curative dosage. Regenerating axon fiber optics to nucleus of an activated T cell.

The small TV was given away a long time ago, but the plant is here. What will I do with it? A living thing. I will also give it away. Someone else will take care of it. Perhaps it will survive long after, like other plants from fraternity rooms, drunken youth, and midlife transition.

I played the artifact card, but it is not tappable. It is not regenerative. I can only use it once, and then it breaks, fragments and goes to the discarded stack. Perhaps there lurks a spell or incantation still to draw, which let's me search through the discarded deck and reclaim a cheap, shelf-made self. My deck has always been green, partly regenerative, partly reflective and recursive, a self-made reclamation.

But it's time to pack up the playing cards, at least for now. You win. Take the card that you wanted. I hope it makes your deck strong. I buy another starter deck hoping to find that one interesting artifact, spell, or creature card that will fit nicely into my current odd assortment of memory and manna.

3X3
fragment. nass. noFog.
magic. regeneration. artifact.
books. memory. manna.

Morning (syncing random u)

It is odd. Really it is; By nature we are designed to look for signs and omens, like chickens who adopt odd behavior, idiosyncratic routines in a naive attempt to recapitulate the conditions that cause the dropping of the food pellet.

We are social, pack animals and yet we've created tiny matrix boxes of isolation, and then connected them with a magic that will soon be greater than the spoken word, the tender touch, and the primordial family root. Do you understand? You do, but you choose to rejected it.

A mouse in a plastic box, eating as much as he wants, running in circles, exploring a 4x2x2 cm world and thinking he knows the mind of God. And every now and then plucked up by his tail and allowed to mate with an equally frighten, lonely, and socially sanitized female. Coupled and with spooning in mouth, we eat our comfort food.

It's just food. Organic connections be damned!

We don't make food that fit us, rather we change our biology to fit the food. It has always been so. That is why we have been so successful. We adapt. We are plastic (pun intended). We are beginning to fit our biology to the food and drink we make. You might protest, fight it with all your might, but the reality is, this is what we are doing.

It's just food.

It's just water.

It's just soda and pop, father of all sugar drinks. It encapsulates all our vestigial quirks. The essential need for water and sugar. But that's not enough. The wiring dictates an addiction for sugar highs, and caffeine vigilance. And supply-side economics gladly give us our Monster drinks.

OK. Enough raving for today. I take a shower, and go outside to my patch of green grass. There are industrial chickens who are certified organic because they too have a little patch of outside next to their "roost", but they never step out because that is not the life they know.

We can't go back to being free range fouls, but this roost stinks.

Morning (politic moving orange)

>sync.intercorrelation

I've moved on. I am now pass the election. It doesn't really matter for me because I will win either way.

Don't you understand? Whoever is elected must, by the alchemy of modern politics, become a centrist. I am a centrist moving.

I like to think of it like two siblings at the ice cream counter, or if you are in Europe, at the gelato counter.

One wants vanilla ice cream, the other chocolate. They have to fight it out but not with fists anymore. And at some point, one yields and they both get the same flavor ice cream. You will be happy because you got vanilla, and I will grouse, still wanting chocolate.

We seem to miss the point that we both have ice cream.

Can you imagine fighting with fists? Are the problems we face so dire that I will kill you to get my chocolate gelato?

You are trying to convince me that it is still the old choice, of eating or not eating. Really? Fat kids are throwing away food at lunchtime and then complaining that they don't get enough to eat. Really?

Absurdities of looking at the real statistics. Of course it isn't me, not my kids.

I will be the first to cast the stone. I still waste some food and generate some waste. I measured it. In 3 weeks, I generate about 1kg of plastic/gelb sack waste and 1kg regular waste, and about 0.1kg bio-waste. I don't have kids to worry about. And for that waste-footprint I demand my flavor!

It is ice cream DAMN IT!

I don't care how you argue. Chocolate is evil. Chocolate is communism. Chocolate is really shit. If you want some I can scoop it from my ass and smear it across your face. Is that what you want, chocolate?!

Please. You're making a spectacle of yourself.

It is ice cream.

And next week we will decide again on the flavor. Maybe instead of vanilla we will have strawberry. Doesn't matter. Maybe we will have the whole counter of flavors. Can you imagine! We will be there arguing the whole week instead of eating ice cream! At this point even a third flavor is a nonproductive idea.

We reduce it down to two dots and then choose, yet there is a whole dot matrix full of flavors! Maybe we, the two kids need to learn a bit of matrix math. Let's start with a linear array.

I remember late nights with Pete in the Math building cramming for calculus. I remember how to add one matrix to another. I can multiple them too! There are define rules to do matrix math.

Efficient, high-throughput politics! Is that the third path? A way to shutout the money-voice? Are my web-based politicomatic tools there in the cloud yet? How do we go about comparing two politicomatic arrays? Vector addition? How do we just move and avoid this stasis of staring at dots?

OK. Alles klar.